Ensuring social and cultural equality
producing well-rounded, socially conscious students who will contribute to solving the country’s problems.
Tabata said that institutions of higher learning are a microcosm of an unequal society. The framework to transform the sector appreciates the depth and history of race and class divisions, as well as of existing conflict and tensions.
The framework defines social cohesion as the extent to which a society is coherent, united and functional and provides an environment in which its citizens can flourish. Social inclusion is a concept that embraces all of humanity and cuts across all factors that divide the human race. It recognises that we are all human beings, informed by a desire to create a more humane and interconnected world.
The two concepts reinforce each other and must be seen as such at institutional level. Effective monitoring of the progress at institutions of higher learning to achieve social inclusion and to rehumanise universities will be the game-changer.
What should be done to achieve this inclusion?
Many students will affirm the de-humanising nature of higher education. A concerted effort to understand who students are and where they come from, and to tap into the talent pool available to African institutions, will allow for the tailoring of inclusive syllabi that speaks to the diversity of students.
When there is a sense of belonging in the student population, the possibility of success and flourishing is far greater, than when higher education alienates. There must be investment in social justice for human flourishing. Even universities that have been designed to serve the elite can be used for the fulfillment of a transformative agenda. Without this, real social inclusion remains a pipe dream.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni views the issue of exclusion and inclusion from an ontological perspective. He argues that the problem of exclusion and inclusion can be traced back to the “coloniality of being”. Humanity was socially classified and racially hierarchised. Some people were denied being human for the purposes of enslavement, colonisation, exploitation and exclusion.
Before any project of inclusion can take place, we must first be equal. Those who have been denied humanity need the restoration of their humanity first. Inequality in higher education has its roots in the denial of humanity of some people. Re-humanising higher education means repurposing the university, which was a major role player in racialisation and hierarchisation in colonialism. Re-humanising is also a process of remembering people who were dismembered from humanity.
Universities, argued NdlovuGatsheni, are complicit in dehumanisation through the epistemicide of knowledge from colonized people. The work to transform such institutions must begin with the interrogation of the relevance of these institutions in society today and the values they espouse. The analysis of the curriculum is an indicator of what institutions value.
A privileging of European knowledge over African knowledge is a continuation of epistemicide. He emphasized the link between the ontological question and the epistemic question by saying: “If you accept that I am a human being like you, you must accept that I have knowledge, and if you accept that I have knowledge, then that knowledge must be reflected in the academy.”
Merely adding African thinkers to the list of existing curriculum is inadequate. A complete overhaul is necessary. The idea of an overhaul is, at times, interpreted as a purge of existing Western and European knowledge from African institutions. Ndlovu-Gatsheni does not agree with this view; he believes that it is more helpful to continue to teach and critically engage thinkers such as (I think it is Hegel) from a decolonial perspective, to “reveal how evil Hegel was”. All knowledge must be critically engaged.
He also highlighted the need for a learning environment that doesn’t reflect hierarchy between the teacher and the student, but rather is a collaborative production of knowledge. This philosophy should also be reflected in what he calls academic democracy, which influences how institutions of higher learning are managed, and whose voice is given prominence.
Sindane agreed with this view and acknowledged the opportunity students have been afforded to speak because their voice is critical to shaping what an African university should look like.
Sindane problematised the idea of inclusion as a more pleasant way of saying “accommodating, inserting and recognising”. He then asks who should be included and who should do the including. This question reveals once more that universities are colonial structures. The groups of people who need to be included by white males are black men and women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people and people with disability. Speaking about the plight of black women in higher education, Sindane referenced the rape culture raised during the Rhodes Must Fall and the Fees Must Fall movements. The response by men indicated a refusal to appreciate and engage the violence meted against women. This violence is an additional layer of violence against this group of students who already have to contend with structural violence in society.
Sindane reflected on his time in the student representative council, when he was required to speak about gender and sexuality and was unable to because of the peripheral positioning of such issues in discussions about what African institutions of higher learning should be. He called for greater integration for people living with disability.
Inclusion is a problem because the goal should be ownership of universities, and not merely forming a part of a space that does not represent its location. As a response to how institutions of higher learning must be transformed, Sindane said white thinkers must be relegated, and black thinkers elevated. The curriculum must centre on Africa and be produced by thinkers who are of the continent and understand the contexts they write about.
Sindane, like Ndlovu-Gatsheni, believes learning should be a process of co-production.
Sindane called for greater investment in languages and that institutions cannot have small African languages departments, but rather have Afrikaans and English as stand-alone departments.
He said an investment in African languages is a significant part of the political project that is decolonising. Images and the names of colonisers must be removed. He concluded by saying that “in decolonising, we must guard against the tendency of deracialising and depoliticising the debate, especially in academia. Decolonisation is a political project.”
He called for courage and political will from black leaders in society: “If a vice-chancellor, who is black, is entrenching whiteness at the institution, that vice-chancellor must go.” Embracing new ways of learning, and decentering Western and European knowledge is the path to the creation of decolonised and rehumanised universities.