Culture, crisis and epistemicide: what can southern African communities teach the world about living in an age of crisis?

Abstract

Modern human beings (homo sapiens) are the last extant species of the genius homo and as such have been on the planet for some 350,000 years or more. Unlike other animal systems, humans have been able to live in many different environments. One key way in which that is done is through the creation of knowledge systems. Different communities have different knowledge systems. When communities with different knowledge systems interact with one another there have historically been a number of possible group to group relations, grouped into the following categories: conflict/domination, tolerance (separation) and syncretism (the coming together of two or more communities to form a new community). At the present moment one knowledge system – the European Colonial Knowledge System (CKS) – has come to dominate all others.