The idea of decolonization frightens many South African academics. Since students launched the movement to decolonize higher education in early 2015, I’ve heard several of my peers ask, “What do ‘they’ mean by decolonization? Going back to the Stone Age? Teaching only about South Africa and Africa? Isolation from the rest of the world?” Legal academic Joel Modiri points out that these “cynical queries by mostly white academics, demanding that students explain to them what decolonization even means, suggest their own illiteracy about the history and intellectual debates in their disciplines”. These sorts of questions also show a distinct lack of engagement with the African continent. After all, other African countries have grappled with precisely the same issues for decades. In Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ghana, academics and intellectuals have long tried to break down colonial shackles and decolonize their disciplines and universities.
Read also: Decolonisation of higher education – Dismantling epistemic violence and Eurocentrism in South Africa
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