Given the growing interest in understanding the meaning, manifestations, analyses and implications of racism in North/South relations, White Saviorism in International Development seeks to remedy the shortcomings of the development studies literature on the prevalence of White Saviorism in Western development initiatives in the Global South. The volume comprises theoretical chapters, testimonies, stories and lived experiences from 19 contributors from across the Global South. With sensitivity and intelligence, these practitioners and academics create a tapestry that unveils the implicit and explicit forms of White Saviorism in international development.
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
[caption id="attachment_15332" align="aligncenter" width="432"] Themrise Khan, Kanakulya Dickson and Maïka Sondarjee, authors of White Saviorism in International Development, published by Daraja Press.[/caption] Themrise KHAN is an independent development professional with over 25 years of experience in international development, gender, social…
Given the growing interest in understanding the meaning, manifestations, analyses and implications of racism in North/South relations, White Saviorism in International Development seeks to remedy the shortcomings of the development studies literature on the prevalence of White Saviorism in Western development initiatives in the Global South. The volume comprises theoretical chapters, testimonies, stories and lived experiences from 19 contributors from across the Global South. With sensitivity and intelligence, these practitioners and academics create a tapestry that unveils the implicit and explicit forms of White Saviorism in international development.
Edited by: Themrise Khan, Kanakulya Dickson, Maïka Sondarjee
Foreword
Olivia Alaso with Wendy Namatovu vii
Introduction: Why White Saviorism?
Kanakulya Dickson, Themrise Khan & Maïka Sondarjee 1
PART I: THEORY AND PRACTICE
1 Indigenous Cultures and the Industrial-Colonial-Patriarchal White Savior Complex
Marcelo Saavedra-Vargas 27
2 Evaluation and the White Gaze in International Development
Sadaf Shallwani and Shama Dossa 42
3 The Warrior Logic of the White Savior
Leila Benhadjoudja 63
4 The Matriarchy Complex: White Feminist Disruption in Development
Themrise Khan 79
5 False Consciousness and the Phenomenology of White Saviorism
Kanakulya Dickson 98
6 Epistemological Underpinnings and Emancipatory Insights on White Saviorism in Development
Kizito Michael George 116
7 Imposition and Reproduction of White Saviorism in Haiti
Rose Esther Sincimat Fleurant 129
8 The White Saviorism, Corporate Sector and Land Rights in Central Uganda
Robert Kakuru 140
PART II: LIVED EXPERIENCES
9 White Saviorism, Green Colonialism and Sea Shepherd
Fernando David Márquez Duarte 159
10 Today as Yesterday, the ‘Savior Complex’ of Europeans
Anonymous 1 166
11 SUVs, Hotels and Faith: Experiences of White Privilege
Amjad Mohamed Saleem 173
12 Macaulayputras and the ‘Brown Saviors’ in the World Bank’s Advisory Services: A Story
Anonymous 2 181
13 ‘H’ is for Heroes With Hologram Haloes: A Testimony of
Saviorism and Ministry
Chongo Beverly Anne Mwila 191
14 The ‘Local’ and White Saviorism in the Caribbean
Jody-Ann Anderson 198
15 Protecting Daughters for Gender ‘Empowerment’
Radha Shah 209
16 The White Savior Complex in International Cooperation
Initiation Mandates
Eddy Michel Yao 219
Part III: CONCLUSION
17 The Common Threads of White Saviorism
Themrise Khan and Maïka Sondarjee 229
APPENDIX
About the Contributors 245
Jody-Ann Anderson is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research focuses on how institutions, like the police, can sustainably transform in contexts of increasing complexity. She has worked and currently works on various issues that include, but are not limited to, youth development, violence reduction, disaster risk reduction / climate change, White Saviorism, policing and security sector reform. She maintains hope for a peaceful and just world where all people, regardless of race, gender, citizenship, etc., can realize their full potential.
Leila Benhadjoudja is an anti-racism feminist and holds a doctorate degree in Sociology. Her research focuses on racism and anti-racism in Quebec, and her main publications focus on Islamophobia and Muslim feminism. She is the co-founder of the Feminist Festival in Ottawa and works as a professor at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa.
Shama Dossa is Manager of Learning and Evaluation at Fenomenal Funds, a Feminist Funding Mechanism and associate professor in Social Development and Policy at Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan. She is a community development practitioner, researcher and academic with a specific interest in gender, disaster, reproductive health and rights in the Asia–Pacific region. Her work explores the link between theory and practice, drawing on arts-based and participatory methodologies. She is currently the Chair of the Board for Shirkat Gah Women’s Resource Centre, one of Pakistan’s oldest feminist organizations.
Fernando David Márquez Duarte is a Mexican decolonial activist and thinker from the Abya Yala. He has a B.A. in International Relations with an Honorific Mention from UABC and an M.Sc. in Regional Development from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) with a CONACYT scholarship. He is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. Political Science program at the University of California Riverside (UCR) with a Fulbright García Robles scholarship and the Dean’s Fellowship. He has more than five years of teaching experience in different universities in México and the USA. Currently, he teaches at UCR. He has academic articles published in indexed journals of México, Brazil, Ecuador, Russia, Germany and the UK, and book chapters in México and Spain. He has advised and supported Indigenous groups such as the Triquis and Cucapáh Indigenous communities in Baja, California, México regarding Indigenous rights and political participation. He has also worked with the resistance in the defence of water in Baja, California, with a participatory action-research project. He is proficient in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Náhuatl languages.
Kizito Michael GEORGE is a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Kyambogo University. He holds a Master of Philosophy degree in gender and development from the University of Bergen (Norway) and obtained a Ph.D. in development ethics from Makerere University in 2019. Dr. Kizito is a member of the American Philosophy Association (APA) and the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA). His research interests include development ethics, Pan-Africanism, White Saviorism, human rights, poverty eradication, gender, jurisprudence and African philosophy.
Robert Kakuru is a lecturer of Human Rights in the Department of Philosophy, Makerere University, and holds a Ph.D. in Human Rights, a Master of Arts in Human Rights and a Bachelor of Development Studies. He has experience in lecturing / teaching, research and providing consultancy services. His core areas of teaching and research are natural resources and property rights, children’s rights, international and regional human rights regimes, research methods, human rights monitoring, evaluation and reporting and theories of human rights. His consultancy engagements include policy research, strategic planning and management, program development, management, monitoring and evaluation, organization management, capacity-building and training, transparency and accountability, organizational capacity assessments, program evaluations, systems analysis and development, programming and organizational resource mobilization.
Kanakulya DICKSON is a lecturer at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Philosophy, Makerere University. He holds a Ph.D. (Makerere, Uganda), Licentiate (Linköping, Sweden), M.A. Philosophy (Bergen, Norway) and B.A. (Makerere, Uganda). He has research interests in philosophy, ethics and governance. He has experience in collaborative research with national and international partners resulting in several publications. Dickson is co-editor of this volume.
Themrise KHAN is an independent development professional with over 25 years of experience in international development, gender, social policy and global migration. She has worked with several bilateral and multilateral agencies and international civil society organizations globally. Her main expertise lies in leading qualitative thematic and policy research studies and summative and formative evaluations of development programming. She has published both academically and as a research practitioner, including for the University of Ottawa Press and Routledge, as well as global think tanks and development agencies, on issues ranging from development aid intervention in fragile states to female labor migration. She is also a regular writer of op-eds and thematic pieces for various print and online mediums on development assistance, migration and gender. She has degrees from York University, Canada, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She is based in Pakistan. Themrise is co-editor of this volume.
Chongo Beverly Anne MWILA is an intersectional feminist and driven communication and advocacy professional who has been actively involved in interventions for the empowerment and advancement of women, children and young people since her mid-teens in the early 2000s. Since 2012, she has worked extensively on USG, USAID, United Nations systems and other donor-funded programming for girls’ equitable access to education, advocacy efforts to increase all young people’s (including those living with disabilities) access to relevant Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) information and services, and capacity-building programs to reduce women’s socio-economic vulnerability to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and HIV. Chongo holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Simon Fraser University and began pursuing a master’s degree in development studies from the University of Lusaka in 2021. Based in Lusaka, Zambia, she is currently juggling communications-based consultancies for clients around gender and SRHR.
Marcelo Saavedra-Vargas has been a political advisor to the vice presidency of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), a representative in Canada of the Federation of Peasant Workers of the Department of La Paz–Tupaj Katari and president of the Peoples Support Group of the Americas (GAPA), Canada. He was a researcher for the North-South Institute (INS) and the Canadian Development Research Centre (IDRC), and a number of development-related non-government organizations (NGOs). He holds two bachelor’s degrees: one in economics, specializing in economic development, and one in communication studies, specializing in mass media development. He also holds a master’s degree in Diplomacy and a Ph.D. degree in International Relations from the Diplomatic Academy of Bolivia. He has been OPIRG leading elder and created the Indigenous Constitution exercise, anti(O)pression training, decolonization and indigenization workshops. He has been a professor at the University of Ottawa for the past 15 years and is currently teaching for the Institute of Indigenous Studies.
Amjad Mohamed SalEem is a political scientist with extensive knowledge of peace-building, humanitarian affairs and development work. He has a particular interest in interfaith engagement and a focus on South Asia. He is currently focused his work on decolonization, anti-racism and dealing with diversity and inclusion within the multilateral sector. He has worked for different organizations on peace-building and humanitarian action. He is a regular contributor to different media posts and an alumnus of the International Visitors Leadership Programme and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. He has published in several journals, chapters in several books and published a book in 2008 entitled Lessons from Aceh. Amjad has an M.Eng. from Imperial College, London; an MBA from U21Global, Singapore; and a Ph.D. from Exeter University.
Radha SHAH is a social anthropological researcher with a background in south Asian studies who has worked for non-profits in Canada, Pakistan and Hong Kong. Her area of expertise spans rights advocacy for ethnic minorities, women, prisoners and migrant workers.
Sadaf Shallwani conducts and facilitates participatory research and knowledge generation from Global South perspectives in the areas of early childhood development, primary education, child rights and the effectiveness of grassroots civil society. Sadaf has two decades of research, evaluation and program development experience, including extensive work with different agencies of the Aga Khan Development Network in East Africa, South Asia and Central Asia. She has also designed and led several child development programs and research projects in Canada. Currently, Sadaf serves as Director of Learning and Evaluation at Firelight Foundation, where she plays a key role in the organization’s efforts to shift power closer to community-based organizations and their communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, embrace and operationalize community-driven systems change and support communities to develop and carry out their own Indigenous and participatory approaches to evaluation and learning.
Rose Esther Sincimat Fleurant has been a professor at the Université d’État d’Haïti (UEH) for more than 15 years. She completed her doctoral studies in social sciences at the UEH and holds a DEA in Gender, Population and Development. She completed her master’s studies at the Faculty of Ethnology and has a degree in social communication. An expert / consultant in gender and local development, she has had a career in Haitian public administration. Committed to the fight for the respect of human rights, particularly women’s rights, for over 25 years, she has been a facilitator / trainer and mobilization agent in education for responsible citizenship. She has provided technical support to numerous socio-community organizations, women’s associations and youth associations in various municipalities of the Republic of Haiti. Former Director General of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Women’s Rights (MCFDF), she has also worked as a consultant and advisor on various technical and / or political issues in her expertise for local and international institutions. As a researcher in social sciences, she works on public policies, social movements (particularly women’s movements), gender relations, population and local development.
Maïka Sondarjee criticizes North / South inequalities from an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and feminist viewpoint. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, and she is an assistant professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her first book (Perdre le Sud. Décoloniser la Solidarité Internationale, 2020) was nominated for the Prix des Libraires du Québec. She is also a regular contributor for the Canadian newspaper Le Devoir. Maïka is co-editor of this volume.
Eddy Michel YAO is a candidate for the master’s degree in International Development and Humanitarian Action Management at the Université Laval. He is originally from the Ivory Coast and is currently a volunteer project manager in Senegal. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Graduate Diploma in Management from HEC, Montreal. He is particularly interested in north–south relations and African issues. He is at the service of communities in the south in order to build a more equitable world and develop their resilience in the face of crises situations.
FRONT COVER DESIGNER
Hikmatullah Kharoti is a still and motion designer at Da Afghanistan Bank (Central Bank of Afghanistan) and holds an associate degree in graphic design. He was born in Helmand, Afghanistan. His recent works focus on digital payment and how to make Afghanistan cashless and free from fraud. He has given presentations to the President of Afghanistan, H.E. Ashraf Ghani, on TV Ads, motion videos, social media designs, print designs and narration. He was presented the creative designer award by H. E. Ajmal Ahmadi, governor of Central Bank of Afghanistan (DAB) and awarded the Future plan: ‘To Make a World Where no one Become Someone’ fellowship.
Keywords
White saviorism, White savior complex, indigenous culture, colonialism, imperialism, development, neocolonialism, evaluation, warrior logic, matriarchy, matriarchal complex, false consciousness, Epistemological Underpinnings, emancipation, Haiti, Pakistan, Uganda, India, Canada, corporations, charity, land rights, green colonialism, sea shepherd, prejudice, faith, SUVs, privilege, racism, Carribean, Africa, Asia, Latin America, gender empowerment, international cooperation, White Savior Industrial Complex, inequalities, subaltern, global north, global south, Teju Cole, Joseph Kony, white supremacy, Macaulay, BIPOC, black, brown, usa, uk, europe
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Africa Matters: Cultural politics, political economies, & grammars of protest provides a sampling of insightful articles from the first five issues of Nokoko, journal of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. It brings together pieces that the journal’s editorial board felt were particularly perspicacious in their analysis and resonant in their crafting. Uniting them in this book permits a new dialogue to emerge around the key themes of cultural politics, political economies and grammars of protest. Their intersection here sheds light on important issues for Africans in the twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
Introduction: On the matter of African matters—Blair Rutherford and Pius Adesanmi
Two cities: Guangzhou / Lagos—Wendy Thompson Taiwo
Catherine Acholonu (1951- 2014): The female writer as a goddess—Nduka Otiono
Filming home, plurality of identity, belonging and homing in transnational African cinema—Suvi Lensu
‘Spare Tires’, ‘Second Fiddle’ and ‘Prostitutes’? Interrogating discourses about women and politics in
Nigeria—Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin
The South African Reserve Bank and the telling of monetary stories—Elizabeth Cobbett
The neoliberal turn in the SADC: Regional integration and disintegration—Jessica Evans
Indian hair, the after-temple-life: Class, gender and 137 race representations of the African American woman in the human hair industry—Nadège Compaore
The role of radio and mobile phones in conflict situations: The case of the 2008 Zimbabwe elections and xenophobic attacks in Cape Town—Wallace Chuma
The story of Cape Town’s two marches: Personal reflections on going home—Stephanie Urdang
Beyond an epistemology of bread, butter, culture and power: Mapping the African feminist movement—Sinmi Akin-Aina
Setting the agenda for our leaders from under a tree: The People’s Parliament in Nairobi—Wangui Kimari and Jacob Rasmussen
Politics across boundaries: Pan-Africanism: Seeds for African unity—Gacheke Gachihi
Afterword: Incorporeal words: The tragic passing of Pius Adesanmi—Blair Rutherford
About the contributors
About the Institute of African Studies
Nokoko podcasts
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.
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
By chronicling rural people’s struggles across diverse contexts, this collection gives us some signposts of emancipatory politics in the African countryside. Accessible and theoretically grounded, this exciting collection by leading African scholar-activists chronicles rural people’s struggles, from resistance to alternatives. Activists and scholars engaged with rural struggles need to read this book. —Ruth Hall, professor, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
A remarkable, well-argued and theoretically diverse collection of essays on the land question in Southern Africa, a topic as old as colonialism and as new as the newest impositions of global capitalism. Land struggles and resistance in a new and powerful light.
— Boaventura de Sousa Santos, author of The End of the Cognitive Empire, 2018
This book makes a powerful contribution to the existing and growing literature on land and agrarian questions in southern Africa. Empirically rich… the book is essential reading for scholars, intellectuals, students and activists involved in the everyday struggles and responses of those communities who are directly affected by neoliberal policies. Highly recommended. —Lungisile Ntsebeza, Emeritus Professor in African Studies and Sociology in the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town.
Co-publisher: Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies
In recent years southern Africa has aroused the interest of domestic and foreign investors targeting several sectors. The agrarian and extractive capital has been the most penetrating in the countryside, causing land conflicts, displacement of local peasant communities and in worse cases, deaths. Being mostly neoliberally oriented, SADC states have positioned themselves in favour of capital. This collusion results in State measures that are hostile to the peasantry of their countries. The measures taken by the States, both in policies and in repressive actions, are endorsed by of high-level government officials, Ministers, Presidents, Kings and traditional Chiefs. As far as traditional chiefs are concerned, even in situations where the presence of capital is dangerous, ‘feudal’-type power relations prevail, oppressing mainly young people and women.
The peasantry and rural people in general have not, however, been passive in this process. Alone or in alliance with non-governmental organizations and activists, they have positioned themselves strongly against such dynamics and have raised their voices questioning developmentalist logics that are imposed on them, but that take away their means of production and violate their rights. In fact, resistance movements to capital are taking place throughout the region, even if the response to this has been repression by the states.
This book, which takes a scholar-activist stance, is written by authors, men and women, who critically study the dynamics of agrarian and extractive capital in southern Africa. In their academic and activist work, they seek to bring useful theoretical, conceptual and practical contributions to the struggles of agrarian and rural movements that represent the ‘subalternised’ rural and urban people. The book brings contributions in forms of chapters from DRC, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, eSwatini (Swaziland), Mozambique, and Madagascar.
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/
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”.
The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher is a riveting account of the bumpy first decade of the work life of Karim F Hirji, a retired Professor of Medical Statistics. Filled with a distinctive variety of eye-opening episodes, it covers lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam, the life of a political exile in a remote rural area and the challenges of setting up from scratch a one-of-a-kind educational institute in Africa. With a style that seamlessly combines the personal with the general, Hirji provides an illuminating description of different aspects of the Tanzanian political, educational, economic and rural landscape during the 1970s. Starting with a commentary on teacher training, he concludes with a critical comparison of modern university education in the nation with that of the earlier era.
A clearly written, excellently illustrated, valuable and absorbing reflection upon a rich lifetime in teaching that deserves an international audience. Richard Pring, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Education, and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.
The remarkable life of a principled Tanzanian educator told with emotion and humor. Peter Lawrence, Professor Emeritus of Development Economics, Keele University UK and Lecturer in Economics, University of Dar es Salaam, 1970-72.
Karim Hirji’s account of four decades of teaching in post-colonial Tanzania is a timely call on teachers to: “educate in ways that will promote equality and social justice”. Dr Anne Harley, Paulo Freire Project, Centre for Adult Education, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o with Rosa Hirji, holding a copy of The Travails of a Tanzania Teacher i.
This book collects four decades of writings on dialectics, a number of them published here for the first time, by Kevin B. Anderson, a well-known scholar-activist in the Marxist-Humanist tradition. The essays cover the dialectics of revolution in a variety of settings, from Hegel and the French Revolution to dialectics today and its poststructuralist and pragmatist critics. In these essays, particular attention is given to Lenin’s encounter with Hegel and its impact on the critique of imperialism, the rejection of crude materialism, and more generally, on world revolutionary developments. Major but neglected works on Hegel and dialectics written under the impact of the struggle against fascism like Lukács’s The Young Hegel and Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution are given full critical treatment. Dunayevskaya’s intersectional revolutionary dialectics is also treated extensively, especially its focus on a dialectics of revolution that avoids class reductionism, placing gender, race, and colonialism at the center alongside class. In addition, key critics of Hegel and dialectics like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard Rorty, are themselves analysed and critiqued from a twenty-first century dialectical perspective. The book also takes up the dialectic in global, intersectional settings via a reconsideration of the themes of Anderson’s Marx at the Margins, where nationalism, race, and colonialism were theorized alongside capital and class as key elements in Marxist dialectical thought. As a whole, the book offers a discussion of major themes in the dialectics of revolution that still speak to us today at a time of radical transformation in all spheres of society and of everyday life.
