Ideology critique as decolonising pedagogy: Urban forced removals as a case study

Abstract

After emerging from its troubled past, postapartheid South Africa adopted a democratic constitution and cosmopolitanism as path to a peaceful future. Cosmopolitanism, once a vibrant tradition at the turn of the 19th century, disappeared from the apartheid historical canon and memory due to the colonial practice of forced removals. The apartheid fallacy that forced removals were necessary because of urban slum conditions and public health reasons obscured its ideological and economic reasons. Apartheid narratives and traumatic memories of forced removals continue in the postapartheid era and mitigate against the establishment of a nonracial, cosmopolitan society. Notwithstanding the dominance of negative memories, a productive, decolonised version of forced removals can make a positive contribution to social cohesion. This paper offers a multiple historical case study of three pre‐apartheid cosmopolitan spaces that were destroyed by the Group Areas Act as framework to suggest how ideology critique can be employed as a decolonising pedagogy. A critical notion of cosmopolitanism is appropriated, using the notion of production of space to explain the role of political and social engineering in the making of place during the colonial‐apartheid period. Recommendations suggest how to integrate cosmopolitanism, segregation, and forced removals with ideology critique as decolonising pedagogy in teacher education curriculum spaces.