Decolonising Climate Change Education for isiZulu-Speaking Communities through Zulu Poetry

Humans in the rural Global South are often blamed for harming nature, yet they are least likely to encounter climate change awareness in language and form that are familiar to them. The issue is often presented in colonial languages such as English, with its scientific jargon. Research on African Indigenous Knowledge Systems transmitted through poetic oral traditions that encode ecological knowledge remains limited. This paper explores the potential of decolonising climate change education through an analysis of D.B.Z.B. Ntuli’s 1972 Zulu poem, ‘Umhlabathi ukhala izinyembezi’ (The earth is crying tears), written for isiZulu-speaking communities of South Africa, through Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis whilst drawing on decoloniality theory to critique the colonial legacies embedded within environmental knowledge systems that are predominantly Eurocentric. The guiding question of the study is: How can Ntuli's poem serve as a decolonising tool for climate change awareness among rural isiZulu-speaking communities? Four themes emerge from a reflexive thematic analysis: environmental change and impact, nature's response and damage, human activities and responsibility, and a call to action rooted in indigenous coexistence ethics. The discussion shows that Ntuli's poem offers a ready-made text that undermines the coloniality of knowledge embedded in English-language climate curricula. The implication is that facilitators working in African contexts need to constantly seek strategies that contribute to the decolonisation of knowledge.