DOI:
Authors:
Precious Simba
Abstract:
In 2015 the government of Zimbabwe announced the rollout of a new education policy that represented a curriculum overhaul at the primary and secondary school level.At the centre of this policy was the explicit introduction of ubuntu as a philosophy of education in Zimbabwe.This move took a cultural artefact and what was, until that time, an academic aspiration into policy.The move also represented the first time in Zimbabwe’s education history that an indigenous artefact would sit at the centre of mass education.About the same time, I was working for a girls’ education organisation in Bulawayo, where we were experiencing challenges of extending our feminist ideologies.The community would often ask us « but what about our culture, what about ubuntu? ».Policy changes at the national level and tension at a professional level sparked the commencement of this study and its central concern: bringing ubuntu into conversation with feminism.The central question guiding the study is: what is the feminist critique of ubuntu, and what are the implications of this critical assessment for citizenship education in Zimbabwe?In response, I unpack the notion of ubuntu in its multiple interpretations as an ethic, a philosophy, a notion enfolded in power and a framework of encounter.I use language as a vehicle of critique to read through the various interpretations.In researching an artefact like ubuntu in a context like Zimbabwe, the study employs a research orientation that is able to contend with knowledge that is not always part of the known archive, what Mbembe (2002) calls the archivable.The study is, therefore, guided by a decolonialfeminist research paradigm.The study is largely conceptual but supported by an empirical element in the form of narratives from eight female educators from Bulawayo.Being feminist in orientation, the study places the female voice at the centre of analysis; hence the educators’ conceptions of ubuntu in and out of the classroom add weight to the feminist critique of ubuntu.I use the power of stories and re-storying throughout the study but more so in chapter 5 to analyse and present the data from interviews conducted with the female educators.My original contribution to knowledge comes in the form of a new interpretation of ubuntu.I advance another interpretation of ubuntu to subvert the inconsistencies and shortfalls of interpretations that already fill academic literature.I argue for a view of ubuntu as a social framework that mediates the encounter with the other permitting the currency of power Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.zaThere were aspects of Ndebele social structure (my organisation operated in a predominantly Ndebele-speaking locale) that put simply, could not contend with my new understanding of feminism, such as the premise of subjectivity and power(lessness) in the category of woman.A recurring question from some community members was « ubuntu le sintu 2 sethu ke? »[What of our ubuntu and culture?]Up to that point the organisation I founded operated on the logic of individuality and rights but many times in the communities that I worked in action was defined by something else.There was a sense that, what was known or common sense to the community was missing or lacking in the NGO’s programming, hence the recursive question on locating ubuntu and its derivative isintu in the organisation’s work.The organisation’s programmes for reforming gender through girl-led peer groups in the schools while valid, theoretically sound (with regards to reigning approaches I had newly acquired in the UK), and programmatically effective, fell apart at the point of integration with what the community knew.Clearly, my feminism needed some grounding.I was operating on a largely Western understanding of feminism.This « Western construal » of feminism (Nzegwu, 2004) is an understanding that places emphasis or over-emphasis on locating the body [Oyewumi (1997) calls this bio-logic], on the universal subjective condition of the category of woman, and on sexed bodies being dimorphic in experience and leading to a dichotomous discourse of women versus men.This view of feminism seemed asymmetrical to the Zimbabwean lived reality, and feminists from non-Western countries have documented this as a problematic (Mohanty, 1988;