“Education and learning allow us to make sense of the world around us, the world inside of us, and where we fit within the world” - Nelson Mandela
The Social Consciousness and Sustainable Futures course prioritises deep historized human-planet centred conversations, which requires a slightly different approach to normalised assessment methods. This course is centred on generating deep conversations around the issues of being and the role of science in the future of the university and society at large.
The course uses key canonical material under each theme in the form of poems, novels, songs, documentaries, and artistic material. The logic behind the use of less overwhelming textual material is to foster a more interactive classroom, and centre other materials such as audio, video and visual art while encouraging the students to co-create a transformative classroom space. This minimal textual material seeks to accommodate all students from different faculties and encourage engagement with the material quickly despite the deep sociological meanings attached to this material.
The course includes collaborative learning and engagement with students partaking in small group sessions prior to the plenary lecture to engage in texts and discuss perspectives from different disciplinary points.
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Theme 1: Mandela Name, Person, intellectual legacy and Institutional Values
This theme interrogates the idea of naming linking to identity of Mandela University, the Person and Mandela’s intellectual legacies. This attempts to create links between the institution and the Eastern Cape Intellectual Histories along with liberation histories in the African continent.
Presenter: Prof Nomalanga Mkhize
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Theme 2: On Makings of Gender and Sexuality
Using the history of South Africa and its formation by the barrel of the gun, this theme links and traces the gender based violence to colonial and patriarchal violence that continues to define citizenship in contemporary South Africa. This section of the course, is designed to link race, class and gender on how gender based violence is perpetuated and ‘allowed’ in the post-apartheid South Africa.
Presenter: Dr Babalwa Magoqwana
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Theme 3: Science for Society
This theme will introduce the Mandela students to debates on the history of Science, the social context of hard science and its links to Africa. These discourses are is linked to conversations on the origins of the disciple of science and how interpretations of science can offer support for societal decisions. This theme intends to encourage conversations on the relationship between science and the sustainability of society.
Presenter: Prof Azwinndini Muronga
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Theme 4: Economy, Technology and Dignity
This theme builds on the previous section in interrogating different histories and means of survival. These questions will draw on global and local challenges of the global economy that promotes consumer culture while opening inequalities between groups, societies and regions. The theme links the consumer cultures, between ‘uluntu’ and information technology and how identities are formed through consumerism. This conversation will explore the impact on labour, environment and dignity (of those who cannot participate in this global economic condition).
Presenter: Ms Lebohang Pheko
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Theme 5: Constitutionalism, Land and Ethics
This theme interrogates the meaning and purpose of the Constitution in defining humanity as it links to freedoms, rights and justice. This will focus on the nature and history of the South African constitution. Using the Bill of Rights, this theme be interrogating in different ways to ask questions about justice and freedom; equity and equality; democracy and justice.
Presenter: Prof Avinash Govindjee
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Theme 6: Humanising Pedagogy: Co-existence and Common Futures
This theme seeks to conclude and link themes presented in the course around the concept of ‘humanising pedagogy’. This approach will encourage student to act as active participants in knowledge production towards a more ‘humane’ understanding of society while promoting deep conversations on the features of a Nelson Mandela graduate. In summarising the course, students will be encouraged to define their own common and sustainable institutional futures.
Presenter: Mr Mukhtar Raban