Decolonization and development: Reimagining key concepts in education

2019 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Leyla Tavernaro-Haidarian
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Lens Development ◽  
Educational Settings ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Educational Project ◽  
Participatory Citizenship ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Mutual Empowerment

In view of the importance and urgency of transformation within post-colonial educational settings, this article considers key concepts in relation to re-curriculation efforts. It specifically discusses how the concepts of development and decolonization are typically understood and how they can be reimagined through the realism provided by the African moral philosophy of ubuntu. Ubuntu foregrounds deeply relational and immaterial notions of power, and through its lens development can be thought of in terms of ‘mutual empowerment’ and decolonization as a process of ‘constructive resilience’. The author elaborates on these definitions and draws on a practical example from an educational project in Limpopo, South Africa, to show how this can be operationalized and translated into the genesis of materials and methods that facilitate participatory citizenship.

The Reflection of Apartheidic Trauma / Traumatic Apartheid in None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 328
Author(s):  
Şahin KIZILTAŞ
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black People ◽  
Native People ◽  
Nadine Gordimer ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
White People ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Violence Victimization ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Almost All

The world has gone through a trauma for centuries. Almost all nations have experienced all sorts of traumatic events and feelings in this period. Among those nations, the black seem to be the most unlucky and ill-fated suffered from traumatic disasters. However, among those black nations, the natives of South Africa have been the most piteous and wretched ones. Their misfortune began in 1652 with the arrival of white colonists in the country. Since then, the oppression and persecution of white European colonists and settlers on natives increasingly continued. Those native people were displaced from the lands inherited from their ancestors a few centuries ago. They were not allowed to have equal rights with white people and to share same environment in public premises. The natives have put up resistance against the racial and colonial practices of white settlers which excluded them from all living spaces; yet, they could not manage, even they came into power in 1994. Today their exclusion and violence victimization still go on and they are still subjected to inferior treatment by (post)colonial dominant white powers. As a white intellectual and writer who had European origins, Nadine Gordimer witnessed the repression and torturing of European settlers on native people in South Africa. In her novels, she has reflected the racial discrimination practiced by white people who have considered of themselves in a superior position compared to the black. This study aims to focus on how Gordimer has reflected the trauma which the black people of South Africa have experienced as a consequence of racist practices. This will contribute to clarify and get across the real and true-life traumatic narratives of native people in the colonized countries.

scholarly journals The Concept of Labour in South African Law

Fundamina ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 42-90
Author(s):  
LN Maqutu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Industrial Mining ◽  
Necessary Evil ◽  
Mobility Mining

The attitude of European invaders toward the African people they encountered during the colonial conquest of South Africa has been crucial in the formulation of law. This contribution undertakes a contrapuntal reading of historic laws pertinent to notions of labour and its regulation, in order to reveal the import of its orientation to the system devised. The discourse on Africans and the manner of their utilisation as a source of labour are assessed from the text of legal provisions of the emergent Cape Colony and the later period of industrial mining in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. From a post-colonial, theoretical perspective, the exploration expands the latitude of labour law to incorporate property, mobility, mining and other subsets of law. A recount of these early laws reveals that the forcible labouring of Africans has been vital in the development of colonial settlements and enterprise endeavours. The supposed worthwhile modernisation of South Africa has been largely accomplished through the cruelty imposed on Africans. Yet normalised accounts advance concrete separations, (white) leadership alongside legitimised African servitude. Fidelity to that paradigm of thought demands an either-or response to historical events (either it was good – a necessary evil – or it was bad), without making room for nuanced deliberation. It presumes a capacity to escape colonial manipulation when interrogating its misdeeds. However, the formation of that type of thought itself is flawed, and has failed to create the certitudes professed. Since the founding mythos upon which legal reasoning has been assembled has rested on the diminution of Africans, continued fidelity to the accumulated arrangements of labour and its control is disturbed by the appraisal in this contribution. The process avoids validating the simplistic legitimation of labour norms by the controlled insertion of Africans into colonised spaces – a narrow way of thinking that encourages the belief that solutions can be found in according Africans access to the spoils of conquest.

Africa between Gandhi and Nehru

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Ali A. Mazrui
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Impact

The author’s interest in Africa’s relations with India goes back to his doctoral thesis at Oxford University, published under the title of Towards a Pax Africana. The impact of India upon twentieth century Africa has a special place for Gandhi’s strategies of civil disobedience and Nehru’s principle of nonalignment. Gandhi’s satyagraha (soul force) inspired African political figures as diverse as Nobel laureate Albert Luthuli of South Africa and Ivorian president Houphouet-Boigny. Nehru’s ideas about what used to be called “positive neutralism” helped to shape African approaches to foreign policy in the entire post-colonial era. The essay, published almost two decades ago, explored these historical dimensions in this prescient analysis.

SOUTH AFRICA’S ENDURING COLONIAL NATURE AND UNIVERSITIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Rossouw
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
State Power ◽  
Pattern Language ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
South African Universities

This article focuses on the question of South African decolonisation with particular reference to the Afrikaners as both the colonised and the coloniser. It is argued that Afrikaners winning state power in 1948 became something of an ironicblueprint for African post-colonial countries — nominally independent and free, but in reality still colonies. The enduring colonial characteristics of South Africa are briefly discussed, and how Afrikaner- and African nationalists in power turnedout to be variations of a post-colonial pattern. Language is discussed as a focal point of this pattern since 1948, also with regards to the 2015 student revolts at South African universities. In conclusion some proposals are offered about whatdecolonisation should be, and what universities can contribute to it.

scholarly journals Is Gabola a Decolonial Church or Another Trajectory of Freedom of Religion in Post-Colonial South Africa? Rethinking Ethical Issues in Religious Praxis

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bekithemba Dube
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Freedom Of Religion ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Religious Praxis

In this paper, I interrogated the Gabola church in terms of its origins, purpose and its distinctiveness as a postcolonial manifestation of freedom of religion in South Africa. I answered two questions, is Gabola church a representation of a decolonial church and could it be a manifestation of trajectories of the postcolonial ill-defined freedom of religion? In responding to these questions, I used decoloniality, a theory whose agenda among many others is geared to usher a future free from oppression, where all can participate in modernity and in postmodernity. Data was generated through participatory action research. The approach enabled us to unearth the theology of Gabola, philosophy and the gap they seek to fill in the religious space. Ten Gabola church members and five church members from a mainline Christian movement participated in this research. The findings indicated that Gabola church presents a new religious movement that is socially inclusive, that seeks to promote social justice and social transformation. On the other hand, the research revealed that the lack of a regulating body for religious movement is the reason for the rise of questionable movements such as Gabola, a serious threat in the praxis of the Christian faith. To this end, I concluded that while freedom of religion is a good idea in line with the decolonial move, there is a need for participative and collaborative regulation of religious movement to eliminate criminal elements that overshadowed the beauty of religion manifested through ‘unthinkable’ ethical irregularities.

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