Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice: Navigating Diversity and Context in South Africa

Abstract

Although it is a collective effort to promote and preserve the social welfare of societies, social work has been at the forefront in fulfilling such intentions in a more coordinated and structured fashion across the globe. The process of providing social services is far more complex than it is often imagined as the ‘context’ of indigenous communities should be an avenue through which social issues are acknowledged and understood before determining frameworks and methods to which appropriate interventions may be employed. Just like many other countries in the global south, South Africa is still in the process of reforming its social work approaches to ensure that they are appropriate and responsive to the human needs of the South Africans, without separating them from their histories, cultures, practices, and beliefs. The reformation is narrowly straightforward as social work education and practices have largely been influenced and informed by Western scholarships due to colonisation. As such, decolonisation of the social work education and practice in South Africa remains a mountain that should be belligerently climbed. Guided by the Afrocentric perspective, this chapter discusses cultural competence as a special flavour to strengthening interventions that reverberate and resonate with the South African context. Recommendations to the social work education, research, and practice are made.