Critical theory must guide the learning of African history
Africans must say no to blind loyalty to leaders and colonisers
THE death of Queen Elizabeth II has moved me to revisit the expression, “history is in the making”.
I would start off by asking, whose history is this expression referring to? A plausible answer to this question will come after we have dealt with another question, whose history have we been fed all along?
I must declare up front the difficulty of addressing the people of South Africa when we are divided into two fascinating, dominant groups.
The first group consists of those former students of history who say, “I disliked history because it was concerned with events about prestigious people of Caucasian descent. It said little about the hegemony, ordinary lives and ethical leadership of the African people.”
The second group says, “History does not prepare anyone for the exigencies of the current economy, as no firm is interested in employing historians, and poets by extension.”
This group has found its voice in the current state bureaucracy and its representatives, which decided that history should not be made a compulsory subject.
Clearly, these two groups of former students of history have stopped before they could understand both the internal and external relations of African history. The second group, for instance, is legitimately inspired by the reductionist view that the economy is in dire need of Stem-related (science, technology, engineering, maths) skills.
The debate is about addressing the essence of the aloofness, the logic and the abstractness of these Europeanised school and university subjects.
While it would be fascinating to look at the group who hold the view that the Stem skills and other important aspects of social and political lives of people are critical for the development of the nation, I am inclined to examine the first group – history being plunged into the study of Caucasians and what they did to Africans in Africa and the diaspora.
In the first group, I find hope in their hopelessness.
I reckon that by activating the agency of the first group one would begin to move his or her children to higher order thinking spheres, instead of allowing them to backslide into a naive acceptance of the absence of Africans from the annals of history as some form of normality – the blind acceptance of the taken for granted.
Colonial history, colonial pain, the deliberate exclusion of Africans from the history records, depictions of Africans in colonial history and the plundering of Africa’s natural, cultural and human resources cannot be taken for granted. The extension of knowledge and practice of decolonisation and the analysis and dismantling of decoloniality should accompany any act of agentivising the first group’s critique of colonial history.
This includes rejecting the notion promoted by those in the echelons of power that learning about the history of Africans is not fashionable.
The supreme act of decoloniality and of dismantling coloniality, as a continued science of living indirect
rule over the exclusion and marginalisation of Africans from land, economy and culture, should begin by understanding:
How African countries were plundered by Europeans and traders from the East.
How Africans objectively and subjectively became conquered and underdeveloped.
How Africans were subjugated, dehumanised and super-exploited as a result.
How Africa was removed initially from the centre of knowledge and commerce to the margins of history.
How the devastating impact of the slave trade, colonialism, “discovery” of minerals and the introduction or extension of the capitalist mode of production and relations in Africa caused the current state of affairs.
How the future role of African children in unravelling, reorganising and redefining our currently distorted history will give rise to a new native and new humanism.
The two groups of former students of history I referred to at the beginning of this article should be encouraged or cajoled to start learning (and teaching) their heritage – understanding how their cultures, languages and philosophies were denigrated, distorted and decimated; how European missions of “educating”, “civilising” and “plundering” were valorised.
Children of Africa! You must be critical of the rationale for those claiming to be in power who downplay the value of studying African history, saying it is less important and out of fashion.
To learn about Gandhi, Mandela and Mapungubwe and a few paragraphs about the Khoisan people, at a descriptive level, is never enough.
Critical theory must guide the learning of African history during and post colonial histories. For example, black South African children must be taught, at home and in school, why it is they who are living in squalor. They must be encouraged to ask:
If our land was taken by brute force and law and 80% of South African land is in the hands of the 30% minority of white people from Europe, is that less important to know?
If many Africans were killed mercilessly by the British and Dutch settlers for defending their birthright and inheritance – cattle, land and children – is it right to forget and never talk about it?
If strategies to revise, reverse and rehumanise Africans comes from history books, African literature and philosophy, is it unconscionable to teach and learn about history, sociology and African philosophy?
As Africans, we must say no to blind loyalty to our leaders and colonisers. As inheritors of the colonial-capitalist world, we must prepare ourselves to begin the journey towards ensuring South Africa returns from Britain and America to its rightful owners where African communitarianism and scientific socialism shall gain hegemony in order to contest capitalism.
Mtonjeni is a member of the ANC branch in ward 89, City of Cape Town. He writes in his personal capacity as one interested in progressive politics, process philosophy, the African philosophy of Ubuntu and the study of African history from a critical perspective.