Summary
How can understanding histories of decolonisation in Africa enrich the ways the history of geography is taught? How can making connections between past and present struggles in our learning and teaching be an important and productive approach?
This resource aims to:
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Provide a forum to help counteract myopic approaches to learning and teaching about the African continent
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Generate progressive teaching resources about the African continent, past and present, in collaboration with African activists, scholars and teachers
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Generate dynamic teaching resources on the relationship between decolonisation in Africa and the history of geography
Introduction by Dr Ruth Craggs
Watch two South African geographers who are active in the struggle against apartheid, Professor Dhiru Soni and Professor Calvyn Gilfellan, as they discuss:
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Their experiences of studying under apartheid
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Their political formation
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How they used geography to challenge apartheid and coloniality
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How their work and activism contributed to the decolonisation of the discipline itself
Professor Dhiru Soni
Professor Dhiru Soni is based at Regents Business School in Durban, South Africa. He was formerly Head of Department of Environmental Studies and Development and Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Durban Westville – which was allocated to ‘Indians’ under the apartheid regime (and before that a student and lecturer in the department of geography at the same university). UDW was merged with the University of Natal to become the University of KwazuluNatal in 2004.
Dhiru was heavily involved in the campaign to decolonise the discipline of geography in South Africa, including by replacing the two apartheid era geographical societies (the equivalent of the RGS) with a new, non-racial society in the early 1990s. He was also very involved in the process of trying to transform teaching and learning in universities at the end of apartheid, and in gathering international support for anti-apartheid campaigning within the discipline.
In this 20 minute video, Dhiru discusses the struggle for emancipation:
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The experience of being at university under apartheid, and the history of segregation of universities in South Africa from 1959.
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The geography department he studied and worked in – and the power dynamics between senior Afrikaaner academics and more junior ‘Indian’ academics, support staff and students. This includes his own experience starting as a lab assistant and working his way up.
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Poor working conditions for staff – including student numbers and the lack of time for research (compared to the ‘white’ universities) which impacted careers.
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Student protests against the regime and the harsh and violent crackdowns on those protests on campus.
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The geography curriculum and how it was irrelevant to the lives of students and ignored the impact of apartheid.
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Issues with publishing as a black academic and the need to challenge the apartheid structures in the institutions of geography, such as South Africa’s two geography societies.
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The international solidarity garnered for an academic boycott.
Dhiru Soni has narrated the influence of international solidarity against apartheid in this article:
Professor Calvyn Gilfellan
Professor Calvyn Gilfellan is Chief Executive Officer of the Castles Control Board in charge of the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa. Before working in heritage, Calvyn was a student and then lecturer in the Geography Department at the University of the Western Cape, just outside of Cape Town, built for what was known as the ‘coloured’ population of South Africa under apartheid. Whilst working at the university, Calvyn was heavily involved in community education in the townships surrounding the university, and in anti-apartheid activism with the ANC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and was locked up by the apartheid regime as a result of his activism.
In this 20 minute video, Calvyn discusses:
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The landscapes of childhood and how these, and his parents work and migration, impacted his own politics (his father worked in the mines in Namibia, where the South West African Peoples’ Organization (SWAPO) were campaigning for liberation from colonialism).
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His journey to becoming a geographer (he wanted to be a vet, but apartheid university systems prevented that)
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His connections with the African National Congress (the ANC)
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His work mobilising and conscientizing students and young people through his teaching within and beyond the university
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His imprisonment by the apartheid regime, and student support received in prison
What role might geography or geographical knowledge and skills play in challenging ongoing coloniality?
Dhiru Soni believes geography can provide important explanations, but we also need to make sure our curricula are relevant and can help students to challenge, not just understand injustice, and to cultivate empathy:
Calvyn Gilfellan argues that geography can provider that integrated understanding, but we must guard against ‘ivory tower-ism’ and speak and work directly with communities. He highlights the importance of bringing theory and practice together.
What can we learn from the past for today’s struggles? How can educators respond to the challenge of decolonisation and what do liberation thinkers offer to 21st century concerns?
Calvyn Gilfellan highlights the challenges of today given the defeat of the left, but remains optimistic when he sees progressive politics winning in places around the world. He notes the global, transnational and connected nature of struggle.
Dhiru Soni highlights the importance of learning from history, and the continued pertinence of the ideas of Steve Biko in relation to ‘decolonising the mind’.
Resources
Both Soni and Gilfellan, mention the anti-apartheid activist and leader Steve Biko, as a key influence that remains important and useful today. You can read some of his work here:
Both also mentioned the work of Harold Wesso. Wesso produced one of the earliest and most important critiques of the discipline of geography in South Africa as colonial product:
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Wesso, H. (1992) The colonisation of the geographical mind: A critical contextual analysis of the institutionalisation and establishment of geography as an academic discipline in South Africa. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of the Western Cape. You can download his PhD thesis here: wesso_phd-arts_1992.pdf (19.53Mb)
Geography teachers in and beyond South Africa were engaged in the struggle against apartheid. One example of the resources they produced is here:
A good collection of geographers’ work on apartheid South Africa is this book, produced just as the regime was coming to an end:
On geography in South African universities, apartheid legacies, and possibilities for decolonisation, these pieces are informative and thought provoking:
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Crush, J., Reitsma, H., and Rogerson, C. (1982). Decolonizing the human geography of Southern Africa. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 73 (4): 197-198. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9663.1982.tb00955.x
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Daya, S. (2022). Moving from crisis to critical praxis: Geography in South Africa. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47(1): 9-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12459
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Fairhurst, U. J., Davies, R. J., Fox, R. C., Goldschagg, P., Ramutsindela, M., Bob, U., and Khosa, M. M. (2003). Geography: The state of the discipline in South Africa (2000–2001). Pretoria: Society of South African Geographers. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03736245.2003.9713787
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Ramutsindela, M. F. (2002). The philosophy of progress and South African geography. South African Geographical Journal, 84 (1): 4-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2002.9713750
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Rogerson, C. M., and Parnell, S. M. (1989). Fostered by the laager: apartheid human geography in the 1980s. Area, 21 (1): 13-26.
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Wesso, H. and Parnell, S., (1992). Geography education in South Africa: colonial roots and prospects for change. In Geography in a Changing South Africa: Progress and Prospects (ed. C. M. Rogerson, and J. McCarthy), 186-200. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
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Wesso, H. (1994). The colonization of geographic thought: the South African experience. In Geography and empire, (ed. A. Godlewska, and N. Smith), 316-332. Oxford: Blackwell.