Abstract

Since the eruption of student protests in 2015, 2016, and part of 2017 across almost all South African university campuses, the question of transforming universities and decolonising university curricula have been at the epicentre of academic discourses. University Transformation Committees and Student Representative Councils are now more than ever challenging university stakeholders not only to transform staff and student demographics as well as institutional structures, but also to decentre Western epistemic traditions, which have dominated the scholarship of teaching and learning in South African universities. This article reflects on existing literature on transformation of South African higher education and classroom discussions with students to understand and link curriculum decolonisation to social justice and agency. It explores how colonial and apartheid matrices of power, culture, and knowledge intersect with classroom pedagogies to entrench Western epistemologies in South African universities. The article also examines ways through which the subordination and marginalisation of African knowledge systems silence South African students’ voices and perpetuate different forms of epistemic injustices. Finally, it discusses different strategies to disrupt Western epistemic domination and to restore African ways of knowing and being in mainstream university curricula.