Abstract
The value of human rights in a democratic South Africa is constantly threatened and
often waived for nefarious reasons. We contend that the use of visual graphics
among incoming university visual art students provides a mode of engagement that
helps to inculcate awareness of human rights, social responsibility, and the public
good in South African higher education. Visual graphics, the subject of the research
project which forms a key component of a Masters dissertation by one of the authors,
provides an opportunity to counter a noticeable decline in the students’ response and
sensitivity to the freedoms entrenched in the South African Bill of Rights. The article
presents a study using an action research approach in the classroom between
2005–2010, in order to inculcate awareness of human rights among participating
students and deepen their understanding of social responsibility. The method used
involved an introduction to specific visual art curricular intervention projects which
required incoming first-year students to develop visual responses to address selected
human rights violations and, in their second year, to develop their visual voice in
order to promote human rights advocacy through civic engagement. The critical outcomes
impact positively on the use of graphic images in the curriculum as a visual
methodology to re-insert the discourse of human rights as a basic tenet of constitutional
democracy in higher education.