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Across the world, universities are grappling with the colonial legacies that have shaped them. That struggle is especially vital in South Africa where the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements have catalysed decolonial activism and discourse against the legacy of apartheid in higher education. This collection asks what epistemic justice might look like in teaching, learning and research across multiple academic disciplines. Each author writes from first-hand experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town, an institution that was and remains a key site of complicity with and resistance against settler colonialism, apartheid, and their ongoing oppressions. The contributors trace power relations that are embedded in various teaching and learning spaces at UCT, asking critical questions about the kinds of subjects and objects of knowledge that are produced by their disciplines. Further, they explore new ideas, texts, and intellectual and pedagogical practices that can help academics interrogate, challenge and transform the dominant power relations in the South African academy. Collectively, these chapters work to imagine new subjects of knowledge in the postcolonial university through an ethic of epistemic justice. At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity. At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection by authors based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity.

The South African higher education system has historically been characterized by racial and gender inequities inherited from the discriminatory policies of the apartheid era. From the ascent to power of the National Party in 1948, tertiary institutions were divided along ethno-linguistic lines in accordance with the segregationist policies of the apartheid system. The 1990s ushered in a new political era characterized by the un-banning of political parties, the release of political prisoners, and the shift of political power from the Nationalist party to the government of national unity led by the African National Congress. Since the change of government in 1994 there has been a concerted effort to transform the system of higher education from one in which race, gender, and class determine access and success, to a more equitable one. The demise of apartheid in South Africa requires that educational institutions transform in order to reflect the changing nature of the country. This volume includes case studies on South African tertiary institutions immersed in the process of transformation, examining the issue of language policy at Afrikaans-medium institutions, the challenges that the historically white, English-medium institutions face when including a previously excluded group, the experiences of Black South African students enrolled at such institutions, and the challenges faced by historically disadvantaged institutions.

This paper focuses on policy initiatives and strategies used to promote the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education in South Africa. It explores a wider international outlook and current debates in South Africa to map out an emerging South African perspective concerning the integration of ICT in higher education. It also provides a brief survey of key policy developments on e-education in general to contextualize the use of ICTs. In doing so, the paper addresses the following questions: What general goals do policy makers in South Africa express in national policy documents for the integration of ICT in the education system? What is the role of government regarding the use of ICT in higher education? What policies and strategies for ICT do leaders of South African higher education institutions develop? How do South African national priorities and higher education institutional strategies match?

International academic partnerships have the potential to enhance the participating institution's efforts to become actors in the global educational arena. The ability of partnerships to realize their objectives is affected by the relationship that the partner members have with one another and the mutual benefit each receives from the agreement. This article examines the dynamics of an academic partnership between Transformed University an historically disadvantaged institution in the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa and three international partners from the US, Canada, and the European Economic Community. The paper illuminates a variety of factors including history, organizational culture, and globalization forces that affect the success of academic partnerships to reach their stated objectives. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

How is knowledge about religion and religions produced, and how is that knowledge authenticated and circulated? David Chidester seeks to answer these questions in Empire of Religion, documenting and analyzing the emergence of a science of comparative religion in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and its complex relations to the colonial situation in southern Africa. In the process, Chidester provides a counterhistory of the academic study of religion, an alternative to standard accounts that have failed to link the field of comparative religion with either the power relations or the historical contingencies of the imperial project. In developing a material history of the study of religion, Chidester documents the importance of African religion, the persistence of the divide between savagery and civilization, and the salience of mediations—imperial, colonial, and indigenous—in which knowledge about religions was produced. He then identifies the recurrence of these mediations in a number of case studies, including Friedrich Max Müller's dependence on colonial experts, H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan's fictional accounts of African religion, and W. E. B. Du Bois's studies of African religion. By reclaiming these theorists for this history, Chidester shows that race, rather than theology, was formative in the emerging study of religion in Europe and North America. Sure to be controversial, Empire of Religion is a major contribution to the field of comparative religious studies.

Apartheid, ironically, provided Grant Farred with the optimal conditions for thinking.He describes South Africa's apartheid regime as an intellectual force that, \"Made thinking apartheid, more than anything else, an absolute necessity.\"  The Perversity of Gratitude is a provocative book in which Farred reflects on an upbringing resisting.

Muslim Institutions of Higher Education in Postcolonial Africa examines the colonial discriminatory practices against Muslim education through control and dismissal and discusses the education reform movement of the post-colonial experience.

Produced from experiences at the outset of the intense times when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions began in March 2020, this collaborative paper offers the collective reflections and analysis of a group of teaching and learning and Higher Education (HE) scholars from a diverse 15 of the 26 South African public universities. In the form of a theorised narrative insistent on foregrounding personal voices, it presents a snapshot of the pandemic addressing the following question: what does the ‘pivot online’ to Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERTL), forced into urgent existence by the Covid-19 pandemic, mean for equity considerations in teaching and learning in HE? Drawing on the work of Therborn ( 2009 : 20–32; 2012 : 579–589; 2013 ; 2020 ) the reflections consider the forms of inequality - vital, resource and existential - exposed in higher education. Drawing on the work of Tronto ( 1993 ; 2015 ; White and Tronto 2004 ) the paper shows the networks of care which were formed as a counter to the systemic failures of the sector at the onset of the pandemic.

This celebratory volume tells the story of the late Russel Hayman Botman who died suddenly early in his second term as Rector and Vice-Chancellor of Stellenbosch University. Botman’s story is told from his earliest childhood years until his last day as rector. The nature of tributes and celebratory volumes is that it can never be exhaustive. It tells a rich story from limited perspectives. It, however, serves as invitation, stimulus and inspiration to others connected to Botman to also tell their stories about his story.

This paper examines the idea of 'core business' in contemporary South African public universities. South Africa's public higher education system has global ambitions, but is also highly internally stratified. Drawing on new data from interviews with higher education leaders and government policymakers across a number of South African institutions, we show that while the rhetoric of 'core business' of the university has been adopted by higher education leaders, the question of what constitutes the purpose of the university, in South Africa and arguably beyond, is subject to ongoing debate and negotiation. The multiplicity of conflicting but coexisting narratives about what universities should do in South African society—producing excellent research, preparing a labour force, or addressing societal inequalities—exposes a persisting tension surrounding the purpose of a public university. And while this tension has historical origins, we show that responses to addressing these various roles of the institution are not developed organically and in a neutral context. They emerge under conflicts over limited state funding and attendant and opportune market pressure put on public universities in times of crisis, that shape profoundly their framing and outcomes, and the future of the universities.