Opening up spaces for social transformation: Critical citizenship education in a post-conflict South African university context

Abstract

In post-conflict countries such as South Africa, some university students to know anything about the conflict-ridden past. As in other parts of the world that suffered from pasts of discrimination and conflict, it is easier for some students than others to argue like this since an unfortunate past does not concretely affect them any longer. Many students are, however, still benefitting or suffering from a privileged or disadvantaged past, and thus subconscious feelings of guilt or resentment prevail. When triggered by critical citizenship education, some students seem to want to avoid confronting issues. Such avoidance, however, can perpetuate and worsen the existing gap between social differences and/or academic performance. Against this background a critical citizenship module was included into a Visual Communication Design curriculum at a university in South Africa. Through fostering social justice, the module constructs a safe environment where historical and current realities can be unravelled. It also allows for dealing with these issues through art and design – a process that triggers the imagination and hence involves participants to see and experience that which cannot necessarily be seen or experienced in any other way. Through written reflections and interviews the project involved students, lecturers and high school learners in a township to whom art was taught by university students. Results showed that a less hierarchical and more self-motivated approach to critical citizenship education in art, which becomes part of the formal curriculum, results in addressing some of the avoidance and difficulties that were experienced earlier.