Towards salvaging the social sciences and humanities through indigenisation in South Africa.

Abstract

This essay advances the thesis that given the history and role of the social sciences and humanities in the colonisation of Africa in general and South Africa as a specific case, the only way in which such disciplines can be salvaged from their crises so that they can thrive and add value is through their indigenisation. Following the independence of many African countries not much changed in the orientation of the academy in Africa as a result the social sciences and humanities still suffer from the coloniality of knowledge. In this respect, there is a need to recognise the historical, institutional and normative baggage of the disciplines so as to explore their appropriation, localisation and grounding in an emancipatory and transformative agenda. The West has made the particular the universal and that is the intellectual project which African intellectuals have been deconstructing.