Professor Norman Duncan, Vice-Principal: Academic at the University of Pretoria, cordially invites you to a public lecture on Curriculum Transformation presented by Prof Relebohile Moletsane, Professor and JL Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Title: Re-Imagining the Decolonisation Debates in South African Higher Education: What’s Gender Got to do With it?

Persons with disabilities are kindly requested to contact Neo Maseko on 012 420 2631 if assistance is required.

The current neoliberalism that has captured South African universities, and the adoption of such corporate strategies of competition, marketisation and entrepreneurship as key areas of performance for staff and students are negatively impacting the lives of all who inhabit these spaces. Due to prevailing unequal gender norms, these negative impacts tend to be negatively skewed against women, undermining their participation in the life of institutions, and more significantly, in the current higher education decolonisation project. As we continue to look to decolonise higher education and to improve access, success and life outcomes, what might the debates look like if we were to look seriously at the continuing marginalisation (and brutalisation) of women in and around university campuses? Arguably, current debates on decolonisation, particularly within the student movement, have been informed largely by the writings of such race scholars as, among others, WEB du Bois‚ Marcus Garvey‚ Steve Biko‚ and Frantz Fanon, which aim to challenge the continuing influence of colonial structures and systems on power relations in and around institutions. However, much of this scholarship is silent on role of gender and gender relations in the decolonization project. As summarised in a recent CHE monitoring brief, “the decolonisation of the curriculum is [often] based on a broad understanding of curriculum which makes it necessarily bound up with a proposed decolonisation of the university – in other words, a fundamental change in the nature and identity of such institutions and a dismantling of the apparatus that is perceived to support and continue a colonial legacy… (CHE, 2017: 2). This presentation seeks to move gender from the margins of the decolonisation scholarship and to re-centre it so as to inform debate on changing the nature, identity and culture(s) of our institutions and disrupting the tools and systems that continue to support the legacy of colonialism and apartheid in our institutions and beyond.

Relebohile Moletsane is Professor and JL Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her areas of research include rural education, gender and education, sexual and reproductive health education, girlhood studies and girls’ education in Southern African contexts. She is the Co-PI (with Claudia Mitchell, McGill University) on the Networks for Change and Wellbeing project (Networks for Change and Wellbeing (www.networks4change.co.za/). She is the co-author (with Claudia Mitchell and Naydene de Lange) of the 2017 book Participatory Visual Methodologies: Social Change through Community and Policy Dialogue. London: SAGE and co-editor, with Claudia Mitchell of the 2018 book: Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and Young Women Speak Back Through the Arts to Address Sexual Violence. Rotterdam: Brill/Sense Publishers.