Deputy vice-chancellor Sandra Klopper says the University of Cape Town is heading for curriculum reform in faculties to strengthen cooperation with BRICS countries.
“Informed teaching has led to the strengthening of South-South relations with academics in Brazil, India and other African countries,” Klopper said.
“For example, some time ago the health sciences faculty took a decision to shift the focus of the curriculum fundamentally by addressing the issue of primary healthcare.
“The humanities faculty is engaged in a project to decolonise – rather than simply Africanise – the curriculum.
But associate professor in sociology Xolela Mangcu challenged the direction and said the establishment of black studies as a discipline in their own right was the key, timeslive reported.
He said the call by the Rhodes Must Fall movement for more black academics, more black students and a revised curriculum was “very similar to the demands made at Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s” that resulted in the development of a highly successful discipline known as black studies.
He said UCT’s approach of holding “rational discussions was not the way to deal with it” and that race, rather than the notion of disadvantage, should be dealt with more explicitly.