Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Africa: exclusion of students with disabilities in South African higher education

Abstract

While contemporary scholarship seeks to include Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) into epistemology, to re-centre knowledge that has been placed in the periphery, in Africa largely and in South Africa specifically, construction of African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) has shaped disability in negative ways, hence the exclusion of persons with disabilities in society. The article utilised a review of literature as a methodology to explore the ways in which negative AIK has been constructed, to frame disability negatively and to exclude students with disabilities in South African higher education. Decolonial theory informed the imperceptible underlying cause of negative AIK about disability. Ubuntu was viewed as an African philosophy that could bring back the being and humanness of those with disabilities. Incorporating African proverbs relating to tolerance of disability into the curriculum was proposed as the way in which positive AIK could be re-centred, to assist the inclusion of students with disabilities in families, communities and higher education. The article sought to contribute to the contemporary debate of placing IKS at the centre of epistemology in higher education. While a number of studies have focused on re-centering IKS in epistemology largely, few have looked at it from the perspective of re-centering the positive AIK, to include students with disabilities in higher education in the South African context.