Seminar-Coloniality of Academic freedom in South Africa

Abstract

South African higher education promises academic freedom to its scholars, a section 16(d) fundamental human right in the country’s Constitution. However, scholars who pursue African studies in the philosophical turf of Afrocentric, Pan-African, decolonial, feminist, Black Consciousness, and anti-racism-orientated thought do not enjoy this human right. This is the case because post-1994 higher education in South Africa puts a very high premium on academic discourse that does not disrupt coloniality, whiteness, white supremacy, racism, and the legacy of land dispossession and Eurocentric epistemic hegemony. In addition, the South African higher education system is comfortable promoting, rewarding, and incentivising polite scholarship that does not call the enduring legacy of settler white racism by its name. The scholars who challenge coloniality by getting to the bottom of the truth are targeted through institutional abuse, harassment, racism, and, indeed, suspension. This phenomenon is what I call the coloniality of academic freedom. I present here a case study of my experience of this playbook when I was a sociology lecturer at the University of the Free State (UFS) from November 2022 to December 2023.

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Dr Pedro Mzileni is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Zululand in South Africa. He is also a Research Associate at the Raymond Mhlaba Centre for Governance and Leadership at Nelson Mandela University. His research is focused on Global Higher Education Studies, Sociologies of African Thought, Decolonial Theory and Social Movements. He also writes columns for Al Jazeera English International.