Decolonising from below: Africanisation, student voice, and epistemic justice in South African technical and vocational education and training

Abstract

Amid intensifying calls to decolonise education in South Africa, this article advances a theoretically grounded model of ‘decolonising from below’ – an approach that foregrounds student voice as both a site and a method of epistemic justice in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Drawing on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and African decolonial thought, the study conceptualises Africanisation as the epistemic re-centring of African worldviews, languages, and values, and decolonisation as the structural dismantling of colonial hierarchies in knowledge and pedagogy. Using qualitative data from Learning Cycle Groups or dialogical spaces in which 15 isiXhosa-speaking TVET students collectively interrogated curriculum, language, and institutional culture, the article analyses how students theorise transformation from their lived realities. The findings reveal that students positioned as epistemic agents reframe vocational education beyond employability, envisioning it instead as a relational and ethical practice grounded in Ubuntu and collective self-determination.
Contribution: The article contributes a conceptual model of Africanisation from below, which integrates Freirean praxis with African humanist philosophy, offering both a methodological and a theoretical advance for decolonial research in vocational education.