Ideology critique as decolonising pedagogy: Urban forced removals as a case study

16 Educational Research for Social Change (ERSC) Volume: 7 Special Issue June 2018 pp. 16‐30 ersc.nmmu.ac.za ISSN: 2221‐4070 Ideology Critique as Decolonising Pedagogy: Urban Forced Removals as a Case Study M.Noor Davids University of South Africa Abstract After emerging from its troubled past, postapartheid South Africa adopted a democratic constitution and cosmopolitanism as path to a peaceful future. Cosmopolitanism, once a vibrant tradition at the turn of the 19th century, disappeared from the apartheid historical canon and memory due to the colonial practice of forced removals. The apartheid fallacy that forced removals were necessary because of urban slum conditions and public health reasons obscured its ideological and economic reasons. Apartheid narratives and traumatic memories of forced removals continue in the postapartheid era and mitigate against the establishment of a nonracial, cosmopolitan society. Notwithstanding the dominance of negative memories, a productive, decolonised version of forced removals can make a positive contribution to social cohesion. This paper offers a multiple historical case study of three pre‐apartheid cosmopolitan spaces that were destroyed by the Group Areas Act as framework to suggest how ideology critique can be employed as a decolonising pedagogy. A critical notion of cosmopolitanism is appropriated, using the notion of production of space to explain the role of political and social engineering in the making of place during the colonial‐apartheid period. Recommendations suggest how to integrate cosmopolitanism, segregation, and forced removals with ideology critique as decolonising pedagogy in teacher education curriculum spaces. Keywords: Cosmopolitanism, forced removals, Group Areas Act, ideology critique, segregation Copyright: © 2018 M. Noor Davids This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non‐Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non‐commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Please reference as: Davids, M. Noor (2018). Ideology Critique as Decolonising Pedagogy: Urban Forced Removals as a Case Study. Educational Research for Social Change, 7(0), 16‐30. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2221‐4070/2018/v7i0a2 M. Noor Davids http://orcid.org/0000‐0003‐2894‐3951 Introduction After 23 years of democracy, optimism to establish a nonracial, cosmopolitan society seems to be on the wane. South Africans have emerged from apartheid as new political subjects of diverse cultural backgrounds. There is a moral expectation to live together according to a civil code. South Africans Educational Research for Social Change, Vol. 7 Special Issue June 2018 17 enthusiastically adopted a democratic constitution and cosmopolitanism to pave the way towards building a peaceful, postapartheid future. Regrettably, experiences and memories of cosmopolitan living have been overshadowed by the apartheid government’s preoccupation with segregation politics and the trauma caused by forced removals. Cosmopolitanism, once a vibrant tradition at the turn of the 19th century in South African cities such as Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, disappeared from the official historical canon and memory as a valuable experience of a significant number of South Africans. The apartheid fallacy that forced removal was necessary due to urban slum conditions and public health reasons, obscured its ideological and economic reasons. This historical misrepresentation is an apartheid‐colonial construction in need of reinterpretation and decolonisation. Paradoxically, while the postapartheid Constitution (1996) built on cosmopolitanism as a model for peaceful coexistence, it was forced removals that destroyed its memory. Due to the threat that these integrated, racially mixed communities posed to the doctrine of segregation and apartheid, they were physically erased. Historically, the doctrine of segregation, which culminated in the ideology of apartheid, was used as legitimation for white supremacy and to create favourable conditions for racial capitalism to flourish (Dubow, 1989). While cosmopolitanism is lauded to promote reconciliation and tolerance, apartheid memories of racism and forced removals remain dominant in the public domain, posing obstacles for the development of a sense of common citizenship and social cohesion. The current educational system has been criticised for avoiding the particular history of race relations and of extreme inequality (Staeheli & Hammett, 2013). Additionally, the public media report regularly on incidents of racism and xenophobia, which undermine the cosmopolitan project. Xenophobia is a daily occurrence and has become a long‐standing feature in postapartheid South Africa (Misago, 2017). The Citizen newspaper reported, for instance, that the University of Pretoria was urged to take a stand against a new residential building that opened for Christian, Afrikaans students only (“UP urged to condemn,” 2017). Similarly, the Daily Mail carried a report that a black man had been forced into a coffin by two white men as retribution for a crime committed, and was told he would be fed to snakes and the coffin be set alight with petrol (Flanagan, 2016). The same article noted that in January 2016, the South African Human Rights Commission had received 160 racism‐related complaints—the highest monthly figure in its 20‐year history—and that nearly 3,000 violent attacks on farms and more than 1,600 farm murders had been committed since 1990. If South Africans, black and white, were to know that South Africans once lived together in city spaces despite their racial and cultural differences, they might be willing to give a cosmopolitan vision of coexistence a chance to animate public life. Notwithstanding the dominance of negative historical perceptions of forced removals, a productive decolonised version can make a positive contribution to social cohesion. This article argues for the employment of ideology critique in teacher education as a decolonising pedagogy to reimagine a nonracial postapartheid society. To this end, historical material about forced removals was excavated to resuscitate the suppressed memories of cosmopolitan living. The South African educational system has a definite role to play in promoting cosmopolitanism and good citizenship. Both cosmopolitanism and good citizenship are regarded as essential components of a democratic dispensation. Cosmopolitanism, nonracism, and good citizenship are values enshrined in the constitution of South Africa. The white minority were generally the beneficiaries of colonial‐ apartheid rule and enjoyed racial privileges, while black people were second class, disenfranchised citizens. Therefore, in a postapartheid educational sector, the introduction of new constitutional values requires an appropriate pedagogical approach to address historical injust (...truncated)