Decolonising and Humanising Pedagogies in South African Postgraduate Education: Lessons From Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Introduction

In recent years, there have been talks around the decolonizing of knowledge at South African universities. Many scholars view this widespread call for decolonization as overdue in the South African higher education sphere. Scholars such as Heleta (2018) have headed the calls to dismantle the Eurocentric hegemony within the HEIs in South Africa. Reference is made to the establishment of a movement #feesmustfall to decolonize higher education by students in 2015. Students across South African universities had reached a consensus that what the former president, Tata Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and his generation negotiated at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) has failed to break the paradigm of difference whereby ethnic communities remain marginalized in the knowledge economy (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). Inevitably, students demanded immediate decolonization of universities. Increasing efforts as noted by Zembylas (2018) have been explored to pinpoint what decolonization in university curricula entails. However, less theorization has been made to underpin what decolonization implies for higher education pedagogy and praxis (Heleta, 2018; Le Grange, 2016).

The colonial era, or apartheid in the case of South Africa repressed indigenous knowledge as well as indigenous epistemologies and worldviews. It is noteworthy to realize that South African universities’ curricular remains endowed in the Eurocentric knowledge domain and worldviews and this has seen other forms of knowledge such as indigenous knowledge systems being left in the periphery of the knowledge economy. This marginalization of indigenous knowledge system has left the knowledge being produced at the postgraduate level to remain Eurocentric thus devaluing and ignoring other alternative knowledge systems. There is therefore a need to drive a decolonial agenda at the postgraduate level, thereby aiding the humanizing aspect of knowledge. Decolonization of knowledge implies the end of reliance on imposed knowledge, theories and interpretations and theorizing based on one’s own past and present experiences and interpretation of the world (Zembylas, 2018).

Shahjahan et al (2022) note that curriculum and pedagogy is deeply implicated in grounding, validating, and/or marginalizing systems of knowledge production. Therefore, there is a need to transform Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and this can be achieved by various scholars, including indigenous scholars who can stand steadfast and counter the non-transformation that seems to bring the HEIs of South Africa to stagnation. Nonetheless, some questions remain as many ask themselves, to what extent the changes in HEIs, including pedagogies and curriculum, have “decolonized” higher education, and whether full decolonization is even possible.

The Afrocentric theoretical perspective that has been brought forth by Molefi Asante is realized by South African universities as a leeway to foster Africanization within this institution (Sebola & Magoboya, 2020). Afrocentricity, according to Asante (1999), is a critical corrective to a displaced agency among Africans by re-centring African minds. Afrocentricity may also be viewed as a paradigm based on the idea that African people should re-assert a sense of agency in thought and practice within the livelihood of Africans, their societal institutions, and processes in order to achieve sanity. This theoretical perspective provides an indigenized lens which can be understood and applied using African centred values, standards, and tools (Sebola & Magoboya, 2020). Another means to fully humanize pedagogies at postgraduate level in South Africa, the philosophy of Ubuntu needs to be inculcated into both academics and academic developers. Ubuntu is viewed as an agent of decolonization in HEIs across South Africa as its core norms and values are rooted in indigenous knowledge systems and African worldviews.