About CCJD

are systems of integrated knowledge that have developed—and keep developing—in a specific place as people engage with and respond to their experience and needs in that context.  We recognise that indigenous systems continue to inform the understandings and way of living of African (and other) South Africans. We recognise that knowledge systems indigenous to South Africa were subjected to violence, fragmentation and criminalisation through the years of colonialism and apartheid, paralysing the capacity of these systems to flourish and evolve in healthy and powerful ways as they encountered other (European) knowledge systems. We believe that indigenous knowledge systems must be recognised and engaged—by government, NGOs, researchers and other entities—for social change initiatives to support the wellbeing and flourishing of the people such initiatives are designed for. Such initiatives should support African indigenous knowledge systems to flourish and evolve to contribute to the discourse and development of solutions in the modern globalised world and in a diverse South Africa that continues to carry the legacy of apartheid in terms of the dominance of Western knowledge systems in most structures—including civil society.

We are committed to reversing the presumption that Western approaches are inherently superior and their centring as the norm across institutions and initiatives. We aim to interrogate our presumptions, thinking and structures continually to address the legacy of Eurocentrism and hold open space for other possibilities informed by local communities, indigenous systems and critical theory.

We refuse to get caught in a ‘charity’ or ‘service-delivery’ mindset where institutions or individuals with more social or economic capital are presumed to know and be able to do on behalf of, or better than, those with less social or economic capital. Individuals know themselves and their context best and have the capacity to think, analyse and act to transform their situation. Our role is to engage strategically to trigger and facilitate this.

In light of this, our starting point is always the community. While Eurocentric research has typically mined communities for data and analysed and drawn conclusions separate from the ‘informants’, we recognise that individuals have the capacity to make sense of their lives. Our ‘listening’ is thus not only focused on what people are experiencing but also on the meaning they make from this and the thoughts they have about what change is necessary and how they can leverage it.

In addition to listening to and engaging with local communities, we also listen to and participate in local and global conversations and modelling of the dynamics and systems that perpetuate injustice and inequality. We thus look at issues both from the grassroots level (bottom) ‘up’, and from the global level (top) ‘down’ to understand phenomena and inform our action.

We should not undertake an activity in a community unless the individuals involved believe that it has value. Research data should only be collected from our activities if it could have value to other communities, organizations or government, or contribute to scholarly discourse.