How do we respond to postcolonial era?
The internet has been buzzing for the past week or so about a video taken during a discussion at the University of Cape Town during which a “Fallist” student calls for the scrapping of “western science”, whatever that might be, as part of a “decolonisation” agenda. “Decolonising the science would mean doing away with it entirely and starting all over again to deal with how we respond to the environment and how we understand it,” the student says.
Responses to the video range from a kind of skewed sympathy for the underlying motivation to outright bewilderment that this is the parlous state of the debate at, of all places, a university. As always in SA, contradictions abound. As many have pointed out, the student, still unnamed, is criticising colonialism speaking a “western” language at an institution founded by a “western” mining mogul, wearing “western” clothes and using “western” electronics to learn and communicate. Yet at least some of their critics are also seemingly unaware of their own biases: “western” science has often in the past tried to present itself as value-neutral, yet it is and has always been thoroughly imbued with many prejudices of its time.
What struck me about the statement was the unwitting narcissism. Decolonisation would involve “having knowledge that is produced by us‚ that speaks to us and that is able to accommodate knowledge from our perspective”. It’s hard to miss the triple use of the pronoun; such is the self-absorption of the selfie generation.
Personally, I think the debate is rather simpler than it’s described here. If “decolonisation” means developing science in a way that doesn’t ignore local problems, who could possibly disagree? If it means ignoring the science of Europe or China or anywhere else, who could possibly agree? Well, perhaps some could, but I would humbly suggest a university is not the place to go down that path.
But, what really irks me about this debate is how the obsession with colonialism tends to obscure the much more enlightening period of African history; that following the colonial period. In all but a handful of African countries, it ended half-a-century ago. What followed is what is important and what speaks to our modern predicament much more pertinently than does the colonial period.
Between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. But the postcolonial period was in some ways arguably as traumatic for much of Africa as the colonial period. The histories of the new African states were of course varied, but it’s possible to see trends that exist to this day. To generalise unforgivably, postcolonial states took very literally the call of the liberation period for a dominant state. They tended to see all centres of power outside of a state suspiciously, as competition and therefore a threat.
The result was disastrous. The notion and desire for a dominant state was supported largely by left-wing-inspired theorists whose knowledge and interest in economics was informed by Marxist revolutionary theory. In some places, attempts were made to fuse traditional, rural lifestyles with modern socialism. Whatever the case, the hostility to capital formation and free markets ultimately weakened the states that, despite their ambitions, were actually weak in the first place. That made them easy to topple by military dictators or to control by a whole new class of tyrants: despotic leaders with a kind of quasidemocratic mandate.
Behind these leaders stands a new type of elite; nervous, short-sighted, greedy beyond belief, always ready to change sides in an instant, depending on which way the wind blows; always fawning on political leaders in the hope of gaining some officially decreed right to do business, but in private, dismissive. And in this context, the only way to hold power is a delicate mixture of oppression and a new kind of scolding support. Hence, complicated, restrictive and oppressive laws that are applied inconsistently. But at the first sign of uprising, out comes a brutal application of state power. Surely the students notice that?
The political leaders themselves are also in a hurry, desperate to secure their futures before the past catches up. There is a constant background of infighting, of manoeuvring, of pushing people aside to appoint puppets, of demanding absolute loyalty, because taking hold of the political structure is absolutely critical. They make flagrantly lucrative alliances with sections of business, preferably foreign. And in their path, they leave a wake of destroyed lives, legal chaos, economic weakness and general moral deprivation. Now, what country does that remind you of?
AND IN THIS CONTEXT THE ONLY WAY TO HOLD POWER IS A DELICATE MIXTURE OF OPPRESSION AND A NEW KIND OF SCOLDING SUPPORT