Abstract:
Impulsive uses of collective memory to rally support for decolonised education, establishing clear divisions
through binary oppositional thinking, have been characteristic of the student movement. Analysing the binaries
that constitute the decolonial turn, I highlight misconceptions of decoloniality that facilitate the erasure of
oppositional voices in decolonisation. Misconceptions of decoloniality manifest as the dismissal of all so-called
non-African knowledge as colonial. I subsequently caution against the perverted inversions of power in
knowledge production in Higher Education in South Africa and interrogate positions that I perceive to be
recreating fundamentalisms in the quest for decolonised education. Using a decolonial critique that frames
education as emancipatory, I argue for the impossibility of separable categories. I conclude by raising two
questions, both of which require further investigation: What is the role of Higher Education in South Africa
today? Does decolonial thinking in praxis displace assumptions that continue to perpetuate and maintain
coloniality in the South African academy?
