The degradation of the Afrocentric counselling perspective as a function of the perpetuations of engendered Eurocentric hegemonic practices in Zimbabwe
Keywords:
Afrocentric counselling, Eurocentric counselling, Engendered hegemonic practices, Traditions, Culture, Spirituality, CollectivismAbstract
Africa as a whole, Zimbabwe included, has not remained static since colonisation by the west who pretended to be on a civilizing mission in terms of culture, norms and lifestyle yet they had an agenda punctuated by supremacy ideologies. The perpetuation of Eurocentric ideologies has left a trail of extreme distortion of most, if not all, the cultural values of the African people to the advantage of the west. This has left Africa confused and uncertain culturally, philosophically and religiously as to which counselling perspective to follow between the Afrocentric and Eurocentric perspective. Thus the invasion and colonisation of Africa has polarised even the counselling systems employed by its people leaving them distorted and in a state of confusion. The effects of this colonisation and invasion have permeated the Afrocentric perspectives and approaches to counselling to the extent of undermining the cultural and spiritual significances in these regards. This paper interrogates the degradation of the Afrocentric counselling perspective as a function of the hegemonic perpetuations of Eurocentric counselling systems with a special focus on Zimbabwe. The paper traces how the supremacy agenda of the west has permeated the counselling domain and, like in the case of missionary religion, used as an excuse to exterminate the traditional forms of counselling in the name of formality and professionalism. The value of Afrocentric counselling is overwhelmingly exposed in the paper and as a way forward the paper admits to the fact of globalisation and plurality of culture and therefore concludes in favour of the multicultural perspective to counselling which is hitherto not biased toward Euro centrism.
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