South African higher education and the normalisation of oppression

Abstract

This paper illustrates how higher education in South Africa normalises the historic arc of anti-Black oppression. Through observational narratives, the author argues that the foundation of knowledges must be shifted to decolonise, transform, and realise a racially just higher education in South Africa. Using data from two university lecturers, the author argues how the transformation agenda is, and has been, compromised, leveraging a focus on racial representation rather than decoloniality. As the focus on increasing access into colonial institutions expands, conversations, and indeed, designs to decolonise, are silenced. This mainstream version of transformation mirrors a related denial of Black realities, wherein the existence of township and rural school conditions are structurally denied, further limiting access into colonial infrastructures. Underneath these continued colonial inequities rests a larger commitment to sustain the structure of capitalistic exploitation, wherein universities remain in the service of exploitation, focusing on English-only approaches to silence African multilingualism. The paper concludes with a reminder that universities must recognise, name, and address the continuing structures of apartheid-era racism, while also transforming the very purpose and function of higher learning from its foundation in coloniality.