Case study shows how Popular Participatory Theatre engages students in decolonising education in South Africa, suggesting new approaches for curricula.
The #FeesMustFall movement of 2016 demanded that South African universities urgently rethink their curricula (Langa, M. 2017. #Hashtag: An Analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African Universities. Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation). While calls to decolonise education are now familiar (Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin; Mignolo, W., and M. Tostanova. 2012. Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas. Ohio: Ohio State University Press), there remains uncertainty about what a decolonised curriculum in South Africa entails and how it should be taught. This article argues, through a case study, that Southern African Applied Theatre in the form of Popular Participatory Theatre (PPT) offers an effective decolonial pedagogy. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, final-year Drama students create a participatory performance, ‘Learn, Unlearn, Relearn’, becoming co-investigators who engage education and re-curriculation in a post-apartheid context.
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Miranda Young-Jahangeer (2026) studied this question.
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