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association with their natural environment, developed and maintained over thousands of years. As a result of this close interaction, indigenous knowledge has strong elements of environmental resource management.

Unlike Western epistemologies, IKS adopts a stewardship approach to the environment rather than one of dominance and subjugation. However, it is important to remember that whilst being fundamentally underpinned by natural resource use, not all indigenous practices have proven to be environmentally sustainable and indigenous knowledge by its very nature can count against itself in certain instances. One must thus be wary of adopting Utopian notions of IKS.

4.4 IMPACT OF APARTHEID AND COLONIALISM ON INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

Respondent 1 provided an overview of the pre- and post-apartheid education system. He explained that during the apartheid era South Africa’s education system was underpinned by the ideology of the Christian National Education.

Consequently, western systems were used to legitimise the ideologies of the

politically dominant group, i.e. Afrikaans-speaking White South Africans. This resulted in specific exclusions from the curriculum such as indigenous knowledge systems and the associated consequence of learners being

“impoverished from a knowledge point of view” (Respondent 1).

The literature review (chapter 2) found that within the post-apartheid curriculum the prior learning of children was not given cognisance which resulted in a major disconnection between what they learned in the classroom (formal knowledge) and what they learnt outside the classroom. This was supported by Respondent 5 who explained that the Eurocentric nature of the apartheid curriculum did not provide “opportunities to bring in contextual relevance unless the teacher decided to do so”. In a similar vein, Respondent 3 stated that apartheid education focussed on the learner “being a sponge to absorb the education and to memorise and never to question”. He also explained that even the intelligence of a learner was determined through mechanisms such as the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test that was rooted in western epistemologies.

Apartheid education forced learners and educators from indigenous communities in South Africa to marginalise what they had learnt from their elders and communities. This resulted in IKS being devalued in favour of Western knowledge and has created a sense that the various issues including the environment can only be understood in terms of Western or English scientific concepts(Mail and Guardian, 2005). “Colonialism and the monopoly of western science have made many colonised people suspicious and even dismissive of their own knowledge in favour of western knowledge paradigms” (Payle, 2002:1). Respondent 4 aptly referred to this phenomenon as the “colonised mind” stating that “we have been brainwashed to think less of ourselves and our knowledge”.

Ntsoane (2002:25) asserts that “not only did the colonial education system eventually create a sense of disaffection or desire to disassociate oneself with the native heritage, but it affected the individual and the sense of self confidence. On top of this the new colonial education undermined people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity and in their own abilities. It makes them see their past, their rural richness, their living heritage and their cultural and natural heritage as a wasteland of non-achievement and it causes them to want to distance themselves from that wasteland”. Respondent 1 agrees, as he explained that where there are people there is indigenous knowledge systems but “in areas where there are so-called sophisticated people, they have turned their backs on their own IKS”. Respondent 2 submitted that “in South Africa what has happened is that there are people who are ashamed of their own culture and are reluctant to admit that they eat caterpillars or stink bugs”. When probed as to whether this has any link to the legacy of apartheid, he responded in the affirmative.

The result of this epistemicide is that western science and western paradigms have established themselves as both politically and epistemologically correct (Payle, 2002). By epistemicide, Payle is referring to the negation and dismissal of the indigenous experience as a basis for understanding indigenous reality. He explains that this has led to a profound reluctance to reclaim and manipulate indigenous knowledge systems as a source of sustainable development.

Respondent 1 emphasised that Curriculum 2005 (C2005) signified transformation in the curriculum, but that the essence of it was still largely linked to apartheid issues. According to him, these apartheid ideals were

maintained primarily by beauracrats who favoured the apartheid system. Also, indigenous knowledge systems were not mentioned in C2005.

C2005 was actually a combination of Apartheid and post-apartheid ideals as related to both the ANC policy document on Education and Training (1993) and the Education Renewal Strategy (1992), the latter being entrenched in CNE ideals.

Therefore, the new syllabus is built on the remnants of the old syllabus.

The vestiges of the old are found in the new. So, the actual elements of the old syllabus were implanted in the new syllabus by Apartheid beauracrats.

In the documents that spoke of C2005, you will find that IKS was not mentioned i.e. IKS was conspicuous by its absence. The time was not right for IKS during this period. The period in history allows certain things to take root. By the second time i.e. when C2005 was reviewed, certain issues such as IKS had already become part of the public discourse and was thus easier to introduce into the curriculum.

Respondent 1

Respondent 1 cited the inclusion of IKS, as a principle in the National Curriculum Statement, as a major milestone given its total absence in C2005.

Respondent 4 was also optimistic about its integration into the National Curriculum Statement even though it has limitations based on the manner in which it was integrated.

However, whilst the National Curriculum Statement appears to respond to the democratic values enshrined in the Constitution through, among other things, its recognition and integration of IKS, what emerged from the interviews is that the integration was made by concession. On being probed on whether its integration was a compromise Respondent 4 said, “Yes, it was almost a compromise. It was contested. It was not as though everyone bought in. We had to have open sessions and open debates and we had monitoring groups to look at the subject statements and say ‘there isn’t enough of IKS in here’. I was one of those ‘police’. However, that was influenced by the fact that we are not challenging the fundamentals but are including aspects of IKS in the curriculum. It was a managed integration of IKS into the curriculum”.

The manner in which Principle 8 is couched shows that it was a negotiated settlement”

Respondent 1

The curriculum change that we undertook did not challenge the fundamental basis on which knowledge is built. So, we merely included within that western epistemology aspects of IKS. Off course it is a minimalist approach and therefore the achievements that we expect from it, necessarily, will be limited. However, that limitation is still much better than what it was before...

To me, this was a problem in that it was not really integration but cooption. It was taking little bits of IKS and inserting them. It was not a fundamental change.

Respondent 4

From the statements above, one can deduce that despite the integration of IKS into the National Curriculum Statement, the vestiges of the apartheid and colonialist curriculum, such as the prominence of Western ideologies, were still carried forward into the new curriculum.