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    Towards a Decolonized and Africanized School History Curriculum in post apartheid South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Maluleka, Paul; Ramoupi, Neo Lekgotla; Mathebula, Thokozani
    This study explores and discusses ways in which the School History Curriculum (SHC) in South Africa was designed by colonialists to depict their history favourably and how this continues to be the case after independence. The study also investigates ways in which the SHC could be decolonized and Africanized, especially where knowledge building is a concern. This is done both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, a critical decolonial conceptual framework strengthened with Bernstein’s Code Theory and Pedagogic Device, Maton’s Epistemic-Pedagogic Device, and Legitimation Code Theory’s Autonomy dimension were employed. Firstly, to highlight how the legacy of colonialism, apartheid, coloniality, and their monolithic epistemic nature, and to some extent, their alienating pedagogic and assessment practices, continue to underpin the SHC in post-apartheid South Africa. Secondly, to explore conceptual ways in which decoloniality could be applied in curriculum knowledge building and its structures in cumulative and principled ways. This was done to counter much of the knowledge blindness that characterize sociology of education including many of the calls for decolonization and Africanization. In turn, this was meant to reposition scholarship on decolonization and Africanization to also be vested in a sociological approach to knowledge and curriculum that is vested in investigating the relations within knowledge and curriculum and their intrinsic structures. A qualitative research approach was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were used as methods of generating empirical data, with descriptive and interpretive elements of data analysis used to engage the data. Empirically, four in-service history educators from Gauteng and Limpopo Provinces were purposefully and conveniently selected. The purpose of interviewing in-service history educators was to gain insights into how they thought of the current SHC. Whether, according to them, calls to decolonize and Africanize the SHC were imperative and justified, and how they could be carried out. Both the conceptual and empirical findings reveal that there is a need to decolonize and Africanize SHC in post-apartheid South Africa given that its knowledge base is still characterized by the legacy of colonialism, apartheid, and coloniality. To achieve this, both the conceptual and empirical findings pointed out the need to reimagine and construct epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies that not only move beyond universal explanations of the world; but embrace trans-modernist and pluriversal explanations of the world. These are informed and shaped by time and the place, perspective, orientation, and situatedness of their authors. Secondly, the findings of the study revealed how historical knowledge is both dialectically and intersectionally produced, recontextualized and reproduced in the three fields of practice. Interrogating critically who are the knowers that are legitimated and de-legitimated in all these processes, can enable us to better understand the colonizing gaze that continues to characterize the SHC. It can also allow us to better understand how these fields of practice can also be seen as spaces where de-legitimated knowledge and knowers are recentred and where decolonization and Africanization can happen. This would see the continued marginalization of indigenous knowledge systems, traditions, and cultural practices in the SHC at the altar of Eurocentric methods being disrupted. Thirdly, the findings also pointed out that presently CAPS SHC does not have a settled African philosophy (of education): it is torn between two worlds, i.e., the universal and the particular. In a strict education for Africanization sense, the SHC in post-apartheid South African schools should be perceived first and foremost as a professional philosophical project that African philosophers in higher education devote their time and energy to. Second, a sage project that oMakhulu’s as part of the broader school communities help in-service history educators and their learners through oral history and research projects to address problems and deal with issues facing locals. Last, but not least, it should be perceived as a hermeneutic project that brings philosophy down from the sky, i.e., helps both in-service educators and their learners to make practical sense of deep philosophical issues in post-apartheid South African schools.
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    The South African Arts Scene and European Cultural Institutions - A Troubled Relationship?
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02) Heide, Josephine Elisabeth; Tagwirei, Cuthbeth
    Framed within the conceptual idea of decoloniality, this research critically investigates the power dynamic between South African artists and European cultural institutions that operate in South Africa. The study examines colonial legacies of exploitative practices, knowledge imposition and neo-colonisation disguised as charity and development aid in the Arts. It highlights the disproportionate dependence on European institutions due to a lack of sufficient sources of funding and support available to artists in South Africa. The study further establishes the legitimate place of European cultural institutions in the cultural landscape and their significant role according to the perspectives of the interview partners who shared their experiences as art practitioners and cultural policy experts. A qualitative research process comprising six semi-structured narrative interviews with South African artists was conducted. The collected data are explored using experienced-centred Narrative Analysis, focusing on the identification of colonial legacies that surface from the narratives. The research uses decolonial theory as a theoretical lens into the investigated power dynamics in the field of cultural cooperation between European institutions and South African partners. Decoloniality helps to unpack and dismantle the underlying complexities. The analysis elicits the perspectives and experiences of art practitioners which indicate perpetuated colonial relations on different levels. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for practitioners on how a more decolonised practice in the field of transcultural collaboration between South African artists and European cultural institutions can be achieved.
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    Justice as Recognition in the Ecological Community
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-06) Francis, Romain; Hamilton, Lawrence
    This thesis postulates that an alternate mode of recognition is required to develop an authentic conception of justice that reconciles the subaltern’s desire for dignity with affording greater love, care, and respect for nature. Extant redistributive and recognitive justice frames within traditional western political theory and philosophy are strictly anthropocentric and restrict nature to a purely utilitarian function in the satisfaction of human needs. This maintains a moral hierarchy between humans and nature that perpetuates ecological injustice. Using decoloniality as both a method and critical analytical framework, this thesis develops and employs the coloniality of nature to illustrate that the continued destruction, exploitation, and disrespect for nature is fundamentally tied to the misrecognition of subaltern people. Misrecognition is a product of a deep-seated sociogenic problem of coloniality introduced during European colonisation, which consolidated the superior status of a hegemonic western subjectivity. Other experiences, knowledges, practices, and ways of articulating human-nature relations were rendered as non-scientific and superstitious and devoid of any value. The misrecognition of subaltern people denied humanity an opportunity to learn from other viewpoints and integrate them into an inclusive idea of justice where no single subjectivity assumes a dominant status. Centered on a decolonial love predicated on Fanon’s idea of “building the world of the You”, not the I, Us or We, this thesis draws on the principles of transculturalism and border thinking to promulgate a practical idea of justice as recognition in the context of an ecological community, that is more inclusive of other living and non-living entities. It advances a dialogical mode of recognition that attempts to achieve the following objectives: i) promote critical introspection amongst the subaltern to understand how their experience of (mis)recognition is connected to the destruction of nature, and how their attitudes towards nature were altered by the introduction of western modernity, capitalism and colonisation, ii) enable those social groups that are on the top of the ontological hierarchy to understand their role in such processes and how to address them, and iii) to demonstrate that increasing humanity’s love, care, and respect for nature is not possible without first addressing misrecognition between people.