The transformation of South Africa from a deeply iniquitous apartheid regime to a more inclusive democratic dispensation remains a huge challenge for all South Africans and its social institutions. The university remains one institution that is under severe pressure to transform. This pressure is exacerbated by the deeply entrenched apartheid…

We explore the place that the digital can occupy in teachers' pedagogical practices around social justice and especially how memory-work can deepen and enhance teacher practices. Like Walter Benjamin, we see memory as being a medium for exploring the past and where the digital provides greater opportunities for teachers to work productively across…

Assessment of the legacy of apartheid at the end of the apartheid era in South Africa highlighted major inequalities between white and black, urban and rural areas, and several departments of education. Eighteen years into democracy, the country needs to distinguish between the initiatives taken by the government to address the apartheid legacy,…

"In a time of unacceptable global injustice, growing inequalities in the distribution of power, accelerating climate change, and unwavering racism and social exclusion, we are today facing the biggest challenges of human history" (European Conference on Intercultural Dialogue in Development Education, 2008: 1). A favourable wind is…

South African institutions still confront gendered inequalities, irrespective of transformative national policies, compounded by the absence of a national gender equality policy for higher education. We therefore explore the potential of the capabilities approach (CA) to inform policy formation and argue for the development of a policy for higher…

This paper attempts to develop a conceptualisation of social justice in higher education based on a close reading of the current literature in the field. An important assumption we make is that higher education is a valuable mechanism for social justice. We set the literature against policy documents that detail South African aspirations with…

Access to education is one of a range of social citizenship rights that are intended to afford members of a society an opportunity to share in a basic level of social, economic, and cultural well-being and to mitigate societal inequalities. The idea that every individual has a right to education is deeply entrenched in the international discourse…

The article considers the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concerned with poverty, education and gender (MDG 1, MDG 2 and MDG 3). Despite considerable achievements associated with the MDG approach, which entails international and national target setting and monitoring, a sharp distinction between areas of social policy is entailed. In addition…

Post-apartheid South Africa manifests poor social indicators with over half the population living below the poverty line and the worst levels of inequality in the world, with much work needed to overcome the skewed legacy of apartheid. Sport suffered in this system resulting in unequal access to sporting facilities and opportunities, meaning many…

South African higher education is at a critical juncture in the implementation of South Africa's multilingual language policy promoting institutional status for nine African languages, English, and Afrikaans. South African scholars, not content merely to comment from the sidelines on the policy, its promise, and challenges, have also engaged in…

Student affairs, as an integral part of universities, has taken on a key position in contributing to social justice as one of the central imperatives of higher education in South Africa. This article sketches the development of this role and outlines some important tasks for contemporary student affairs. Three conceptual models within the social…

In this paper I analyse the potential that participatory action research holds for educating pre-service teachers to become more critically reflective and socially conscious. I also describe the rationale for and process of engaging pre-service teachers in their teacher education programme. Involving these candidate teachers in participatory…

This article begins with a critique of dominant approaches to language policy in education that are based on the notion of "rights" and "peoples." It makes the case for an approach that is based on the tripartite view of social justice, as articulated by Nancy Fraser. This view of social justice sees a complementary…

University access programmes inherently and inevitably provide students with a "label". Firstly, students are generally segregated and stigmatised as they are treated as a separate group that accessed university somewhat "illegitimately". Access programmes generally place more emphasis on academic development and in so doing…

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…