Social Empowerment Theory

Empowerment theory
The empowerment theory owes its articulation to the woks of Freire (1973, 1998). According to Robbins et al (2012), the theory of empowerment draws a range of its ideas and key themes from economic and political theory, sociology, the social work tradition and liberation theology. It is grounded on the conflict perspective model and it endorses social activism and consciousness raising. The concept of critical consciousness is particularly essential for personal empowerment because it enlights people of the oppression and discrimination in their societies as well as its social and political impacts (Lee, 2007).
Drawing from the understanding of Freire’s work, empowerment is vitally concerned with the structural barriers

In other words empowerment is a process through which the marginalized individuals, groups and communities are enabled to access power to resources and to have overall control on their lives (Adams 2008). He further postulated that tower in this respective context has to do with the ability to access and control resources and people. The overall objective is of the empowerment theory is for the marginalized individuals, groups and communities to gain economic and sociopolitical liberation.
From the understanding of the empowerment theory, one can see its positive relevance to South Africa’s decolonization and Africanization process. This can be so in that, a critical analysis on pre 1994 South Africa shows that the Republic was under white colonial rule of the National Party which sort to increase patterns of colonial discrimination of the Black South Africans through the devolution of political structures and the promotion of a putative independence in the African reserves

According to Moulder 1995 in (Letseka et al, p.2013) “The discourse on African higher education that has appeared in the last decade depicts the inappropriateness and irrelevance of current curricula, which was introduced during the colonial era’. This has resulted in a different call for Africanisation of higher education. According to this argument, the Africanization of education can be conceptualized as the adaptation of the subject matter as well as teaching approaches defined to the physical and cultural realities of the African environment. Also at regional level, South Africa is a member of the Southern Africa Development Commit (SADC) which is a board narrowly defined and principled to uphold the interest of Afican countries in the South part politically, socially and economically , respecting difference in cultures (