Perspectives on Knowledge and Higher Education within Marginalised Communities in South Africa

With increasing calls to decolonise education across the globe, the inclusion of different knowledges in mainstream education has become a priority. Initiatives have included diversifying curriculum content and the creation of modules with a focus on localised knowledge. These initiatives have rarely been undertaken in collaboration with local communities and students, but rather have involved extracting and repurposing local knowledges for mainstream education (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2008; Shizha,2014; Mkhize & Ndimande-Hlongwa 2014).
In South Africa, colonialism, and apartheid systematically marginalised traditional and indigenous ways of producing knowledge. The end of apartheid brought with it a move away from segregated education and new policy emerged to increase the access to higher education. However, many universities remain segregated, which means that students from historically marginalised communities are still attending universities that are under-resourced (Heleta, 2016). The curriculum in many higher education institutions remains Eurocentric, reinforcing Western dominance and privilege. The lack of meaningful decolonisation led to student protests in 2015, which propelled decolonisation and the demand for an Afrocentric curriculum to the forefront of the national debate (Kwoba, Chantiluke & Nkopo, 2018).
Through utilising a collaborative approach as part of a decolonising methodology, this study attempts to challenge Eurocentric research methods that can undermine local knowledge and the experiences of marginalised groups. As well as being collective, this approach requires the researcher to critically reflect on their own participation in a research project (Smith, 2002). This research highlights the tensions inherent in meeting the aspirations of a decolonisation agenda and student expectations of the currency afforded by attending a neoliberal higher education institution. The findings of this study add to the critical research base on decolonisation by focusing on indigenous perspectives of received education, their own knowledge, and how this knowledge can/should be used. Furthermore, this research is a recognition of the complexities and contextual considerations necessary when exploring decolonising.