In the light of recent media reports of racism in South African schools, this paper examines the role of school principalship standards in addressing race in South African educational leadership. The paper draws on tenets of critical race theory to examine how issues of race are addressed in the Policy for School Principalship Standard in South…

Calls for the decolonisation of higher education in South Africa gained prominence after the #Rhodesmustfall, #Feesmustfall and series of 2015-2016 students' protests in South African higher institutions. Visible in the demands of the students during these protests was the need for the decolonisation of higher education curriculum to ensure…

With the ascent of the National Party to power in South Africa in 1948, education reflected apartheid thinking and practices and implemented the ideology of separate development in educational institutions. Pronouncements of the African child's inferiority were reflected in government policy and legislation. The origins of this thinking and…

This paper was motivated by the anecdotal experiences of the lead author on the views of middle-class Black African parents who did their schooling under apartheid and who were parents of high school learners in contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. In this paper narrative inquiry was used to engage with ten purposively selected Black African…

This article explores the possibility that the recent #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests at South African universities may be partially underpinned by grief over a dying essentialist assemblage in the wake of the 2012 Marikana massacre--which saw the assemblage severed from the State Apparatus in a way that spelled its doom.…

This article presents findings from a critical race theory-informed qualitative study of three teachers in a township secondary school outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Based on a series of interviews conducted throughout the school day, this study demonstrates how teachers intentionally empower learners to navigate school infrastructures that…

Microaggression is defined as subtle and often unconscious or automatic actions or statements made towards a discriminated group. It causes distress, anxiety and isolation. Microaggression can often lead to demoralisation and a feeling that one is in a constant psychological warfare. It is also ubiquitous in nature. This paper is a reflection on…

An earlier paper focused on how born-free learners constitute, negotiate and represent their identities after almost two and half decades of democracy in South Africa. Utilising the theoretical framework of subjective realities of educational change, in this article I set out to explore what implications teachers' beliefs hold for born-free…

In an attempt to bring about a society in which individuals can realise their full potential, South African (SA) education has undergone fundamental reforms. However, despite these changes, the education system seems to remain hampered by ongoing systematic and institutional racism, and subsequent socio-economic structures of poverty and…

In this essay, Sharon Subreenduth explores how social justice policies have both global-local and historical dynamics and maintains that, as a result, dominant Western models of social justice limit engagement with alternative modes of understanding social justice in non-Western locations. She uses the South African experience as a case study for…

This article investigates and documents how undergraduate students in South Africa make meaning of cross-racial interaction on the college campus in the post-apartheid era. Additionally, it explores how students perceive that interactions with diverse peers have shifted since apartheid, and how these interactions are indicative of the larger…

Drawing on scholarship in Critical Pedagogy, this article speaks to the debate about pedagogical approaches within social justice education (SJE). The article addresses itself to privileged positionality within the context of university-based SJE, with a specific focus on race and whiteness. As a conceptual piece, it addresses some key…

This article foregrounds the salience of "lived experience" in the mediation of unlearning racialized habitus (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), and in learning and relearning the "truth about reality," or the truth about others. This article emphasizes the value of positive "lived experience" for anti-racist and…

Despite efforts to transform the racialised system of higher education in South Africa inherited from apartheid, there has been little research published that interrogates the relationship between race and the experience of academic staff within the South African higher education environment. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and critical…

The contemporary South African subject English classroom is a complex space requiring ongoing attention to issues of cultural and linguistic diversity, and frequently manifesting the need to work across historically constructed differences in race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This article reports on one aspect of a broader research…