South Africa’s Postcolonial Moments: Tensions and Complexities of Globalization Discourse and Social Justice Education

• In Event: The Project of Decolonization: Taking on Our Sacred Discourse

Abstract

Objectives
Currently South Africa (SA) is basking in the globalizing economic and cultural effects that the 2010 World Cup Soccer has produced. This global event has also highlighted the neoliberal hold that FIFA has over the organization and implementation of the World Cup. Against this backdrop of compromises in order to host such a global event, this paper analyzes post-apartheid educational policies and initiatives, critiques the educational compromises and highlights the tensions and complexities embedded in SA’s pursuit for global competency. South Africa’s post-apartheid educational policies and democratic changes were shaped against the backdrop of massive political and socio-economic recalibration (Fataar, 2006) but also with an eye to becoming globally competitive and efficient. I provide a socio-political and historical context and pose a primary question: Has education in SA become a global capitalistic commodity instead of a vehicle for social justice, equity and human rights? In working through this question the paper will:(1) examine the historical and political intentions of the South African Constitution and the National Education Statement with regards to its ideology of freedom, equality, social justice and human rights;(2) examine curricula initiatives for understanding the complexities and impact of globalization on the above ideology.
Theoretical Framework
The paper utilizes anti/post-colonial theoretical frameworks to analyze the possibilities of social justice and decolonizing education in South Africa. I use these frameworks to theorize the ways in which globalization has appropriated South Africa’s educational decolonizing projects.

Methods and Data Sources
Paper reviews and analyzes post-apartheid educational policy and curriculum specifically for its decolonizing intentions to redress apartheid social injustices. In addition to document analysis, I insert Black teacher narratives on post-apartheid education for social justice, empowerment and equity. These teacher narratives were collected through individual and focus group interviews during 2003-2007.
Results/Findings
Certainly a social justice agenda underpins educational policy and curricula in South Africa. However, I argue that the governmental standardization and expectations of educational output within divisive, discriminatory and disparate educational environments iniquitously maintains the apartheid status quo and works counter to its decolonizing intentions. Thus in its attempt at equalizing schools/schooling the South African government has fallen into the western archetype of aligning the function, organization and product of schools to corporations that reflects a global capitalistic trend that seems contradictory to its intention of disrupting apartheid divisions. I argue that globalization has the capacity to appropriate symbols of social justice, and creates conflict with indigenous decolonizing ideals and has changed the internal discourse and implementation of social justice, specifically educational social justice in South Africa.
Scientific /Scholarly Significance
Noting that globalization has “no stipulative meaning” but is politically and theoretically contested (see Rizvi & Lingard, 2000), this situated theorizing offers complex insights into the dynamics of decolonizing education efforts and globalization within developing countries. Such an approach helps us expand contemporary educational theorizing of post-colonial educational moments within the context of a global discourse of neoliberalism buttressed against strong social justice ideology.

Author

• Sharon S. Subreenduth, Bowling Green State University