Its critics complain that current Afrodiasporic literature is not in tune with everyday life on the continent. They see its versions of Africa as sanitised and Westernised.
There is a risk that because of fatigue, frustration and silencing the important moment created by South Africa’s student movements will pass by with no proper, long-term structural change.
Calls for the decolonisation of countries, institutions, the mind and of knowledge are not new. In South Africa, these changes are crucial and long overdue. But they must be carefully thought through.
If South Africans are to make the radical changes they must to become truly great, the new generation will have to find a way of understanding the country’s past in its profound complexity.
A curriculum can’t be decolonised by simply removing content. This denies students the chance to participate in local policy debates and the global job market. A more nuanced approach is needed.
Ghana has often been depicted as one of modern Africa’s success stories. But how different is contemporary Ghana to the vision its founding father Kwame Nkrumah had?
The book contains major flaws, the chief of which is the lack of solid, supporting evidence. Brown claims that ‘Rhodes documented everything’ – which was not actually the case in this regard.
Many works published on decolonisation originate from Ngugi wa Thiongo’s idea of decolonising the African mind. Imperialism, he writes, has left its mark on the minds of the previously colonised.
South Africa’s universities are in a state of upheaval. Academic developers must rethink their own purpose and how they work with academics in this environment to foster positive change.
Student protests in South Africa saw triumph for the hashtag and success for the slogan. What lies beyond this as students push for genuine change in universities?
African academics are steeped in European knowledge systems and ways of teaching. There is a galaxy of African scholarship they can draw from to change this - if they’re brave enough.
The students’ movement has stretched South Africans in personal, professional, powerful and provocative ways. Have academics been stretched enough to reflect deeply on the status quo at universities?
Many universities in East and West Africa lost their autonomy during the 1980s and 1990s and became handmaidens of the state. What insights can their experiences offer for South Africa?
There is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in schools – and this will see African languages bumped even further down the pecking order.
An academic who has marched alongside students during university fee protests in South Africa explains why their demands resonate with her and so many others.
The Pacific War played out as a colonial war in the Pacific. It was brutal for non-combatant civilians in its path, and its impact epitomised the dehumanising capacity of both war and colonialism.
Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa and Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations, Utrecht University