Reinvoking the past in the present: changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe

This article discusses the histories, narratives and representations that have been produced by and on former ZAPU leader and Vice-President of Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo. We focus on the multiple identities and subject positions that Nkomo came to inhabit in the way in which he was represented in ZANU-PF’s discourse of the early 1980s; his self-representation in Nkomo’s 1984 autobiography Nkomo: the story of my life and subsequent appropriations of Nkomo by different political actors in the early 2000s. In line with Stuart Hall’s 1996 description, we consider identities not as essentialist and fixed categories but as positional, multiple, constantly evolving and constructed through difference. We argue that the changing identities of Nkomo served the purposes and interests of a variety of political actors, ranging from the ruling party ZANU-PF to the opposition MDC. Against the background of a mushrooming of popular historical narratives evidenced by both the publication and republishing of biographies, autobiographies and significant reports, and the serialisation and recirculation of these texts in newspapers and through websites, we also argue that the many uses and appropriations of Nkomo demonstrate the continued relevance of the past in the power struggles waged by different political actors in Zimbabwe

Book Review: Putting People First: African Priorities for the UN Millennium Assembly

Book Title: Putting People First: African Priorities for the UN Millennium Assembly (2000)Authors: Pandelani Mathoma, Greg Mills, John Stremlau (eds.) Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs, 129 pp

How did Europe rule Africa? Dialectics of Colonialism and African Political Consciousness in Matabeleland Region of Zimbabwe

The question of how Europe ruled Africa relates to the crucial issues of settler-native identity as constructions of colonialism as well as political consciousness formation and development among the colonized as well as the colonizers. Because colonialism operated ambiguously throughout its life to the extent of hiding its adverse contours of epistemological and mental invasion that have come to haunt during the post-colonial era, it deserve to be subjected to systematic theorization and historicization. This article deploys various conceptual tools culled from post-colonial theories to delve deeper into the dialectics and ontology of colonial governance in Zimbabwe and it simultaneously historicize the phenomenon of colonial governance on the basis of how white Rhodesians inscribed themselves in Matabeleland in the early twentieth century. It also systematically interrogates the development of Ndebele political consciousness under the alienating influences of settler colonialism up to the mid-twentieth century. The article contributes to the broader debates on colonial encounters and colonial governance that have left an indelible mark on ex-colonies across the world. Colonialism was not just a footnote in African history. It had long term pervasive impact of altering everyone and everything that it found in Africa

Chapter 1 Introduction: Seek Ye Epistemic Freedom First

Epistemic Freedom in Africa is about the struggle for African people to think, theorize, interpret the world and write from where they are located, unencumbered by Eurocentrism. The imperial denial of common humanity to some human beings meant that in turn their knowledges and experiences lost their value, their epistemic virtue. Now, in the twenty-first century, descendants of enslaved, displaced, colonized, and racialized peoples have entered academies across the world, proclaiming loudly that they are human beings, their lives matter and they were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems that are capable of helping humanity to transcend the current epistemic and systemic crises. Together, they are engaging in diverse struggles for cognitive justice, fighting against the epistemic line which haunts the twenty-first century. The renowned historian and decolonial theorist Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni offers a penetrating and well-argued case for centering Africa as a legitimate historical unit of analysis and epistemic site from which to interpret the world, whilst simultaneously making an equally strong argument for globalizing knowledge from Africa so as to attain ecologies of knowledges. This is a dual process of both deprovincializing Africa, and in turn provincializing Europe. The book highlights how the mental universe of Africa was invaded and colonized, the long-standing struggles for 'an African university', and the trajectories of contemporary decolonial movements such as Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall in South Africa. This landmark work underscores the fact that only once the problem of epistemic freedom has been addressed can Africa achieve political, cultural, economic and other freedoms. This groundbreaking new book is accessible to students and scholars across Education, History, Philosophy, Ethics, African Studies, Development Studies, Politics, International Relations, Sociology, Postcolonial Studies and the emerging field of Decolonial Studies

Eurocentrism, coloniality and the myths of decolonisation of Africa

Abstract: Fifty years after the celebration of decolonisation the ‘European game’ which denied Africans agency continues to prevail. Coloniality remains a reality

Celebrating the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth and his nationalist humanist vision

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, charismatic and iconic, is a product of his time and can only be understood within the context of the social movements that he belonged to and led. Thus, this article locates Mandela within the local and global context in which he emerged while at the same time making sense of his instrumental interventions and nationalist humanist vision of life, peace and justice. This article situates Mandela’s political life within the broader context of the third humanist revolution, which was a response to the inimical processes of racism, enslavement and colonisation. In its centenary celebration of Mandela, the article re-articulates how he embodied alternative politics founded on the will to live as opposed to the will to power; the paradigm of peace as opposed to the paradigm of war; political justice as opposed to criminal justice; as well as pluriversality as opposed to tragic notions of racial separate development known as apartheid. What is fleshed out is a ‘Mandela phenomenon’ as founded on strong progressive politics albeit predicated on the unstable idea of the potential of advocates and victims of apartheid undergoing a radical metamorphosis amenable to the birth of a new pluriversal society.Keywords: Nelson Mandela, nationalist humanism, politics of life, paradigm of peace, pluriversality, South Afric

Why decoloniality in the 21st Century?

Abstract: What Africans must be vigilant against is the trap of ending up normalising and universalising coloniality as a natural state of the world. It must be unmasked, resisted and destroyed because it produced a world order that can only be sustained through a combination of violence, deceit, hypocrisy and lies

African Studies in distress: German scholarship on Africa and the neglected challenge of decoloniality

This paper is a response to Matthias Basedau's article published in issue 55/2020 of the present journal. At a time when African Studies scholarship is rising beyond the flogging of dead horses, certain strands in the field in Germany seem to ignore much of the valuable scholarship and intellectual contributions by excellent African and non-African researchers alike. It is striking to see how Basedau falls prey to the same shortcomings that he draws our attention to, that is, the domination of African Studies by sources and figures outside the continent and the construction of Africa as a space of lack. This underscores the urgency of decolonizing African Studies at many levels, including liberating it from the straightjacket of area studies, interrogating purportedly objective scholarship, and opening it up to new theoretical perspectives. The restriction to comparative approaches will only ensure that these strands in African Studies remain stuck in their epistemological cul-de-sac.Dieser Beitrag ist eine Replik auf den Artikel von Matthias Basedau, der in Ausgabe 55/2020 der vorliegenden Zeitschrift erschienen ist. Während die Afrikawissenschaften im Begriff sind, überkommene Debatten hinter sich zu lassen, scheinen manche Strömungen innerhalb des Feldes in Deutschland intellektuelle Beiträge herausragender afrikanischer und nichtafrikanischer Forscherinnen und Forscher nicht wahrzunehmen. Es ist frappierend, wie Basedau teils dieselben Defizite reproduziert, auf die er aufmerksam machen will, etwa die Dominanz der Afrikastudien durch Arbeiten und Personen von außerhalb des Kontinents oder die Konstruktion Afrikas als einen Ort, dem es an vielem mangelt. Dies unterstreicht die Notwendigkeit einer Dekolonisierung der Afrikastudien auf vielen Ebenen, etwa durch ihre Befreiung aus der Zwangsjacke der Regionalstudien, das Hinterfragen vermeintlich objektiver Wissenschaft und die Öffnung für dekoloniale Ansätze. Die Beschränkung auf vergleichende Perspektiven wird hingegen dafür sorgen, dass die Afrikawissenschaften in einer epistemologischen Sackgasse stecken bleiben