The illusion of change: The unfulfilled promise of decolonisation in a South African private higher education institution

Abstract

While decolonisation discourse has surged in South African public universities, private higher education institutions (PHEIs) remain a significant, under-researched site of market-driven education. This study aimed to identify the structural and cultural conditions that reproduce coloniality within a large, Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed South African PHEI. Using a qualitative case study design, this research applies a critical realist and critical discourse analysis lens to move beyond surface-level rhetoric. It seeks to identify the deep, unobservable generative mechanisms (profit, governance) that shape the institutional landscape. Findings from interviews with six experienced lecturers show that while they are conceptually fluent in decolonisation, their agency is severely curtailed by a non-negotiable, profit-driven institutional ethos and a rigid, centralised curriculum governance. This combination produces a state of ‘colonial morphostasis’, an active reproduction of the status quo. The study concludes that meaningful, structural decolonisation is antithetical to the institution’s current corporate model. It reveals the mechanisms by which neoliberal and colonial logics merge to reproduce the coloniality of power, knowledge and being.
Contribution: This study advances decolonisation debates by providing a rare empirical analysis of the under-explored PHEI sector. It uses a critical realism and social realism framework to offer a causal explanation for why transformation is inhibited, concluding that the institution’s core business model is a primary mechanism of colonial reproduction. It proposes ‘pathways for bounded agency’ as a form of critical micro-resistance for lecturers in similar corporate contexts.