#NotDomestication #NotIndigenisation: Decoloniality in Social Work Education

Abstract

This article argues that South African social work education, situated in Western modernism and broadly within the ideological project of colonialism and racist capitalism, should move from knowledge and discourses which are domesticating and oppressive, and do essential decolonising work. It explores colonialism and post-colonialism and the politics of social work knowledge, it describes the processes of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements, and then it describes the work of decolonisation. In order to move from coloniality and domestication, which means neither indigenisation nor Africanisation, social work education must 1) reclaim and repossess truths and narratives about the history of social work in South Africa, 2) explore ideology underlying its knowledge and discourses, 3) facilitate critical conscientisation and cultivate a critical and anti-colonial approach, and 4) include anti-colonial theorists in the curriculum. It provides two examples of courses which facilitate such a process.

Transforming Social Work: Contextualised Social Work Education in South Africa

“…It should also re-conceptualise theories and lived realities through a South African lens and examine (oppressive) South African history and acknowledge global factors. Indeed, as advocated by Boulton (2018), Chitereka (2009), Harms-Smith and Nathane (2018), and Mathebande and Sekudu (2018), they resist the imposition of Western perspectives and reclaim the South African narrative through focusing on the local, societal and cultural context, interrogating dominant values and ethics, and prioritising knowledge production and epistemic theorising. Educators privilege community work as the method and community as location as suggested by Mwansa (2011).…”

“…Further critique around these dominant frameworks are, for example, that expert-led deficit-informed interventions are viewed as pathologising and non-participatory (Hammoud, 1988;Harms-Smith & Nathane, 2018;Ibrahima & Mattaini, 2019;Patel, 2015). Practitioners and academics assert that individualised interventions are insufficiently cognisant of the interaction of the emotional, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual dimensions, thus overlooking holistic, integrated responses (Gray, Coates & Yellow Bird, 2008).…”

“…Afrocentrism exemplifies an indigenous perspective (Makhubele, Matlakala & Mabvurira, 2019;Mathebane & Sekude, 2018;Shokane & Masoga, 2018). As a further alternative, decolonised social work and decoloniality foreground the ways in which Western discourses and assumptions create and reproduce historical and current subjugation (Harms-Smith & Nathane, 2018;Mathebane & Sekudu, 2018).…”

Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary contribution

“…The Apartheid era acted as a silencing of those social work voices that challenged and resisted, "contributing to the ongoing colonising nature of social work itself" (Harms-Smith and Nathane, 2018, p.15). Despite a transformation of the welfare system towards a developmental approach after the end of the liberation struggle and transition to democracy, ongoing inequality stratified by race, transformative and liberating social work has been constrained by neoliberal economic policies (Sewpaul, 2006) It is also argued that so-called 'indigenisation' and Africanisation merely obfuscate the underlying conservative and colonial nature of knowledge generally (Mbember, 2015), and social work knowledge and discourse specifically (Harms-Smith and Nathane, 2018;Mathebane and Sekudu, 2017); "What is required is a transformed curriculum committed to a position of decoloniality" (Harms-Smith and Nathane, 2018, p.15).…”

“…Taking into account ideologies underlying and supporting social work, as well as the historical complicity of social work with conservative and oppressive practices (Smith, 2008;Harms Smith, 2013), social work knowledge and discourse may be described as being positioned on a continuum from domesticating, oppressive and colonising, through to revolutionary, radical and anti-colonial (See Figure 1 (Harms-Smith, 2013) It is crucial therefore that as students are prepared for social work practice through the theory and discourse of their curriculum, that they are exposed to appropriate critical and anti-colonial content (Harms-Smith and Nathane, 2018), not only at a cognitive but also at an experiential level. However, where students themselves live within a post-colonial context and realities of socio-economic inequality and intergenerational transmission of collective trauma, they will need to work through issues of Coloniality and internalised oppression (Smith, 2008;Harms-Smith and Nathane, 2018). Developing an attitude of Decoloniality (Fanon, 1968) is therefore critical.…”