conclusion

Emancipatory Social Work, Ubuntu, and Afrocentricity: Antidotes to Human Rights Violations

Vishanthie Sewpaul and Linda Kreitzer

Social work’s commitment to respect for cultural diversity must be balanced against adherence to universal human rights values and practices. There are core global social work documents that conceptualize social work as a human rights profession and that highlight the centrality of human rights and social justice in social work. The Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles (GSWSEP) (IASSW, 2018), the Global Definition of Social Work (IASSW/IFSW, 2014), the Global Standards on Social Work Education and Training (Sewpaul and Jones, 2004), and the Global Agenda (IASSW/ICSW/IFSW, 2012) resonate with the provisions of various international conventions and declarations on human rights. Dealing with the complex individual and structural, socio-economic and political issues around culture and human rights, as discussed by the various authors in this book, demands that social workers adopt multiple approaches at multi-systemic levels, a view that is entrenched in the key global social work documents.

The Global Definition of Social Work (IASSW/IFSW, 2014) reads as follows:

Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledges, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance well-being. (para. 1)

Given the understanding that social work is a contextual profession that must be responsive to local contexts, the following: “The above definition may be amplified at national and/or regional levels” (para. 1) was added as part of the definition. The definition is followed by a six-page commentary unpacking key concepts that are informed by critical, post-colonial theorizing, and structural, emancipatory approaches to social work education, research, policy, and practice.

There is detailed commentary on social work’s core mandates, principles, knowledge, and practice. In terms of social work’s core mandates, the emphasis is on: working toward social change as well as promoting social stability, continuity, and harmony; promoting social development, which is conceptualized as desired end states, strategies for intervention, and as a policy framework; and the empowerment and liberation of people. The core principles are: respect for the inherent worth and dignity of human beings; doing no harm; respect for diversity; upholding human rights and social justice; co-existence of human rights and collective responsibility; and interdependence. In relation to knowledge, the commentary deals with the meaning of science, with emphases on critical, post-colonial social work theories that are applied and emancipatory; the co-construction of knowledge; and on indigenous knowledges. Regarding practice, the commentary details the importance of working with, rather than for people, and also the system-stabilizing and system-destabilizing functions of social work, emphasizing that social workers engage on a continuum from direct work with individuals to political level interventions, and that social work challenges personal-political and micro-macro dichotomies.

The Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training (Sewpaul & Jones, 2004), in several of their core purposes, reiterate a human rights and social justice approach. The core purposes elucidate both the system-stabilizing and system-destabilizing functions of social work. Recognizing that the cultural emphasis on stability, harmony, and continuity might be used to oppress some groups of persons, the GSWSEP (as does the Global Standards) adds the qualifier, “insofar as these do not conflict with the fundamental rights of people” (IASSW, 2018), Section 2). The qualifier is reiterated in the 2014 Global Definition (IASSW/IFSW, 2014)).

In this chapter we discuss the tensions between universal and relativist discourses in social work, and we call for the reclaiming of Afrocentric values, with Ubuntu as their core, in challenging neoliberal capitalism and violations that occur in the name of culture. Each chapter in this book gives examples of human rights violations and the social worker’s roles in addressing these violations. In this chapter, we challenge social workers to be informed by an emancipatory framework that embraces the values of Afrocentricity and human rights.

Culture and Social Work: The Universal–Relativist Debates

The juxtapositioning of respect for diversity and the promotion of human rights might at times seem paradoxical, as specific cultural traditions threaten people’s rights to dignity, well-being, bodily integrity, security, and life itself. But respect for peoples in all their diversity with regard to, for example, religious affiliation; music, dance, dress, and food preferences; the ways people eat and sleep; language; modes of speech; and non-discriminatory marriage, death, and coming-of-age rituals, must not be confused with acceptance of beliefs, values, and practices that are malicious. Hallen (2002) characterizes the tension between the universal and the relative in two chapters titled “Rationality as culturally universal” (p. 19) and “Rationality as culturally relative” (p. 35).

Logical-positivist rationality, which originated in the West and has come to be universalized, has significant impact on social work’s ontologies, epistemologies, and practices, including its formulations of codes of ethics and codes of practices. Thus, we have the taken-for-granted education, research, and practice frameworks, rooted in the natural sciences and transposed into the social sciences, that support researcher/practitioner non-involvement, detachment, neutrality, generalization, replication, separation of the professional from the personal, technical-bureaucratic models in social work, and the demand to prove one’s truth according to positivist empiricism’s all too often linear reductionist reasoning (Dominelli, 1996; Henrickson & Fouché, 2017; Metz, 2014; Sewpaul, 2010; Sewpaul & Hölscher, 2004). Such emphases have derided alternative and different ways of knowing and doing that are embedded in emancipatory and indigenous epistemologies (Sewpaul & Henrickson, 2019).

A critique of logical-positivist rationality, that presupposes the Kantian autonomous, rational being, and which minimizes the centring of people as social beings in an interdependent world, does not mean an eschewing of the importance of reason. Hallen (2002) discusses the West’s characterization of the indigenous African intellect as “a-critical, non-reflective, and therefore . . . non-rational” (p. 47). Reason is not exclusively the purview of the West. Countering Eurocentric representations of African thought, Sogolo (1993) contended that “there are certain universals which cut across all human cultures. . . . Pre-eminent among these . . . is the ability for self-reflection and rational thought” (p. xv), but cautions that such reasoning “has its own local colour and particular mode of manifestation depending on the contingencies of the intervening culture” (p. xv). In response to the illogicality of Eurocentric assumptions of African (ir)rationality, Makinde (1988) asserted that “logic is either universal in all thought or it is relative to different thought systems. So, in neither case can we deny logic in the thought systems of others” (p. 43). Rationality is thus both universal, cutting across all cultures, and relative within cultures.

Adopting a postmodern lens in understanding the relationship between the universal and the particular, Williams and Sewpaul (2004) concluded that “the presence of a multiplicity of incommensurable contexts and identities does not render reference to universal values obsolete, ethnocentric and totalitarian” (p. 559). Even within cultures there are competing and conflicting discourses, for example reconciling religious and scientific discourses, and questions around God, the supernatural, destiny, causality, free will, science, ethics, and morality (Hallen, 2002; Sogolo, 1993), so no culture must be reduced to an essentialized, monolithic construction. Appiah (1992) balances the culturally universal and the culturally relative debate thusly: “We will only solve our problems if we see them as human problems arising out of a special situation, and we shall not solve them as African problems, generated somehow by our being unlike others” (pp. 135–136, emphasis added).

Such arguments bear salience in an intensely globalizing, interdependent world, where solutions for the particular must be sought in the universal, and where local solutions feed into global discourses and practices. The relationship between the universal and the particular must be thought of in dialectical terms, to “prevent the reduction of the particular to the universal as well as the reduction of the universal to the particular” (Torfing, as cited in Williams & Sewpaul, p. 560). On the universal-particular culture debate, Donnelly (2006) concluded:

If cultural relativism is to function as a guarantee of local self-determination, rather than a cloak for despotism, we must insist on a strong, authentic cultural basis, as well as the presence of alternative mechanisms guaranteeing basic human dignity, before we justify derogations from ‘universal’ human rights. (p. 103)

Afrocentricity, inscribed with Ubuntu and being for the other (Bauman, 1993; Levinas, 1985; IASSW, 2018; Sewpaul, 2015a), we argue, is that authentic cultural basis that has universal appeal. Levinas (1985) and Bauman (1993) assert that the moral self accords the unique Other that priority assigned to the self. For Levinas (1985), to be responsible means to make oneself available for service of the Other in such a way that one’s own life is intrinsically linked with that of others.

The latest GSWSEP (IASSW, 2018) attempts a balance between culture and human rights, and thus the tensions between universal and the relative, by calling on social workers to not stretch the boundaries of moral relativism to the point where the rights of some groups of persons are violated (Principle 3.2b) and for social workers to adopt the role of cultural mediators (Principle 2.3). Managing the tensions between the universal and the particular does not depend on formulaic answers. In recognition of the fact that no code can make social workers ethical, the IASSW (2018) calls for social workers to uphold ethical practices through “processes of constant debate, self-reflection, willingness to deal with ambiguities, and to engage in ethically acceptable processes of decision-making” (p. 1). In making explicit social workers” commitment to the core values and principles of the profession, the GSWSEP is designed to ensure multiple levels of accountability—most importantly accountability toward the people social workers engage with.

Reclaiming Ubuntu and Afrocentric ideals: Toward Alternative Socio-Political and Economic Governance

Cultural norms and traditions do not occur in a vacuum. They have antecedents, rooted in Africa’s devastating colonial history. Serequebehan (2000) asserted that “we are . . . at a point in time when the dominance of the universe of European singularity is being encompassed or engulfed by the multiverse of our shared humanity. The colonizer, self-deified imperial Europe, is dead!” (pp. 52–53, emphasis in original). There is cogency in the former part of this assertion but, unfortunately, colonial Europe is not dead! Neocolonial imperialism, with other colonial powers such as the United States and China, continues to keep people in the Global South in poor, marginalized, and excluded positions, and there are contemporary socio-political and neoliberal economic factors that violate human dignity and human rights (Annan, 2006; Dominelli, 2008; Hahn, 2008; Sewpaul, 2014, 2015a; Shai, 2018).

In contrast with neoliberalism, which has exacerbated poverty and inequality and has disproportionately disadvantaged women and children (Bond, 2005; Hahn, 2008; Sewpaul, 2005; 2015b; Shai, 2018), Afrocentric ideals embrace non-discrimination, communitarian values, cooperation, generosity, interdependence, equality, respect, and the recognition of the inherent dignity of all of persons. Aligned with the views of Sewpaul and Henrickson (2019), our conceptualization of the person is not limited to Kantian, liberal notions of individual persons; it includes families, tribes, and communities, and ultimately the unity of self with that of the universe—the interdependence of the self with the whole. Thus, acknowledging the dignity of humanity means opposing the legal and cultural subjugation of women and girls, as individuals and as groups, as much as it means opposing colonialism, capital punishment, mob lynching, genocide, and working toward environmental and climate justice.

Race and location constitute the centres of identity in Afrocentric theorizing and methodology. If Afrocentricity is to make meaningful contributions to policy developments, it must integrate into its framework, far more than it currently does, key social criteria such as class, (dis)ability, sexuality, gender, and distributive justice, as emancipatory social work does. Many cultural traditions that constitute sources of human rights violations, such as child marriages, harmful traditional practices in the face of physical and mental ill-health, female genital mutilation/cutting, and bride wealth, have as much to do with values and beliefs of groups of persons as they do with socio-economic exigencies. These are brought out in the various chapters of this book, with Abukari, for example, paying particular attention to how socio-cultural constructions of childhood intersect with socio-economic realities to render children vulnerable to child labour. Women who perform the acts of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), as discussed in Bukuluki’s and Boateng and Sottie’s chapters, are indicted for being the torchbearers (Opoku, 2017) of such practices, and they are, indeed, complicit in reproducing harm, within patriarchal societies that condone harm. But patriarchy, and stereotypical gender roles, manifest differently in different contexts, with both women and men being involved in their disruption and/or continuity (Sewpaul, 2013), are often linked to socio-economic circumstances.

What must be examined are the socio-economic and political structural constraints within which women operate, particularly the constraints of alternative forms of gainful employment. For example, educating women about how FGM/C violates female rights to dignity and bodily integrity, and on the dangers and consequences of FGM/C, is likely to produce small gains if participation in this is the only viable source of income for those women. Similarly, the problem of child marriages is unlikely to dissipate without expanding socio-economic opportunities and civil liberties of families. Under conditions of extreme deprivation, marrying one’s child early means having one less person to feed, clothe, and educate, and perhaps reflects the hope that by being married, one’s child would be better provided for. In this text, Muchacha, Matsika, and Nhapi discuss how child marriages are significantly shaped by poverty in the Global South, and they call for, in addition to other measures, prioritizing the eradication of poverty. Likewise, if we are to prevent or minimize the consequences of harmful traditional practices related to health, as Mugumbate and Gray examine in relation to how poverty, stigma, and misrecognition contribute to the gross violation of the rights of persons with epilepsy, people must have access to education, employment, and free or affordable quality health services.

We look to Africa’s history for some lessons that might be carried into contemporary Africa and draw on Nyerere’s (1967) conceptualization of African socialism—Ujamaa, which embraces the principles of Kwanzaa discussed in the Introduction. Nyerere’s dictatorship (constructed by some as authoritarian and by others as benevolent [see, e.g., Foueré, 2014]), his failed policy choices, the demoralizing consequences of his enforced villagization program, and the extraneous influences of the West on Tanzania and other African countries’ post-colonial statuses, do “not deny the legitimate intentions and aspirations that informed Ujamaa as a developmental strategy” (Ibhawoh & Dibua, 2003, p. 60). Ujamaa emphasized people participation, communitarianism, non-exploitative development, national self-reliance, freedom, equality, and national unity. Nyerere (1967) was intensely opposed to foreign aid and the neoliberal impositions of the IMF and the World Bank, and while he encouraged and supported national self-sufficiency, he rejected isolationism.

Nyrere’s ideas cohere with those of Keynesian economics, which played a key role in establishing the welfare states of the West (Leonard, 1997). Keynesian egalitarianism involved state intervention, regulation of the market, the involvement of organized labour to promote full employment and economic growth, and some state ownership of crucial national enterprises like railroads, public utilities, and energy (Keynes, 1933). Keynes (1933) argued that

ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel . . . should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and above all, let finance be primarily national. . . . National self-sufficiency . . . though it costs something, may be a luxury, which we can afford, if we happen to want it. (unpaged)

Therein lay the crunch—if we happen to want it—as states, across Africa and the world submit to neoliberal free markets, trade liberalization, privatization, and deregulation (Hahn, 2008; Sewpaul, 2015a; Shai, 2018). Despite the vast body of research that reflects its pernicious consequences, “capitalism succeeds through ideological control of consciousness, designed to make us believe that neoliberalism is in our interests and is inevitable” (Sewpaul, 2015b, p. 463).

Sadly, Nyerere’s ideals gave way to “state bureaucratic capitalism—the use of state capital by a managerial elite” (Shijvi, cited in Ibhawoh & Dibua, 2003, p. 85). Nyrere’s single-party state leadership reflected the dangers of post-colonialism, commanded by the new emergent national elite, that Fanon (1963) so strongly warned about. These patterns have seen replication across post-independent African states, including post-apartheid South Africa (Bond, 2005). Fanon (1963), in his theses on colonialism, post-colonialism, capitalism, and culture, concluded that “the poverty of the people, national oppression and the inhibition of culture are one and the same thing” (p. 191).

If African states have to live up to Afrocentric ideals they must make policy choices that counter neoliberal capitalism. Within the Afrocentric paradigm, the well-being of the individual is aligned with the well-being of the society, with an attempt to maintain a “delicate balance between the concepts of community and individuality” (Gyekye, 1995, p. 132), and it is humanistic ethics—not ethics founded on capitalism—that must underpin approaches to dealing with the various contemporary problems confronting Africa. Gaining economic freedom and expanding opportunities and choices are just as important as civil and political freedoms (Sen, 1999), with social solidarity and deepened democracies being the essence of societies. There are arguments that Afrocentricity is a poor fit with neoliberal capitalism, which places primacy on the individual, and profit above people. Hallen (2002) contended that socialism “in its democratic forms appear[s] to be more compatible with the humanitarian values definitive of Africa’s ‘communitarian’ societies” (p. 34). Nyerere’s (1967) rejection of neoliberal austerity measures imposed by the IMF and World Bank, and his bringing together development, empowerment, freedom, and people participation, bear much relevance for contemporary Africa.

Ibhawoh and Dibua (2003) point out that Ujamaa failed as an economic project, as measured by GDP, which should not be the sole criterion of its success. The role of the West, particularly Europe and the United States, in undermining socialism in Africa and other parts of the world must not be underestimated. Indeed, to ensure that other African countries did not follow suit, Western countries and international financial institutions did everything possible to ensure the failure of the pursuit of any socialist forms of governance (Hahn, 2008; Ibhawoh & Dibua, 2003; Shai, 2018; Sewpaul, 2014). According to Annan (2006), “across Africa, undemocratic and oppressive regimes were supported and sustained by the competing super-powers in the name of their broader goals” (p. 241)—the broader goals being primarily the disavowal of socialism, the propagation of neoliberal ideology and securing domestic trade and profit. The Ujamma experiment produced greater national unity and literacy (Ibhawoh & Dibua, 2003; Parmar, 1975; Samoff, 1990), and it was the “harbinger of social welfare development” (Ibhawoh & Dibua, 2003. p. 71). For social justice and human rights to flourish, a pursuit of socialist forms of democracy that encourage social solidarity and distributive justice, rather than the forms of liberalism that characterize capitalistic democracies, or autocracies disguised as democracies, must be supported.

Afrocentricity and Emancipatory Social Work

Afrocentricity places, in its centre, the location, cultures, histories, knowledges, and experiences of African peoples, both within Africa and across the Diaspora, without the reduction of Africans to a single, fossilized identity (Asante, 2014; Sewpaul, 2007). Such centring in Afrocentricity is grounded on awareness of the annihilation of African heritages and ways of being through the long histories of slavery and colonialism, contemporary forms of neocolonialism, and the archetypical representations of Africa and Africans. For the colonizer the logic of colonizing peoples—controlling their bodies, minds, and spirits; dispossessing them of their lands; and extracting their labour—rested on benevolence through their civilization and the Christianization missions. In many ways it was relegating Africans to a subhuman species that granted the colonizer justification for the atrocious treatment of Africans, as so cogently described by Fanon (1963; 1967) and Cesaire (1972). Cesaire (1972, p. 43) wrote of “societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out” and about “millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys.”

At the heart of Afrocentricity is the transformative agenda, and the goal of liberating African peoples from the constraints of their own thinking—a goal that emancipatory social work shares. While it is constructed as a non-hegemonic alternative to Eurocentrism, as we caution in the Introduction, some African scholars do construct Afrocentricity as superior to Eurocentricity and call for a replacement of the Eurocentric with the Afrocentric. This, we argue, is to fall into the same trap as the colonizers and neocolonizers and is a negation of the more unifying goals of emancipatory social work. Sewpaul (2007, 2016) challenged the views of authors such as Cobbah (1987) and Makgoba and Seepe (2004) who saw respect, restraint, responsibility, reciprocity, and emancipatory ideals as distinguishing features of African society, and thus antithetical to the values of Western societies. Rejecting dichotomous depictions of the West and the Rest, she called for unity in diversity and “dialogue; tuning into the life worlds of people; responsiveness; reasoned debate; recognizing the power of care, interdependence, reciprocity and validation” (Sewpaul, 2016, p. 37). Furthermore, while Afrocentricity calls for the cognitive independence and the redefinition of African identities (Asante, 2014; Kumah-Abiwa, 2016), we, like emancipatory thinkers such as Biko (1978), Fanon (1963), and Mandela (1995), argue that both the oppressor and the oppressed need to be liberated from colonial and racist forms of thinking for true transformation to occur at individual and societal levels—thus the emancipatory social work goal to critically interrogate and undo sources of both oppression and privilege (Sewpaul, 2013, 2016).

Deconstructing Archetypes: The Classroom as Context

We concur with Mazama (2001) that the appeal of Afrocentricity “lies both in the disturbing conditions of African people and the remedy that Afrocentricity suggests” (p. 387). Afrocentricity is an antidote to the devastating archetypes induced by colonialism. But the danger is not just the construction of Africans by the West; the real dangers lie in the naturalization and internalization of these archetypes by Africans (Asante, 2014; Fanon, 1963, 1967; Sewpaul, 2007, 2013). Sewpaul (2007) wrote about the incongruous worlds of students who associate Africa and African with all that is negative, reflecting the debilitating and shameful effects of colonization, racism, and race thinking. Ongoing exercises with both Western and non-Western students, within and outside of Africa, reflect a continuous reproduction of such representations, which are reinforced by the media and some political figures, the most recent being Donald Trump, who despite his geographic ineptitude, referred to Africans belonging to “shithole” countries (Vitali et al., 2018).

Students who are African live in a world of denim jeans (often designer ones), cellphones, TVs, computers, and concrete buildings in developed urban settings, yet carry an archetypical Africa in all its negativity, with dominant images of poverty, disease, underdevelopment, threats, and danger (Sewpaul, 2007). When students are engaged in reflective dialogue and are asked “where is the Africa that you live in?” they react with surprise, and sometimes with disdain at themselves for their naiveté in buying into dominant constructions. Hall (1985) asserted that

ideological struggle actually consists of attempting to win some new set of meanings for an existing term or category, or of dis-articulating it from its place in a signifying structure. For example, it is precisely because ‘black’ is the term which connotes the most despised, the dispossessed, the unenlightened, the uncivilized, the uncultured, the scheming, the incompetent, that it can be contested, transformed and invested with a positive ideological value. (p. 112)

It is toward such ideological contestation, deconstruction, and redefinition that advocates of Afrocentricity and emancipatory social work direct their efforts. This is important, as we know from labelling theory that people come to identify themselves and often behave according to dominant constructs. People might hold onto outmoded and superstitious beliefs and practices if this is what is expected of them. Also, holding onto primordial values is erroneously seen as agency, and as an authentic anti-colonial response, as discussed by Sewpaul, Mdamba, and Seepamore in this book. Yet, paradoxically given the archetypical representations, it is no wonder that education in the Global South is infused with Western ideologies. There is a desire to be seen as being on par with Europeans, and to be European (Kreitzer, 2012). The internalized self-loathing of blackness and the aspiration toward whiteness is cogently described by Fanon (1963, 1967; see also Toni Morrison’s poignant novel The Bluest Eye). If students have to enter communities with humility enough to engage people in changing cultural traditions that violate human rights and social work values, they need to be well grounded in their own values, identities, and positive conceptualization of self.

Adopting an emancipatory lens to social work, Sewpaul (2007) questioned the pedagogical implications of students’ negative constructions of self and of Africa and called for alternative experiences so that such dominant thinking can be disrupted. Deconstruction of dominant ideologies is critical if we are to achieve the kinds of emancipatory goals that Afrocentricity calls for. Educators must use the opportunities provided in the classrooms and create safe spaces to engage students in reflective activities and dialogue that facilitate the inscription of positive values.

Deconstructing Neoliberal Thinking

Each of the chapters in this book proposes ways forward in dealing with human rights violations, including expanding opportunities for education and employment, challenging and changing patriarchy and the hegemonic power of entrenched traditions and values, lobbying for policy and legislative changes, broad-based community education to engender attitudinal and behavioral changes, advocacy, and strategies for reducing poverty. Yet one of the main contributors to poverty and inequality—neoliberal capitalism, as discussed above—is not specifically interrogated. Emancipatory social work calls for all human beings to ask critical questions about the construction of self in the face of the overwhelming legitimating power of neoliberal consumerism. Nyerere (1967) understood this, and while envisioning political, economic, and cultural goals, he emphasized that Ujamaa needed to be entrenched in attitude; it requires alterations in our conception of humanity, to embrace interdependence and intersubjectivity as does emancipatory social work (IASSW, 2018; Sewpaul & Henrickson, 2019). Given the manufacture of consent and of desire (Leonard, 1997), the market seduces people into believing that their moral worth is determined by their purchasing choices and power (Bauman, 1993; Leonard, 1997). Drawing on the work of Larner (2000) and Steger and Roy (2010), Sewpaul (2015b) conceived of neoliberalism as ideology, as a form of governmentality, and as a policy paradigm—overlapping and mutually reinforcing dimensions, which “penetrate daily consciousness so much so that it is normalized and naturalized, and it is considered necessary for the social order despite the inequality and poverty that it engenders” (p. 463). She points to all our complicity in reproducing neoliberalism, and hierarchies of class, race, and gender. We are also complicit in reproducing hierarchies of language, age, marital status, ethnicity, culture, nationality, sexuality, and mental and physical (dis)abilities.

Yet, as Sewpaul (2014, 2015a) asserted, there is hope, through the use of critically reflexive, consciousness-raising strategies, in people becoming aware of the legitimating power of neoliberal capitalism. Such awareness and its transformative potential rests on critically questioning, challenging, and changing taken-for-granted, commonsense assumptions (Gramsci, 1977; Hahn, 2008; Sewpaul, 2013, 2015b). This is at the heart of emancipatory social work. Social work educators must bring these discourses into the classrooms, and use locally relevant case studies, drama and art, and engage students in exercises such as journal writing and writing of their biographies so that they recognize the impacts of structural determinants, including the ideological control of consciousness by the media and state apparatuses, on their thinking and material conditions of life (Sewpaul, 2013).

Raising critical consciousness, which characterizes emancipatory social work, means examining how intersectional criteria like race, caste, class, gender, language, ethnicity, nationality, (dis)ability, and sexuality combine to constitute sources of advantage and/or disadvantage on our lives (as social work students, educators, researchers, and practitioners) and the lives of people we engage with. In doing so we might be able to better understand and respond to the life circumstances and ideological positioning of the people we work with. But the social work profession is not going to do this alone. The problems facing humankind in the face of the onslaughts of neoliberalism and far-right politics call for far more concerted efforts on a much broader scale. Social workers need to build alliances and bridges across similarities and differences and connect with progressive people’s movements on national, regional, and global levels in the ongoing struggle to uphold human dignity and the rights of all peoples of this world (Sewpaul, 2014). But social activism is not going to occur if it is not preceded by developing critical awareness of the legitimating power of societal discourses and practices.

Culture, Education, and Practice

Sometimes law and culture coalesce to violate human rights, as discussed in the case of corporal punishment by Ntshwarang and Sewpaul in chapter 12, but it is applicable to other issues such as sexual orientation. Homophobia, which spans the globe, is defended in the name of religion and culture, punished in some countries by draconian laws that violate human rights. When violating laws and cultures merge, it makes the advocacy efforts of social workers, other professionals, and the citizenry at large more challenging, for change must be directed at both the law and community attitudes and choices. In some instances, there are conflicts between national legislation and customary laws, as in the case of child marriages in some countries. Muchacha, Matsika, and Nhapi in this volume and Werft (2016) cite the cases of Zimbabwe and Malawi respectively, where national law bans the marriage of persons under 18 years of age, but with customary law and/or religious sanction such marriages occur widely.

Having laws that promote and protect human rights does help, but legislation alone is insufficient to protect people against human rights violations that occur in the name of culture. Social workers in Africa, and across the globe, in their role as cultural mediators (IASSW, 2018; Sewpaul, 2014, 2015b) can play important roles in facilitating intercultural dialogue, debate, and constructive confrontation. One of the standards in the Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training (Sewpaul & Jones, 2004) reads: “Ensuring that social work students are schooled in a basic human rights approach” (p. 501), with the following explanatory note:

Such an approach might facilitate constructive confrontation and change where certain cultural beliefs, values and traditions violate peoples’ basic human rights. As culture is socially constructed and dynamic, it is subject to deconstruction and change. Such constructive confrontation, deconstruction and change may be facilitated through a tuning into, and an understanding of particular cultural values, beliefs and traditions and via critical and reflective dialogue with members of the cultural group vis-à-vis broader human rights issues. (p. 510)

While it is written in the context of social work education and training, the implications of this for practice are self-evident. Students become practitioners, and they are expected to transfer the knowledge, skills, values, and principles of the profession into the practice context. Social work practitioners, through ongoing professional development, must be consistently aware of the human rights provisions and their applications, or lack thereof, to local contexts, and engage in the same forms of praxis that we engage students in. Furthermore, given the “concealing function of common sense” (Sewpaul, 2013, p. 122), and that we (educators, researchers, and practitioners) are products and producers of our socio-political and cultural worlds, the GSWSEP, which applies to teaching, research, and practice contexts, has specific principles related to this. Principles 4.7 and 4.8 call for the development of awareness of entrapments of one’s thinking by dominant socio-political and cultural discourses, which may manifest in a range of prejudices, discriminations, and human rights violations, and for social workers to heighten their own consciousness as well of that of the people they engage with.

Informed by an emancipatory theoretical approach, social work educators, practitioners, and researcher-practitioners can adopt strategies of consciousness raising to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions that are inscribed through dominant socialization and culture (Freire, 1973; Gramcsi, 1977; Sewpaul, 2013, 2015b). Social work education and training is generally designed to equip graduates with the requisite skills in empathy, active listening, facilitation, mediation, and interpersonal relationships. These skills can be used to build bridges across cultures and to engage people in ways that ensure the harmful aspects of culture are confronted, while retaining those that are positive and that allow for intergenerational cultural continuity and human development (Sewpaul, 2014). Social workers must also be courageous to adopt constructive confrontational strategies when necessary, especially when culture threatens people’s security, bodily integrity, and life. In this respect it is heartening to note that there are pockets of resistance by social work educators and practitioners in Africa (Sewpaul, 2014), and as writing is a form of resistance, the authors of this text contribute to such resistance.

Practice-Based Research and Learning from Practice

While the classroom constitutes an ideal space to introduce students to critical, post-colonial, and emancipatory theories and research paradigms, and to deconstruct and reconstruct thinking around self and society, it is equally important to learn from practice, through practice-based research, as is so fully discussed in the edited book by Twikirize and Spitzer (2019), reflecting locally specific interventions in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The most compelling examples come from Rwanda, which after the genocide saw an interventionist state that, through national dialogues, launched local programs directed at “facilitating people to do things by themselves” (Rutikanga, 2019, p. 73), and the promotion of unity, participatory democracy, and reconciliation on a nation-wide basis (Uwihangana et al., 2019). The role of a facilitative state is critical for sustainable community development, and for wide-scale, national rollouts of programs that have been proven to work. Sewpaul and Hölscher (2007) discuss local interventions in South Africa, in respect of children in very difficult circumstances, where the gains remained constrained on account of lack of government investment in their expansion and continuity.

Through the voices of several authors, the book (Twikirize & Spitzer, 2019) describes various local, culturally relevant approaches based on values such as social cohesion, interdependence, and collective means of dealing with a range of individual and socio-economic problems, drawing on the lived experiences and tacit knowledges of communities, building resilience and self-sufficiency, and respect, unity, and reconciliation—all of which reflect the ethos of Ubuntu and Ujamaa. Bukuluki and colleagues in this book discuss how practices grounded in positive African values might contribute to the prevention of domestic violence and HIV/AIDS. Conjoining the voices of a “service user/giver” and of a university professor, Sewpaul and Nkosi Ndlovu (2020) describe the transformative and sustaining potential of emancipatory social work and Ubuntu, and how HIV+ women shifted from being trapped in trauma, guilt, and secrecy to becoming HIV/AIDS outreach workers, educators, and activists.

One of the identified limitations of the application of indigenous approaches is the reliance on males as the arbiters and leaders in cultural discourse and problem solving. While the exclusion of women, in itself, constitutes a violation of rights, it also perpetuates patriarchal cultures, which are sources of many human rights violations. This is a common theme in all the chapters in this book. Furthermore, the exclusion of women from chieftainship and other leadership positions neglects an enormous resource base that Africa so desperately needs. Werft (2016) highlights the atypical appointment of Theresa Kachindamoto as chief in Malawi. In her position, Kachindamoto annulled over 850 child marriages, suspended chiefs who failed to make this commitment, championed girls’ rights to education, and put a ban on sexual initiation rites, where girls as young as seven years of age are taught how to please future husbands, thus exposing them to HIV/AIDS. Reclaiming indigenous approaches in social work education, research, and practice on the African continent does not mean reverting to traditional values and practices that are harmful.

Conclusion

It is difficult to separate the effects of cultural ideological constraints, for example the claims to a primordial essence and an essentialized cultural identity that underlie human rights violations, socio-economic deprivation, and the consumerist ideology engendered by neoliberalism, as each overlaps and constrains the other. Thus, emancipatory social work goals must be directed at developing critical consciousness around the legitimating and normalizing powers of both cultural and neoliberal discourses and practices. The virtues of the we-centred, communitarian ethos, Ubuntu, and the distributive justice goals of Afrocentricity must be used in the interests of all people. There is no place in the Afrocentric paradigm, which embraces human dignity, mutuality, reciprocity and respect, for the inferior construction and treatment of women and children, people who do not fit the norms of heterosexuality, and those with mental and physical disabilities, who are often subject to human rights violations.

We concede the power of historical and/or perceived historical continuity in retaining harmful cultural practices, and the deep interconnections made between cultural values and identities. But there are also discontinuities and disruptions; cultural norms and practices wax and wane, take different shapes and forms, and the nature and extent of practices change over time. To conceive of African traditions, values, and beliefs as timeless and primordial is to deny African peoples the capacity for reflexivity, rational thought, and agency—a reinscribing of colonial constructions that Afrocentricity repudiates. Afrocentricity is a transformative project, not the sedimentation of traditions; it is directed at granting agency to African peoples, and is fully aligned with emancipatory social work theory and practice. The core values of Afrocentricity must be used to challenge and change those traditions and customs that violate human rights and human dignity; this is both a privilege and a challenge for the social work profession in Africa. It is human dignity that both social work and Afrocentricity hold as sacrosanct.

References

Annan, K. (2006). The causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa. In C. Heyns & K. Stefiszyn (Eds.), Human Rights, peace and justice in Africa: A reader (pp. 239–243). Pretoria, ZA: Pretoria University Law Press.

Appiah, K. A. (1992). In my father’s house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Asante, M. K. (2014). Afrocentricity: Toward a new understanding of African thought in the world. In M. K. Asante, Y. Mike, & J. Yin (Eds.), The global intercultural communication reader (2nd ed., pp. 101–110). New York, NY: Routledge.

Bauman Z. (1993). Postmodern ethics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Biko, N. M. (1978). I write what I like (A. Stubbs, Ed.). Johannesburg, ZA: Heinemann.

Bond, P. (2005). Elite transition: From apartheid to neoliberalism in South Africa. Scottsville, ZA: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

Cesaire, A. (1972). Discourse of colonialism. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Cobbah, J. A. M. (1987). African values and the human rights debate: An African perspective. Human Rights Quarterly, 9(3): 309–331.

Dominelli, L. (1996). Deprofessionalizing social work: Anti-oppressive practice, competencies and postmodernism. British Journal of Social Work, 26, 153–175.

Dominelli, L. (2008). The new world order, scarcity and injustice: Social work fights back. Caribbean Journal of Social Work, 6(7), 6–15.

Donnelly, J. (2006). Cultural relativism and universal human rights. In C. Heyns & K. Stefiszyn (Eds.), Human Rights, peace and justice in Africa: A reader (pp 111–121). Pretoria, ZA: Pretoria University Law Press.

Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin white mask. New York, NY: Grove Press.

Foueré, M. (2014). Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa, and political morality in contemporary Tanzania. African Studies Review, 57(1), 1– 24.

Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York, NY: Seabury.

Gramsci, A. (1977). Selections from political writings 1910–1920. London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart.

Gyekye, K. (1995). An essay on African philosophical thought: The Akan conceptual scheme. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hahn, N. S. C. (2008). Neoliberal imperialism and pan-African resistance. Journal of World Systems Research, 13(2): 142–178.

Hall, S. (1985). Signification, representation, ideology: Althusser and the post-structuralist debates. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 2, 91–144.

Hallen, B. (2002). A short history of African philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Henrickson, M., & Fouché, C. (2017). Vulnerability and marginality in human services. Surrey, UK: Routledge.

Ibhawoh, B., & Dibua, J. I. (2003). Deconstructing Ujamaa: The legacy of Julius Neyerere in the quest for social and economic development in Africa. African Journal of Political Science, 8(1): 59–83.

IASSW. (2018). Global social work statement of ethical principles. https://www.iassw-aiets.org/2018/04/18/global-social-work-statement-of-ethical-principles-iassw/IASSW/IFSW. (2014). Global definition of social work. https://www.iassw-aiets.org/global-definition-of-social-work-review-of-the-global-definition/

IASSW/IFSW/ICSW. (2012). Global agenda for social work and social development commitment to action. https://www.iassw-aiets.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Global-Agenda-English.pdf

Keynes, J. M. (1933). National self-sufficiency. Yale Review, 22(4): 755–769. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/Keynes.htm

Kreitzer, L. (2012). Social work in Africa: Exploring culturally relevant education and practice in Ghana. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.

Kumah-Abiwa, F. (2016). Beyond intellectual construct to policy ideas: The case of the Afrocentric paradigm. Africology: The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 9(2): 7–27.

Larner, W. (2000). Neo-liberalism: policy, ideology, governmentality. Studies in Political Economy, 63, 5–26.

Leonard, P. (1997). Postmodern welfare: Reconstructing an emancipatory project. London, UK: Sage.

Levinas, E. (1985) Ethics and infinity. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

Makgoba, M., & Seepe, S. (2004). Knowledge and identity: An African vision of higher education transformation. In S. Seepe (Ed.), Towards an African identity in higher education (pp. 13–57). Pretoria, ZA: Vista University and Scottsville Media.

Makinde, M. A. (1988). African culture and moral systems: A philosophical study. Second Order 1(2): 1–27.

Mandela, N. (1995). Long walk to freedom: An autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Mazama, A. (2001). The Afrocentric paradigm: Contours and definitions. Journal of Black Studies, 31(4): 387–405.

Metz T. (2014). Harmonizing global ethics in the future: A proposal to add south and east to west. Journal of Global Ethics, 10(2): 146–155.

Nyerere, J. K. (1967). Freedom and unity, Uhuru na Ujoma: A selection from writings and speeches 1952–1965. London, UK: Oxford University Press.

Opoku, R. (2017). Gendered violence: Patterns and causes of women-to-women violence in the Lake Zone regions of Tanzania, East Africa. Tampere, FI: University of Tampere Press.

Parmar, S. L. (1975). Self-reliant development in an interdependent world. In G. F. Erb & V. Kallab, (Eds.), Beyond dependency: The developing world speaks out (pp. 2–27). Washington DC: Overseas Development Council.

Rutikanga, C. (2019). A social work analysis of home-grown solutions and poverty reduction in Rwanda: The traditional approach of Ubudehe. In J. M. Twikirize & H. Spitzer (Eds.), Social work practice in Africa: Indigenous and innovative approaches (pp. 61–80). Kampala, UG: Fountain Publishers.

Samoff, J. (1990). Modernizing a socialist vision: Education in Tanzania. In M. Carnoy & J. Samoff (Eds.), Education and social transition in the Third World (pp. 209–274). Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Serequebehan, T. (2000). Our heritage. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.

Sewpaul, V. (2005). Feminism and globalisation: The promise of Beijing and neoliberal capitalism in Africa. Agenda, 19 (64): 104–113.

Sewpaul, V. (2007). Power, discourse and ideology: Challenging essentialist notions of race and identity in institutions of higher learning in South Africa. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk, 43(1): 16–27.

Sewpaul, V. (2010). Professionalism, postmodern ethics and global standards for social work education and training. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk 46(3): 253–262.

Sewpaul, V. (2013). Inscribed in our blood: Confronting and challenging the ideology of sexism and racism. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 28(2): 116–125.

Sewpaul, V. (2014). Social work and human rights: An African perspective. In S. Hessle (Ed.), Human rights and social equality: Challenges (pp. 13–28). Surrey, UK: Ashgate.

Sewpaul, V. (2015a). Politics with soul: Social work and the legacy of Nelson Mandela. International Social Work, 59(6), 697–708. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872815594226

Sewpaul, V. (2015b). Neoliberalism. In J. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 16, pp. 462–468). Amsterdam, NL: Elsevier.

Sewpaul, V. (2016). The West and the Rest divide: Culture, human rights and social work. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 1, 30–39.

Sewpaul, V., & Hölscher, D. (2004). Social work in times of neoliberalism: A postmodern discourse, Pretoria, ZA: Van Schaik.

Sewpaul, V., & Hölscher, D. (2007). Against the odds: Community-based interventions for children in difficult circumstances. In L. D. Dominelli (Ed.), Revitalising communities (pp. 193–206). Hampshire, UK: Ashgate.

Sewpaul, V., & Henrickson, M. (2019). The (r)evolution and decolonization of social work ethics: The Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles (GSWSEP). International Social Work, 62(6), 1469–1481. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872819846238

Sewpaul, V., & Jones, D. (2004). Global standards for social work education and training. Social Work Education, 23(5): 493–513.

Sewpaul, V., & Ndlovu, N. (2020). Emancipatory, relationship-based and deliberative collective action: The power of the small group in shifting from adversity to hope, activism and development. Czech and Slovak Social Work, 20(1), 108–122.

Shai, K. B. (2018). US foreign policy towards Ghana and Tanzania: An Afrocentric view. Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 40(2): 52–66.

Sogolo, G. S. (1993). Foundations in African philosophy: A definitive analysis of conceptual issues in African thought. Ibadan, NG: University of Ibadan Press.

Steger, M. B., & Roy, R. K. (2010). Neoliberalism: A very short history. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Twikirize, J. M., & Spitzer, H. (Eds.). (2019). Social work practice in Africa: Indigenous and innovative approaches. Kampala, UG: Fountain.

Uwihangana, C., Hakizamungu, A., & Bangwanubusa, T. (2019). Umugoro w’Ababyeyi: An innovative social work approach to socio-economic wellbeing in Rwanda. In J. M. Twikirize & H. Spitzer (Eds.), Social work practice in Africa: Indigenous and innovative approaches (pp. 81–94). Kampala, UG: Fountain.

Vitali, A., Hunt, K., & Thorp V. F. (2018). Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole” countries. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946

Werft, M. (2016, April 7). Meet the brave female chief who stopped 850 child marriages in Malawi. Global Citizen. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/malawi-chief-woman-ends-sex-initiation-and-child-m/

Williams, L. O., & Sewpaul, V. (2004). Modernism, postmodernism and global standards setting. Social Work Education, 23(5): 555–565.