POLITICS © Shutterstock.com 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 10 THE THINKER POLITICS 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 Volume 48 / 2013 11 POLITICS 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,