KAI HORSTHEMKE

7. AFRICANISATION AND DIVERSE EPISTEMOLOGIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION DISCOURSES

Limitations and Possibilities

INTRODUCTION: KNOWLEDGE AND IDENTITY – AN AFRICAN VISION OF HIGHER EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION

The ‘Africanisation’ of higher education is generally understood (Moulder, 1995; Pityana, 2004) to involve institutional transformation, and more specifically ‘decolonisation’ of higher education. As such, it has been assumed by many to be ‘beyond debate’.1 In 2003, an initial meeting took place between the then South African president Thabo Mbeki and vice-chancellors of institutions of higher education. The objective was to pave the way towards transformation, by identifying critical issues and challenges in higher education in South Africa. It was in this context that the relevance (and indeed the interrelatedness) of African culture, African identity and African knowledge systems was articulated. The foundation document, which Malegapuru Makgoba and Sipho Seepe (then acting vice- chancellors of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Vista University, respectively) were commissioned to prepare, was circulated for critical commentary, mainly among academics, before it was submitted to then Minister of Education, Kader Asmal. “The discussion paper … covers areas such as identity, culture, language and globalisation, but keeps returning to its central theme: What is African knowledge? What is an African identity and what would an African university look like [?]” (Seepe, 2004, p. 8). Seepe adds, somewhat puzzlingly: “Answers are not given to these questions. Nor should they” (Seepe, 2004, p. 8; emphasis added). Nevertheless, other universities soon followed suit with dedicated programs of institutional transformation. “The transformation challenge must be implicit in what we teach, the kinds of knowledge we produce”, according to a 2005 Wits University Forum discussion document. “… Informed by the global context, we intend to be distinctly African in our purpose, commitment, curriculum, research and in how we engage with all sectors of society” (University of the Witwatersrand, 2005, pp. 3, 4). The present chapter explores some of the focal areas in the discourse(s) of transformation in South African higher education, most significantly the ideas of an African essence, culture and identity, as well as indigenous or African knowledge

M. Cross & A. Ndofirepi (Eds.), Knowledge and Change in African Universities, 101–120. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. K. HORSTHEMKE systems. A popular trend in this regard takes culture and identity to be the “central determinants of which knowledge to get into the curriculum” (Ekong & Cloete, 1997, p. 11; see also Ntuli, 20042). This position is associated with an instrumentalist approach to education, educational institutions and knowledge (Ekong & Cloete, 1997, p. 10; Makgoba, 1997, pp. 142, 143), an approach that “insists on problem- solving skills, applied research, local or African content and community service” (Ekong & Cloete, 1997, p. 10). In other words, education and knowledge are treated (at least implicitly) not as values or ends in and for themselves, but as instrumental in the construction of identity and culture. The present chapter argues that neither the idea of an African essence (culture and identity), nor the notion of African ‘ways of knowing’ constitutes an appropriate theoretical framework for conceptualising change in higher educational thought and practice in South Africa. In the aforementioned discussion document, Makgoba and Seepe’s (2004) ‘preliminary remarks’ stipulate “an African identity and vision” of higher education that is in opposition to, and a departure from, “the current Colonial-Christian- Western identity and vision” (pp. 13, 14): [T]he responsibilities [connected with being an African university] are … served not only by adapting our scholarship to the social structure and the cultural environment of Africa but by also producing knowledge that takes the African condition and the African identity as its central problem. The central issue for our universities today is an institutional transformation in higher education that will provide for the production of knowledge that recognises the African condition as historical and defines its key task as one of coming to grips with it critically. (Makgoba & Seepe, 2004, p. 19) The same authors go on to say that “[t]he process for translating the African identity and vision in education is called Africanisation” (Makgoba & Seepe, 2004, p. 40).

AFRICANISATION AND THE HIGHER EDUCATION CURRICULUM IN SOUTH AFRICA

The ‘Africanisation’ of higher education in South Africa is multi-dimensional and can be taken to involve at least four different kinds of transformations or changes: (1) transformation “reflecting the demographic profile of the country at all levels of the life of the institution”, i.e. changes in the composition of student, academic and administrative bodies; (2) transformation of the syllabus or content, i.e. changes in what is taught—pertinent considerations here concern issues of relevance, language (‘decolonisation of the mind’3) and critical thinking or interrogation of the former, oppressive status quo; (3) transformation of the curriculum, i.e. changes in the whole way teaching and learning are organised; and (4) transformation in terms of “throughput rates and research profile” (Pityana, 2004, p. 4; cf. also Moulder, 1995, p. 7)—changes in the criteria that determine what counts as excellent research etc., on the basis of acknowledgement of, and respect for diverse and subaltern

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