This essay seeks to analyze a practice on the Potchefstroom campus of North West University. This practice involves “higher education curricula that have not yet been decolonized.” Since 2015, students at South African universities have been campaigning for the decolonization of higher education. This practice will be analyzed and explained using the theoretical framework of Modernity/coloniality. At North West University's Potchefstroom campus there is a practice of providing a curriculum that remains largely Eurocentric and colonial in nature. This problem is further compounded by the fact that the curriculum is mostly taught in Afrikaans. In fact, a campaign calling for the decolonization of higher education is underway in all universities in South Africa. A perfect example is that we are taught more European history than African history. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe starting point for the theoretical framework of modernity/coloniality is that "modernity" is a European narrative that hides its darker side, "coloniality". Coloniality, in other words, is constitutive of modernity: there is no modernity without coloniality (Mignolo 2007: 39). In this case North West University, which can be considered modern, still teaches a curriculum that is colonial in nature. Decolonial thought emerged, starting from the 16th century, as a response to the oppressive and imperial tendency of the modern European ideal projected and enacted in the non-European world (Mignolo 2007: 39). Since the end of the oppressive and racist system of apartheid in 1994, the epistemologies and knowledge systems in most South African universities have not changed significantly; they remain rooted in colonial, apartheid, and Western worldviews and epistemological traditions (Heleta 2016). The curriculum remains largely Eurocentric and continues to reinforce white, Western dominance and privilege (Heleta 2016). The conceptualization of modernity/coloniality is based on a series of operations that distinguish it from established theories of modernity (Escobar 2007: 184). Put simply, these include the identification of the domination of others outside the European core as a necessary dimension of modernity, with the concomitant subalternity of the knowledges and cultures of these other groups; a conception of Eurocentrism as a form of knowledge of modernity/coloniality – a hegemonic representation and mode of knowledge that claims universality for itself and which is based on “a confusion between abstract universality for itself and world hegemony concrete derived from the central position of Europe”. (Dussel 2000, p. 471, Quijano 2000, p. 549, as cited in Escobar 2007: 184). The modernity/coloniality research agenda is a framework built on the modern world system; it helps to explain the dynamics of Eurocentrism in the construction of modernity and attempts to transcend it (Escobar 2007: 189). If it reveals the dark sides of modernity, it does so not from an intra-epistemic perspective, as in European critical discourses, but from the perspective of the recipients of the supposed benefits of the modern world (Escobar 2007: 189). From the Caribbean we see that modernity not only needed coloniality, but that coloniality was and continues to be constitutive of modernity (Mignolo 2007: 466). There is no modernity without coloniality (Mignolo 2007: 466). From England we only see modernity and, in the shadows, the 'bad things' such as slavery, exploitation, the appropriation of lands, which are supposed to be corrected in the advance of modernity and democracy when everyone reaches the stage inwhere justice and equality will be for all (Mignolo 2007: 466). In an article published in 1989 and reprinted in 1992, entitled 'Colonialidad y modernidad-racionalidad' Quijano explicitly links the coloniality of power in the political and economic spheres with the coloniality of knowledge; and concluded the speech with the natural consequence: if knowledge is colonized one of the tasks to be faced is to decolonize knowledge (Mignolo 2007: 451). In the last three or four years, the work and conversations between members of the modernity/coloniality research project, decoloniality became the common expression combined with the concept of coloniality and the extension of coloniality of power (economic and political) to the coloniality of knowledge and being (gender, sexuality, subjectivity and knowledge), were incorporated into the basic vocabulary among the members of the research project (Mignolo 2007: 451). South African students and a small number of progressive academics began a campaign in 2015 to decolonize the university curriculum by ending the dominance of Western traditions, histories, and epistemological figures (Molefe 2016: 32, as cited in Heleta 2016). Students called for an end to the dominance of white, male, Western, capitalist, heterosexual and European worldviews in higher education and the incorporation of other South African, African and global perspectives, experiences and epistemologies as central tenets of the curriculum, teaching, learning and research in (Shay 2016, as cited in Heleta 2016). National liberation, national rebirth, restitution of nationality to the people, commonwealth: whatever the formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon (Fanon et al 1963: 35). At whatever level we study it – relationships between individuals, new names for sport for sports clubs, human mixing in cocktail parties, in the police, on the boards of directors of national or private banks – decolonization is simply the replacement of a certain “ species” of men by another “species” of men (fanon et al 1963: 35). Without any transition period, there is total, complete and absolute replacement (Fanon et al 1963: 35). The modernity/coloniality perspective provides an alternative framework for debates on modernity, globalization and development; it is not just a change in the description of events, it is an epistemic change of perspective (Escobar 2007: 189). In speaking of colonial difference, this framework brings to the fore the dimension of power that is often lost in relativistic discussions of cultural difference (Escobar 2007: 189). Universities have done little since 1994 to open up to different bodies and traditions of knowledge and knowledge creation in new and exploratory ways (Heleta 2016). While universities have adopted new policies and frameworks that speak to equality, equity, transformation, and change, institutional cultures and epistemological traditions have not changed significantly (Heleta 2016). The South African higher education system remains a colonial outpost to this day, reproducing hegemonic identities rather than eliminating hegemony (Mckaiser 2016, cited in Heleta 2016). Mbembe (2016: 32) argues that there is something wrong when curricula designed to meet the needs of colonialism and apartheid should continue into the liberation era (Heleta 2016). The colonized have no epistemic privileges, of course: the only epistemic privilege is on the side of the colonizer, even when it comes to emancipatory projects, whether liberal or Marxist (Mignolo 2007: 459). By 'colonizer side' we mean here Eurocentric categories of thought that carry with them both the seedof emancipation is the seed of regulation and oppression (Mignolo 2007: 459). Kelly (2000: 27) writes that colonial domination required an entire way of thinking, a discourse in which everything advanced, good, and civilized is defined and measured in European terms (Heleta 2016). In this process, colonial education played an instrumental role, promoting and imposing Eurocentric ways and worldviews, subjugating everything else (Heleta 2016). Therefore, one of the most destructive effects of colonialism was the subjugation of knowledge local and the promotion of Western knowledge as universal knowledge (Heleta 2016). Decolonialism, therefore, means working towards a vision of human life that does not depend on or is structured by the forced imposition of an ideal of society on those who differ, which is what modernity/coloniality does and, therefore, where the decolonization of the mind should begin (Mignolo 2007: 459). The struggle is to change the term as well as the content of the conversation (Mignolo 2007: 459). European scholars have worked hard for centuries to erase historical, intellectual centuries to erase the historical, intellectual, and cultural contributions of Africa and other parts of the “non-Western” world to our common humanity (Heleta 2016). They did this as part of the white supremacist project (Heleta 2016). As Said (1994: 8) Western European literature has for centuries represented the world and non-Western peoples as inferior and subordinate; this helped normalize racism among colonialists and developed the idea that Europe should govern, while non-Europeans should govern (Said 1994: 120, as cited in (Heleta 2016). Eurocentrism, racism, segregation and epistemic violence in South African universities were not products of (Heleta 2016). Rather, these problems began with the establishment of universities by the British colonists and evolved further after 1948 (Sehoole 2006: 4, as cited Heleta 2016). political, domination and exploitation of resource-rich parts of the world by European powers in the form of settler or extractive colonies (Mandani 1996: 17, as cited Heleta 2016). to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantiation that results from and is nourished by the situation of the colonies (Fanon et al. 1963: 36). It transforms spectators crushed by their inessentiality into privileged actors, under the grandiose glare of history's spotlight (Fanon et al 1963: 36). It brings into existence a natural rhythm, introduced by new men, and with it a new language and a new humanity (fanon et al 1963: 36). In South Africa, colonial universities were established by settler elites who saw them as symbols and disseminators of European civilization in the colonies (Pietsch 2013, as cited in Heleta 2016). project-was to promote white supremacy and develop white youth to maintain and further expand colonial society ((Pietsch 2013; Ramoupi 2011:5, as cited Heleta 2016). Colonial universities were unapologetically Eurocentric, modeled on metropolitan universities by from which they drew much of their faculties and study programs (Zeleza 2009: 114, as cited Heleta 2016). same process through which one liberates oneself (fanon et al 1963: 37). If we wanted to describe it precisely, we could find it in the colonial situation well-known words: “the last will be first and the first last”(fanon et al 1963: 37). Decolonization is the putting into practice of this phrase (Fanon et al 1963: 37). That is why, if we try to describe it, every decolonization is successful (Fanon et al 1963: 37). After 1994, the epistemological transformation should have involved a reorientation away from the colonial and apartheid knowledge system, in which the curriculum was used as a tool of exclusion, towards a democratic curriculum that includes all human thought (Department for Education 2008: 89 , as cited in Heleta 2016). However, universities failed to do much, if anything, to change the curriculum after the end of apartheid (Heleta 2016). As the Department of Education concluded in 2008, transformation efforts have not resulted in any significant changes in structure and content. of the curriculum (Department of Education 2008: 90, as cited in Heleta 2016). The curriculum is inextricably intertwined with institutional culture, and given that the latter remains white and Eurocentric in historically white institutions, the institutional environment is not conducive to curriculum reform (Department of Education 2008: 91, as cited in Heleta 2016) . Epistemic decolonization runs parallel to delinking (Mignolo 2007: 453). A delinking that leads to the decolonial epistemic shift and brings to the foreground other epistemologies, other principles of knowledge and understanding and, consequently, other economics, other politics, other ethics (Mignolo 2007: 453). The 'new intercultural communication' should be interpreted as new inter-epistemic communication (Mignolo 2007: 453). Furthermore, de-linking presupposes the transition to a geopolitics of knowledge which, on the one hand, denounces the claimed universality of a particular ethnicity (politics of the body), located in a specific part of the planet (geopolitics), that is, Europe where the capitalism accumulated as a consequence of colonialism (Mignolo 2007: 453). The disconnection must therefore be understood as a decolonial epistemic change that leads to other-universality, that is, to pluri-versality as a universal project (Mignolo 2007: 453). The colonial and apartheid curriculum in South Africa promoted white supremacy and dominance and stereotyping of Africa (Heleta 2016). The current higher education curriculum still largely reflects the colonial and apartheid worldview (Ramoupi 2014: 271, as cited in Heleta 2016) and is disconnected from African realities, including the lived experiences of the majority of black South Africans (Heleta 2016). Most universities still follow the hegemonic Eurocentric epistemic canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production (Mbemebe 2016: 32, as cited Heleta 2016). Such a curriculum does not develop students' critical and analytical skills to understand and advance the African continent (Heleta 2016). what we have in most fields of study (and particularly in the humanities and social sciences) is a Eurocentric indoctrination, which marginalizes Africa and is often filled with condescending views and stereotypes about the continent: European and white values ​​are still perceived as the standards on which the country's education system is based and rooted (Ramoupi 2011: 5, as cited Heleta 2016). Eurocentrism, which dominates the curriculum, seeks to universalize the West and provincialize the rest (Zeleza 2009: 133, as cited in Heleta 2016). Such education does not critically interrogate the outcomes of a history of patriarchy, slavery, imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism (Molefe 2016: 32, as cited in Heleta 2016). According to Rossouw (2017), he proposes that decolonization means the advancement of freedom and self-sufficiency of all South African communities who identify with.