Decolonisation and Multiculturalism: Navigating a Theoretical Cul-de-Sac

What does it mean to decolonise education in a multicultural society? Can this society be decolonised after all? In this article, I ask these questions and try to provide some answers. I draw on qualitative responses from some graduate students in South Africa to argue that decolonisation is mainly about ensuring multicultural sensitivity. As both a process and practice, decolonisation challenges cultural and epistemic ethnocentrism in significant ways. With this argument, the article presents a new way of reigniting the debate on decolonisation and offers possible ways of altering existing misinterpretations of what it means to decolonise education or the academy in the global South and beyond. I argue that any discussion about decolonisation should not be about the North–South divide. Rather, any thinking about decolonisation should focus on ways to enhance multicultural interaction and dialogue.