Segalo 2017

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PINS, 2017, 54, 29 – 41, http://dx.doi.org/10.

17159/2309-8708/2017/n54a3

A psychology in our own


language: Redefining psychology
in an African context
Abstract Puleng Segalo
Psychology in Africa has for a long time and continues University of South Africa
to be a contentious subject. Many scholars have pointed Pretoria
to the importance of acknowledging multiple forms of [email protected]
knowing and being in the world and understanding the
complexities of understanding how people make meaning Zethu Cakata
of their world. The urge to understand and define the Independent researcher
notion of being human in universalistic terms minimises [email protected]
and obscures the complexities of human experiences in
time, space and geolocation. This paper argues for the Keywords
need to take the role of languages (indigenous) earnestly African Psychology,
if we are to imagine a psychology (African) that takes decolonisation, indigenous
local contexts within which it is practised and taught languages, epistemic
seriously. Furthermore, we insist on the importance of disobedience
decolonising the psychology curriculum wherein what is
deemed as legitimate at the exclusion of other forms of
knowing becomes challenged.

Tshoboloko
Saekholoji mo Aforika e nnile e bile e tswelela go nna
kgang e e tlhorang boroko sebaka se seleele. Barutegi
ba le bantsi ba bontshitse botlhokwa jwa go lemogwa
ga ditsela tse di mmalwa le go nna mo lefatsheng le
go tlhaloganya mathata a gore batho ba bontsha jang
bokao jwa lebopo la bone. Tsiboso ya go tlhaloganya le go
tlhalosa mogopolo wa go nna botho ka bolefatshe lotlhe
go fokotsa le go tlhakatlhakanya mathata a maitemogelo
a botho ka nako, sebaka le tikologo. Pampiri e e sekaseka
tlhokego ya go tsaya seabe sa dipuo (tsa tlholego) ka
tlhoafalo fa re tlhoka go akanya saekholoji (Aforika) e e
elang tlhoko lemorago mo e diragadiwang gone le go
rutiwa ka tlhoafalo. Go feta foo, re gatelela botlhokwa
jwa go lokolola kharikhulamo ya saekholoji moo se se

29 | PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017

Open Rubric
bonwang se le mo molaong go sa akarediweng ga ditsela dingwe tsa go itse go fetogang
go nna kgwetlho.

Problematising Psychology
Re qala ka ho ipotsa dipotso hore na ebe ha re ngola ka bohlokwa ba maleme a Setho
thutong ya botsebi ho tsa kelello, maikutlo, le maphelo a batho, re ka etsa jwalo ka leleme
ya sekgowa na! Lefapha la thuto e phahameng le dibaka tsa thuto di sa ntse di le morao
ho amoheleng bohlokwa ba tsebo e arolelanwang ka maleme a Setho a Afrika Borwa. Ke
ka lebaka leo re ngolang pampiri ena ke leme la sekgowa ho hlahisa tlhokeho ya hore
re emelle morao re ipotse hore na e be ke eng eo re e lahlehelwang ka ho se sebedise
maleme a Setho thutong. Re ngola tjena re batla ho hlahisa tletlebo – re re thuto eo re
e fumaneng e thatafatsa maipolelo ka puo tsa bo rona. Re etsa boipiletso hore jwalo ka
ditsebi mafapheng a thuto re lokela ho etella phetoho pele, hoba phetoho e qala ka rona.

We start with the above assertion as a way to situate ourselves and to explain the
importance of indigenous languages in academic spaces. We deemed it fit to do so in
one of our indigenous languages, Sesotho. Ideally this paper should be written in an
indigenous language however we are cognisant of the limitations we are still contending
with; and these include publication spaces/allowance for non-English texts in many of
our journals (including this one). One of the things we wrestled with was the translation
of the very concept of Psychology. This paper therefore wrestles with the issue of what an
African Psychology should entail in general, and what the role of indigenous languages
is in these debates.

We start this paper by acknowledging that the call for moving away from solely relying
on Eurocentric perspectives when teaching and practising Psychology is not new (see
Nsamenang, 1995; Naidoo, 1996; Ya Azibo, 1996; Akbar; 2004; to name a few). Our aim is
to open up conversations on the importance of indigenous languages and the role they
play in how we come to know and define the world. As we continue journeying towards
Africanising and decolonising psychology, we deem it critical to have indigenous
languages as an integral part of the process.

Psychology in Africa, like other knowledge forms, is often treated as though its origins
are distinctly Western. This has been made believable by the systematic erasure and
inferiorisation of indigenous knowledge systems which began with colonialism. African
knowledges, which sustained societies for centuries before colonialism, were brutally
disrupted by the imposition of European knowledges and cultures and various spheres
were left without a trace of indigenous wisdom. Mignolo (2011) argues that this process
was made possible by the inferiorisation and exclusion of indigenous languages in the
professionalised world. Mignolo (2011) further asserts that the exclusion of indigenous

PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017 | 30


languages allowed for the disregard of indigenous forms of being. This cemented the
belief that these languages do not deserve a place in the world of rational thought
and left people who come from the world considered inferior looking to assimilate the
superior world and disassociating with their origins. Their languages were seen only as
a way of exposing their inferiority with no real contribution to knowledge production.
This inferiorisation has contributed towards African countries being subjected to
knowledge systems that do not reflect their realities. This is found within the university
spaces as well where the inferiorisation of knowledges that are “non-European”
continue to be perpetuated. It is at this point where African Psychology makes its entry
in order to critique and challenge the universalistic approach in understanding human
behaviour. According to Nwoye (2015: 11),

“African Psychology is interested in engaging in field studies with the potential to


generate relevant data for addressing the psychosocial needs and problems of the
people of Africa, particularly those intended to help to bring to the fore the African
Indigenous Knowledges deemed vital for attending to the peculiar challenges
of living in the contemporary African world. In some cases, African psychologists
engage in the exercise of restudying some of the themes and problems earlier
studied but wrongly understood and coded or conceptualized by foreign researchers,
due to lack of expertise in the language of the people they studied. Through such
a language barrier, such researchers were unable to penetrate to the details and
discover accurate meanings and significance of some of the issues studied, such as
the psychological significance of the mortuary practices and naming rituals of the
people of Africa.”

As alluded to above, if Africans are to respond to the realities of their context, the manner
in which reality is perceived has to change drastically to allow multiple voices. This could
redress the misconception that only the western forms of knowing are valid. Mignolo
(2011) calls this disruption an epistemic disobedience and it relates to Nyamnjoh’s (2013)
notion of epistemological conviviality which he describes as an openness to various
forms of knowledge. Both Epistemic disobedience and epistemological conviviality
advocate for the rejection of the colonial reality imposed by the western world. By
rejecting the western realities, the colonized people would be refusing to subscribe to
the notion that western knowledge systems are universal.

The rejection of western ways of knowing and relating to the world would be
challenging the violence which has characterized relations between the colonizer
and the colonized. This is the violence which Fanon (1986), wa Thiongo’ (1986), and
Biko (2004) have written about extensively. According to these three authors both
the physical and the structural forms of violence have made the domination of the

31 | PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017


colonized people possible. While physical violence ripped success in ensuring that
the resistance of African people was muted, structural forms of violence ensured
the mental enslavement of Africans where they were made to see no value in who
they are due to the distortion and inferiorisation of their knowledge systems and
cultures. Language was pivotal in ensuring this mental enslavement. Colonial
languages were imposed to introduce European cultures and to ensure that they
replace existing African cultures in the minds of African people. This was ensured,
as Biko (2004) states, by the introduction of European cultures as universal and that
made certain that African cultures existed as mere adjuncts to dominant European
cultures. Colonisation, according to Nyamnjoh (2012), emphasised imitation of
western ways rather than a co-existence of different realities. It replaced indigenous
people’s epistemologies with a western single dimensional epistemology which has
served to oppress African people. For Biko (2004) this ensured the inferiorisation of
African cultures and knowledges.

The introduction of western education was instrumental in facilitating the structural


violence referred to above. Schools according to Fanon (1986), wa Thiong’o (1986),
and Biko (2004) became a tool to engrain European cultures. In their very design, they
served to define the world. Through an education that was single dimensional, the
world therefore got to be defined by the coloniser. As Fanon (1986) states, schools did
not only make European cultures superior, they were also rigorous in ensuring that
indigenous cultures were distorted and inferiorised. This sentiment is re-iterated
by Biko (2004) when he argues that imperialism cleansed black people’s brains of
all forms of substance by destroying and distorting their past thus ridding them of
a cultural point of reference. Europeans perceived African cultures as barbarism
and they dubbed African spirituality as superstition and the histories of African
people were erased and misrepresented (Biko, 2004). All of this resulted in Africans
looking only to the west for a cultural reference point. The discipline of psychology
contributed in the delegitimisation of other forms of knowledges. As Makhubela
(2016: 52) argues, “mainstream psychology in South Africa is seen as harbouring
aspirations of becoming a local incarnation of an imperialist academic model based
on a Eurocentric epistemic standard, which discounts and represses other epistemic
traditions”. The call for African psychology becomes critical at this point. In the rest of
the paper we attempt to highlight the importance of a psychology that is rooted within
Africa and that acknowledges and takes seriously African ways of being. We zoom in
on the importance of indigenous languages in our quest to make meaning of people’s
lived realities. Language is an integral part of our identities and it is through language
that we can make sense of our world. For a long time indigenous languages have been
in the periphery, and we argue that these languages need to be at the centre and form
an integral part of the teaching of psychology.

PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017 | 32


Defining African psychology
There has been a call from various scholars of the need for African people to tell their own
stories and not use (or rely solely on) imported theories to understand local realities. So
why has African psychology taken so long to make its way into the classroom? It is due
to the nature of the university in Africa? These questions will inform the arguments we
would like to make in this paper. We deem it critical to engage first with why there is a
need for an African psychology and what this kind of psychology would mean. Colonial
influence played a role in what was regarded as legitimate knowledge and this further
informed what was taught at universities; which was curricula that was imported
(uncritically) from Europe. In many ways this remains the case today. African psychology
is an epistemological frame of work that rejects exclusion of other ways of knowing.
It encourages multimodal understanding of being (what it is to be human) and the
importance of taking context into consideration.

In a talk he gave at the first international conference of the Forum of African Psychology
(conference held at the University of Limpopo, March 2013) Nwoye described African
psychology as a field of study interested in investigating and understanding what it is
to be African. It is interested in understanding the psychological capital of the African
people. It is a psychology that has a pre (before the colonialists came) and post-colonial
reference to it; it moves beyond understanding a one-person subjectivity to a collective
understanding of people. It is a field of study interested in theory building, research,
critical practice and documentation. It has come into being to move beyond the limitations
that it perceives within mainstream psychology. Furthermore, African psychology values
multiple epistemologies as all instrumental in understanding behaviour and lived
experiences. It is not limited to what is deemed objective, measurable and universal.

The African in African psychology derives from its focus and attention to the African
content. It aims to understand the African people from the past, those in the present
and the acknowledgement of the diverse realities they exist within (Nwoye, 2015). It
acknowledges the multiracial aspect of what or who is deemed African. It comes in as a
form of protest that aims to fulfil African people’s need for wholeness. It is also critical
to note that there are multiple perspectives in how African psychology is defined and
understood (see Makhubela, 2016; Ratele, 2016; Nwoye, 2017). For example, Ratele (2016)
proposes four African psychologies which he asserts are critical as they allow space for
therapists, researchers and teachers to ‘choose’ orientations that speak to their area
of focus (psychology in Africa, cultural African psychology, critical African psychology,
and psychological African studies). This “slicing” up of African Psychology is deemed
problematic by Nwoye (2017: 5) who argues that we need to “develop a postcolonial
academic field of African Psychology” and not focus only on the individual parts of what
forms African psychology. These multiple views force/afford us the opportunity to engage

33 | PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017


and challenge us to be critical of definitions we employ. The interest and engagement
with what African psychology means highlights its importance in our current debates of
the relevance of Psychology in South Africa (Long, 2012; 2013; 2014).

There continues to be a silencing of alternative forms of knowing, in for example, what


is validated as legitimate knowledge. As Nyamnjoh (2004) argues, the African university
continues to be a colonial satellite of the western academy. With this therefore a space
is needed for the decolonisation of the university in general and the curriculum within
various disciplines such as psychology in particular. Decoloniality is a theory of social
change, a theoretical perspective that seeks for a philosophical view to knowledge.
It calls for the understanding of issues from the critical perspective of the indigenous
(African) subject. An epistemological reconstruction and a humanising intellectual
knowledge is critical if we are to truly get an understanding of people’s lived realities.
African Psychology is therefore a decolonising project that “can be understood as
a psychology of rehabilitation of the culture and orientation of research in African
universities, the type that will derive, anchor, not in comparing African and Europeans,
but rather in people’s everyday needs, epistemologies, and worldview” (Nwoye, 2015: 4).

Centring indigenous languages


“The absence of native language literacy obliges African psychologists to write in
foreign languages, a practice which further reduces productivity and quality of work.
Foreign languages also fail to capture or fully represent many African phenomena
adequately. For example, many African idioms and proverbs cannot be translated
appropriately into scientific jargon or European languages, expect at the risk of
impairment to their essence or distortion of their full meaning.” (Nsamenang, 1995: 735)

In wrestling with the issue of indigenous languages, we asked ourselves this question:
Should we develop our indigenous languages for psychology purposes or should we
engage with our indigenous languages and in them find ways in which psychology can
be defined? We sought answers from language scholars such as Ngugi wa Thing’o. In a
talk he gave at the University of the Witwatersrand (2 March 2017) Ngugi wa Thong’o
asserted that there is a need to centre African languages and not allow these languages
to be on the margins or below European languages. There needs to be a shift from
perceiving European languages as keys that are there to unlock possibilities to a better
life as this affirms the fallacy of these languages as superior. wa Thiong’o asked: How
can languages spoken by only ten percent of the world be deemed as superior and as
a normative measure of excellence? This assumes European languages to be superior.
This perception and assumption of superiority is not an accident, but a legitimate aim
of the conquest mission. Language did (does) to the mind what the sword did to the
body, and thus being stripped of one’s language wounds and hampers the ways in which

PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017 | 34


one perceives the world. wa Thiong’o further argued that we pamper English and other
European languages and pauper(ise) African languages. The academia has contributed
in people having what may be deemed as a death wish for their own languages while
embracing European languages. The extreme humiliation and devaluing of African
languages by mainstream discourses led to people despising their own languages.
Who then would not want to busk in the sunshine glory of the “master” language? wa
Thiong’o went on to assert that this cognitive conditioning leads to people wanting
to move away from the object of shame (their indigenous languages). This cognitive
conditioning is passed on from one generation to another; it is embodied and becomes
normalised and as a result is never questioned. The discipline of Psychology with its
dark history of racism, stereotyping and labelling people, is also guilty of not embracing
the possibilities that lie within indigenous languages. Psychology needs to create space
for the promises and wealth of knowledge that indigenous languages may offer.

The effort to make psychology respond to the African condition which is rooted in
colonialism remains complicated. We argue for a need to make indigenous languages
the main driver in such efforts. We believe that by putting indigenous languages at
the centre we would be digging deep to ignored knowledge systems that have always
shaped the well-being of African people. Languages would allow us to recover lost
wisdom and allow us to reclaim our right to self-definition. This would allow Africans
to view the world with a lens that refuses to recognize the inbuilt superiorities of the
colonial world and will cause colonial languages to lose significance. By continuing
to treat colonial languages with superiority we are affirming that the colonial
world should shape who we are and what we consider as valid knowledge and we
are declaring the deliberate mission to inferiorise indigenous life successful. It is
important to remember that indigenous languages in Africa, as wa Thiong’o (1986),
Bamgbose (2011), Ramoupi, (2011), and Biko, (2004) state, were placed in the position
of inferiority deliberately by colonial powers whose aim was to dominate African
people. Our failure, therefore, to not expose those roots would allow the continued
domination of Africans by the colonial world.

Any discussion to include indigenous languages in the professional sphere is usually


misconstrued as a call to translate existing Western knowledges into indigenous
languages. This is not the call we are making, by calling for a Psychology that is founded
on indigenous languages, we have reached a conclusion that the existing psychological
knowledge is based on the epistemology and ontology that see the West as superior
and Africa as inferior. A point also noted by Nwoye (2015; 3) in his assertion that “African
Psychology emerged to serve as a protest psychology aimed at engaging in African
image reconstructions; and, in that way, to add to and advance the incomprehensible
determination of the African to recover from disturbance”. Merely translating such

35 | PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017


knowledges would be accepting those inhumane categories and Africans will continue
to be just receivers and replicators of western knowledges and never key role players in
the production of their own knowldeges. The rejection of these categories would allow
indigenous languages to give names to their psychologies and respond to the needs of
their people. As Hikwa (2012) argues, indigenous languages make indigenous knowledges
transmittable as they provide labels to indigenous concepts and processes. Hikwa (2012)
is in agreement with Mkhize & Ndimande-Hlongwa (2014) that indigenous languages
and indigenous knowledge are inseparable as languages are central in the transmission
of indigenous knowledges. We therefore cannot speak of an African Psychology or
African Psychologies that exclude the languages of African people. As demonstrated
by Sobeicki (2014), indigenous languages have always played a role in indigenous
medicine / psychology. The inferiorisation of indigenous languages has led to the
exclusion of indigenous medicine/psychology in what is perceived as mainstream medical
field. Sobiecki (2014) clearly demonstrates that the value of indigenous medicine/
psychology is hidden in the languages that carry them. These languages carry concepts
that explain the medicinal and psychological value of many traditional plants and
various descriptions of the human condition (mental and/or physical). Sobiecki’s (2014)
work is a clear demonstration that sciences are not foreign to African communities but
hidden in languages that are not given their due place in the academic world. Sobiecki’s
(2014) explanation of how plants are used by amaXhosa for medical/psychological
purposes exposes that there is nothing unscientific about traditional healing as these
plants are known to have chemical composition that have psychological effects.

The western scientific world’s refusal to treat indigenous knowledges with respect
is well captured by Nsamenang (2007) who exposes the manner in which the West
has dehumanized African people through an imposed education system which has
disregarded Africa’s world view. Nsamenang (2007) argues that many programmes
designed (often by the United Nations) to respond to the African condition often fails
because the West is only attempting to fit Africa into its reality. This is a notion also
highlighted by Shahjahan (2011) who reminds us of the importance of looking into what
others bring with them, what they have to offer and the need to look at how spaces
for acknowledgement can be created. The academia in general and the discipline of
psychology in particular has been guilty of privileging other forms of knowledge over
others. For a long time, African epistemologies were absent (and in many ways continue
to be absent) in the psychology classrooms.

Efforts made by the many African governments to include indigenous knowledges have
been more concerned with appending these knowledges to the existing western-defined
sciences and expecting them to fit into western standards of what science is. A clear
example of this lack of disruption are the attempts by the South African Department of

PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017 | 36


Health to make indigenous healers subscribe to western medical and health regulations,
where they are required to have to be subjected to scrutiny which is based on western
standards. Bogaert (2007) has argued that while it is necessary to ensure that the
public is protected from harmful practices, the standard on which such protection is
based should acknowledge that traditional and western healing systems are distinctly
different. The current practice continues to let the west dictate even in an era where
Africa is supposedly self-governing.

What type of psychology do we envisage in Africa (South Africa)?


We would like to align ourselves with Lebakeng, Phalane & Dalindyebo (2006) in their
assertion that it is imperative to inscribe indigenous African epistemology into the
curriculum and how we approach research. Lebakeng et. al (2006: 75) further argue that
“underpinning education with African Philosophy is, in the first instance, a question of
rights, and thus a matter of natural and historical justice”. It is about respect and dignity
for multiple forms of knowing, acknowledging them as legitimate and worthy of being
embraced and applied in our everyday encounters. It is critical to dig deep and deal
with the core of what coloniality has managed to do if we are to truly understand and
dismantle its roots and influence within the discipline of Psychology. Nyamnjoh (2004:
178) comes in here and reminds us that what is “often missing have been perspectives of
the silent majorities deprived of the opportunity to tell their own stories their own ways
or even to enrich defective accounts by others of their own life experiences. Correcting
this entails paying more attention to the popular epistemologies from which ordinary
people draw on a daily basis, and the ways they situate themselves in relationship to
others within these epistemologies”. Knowledge is always within temporal and spatial
dimensions. Society and historical context plays a role in what you know. Body, space,
and geopolitics play a role in how knowledge is produced. Before going to empirical fact
finding, human beings have a filtered understanding and therefore one can never really
know the truth.

We need to think about the possibility for pluriversality which allows collective meaning
making and situated knowing, taking into consideration the particularities of each
context. Local histories and various forms of knowledges that reside within communities
will contribute towards our understanding of how people approach their challenges and
seek solutions. Nwoye (2015: 5) assists us by connecting this argument to psychology
when he argues that “the inclusion of African Psychology in our university curriculum
holds enormous potential for enriching and extending the contributions of the discipline
of psychology and a means of breaking away from the spells of colonialism and
white-centredness in the study of psychology in Africa. In this way the introduction of
African Psychology as an academic discipline in African universities is perceived by many
African students and scholars as a process of decolonization as well as reflecting one

37 | PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017


aspect of the ongoing process of entrenchment of African-centredness in our university
programmes”. This rethinking of curriculum where multiple forms of knowing and
understanding the world is privileged and offered space we deem as a form of epistemic
disobedience that encourages understanding, defining, and making sense of the world
from the position of the subject (the African) whose voice (in his/her own indigenous
language) and experience has for a long time been muted/silenced. Our quest is also
in line with Manganyi’s plea (2013: 287) wherein he argues: “I was thinking about a
psychology of everyday life, a psychology for and about ordinary women and men, a
psychology that is to advance our society into a non-racist and humane society. I was
imagining and proposing what I call a public interest psychology”. We would like to heed
the call and together with Manganyi imagine an African Psychology that puts at the
forefront the importance of indigenous languages and that takes seriously people’s lived
experiences from the position wherein people exist. A public interest psychology would
acknowledge and offer space to those whose voices have for a long time been denied
and pushed into the margins; many of whom inhabit the black bodies. It is a psychology
that allows the silenced to speak in their voices, and languages.

Concluding remarks
“African Psychology is both like and unlike the project of human self-reflection;
a preoccupation that is found wherever human beings exist, but something that is
different from the scientific project of a psychology created in the 19th century. Hence,
over and above the idea of African Psychology as entailing the project of human
self-reflection is its further social-cultural mission to promote a systematic
understanding of the human condition and culture in post-apartheid Africa”
(Nwoye, 2015: 12).

“IPsychology yama-Afrika, ifana, ingafani nelinge lomntu lokuziphicotha; linge elo


elifumaneka nakuyiphina indawo enabantu. Eli linge lokuziphicotha lwahlukile
kwimizamo yenzululwazi ye Psychology eyayiqulunqwe mandulo. Yi loonto ngaphaya
kweengcamango zePsychology yama-Afrika emumathe ilinge lokuziphicotha, kukho
iphulo elisekelwe ekufundeni banzi ngentlalo nenkcubeko ngenjogo yokukhuthaza
ulwazi olucwangcisiweyo lwemo yoluntu kwakunyenenkcubeko kwi-Afrika
engaphesheya kocalucalulo”.

We close with the above quote from Nwoye as his sentiment successfully captures the
importance of reimagining psychology as we know and practice it today. It is critical
to think about the role of psychology today and embrace the possibility of allowing
space for multiple and alternative ways of teaching and practising it. Many students
have become vocal about the importance of an education that speaks to their lived
realities; many are challenging and rejecting knowledge that undermines that which

PINS [Psychology in Society] 54 • 2017 | 38


they bring with into the classrooms. The speaking (from our students) back highlights
the need to deconstruct and imagine new or different tools that could be used in the
re-imagination of how psychology is understood. African psychology calls for self and
collective reflection from scholars and practitioners who are invested in the project
of understanding human relations and constantly seeking ways to achieve this goal.
Stepping away from our comfort zones is a necessary step we need to take if we are
to truly imagine a psychology that is African and one that respects, acknowledges, and
embraces the pluriversal spaces we all occupy without needing to categorise and label
for our own convenience.

Sigqibe ekubeni sivale ngamazwi ka Nwoye acatshulwe apha ngasentla kuba uwubeka
ngokucacileyo umba wokubaluleka kokuqulunkqa ngokutsha izifundo ze Psychology
ngokokuyazi nokuyi sebenzisa kwethu. Kubalulekile ukucinga ngendima emayidlalwe
yi Psychology kulemihla siphila kuyo kwa kunye nokwamkelwa koluvo loku vumela
iindlela ezahlukileyo zokufundisa nokusetyesiswa kwe Psychology. Abafundi abaninzi
bathetha ngokuphandle ngokubaluleka kwe mfundo ethathela ingqalelo indlela abaphila
ngayo: uninzi lwabo bacela umngeni bekwa khaba ulwazi olujongelaphantsi ulwazi
abaza beluphethe kumagumbi okufundela. Okukunxakama kwabafundi kubonakalisa
ukuba kukho isidingo sokuchitha kuphinde kwakhiwe ngokutsha izixhobo ezinokunceda
ekujongeni ngamehlo amatsha indela iPsychology ebonwangayo. IPsychology yama
Afrika inyanizelisa ukuziphicotha komntu siqusakhe kwakunye nokuziphicotha njenge
lungu lequmrhu lwabanye abantu abanoxanduva lokufundisa uluntu ngokubanzi
ngonxulumelelwano loluntu jikelele. Ngoko ke kubalulekile ukuba sizibhekelise kwindlela
esiqhele ukuzenza ngayo izinto, ukuba ngokwenene sizimisele ukubanomfanekiso we
Psychology esinokuthi yeya Ma-Afrika kwaye ekwa hlonipha, yamkele iinkalo-ngeenkalo
uluntu oluphuma kuzo ngendlela engafuni sithiye kwaye sahlulahlule izinto ukwenzala
ubomi babantu abathile bubelula.

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Hikwa, L (2012) Indigenous languages as preservers of indigenous knowledge in
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