Abstract
A people's self-definition is founded on their epistemologies, but since the imposition of Western education, African epistemologies have been marginalized and bastardized. This chapter will focus on the importance of centering African epistemologies in spaces of learning in order to ensure that what is taught especially at postgraduate level is in concurrence with how people know and experience themselves in society. The focus at postgraduate level is particularly important because this is where students are trained to produce knowledge. This chapter will explore the concept of ukuphilisana as the practicalisation of African psychology on the daily basis. It will be argued that ukuphilisana communicates the cultural embeddedness of the practice of psychology to indigenous Africans. Ukuphilisana also communicates reciprocity central in the philosophy of uBuntu. It is dependent upon everyone remaining ethical to reciprocity. This reciprocity will be explained as a way of being one another's healers.
TopSome Have Knowledge, Others Have Culture
The need to define concepts here emanates from the subjective meanings that have been attached to certain terms as a deliberate tactic to portray peoples in colonised lands as void of knowledge, thus rationality. Indigenous people in colonised lands, the world over, often appear in scholarship as the only people who have a culture and that has tainted the meaning of the very term indigenous. One often finds that it is only those who are said to have a culture who are being labelled as indigenous. In contrast to this, colonising nations are often portrayed in scholarship as possessing the kind of knowledge that is universally applicable. This knowledge is said to be scientifically produced and not emanating from a cultural experience. This act of assigning subjective interpretations to words is done against obvious evidence that words such as indigenous have traceable meaning It is for this reason that I elected to provide definitions of the terms that are crucial to this study, namely indigenous, culture, and knowledge.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ukuphilisana: This means both reciprocal healing and a harmonious way of existing amongst those who share a space.
Ubuntu: An all-pervading indigenous African ethic that informs and guides the behaviour of people in society.
Isintu: The way of life of a people who use ubuntu as a foundational philosophy.
Decolonisation: The intelligent, calculated, and active resistance to the forces of colonialism that perpetuate the subjugation and/or exploitation of minds, bodies, and lands, and it is engaged for the ultimate purpose of overturning this colonial structure and realizing indigenous liberation.
Culture: Repeated knowledge acts that are endorsed by communities and never considered static.