Decolonization and Decoloniality – phases, ways and impediments: excerpts from Omanga’s interview with Professor Gatsheni-Ndlovu, 2020

Phases of decolonisation

“Decolonization needs to be understood in its phases. What became known as “primary resistance” movements—such as the Maji Maji in Eastern Africa (1905–1907) and Ndebele-Shona Uprisings in Southern African region (1896–1897)—formed the basis for future nationalist-anticolonial struggles, with the Mau-Mau Uprising (1952–1960) occupying an intermediate position. What is well-known is twentieth-century decolonization, which the historian Paul Tiyambe Zeleza depicted as the “proudest moment in African history.”3 Basically, the educated African native elites—westernized elites who wanted to replace white elites—played a leading role, and their project included taking over the institutions and the state left by the colonizers. Their change agenda was, however, undercut by the resilient and immanent logics of colonialism, which consistently and persistently diluted decolonization. Strategically speaking, Nkrumah’s injunction to seeking the political kingdom first in the hope that all other things will be added unto it was correct, but with hindsight, we have never seen it happen that way. By 1965, Nkrumah was speaking of neocolonialism as a global threat to genuine decolonization. A people can gain territorial independence but not gain economic, epistemic, or cultural independence.”

Inspired by…

“Building on the long-standing African radical decolonial tradition represented by such giants as Fanon, Nkrumah, Steve Biko, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Ibekwe Chinweizu, and drawing also from Latin American ideas of coloniality and decoloniality, I felt it necessary to rearticulate the struggles for decolonization and their necessity for twenty-first-century liberation, culminating in Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity and Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization.”

Teaching and learning the noncolonial way

“Epistemologically, and even pedagogically, what does it mean for African studies to learn in a “noncolonial way”? A noncolonial way underscores that all human beings were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems and recognizes the various and diverse ways of knowing, which restores epistemic freedom and cognitive justice. Then there are methodological implications when a noncolonial way of doing research is set afoot, which avoids the extractive approach and anchors subject-to-subject relationships, as opposed to “subject-object” relationships shot through by the invisible “white gaze” of the other. Bear in mind that methodology itself has been a tool of epistemic domination and responsible for cognitive injustices. Methodology, if not subjected to decolonial interrogation, carries the dirty history of colonialism and racism. To decolonize methodology itself means we have to think deeply about ethics; we must think about subject-to-subject relationship method, not the object-subject relationship; you must think of a nonextractive methodology. You need to unlearn that one geographical space in the world cannot be teacher of the world. And then relearn, that all human beings are born to valid and legitimate knowledge. At the decenter of unlearning is also the important process of de-bourgeoisefication of knowledge.”

Practical decolonisation not leap service

“Decolonization has to remain a revolutionary term with theoretical and practical value. If it is immediately embraced by everyone and it’s easily on the lips of everyone, there is a danger it might transform into a buzzword and a metaphor. There was a time when many academics never wanted to hear about the term, especially where I am based in South Africa, and were comfortable with terms such as “transformation” and “Africanization.” Nowadays, everyone runs with decolonization. And, once that happens, it means people are appropriating it to mean other things which it is not. It then loses its revolutionary potential, and it becomes part of reformism—just another way to be seen as progressive. But the issue is that the decolonization expressed by your lips differs from the decolonization that comes from within, as a revolutionary concept that speaks about rehumanization—which is a fundamental planetary project.”

What and who are the biggest impediments to the realization of the aspirations of decolonization?

“The greatest impediments to decolonization are the very people who are supposed to lead the decolonial struggle because they are products of colonization. They will need to first liberate themselves before they can do anything. It becomes a lifelong relearning process. The leading academic voices on decolonization are also products of westernized universities, which taught them to think in a particular way. What they are engaged in is self-unlearning and there is, therefore, the need to unlearn and then to relearn. And the pitfalls of falling into what we are trying to change are always there. We also need to be honest and say we are products of these processes and structures of power that we are fighting to change. And the potential for contradictions and ambivalences are endemic to the exercise, and we must not fear confronting them. Despite the contradictions being inevitable, we must still act and fight.

The other issue is this: colonial global matrices of power are not resting to allow decolonization to take place. This system always devises methods of reinvention, by appropriating the antisystemic forces pushing them back, into itself, so that it gives the system a new lease of life. The problem of the decolonization of the 1960s was that we wanted to be part of the (European) game (sometimes called Africanization or inclusion into the system without fundamental change). The decolonization of the twenty-first century is to question the rules of the game, not to be part of it. We need to get it right this time. The additive approach (in curricula, or of Global South names in reading lists, or other) is a shallow approach to decolonization. It legitimizes the structure. We need to change the structure itself.”

If you remove colonialism physically without removing it epistemically, it will not disappear.

Gatsheni-ndlovu, 2020

Cite as…

Gatsheni-Ndlovu, S. (2020). Decolonization, Decoloniality, and the Future of African Studies: A Conversation with Dr. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Interview with Duncan Omanga, program officer for both the African Peacebuilding Network and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa.

Another publication

Click to access Ndlovu-Gatsheni-2018-THE-DYNAMICS-OF-EPISTEMOLOGICAL-DECOLONISATION-IN-THE-21ST-CENTURY-TOWARDS-EPISTEMIC-FREEDOM.pdf