A brilliant interview with Sylvia Tamale by Sylvia Bawa and Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin has just been published by Feminist Africa. March 3, 2023
“Africa will inevitably rise like those many heads of the hydra, but first it needs a decolonial break from the tether that ties its economies to the global capitalist market”—An interview with Sylvia Tamale
Decolonization and Afro-Feminism wins the 2022 FTGS Book Prize
The FTGS Book Committee has unanimously awarded the 2022 FTGS Book Prize to Decolonization and Afro-Feminism (Daraja Press). Sylvia Tamale’s Decolonization and Afro-Feminism makes a compelling case for unlearning imperial power relations by “shaking off” the colonial filters through which we view the world. This process, she argues, is a process of relearning that re-envisions Pan-Africanism as a more inclusive decolonizing/decolonial movement that embraces afro-feminist politics. Tamale also challenges the traditional human rights paradigm and its concomitant idea of “gender equality,” flagging instead the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a serious alternative for reinvigorating African notions of social justice.
In Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, Sylvia Tamale provides a powerful guide towards the elimination of two interconnected challenges in contemporary Africa by situating her text as “part of the narrative that does not simply commit to the struggle for decolonization, but also recognizes the dynamics of gender within the struggle for new ways of being”. – Emmah Khisa Senge Wabuke: Feminist Legal Studies https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-021-09470-6
Overall, this book is not only about how Afro-feminism has been excluded from decolonisation efforts, but how its inclusion can nourish decolonial epistemology. …
Although it is dedicated to students of Africa, this book goes beyond an excellent teaching tool, to make important contributions to socio-political organising in fur- therance of the Afro-feminist decolonial project on the continent.—Emmah Khisa Senge Wabuke,Centre for Gender Studies, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Feminist Legal Studies (2022) 30:121–123 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-021-09470-6
Professor Sylvia Tamale is a leading African feminist, multidisciplinary scholar and Coordinator of the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Centre based at the School of Law, Makerere University in Uganda. Prof Tamale was the first female Dean of Law in…
Why do so many Africans believe they cannot break the “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” cycle? Six decades after colonial flags were lowered and African countries gained formal independence, the continent struggles to free itself from the deep legacies of colonialism, imperialism and patriarchy. Many intellectuals, politicians, feminists and other activists, eager to contribute to Africa’s liberation, have frustratingly, felt like they took the wrong path. Analyzed through the eyes of Afro-feminism, this book revisits some of the fundamental preconditions needed for radical transformation.
The main focus of Decolonization and Afro-feminism is unlearning imperial power relations by relearning to “shake off” the colonial filters through which we view the world, including the instruments of law, education, religion, family and sexuality. It re-envisions Pan-Africanism as a more inclusive decolonizing/decolonial movement that embraces Afro-feminist politics. It also challenges the traditional human rights paradigm and its concomitant idea of “gender equality,” flagging instead, the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a serious alternative for reinvigorating African notions of social justice. If you are a student of Africa or in a space where you wish to recalibrate your compass and reboot your consciousness in the struggle for Africa’s liberation, this book is for you.
Afro-Feminism is a fresh lens through which to consider decolonisation and decoloniality because it gives voice to and perspective from African women. It brings together the activism and scholarship of women who have fought for and alongside men in the political struggles for independence from colonial rule and continue to fight the injustices of colonial effects. They challenge the normative academic models for knowledge-making, offering different kinds of methodologies that recognise ways of knowing and being that resist and contest the scientific, positivist bias of Eurocentric gatekeeping. For precisely this reason, Sylvia Tamale’s layered and meticulous attention to epistemic alternatives opens up new conversations about what it is to decolonise our thinking, being and acting in this world. …There are many reasons to read this book, one of which is that I can barely do it justice in a review. Tamale covers the range of colonial effects on African experiences and relations with compelling confidence and articulation, conveying a profound understanding of the essential work of decoloniality from an Afro-Feminist perspective. There are ‘aha’ moments on every page, detailed and multiple references which encourage the reader to keep searching for and finding the conscientisation and truth that will liberate. – Corinne Knowles, Extended Studies Unit, Rhodes University, Makhanda. (2021): Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2021.1938976
Decolonization and Afro-feminism makes a major epistemic contribution to charting Africa’s way forward, and alerts us to new forms of domination such as digital colonialism… This book will leave you thinking!
– Oyeronke Oyewumi, author of The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses
Sylvia Tamale brings an encyclopedic rigour to the study of decolonization and what it offers as an African liberatory praxis. Her scholarship is rooted in real-time solidarity with African feminists and queer activists… Essential reading.
– Jessica Horn, Feminist activist, writer and co-founder, African Feminist Forum Working Group
Tamale brilliantly dissects and demolishes the dangerous tropes of coloniality that distort our understanding of African societies, cultures, bodies, institutions, experiences, social relations, and realities… The book is a clarion call for the continent’s feminist epistemic liberation.
—Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences and Vice Chancellor, United States International University-Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
This book is Intellectually orgasmic! It provides students with an Afro-feminist intellectual rebirth… The next generation of Afro-feminists have our struggle cut out for us.
—Anna Adeke, Feminist and student, Makerere University, Uganda
About the Author: Sylvia Tamale is a Feminist, Sociologist and Professor of Law at Makerere University in Uganda.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Some Key Definitions xiii
1. Introduction 1
Of Counter-Narratives 1
The Meaning of Africa(ns) 10
Goals and Organization of the Book 13
2. The Basics of Decolonization and Decolonial Futures 17
Africa’s Decolonization and Decolonial Reconstruction 18
Decolonization & Decoloniality: Science Fiction or Present Fact?
22
A Two-Pronged Approach: The Political and the Psychological
27
3. Feminists and the Struggle for Africa’s Decolonial Reconstruction
27
Gender Studies in African Academies 44
Beyond Racism: Multiple Inequalities and Intersectionality 62
Integrating Afro-Ecofeminism into Decolonization 80
4. Challenging the Coloniality of Sex, Gender and Sexuality 92
Michael Phelps and Caster Semenya: A Juxtaposition 95
Decolonial African Sex/Gender Systems 100
A Decolonial Analysis of the Phelps/Semenya Conundrum 105
Medico-Legal Taxonomies: Semenya’s Battle with Science and the Law
119
5. Legal Pluralism and Decolonial Feminism 132
State “Customary Law” versus Living Customary Law 133
Decolonized Customary Law 140
Gender and Religious Relativism 173
6. Repositioning the Dominant Discourses on Rights and Social Justice
187
Human? Rights? 194
Unpacking the Universalizing Essentialism of “Gender Equality”
205
Reconceptualizing Justice through Ubuntu 221
7. Rethinking the African Academy 235
History and Evolution of African Academies 237
Internalized Colonialism: How it is Achieved 245
A Framework for Transforming the African Academy 257
8. Decolonizing Family Law: The Case of Uganda 285
Conceptualizing the Heteropatriarchal Family 288
The Ugandan Family and the Law 300
Family Relations: Then and Now 306
Challenging the Status Quo 321
The Limits of Officialist Approaches to Family Gender Justice
331
9. Towards Feminist Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Feminism
340
Feminism in the Pan-African Movement? 343
Pan-Africanism in African Feminism 369
Developing a New Pan-Africanism in the Era of Globalization 378
Epilogue: Decolonizing Africa in the Age of Big Data 385
Index 397
Conversation between Sylvia Tamale and Charmaine Pereira
In Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, Ugandan feminist scholar and human rights activist Sylvia Tamale tackles the complicated task of articulating and identifying some of the work that decolonisation/ decoloniality requires of African scholars, thinkers, artists and activists at this moment in history. The book spans more than four hundred pages, covers an impressive range of themes, and functions in many different registers. Decolonisation/decoloniality is taken up as an epistemic, political, artistic, psychological, legal, and cultural project. At the heart of the book is the claim that the decolonisation of African societies is Afro-feminist work, in so far as the persisting racial and economic hierarchies of colonialism and coloniality are inextricably intertwined with systems of heteropatriarchy. … Perhaps the most important tension that this book manages to hold, is the one between understanding the magnitude of colonial devastation and erasure on the one hand, and maintaining hope and movement, on the other. Tamale manages to present to her reader the vast and extremely complex nature of the project of decolonisation/decoloniality, while, at the same time, cultivating in the text not only a feeling of urgency, but an unwavering and deep sense of possibility. She creates and identifies openings through which the work can be started, and although the solutions she offers often have a utopian tone to them, they are firmly anchored in existing African realities and histories. This is an energising book to read, it is not simply an academic treatise, but also a compelling and enlivening call to action.
Azille Coetzee (2021): Decolonization and Afro-Feminism by Sylvia Tamale, Agenda, DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2021.1917301
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Under-Education in Africa: From Colonialism to Neoliberalism is a collection of essays on diverse aspects of educational systems that were written over a period of four and a half decades, written from the point of view of an activist educator.
With the focus on Tanzania, they cover education in the German colonial era, the days of Ujamaa socialism and the present neo-liberal times. Themes include the social function of education, the impact of external dependency on education, practical versus academic education, democracy and violence in schools, the role of computers in education, the effect of privatization on higher education, misrepresentation of educational history, good and bad teaching styles, book reading, the teaching of statistics to doctors and student activism in education.
Two essays provide a comparative view of the situation in Tanzania and the USA. Linking the state of the educational system with society as a whole, they explore the possibility of progressive transformation on both fronts. They are based on the author’s experience as a long-term educator, his original research, relevant books, newspaper reports and discussions with colleagues and students.
The author is a retired professor of medical statistics who has taught at colleges and universities in Tanzania and at universities in the USA and Norway.
Table of Contents:
– Abbreviations
– Preface
– Introduction
– Education and Colonialism
– Education and Ujamaa
– Education and Democracy
– Education and Dependency
– Education and Violence
– Education and Privatization
– Education and Computers
– Education and America
– Education and Debate
– Education and History – I
– Education and History – II
– Education and Reading
– Education and Educators
– Education and Activism – I
– Education and Activism – II
– Education and Liberation
– References
– Author Profile
A collection of essays from an educator-activist that takes us back to one of the richest periods of African intellectual debate about knowledge and colonization, the early 1970s at the University of Dar es Salaam, with valuable lessons for today.
– Budd L Hall, PhD, Professor Emeritus, UNESCO Co-chair in Community‑Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, University of Victoria, Canada
This is a timely, broad ranging, provocative series of essays about under-education in Africa. The author’s lived experiences, particularly in Tanzania, form a rich base for much of the critical contextual analysis. New generations of scholar-activists in Africa and elsewhere are urged to learn from history, to debate, to question and strive, with passion and hope, to attain a just, more egalitarian world.
– Shirley Walters, Professor Emerita, University of Western Cape, South Africa
An inspiring collection of vivid stories and profound critiques of education from a committed scholar-activist who draws upon a lifetime of engaged learning, teaching, research and debate. Revealing how under-education has been spawned by global capitalism, it also inspires hope and offers strategies for educational and social change in Africa and beyond.
– Pat Saul, UDSM graduate, teacher and community activist for social change, Toronto
A dedicated and passionate educator and scholar activist, Karim Hirji explores the connection between education and a dependent economy, and the systematic de-education of the Tanzanian and African masses during the colonial and post-colonial periods up to the present day. Broad structural analysis of underlying factors such as social and economic injustice, political accountability and neoliberal policy is combined with concrete investigation of the challenges facing students and teachers at all levels of the education system and ends on a positive note, “dare to dream.”
– Marjorie Mbilinyi, Professor of Education, University of Dar es Salaam (1968-2003), independent researcher and writer
Karim Hirji’s erudite yet accessible collection of essays is bound to become an essential companion and a classic for all concerned with the underdevelopment of Africa and its educational doppelganger, under-education. His dialectical, fine-grained and multi-scalar analysis of educational issues traverses the period of colonialism, the first flush of independence through neo-colonialism to present day capitalist neoliberalism. It is a milestone in connecting past and present struggles through the tools of political economy. While the essays focus on Tanzania, they have continental resonance and remain globally relevant.
The essays draw inspiration and critical lessons from many countries. Hirji’s education commentary is grounded in a dedicated praxis of over forty years. The collection reflects this breadth of experience and the depth of multifaceted struggles. It embraces many pertinent issues valuable for contemporaneous endeavours against miseducation as these relate to democracy, dependency, violence in schools, the privatisation and corporatisation of education, the uses and abuses of technology, cultural imperialism, academic dissent, publishing, reading and the qualities of an effective teacher.
Written in a register that exudes deep honesty, wisdom, self-critical reflection and borne out of collective struggle, the essays are indispensable to confront the current obfuscations, falsifications and the dominant right wing and indeed neo-fascist assaults on meaningful education and reason. The ideas and practices of Hirji and his fellow activist scholars such as Shivji, and the much missed AM Babu and Walter Rodney remain germane today and will leave a solid legacy for future generations to build on.
Despite these bleak, dire and precarious times, this remarkable collection is an antidote to despair. Hirji’s injunction, not to lose hope is also a clarion call to action and a firm belief that, to quote Hirji, “…the struggle is a long term one; there are bound to be ups and downs. But ultimately, Africa and its people will triumph.”
– Salim Vally, Professor and Director, Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
“This book will be of interest to readers in search of critical perspectives on education in Tanzania and Africa more widely. It invites the policymakers, teachers and students of today to erase their ‘ideological blinders’. For fellow citizens and observers of Tanzania, it elucidates the ideology of ‘education for self-reliance’ in practice. And, as an authoritative text on under-education, it makes an important contribution to the debates on transformative education and knowledge production in Africa as a whole.” Ahmad Kipacha Senior Lecturer in the School of Business Studies and Humanities at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology in Arusha.
https://www.tzaffairs.org/2021/01/reviews-89/
We are pleased to announce that your book Revolutionary Hope vs Free-Market Fantasies Keeping the Southern Africa Liberation Struggle Alive: Theory, Practice, Context has been nominated for the Rik Davidson / Studies in Political Economy Book Prize in Political Economy.
À rebours des thèses soutenant que la migration contribue au développement ou que l’in- vestissement dans le développement réduit la croissance de la migration « irrégulière », ce livre marque une rupture tonifiante avec les idées communes abondamment véhiculées dans la littérature sur les liens entre migration, mobilités et développement en Afrique. Il accorde un intérêt manifeste pour la plus grande part des mobilités africaines, lesquelles se situent à l’intérieur du continent, et à la formation des diasporas en dehors des fron- tières nationales et continentales. Cette considération conjointe des mobilités « Sud-Sud » et « Sud-Nord » permet de remettre en cause l’hypothèse selon laquelle il existe des diffé- rences fondamentales entre elles.
Cet ouvrage examine les fluctuations ordinaires des mouvements de populations – à travers l’Afrique, comme dans le reste du monde –, qui étendent les familles, génèrent de nouvelles relations, reconfigurent les connexions économiques et politiques, et sont intégrées dans l’expérience quotidienne des millions de personnes qui y prennent part.
The in-depth knowledge of the mostly African authors adds to the quality of a research field, which was for long far too Eurocentric. – Ilke ADAM, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium)
Il était temps de mettre en lumière ce que migration et mobilité représentent en Afrique. L’ouvrage offre une perspective originale et décoloniale sur le sujet. – Eric HAHONOU, Roskilde Universitet (Denmark)
Christian Bouquet, « Quelques éclairages nouveaux sur les migrations africaines », EspacesTemps.net [En ligne], Books, 2020 | Mis en ligne le 20 November 2020, consulté le 20.11.2020. URL : https://www.espacestemps.net/en/articles/quelques-eclairages-nouveaux-sur-les-migrations-africaines/ ; DOI : 10.26151/esapcestemps.net-jc2a-6b03
Avec la participation de John O. IGUE, Saydou KOUDOUGOU, Pierre-Joseph LAURENT, Bassirou MALAM SOULEY, Hamidou MANOU NABARA, Marème NIANG NDIAYE, Amadou SARR DIOP, Sadio SOUKOUNA , Eric Stève TAMO MBOUYOU et Astadjam YAOUBA.
The Spanish edition of this book was presented as an offering during the ceremonial mass commemorating the 32nd anniversary of the slaying of 6 Jesuit priests by the army during El Salvador’s civil war.
You can watch Brian Murphy interviews Andrés McKinley here.
From his home in El Salvador where he has lived over four decades, the author shares an intimate personal and political memoir that follows his remarkable journey from the comfort and security of a picturesque New England town to a stirring and heroic engagement in common cause with the struggle for peace and justice in El Salvador.
After four years as a Peace Corp worker in northern Liberia beginning in the late 1960’s, followed by a stretch back in the United States as a street worker in the ghettos of North Philadelphia, McKinley finds himself in Central America as an aid worker in 1978. He quickly becomes engulfed by the political violence of the region and engaged with the people and their struggles against five decades of military dictatorship, centuries of poverty and exploitation. The story is marked by terror, adventure and courage, by trials and tragedy redeemed by the beauty and transcendence of people in struggle.
Originally based in Guatemala heading up a Catholic relief agency, his commitment to the struggles for change in the country attracts the attention of the military, and his own government, forcing him to leave the country in late 1980. He moves to El Salvador where he begins a gradual incursion into the revolutionary struggle of this country, in a commitment that will last the rest of his life.
Interwoven with this personal journey, is the story of Teresa Rivas, her husband Antonio, and their five children, a peasant family whose commitment as catequists with the Jesuit, Rutilio Grande, led to their eventual incorporation into the guerrilla forces of the FMLN after Grande’s assassination in 1977. The book describes the circumstances under which the author meets Antonio Rivas and family in the war zones of El Salvador, falls in love with them and their cause, and commits to accompanying their struggle through its darkest hours during the most violent years of the war. It also describes their life after the war, with resettlement in the lowlands of Guazapa where many ex-combatants were building a new life.
Interwoven with these stories, is the epic of a decades-long people’s struggle for economic justice, human rights and authentic democracy in El Salvador. The book lays out the social, economic and political origins of the armed struggle that caught fire in the 1970s, and the experiences of a people in desperate pursuit of non-violent options for democratizing their country and assuring a dignified life for the impoverished and marginalized majority of its population. It explains in detail the gradual emergence of the objective and subjective conditions for revolution in El Salvador, including the difficult choice for the use of violence as the only available option for transformative change in the country.
The book also details the challenges of reconstruction after the Peace Accords that end the war in 1992, and the tragedy of opportunities lost during the immediate post-war period in the face of the ongoing resistance of traditional opponents to reform. The author—himself deeply involved during these years in support of non-violent political organizing and advocacy—describes the efforts to sustain peace and to resolve the issues that continue to threaten the country with political violence. One of these is the water crisis that threatens the viability of the nation and life itself, and the book reveals the processes of organizing behind the ultimately-successful 17 year struggle to ban metallic mining—an historic victory in 2019 approved by a vote in the National Assembly, and without precedent in the world.
As the memoir closes, the author reflects on his choice to be in El Salvador over the past 43 years, and the country as he finds it in these changing times; on the family with whom he has shared love and life there; on his continuing relationship with Antonio Rivas and his surviving family; and his gradual reconciliation, from a distance, with the country of his birth.
With a Foreword by Charlie Clements, author Witness to War (Bantam, 1984) and Former Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Andrés McKinley has penned a beautiful, moving love story – a stunning tribute to his family and country of birth and to his family and country of re-birth. Read it also as a tribute to a generation whose best and brightest members seized the opportunity to be a part of the social justice movements that were unfolding around the world. Theirs was not a journey for fame or for fortune. Baby-boomers, read this book to remember; others, read this to understand not only the sacrifices made but, more importantly, the fulfillment gained. May others follow Andres’s path to love, wherever it may take take them. — Robin Broad (Guggenheim Fellow) and John Cavanagh (director, Institute for Policy Studies), coauthors
of The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed (Beacon Press, 2021).
The voice is simple, authentic, articulate, and consistent and coherent throughout. Given the unique and dramatic personal story that Andrés tells, it is actually understated and quiet—restrained intensity is how I might describe it. What really sets it apart, though, is the intimacy, care and respect with which he describes and tells the stories of the Salvadorans with whom he shared life and struggle throughout these years (and for that matter the villagers in Liberia in his early Peace Corps years). … It is a work of great humility, even as it tells a heroic tale without flinching, and in great detail. Nor is he romantic about the course that the struggle has taken; he is unflinching in that as well, and so leaves history open-ended but blessed with the grace of those who struggle. — Brian K. Murphy, writer and organizer, former policy analyst at Inter Pares, who writes at MurphysLog.ca
This is a very impressive book which tells a truly remarkable personal story, without the story becoming purely personal. In fact, there is a great deal of political history in the book, which I can confirm as I also studied as well as lived through some of the Salvadorean civil war. The truly incredible Salvadorean peasants who stayed in the war zones despite army incursions and US backed aerial bombing, are just as he describes them. They led me also to a lasting respect and love for them, even with- out the long term depth of experience of the author. The way the author brings us so many personal stories is very powerful. We get to know the friends he makes and then to feel as he did, when they lost their loved ones in this horrendous violence un- leashed on the Salvadorean poor and their allies by the Salvadorean wealthy elites, their military and US backers. — Jenny Pearce, Research Professor, Latin America and Caribbean Centre, London School of Economics
Andrés McKinley’s book For the Love of the Struggle is a moving and personal account of his involvement in the fight for justice in El Salvador during the civil war of the 1980s. But more than the events he describes, with great detail and political insight, it is his love for the people of El Salvador that sets this book apart. From working with church related organizations, to joining the guerrillas in the liberated zones, to his work along the communities opposing metallic mining, it is his relation- ship with the people, particularly the humbler ones, which stands out.
Most books that deal with the civil war in El Salvador end with the signing of the Peace Accords, which put an end to the armed conflict and laid the foundation for a more democratic and just El Salvador. As important as the Peace Agreements were, they did not solve all the problems and conflicts of the country. When several rural communities were threatened in the early 2000s by the efforts of trans- national gold mining interests, they rose in defense of their rights through social organization and peaceful opposition. In spite of the repression they suffered, after 17 years of struggle they finally prevailed, showing how people united, can bring about change.
This belief is particularly important now, at a moment in which our democratic insti- tutions are being threatened precisely by those who should be the first to protect them. It is the role of organized civil society to defend what we have conquered and McKinley’s book is an excellent and timely reminder that this is something possible and necessary to achieve.— Francisco Altschul is a former Salvadoran Ambassador to the United States
Critically engaging Ato Sekyi-Otu’s notion of partisan universalism, this timely volume of essays speaks directly to the onto-metaphysical issues that will give Africana thought the new foundations that will enable it to move beyond the lin- guistic turn, brush aside the ashes of Afro-pessimism, engage Badiou’s new mathematical universalism, and to launch new projects of liberation on decolonized grounds of greater epistemic independence. A must read for all concerned with the future of Africana theory and praxis. — Paget Henry, author of Caliban’s Reason.
Responding to the invitation ‘to re-member severed but shareable things’, these lovers of truth, freedom, and dignity celebrate the searing intellect, generosity, wit, and compassion of the person and the scholar Ato Sekyi-Otu. … Combined with Sekyi-Otu’s autobiographical reflections of learning to be Black in the United States and insistence that Afropessimism turns the perverse ontology of the antiblack world into a Black ontology, this is a precious contribution. Not to be missed! —Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement and co-editor (with Drucilla Cornell) of Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg
Ato Sekyi-Otu’s thought is one of the most important and exciting in Africa today. The texts compiled in this volume celebrate and engage with the work of Sekyi-Otu … They bear eloquent witness to Sekyi-Otu’s stature as a thinker and to his consistent commitment to the universalization of humanity in both theory and practice. Deeply anchored in African cultures and modes of life, Sekyi-Otu has shown how ideas of human universality are ingrained in African popular sayings and proverbs and are regularly reflected in artistic creations. — Michael Neocosmos, Emeritus Professor in the Humanities, Rhodes University, South Africa
This anthology in honour of Ato Sekyi-Otu is indispensable for those concerned with Frantz Fanon’s ideas of ‘ false’ and ‘ true ‘ decolonisation and about social humanist critique of post-structuralism’ s truncated version of anti-colonialism. Sekyi-Otu accomplishes precisely such a critique in his Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience and in Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays. The essays here are exemplars of such a critique which, together with Fanon and Sekyi -Otu, build a legacy for envisioning a post-imperialist world. The authors of this volume rescue post-colonial studies from a stale and unfruitful post-structuralist reading of anti-colonialism by positing an apparent paradox of ‘left ‘ or ‘ partisan’ universalism which can then be dialectically resolved. Intellectually and politically active at once, this anthology shows how Sekyi-Otu and his co- authors can help the reader to move beyond a binary and solipsistic stance towards a project of a real emancipation, a ‘ true ‘ decolonisation. In this neither the living experience individual nor the collectivity implied in the notion of the human lose their specificity and universality. — Himani Bannerji, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, Department of Sociology, York University
This collection of essays celebrates the work of Ato Sekyi-Otu as a scholar, teacher and friend, marking his extraordinary contribution to the philosophy, politics and praxis of liberation. As Ato Sekyi-Otu has argued in his most recent book, Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays (Routlege 2019), universalism is an ‘inescapable presupposition of ethical judgment in general and critique in particular, especially indispensable for radical criticism of conditions of existence in postcolonial society and for vindicating visions of social regeneration’. Universalism must and can only be partisan. Edited by Gamal Abdel-Shehid and Sofia Noori, the collection includes essays by Stefan Kipfler, Patrick Taylor, Sophie Mcall, Gamal Abdel-Shehid, Jeremy M. Glick, Nigel C. Gibson, Jeff Noonan, Esteve Morera, Tyler Gasteiger, Olúfeṃ́i Táíẃò, Susan Dianne Brophy, Nergis Canefe, Chistoher Balcom, Lewis Gordon, and by Ato Sekyi-Otu himself.
CONTENTS
This captivating volume dives into the complexities of racism and White Saviorism in North/South relations. With contributions from 19 experts across the Global South, this book examines its prevalence within Western initiatives for international development. Through a blend of theoretical topics, testimonies, stories and personal experiences these contributors shed light on implicit as well as explicit forms of White Saviorism – all with sensitivity to broaden an understanding through multi-dimensional approaches that truly transcend borders.
Edited by: Themrise Khan, Kanakulya Dickson, Maïka Sondarjee
Combining praxis-informed theorization and accounts grounded in authors’ own experiences in the White Savior Industrial Complex, these succinct and accessible chapters bring the realities of racial capitalism in international development to life. I was both educated and enraged! — Alana Lentin, author of Why Race Still Matters
This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand how many people contribute to upholding an oppressive White supremacist global system. — Amiera Sawas, Researcher and Advocate
This is a terrific work of deep unmasking and engagement with the proverbial but the always invisible elephant in the room of international development, that of the White gaze—correctly rendered here as the “industrial-colonial-patriarchal-White savior complex.” Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization
White Saviorism in International Development unveils the hypocrisies undergirding development projects led by the Global South for the Global South. … It examines the intimate linkages between coloniality, development, and White Saviorism.— Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, Texas Tech University
White Saviorism in International Development is an important and timely book that should be read by all international development students and practitioners. — Dylan Mathews, CEO Peace Direct, Chairperson CIVICUS Alliance
Este livro escrutina o impacto significativo da independência em diferentes sectores da sociedade moçambicana. Quarenta e cinco anos após a independência, Moçambique conheceu várias transformações. O Moçambique pós-colonial é hoje, em muitos aspectos, diferente do Moçambique colonial. No entanto, existem muitas questões permanentes relativas a essas transformações e ao seu impacto na maioria do povo moçambicano.
Ao salientar as contradições de todos os processos políticos e sociais em Moçambique pós-colonial, neste livro levantamos questões que visam desconstruir alguns mitos sobre o país.
Temas como estado, desenvolvimento, política, cultura, nação, políticas públicas, políticas agrárias e outros são questionados em abordagens teóricas inovadoras e progressivas, a fim de compreender o passado, o presente e o futuro de Moçambique numa perspectiva crítica. Por conseguinte, cada tema do livro é tratado de uma perspectiva crítica para melhor captar as aporias dos últimos quarenta e cinco anos de independência.
A liberalização política que deveria permitir mais partilha de poder e mais respeito pelos direitos políticos e cívicos consolidou, pelo contrário, um regime autoritário que utiliza a ajuda internacional e os benefícios da indústria extractiva não para transformar o país, mas para construir a sua hegemonia política, económica e social em todo o país.
Defendemos neste livro a tese de que é impossível compreender a verdadeira dinâmica social, política, económica e cultural sem considerar o “povo” como uma categoria essencial de análise.
Apesar de muitas transformações positivas que ocorreram após a independência, Moçambique ainda preserva muitas heranças coloniais e, portanto, várias transformações estão ainda por implementar.
Neste trabalho afirmamos que Moçambique é governado por elites que são incapazes de descolonizar o projecto de desenvolvimento que ainda está ancorado na agenda da capital internacional.
O objectivo deste livro é dar uma melhor compreensão do que tem sido o processo de independência em Moçambique e porque é que o país pós-colonial ainda é colonial na sua estrutura política e económica. Assim, são dados muitos exemplos para dar ao leitor a possibilidade de confrontar as perspectivas teóricas aqui utilizadas com os casos concretos.
Todos os estudos deste livro mostram que quarenta anos de independência não foram vividos da mesma forma pelas elites que governam o país e pelas populações que vivem sob o seu domínio. Por um lado, as elites no poder e os seus parentes beneficiaram, e ainda beneficiam dos recursos do país, enquanto que uma grande parte da população continua à espera das promessas da independência.
De um ponto de vista político a económico, os estudos que compõem o livro destacam como o “desenvolvimento” em Moçambique tem estado em contradição com as necessidades do país. Significa que o actual modelo de desenvolvimento responde muito mais à capital internacional do que à transformação social de Moçambique.
Richard Pithouse’s extraordinary overview of the what is means to be human after 1492:
… On 9 August 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The movement that grew out of the rebellion that followed inaugurated a new sequence in the struggle against racism in the United States. As with previous sequences in that struggle it quickly acquired an international dimension, including here in South Africa. One aspect of this international moment has been an urgent confrontation with the reality that what Césaire called ‘abstract equality’ does not, on its own, mark an end to the racialization of life.
In the United States, and elsewhere, there is a sense that history is as present as it is past. Just over a decade ago, Baucom observed that “what-has-been is, cannot be undone, cannot cease to alter all the future-presents that flow out of it. Time does not pass or progress, it accumulates”. It is the sense that time accumulates into the present that has often led to the invocation of William Faulkner’s famous line from Requiem for a Nun in discussions about race: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The past does not merely haunt or shape the present via the enduring power of deep and impersonal structural forces. Across Europe, and in settler societies like Australia, Brazil and the United States, racism is an increasingly explicit and menacing presence at the centre of political and social life. White revanchism has rallied, often under demagogic leadership, to secure the racial order that emerged from the event of 1492. It has already resulted in Brexit in England, the impeachment of an elected President in Brazil and the election of a figure as grotesque as Trump in the United States.
We will not be able to transcend the epoch that began in 1492 without a politics that can confront and defeat this revanchism. And we will not have transcended this epoch until “things, in the most materialistic meaning of the word” are, as Fanon insists, “restored to their proper places”. But the catastrophe from which we are all derived is not solely a matter of material dispossession and accumulation. As Michael Monahan argues, in conversation with Wynter, “the history of colonialism is also the history of the emergence of the idea of Europe and of Europeans, and . . . it is such ideas and cultural practices that inevitably shape our consciousness, conditioning what counts as normal and, ultimately, as rational”.
Alexandra Walker
Delinked:
A Review of Sylvia Tamale’s Decolonization and Afro-Feminism
By Alexandra Walker (Howard University C’27) as part of the Black Feminist Theory taught in Howard University’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program
Decolonization and Afro-Feminism by Sylvia Tamale is an intricate work that weaves together the intersectional relationship between racialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and gender roles within an African context to center decolonization as integral to the advancement of Afro-feminism. Professor Sylvia Tamale is a feminist, a legal scholar, and human rights practitioner whose fearlessness in speaking truth to power led her to serve as the first woman Dean of Makerere University School of Law. Fittingly, Tamale critically examines the historical, cultural, and socio-political dimensions of decolonization and its implications for the advancement of Afro-feminist thought.
Tamale begins by setting a historical backdrop for the work, because a clear understanding of the past enables one to walk with discernment in the present. In chapter one, Tamale explains that decolonization cannot be a one-time moment or thing. Decolonization and decolonial effects have historically been “Band-Aids” from people picking at the scabs that colonialism left on the continent. Tamale suggests that there needs to be more than a “Band-Aid” effort to fix the deep scars that have been left so to completely understand the complex damages left by colonization. The reversal of colonial legacies may take centuries and require unique and creative approaches.
Tamale’s notion of decolonization is multifaceted. Africans must think beyond “de-construction” of colonial structures and systems. Without a clear plan to rebuild and reconstruct there is no reason to de-construct and Tamale suggests that this sends Africans back into the arms of the colonizers. Moreover, the African agenda for decolonization and decolonial thought and activism should include reconstructions that prioritize: a) reclaiming humanity, b) reasserting self-determination, c) restoring spirituality, d) rebuilding territorial and bodily integrity, and above all, Africanness and the celebration of womanness.
Tamale makes one thing very clear, the goal of African decolonization and the decolonial project is about one thing: the restoration of dignity to the African people. Tamale does this by analyzing decolonization through a feminist lens. She asserts that decolonization cannot only address political independence but they must all challenge patriarchal structures inherited from colonial rule. Tamale draws attention to the often-overlooked contributions of African women in the struggle for liberation and asserts the need for an inclusive decolonization that recognizes and values the agency of women.
Later, Tamale breaks down some of the methods Europeans and Asians used to colonize Africa. From political colonization to the insidious and dangerous methods of psychological colonization, Tamale suggests that these same tactics can be used in reverse to decolonize and deconstruct colonial structures in Africa. She continues to say that Africans’ sense of history needs to be “delinked ” from the empire in order to delve deeper into Africa’s past (beyond the period of colonialism). Colonial powers were able to maintain their grip, influence, and imperialism through laws, education, religion, and pop culture. Tamale shows that through these mechanisms of globalization, naturalization, and rationalization colonists have been able to blur Africa’s vision to anything “indigenous”, which she aptly identifies as internalized colonization. Moreover, internalized colonization is so entrenched in global structures that the path to decolonization seems difficult and tortuous.
The intersectionality of identities is a central theme in Tamale’s analysis. She contends that Afro-feminism must confront the interconnected systems of oppression based on race, gender, and class. Tamale states that it is impossible to analyze race without also analyzing gender. Tamale continues to explain that until there is a shift to an understanding where there does not have to be an other to understand self, colonial structures will remain in place.
Sylvia Tamale’s Decolonization and Afro-Feminism is a groundbreaking exploration of the intersections between decolonization and feminism in the African context. The work explores and challenges prevailing colonial political, economic, and social structures. Tamale advocates for a more inclusive understanding of colonial structures as this is the only way to decolonize and delink African thought from colonial teachings. Tamale emphasizes the agency of women, while calling for a radical approach that recognizes the complexity and interconnectedness of racial, gender, and other colonial structures. Tamale’s book outlines key strategies, plans, and goals for the decolonization movement and the quest for the restoration of African dignity.
Tamale presents the possibility for a more just future in her critique of the present and suggestions for a pragmatic step forward. Tamale challenges reluctant minds, affirms African feminism as distinct within the spectrum of the global feminism, and places herself within the ever-developing canon of pivotal Black feminist thought for the 21st century. It becomes evident why the Black Feminist Theory course at Howard University incorporates Tamale into the list of authors and the book as assigned reading. It leads us to ask ourselves, “How do we get the work in front of the individuals who need to review them most?” whether in Africa or in one region of the global African Diaspora.