‘CHANCE FOR DEBATE ON COLONIALISM'

‘THE colonists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history.” – Amilcar Cabral

The furore around Helen Zille’s tweets on colonialism will no doubt continue for a long time and may even result in her political demise. And it won’t be because of “political correctness” or growing intolerance, as Zille tries to preemptively claim.

It will be because of a combination of ignorance about the meaning of colonialism and deep-seated prejudice about the place of Africa in world history.

Zille may make all sorts of claims about her being the victim of a witch- hunt against “white people” who speak out against “racial African nationalism”, but in this case she is the victim only of her own racially blinkered view of history.

Her views on colonialism in fact provide an opportunity for a wider discussion on colonialism and the counter decolonisation movement sweeping across our universities, particularly the former historically-white universities.

Zille typically equates colonialism with progress and advancement, most notably in technology and science. Hence her emphasis on colonialism and the development of infrastructure.

In fact, from her assertions, one would be hard-pressed not to conclude that without colonialism, every colonised part of the world – and Africa in particular – would not have any infrastructure (and certainly not the sophisticated infrastructure we have in our country).

Along with this emphasis on techno- logical advancement goes another familiar colonialism trope – colonisation is the precursor of civilisation. Without colonialism, we would have no modern state with the constitutional democracy and separation of powers that we have today. Certainly no independent judiciary, as one of the tweets reminded us.

Perhaps more interesting than what colonialism brought would be to hear what Zille thinks South Africa would be today if it was not so fortunate to have suffered this fate. But I won’t put words into her mouth. We’ll just wait for the next 140-character history lesson.

Colonialism is best described as an oppressive system of domination and exploitation underpinned by an ideology of (white) racial supremacy.

To conflate colonialism with technological advances or the evolution of humankind is representative of the kind of thinking which informed the ideology of colonialism in the first place.

Technological advances belong to all of humankind and are an expression of our inter-connectedness as a human species. Inventions have taken place in all parts of the world, from writing in Egypt and China to mathematics in Greece and India to the industrial revolution in Great Britain to our present global digital age. And it is hard for anyone to claim exclusive proprietorial right to any of these advances as they are all interconnected and often occurred in different parts of the world simultaneously.

To perpetuate the myth of white European superiority, apologists for colonialism have long tried to palm these as gifts bequeathed to the “backward natives” who but for the munificence of their colonial overlords would still be languishing in barbaric primitiveness.

As for human development, this is the natural condition of humankind and while trade, interaction and other forms of exchange influenced the pace and manner of this process, it was certainly not dependent on colonialism for it to take place. Progress did not need the conquest of one people by another or the enslavement of the majority by a minority. Colonialism was a product of history and not an inevitable part of the development of human society. Recognising its historical reality is not the same as imbuing it with some divine civilising mission. That is the task of praise singers and other propagandists.

It is precisely the denigration of Africa’s place in history and the elevation of colonialism as having brought Africa “into history” which the decolonisation movement is rightly debunking.

An essential element of decolonisation is reclaiming this history and inserting Africa back into global history, which it was an integral part of before the disruption of colonial conquest.

Unlike the caricature of decolonisation which presents it as wanting to disconnect from the world, decolonisation is about reintegrating into the world as equal and free citizens and not as abject subjects who have to look towards colonialism for validation of their humanity.

Even if it was not the intention of her tweets, Zille has inadvertently reinforced the imperative for us to reimagine a history divorced from the ideology of colonial domination to embrace a way of viewing the world that celebrates the contributions of all of humankind to our common humanity.

Zille is victim of own blinkered view of history