A decolonial reading of the history curriculum: towards undoing historicide for curricular justice for the Zimbabwean learner

ABSTRACT

This study undertakes a decolonial reading of the Zimbabwean history curriculum as an exemplar of how knowledge and pedagogy could be reframed as the basis for curricular justice in a global imaginary that is predicated on the epistemic hegemony of the Global North. The study which is framed as a conceptual research article introduces and argues for undoing historicide as a heuristic within the broader scope of the epistemic decolonial turn. The Zimbabwean history curriculum, as a unit of analysis, is referenced to exemplify entrapment within the Cartesian paradigm of knowing, despite the country’s political independence. The argument developed is that history curricula that do not interrogate the geography and biography of knowledge entrench the hegemonic narrative of the coloniality of power and by extension colonial historiography. The paper suggests that the way out of the epistemic quandary that pervades the Zimbabwean history curriculum entails re-envisioning curricular practices in ways that ensure the emergence of a pluriverse in which we reclaim, restitute and legitimate our knowledges and histories, and affirm our ontological densities as equal to those of the Global North.

KEYWORDS:

• Coloniality of knowledge
• curricular justice
• Epistemicide
• historicide
• history curriculum
• Global South
• Zimbabwean history curriculum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Fund Thuthuka Reference: TTK200318509938 Grant No: 129837.

Notes on contributors

Bekithemba Dube

Bekithemba dube senior lecturer and coordinator intermediate phase

Nathan Moyo

Nathan moyo post doctoral fellow and senior lecturer