Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding.

— Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p. 36

The resurging call in South Africa presently highlights that decolonization as a political, epistemological and economic liberatory project has remained an unfinished business, giving way to coloniality. Invoking Audre Lorde, in that the master tools will never dismantle the masters house and the idea that they could is what produces a seemingly inescapable coloniality. The call to decolonise the university is a clarion cry for universities in an African context to do away with coloniality and be more relevant to their geographic situation instead of being apolitical, a-contextual, outward facing, and structurally racist monoliths at the edge of society.

Sparked around the issue of academic and financial exclusion of black students, and continued existence of colonial and apartheid memorial, statues and other representational symbols and insignia at the University of Cape Town, the protest and eventual removal of the Rhodes statue was symbolic for the impending and inevitable fall of white supremacy and white privilege at the university, and by implication in the wider society in South Africa.

The debates and urgencies that encompassed and capitulated the height of this period have been organised under the umbrella term of "decolonisation" as a stand in term for addressing dissatisfaction with processes and systems that are under-transformed post-apartheid.

Given that the initial protests were against 'art and heritage objects' in the university art collection, beside the Cecil Rhodes statue, many of which were artworks produced by alumni and students of the Michaelis School of Art. There was an assumption and hopes that the 'moment' would force an 'accelerated reflection' on not only the university, but the art school, its programs and orientation.

Decolonisation and the Scopic Regime was an attempt to critically engage an art school in the midst of an embattled university context, and garner some perspective, both in terms of what it means to heed the call to decolonise and how do we recognise it when it's happening.

Looking After Freedom curated with Dr. Rael Salley, through the work of 10 South African artists the exhibition condensed into speculative proposition the supposition that there are recent works of Africana contemporary art that make Looking After Freedom possible.

Exhibition Histories and Afro-fictions curated with Dr. Lucy Steeds was a filmic exhibition that invited reflection on how different public contexts have shaped, or sought to shape, notions of 'African art' historically and around the world.

3rd Space Symposium convened with Prof. Jay Pather explored ideas around the role of the creative arts in provoking change, the imperative to decolonize the university, and the dialectic between the settled nature of academic curricula and the spontaneity of transformation.

Broadly the project Decolonisation and the Scopic Regime proposes that since decolonial discourse cannot be restricted to binary power relations, its scopic regimes must not only expand, but decipher the epistemological and methodological grounds of coloniality, as well as its embedment within the modernity project and its mutating abilities.