Browsing by Subject "Decolonization"

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    Breaking my silence as a 'trained' dancer in post-apartheid South Africa
    (2020) Jones, Danielle-Marie; Baxter, Veronica; Job, Jacki
    This research is a personal reflection and a self-study of two performances that have taken place over the course of two years. My Medium Project titled, When Memories Break, set out to navigate ways of decolonising oppressive dominance and investigating the ramifications of indoctrination in dance. In 2017, during my Honours Degree in Dance Studies at the University of Cape Town, I created a poster-painting with a fellow #FeesMustFall artist-activist. This poster-painting, entitled, Amputation, was introduced at UCT School of Dance' Confluences 9: Deciphering decolonisation in Dance Pedagogy in the 21st Century in Cape Town, South Africa. Since then, Amputation has become a personal credo that I have carried with me in my Practice as Research field of study. In 2018, as part of my Minor Project, I not only highlighted my memories and experiences in Classical Ballet, but also included my memories of other informal1 dance influences. The purpose of this essay is therefore not to depict ballet as a current colonialist art form but rather to draw attention to what it represented during the years of colonialism, apartheid, and the aftermath of that. It is against this background that I explore the issues related to the relationship I have with my dance training to date. As a performer-researcher, I will use my living experience as a case study. This article provides a perspective from a performer-researcher's position using selfreflexivity as a research methodology. My conclusion supports the notion that self-reflection in the quest for decolonisation in dance by performer-researchers is important for the evolution of a more democratic society.
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    Curriculum Decolonization in the University of Cape Town: Research, Policy and Practice
    (2022) Muraina, Luqman O; Xulu-Gama, Nomkhosi
    Despite seeking a ‘transformation' agenda since the end of apartheid, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and South African universities are still unable to displace Western hegemony in higher education. Hence, knowledges and the curriculum are structured along Western epistemological traditions with a strong depiction of African epistemicide. The inability of students to see themselves and be present in Teaching & Learning (T&L) spaces, amidst feelings of alienation and pain expressed through the Fallist movements which started on the University of Cape Town campus and continued in subsequent national and international decolonization uprisings. Since the end of the Fallist protests, research around decolonization has increased, including in UCT. Meanwhile, there are still calls for more practical research on decolonization, including decolonizing classroom spaces. Similarly, the DHET has been critiqued for not creating space for investigating curriculum learning and pedagogies beyond its demographic and economic-oriented ‘transformation' agenda. Lastly, the conversations around UCT's Curriculum Change Framework and its capacity to be implemented as a university-wide curriculum reform ‘framework' motivated the study's broad question - what does curriculum decolonization entail at UCT concerning research, policy, and practice? The study is anchored in a ‘coloniality of knowledge' theoretical orientation and critical qualitative inquiry design. By using a stratified sampling strategy, the UCT staff population were divided into decolonization researchers, university administrators, and lecturers from whom individuals were purposively selected and invited for interviews. A semi-structured qualitative interview instrument was finalized after conducting pilot interviews. The study received ethics approval from the sociology department, and eleven interviews conducted were analysed within a thematic (reflexive) method using NVivo as a systematic resource aid. The thematic framework consisted of five themes: coloniality of knowledge, DHET transformation affairs, UCT decolonization engagements, curriculum decolonization, and putting decolonization into practice. Coloniality of knowledge talks about asymmetrical global knowledge systems structured along racial and gender lines. Curriculum decolonization entails dismantling and rethinking HE amidst curriculum diversity, relationality and promoting indigenous knowledges. The DHET transformation agenda is limited to who is at the university and does not consider whose knowledge, teaching methods, and learning cultures are foregrounded in universities. UCT's decolonization engagements have achieved a few quantitative successes such as changing building names, but much more needs to be done to interrogate Western hegemony, knowledges and culture in the university. A decolonial curriculum frame is the major finding concerning curriculum decolonization theme. It concerns how academic disciplines and lecturers must reflect on how they sustain coloniality in T&L spaces. Finally, decolonization entails pluriversal thinking; hence, a top-to-bottom policymaking approach is detrimental to it. The study recommended that UCT must not adopt neoliberal methods in decolonizing the curriculum. The DHET and UCT must be provocative in dismantling Western education structures and epistemological cultures and embracing ‘Other ways of doing curriculum', including multilingualism. In conclusion, seeking decolonization to be politically right is detrimental to students' sacrifices and intergenerational Black pain.