Abstract
This article utilizes internal colonial analyses to explore and understand the difficult educational conditions students from peasantry background experience in Zimbabwe’s universities. The article proposes that the subordinate position and related educational experiences of peasantry students since the year 2000 are exploitative and to the advantage of the elite to such an extent that peasants are an internal colony. The analysis is informed by critical anti-colonial perspectives that observe the hegemonic tendencies of global and local capital in collusion with dictatorial elite nationalists. By use of a critical interpretive case study of purposefully sampled students and other relevant members of the university community from one public university, disturbing student experiences were excavated. Student narratives and experiences were analyzed using the constant comparative method and led to the conclusion that there is internal colonialism in Zimbabwe where an alliance of the state and the local and global corporate world are colluding to maintain their economic and political dominance. The article challenges those in education and academics that there is need for the decolonization of education by first identifying contemporary hegemonic forces and recognizing students from the peasantry as victims of the emerging kleptocratic capitalism.
Highlights
The persistence of poverty, the high rate of educational failure, and the absence of meaningful “development” among peasants/peasantry in post-independence Zimbabwe necessitate an imperative search for an explanation
Given the apparent absence of a theory to explain the under-class predicament of peasantry children in higher education, the article uses internal colonial insights and analytics to address the crisis in higher education of children from peasant background
The objective of this article is to utilize the thesis of internal colonialism to analyze the educational underachievement of students of peasantry background in Zimbabwe
Summary
The persistence of poverty, the high rate of educational failure, and the absence of meaningful “development” among peasants/peasantry in post-independence Zimbabwe necessitate an imperative search for an explanation. Given the apparent absence of a theory to explain the under-class predicament of peasantry children in higher education, the article uses internal colonial insights and analytics to address the crisis in higher education (unaffordable fees, high dropout, concentration in disciplines that lead to low pay, poor living conditions, etc.; see Students Solidarity Trust, 2009) of children from peasant background. The objective of this article is to utilize the thesis of internal colonialism to analyze the educational underachievement of students of peasantry background in Zimbabwe. The article uses anti-colonial perspectives and critics that unmask modern hegemonic forces and refuses the notion that colonialism ended with the attainment of national independence (Escobar, 2004; Fanon, 1963; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2000) to a. describe the living and learning conditions of students from peasantry background;
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