Background: Persons with disabilities continue to be excluded from professions in South Africa despite legislation on non-discrimination and equity. Objectives: We sought to identify both the opportunities and obstacles that students with disabilities face in professional degrees. Method: Selected texts from the South African and international literature were analysed and synthesised. Results: Students with disabilities are afforded opportunities to graduate into professions through the current climate of transformation, inclusion and disability policies, various support structures and funding. These opportunities are mitigated by obstacles at both the higher education site and at the workplace. At university, they may experience difficulties in accessing the curriculum, disability units may be limited in the support they can offer, policies may not be implemented, funding is found to be inadequate and the built environment may be inaccessible. Fieldwork poses additional obstacles in terms of public transport which is not accessible to students with disabilities; a lack of higher education support extended to the field sites, and buildings not designed for access by people with disabilities. At both sites, students are impacted by negative attitudes and continued assumptions that disability results from individual deficit, rather than exclusionary practices and pressures. Conclusion: It is in the uniqueness of professional preparation, with its high demands of both theory and practice that poses particular obstacles for students with disabilities. We argue for the development of self-advocacy for students with disabilities, ongoing institutional and societal transformation and further research into the experiences of students with disabilities studying for professional degrees.

Background: Former historically disadvantaged social groups such as women, black people and those with disabilities are expected to participate in the skilled labour force that South Africa has pledged to produce for the 21st century. However, in the South African context, research widely neglects access of those into professional degrees in higher learning. There is a need for such an exploration because people with disabilities have been found to be excluded from professional employment.Objectives: Using decolonial theory, this empirical study sought to explore obstacles confronted by students with disabilities at entry in a specific institution of higher learning in South Africa. The aim was to unveil the invisible obstacles and their causes for an effective intervention.Method: A qualitative research design was adopted and in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data from the participants. This particular dimension of research method was chosen to enable dialogue and development of partnership, which is important for collecting rich data.Results: While policies of inclusion still enabled access of all students into professional degrees, there were however inequitable practices, alienation and inequality that excluded students with disabilities at entry. Obstacles seen at surface level were not the real ones; the real ones were the deep-seated issues of coloniality.Conclusion: If the underlying causes of obstacles at entry are not visible to students with disabilities themselves and the responsible stakeholders, students might continue to be oppressed on entry into the professional degrees and in higher learning generally. Obstacles can only be dismantled when there is an awareness about their deep-seated causes.

In the 21st century, knowledge has become the driving force behind societal progress, emphasising the need for higher education to produce contextually relevant knowledge that addresses the multifaceted challenges faced by local communities. It is in this respect that knowledge needs to be generated through one’s position of epistemic location in higher education. However, academics positioned at the pinnacle of knowledge production in higher education find themselves entangled in a global crossroads. On the one hand, they are expected to exercise epistemic freedom by producing knowledge from their centralities and unique positionalities. On the other hand, they are constrained by the pervasive influence of neoliberalism, a paradigm that dictates that knowledge production should be subservient to market dynamics. To interrogate the intricacies of the impediments placed on academics seeking to exercise their epistemic freedom, this article utilises a desktop literature review, underscored by the theoretical framework of Decolonial Theory. The examination elucidates how these constraints hinder the production of knowledge from the centrality of the Global South. The article draws examples from South African higher education as a point of reference, providing examples that underscore the global challenges of neoliberal policies in higher education. Central to the thesis advanced in this article is the contention that, within the existing neoliberal framework of higher education driven by market forces and productivity imperatives, the production of knowledge from the position of one’s centrality is limited and the ability to produce locally relevant knowledge is fundamentally restricted. Consequently, the epistemic freedom of academics within higher education across the Global South is imperilled.Contribution: In response to these challenges, this article engages in an academic discourse on potential strategies for reclaiming epistemic freedom within the prevailing neoliberal milieu of higher education.

For decades, scholars from the Global North have written the disability script from their own perspective, writing it for persons withdisabilities and for disability scholarship in the Global South. A mould has been broken and African scholars have now begun re-writing the script from their own perspectives and from the Global South’s perspective. Using Decolonial Theory and the systematic review method, the paper is based on the work of Professor Tsitsi Chataika, which has impacted disability scholarship from an African context and from the Global South at large. The work contributes extensively to disability scholarship in terms of disability conception,disability theory, disability policy and inclusion of persons with disabilities in society and of students with disabilities in higher education in African countries. The scholar shifts the narrative from writing disability scholarship from the Global North to the South.

Radical inclusion: Students with disabilities’ professional learning in South African higher learning

Using literature from his own works and underpinned by the Social Justice Theory, the paper presented and discussed Sechaba Mahlomaholo creation of sustainable environment for teaching and learning by the marginalised at all levels of education. While Sechaba focused on the marginalised his work did not specifically make specific reference to creating a sustainable teaching and learning for students with disabilities in the context of higher education, who also belong to the category of the marginal however due to impairment related disadvantaged, their learning needs are different and unique from the other marginalised, warranting a specific focus on creating a sustainable teaching and learning environment specifically designed for them as ‘special’ category. The aim of the present paper was to therefore to present Sechaba’s work in terms of working towards achieving and attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) of providing quality education to all and lifelong learning and also provide further discussion of creation of sustainable teaching and learning for students with disabilities in the context of South African higher education, working towards also achieving SDG5 related specifically to persons with disabilities. The purpose of so doing was to honor Sechaba and also extend his legacy to include students with disabilities in his work of creating sustainable teaching and learning for a ‘special’ marginal social group, which his seminal work had overlooked. Keywords: Social Justice Theory, Students with Disabilities, Higher Education, Teaching and Learning