The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Platform to Rethink the Decolonisation of Higher Education in South Africa

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore numerous challenges that South Africa has been grappling with since the end of apartheid. Higher education in particular has been facing many challenges that have opportunistically become salient in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. This chapter explores a wide range of challenges within the higher education sector that participants (mainly students) on the official Facebook Page of the Department of Higher Education and Technology (DHET) raised in the context of the Covid-19 National Lockdown. 1 I draw on concepts from decolonial theory, particularly the notion of "coloniality", to examine how Covid-19 can be appropriated to rethink the decolonisation of higher education in South Africa. Coloniality refers to the perpetuation of quasi-colonial systems and structures long after the end of official colonialism. Decolonial theory seeks to identify and dismantle logics of coloniality in existing structures, systems and patterns of thought in former colonised territories. Covid-19 has not only highlighted the inequalities that continue to stalk South African society post-apartheid, but also the shortcomings of interventions that the government has put in place to address these challenges. The chapter argues that the Covid-19 crisis has presented an opportunity to rethink the unfinished business of decolonisation in higher education. 1 South Africa declared a National Lockdown on 26 March 2020 following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

Ignite some agency: how teaching assistants engage whiteness at a South African university

“…First, decolonisation unmasks how coloniality suffuses higher education with violence, but institutionalised whiteness threatens its progress. Some scholars are responding by bridging abstract theorisations of decolonisation with pedagogic reform at the level of institutional policy, but also down to department-specific changes (Makombe 2021;Wale 2019;Makhubela 2018).…”

“…Evidently, Assistants are employed as an institutional reaction to evolving teaching conditions. How this response contributes to decolonisation and antiracism merits critical inquiry given its potential to rupture and/or reproduce inequitable and intersectionally-oppressive epistemic ecologies (Makombe 2021;Adams et al 2018). Such micro-level research is humble compared to institutional policy reform, but grasping the dynamics of Assistants' work can illuminate how specific departments advance/ retard decolonisation.…”

“…Various normative institutional discourses stymie the deepening and meaningful implementation of critical insights into systemic racism (Adams et al 2018;Kelly 2017). Decolonial scholars treat this problem as the coloniality of institutionally-sanctioned knowledge (Makombe 2021;Makhubela 2018). Antiracist pedagogy responds by de-normalising such discourses, aiming to expose and disrupt the passive, habitual reproduction of racist discourses and to address the violence enacted on subordinated groups.…”

“…Indeed, Mueller (2017), Wale (2019) and Adams et al (2018) adduce that contemporary social life teems with evidence of the severity and sophistication of racism. Concrete proposals for advancing justice are also widely available, with vocal calls for decolonisation contributing to and directing some of these calls (Makombe 2021;Makhubela 2018). Nurturing ignorance against this knowledge is an ongoing accomplishment.…”

“…For them, creative maladjustment is best rooted in subordinated knowledges. This proposition is shared in various streams of decolonial scholarship, but sustained labour is still required to ascertain what it spells for department-specific pedagogies (Makombe 2021;Makhubela 2018). My initial reading of interviews with Assistants flagged the potential relevance of this concept.…”