Towards an Ubuntu and Capabilities-Based Conceptualisation of Sustainable Educational Futures in the South African University : Perspectives from Student Activists

Martinez Vargas, Carmen and Mathebula, M. and Mkwananzi, F. and Kibona, B. and Malatji, T. and Mahlatsi, T. and Mmula, P. and Khoza, N. and Nkosi, S. and Ndimba, B. and Oamen, B. and Buthelezi, A. and Maubane, M. and Ngwabeni, Y. and Dlamini, S. (2024) Towards an Ubuntu and Capabilities-Based Conceptualisation of Sustainable Educational Futures in the South African University : Perspectives from Student Activists. In: Reparative Futures and Transformative Learning Spaces :. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 89-109. ISBN 9783031458057

Abstract

Based on student activists’ aspirations for a Pan-African decolonial and sustainable university, this chapter focuses on the process and outcomes of exploring and negotiating the diverse worldviews and valued capabilities needed to achieve these aspirations. By so doing, the chapter builds on literature that makes a case for a ‘Pan-African approach to the contestation of institutional racism through an understanding of the collective experience of blackness and a consciousness of the impact of racism in contemporary historically white spaces’ (Kessi et al. Pan-Africanism and Psychology in Decolonial Times. (Pan-African psychologies). Palgrave Macmillan, 2021: 103). The chapter draws from literature that theorises ways of undoing the damage done by colonial epistemic structures (Walker & Martinez-Vargas, 2020) and ontologies that perpetuate European memory as the basis for defining valued ways of being (and learning) in Africa (wa Thiong’o. Macalester International, 14(1), Article 9, 2004). The methodological and empirical discussions are based on a year-long participatory action research project involving a team of 12 student activists/co-researchers at a historically white university in South Africa. Using concepts from the capability approach (Sen. Development as Freedom. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), which we applied alongside the African moral philosophy of Ubuntu (Hoffman & Metz. World Development, 97, 153–164, 2017) as an analytical tool, we first present what the research team understand and perceive as the central unfreedoms maintained and perpetuated by current university structures and cultures, including challenges regarding funding, management and administration, as well as problems evident at the ethical and self-levels. The chapter concludes by presenting the Ubuntu-Based Institutional Capabilities list, which highlights the institutional capabilities that ought to be enhanced and promoted for sustainable educational futures.