Abstract
International Relations (IR) in South Africa continues to be shaped by entrenched Eurocentric and patriarchal traditions that determine what knowledge is valued, which theories are foregrounded, and whose perspectives are marginalised. Despite ongoing national and continental commitments to Africanisation and decolonisation, IR curricula still privilege Western epistemologies while excluding African endogenous knowledge systems and African feminist intellectual traditions. This study addresses this disjuncture by examining how African Endogenous Feminist Knowledge (AEFK) conceptualised through African Endogenous Feminist Theory (AFET) can inform the Africanisation of the IR Honours curriculum at a pseudonymised South African institution, referred to in this thesis as University A. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how AFET could serve as critique, theory and praxis, illuminating epistemic tensions, guiding ethical reflexivity, and anchoring socially just curriculum leadership. The study employed a single qualitative case study design involving focusing on the IR Honours Programme at University A. The lens of AFET enabled the study to foreground how gender, race, colonial legacies and institutional culture intersect to shape curriculum-making and to expose the epistemic hierarchies that structure IR teaching. Three key themes emerged from the analysis. These are (1) relevance centred on participants’ critiques of Eurocentric and patriarchal IR syllabi and their call for integrating African feminist, relational, and community-rooted epistemologies that speak to African lived realities; (2) challenges pointed to ongoing barriers such as resource limitations, institutional inertia, entrenched epistemic gatekeeping, and insufficient capacity to advance endogenous feminist curriculum work and (3) enhancement highlighted participants’ emphasis on epistemic and ethical grounding, drawing on principles like Ubuntu, communal responsibility, relational accountability, and endogenous feminist thought as essential for reorienting IR pedagogy toward social justice and contextual relevance. The study concludes that Africanisation efforts in IR cannot be meaningful without integrating AEFK as a core epistemic and pedagogical foundation. It recommends the adoption of the AFET-IR Model, developed in this thesis, as a structured, contextually grounded framework to guide curriculum review, knowledge selection, pedagogy and practice. By positioning AFET as the guiding ethical and epistemic orientation, the study contributes new knowledge to IR curriculum scholarship in South African higher education and...