Rethinking peace education in South Africa: through art and decolonization
Hosting a conference has radically changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Where the traditional conference allowed face to face interaction in a centralized location, the ‘new normal’ sees conferences operating in an online space. Through the global restrictions on travel, gatherings and social contact, an online conference was the only option to host our own Decolonized Peace Education in South Africa conference.
However, because decolonializing is a mandate for our research team, we needed to find a way in which the conference could be hosted in a more decolonial manner. The resulting conference was therefore an approach to storytelling.
The DEPA South Africa group’s conference constitutes topical issues of decolonizing peace education in South Africa told through the narrative of four individuals. The conference provides a platform for a discussion on peace education, the role of art, decolonization and the future of the curriculum that embraces plurivesality and peace. The discussions are presented by cultural practitioners who embrace the idea of a peaceful world. The need to understand conflict and the paradigm of war, calls for a serious need for attention to be paid to the hidden continuous legacies of the dark side of modernity. The accounts are provided by Babalwa Mzingisa; Zingisa Nkosinkulu; Loyiso Lindani and Monishia Eavesdrop Schoema.
You attend the conference at your own convenience here: https://www.decolonising-education-for-peace-africa.org/events and you can view the stories of the speakers here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVOQw0URwm36vLpMMoSZK26GLgHLoauRz
For more information on our decolonial conference, or the DEPA project as a whole, please visit the DEPA website: https://www.decolonising-education-for-peace-africa.org/ or our Twitter page @DEPAfrica.