For the past two years, South African students have been calling for the decolonization of education in universities especially. In the recent years, I’ve also realized how misunderstood the term “decolonized education” is.
I understand how the term may come across as vague for non-black people, especially those with no knowledge or regard for African cultures. Colonization by textbook definition is the forming of a settlement or colony by a group of people who seek to take control of territories or countries.
Now, I used this textbook definition of colonization because that’s what we were taught in school, that’s the definition we’re told to take, and it’s a definition that kids are currently being taught; while it may be true, it downplays the significant role that colonization has in the disposing of African truths.
This definition of colonization alone doesn’t speak at all. It says nothing about indigenous knowledge and ways being disregarded, it says nothing about the attempt to dispose of African intellect, while today in modern South Africa, that is exactly how colonization currently thrives. It’s not in the form of people being migrated or physically enslaved, it is more about intellectual, for lack of a better word, brainwashing.
“We’re raised with African traditions and cultures but the minute we’re introduced to “education” we’re fed methods and processes that worked for white people.”
Current higher education is exclusive to Eurocentric ideologies especially in undergrad. We’re deprived of having pride in what we’re being taught. We’re raised with African traditions and cultures but the minute we’re introduced to “education” we’re fed methods and processes that worked for white people. We’re forced to mentally adopt a different culture.
Now the question is, who gets to decide what in our current curriculum is colonized? Well, who decides what’s right or wrong? Up or down? The answer is any conscious person. You see decolonization is about inclusion. The inclusion of African research, the inclusion of African cultures, the inclusion of intersectionality in medicine, in science, in art, in literature but even in the approach and manner in which we are lectured/taught. We’ve been brainwashed by western teachings all the way down to how to act according to what is deemed acceptable in society.
It also involves removing the notion that Africans don’t understand what it is to be civilized. It has to be an everyday plight because every day we experience colonial methods, low key and even openly. We’re just calling for the rebirth of indigenous knowledge in processes and in institutions. We’re calling for the welcoming of indigenous intellect in ways of life. Just like how patriarchy is a system that we constantly try to eliminate, decolonizing of education must be just as frequent, it must be a system in itself. A system that can disband western centered learning.
We’re Africans in Africa, indigenous knowledge systems deserve a seat at the table.
