Decolonizing Knowledge in South Africa: Dismantling the ‘pedagogy of big lies’

Abstract

The colonial and apartheid knowledge systems and Eurocentrism have not been sufficiently questioned, let alone transformed, during the first two decades of democracy in South Africa. The movement to decolonize higher education was launched by students in 2015. The fact that the students are at the forefront of the campaign for decolonization and not the university leaders, academics, and administrators tells a lot about the state of higher education in post-apartheid South Africa and the continued maintenance of the hegemonic status quo when it comes to the knowledge, teaching, learning and research at the country's universities. Decolonization of knowledge is crucial in order to rewrite histories, reassert the dignity of the oppressed and refocus the knowledge production and worldviews for the sake of the present and the future of the country and its people, as well as the rest of the African continent. The dismantling of the 'pedagogy of big lies' rooted in colonialism and apartheid will require a complete reconstruction of the epistemological model. The decolonized curriculum must place South Africa and Africa in the center of teaching, learning and research and incorporate the epistemic perspectives, knowledge and thinking from the African continent and the global South and place them on an equal footing with the currently hegemonic Eurocentric canon.

The Future of Evidence-Based Temperance Interventions

“…An overreliance on the WEIRD not only limits the generalizability of the results but also influences the intervention's applicability (and adoption) within other contexts. For example, the decolonization of science movement in South Africa is largely centered around the idea that western values and approaches are not usually applicable in African contexts, especially when they negate local values and traditions (De Jong et al, 2018;Heleta, 2018). Not developing interventions within these contexts and local traditions would therefore (out of principle) lead to such being received with skepticism or even outright rejection by these societies.…”

Higher education research: Responding to his/her Master’s voice

“…7 The reference to the criteria produced by "westernoriented, neoliberal and neo-colonial perspectives of 'excellence'" relate to the earlier remark by Bleiklie (2018) on how criteria formulated and sanctioned by interinstitutional and international networks supersede institutional or local criteria. 8 In the specific context of South African higher education, there can be little doubt that the higher education landscape is, indeed, undergoing a number of 'revolutions' (see for example, Heleta, 2018;Mirza, 2018;Motala, Vally, & Maharajh, 2018;Vandeyar & Swart, 2018;Watermeyer, 2019). Transformation in South African higher education is encapsulated in three distinct but related discourses, according to Du Preez, Simmonds, and Verhoef (2016).…”

“…In the summary to the analysis of the UB data we pointed to how higher education research has to be understood in context. As such, it therefore is no surprise, in light of the debates pertaining to decolonisation (Heleta, 2018) and the broader transformation agenda (Du Preez, Simmonds & Verhoef, 2016), that while there was some evidence of a critical discursive orientation, compared to the prevalence of transformation and decolonisation in public rhetoric, it was relatively subdued. While all three discursive orientations presented themselves in the analysis, and there is evidence of how these orientations contend or a place on the agenda, there is no evidence of an exclusive dominant discursive orientation in the context of Unisa.…”

An examination of the English curriculum in Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges

“…Consequently, if one lacks a command of English, one may be, or at least feel, excluded and disempowered (Alexander, 1989). For Heleta (2018), recent debates about colonial education and knowledge systems support concerns about the dominance of English as a language of instruction in the education system and the way in which such dominance has been used to undermine indigenous languages and maintain structural domination. Most of the students enrolled in the South African TVET colleges study English as a second language (ESL).…”