The Faculty of Education recently hosted CPUT students and their European counterparts at an International Student Conference on International Competences for Decolonization.
The conference forms part of the faculty’s exchange programme with the HAN University (Netherlands) and the UCLL (Belgium).
“The aim of these student conferences which started last year is to cement Internationalization at Home (I@H). Given our constraints such as finances with regard to internationalization through mobility, I@H will help to internationalize larger groups of student,” says conference organizer and CPUT lecturer Felicity Titus.
“Ultimately, we wish to work towards embedding the international competences into the curriculum.”
Titus says colonialism brought the rape of land and language with it as well as awareness of one’s race and religion, and that decolonization will involve redefining human beings, revaluing Africa as part of the global village and the reconstruction of minds, curricula, spaces and structures.
She identified personal growth, language skills, intercultural competencies and global engagement as some of the international competences required for decolonization.
Ziyana Lategan, a Master’s student at the University of Cape Town, discussed how various modern philosophers and certain historical events influenced the production of knowledge. Lategan asserted that certain South African universities have American and European philosophy books but none from the African continent.
“Can we have a decolonized university in a colonized country?” she asked.
During a panel discussion European delegates said decolonization should be a school subject worldwide and not only in South Africa.
CPUT delegates, who included Local SRCs on Mowbray and Wellington Campuses, made a case for the intellectualization of indigenous languages.
Speakers included the Faculty’s Dean, Prof Thobeka Mda, Karin Benjamin (HAN), Merle Hodges (CPUT International Office), Bonnie Horbach (Consul General to the Netherlands in Cape Town).
