The African renaissance and the transformation of the higher education curriculum in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe curriculum is a critical element in the transformation of higher education, and as a result, I argue for the inclusion of what I refer to as an African epistemic in higher education curricula in South Africa. In so doing, attention is directed at the decolonisation of the curriculum in higher education in South Africa, which aims to give indigenous African knowledge systems their rightful place as equally valid ways of knowing among the array of knowledge systems in the world. In developing my argument, I maintain that a critical questioning of the knowledge included in higher education curricula in South Africa should be taken up in what I call transformative education discourses that examine the sources of the knowledge that inform what is imposed on or prescribed for curricula in higher education in South Africa, and how these higher educational curricula are implicated in the universalisation of Western and European experiences.