Between compliance and consciousness: Africanising curriculum and professional identity in South African vocational education

Abstract

This article interrogates the contradictions embedded in the Advanced Diploma in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) at Nelson Mandela University, situating the preparation of vocational lecturers within the historical and political legacies of apartheid and the contested reforms of post-1994 South Africa. It examines how the formation of vocational educators navigates tensions between compliance and critical consciousness, between academisation and Africanisation, and between professionalisation and pedagogical justice. Although discursively framed by institutional commitments to humanising pedagogy and transformative learning, the curriculum frequently defaults to technicist delivery and bureaucratic alignment, thereby marginalising African epistemologies, multilingualism, and community-engaged practice. Drawing on a critical desktop analysis of curriculum documents, policy texts, and institutional frameworks, the article positions TVET lecturer education as a contested terrain of knowledge production, identity formation, and ideological struggle. Grounded in Freirean pedagogy and African philosophical traditions such as Ubuntu and epistemic justice, the analysis reveals that professional identity is shaped through normative compliance rather than ethical reflexivity. By extending the South African case to global debates, the article argues that vocational institutions must be understood not only as skill-delivery systems but also as sites of belonging, identity, and epistemic justice. In doing so, it contributes to decolonial scholarship in critical African studies by reframing vocational education as a space for epistemic courage, curricular justice, and the rehumanisation of knowledge in Africa and beyond.