Decolonising Academia: Knowledge Co-creation with the First Indigenous People of South Africa.

 

 

Discussing knowledge production in the African educational system is a complex topic because of its Western colonial foundation, structured under a reductivism “monocultural” perspective of the world, together with its “otherness” approach. The current process of decolonization of the high educational system is focusing attention on student’s requests to reform(ing) the Euro-centric curriculum, interrogating the procedures on how knowledge is produced, who produces it and for what purpose is produced. But: who will said knowledge produced benefit? The last question is a very crucial aspect because it lines up with the role that the communities can have in co-creating knowledge that is relevant not only for “internal to the academia” discourse but also strongly orientated and focused to be in “service of society”. This paper wants to use two projects as case studies of knowledge co-creation with the First Nations Peoples of South Africa, developed at Nelson Mandela University, namely “The Spirit of Water, Indigenous Ceremony and Study of the Fish Traps” (2017-21), and “Investigation on the First Indigenous Peoples of South Africa’s Built Environment” (2021-23). The working group - led by the author- was formed in 2015 under the umbrella of the School of Architecture and is composed of First Nations Chiefs and community members, students and staff. Since then, the focus has been on community engagement projects, based on transformative participatory action research, that involves teaching and learning as well. The projects promote acts of cultural re-appropriation, reconnecting the First Peoples with their heritage sites, and reformulating and reconstructing the indigenous narrative, done by them. This inter alia seeks to contribute to the building up of new knowledge, the restoration of the Indigenous culture and identity, the decolonizing of the higher education curriculum, the breaking of the boundary between Indigenous communities and academia, and the building up of equity and inclusivity.