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‘Africanisation’ has, during the last few decades, been a buzzword that has enjoyed special currency in South Africa. Africanisation is generally seen to signal a (renewed) focus on Africa, on reclamation of what has been taken from Africa, and, as such, it forms part of post‐colonialist, anti‐racist discourse. With regard to knowledge, it comprises a focus on indigenous African knowledge and concerns simultaneously ‘legitimation’ and ‘protection from exploitation’ of this knowledge. With regard to education, the focus is on Africanisation of institutions, curricula, syllabi and criteria for excellence (in research, performance, etc.). This paper, while sympathetic to the basic concerns that inform the call/s for Africanisation, spells out the problems and limits of this project. For one thing, the idea of Africanisation may evoke a false or at least a superficial sense of ‘belonging’. For another, it may entail further marginalisation and derogation. Lastly, while it may emphasise relevance, it is hazardously close to a comprehensive relativism. In the light of these points, this paper suggests a more promising alternative: a framework of basic human rights appears to be a more appropriate locus for the pertinent concerns and demands.

Taking its inspiration from the name of the recent '#FeesMustFall' movement on South African university campuses, this paper takes stock of the apparent disrepute into which truth, facts and also rationality have fallen in recent times. In the post-truth world, the blurring of borders between truth and deception, truthfulness and dishonesty, and non-fiction and fiction has become a habit -and also an educational challenge. I argue that truth matters, in education as elsewhere, and in ways not often acknowledged by constructivist, postmodernist and postcolonialist positions.'Imfihlakalo yasemhlabezi iqiniso. ' ('The truth is the world's secret. ' -Zulu proverb) Introduction: the decline of truthThe phrase '#FactsMustFall' has been inspired by the name of the recent '#FeesMustFall' movement on South African university campuses that was preceded by '#RhodesMustFall' . The association is significant for an additional reason, given this movement's ideological proximity to black consciousness and Afrocentrism, and its explicit endorsement of the Africanisation of higher education. Part of the latter is also a disavowal of 'Eurocentric logic' , 'Western rationality' and 'Northern epistemology' (see Seepe, passim 2004; De Sousa Santos, passim 2007; Cross and Ndofirepi, passim 2017).A further important inspiration for this paper has come, of course, from recent political events and their global impact: the stay-vs.-leave referendum in the UK, the US presidential election, the appointment of creationist Betsy DeVos as the US Education Secretary, Vladimir Putin's prevarications about the Russian arms build-up, not to mention developments in the Eastern Ukraine (e.g. the denial that there are any Russian troops there), Turkey (e.g. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's decision to

In South Africa, the notion of an African Philosophy of Education emerged with the advent of post-apartheid education and the call for an educational philosophy that would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures, identities and values, and the new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-apartheid era. The idea of an African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South Africa. Not only its content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and continue to be, the subject of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after discussing some of the constitutive features of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with which we are sympathetic. Our central question is whether African Philosophy of Education is the revisioned, 'typically African' philosophy of education that it is claimed to be. We argue that it has revealed certain tendencies that are remarkably similar to characteristics of Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid education that it claims to replace. More substantially still (and this is a feature that has wider ramifications for philosophy of education internationally), African Philosophy of Education, by labeling itself uniquely and distinctly 'African', runs the risk of insulating itself not only from interaction with the wider (i.e. non-African) world but also from any critical interrogation.

Following the first democratic election in South Africa in 1994, there has been a strong drive towards democratising education at all levels, primary, secondary and tertiary. The present paper examines some of the key ideas in the debate around transformation in higher education in South Africa, namely the notions of an African essence, culture and identity, as well as African knowledge systems. It contends that neither the idea of the 'essence of Africa' nor an emphasis on 'African culture and identity' constitutes an appropriate theoretical framework for conceptualising change in higher educational thought and practice in South Africa, the major problems turning on issues around essentialism and cultural relativism. Similarly, the post-colonialist and anti-discrimination discourse underpinning 'African ways of knowing' is unfortunately riddled with problems, logical and epistemological. While the present contribution is sympathetic to the basic concerns articulated in the respective debates, especially around the significance of indigenous languages, it offers both conceptual clarification as well as a critical (re-)evaluation of the pertinent issues. Thus, 'African knowledge' is argued to be a misnomer that raises more problems than it can conceivably solve. What its proponents hope to achieve is arguably better achieved by an emphasis on restorative justice that locates the principle of reconciliation within a basic framework of human rights.

The idea of`the African university' is usually accompanied by an emphasis on Africanisation of education, and of knowledge, on changing the demographic profile of student, staff and administrative bodies, educational syllabi and curricula, and the criteria for research activity and for throughput.

Mosibudi Mangena, the Minister of Science and Technology, said in an address to the Annual Congress of the South African Mathematical Society at the University of the Potchefstroom, November 2, 2004: “There is one thing we need to address before anything else. We need to increase the number of young people, particularly blacks and women, who are able to successfully complete the first course in Mathematics at our universities.” How is this to  be achieved? A popular trend involves a call for the introduction and incorporation of so-called ethnomathematics, and more particularly ‘African mathematics’, into secondary and tertiary curricula. Although acknowledging the obvious benefits of so-called ethnomathematics, this paper critically analyses three aspects of ethnomathematics that have been neglected in past critiques. Our focus is not on the relationship as such between ethnomathematics and mathematics education. Our critique involves (1) epistemological and logical misgivings, (2) a new look at practices and skills, (3) concerns about embracing ‘African mathematics’ as valid and valuable – just because it is African. The first concern is about problems relating to the relativism and appeals to cultural specificity that characterise ethnomathematics, regarding mathematical knowledge and truth. The second set of considerations concern the idea  that not all mathematical practices and skills are necessarily culturally or socially embedded. With regard to the validity and viability of ‘African mathematics’, our misgivings not only concern the superficial sense of ‘belonging’ embodied in the idea of a uniquely and distinctly African mathematics, and the threat of further or continuing marginalisation and derogation, but the implicitly (self-)demeaning nature of this approach. This paper serves as a reminder that a critical position in the deliberations of ethnomathematics needs to be sustained. It warns against the bandwagon syndrome in a society where political correctness has become a prominent imperative. This paper is framed by many unanswered questions in an attempt to inspire and sustain a critical discourse in the ethnomathematics movement.

African ethics is primarily concerned with community and harmonious communal relationships. The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that, in stark contrast with Western moral attitudes and practices, there is no comparable objectification and exploitation of other-than-human animals and nature. This article investigates whether this claim is correct by examining the status of animals in religious and philosophical thought, as well as traditional cultural practices, in Africa. I argue that moral perceptions and attitudes on the African continent remain resolutely anthropocentric. Although values like ubuntu (humanness) or ukama (relationality) have been expanded to include nonhuman nature, animals are characteristically not seen to have any rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively “indirect.” I conclude by asking whether those who, following their own liberation, continue to exploit and oppress other creatures—simply because they can—are not thereby contributing to their own dehumanization.