An encounter with the structural and spiritual violence of coloniality: Intersectional understanding of black students’ experiences of exclusion in higher education

Abstract

Since the fall of Apartheid, the new mandate of the democratic South African government has been to provide equal quality education for all and to desegregate the education system. However, the national government’s refusal to decolonise the country, the colonial stronghold of the university, structural racism, and systemic violences strategically remove Black students from the university space. This study examines the structural and spiritual violences experienced by Black South African students in higher education that resulted in their inability to graduate. First, this study gives a historical account of the origins of the identity ‘Black’ in colonial discourse, then it traces how the historical construction of Black as inferior justified the exclusion of Black people in education while coloniality destroyed indigenous ways of knowing.