Abstract
Relying on discourse analysis and critical social work, this article explores the relevance of a decolonisation discourse to South African child welfare. A child welfare discourse of coloniality emerges from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This emphasises the role that colonisation has played in eradicating indigenous persons or alternately assimilating subjugated populations to Western norms and sensibilities and maintains that coloniality persists in contemporary child welfare. South African child welfare has not been explicitly problematised as furthering coloniality. There have been transformation efforts post-apartheid relating to the legislative/policy environment and increasing racial representation and community-based access. However, the colonial and apartheid roots of South African child welfare persist in impacting child welfare, particularly by overriding local ways of being. A decolonisation discourse is needed to identify the various ways in which the child welfare system replicates colonising processes and how these can be interrupted. To do so, the individualised, intrusive, punitive, statutory Child Protection discourse must be replaced, structural issues prioritised, intergenerational and contemporary trauma centred, liberatory indigenous child-rearing practices privileged and local knowledges curated and used to inform the child welfare process.
In several countries, social work (particularly child welfare) has been called out for having been complicit in harming children and families through colonisation. In Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the ongoing and contemporary overrepresentation of indigenous children in child welfare systems is viewed as evidence of the perpetuation of colonisation and the continued traumatisation of indigenous children, families and communities. Although the colonisation process in South Africa does not entirely mimic that of the countries mentioned and though South African child welfare has attempted post-apartheid to transform the system, the policy framework and child welfare practice nevertheless promotes colonial perspectives. This article aims to identify where this occurs and how this might be addressed, recommending that the Child Protection system be entirely replaced by a system that in an integrated manner attends to structural issues, recognises historical and current trauma as a child welfare matter and identifies and integrates local wisdom regarding child rearing and promoting child well-being. Hence, an alternative way of thinking (or discourse) about South African child welfare is needed that centres on decoloniality.