The article defends ubuntu against the assault by Enslin and Horsthemke (Comp Educ 40(4): [545][546][547][548][549][550][551][552][553][554][555][556][557][558] 2004). It challenges claims that the Africanist/Afrocentrist project, in which the philosophy of ubuntu is central, faces numerous problems, involves substantial political, moral, epistemological and educational errors, and should therefore not be the basis for education for democratic citizenship in the South African context. The article finds coincidence between some of the values implicit in ubuntu and some of the values that are enshrined in the constitution of South Africa and that on that basis argues that ubuntu has the potential to serve as a moral theory and a public policy. The educational upshot of this article's argument is that South Africa's educational policy framework not only places a high premium on ubuntu, which it conceives as human dignity, but it also requires the schooling system to promote ubuntu-oriented attributes and dispositions among the learners. The article finds similarities between ubuntu and bildung, whose key advocates, among others was German scholar and intellectual Wilhelm von Humboldt. It argues that it would be ethnocentric, and indeed silly to suggest that the ubuntu ethic of caring and sharing is uniquely African when some of the values which it seeks to promote can also be traced in various Eurasian philosophies.

This article reflects on shocking and horrifying incidents of moral indiscretion that have become commonplace in South Africa. The aim is to understand why human beings would carry out such shocking and horrific acts on fellow human beings. The article draws on Dismas Masolo's book Self and Community in a Changing World to unpack the notion of personhood. It draws lessens on Basotho indigenous education. The choice of Basotho indigenous education is premised on the assumption that it is the author's own native knowledge with which he is most familiar, and about which he can write uninhibitedly.

This paper reflects on public-sector unions in South Africa with a view to highlighting teacher unionization’s contribution to South Africa’s education crisis. South Africa’s teaching profession is highly unionized. The largest teacher union, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) is affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The latter is a partner in the ruling tripartite alliance that includes the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Worldwide most public-sector unions are known to prop up left-wing political organizations. SADTU is no exception. But this paper shows that SADTU organizes teachers at the expense of teaching and learning in a country whose education system has been described as “a crisis” and “a national disaster” whose schools are “dysfunctional”. The paper contemplates on the possibility of borrowing from business models to “redesign” or “reengineer” the country’s ailing education system into an efficient system

This article picks up on Foucault's radical reconceptualisation of concept "power", and presents a significant challenge to contemporary discourses surrounding instructionist classroom management. We critique his approach to instructionist classroom management on the basis that it conceptualises power as domination in dealing with disruption in the classroom. We argue that power and discourse are interrelated constructs that the teacher uses to perpetuate Taylorism, Fordism and bureaucratic domination in an instructionist classroom setting. Drawing on Foucault's and Bourdieu's works, this document reviews: 1) explores Foucault's theory of discourse; 2) argues discourse as an instrument of power; 3) captures the philosophical perspectives on instructionist classroom management; and 4) argues a teacher's power as a tool for social reproduction and domination in instructionist classroom setting.

The University of South Africa (UNISA) is the largest open distance e-learning (ODeL) university in the continent of Africa, with a student headcount more than 300,000. Over two decades after the transition from apartheid to democracy, vast inequalities across race, class, gender and socio-economic status persist in South Africa, with the majority of the African people being the most affected. Demographically, the African people constitute about 80.8% of the country's total population, compared to whites, who constitute a meagre 8.8%, yet African households carry the highest burden of poverty, living way below the official poverty line of $1.90/day as determined by the World Bank and other international agencies. This chapter explores these inequalities and ponders on the role of e-learning for this poorest section of society in a country where modern technological devises in the form of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and access to the Internet are perceived to be ubiquitous. South Africa's Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) commits to "an expansion of open and distance education and the establishment of more 'satellite' premises where universities or colleges provide classes at places and times convenient to students (including in rural areas)". This chapter also explores the role of UNISA in the provision of distance learning through structured and sustainable e-learning.