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Why Decoloniality in the 21st Century?

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.

By Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

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he fundamental question which universalising coloniality as a natural context the very moment they step has consistently cried out for a state of the world. It must be unmasked, into the school, church, and university Tresponse throughout the Global resisted and destroyed because it door. They begin the painful path of South/Third World as an epistemic produced a world order that can only learning to hate their progenitors as site that experienced the ‘darker be sustained through a combination demons, they begin to be taught that side’ of modernity is that of how to of violence, deceit, hypocrisy and all the knowledge they possessed extricate (ex)-colonised peoples from lies. This unmasking and resistance before coming to school was nothing coloniality. African countries are entails decoloniality as a political-cum- but folk knowledges, barbarism and prominent in this group of nations. epistemological liberatory project. superstitions that must be quickly be Africa has experienced the slave Decoloniality is born out of a forgotten. They begin to be told that trade, imperialism, colonialism, realisation that ours is an asymmetrical speaking mother-tongue is a sign of apartheid, neo-colonialism, neo- world order that is sustained not only being primitive. In some schools direct liberalism (Washington Consensus and by colonial matrices of power but also punishments were inflicted on those Structural Adjustment Programmes), by pedagogies and epistemologies of who spoke ‘mother-tongue’ within and today globalisation. Taken equilibrium that continue to produce school premises. Preachers, teachers, together, these processes constitute alienated Africans who are socialised and lecturers produced by colonially- coloniality as a global power structure into hating the Africa that produced constructed institutions exist as lost that sustains asymmetrical power them, and liking the Europe and America children of coloniality. relations between the Euro-American that rejects them. Schools, colleges, Decoloniality is premised on World and the Global South. three concepts. The first concept Coloniality is a leitmotif of global is that of coloniality of power. It imperial designs that has been in Endogenous helps to investigate how the current place for centuries. Decolonisation did and indigenous ‘global political’ was constructed and not succeed in removing coloniality. constituted into the asymmetrical and Coloniality must not be confused with knowledges have been modern power structure. It delves colonialism. It survived the end of pushed to the margins deeper into how the world was direct colonialism. In ‘postcolonies’ it of society. Africa is bifurcated into ‘Zone of Being’ and continues to affect the lives of people, ‘Zone of Non-Being’ maintained by long after direct colonialism and today saddled with invisible ‘abyssal lines.’ What needs administrative apartheid have been irrelevant knowledge to be understood is how modernity dethroned. What, therefore, needs to deposited its fruits of progress, be understood is not just the ‘not yet that disempowers civilisation, modernisation and uhuru’ postcolonial experience but rather than empowers development to the Euro-American the invisible vampirism of technologies world (Zone of Being) while at the of imperialism and colonial matrices individuals and same time imposing the slave trade, of power that continue to exist in communities. imperialism, colonialism and apartheid the minds, lives, languages, dreams, into the non-Euro-American world (the imaginations, and epistemologies of churches and universities in Africa are Zone of Non-Being). modern subjects in Africa and the sites for reproduction of coloniality. We The second concept is that of entire global South. so far do not have African universities. coloniality of knowledge, which focuses Coloniality as a power structure, an We have universities in Africa. They on teasing out epistemological issues, epochal condition, and epistemological continue to poison African minds politics of knowledge generation as well design, lies at the centre of the with research methodologies and as questions of who generates which present world order that Ramon inculcate knowledges of equilibrium. knowledge, and for what purpose. Grosfoguel correctly described as a These are knowledges that do not African Studies frequently neglects racially hierarchised, imperialistic, question methodologies as well as the to conduct serious investigations colonialist, Euro-American-centric, present asymmetrical world order. In into the origins of disciplines, into Christian-centric, hetero-normative, decoloniality research methods and epistemicides, into how knowledge patriarchal, violent and modern world research methodologies are never has been used to assist imperialism and order that emerged since the so-called accepted as neutral but are unmasked colonialism and into how knowledge ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ by as technologies of subjectivation if has remained Euro-American- Christopher Columbus. At the centre not surveillance tools that prevent centric. Endogenous and indigenous of coloniality is race as an organising the emergence of another-thinking, knowledges have been pushed to principle that hierarchised human another-logic and another-world view. the margins of society. Africa is today beings according to notions and Research methodologies are tools of saddled with irrelevant knowledge that binaries of primitive vs. civilised, and gate-keeping. disempowers rather than empowers developed vs. underdeveloped. What What is even more disturbing is that individuals and communities. Africans must be vigilant against is the African children and youth begin a The third concept is that of trap of ending up normalising and journey of alienation from their African coloniality of being. The starting point

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of this perspective is the role played indictment, European civilisation sum’ to privilege ‘men’ in masculine by philosophers like Rene Descartes has suffered a series of trials and gender terms, as the fountain of all and the long term implications of questioning, beginning with decolonial knowledge about the world. his motto ‘Cogito ergo sum‘ (I think, struggles that were premised on The leading Portuguese sociologist therefore, I am) on conceptions of rejecting colonialism as a medium of and decolonial thinker Boaventura de subjectivity. What is at issue here is the modernity and civilisation. The modern Sousa Santos clearly articulated how pertinent question of how whiteness problems ranged widely from those of the human space was divided into two gained ontological density far above ecological destruction, climate change, zones: ‘Zone of Being’ and ‘Zone of blackness as well as how the notions global migration that is provoking Non-Being.’ Santos provides details of ‘I think, therefore I am’ mutated new racism and xenophobia, right up of how Western thinking operated as into ‘I conquer, therefore, I am’ and its to increasing inequalities, deepening ‘abyssal thinking’ consisting of ‘a system production of ‘coloniser and colonised’ poverty and the crisis of Euro-American of visible and invisible distinctions, articulation of subjectivity and being. hegemonic epistemologies. the visible ones being the foundation Coloniality of being is very important To fully appreciate the gravity of of the invisible ones.’4 Those because it assists in investigating how the current multi-dimensional crisis, people like Africans and others who African humanity was questioned as we must remember the promises experienced colonisation: their realm well as processes that contributed of Euro-American modernity to was re-constituted by technologies of towards ‘objectification’/’thingificatio humanity. In the first place, is the fact power and colonial matrices of power n’/‘commodification’ of Africans. One that historically modernity promised into an incomprehensible state of of the continuing struggles in Africa is civilisation that was founded on the being. The possibility of co-presence focused on resisting objectification. Cartesian notion of ‘I think, therefore, or peaceful co-existence of those in These three concepts enable the zone of being with those in the a deeper understanding of the Decoloniality zone of non-being was rendered construction of current modern world impossible. The end product of all this that is today besieged by a plethora of arises from this were colonial discourses and negative crises. Even non-decolonial thinkers like context in which the representations of black people as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri who being characterised by a catalogue produced the celebrated book entitled humanity of black of deficits and series of lacks that led Empire (2000) acknowledged that people is doubted and Ramon Grosfoguel, a leading Latin ‘the international order that European American thinker and theorist, to modernity continually proposed and emerges as one way present the trajectory of those closed re-proposed, at least since the Peace of telling the story of out of the ‘Zone of Being’ as unfolding of Westphalia, is now in crisis. It has in in this way: fact always been in crisis, and this crisis the modern world from “We went from the sixteenth has been one of the motors that have the experiences of century characterization of continuously pushed towards Empire.’1 slavery, imperialism, ‘people without writing’ to the The Colombian anthropologist eighteenth and nineteenth century and leading decolonial thinker Arturo and colonialism. characterization of ‘people without Escobar whose well-known work history,’ to the twentieth century Encountering Development: The Making I am,’ which for Africa and other parts characterization of ‘people without and Unmaking of the Third World, of the colonised world, mutated into ‘I development’ and more recently, notes that the current global crisis conquer, therefore, I am’, which was to the early twenty first century of emanates from the reality of modernity used to justify mercantilism, the slave ‘people without democracy.’”5 which created ‘modern problems for trade, imperialism, colonialism and During the same period, those in which there are no modern solutions.’2 other dangerous ‘isms.’ The second the ‘Zone of Being’ were systematically The crisis of Western civilisation was point is that sociologically, modernity gaining more and more fruits of noticed long ago by one of the early promised new institutions such as the modernity from sixteenth century decolonial thinkers, Aime Cesaire, modern nation-state as the best model ‘rights of people,’ to eighteenth who in his Discourse on Colonialism of human organisation. century ‘rights of man,’ and to the proclaimed that: The third point is that culturally, late twentieth century ‘human rights.’6 A civilization that proves incapable modernity worked to banish What was happening is that the of solving the problems it creates is a religious thinking and spiritualism Anglo-Saxons and their descendants decadent civilization. A civilization and replaced these with rational were increasingly consolidating their that chooses to close its eyes to its and expert knowledge capable of ontological density while Africans and most crucial problems is a stricken rationalising life-world with a view to those of African descent resident in civilization. A civilization that uses its overcome all those cultural obstacles the Diaspora were losing ontological principles of trickery and deceit is a to human trajectories. Finally, there weight. dying civilization.3 is the philosophical aspect in which Decoloniality arises from this From the time of Cesaire’s modernity built on the ‘cogito ergo context in which the humanity of

12 THE THINKER POLITICS black people is doubted and emerges To fully nation, which makes such a nation as one way of telling the story of the an empire. Coloniality, instead, modern world from the experiences of understand refers to long-standing patterns of slavery, imperialism, and colonialism. and appreciate power that emerged as a result of It is not the only way of articulating colonialism, but that define culture, the history of the construction of the decoloniality as a labour, intersubjectivity relations, modern world. What distinguishes it is liberatory option, and knowledge production well its starting point, which is coloniality. beyond the strict limits of colonial Decoloniality entails studying Africa it is important to administrations. Thus, coloniality as a product of 350 years of struggles clearly distinguish survives colonialism. It is maintained against slavery in the first instance and alive in books, in the criteria for against coloniality today. it from colonialism, academic performance, in cultural decolonisation, and patterns, in common sense, in the What is decoloniality? self-image of peoples, in aspirations Decoloniality ‘struggles to bring coloniality. of self, and so many other aspects of into intervening existence an-other our modern experience. In a way, interpretation that brings forward, on that was used to describe the as modern subjects we breathe the one hand, a silenced view of the withdrawal of direct colonialism coloniality all the time and every event and, on the other, shows the from the colonies as well as the day.9 limits of imperial ideology disguised struggles ranged against those Coloniality is a name for the ‘darker as the true (total) interpretation of empires that were reluctant to do side’ of modernity that needs to be the events’ in the making of the so. In Sub-Saharan Africa, South unmasked because it exists as ‘an modern world.7 Decoloniality is Africa became the last colony to embedded logic that enforces control, distinguished from an imperial version decolonise in 1994 from an internal domination, and exploitation disguised of history through its push for shifting form of white colonialism called in the language of salvation, progress, of geography of reason from the West apartheid. Decolonisation became modernization, and being good for as the epistemic locale from which the a historical process that was enabled everyone.’10 ‘world is described, conceptualised and by the emergence of the United Walter D. Mignolo argued that ranked’ to the ex-colonised epistemic Nations sovereignty and its global ‘Coloniality names the experiences sites as legitimate points of departure constitutionalism that embraced and views of the world and history of in describing the construction of the postcolonial states. those whom Fanon called les damnes modern world order.8 de la terre (‘the wretched of the earth’) To fully understand and appreciate Coloniality: those who have been, and continue decoloniality as a liberatory option, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, a to be, subjected to the standard of it is important to clearly distinguish it leading philosopher in decolonial modernity.’11 from colonialism, decolonisation, and thought, grapples with the meaning Mignolo elaborated on the meaning coloniality. of coloniality and this is how he of the wretched of the earth in this defined it: way: ‘The wretched are defined by Colonialism: Coloniality is different from the colonial wound, and the colonial Colonialism is a historical process colonialism. Colonialism denotes a wound, physical and/or psychological, that culminated in the invasion, political and economic relation in is a consequence of racism, the conquest, and direct administration which the sovereignty of a nation or a hegemonic discourse that questions of Africa by states like Spain, people rests on the power of another the humanity of all those who do not Portugal, Britain, and France for belong to the locus of enunciation purposes of enhancing their prestige (and the geo-politics of knowledge) as empires, for exploitation of Decoloniality is of those who assign the standard of natural and human resources and not a singular classification and assign to themselves export of excess population, for the theoretical school of the right to classify.’ benefit of the empire. Colonialism What distinguishes decoloniality as a historical process came to an thought, but a family from other existing critical social theories end in the post-1945 period that of diverse positions is its locus of enunciations and its witnessed the withdrawal of direct genealogy - which is outside of Europe. colonial administrations and with that share a view Decoloniality can be best understood those that were reluctant to do so of coloniality as the as a pluriversal epistemology of the facing confrontation from national future - a redemptive and liberatory liberation movements. fundamental epistemology that seeks to de-link from problem in the the tyranny of abstract universals.12 Decolonisation: Decoloniality informs the ongoing Decolonisation was a term modern age. struggles against inhumanity of the

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Cartesian subject, ‘the irrationality of The poverty of postmodern- long as coloniality exists and as long the rational, the despotic residues of postcolonial critique as African ontology is doubted and modernity.’13 The postmodern and postcolonial ridiculed decoloniality in its various critique of nationalism, Marxism and forms will continue to reverberate and Why decoloniality in the 21st decoloniality is informed by a deep be ‘repeated over and over again’ by century? misunderstanding of how the modern nationalists and Marxists’.19 The direct answer comes from world was constituted and how it works. Postmodernists and some Ramon Grosfoguel who argued that: Such celebrated scholars as Achille postcolonial theorists are surprising One of the most powerful Mbembe and Kwame Anthony Appiah in blaming those people who were myths of the twentieth century manifest this misunderstanding which and still are victims of the ‘dark side’ was the notion that the elimination makes them very critical of any critical of modernity for continuing to blame of colonial administrations thought that builds its case from the slavery, imperialism, colonialism, amounted to the decolonization reality of colonialism, coloniality and apartheid, dependence, and of the world. This led to the myth racism. They wrongly criticised African globalisation for the production of of a ‘postcolonial’ world. The scholars, particularly those whose postcolonial problems. To characterise heterogeneous and multiple global thinking is informed by nationalism genuine people’s pains inflicted by structures put in place over a period and Marxism, for being enclosed inside these inimical processes as an ‘old of 450 years did not evaporate with an intellectual ghetto from which refrain’ informed by unproductive the juridical-political decolonization they articulate false philosophies.16 and misguided intellectual exercise of the periphery over the past 50 The reality is that postmodern and born out of the peddling of essentialist years. We continue to live under the postcolonial theorists totally failed to discourses of autochthony and same ‘colonial power matrix.’ With understand that modernity had two authenticity, is mischievous and juridical-political decolonization faces, particularly that the progressive dishonest. Coloniality is still active and we moved from a period of ‘global inflicting pain and death on Africans. colonialism’ to the current period At the core of What is seen as the ‘self-ghettoisation’ of ‘global coloniality.’ Although of African scholarship, taking the form ‘colonial administrations’ have been decoloniality is the of ‘territorialisation of the production almost entirely eradicated and the agenda of shifting of knowledge’, is in fact a genuine majority of the periphery is politically effort to counter imperialist thought organised into independent the geography that pushes African knowledges to the states, non-European people are and biography of margins of society. Africa is a victim still living under crude European/ of externally generated knowledges Euro-American exploitation and knowledge - who that are not informed by geo-and bio- domination. The old colonial generates knowledge graphical contextual understanding hierarchies of European versus non- and from where? of the African condition. But scholars Europeans remain in place and are like Mbembe deliberately distort this entangled with the ‘international intervention and cast it as promotion of division of labour’ and accumulation rhetoric of modernity including a ‘false belief that only autochthonous of capital at a world-scale. 14 liberal democracy and human rights people who are physically living in Decoloniality announces the broad discourses help in hiding coloniality as Africa can produce, within a closed ‘decolonial turn’ that involves the the negative side of modernity. circle limited to themselves alone, ‘task of the very decolonization of What they identify as false a legitimate scientific discourse on knowledge, power and being, including philosophies that they name as the realities of the continent.’20 institutions such as the university.’ nativism and Afro-radicalism emerge Avoidance, if not scholarly failure to Maldonado-Torres elaborated: as Africans try to regain lost ontological engage with coloniality, is the worst “By decoloniality it is meant here density. What is needed is not severe sign of intellectual laziness compared the dismantling of relations of power critiques of these ideologies emerging to African scholarship that continues and conceptions of knowledge that from the zone of non-being but to to get to modernity, colonialism and foment the reproduction of racial, understand life in this zone. It was coloniality as foundational elements of gender, and geo-political hierarchies actually coloniality rather than nativism postcolonial African problems. 21 that came into being or found new and and Afro-radicalism that installed the Logically, postmodern and more powerful forms of expression in discourse of metaphysics of difference. postcolonial critique of African the modern/colonial world.” 15 Africans are genuine victims of this scholarship provoked an equally But this article cannot be system of power and they have little severe response from such scholars complete without engaging with choice but to reveal a psychosis of as Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and others. the postmodernist and postcolonial victimhood.17 It was also coloniality For instance, Mbembe was criticised critique of all those combative that created a polemic relationship for uncritical celebration of the interventions whose point of departure between the Euro-American world globalisation and cosmopolitanism that is coloniality. and the rest of the Global South.18 As underpin Euro-American hegemony.

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His call for ‘internationalization’ of endeavour to attain cognitive justice. of another world and knowledge. At African scholarship as a way of ‘getting Rationality and technology have not the epistemic level decoloniality is out of the ghetto’ was equated with completely managed to overcome all about epistemological disobedience ‘globalizing tendencies of neo-liberal obstacles to human freedom. premised on three domains of economic policies of liberalization.’22 At another level decoloniality power, knowledge, and being. At the The point was that the domain involves re-telling of history of political level, it is working in areas of knowledge generation in and on humanity and knowledge from the of new critical theory, new meaning- Africa has never been ‘ghettoised.’ It vantage point of those epistemic making and action. At the has never been closed from external sites that received the ‘darker side’ methodological level, it rebels against influences and currents of thoughts. of modernity, including re-telling the knowledges of equilibrium and those Instead it has been excessively exposed story of knowledge generation as methods that operate as part of to external and imported Euro- involving borrowings, appropriations, colonial matrices of power that prevent American paradigms. This makes the epistemicides, and denials of humanity transformation. case for decoloniality relevant, which of other people as part of the story In our modest terms, we are pushing pushes the agenda of decolonising of science. It is also a call for the decolonial thinking as Africa Decolonial knowledge. Mbembe was further Research Network (ADERN) based at criticised for surrendering to the The postmodern UNISA. The newly established Archie triumphalist ideology of globalisation Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI)’s and the disempowering slogan ‘There and postcolonial research work is also informed by Is No Alternative’ (TINA) doctrine. critique of decoloniality. Our plan is to host an annual Summer School at Archie Mafeje Rebutting postmodern and nationalism, Marxism Research Institute to expose students postcolonial critique of decoloniality and decoloniality is and young academics to decolonial Decoloniality must not be confused thinking, the politics of knowledge with nationalist and Marxist thought. informed by a deep generation as well as power, identity Decoloniality is against essentialism misunderstanding of and epistemological issues at the centre and fundamentalism as put by of the modern world order.  Grosfoguel: “This is not an essentialist, how the modern world References fundamentalist, anti-European critique. was constituted and 1 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: It is a perspective that is critical of Harvard University Press. how it works. 2 Escobar, A. 2004. ‘Beyond the Third World: Imperial both Eurocentric and Third World Globality, Global Coloniality and Anti-Globalization fundamentalisms, colonialism and Social Movements.’ Third World Quarterly, 25 (1), p. 207. nationalism. What all fundamentalisms democratisation of knowledge, 3 Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, p. 8. 4 Grosfoguel, ‘The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond share (including the Eurocentric one) de-hegemonisation of knowledge, Political-Economy Paradigms.’Cultural Studies, 21 is the premise that there is only one de-westernisation of knowledge, and (2-3), March/May, p. 214. 5 Ibid. sole epistemic tradition from which to de-Europeanisation of knowledge. 6 Mignolo, W. D. 2005. The Idea of Latin America, achieve Truth and Universality.”23 At the core of decoloniality is the Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, p. 33 7 Ibid, p. 35. As noted by Nelson Maldonado- agenda of shifting the geography 8 Maldonado-Torres, N. 2007. ‘On Coloniality of Being: Torres decoloniality is not a singular and biography of knowledge - who Contributions to the Development of a Concept.’ Cultural Studies, 21 (2-3), March/May, p. 243. theoretical school of thought, but a generates knowledge and from where? 9 Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, p. 6. 10 Ibid, p. 8. family of diverse positions that share a Decoloniality’s point of departure 11 Ibid, p. 8. view of coloniality as the fundamental is existential realities of suffering, 12 Mignolo, W. D. 2007. ‘Introduction: Coloniality of Power and De-Colonial Thinking.’ Cultural Studies, 21 problem in the modern age. Yes, oppression, repression, domination (2-3), March/May, p. 159. they might be some decolonial and exclusion. Decoloniality facilitates 13 Mignolo, The Dark Side of Western Modernity, p. 93. 14 Grosfoguel, ‘The Epistemic Decolonial Turn,’ p. 219. positions that might degenerate into the unmasking of racism as a global 15 Maldonado-Torres, N. 2011. ‘Thinking Through the romanticism and fundamentalism, problem as well as demonstrating Decolonial Turn: Post-Continental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Critique—An Introduction.’ but that is not generalisable to all how knowledge, including science, Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), Fall, p. 1. decolonial thought. was used to justify colonialism. Finally 16 Mbembe, A. 1999. ‘Getting Out of the Ghetto: The Decoloniality gives ex-colonised decoloniality accepts the fact of Challenge of Internationalization.’ In CODESRIA Bulletin 3 &4 and Appiah, K. A. 1992. In My Father’s peoples a space to judge Euro- ontological pluralism as a reality that House: Africa in the Philosophy and Order of American deceit and hypocrisy needs ecologies of knowledges to Knowledge. New York and Oxford: Monthly Review Press. and to stand up into subjecthood understand. 17 Mbembe, A. 2002a. ‘African Modes of Self-Writing.’ through judging Europe and exposing Public Culture, 14(1), pp. 239-273. 18 Mbembe, A. 2002b. ‘On the Power of the False.’ technologies of subjectivation. Conclusion Public Culture, 14(3), pp. 613-655. 19 Robins, S. 2004. ‘The (Third) World is a Ghetto’?: Decoloniality exposes the fact that I hope this article has succeeded in Looking for a Third Space Between ‘Postmodern’ , Euro-American epistemologies are making a strong case for decoloniality 2&3, pp. 18-26. 20 Mbembe, ‘African Modes of Self-Writing.’ exhausted, opening an opportune in the 21st century. Decoloniality needs 21 Ibid. moment for articulation of decolonial to be appreciated as liberatory thought 22 Zeleza Email Comments to Francis Nyamnjoh, 19 January 2004. epistemologies from the South in an that gestures towards the possibility 23 Grosfoguel, ‘The Epistemic Turn,’ p. 212.

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