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The voices of Black African feminists and womanists are often excluded in debates about decoloniality and racism, despite their important scholarly contributions. In this article, we retrieve some of these voices with respect to research and scholarship about decoloniality generally and in work towards decoloniality in a social work programme specifically. During a previous critical and reflective participatory action research process, findings emerged that identified a number of thematic principles. These principles were deemed valuable for further work to disrupt coloniality and work towards decoloniality. These included positioning Afrika as the centre; analysing power dynamics at all levels; foregrounding race, class, and gender as interlocking forms of oppressions in the South African context; maintaining consciousness of structural issues; developing critical conscientisation; privileging the “voice” of those who are silenced; and embracing ubuntu without arrogating it. In this article, we revisit these emergent principles for work towards decoloniality, to recentre and situate Black African feminist and womanist perspectives more prominently. This is critical since Black African feminist and womanist voices are marginalised and elided while there is a critical imperative that they be brought to bear on these principles. These voices not only develop the work towards disrupting the coloniality of gender and patriarchy, but also provide greater depth and criticality to the set of principles.

Both students and scholars have identified the critical imperative to prioritize decolonization and pedagogical and curriculum transformation in South African higher education institutions. The ongoing context of coloniality, persistent race-based inequalities and hegemonic Western-centric epistemologies led to the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall protests by students at South African universities. As a result of the questions raised by students during these protests, the Department of Social Work at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) embarked on a process of working towards decoloniality in their social work programme. This paper describes the unfolding critical participatory action research process toward decoloniality undertaken by this department. Various theoretical perspectives, including communicative action, reflexivity and ‘decolonising the mind’ informed the process of decoloniality that began at the UJ Department of Social Work. The process of critical reflection, dialogue, analysis, development of methodologies and initial implementation of changes that were used in this department may offer useful insights for working towards decoloniality in other academic settings.

This article describes thematic outcomes of a process of engagement around deep transformation toward Decoloniality in a university social work education program. Given the gravity of working towar...

This article reflects on the Marikana massacre of August 2012, subsequent violent strikes and responses by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a case study, and provides an analysis about whether these interventions bring transformative change or maintain the status quo in times of crisis. Events associated with Marikana are seen to be embedded in social structures of the time and part of deeper frictions and fractures of social transformation. The role that NGOs might play in this context must be interrogated as to their facilitation or hinderance of such social transformation. Interviews were conducted with representatives of NGOs intervening in Marikana that provided services of humanitarian assistance, and legal and psychosocial interventions and with mine workers and residents of Marikana about their experiences and views of these services. Findings from the study are illustrative of how NGOs were not primarily motivated to bring about lasting, transformative change but rather attempted to address immediate or short-term needs which, while important, did not account for underlying causes of the crises that they set out to address. Both ideological underpinnings of NGOs and structural conditions produced by state and capital impact on outcomes of interventions. Given these limitations, it is argued that there is a need for deep critical interrogation through praxis, for NGOs to intervene differently in times of crisis to bring ‘real’ change and transformation in the lives of those who are marginalized.

This review looks at a book that is a collection of writings forming the first of a series on ‘Rethinking community development’. The series in intended to challenge readers of various disciplines to critically rethink what community development means in theory and practice. The timely series, introduced by this volume, promises to be of great value to theorists and practitioners alike. What has been theorised and practised as community development clearly requires a ‘critical re-evaluation’ so that revitalised understandings may inform more relevant and contextualised approaches. This first book of the series explores Power, politics and community development, as well as their interplay within various internationally situated contexts.

There are many reasons why Frantz Fanon’s work is relevant today. Given ongoing Coloniality evident in global power asymmetries and neoliberal economic arrangements with grave levels of global (and within-state) inequality, Fanon’s characterisation of racist colonisation, oppressive power relationships and their intrapsychic impact, remain relevant. His work confronted the brutal asymmetrical power relationships of colonialism, critically interrogating these on levels of the psychological, social, material, cultural and political. As a post-colonial critique, his work brings together many philosophical, psychological and cultural theories with personal anecdotes and illustrations from practice relevant to the colonial context. The impact of oppressive racist power relationships exerts a similar impact today as during the colonial era, from the perspective both of the similarity of these dynamics and through intergenerational transmission of collective trauma. With respect to the nature of ongoing Coloniality, race-, class- and gender-based socioeconomic inequality, intersections of oppression, and institutional and structural racism, it is argued here that among Fanon’s many propositions, in particular, psychopolitics and sociogeny; the impact of colonisation; internalised oppression; negritude; disalienation and liberation; the importance of affect; and an attitude of Decoloniality, provide rich ground for liberatory and conscientising encounters in an environment of critical pedagogy, especially in social work. As Fanon says: 'But the war goes on; and we will have to bind up for years to come the many, sometimes ineffaceable, wounds that the colonialist onslaught has inflicted on our people'.

La tarea de examinar los orígenes y el desarrollo del trabajo social está plagada de narrativas en disputa. En Sudáfrica prevalecen los discursos individualistas, liberales, coloniales, masculinos y “blancos”. Desde una perspectiva histórico-dialéctica, en vez de narrar el “progreso” cronológico de la profesión y disciplina, se enfatiza en cómo las dinámicas sociopolíticas y económicas dan forma al trabajo social, que a su vez tiene un papel en la configuración de dichas dinámicas. Se cuestiona la ficción de registros puramente centrados en las ideas de progreso y libertad de elección, y se develan discursos hegemónicos y contrahegemónicos. Se insta a las/os trabajadores sociales a que se comprometan con toda la complejidad de los acontecimientos que surgen de los antagonismos de clase y raza de la sociedad sudafricana. para cautivar la tradición más crítica del trabajo social en América Latina y estimular estudios e intervenciones sociales construidos a partir de la vida concreta de los pueblos latinoamericanos.

There is a dilemma regarding HIV/AIDS disclosure to children born and living with HIV/AIDS in residential settings. Since the advent and accessibility of Anti-Retroviral Therapy, most children born HIV positive live longer and have healthier lives. Some of these children find themselves in Need of Care due to abandonment, orphanhood and neglect or abuse, and are placed in alternative care such as a Child and Youth Care Centre (CYCC). Social Service Workers are then faced with this dilemma around disclosure of their HIV status, due to the complexities around the consequences of such a disclosure, and the absence of clear policies in this regard. The study explored the perceptions of social service workers regarding disclosure of HIV status to children born HIV positive living in a CYCC in Ekurhuleni, South Africa. The findings indicate that HIV status disclosure is a complex but essential process as it reinforces children’s ability to adhere to medication and dispels anxiety and suspicion within themselves around their status. Recommendations relate to community education and awareness programmes, policy and practice changes and makes suggestions for future research.

Critical interrogation of social work texts reveals ideologies contributing to hegemonic ‘taken-for-granted’ knowledge that maintains oppressive power relations. In the South African context of ongoing inequality after the 1994 democratic transition, neo-liberal ideologies have structured and constrained social work knowledge and practice constitutive of social change. Similarly, conservative neo-liberal ideologies underpinning social work knowledge and discourse act performatively to shape practice and social realities. This article, based on a section of the author’s PhD study, examines one of the thematic ideological trends found in post-1994 social work texts on poverty and social development, which reflect neo-liberal, individualist ideologies of ‘blaming-the-poor’ and personal culpability for poverty. A selection of three texts is discussed, illustrating processes and modes of operation of these ideologies in the various approaches proposed.

This article argues that South African social work education, situated in Western modernism and broadly within the ideological project of colonialism and racist capitalism, should move from knowledge and discourses which are domesticating and oppressive, and do essential decolonising work. It explores colonialism and post-colonialism and the politics of social work knowledge, it describes the processes of the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements, and then it describes the work of decolonisation. In order to move from coloniality and domestication, which means neither indigenisation nor Africanisation, social work education must 1)Â reclaim and repossess truths and narratives about the history of social work in South Africa, 2)Â explore ideology underlying its knowledge and discourses, 3)Â facilitate critical conscientisation and cultivate a critical and anti-colonial approach, and 4)Â include anti-colonial theorists in the curriculum. It provides two examples of courses which facilitate such a process.

That social work should be ‘on the side of the poor and the oppressed’ in the context of the ubiquitous and increasingly pernicious consequences of global neoliberal capitalism, demands a differently engaged practice (Dominelli, 2004; Ferguson and Lavalette, 2006; Ferguson, 2008; Reisch, 2013; Sewpaul, 2013). This requires ‘greater system destabilising and social change efforts, and not the traditional social control and status-quo-maintaining functions of social work’ (Sewpaul, 2013: 23). The struggles for social and economic justice waged by global and local social movements may therefore provide insights and impetus for such ‘differently engaged’ radical and transformative practice. This article explores the processes and strategies of two South African social movements and suggests that social work should incorporate some of the discourses of these movements for expansion of its theoretical base for transformation and social change.

The past few years have seen renewed interest in the radical social work tradition both in Britain and internationally in response to the highly negative impact of neo-liberal policies on people’s lives and on the profession itself. While these perspectives are now beginning to be included within social work academic curricula, less consideration has been given within the international literature as to how they might also inform practice placements and field education. This paper outlines the findings of a small piece of qualitative research that explored the experience of one South African social work programme of placing a small group of students within campaigning organisations and social movements concerned with addressing structural issues. Based on interviews with the students, their practice teachers and agency representatives, the research addressed the extent to which students were able to draw on their teaching to make sense of these agencies and their role within them, as well as the particular challenges to which these placements gave rise. The paper concludes by suggesting that, while students undertaking such placements may require additional support and teaching in

English In the context of ongoing internalized and structural forms of oppression in post-apartheid and post-colonial South Africa, social work education must be critical and engage with structural, modernist analysis and post-modern critical theory. This article explores how students experience a critical conscientization process as part of preparation for praxis which meets social change imperatives. French Dans un contexte où les formes d'oppression structurelles et intériorisées de la période post-apartheid et postcoloniale se maintiennent, il est nécessaire que la formation en travail social soit critique et qu'elle fasse place à l'analyse structurelle moderne et à la théorie critique post-moderne. Cette étude explore la façon dont les étudiants font l'expérience, dans leur cheminement pratique, d'un processus de conscientisation critique qui répond aux exigences du changement social. Spanish En el contexto de las internalizadas y estructurales formas de opresión actuales en la Sud Africa post-colonial y post-apartheid, la educación en trabajo social debe ser crítica y comprometida con el análisis estructural moderno y con la teoría crítica postmoderna. Este artículo explora cómo los estudiantes experimentan el proceso de concientización crítica como parte de la preparación para la práctica, la cual se enfrenta con los imperativos del cambio social.

The task of examining the origins and development of social work is fraught with competing narratives. In South Africa individualist, liberal, colonial, masculine and "white" discourses prevail. The dialectical-historical perspective, rather than chronological "progress", shows how socio-political and economic dynamics are formative of societal conditions and of social work, which in turn has a role in shaping these dynamics. The fiction of purely historical records of progress and freedom of choice is challenged, and hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses uncovered. Social workers are urged to be engaged with the full complexity of events emerging from the class and race-based antagonisms of South African society.