Decolonising South African Universities: Challenging the Anthropocene and Re-Centring Indigeneity

ABSTRACT

Colonialism, global capitalism, environmental destruction and destruction of myriad cultures are intimately intertwined. They have impacted our sense of what it means to be human (and who is fully human) and our social systems, including education. Therefore, in working on the decolonisation project to decolonise education, our attention must be multi-focused and recover indigenous cultures and heal the damage, addressing capitalism and emphasising the environment as a source of knowledge. In this article, we outline a learning experiment in decolonised education, the Green Leadership School, which sought in different ways to address these topics, not just through lectures, but also through body work, creative work, gardening and ritual. Given that participants found the School rejuvenating, this work tentatively points to new directions for decolonising education.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonisation
• green leadership
• anthropocene
• feminists
• black depression

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS), and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for the financial support that made the Green Leadership Schools possible. We also thank the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) and the Sociology Department at the University of the Western Cape for hosting the Green Leadership Schools, and assisting with administrative support.

Disclosure statement

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

ORCID

Darlene Miller http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9489-2075

Rebecca Pointer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8303-5772

Notes

1 The first three Green Leadership Schools in 2014 focused on African environmentalism and climate change and were funded by the Rosa Luxemberg Foundation with participants from Southern Africa.

Additional information

Funding

Thanks to the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS), and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for the financial support that made the Green Leadership Schools possible.