#NotDomestication #NotIndigenisation: Decoloniality in Social Work Education

Abstract

This article argues that South African social work education, situated in Western modernism and broadly within the ideological project of colonialism and racist capitalism, should move from knowledge and discourses which are domesticating and oppressive, and do essential decolonising work. It explores colonialism and post-colonialism and the politics of social work knowledge, it describes the processes of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements, and then it describes the work of decolonisation. In order to move from coloniality and domestication, which means neither indigenisation nor Africanisation, social work education must 1) reclaim and repossess truths and narratives about the history of social work in South Africa, 2) explore ideology underlying its knowledge and discourses, 3) facilitate critical conscientisation and cultivate a critical and anti-colonial approach, and 4) include anti-colonial theorists in the curriculum. It provides two examples of courses which facilitate such a process.