South-South Circulation of Ideas? The Uptake of Decolonization in South African Universities

The ‘fallist’ student movements of 2015/16 precipitated renewed debates on the issue of decolonization in South African universities. Although the term ‘decolonization’ has a long history and was a framing concept in the political independence movements of different African nations in the 1950/60s, it was taken up with new energy and fervor – both locally and internationally – following the South African student movements. Decolonization became the predominant framework for articulating diverse calls for change within the higher education sector. The ‘decoloniality’ school of thought – lead by Latin American scholars such theorists including Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo and Nelson Maldonado-Torres – gained wide engagement and uptake within university discourses about institutional change. At the same time, there was renewed attention to decolonial thought of African scholars such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Kwasi Wiredu.

This lecture traces the circulation and uptake of decolonization in the South African higher education sector and discusses how decolonization is variously understood and informs change in universities. It particularly focuses on the uptake and engagement with the concept of decolonization in philosophy, and considers why Wiredu’s conceptual decolonization finds more currency and uptake in the field.