Nelson Mandela University recently hosted the book launch and public discussion at the South End Museum.
In a room filled with academics, students, and thinkers, there was no shortage of reflective insight or difficult questions particularly around the country’s ongoing battle with its colonial and apartheid inheritance.
Professor Pillay’s book arrives nearly a decade after the #RhodesMustFall movement brought concepts like decoloniality, coloniality, and the "colonial wound" into mainstream academic and political discourse.
That movement, rooted in the contestation of monuments and symbols, forced universities to grapple with more than symbolic change it demanded a rethinking of knowledge itself.
In his book he reflects on the complex realities that have shaped higher education over the past three decades and particularly how ideas of transformation have often focused more on demographics than on changing the deeper structures of knowledge and power.
Pillay argues that while the concept of transformation was initially embraced, it often ignored the need for epistemic justice, and the inclusion of African and marginalised ways of knowing in university curricula.
His book questions dominant Western knowledge systems and emphasises the need to reflect on what we teach, how we teach, and who gets to produce knowledge in post-apartheid institutions.
He draws attention to how historical systems, such as colonialism and apartheid continue to shape the present through inherited inequalities. He also critiques the way universities are still categorised by the same power dynamics of the past, with some seen as superior and others expected to "catch up."
Pillay said it is important for the humanities to rethink their role in addressing global crises like inequality, racism, and environmental destruction. He believes we need new ideas and new ways of thinking to imagine better futures.
In his words, “We might not have made a world that has adequately addressed poverty, racism, or inequality … This book is part of an effort to help us think differently, more imaginatively.”
He concludes by reminding us that no single person holds all the answers: “We're all part of this conversation. We must think together, theorise our experiences, and make contributions — each of us.”