Fanon’s daughter speaks in SA
The issues that philosopher, activist and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon grappled with in the 1950s until his death in 1961 — why the wretched of the earth lived in colonial Africa — remain unaddressed and have worsened in some countries.
This is the message his daughter, activist and public intellectual Mireille FanonMendes-France, is delivering at a series of lectures at colloquia organised by the Department of Arts and Culture to mark Africa month. She is chairwoman of the Frantz Fanon Foundation, works with the UN’s Human Rights Council and is a member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
She co-anchored a discussion at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg last week with Canadian academic J Edward Chamberlain, author of If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Government officials, students and activists attended.
Department of Arts and Culture deputy director-general Charles Mabaso says the conversations examine “burning issues of the day”.
“The issue of land is one of them, especially with the recent land audit in SA that found that 14-million hectares of land is uncounted,” he said.
Chamberlain graphically painted the extent to which almost all indigenous people are attached to their land and how they suffered the trauma of physical separation from their land, which today still cuts deep into their psyches.
“In 1998 I was part of a team that witnessed the return of land to the Khoisan people in Namibia. I witnessed the joy of especially the elderly people, who jumped all over the dunes like children, giggling and reminiscing about the past,” he told the gathering.
He said land dispossession was a global issue affecting many people in North America.
“Today in Canada there are indigenous people who, when they speak about land and their feelings and attachment to it, one is left with a clear understanding of the trauma of land displacement and dispossession. In Canada there are up to 4-million indigenous people who feel strongly about the land they believe belongs to them after their forebears were dispossessed since the era of Columbus,” he said.
Fanon-Mendes-France spoke for close to two hours, and the mainly young audience was captured as she ranged from politics and economics, to land and human rights, explaining that freedom from colonialism in Africa that was not accompanied by structural reform was meaningless.
“The issues weighing heavily on the shoulders of black people on the African continent and elsewhere, especially in former colonies, are no longer defined by colonialism. What is affecting the advancement of black people is what we call coloniality,” she said.
“Ordinary people are at a disadvantage when postcolonial governments on the continent cut deals with global capital, such as multinationals, to the disadvantage of their people. Many of these corporates are given tax concessions for investing in the countries. In North African countries such as in Libya, the West will provide money to build walls and fences to stop Africans from crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Europe for better opportunities. This is not only a horrible idea but is also xenophobic as these measures are only targeted at black people.”
The audience shouted out a resounding “no!” when she asked whether schools in SA taught young people about the impact of apartheid on black lives. “It is the same in France. Those who suffered from colonialism and whose forebears were victims of slavery are not given a chance to tell their own stories. When you do, the system labels you anti-white or racist.
“Another level of coloniality is that of not being allowed to be human. Everywhere black people find themselves in this globalised world, they are unfairly profiled based on their phenotype and in the process treated like criminals,” FanonMendes-France said.
She said the worst outcome of coloniality was when black people were resigned to accepting that they were inferior to other people because of brainwashing.
In an interview after her presentation, the activist said that her father’s books — notably Black Skin, White Masks published in 1952 and The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961 — correctly located the problems of postcolonial Africa.
“Today there is no change. Nothing is happening to change the plight of the downtrodden because structurally the system is the same as during colonialism,” she said.
“African leaders simply replaced the former colonisers and then continued to reproduce the same system. In fact, it is worse than before. The system is so clever and is so many steps ahead that it is even harder to challenge it in a postcolonial Africa.
“The people implementing the system now on behalf of the West are black and often the former liberators. It is sometimes depressing, but we cannot give up the fight.”
She believed SA, because of its influence on the continent, could play an increasing role globally, especially in advocating for reforms of organisations like the UN.
“For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is faulty because it was drawn up without African representation and participation.
“We need to revisit that document and ensure that our input is taken and incorporated this time around,” Fanon-Mendes-France said.
EVERYWHERE BLACK PEOPLE FIND THEMSELVES IN THIS GLOBALISED WORLD, THEY ARE UNFAIRLY PROFILED