‘Africanisation’ has, during the last few decades, been a buzzword that has enjoyed special currency in South Africa. Africanisation is generally seen to signal a (renewed) focus on Africa, on reclamation of what has been taken from Africa, and, as such, it forms part of post‐colonialist, anti‐racist discourse. With regard to knowledge, it comprises a focus on indigenous African knowledge and concerns simultaneously ‘legitimation’ and ‘protection from exploitation’ of this knowledge. With regard to education, the focus is on Africanisation of institutions, curricula, syllabi and criteria for excellence (in research, performance, etc.). This paper, while sympathetic to the basic concerns that inform the call/s for Africanisation, spells out the problems and limits of this project. For one thing, the idea of Africanisation may evoke a false or at least a superficial sense of ‘belonging’. For another, it may entail further marginalisation and derogation. Lastly, while it may emphasise relevance, it is hazardously close to a comprehensive relativism. In the light of these points, this paper suggests a more promising alternative: a framework of basic human rights appears to be a more appropriate locus for the pertinent concerns and demands.
Taking its inspiration from the name of the recent '#FeesMustFall' movement on South African university campuses, this paper takes stock of the apparent disrepute into which truth, facts and also rationality have fallen in recent times. In the post-truth world, the blurring of borders between truth and deception, truthfulness and dishonesty, and non-fiction and fiction has become a habit -and also an educational challenge. I argue that truth matters, in education as elsewhere, and in ways not often acknowledged by constructivist, postmodernist and postcolonialist positions.'Imfihlakalo yasemhlabezi iqiniso. ' ('The truth is the world's secret. ' -Zulu proverb) Introduction: the decline of truthThe phrase '#FactsMustFall' has been inspired by the name of the recent '#FeesMustFall' movement on South African university campuses that was preceded by '#RhodesMustFall' . The association is significant for an additional reason, given this movement's ideological proximity to black consciousness and Afrocentrism, and its explicit endorsement of the Africanisation of higher education. Part of the latter is also a disavowal of 'Eurocentric logic' , 'Western rationality' and 'Northern epistemology' (see Seepe, passim 2004; De Sousa Santos, passim 2007; Cross and Ndofirepi, passim 2017).A further important inspiration for this paper has come, of course, from recent political events and their global impact: the stay-vs.-leave referendum in the UK, the US presidential election, the appointment of creationist Betsy DeVos as the US Education Secretary, Vladimir Putin's prevarications about the Russian arms build-up, not to mention developments in the Eastern Ukraine (e.g. the denial that there are any Russian troops there), Turkey (e.g. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's decision to
In South Africa, the notion of an African Philosophy of Education emerged with the advent of post-apartheid education and the call for an educational philosophy that would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures, identities and values, and the new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-apartheid era. The idea of an African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South Africa. Not only its content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and continue to be, the subject of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after discussing some of the constitutive features of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with which we are sympathetic. Our central question is whether African Philosophy of Education is the revisioned, 'typically African' philosophy of education that it is claimed to be. We argue that it has revealed certain tendencies that are remarkably similar to characteristics of Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid education that it claims to replace. More substantially still (and this is a feature that has wider ramifications for philosophy of education internationally), African Philosophy of Education, by labeling itself uniquely and distinctly 'African', runs the risk of insulating itself not only from interaction with the wider (i.e. non-African) world but also from any critical interrogation.
The idea of`the African university' is usually accompanied by an emphasis on Africanisation of education, and of knowledge, on changing the demographic profile of student, staff and administrative bodies, educational syllabi and curricula, and the criteria for research activity and for throughput.
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