WSU’S PROFESSOR BANTWINI CALLS FOR DECOLONIZED HUMANITIES TO HALT CULTURAL DOMINATION

The decolonisation and fostering of the Humanities could be the first step towards reclaiming a colonised Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in South African higher education institutions, according to Walter Sisulu University executive dean, Professor Bongani Bantwini.

This was Bantwini’s central message in his keynote address at the South African Humanities Deans’ Association (SAHUDA) conference hosted by WSU.

One of the most forceful arguments in his address was the link between language and identity.

Bantwini criticised the continued privileging of English and Afrikaans in universities, calling it a betrayal of the multilingual spirit of the Constitution.

“When a language is silenced, an entire way of being is diminished,” he said, before warning that “if we are to reimagine the humanities, we must restore African languages as languages of teaching, research, and scholarship.”

Bantwini described the ongoing dominance of Eurocentric frameworks as a subtle form of epistemic apartheid, one that perpetuates alienation and inequality.

For Bantwini, the use of African languages in academia is a matter of cognitive justice and not merely a cultural sentiment.

“Curriculum is not neutral. It reflects choices about whose knowledge counts, whose stories are told, and whose voices are amplified. Excellence cannot be measured in English or French alone, it must be equally vibrant in Swahili, Yoruba, isiXhosa, or isiZulu.”

Speaking under the conference theme “Reimagining the Humanities in the 21st Century,” the academic made a bold appeal for universities to decolonise curricula and reposition the humanities as the conscience of education.

Bantwini warned that, without doing so, South Africa risks reproducing the very systems of cultural domination it seeks to dismantle.

“Our indigenous philosophies, medical practices, and spiritualities were dismissed as inferior and unscientific. This was not accidental. It was part of a broad project of cultural domination, he said.”

Bantwini said reimagining the humanities requires more than token inclusion of African perspectives; it calls for a reclamation of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) as central pillars of education rather than decorative add-ons.

“Decoloniality and renewal are not about discovering what has come before, but about broadening the epistemic table where Shakespeare and Achebe coexist, not inherit,” Bantwini emphasised.

Bantwini urged academics to understand decolonization not as an act of erasure, but as an expansion of the “epistemic table.”

“Embedding indigenous knowledge in our curricula is not only a matter of historical justice. It is also a pathway to innovation rooted in the lived realities of our people,” Bantwini asserted.

Bantwini closed his address with a reminder that education must not lose its moral compass amid market-driven metrics and employability agendas.

“While employability matters, education must not lose its soul,” he warned. “The humanities remind us that education is ultimately about forming human beings who are ethical, reflective and socially responsive,” concluded Bantwini.

By Sinawo Hermans