Some Key Definitions #Tamale 
No situation, concept or person can ever be fully understood without probing their histories. Hence, decolonization and decolonial projects demand an in-depth appreciation of the history of colonization and all its supporting discourses. #Tamale
Although there are overlaps and similarities in the legacies of European colonialism in Africa, there are also sharp differences between the practices and impacts of the different colonial powers. #Tamale
For the colonized, decolonization of the mind is really about returning to the annals of history to find ourselves, to become fluent in our cultural knowledge systems, to cultivate critical consciousness and to reclaim our humanity. #Tamale
Some people argue that Africans should “move on” and stop whining about colonialism. [...]
All scientists know that you cannot solve any problem without tackling its root causes. #Tamale
All scientists know that you cannot solve any problem without tackling its root causes. #Tamale
Africa’s relationship to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and imperialism is unique and its structural legacies run so deep that it would be foolhardy, even dangerous, to gloss over them in any analysis of its current position in the world. #Tamale
How is it that in 2020 we are still attending seminars and conferences where Euro-American scholars spend one hour rehashing simplistic outdated arguments that were discredited by scholars in the global South decades ago? #Tamale
Colonization of Africa by European states was executed through various layers using diverse strategies over a period that span centuries. The continent was forced into Eurocentric Westphalian world order ill-fitted to the diverse political realities & interests of the continent.
Perhaps the most important historical process was the massive theft of Africa’s land and resources by Euro-Americans. And the key apparatus used to justify and organize such plunder was the invention of the concept of race. #Tamale
Prior to the seventeenth century, human races as we know them today did not exist. Rather, they were invented by Anglo-Americans as a politico-economic manoeuvre designed to rationalize privilege and domination. #Tamale
The idea of race thus replaced “the relations of superiority and inferiority established through domination” and reconceived “humanity and human relations fictionally, in biological terms. #Tamale
Coloniality constructed the White bourgeois man as “the human being par excellence” & ”White women as “the human inversion of men". Indigenous people under the colonial “civilizing mission” were viewed as lesser humans (nearer to animals)—as dehumanized males and females. #Tamale
White women were subordinated to White men but always remained more empowered than Indigenous men and women who were imagined as degenerate beings. #Tamale
And in the colonial/modern gender system Indigenous females were reduced to instrumental vehicles for the reproduction of race and capital. #Tamale
The political economy of gender relations between African women & men was totally altered by colonialism, engendering new structural drivers of inequities. These included, for eg: new economic systems (based on capitalism); new political systems (based on liberal premises);...
For example, under the British system of indirect rule in Nigeria, colonialists recognized the authority of male chiefs, totally overlooking that of female chiefs. This worked to alienate women from the newly-created public sphere. #Tamale
And as the handmaidens of colonization, Christian missionaries introduced Western notions of gender hierarchies that had hitherto not been known in Africa. #Tamale
There is no “race” without colonial constructions of a binary, hierarchical, sex/gender system, incorporating all “women” into one “racialized” group or another. #Tamale
As a non-Western “woman of colour,” I will suffer discrimination based on a fictitious notion of race (skin colour) and hetero patriarchal constructions of gender. #Tamale
The dominance and pervasiveness of coloniality in the modern world is so fundamental it has shaped the way the world perceives us and most of us have in turn internalized its constructions of who we are. #Tamale
Decolonial feminism usefully offers a lens to understand the hidden-from-view interconnections between race and gender and the relation of each to normative heterosexuality. #Tamale
Using tools such as mass media, education, religion and law, colonialists constructed narratives of White supremacy and Black inferiority, male supremacy & female inferiority. Africa is portrayed as a backwater of failed states, trapped in the vortex of underdevelopment. #Tamale
The colonial machinery never goes to sleep & is extremely efficient. It is always in search of new ways of reinventing itself. Its main functions are twofold: to continue exploiting (neo)colonies; and to maintain the politico-economic enslavement necessary for its own existence.
How do we divert the paternalistic, fetishized and poisoned gaze of the Western reader from our beloved continent? How do we develop critical consciousness to counter racist patriarchal hegemonic power? #Tamale
Who will connect the ideological dots of racism, colonization, capitalism, sexism and heterosexism in ways that our children understand? Can we move beyond Eurocentric knowledge hegemonies? How do we navigate Eurocentric “modernity” without losing our “Africanness”? #Tamale
The Meaning of Africa(ns)
Africa is a vast continent of fifty-four countries with diverse and rich cultures and different relationships to economies. It is thus impossible to generalize about “Africa. #Tamale
Africa is a vast continent of fifty-four countries with diverse and rich cultures and different relationships to economies. It is thus impossible to generalize about “Africa. #Tamale
Charles Ngwena argues, Africanness presents itself in the form of a lifelong conversation without an end precisely because of the ever evolving, unfinished, unfolding multiplicities of conjectural African identifications at play in the grand drama of life. #Tamale
But Kwame Appiah argues that “a specifically African identity began as a product of a European gaze. #Tamale
Nonetheless, for the purposes of the decolonization and decolonial projects, it is extremely important to treat Africa as one historical unit. #Tamale
The vast majority of the continent shares a common history of slavery, colonialism and oppression which has fostered a more unified political approach to the challenges of underdevelopment, geopolitical marginalization and economic exploitation. #Tamale
The shared values of communal life and group solidarity, embedded in the philosophical concept of Ubuntu, for example, also differentiate African people from modern Euro-American societies. #Tamale
Even as individualism has penetrated the market-driven societies of neoliberal Africa, many fundamental aspects of African lives remain anchored in collective relationships and efficacy, for which women are central. #Tamale
The communitarianism goes beyond the mere aggregate of isolated individuals but where individuals are part of a unity that is interdependent and mutually beneficial. #Tamale
End of Chapter 1, Introduction – Of Counter-Narratives #Tamale
Chapter 2, The Basics of Decolonization and Decolonial Futures #Tamale
Although not alone in having experienced the ravages of colonialism, Africa is unique in the world in having been the birthplace of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. #Tamale
The unprecedented turmoil, painful dislocation and racially-based colonialism that directly resulted from the dynamics of this trade was to reshape the socioeconomic and political structures of the continent forever. #Tamale
Despite the formal independence of African states, the material legacies and deep psychological scars that this history inflicted on the continent and its people are still fresh more than four centuries later. #Tamale
Our decolonization and decolonial efforts have largely been simply picking at the scabs of the deep scars that colonialism and coloniality left in their wake. #Tamale
Despite concerted efforts to erase the history and humanity of Africans, and to render them expendable, the people of African heritage have, in many ways, endured with their rich cultures, intellectualities and identities. #Tamale
In order to justify Europe’s colonization of Africa, it was important to create a discourse of difference between Europeans and Africans, depicting the race and culture of the former as superior to that of the latter. #Tamale
By casting the African as the inferior “Other,” Europe paved the way for taking over the continent and transforming Africans into Europeans through the process of assimilation. #Tamale
Nowhere was the ideology of assimilation better exemplified than in the African French empire (l’Afrique Noire) where France aimed to convert African “natives” into Black French citizens. #Tamale
The prefix “de-” in the terms “decolonization” and “decoloniality” connotes an active action of undoing or reversal. For Africa, the concept is heavily burdened with deep histories, many of whose consequences are irreversible. #Tamale
<- It speaks to the dismantling of several layers of complex and entrenched colonial structures, ideologies, narratives, identities and practices that pervade every aspect of our lives. #Tamale
We witness the legacies of colonization every day when: our presidents beg for aid from Western capitals; our governments sell off a natural forest for foreign investors to replace it with an industrial park; we refer to the largest lake on the continent as “Lake Victoria”; ...
... the riot police sprays tear gas into a peaceful crowd protesting oppression; … a teacher punishes a student for using their mother tongue; people use dangerous skin-whitening products to bleach their skins;... #Tamale
The African decolonization/decolonial project is fundamentally about one thing: restoring the dignity of African people. By no means is it focused on a naïve desire to return to a romanticized pre-colonial past. #Tamale
Shaking off the historically-extensive and deep legacies of colonialism is the toughest challenge that Africa will ever face. #Tamale
Is decolonization/decoloniality a pipe dream, a fantasy? Are Africans capable of reclaiming their dignity and respect? Is a “Renaissance” realistically achievable? If it is, what would it take? If not, why not, and what would be the alternatives? #Tamale
Most history texts depict Europe as the centre of the universe and the sole driver of the major civilizations of the world. Such history is further embellished with untruths about how, through colonialism, Europe exported civilization to relatively backward Africa. #Tamale
Far from being the insignificant backwater, the civilizations of Africa and Asia were unsurpassed. #Tamale
It is ludicrous and untenable for anyone to suggest that a people do not have history. When a people are constructed through a historical vacuum, it is easy to fill that vacuum with all kinds of negative comprehensions and interpretations. #Tamale
“Unless one chooses to live in a state of unconsciousness and alienation, one cannot live without memory, or with a memory that belongs to someone else. And history is the memory of nations." Joseph Ki-Zerbo #Tamale
The thousands of ancient manuscripts preserved in Timbuktu and its environs (present-day Mali), the Shabaka stone, recorded by the Nubian-Ethiopian pharaoh Shabaka...represent only a small slice of Africa’s civilization legacy that was “disappeared” by colonialists. #Tamale
The original place of modern humans was in East Africa about 3 million years ago. It was from here that brown-pigmented humans migrated to the rest of the world and “by differentiation in other climates that the original stock later split into different races. #Tamale
Decolonization studies must trace African history from its Egypto-Nubian antiquity It is extremely important for Africa’s decolonization/decolonial project that Europe’s manipulation of history and the imperialist intellectual deceit is uncovered. #Tamale
Additionally, the pillage of African antiquities by colonialists and the ongoing illicit trade in the continent’s artefacts present a huge gap in its prehistoric sociopolitical life. ->
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Deliberate steps must be taken to set the historical record straight for our children and to end the slavish parroting of the Africanist guru. This is extremely important for the success of the project. #Tamale
The colonization (and by logical extension, decolonization too) project can be divided into two pedagogical stages: colonialism and coloniality. The former lies in the realm of the experience while the latter is more conceptually oriented. #Tamale
Most of us are familiar with the first term; colonialism refers to the old-fashioned style of physical appropriation of Indigenous lands and people with a colonial administration to oversee their exploitation. #Tamale
Coloniality, on the other hand, is a more indirect type of colonization but by no means less effective than the first. In a cognitive sense, it co-existed with colonialism and outlived it. #Tamale
The process of colonization erased, suppressed & demonized all Indigenous non-Western knowldg systems. In particular, knowledges of women (alchemist wise women), of “peasants” & working classes & of “pagans” or earth-centred religion worshippers were all subjugated & criminalized
Conversely, the Eurocentric knowledge system was given place of honour and constructed as “natural” and universal. #Tamale
For colonization to succeed, it was important for the colonialists to capture minds of the colonized. Not only did they restructure the knowledge systems of African people, they also embarked on a mission to erase and/or devalue their history, culture, expressions & ways of being
<- When we speak of decolonization, the process of “breaking free” must target both levels of colonization in order to be effective. #Tamale
The agency of Africans must be guided by a consciousness that is crystal clear about what the problem is, namely one anchored in the continent’s rich history and the ideals of feminism and African nationalism. #Tamale
Decolonization is a multifaceted, holistic and integral process that cannot be delinked from the very structures of knowledge that were implanted by the colonialists. #Tamale
For Africa, the watershed of European colonization was marked with the capturing of the first African slaves who were taken to America in 1619. Through slavery, Africans were “Othered” as “uncivilized inferior“savages. After 2 centuries, the trade was officially abolished in 1807
Thereafter European imperialists turned to the plunder of Africa’s land, people and resources. They moved in to pillage raw materials such as minerals, oil, rubber, ivory, cotton, cocoa, tea, groundnuts, etc., using cheap labour. #Tamale
Just as the US derived its power from the slave economy, European countries derived theirs from colonial expansion. #Tamale
To date, 14 African countries are obliged to deposit 50% of their foreign exchange reserves w/ the French treasury & another 20% to address financial liabilities. After paying this “colonial tax” these countries have access to only 30% of their own money for national development.
It is estimated that France receives approximately USD 500 billion annually from this colonial tax, which yields trillions after being invested on the stock market. #Tamale
The end of formal colonialism triggered the start of neocolonialism. Neo-colonialism is a reality and while different states acquired flag independence and national anthems, the political, economic and legal structures existing today are still entrenched in the colonial past.
New strategies to maintain colonial power over “independent” Africa are in many ways more dangerous because the “colonizers” are not accountable for their exploitative pursuits. #Tamale
Today, Africa is indirectly dominated by institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and multinational corporations which run the neocolonial machinery and wield significant power on the global landscape. #Tamale
The second level of coloniality was (and still is) much more insidious and dangerous. It operates in subtle and “benign” ways derived from the warped understanding of Africa’s historiography. ->
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Its ideologies are inculcated through institutions such as education, religion, laws, family, language, corrupted cultural practices & mass media (print, broadcast, social). It involves the colonization of the mind, patterns of knowledge & social structures of Indigenous peoples.
Our sense of history should be delinked from that of the empire to allow us delve further into Africa’s past, beyond the skewed periodization of “pre-colonial,” “colonial” and “post
colonial.” #Tamale
colonial.” #Tamale
Psychological colonization renders the identity of the colonized a very precarious unity. Internalized colonization is so deeply embedded and our contexts so enlivened with colonial logic that our intuitive responses to change are usually negative. #Tamale
<- It blurs our vision and restricts our potential to imagine a different world—a world where everything Western is deemed to be inherently superior to anything Indigenous. #Tamale
The complex process of disentangling and destabilizing coloniality, depriving it of all its lifelines, begins with shifting our mindsets. #Tamale
In short, the project of decolonization must begin by rupturing internalized racism and sexism through the decolonization of the mind. This is precisely what African feminists have been working hard to do in the last six decades. #Tamale
End of Chapter 2, The Basics of Decolonization and Decolonial Futures #Tamale
Chapter 3, Feminists and the Struggle for Africa’s Decolonial Reconstruction #Tamale
There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not lead single-issue lives.
—Audre Lord #Tamale
—Audre Lord #Tamale
African feminisms have always stood between the hard rock of Western influence and domination and African relativism and disparagement. #Tamale
While patriarchies everywhere stem from the same roots of male power, and whereas there are some overlaps in the way women experience oppression globally, the preoccupations and priorities of African feminists cannot be similar to those of orthodox Western feminists. #Tamale
This is not only because race is a deeply constitutive element of gender, but also for the reason that the African continent occupies a separate cultural, social, economic and geopolitical landscape from the West. #Tamale
As Africans, our colonial education systems largely delimited our thinking to Western theorizations of ourselves and our environments. #Tamale
Worse still, it reinforced racist and sexist stereotypes about the superiority of Western nations and patriarchal conventions of male dominance.
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Neocolonial powers ensured that the status quo remained intact well after the attainment of flag-independence. It is time to change that, to remove the scales from our eyes and focus on pathways that re-centre Africa and its people. #Tamale
In Africa, women’s struggles against oppression predate colonialism. There is a long history of women mobilizing in creative ways to resist patriarchal and political domination, asserting their personal and collective rights.
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Several legendary women helped transform their societies even before colonizers stepped foot on their soil; examples include Queen Eyleuka (Dalukah) of Ethiopia, Queen Lobamba of Kuba (Congo), Princess Nang’oma of Bululi (Uganda), Queen Rangita of Madagascar, ->
<- Queen Nzinga of Angola and Queen Nyabingi (northern Tanzania & western Uganda). #Tamale
If African women are to successfully challenge their subordination & oppression, they need to carefully and rigourously develop home-grown conceptualizations that capture the specific political-economies and cultural realities encountered, as well as their traditional worldviews.
It reminds us that, given the history of the continent and the lingering legacies of colonialism, imperialism, racism and neoliberalism, theories and paradigms formulated in the West do not necessarily apply in Africa. #Tamale
Currently, African academies largely remain consumers of knowledge produced in the global North. The decolonization and decolonial alternatives would require conscious efforts by Africans to become producers of knowledge. #Tamale
Despite the strides made by feminist scholars, many in mainstream academia, even today, are yet to be convinced that feminist methodologies, approaches and analyses in research are part of legitimate scientific inquiry. #Tamale
Until feminist analyses are mainstreamed into knowledge production and into “malestream” scholarship, Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) will continue to carry the large and weighty burden of filling the gaps in our knowledge base about women and gender relations. #Tamale
As part of the decolonizing/decolonial project and in order to support the work of GWS in Africa, feminists created their own platforms dedicated to publishing feminist scholarship and consolidating the body of feminist literature on the continent. #Tamale
The colonial metropolitan centres kept their influence on the intellectual growth of African academics through various mechanisms such as scholarship schemes and tight gatekeeping at the major peer-reviewed publishing outlets. #Tamale
The commodification of knowledge has reached another level whereby multinational academic publishers such as Springer, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, JSTOR, Wiley Publishing, Sage Publications, etc., are preying on struggling journals from the global South for profit. #Tamale
Empowering Women for Gender Equity. It was launched in 1987 by a group of women activists, students and scholars from the then University of Natal in South Africa, who formed a group by the same name Produced quarterly,->
<- the journal’s primary objective was to showcase “contributions of feminist, women authors, on gender equality and issues from a feminist perspective, following stringent academic criteria.” #Tamale
As part of African feminist & institutional solidarity around knowledge production, the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF)—a regional grant making foundation—has, over the years, awarded grants to Agenda to support its operations & strategy, & special editions of the journal
The biannual Feminist Africa (FA) made its debut from the African Gender Institute (AGI) at the University of Cape Town in 2002 and announced its goal as working towards developing “a feminist intellectual community by promoting and enhancing African women’s intellectual work.
When engendering knowledge discourse and knowledge production, feminists have to be careful not to fall into the trap of projecting African women as hapless victims of a totalizing patriarchal-capitalist oppression. #Tamale
A Black woman’s exp of racism&sexism are not separate (i.e additive) but rather, mutually constitutive; they're not quantitative but qualitative. Systems of oppression do not operate separately along single axis (e.g race) but work simultaneously, shaping each other interactively
An intersectional approach is multifaceted, challenging Western hegemonic structures and institutions, including the very nature of knowledge (ontology) and how we access that knowledge (epistemology). #Tamale
Storytelling is closely associated with Indigenous ways of knowing and fits in perfectly with decolonizing/decolonial discourses. When narratives are combined with nuanced conceptualizations of power and oppression, intersectional analyses are possible. #Tamale
Insofar as intersectionality activates our awareness of the fluidity and dynamism of people’s multifaceted oppressions, it holds enormous conceptual and political purchase for the decolonization/ decolonial project. #Tamale
[intersectionality ] helps African people understand why our “truths” do not always match with the official “truths” constructed in the Eurocentric capitalist-heteropatriarchal master narratives. #Tamale
Intersectionality teaches us “to check for the deep, internal discomfort we feel when something is being stated as gospel but does not match our truth. #Tamale
Nowhere did women’s multiple, interlocking and simultaneous oppressions come to the surface in recent African history than in the South African “fallist” movements spearheaded by the students who challenged institutional power & epistemic coloniality in higher education & beyond.
White middle-class women from the global North tended to take a single axis analysis of women’s oppression based on particularized patriarchy. #Tamale
Afro-ecofeminism is important pillar of a decolonial feminist approach to reconstructing Africa. Naomi Maina-Okori et al are right when they argue tht Indigenous conceptions of interconnectivities go beyond human relations to include nature; they disrupt the nature/culture divide
Link between gender and ecological justice is therefore brought to the fore, providing a different framework for analyzing coloniality as it relates to both social and environmental issues. #Tamale
Huge chunks of land in Madagascar, Uganda, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Congo, etc., have been sold off or leased to countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. ->
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Maina-Okori et al. remind us that “From a colonial perspective, land and the colonized (mostly Indigenous peoples) are considered part of” nature and consequently objects and commodities of capitalism. #Tamale
Africa has the lowest per capita ecological footprint in the world, and yet it is the most vulnerable continent to the impacts of climate change This paradox lies in the continent’s beleaguered legacies of slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism. #Tamale
Na’im Akbar metaphorically likened the African cosmos to a spider
web, explaining that: “its least element cannot be touched without making the whole vibrate. Everything is connected,” interdependent. #Tamale
web, explaining that: “its least element cannot be touched without making the whole vibrate. Everything is connected,” interdependent. #Tamale
The underlying philosophy that informs such wisdom, one that is shared by many communities around the continent, is Ubuntu. For centuries, Africans have celebrated the values which connect past and present as well as humans and nature. #Tamale
In the global North, French feminists were the first to coin the term l’eco-féminisme, (ecofeminism), linking issues of gender oppression to the phenomenon of men’s domination of nature. #Tamale
But the term essentially described “a new name for ancient wisdom. Ecofeminism mimics/recycles ancient African wisdom. It highlighted commonalities b/n anthropocentrism & malesupremacist thinking & revealed how capitalist-patriarchal domination reduces women/nature to commodities
Africa’s ecocentric worldview was, rather obtusely, acknowledged by the world in 2004 when Kenyan feminist Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. #Tamale
African organizations such as African Women Unite Against Destructive Resource Extraction (WoMin) and the African Eco Feminist Collective also use radical and African feminist traditions to challenge patriarchy and neo-colonialism. #Tamale
“The purpose of working out an integrated philosophy of humanity and nature is not only to challenge dualisms to reflect more clearly our lived experience in theory but also to describe relations among women,
men, society, ->
men, society, ->
<- and nonhuman nature in a way that is conducive to a high quality of life and antithetical to oppression and exploitation." Stephanie Lahar
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In order to truly transcend the dualistic anthropocentric culture of patriarchal-capitalism, I would add to Lahar’s integrative philosophical list of humanity and nature, Indigenous knowledge systems. #Tamale
It is in this spirit that I end this chapter with part of a selected “re-memorying” nature poem by the South African feminist poet Malika Ndlovu as a healing tribute & way of affirmin the African ecofeminist poetic fractured by colonialism. Extract is from, “Lydia in the Wind.”
End of Chapter 3, Feminists and the Struggle for Africa’s Decolonial Reconstruction #Tamale
Chapter 4, Challenging the Coloniality of Sex, Gender and Sexuality #Tamale
most of us are not consciously aware of the subtle, multidimensional and infinite ways that coloniality shapes our understandings of [constructs such as race, ethnicity, nationality, age and religion] #Tamale
Today, European global domination has an ironclad hold on our ways of thinking, feeling and being; hence it shapes our positionality in the world. #Tamale
coloniality of Being becomes most visible and concrete when we encounter liminal persons, that is, humans who are culturally ambiguous; those that cannot be easily classified into dichotomized and “naturalized” social categories that coloniality has constructed for us. #Tamale
through a discursive intersectional analysis of the public discourse on Phelps and Semenya, we reveal the hidden power behind the written word (and the silences). #Tamale
Apparently, the physicality of both athletes gives them an advantage over their competitors. The differences between Semenya and Phelps generally fall under the constructs of gender, race, class and nation. #Tamale
The IAAF reported that they wanted to ensure that Semenya did not have an advantage over other female athletes based on her “difference".
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Phelps, on the other hand, despite his unique physique, has never been constrained—by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or IAAF—to undergo any medical/ physical tests. And if any tests were done, they have never been used in a decision regarding his official performances.
The guidelines for eligibility are not clear and remain subjective. #Tamale
“bio-logical” sex did not always correspond to ideological gender in African societies. #Tamale
British colonial administrator Lord Frederick Lugard, viewing woman-to-woman marriages in West Africa through Eurocentric lenses, declared them “not normal” and recorded them in his book, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, under the title, “Slavery” in British Africa.”
<- Of course, such marriages were “not normal” in his European experience and his classic patriarchal mind could not fathom a woman marrying another woman, hence describing it as slavery. #Tamale
Gender flexibility and gender bending existed in many other African societies. For example, woman-to-woman marriages have been documented in more than thirty African societies, including the Nandi, Kikuyu, and Luo of Kenya, the Nuer of South Sudan, the Kuria in Tanzania, ->
<- the Fon in Dahomey (present-day Benin), the Fanti of Ghana, the Thonga of Zimbabwe, the Konso and Amhara of Ethiopia, the Ottoro of Nubia, the Tanala and Bara of Madagascar, the Wolof of Senegal, the Kwayama and Ovimbundu of Angola and the Venda of South Africa. #Tamale
Woman-woman marriages are usually undertaken for reproductive, economic and diplomatic reasons, for example, well to-do women who cannot have children of their own for biological reasons. ->
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Or it could be a woman whose offspring consists of only daughters. Such a woman will marry a younger woman who will take on male lovers and produce children for her female “husband”. #Tamale
By marrying women, these Gikuyu women are radically disrupting male domination operating in their everyday lives.Their stories may begin w land & struggles over material resources, but they're also stories of love, commitment, children, sexual freedom, vulnerability & empowerment
Caution should be exercised in using Western conceptualizations of homosexuality onto same-sex desire in African contexts. Colonial notions of “sexual bodies” and “desire” differ quite distinctively from African ones. #Tamale
Mainstream scientific publications & dominant legal thinking lead us to believe that there are only 2 sexes & that the terms “man” & “woman” are natural, unambiguous & stable. They also operate under the mistaken assumption that one’s birth sex predicts one’s behaviour & actions.
This is so despite medical evidence that has thoroughly disproved such assumptions. The reality on the ground shows that 1 to 4% of the world’s population are intersexed. #Tamale
Numerous studies have documented non-Western societies that view sex and gender along a spectrum. For example, the following names are used to formally describe “third genders”: hijra in India, kwolu-aatmwol in Papua New Guinea, ->
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<- two-spirited people (or perjoratively, berdache) among some Native Americans, and guevodoche or machihembra in the Dominican Republic. Such pluralistic gender systems render “bodies in doubt” visible and legitimate. #Tamale
In Semenya’s case Eurocentric taxonomies of sex & sexuality were re-executed in a scientific laboratory in Berlin, by a board in Monaco (IAAF headquarter) & by a judge in Lausanne (where the Court of Arbitration for Sport & the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland are located).
Together, all these institutions instrumentalized her body by policing the boundaries of the body-scape within a binary gender system, giving it an intellectual base. They exercised their power to “Other” via classifications. #Tamale
Despite the fact that science is presented as “pure”, “logical” & “rational” & scientists as “detached discoverers”, the discipline is always textured by social & cultural contexts within which scientists operate. There is no such thing as “natural knowledge” or “objective truth”
The scientific panel in Semenya’s case was working to reinforce and re-legitimize the sex/gender paradigm. #Tamale
Coloniality has conditioned us to value and venerate the work of gloved and sanitized people (mostly White men) in White coats bending over microscopes in pristine labs; to accept their results as unquestionable and to respect their verdicts as the “truth.” #Tamale
So when the IAAF panel of medical experts declared Semenya “not female,” her fate was sealed. The “scientific” results were then confirmed and institutionalized by the gavel of the bewigged judge and the general public applauded. #Tamale
Semenya is a woman culturally and socially but biologically and legally she is not. Such arbitrary moulding of sex indicates its sociopolitical construction African cultures that accommodate sex ambiguity and fluidity were not consulted.
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Instead, intersexuality was pathologized through imposing intrusive tests on Semenya and causing her considerable psychological stress and trauma. #Tamale
While the case was against one individual, it has far-reaching implications and touches all of us at various levels. The double standard employed by IAAF towards the Semenyas and the Phelps of this world is a serious social justice issue. #Tamale
African countries continue to rely on institutions that have deep roots in colonialism, including education, religion, law and economics. All these ensure that the supremacy of the capitalist system is maintained.
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A rigid binary gender system that recognizes “superior” males over “subordinated” females is supported by legal power. Our legal status as male or female affects our relations in marriage, parenting, inheritance & employment; it affects our access to healthcare & social security.
Caster Semenya is an important symbol of how society, governed by coloniality, works to fit all of us into the two boxes labelled “male” and “female.” #Tamale
Institutions such as science and the law are mobilized to moor social gender norms to birth sex, when in reality gender is neither a coherent nor a stable category. #Tamale
“Scientific” taxonomies of human populations that categorize us into hierarchized binary classifications facilitates the unjust distribution of resources. #Tamale
The law will gloss over the awkward contradictions and double standards that come with the rigid gender ideology simply to maintain the status quo. #Tamale
Semenya went to court demanding that she be allowed to compete “free of drugs, free of speculation and free of judgment. She rejected being forced into, incorporated into the modern/colonial gender system when she refused to be subjected to hormonal treatment. #Tamale
Analyzing the embodied experience of Semenya allowed us to comprehend that “the modern/colonial system of gender is not a universal but a concrete historical experience of subjugation. #Tamale
She proves to us that there are multiple ways of inhabiting our bodies and the world. That is a central point in the struggle for the decolonial reimagination of our bodies. #Tamale
Chapter 5, Legal Pluralism and Decolonial Feminism #Tamale
The situations, mechanisms and processes through which African people position themselves as legal subjects are important. In fact, it is these processes that regulate our day-to-day activities and not the provisions of the law in the books.
#Tamale
#Tamale
Written law is a secondary, rather than a primary locus of social regulation, particularly for women. Hence, we can speak of law-in-the-books vs. law-in-practice or state-law vs. people’s-law or official-law vs. living-law or legal-centralism vs. legal pluralism. #Tamale
When colonialists introduced written laws, new legal professionals and an “independent” court system, they touted them as “more civilized” than the old legal order. The new legalities promised to overcome the “whims” of the “primitive” pre-colonial legal system.
#Tamale
#Tamale
But the fact is that the historical roots of the un-professionalized justice system that the majority of Africans (wananchi) use for dispute resolution run deep in their traditional cultures. #Tamale
As a force of subjugation, colonialism approached law in terms of “law and order” focusing on suppressing the pluralism of competing legal traditions, a tendency described by Cover as “jurispathic.”The primary focus for colonialists was on penal provisions & criminal proceedings.
The emergence of prisons and “penal coloniality” were indeed “an integral facet of colonialism” in Africa. The continuing legacy of penal coloniality is still evident, being embedded in the state criminal justice system that is used to coerce and control.
#Tamale
#Tamale
Some scholars have also argued that the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 was a neocolonial guise to further the mission of imperialism. They point to its exclusive targeting of African leaders and their sympathizers. #Tamale
All formal legal systems in Africa are alien, adversarial, non participatory, expensive and divided into civil and criminal silos. It has been six decades or so since formal independence and the systems are still intact while a few laws have been revised. #Tamale
The bulk of revised laws on the continent are in the two areas of criminal and commercial laws—commercial law to facilitate extraction of resources and labour confluence with commercial and tax laws. #Tamale
<- This is not by accident as the capitalist system turned all of us into “economic citizens.” And criminal law is deployed as a tool to control and regulate. #Tamale
All this is a far cry from the traditional legal systems that existed prior to colonialism which were generally restorative, participatory and communal in finding solutions and reconciling people. #Tamale
An intrinsic dimension of traditional African societies are the “palaver tree” meetings where communities used to converge and discuss issues of common interest including dispute resolution. #Tamale
In most cases, the colonizers simply copied, pasted & imposed their metropolitan laws & enforcement mechanisms on the colonies. In western Africa, for ex, the French introduced French Civil Law and regulations (e.g. the Code Napoléon of 1804 and the Penal Code) to their colonies.
It is a singular shame and a perplexing fact that African sources of law form a negligible part of the continent’s formal law in the twenty first century. #Tamale
To date, African countries typically have multiple sources of formal law, that is, the received colonial laws, received faith-based laws (e.g., Shari’a in most former French colonies) and customary law that was ossified by colonialism. #Tamale
These laws exist in a vertical, hierarchical relationship with each other and are enforced by courts of law. The received colonial laws lie on top of the legal hierarchy and, typically, take precedence over all other forms of law. #Tamale
Among the received laws, one stands out as the premier law to which all other received colonial laws must bend, that is, the constitution. Constitutions set out the basic principles of governance and the values that nation states must adhere to. #Tamale
Not only did the colonial administrators keep close supervision of the chiefs’ courts, but they also maintained control over the courts’ interpretation of customary law. The result was a “tamed” customary law that was subjected to a repugnancy test. #Tamale
It's clear that the “justice” & “morality” to which customary law had to defer were based on colonial standards. It's, therefore, mind boggling to think that many “independent” African states still carry this racist test for assessing validity of their customary norms & practices
The process of decolonization/decoloniality for Africa must involve the extrication and detachment from colonial legal and juridical processes. Our justice systems should reflect the realities on the ground. #Tamale
The decolonization/decolonial project must work to transform the socialized (read colonized) minds of the elite minority by changing the legal educational model to adapt to the realities of wananchi. #Tamale
Viewed through the colonial lens, customary law is perceived as exotic and even barbaric. This form of Othering Indigenous laws and subordinating them to received state laws was part of the colonial agenda of consolidating imperial power. #Tamale
As stated earlier, it is crucial to understand the difference between the colonial product dubbed “customary law” and the Indigenous justice systems that existed in Africa prior to the advent of colonialism. #Tamale
Unlike received laws which are contained in neatly bound texts, customary law remains largely unwritten. It lives in the memories of people who practise it, passed on from generation to generation.
#Tamale
#Tamale
It is based on the values, mores and traditions of communities, although today, its evolution is also heavily influenced by other forces including colonial and postcolonial processes. The fact that customary law is not written posed a big problem for the colonialists. #Tamale
Colonialists deemed customary law much too amorphous and variable. It lacked the certainty that was necessary to effectively police the colonies. But far from being amorphous, customary law was clearly known to the Indigenous people to whom it applied. #Tamale
Colonial conceptions of law find it extremely disturbing that the content of living customary law is not readily available and only resides within the communities subjected to its normative orders. #Tamale
Colonialists disregarded the dynamism integral in customary law and set out to find ways of pinning it down. This was done by establishing rules by which the judiciary could prove the customary laws and practices of a society. #Tamale
Colonialists tried to reduce manipulated customs into fixed written rules with accompanying fixed punishments. Such codification was attempted in countries such as Tanganyika, Senegal and South Africa, thereby transforming a living law into an inflexible colonial residue.
Another way that Europeans reduced customary law to a frozen relic was through an explosion of intellectual publications by Western legal anthropologists and sociologists who claimed to be experts on the contents of different native customs. #Tamale
Colonial “customary law” was born, ossified—like the dry bones of a skeleton—then fossilized and frozen. The aim was to deprive African traditional norms of the oxygen that kept them alive to thrive and instead, cast them in stone like the biblical Ten Commandments. #Tamale
Just as water always finds its way through the tiniest of cracks, so too do people always find their way around and through the cumbersome and alienating state laws when seeking justice. #Tamale
In addition to living customary law, wananchi devise their own systems of navigating social disputes and conflict, collectively referred to as “community justice". Sometimes referred to as “popular justice”. #Tamale
Although colonial and Eurocentric legal theories are reluctant to view such mechanisms as falling within the realm of law, we must examine these informal or community-based initiatives as part of Africa’s decolonization of the justice system. #Tamale
This is how the Rwandan government was forced to reimagine and re-invoke the traditional justice system of Gacaca despite the fact that it had never dealt with crimes of this proportion. #Tamale
Like many African traditional justice systems, Gacaca was backed by the philosophy of reconciliation and reparation as opposed to incarceration and retribution. #Tamale
While the entire Gacaca process lasted only a brief ten years, it brought more people to trial than the ICTR, transnational trials, and the formal courts combined. #Tamale
In communitarian societies, like many of those found in Africa, community needs outweigh the “individual rights” embedded in procedural due process. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
Rather than being accorded to the individual perpetrators of crime or civil wrongs, the ideals of fairness, reasonableness and efficiency carried in due process are bestowed on the families, the clans and the larger community. #Tamale
The processes of decolonization and decoloniality for Africa require the continent to develop a robust jurisprudence based on a hybrid of traditional rules and “modern” developments in line with the approach adopted in South Africa’s courts. #Tamale
However, the ultimate goal should be to dismantle all colonial legal and institutional frameworks that reinforce hierarchies. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
Consequently, there is need to formalize Indigenous systems of justice which are culturally relevant and that resonate with the decolonization/decolonial
project. The resilience of these Indigenous systems tells a story of resistance and transcendence. #Tamale
project. The resilience of these Indigenous systems tells a story of resistance and transcendence. #Tamale
Religion played at least three pivotal and overtly political roles in the process of colonizing Africa. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
First, by converting the people from their Indigenous religious/spiritual beliefs and forcing them to take on alien religions, the empire disconnected African people from their crucial identity markers and value orientations. #Tamale
Second, religion was also instrumentalized in the service of the colonial project to “divide and rule” Indigenous populations and to entrench power. In particular, the colonialists manipulated the differences in religious faiths, denominations and sects. #Tamale
<- By working one politico-religious group off against the other, the divide-and-rule policy ensured that Indigenous people did not unite against their common enemy—the colonizer. #Tamale
The 3rd, & most important function of religion, was that it facilitated & justified the colonization project. Both Islam & Christianity were pandered as religions “of civilization” & “modernity.” Religion was used as a mobilizing force to purchase submission & overawe resistance.
In an email communication, American Pastor Scott Lively—one of the most outspoken religious fundamentalists in the USA—implored his Ugandan anti-gay religious and political collaborators to remove me from the position of Dean of Law at Makerere University #Tamale
Directly or indirectly, religious beliefs and values form part of Africa’s pluralistic legal system and culture. Spiritual coloniality was key to establishing the imperial empire and, to date, continues to be a forceful influence in the lives of African people. #Tamale
Its instrumentalization for political and economic agendas is evident everywhere on the continent, with society’s vulnerable groups such as women and sexual minorities, suffering its worst manifestations. #Tamale
End of Chapter 5, Legal Pluralism and Decolonial Feminism #Tamale
Chapter 6, Repositioning the Dominant Discourses on Rights and Social Justice #Tamale
Like most legal concepts taken for granted today in Africa, “human rights”—as articulated in contemporary discourse—are alien to the continent. #Tamale
The interpretations and narratives of human rights that we discuss in African educational institutions, as well as in current civil society and political spaces, are largely steeped in Western ideas and history. #Tamale
African feminist scholars have critiqued the dominance of Western human rights perspectives that permeate international feminism. Needless to say, the entire foundation & structure of the formal legal system was directly imported from colonial metropoles & imposed on the colonies
Just as African Indigenous philosophy of law would not have necessarily supported the realities in Europe, so too was such imposition problematic in Africa. #Tamale
One only needs to revisit this history through exposés such as Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, Silvester & Gewald’s Words Cannot be Found, German Colonial Rule in Namibia & Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged to appreciate extent of Europe’s atrocious violence on the continent.
All state violence (historical and contemporary) against the people occurs within a legal framework, which is used to legitimize and legalize oppression. #Tamale
[The human rights system] assumes that there was a consensus among the world’s human groupings regarding the rights articulated in the treaties. #Tamale
[T]he absence of Africans in international fora was the norm rather than the exception. In that sense, they were viewed as objects, rather than subjects of international law. #Tamale
[A]gitating for gender justice is un-African or that homosexual practices are alien to African culture are simply perpetuating essentialized versions of custom and of Africans. #Tamale
It is important to be wary of such fundamentalists who abuse rights in the name of culture, religion or the nation, deploying them to silence feminist political struggles. #Tamale
The concept of “human rights” and the notion of the “rule of law” are rooted in international treaties both constructed as universal, essential and generic. #Tamale
“what does it mean to use a discourse of generic personhood—the discourse of rights—against the privileges that such discourse has traditionally secured?” (Wendy Brown) The fact is that human rights are geopolitically circumscribed and historically contingent. #Tamale
The atomistic decontextualized individual implicit in its theory excludes communitarian interests & identities prevalent in non-Western societies. More importantly, in dealing w/ “freely”-competing individuals, it leaves underlying sources of structural power intact & unopposed.
Governments, which are predominantly patriarchal in nature, are not only designed to protect the interests of the propertied classes but also patriarchal interests, including the power that men generally wield over women. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
<- Thus, for the majority of African women, the social contract framework is untenable. #Tamale
The inequities and contradictions that characterize capitalist production make it impossible to speak of universal rights for all. #Tamale
All in all, the Western liberal conception of human rights has no parallel on the African continent. Its philosophical basis lies in diametrical opposition to that of African people. One is founded on the autonomous individual while the other is based on social individuality.
Neither International NGOs (INGOs) like Amnesty International (AI), The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), nor local NGOs are likely to deliver freedom beyond some limited survival. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
This is because their ideological orientation is largely based in Western liberal individualistic understandings of rights rather than in underscoring the critical vitality of group rights. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
All of them operate within the universalistic & essentialist norms that undergird the international human rights framework & the concept of gender, respectively. Inevitably, the decolonial project would reject the racism that underlies the ideas of universalism and essentialism.
Instead of championing the language of rights, it would be more effective to attune our advocacy to the cultural contexts of Africa. #Tamale
The term “equality” looks good on paper and makes for great political rhetoric. But most African women know that “gender equality” is a mirage, a “pipe dream” that needs to be unpacked. #Tamale
For [most African women], equality is an abstract alien concept that holds little meaning in reality as they see those who tout it in the name of human rights using it very selectively, even politically. #Tamale
It is crucial to move away from the narrow quantitative conceptualization of equality towards a more qualitative, participatory & “Africanized” notion. Values such as equity, social justice and Ubuntu resonate much more with the traditional understandings of most African people.
After all, substantive equality is about levelling the ground by addressing systemic injustices that trump the dignity and human worth of the marginalized. #Tamale
In most of Africa, the traditional ethos values the community over the individual and foregrounds interconnected relationships. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
In general the African worldview is relational and formed through active engagement with the ecology and the community. We are horizontally connected to our communities and vertically linked to our ancestors and offspring. #Tamale
Consequently, Western theories, models and concepts do not fit into African contexts without some serious critique. #Tamale
The benchmark of juridical equality also reduces variables to binary values such as sex/gender dualisms, i.e., male/female and masculine/feminine. Equality navigates through a maze of dichotomous divisions of labour within capitalist societies. #Tamale
After such dichotomization, it becomes difficult to give legal recognition to classifications like intersex and transgender that fall outside the normative binaries. #Tamale
“Abstract individualism which focuses on rights-bearing human beings [is] devoid of social relationships and outside of contextual reality. Albertyn and Goldblatt #Tamale
The liberal autonomous, self-sustaining individuals constructed by Rawls are also fictitious because in fact human beings are by nature interdependent. #Tamale
[N]ot only does the liberal individualistic characterization of equality denigrate communities but it also ignores group-based systemic oppression.
#Tamale
#Tamale
Thus, social groups such as women, Blacks, the impoverished, the disabled and homosexuals are pushed out of Rawls’ conceptualized “equality” status based on a moral internal logic of the individual. #Tamale
All men will benefit from structural sexism just as all Whites stand to profit from structural racism. #Tamale
Most African cultures have a variant of the Zulu proverb, Umuntu ng’umuntu ng’abantu. The closest English translation would be: “to be a human being is to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish humane relations with them. #Tamale
Interdependence & compassion are bedrock on which communities are built. The Baganda of Uganda refer to it as Obuntu bulamu, Baluba of Central Africa as Bumuntu, Shona of Zimbabwe as Hunhu, Yoruba of Nigeria as Iwapele &, in Tanzania, it is embodied in the Kiswahili term Ujamaa.
[T]he Ubuntu philosophy is reported by De Tejada to go “from the Nubian desert to the Cape of Good Hope and from Senegal to Zanzibar. #Tamale
Rather than fight for “gender equality” it makes more sense to struggle against those institutions and structures that engender women’s subjugation, diminish their status and denigrate their gender roles. #Tamale
Our traditions equip us w tools that we can use to achieve gender justice; Ubuntu is simply 1 of them. Its moral ðical foundation requires one to respect others if one is to respect him/herself; it also calls for respect for human dignity—all being core goals for Afro-Feminism
As part of the decolonial feminist project, Africa must begin to examine itself and theorize its gender relations through fresh prisms and ontological frameworks; to employ the tool of Ubuntu as a mechanism for vigourously engaging with life questions #Tamale
Ubuntu provides the basis on which to adopt principles of justice that give more weight to the wellbeing of the group than the individual in the logic of coloniality. #Tamale
[R]ural folk are the true philanthropists of this world for, despite their limited resources, they are usually willing to share. Their Ubuntu is exhibited in myriad ways; from their heartfelt hospitality to their unfettered generosity towards a total stranger #Tamale
“the framework for a world free of oppression already exists within the traditional African philosophical world view – if only the Africana woman will claim it. Indeed, tapping into the various centres of knowledge and dialogue may lead to richer experiences for African women,.."
End of Chapter 6, Repositioning the Dominant Discourses on Rights and Social Justice #Tamale
Chapter 7, Rethinking the African Academy #Tamale
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.—Steve Biko #Tamale
the African decolonization/decolonial project must pay particular attention to the education sector in order to seize back the minds of its people. The Academy has been described as “the epicenter of colonial hegemony, indoctrination, and mental colonization.”#Tamale
When people talk about decolonizing the Academy, the focus is usually placed on transforming the curricula and/or replacing White faces with Black ones. But this constitutes only a small fraction of the complex decolonization/decolonial process. #Tamale
When you realize that not only has colonization been ongoing for the past three centuries, but also that it has been running smoothly and efficiently for most of that period, you quickly appreciate the enormity of unhinging its structural and ideological legacies. #Tamale
The imperialist project deliberately destroyed the continent’s academic traditions, essentially reducing higher education to an artifact of its imperialistic policies. #Tamale
“higher education in Africa is as old as the pyramids of Egypt, the obelisks of Ethiopia, & the Kingdom of Timbuktu." Damtew Teferra & Philip Altbach
The oldest university still existing in the world is Egypt’s Al-Azhar, founded as and still the major seat of Islamic learning.
The oldest university still existing in the world is Egypt’s Al-Azhar, founded as and still the major seat of Islamic learning.
The ancient University of Sankoré located in Timbuktu (present day Mali) was founded in 989 AD. The northern and western regions of Africa were largely exposed to Islamic education for millennia before European imperialists set foot on the continent. #Tamale
By 17th several madrasa colleges—equivalent to law schools—had been established in N Africa, most notable the College of Qayrawan. Today, coloniality & Islamophobia have tarred madrasa schools w the brush of “terrorism,” depicted as fertile training ground for Muslim extremists.
Fewer women than men participated in higher education & research in these early institutions, quite a few
excelled in the different disciplines. Most cited example is the case of mathematician, philosopher, astronomer & teacher Hypatia (c. 350–370) who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
excelled in the different disciplines. Most cited example is the case of mathematician, philosopher, astronomer & teacher Hypatia (c. 350–370) who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
These growing rumblings and unrest among post-colonials have been a source of anxiety to the colonizers and their agents who started appropriating the language of decolonization. #Tamale
The pertinent issues regarding the coloniality of African Academies, let alone gender inequality, do not appear on the strategic priority lists of national implementers or even for the AAU. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
The principal management organs of the AAU are overwhelmingly dominated by men. Out of the 13 Governing Board Members (2017-2021), only one is a woman. #Tamale
Decoloniality calls for social transformation that is more disruptive than the minimalist quest for human rights. While the human rights project comes from a Western liberal ethic, the project of decoloniality recognizes and reinstates Indigenous knowledge frameworks #Tamale
The first target in the process of decoloniality must be our mentalities and consciousness. #Tamale
Colonialism affects the way we think, the way we speak and the way we act. This worldview—including its constructed superiority and inferiority statuses—has been internalized. #Tamale
Four different but interlinked processes through which the imperial project achieved its goal of colonizing the mind, are explored in this section, offering examples to demonstrate how each of them works.
1) Through “Othering”
1) Through “Othering”
2) Through Invisibilization
Colonialism undervalues non-Western forms of knowledge construction and their ways of being, rendering them invisible
#Tamale
Colonialism undervalues non-Western forms of knowledge construction and their ways of being, rendering them invisible
#Tamale
3) Through Binarization and Universalization
There are no essential qualities to being. The reality is that all binary distinctions are strategically constructed and universalized to serve colonial vested interests.
#Tamale
There are no essential qualities to being. The reality is that all binary distinctions are strategically constructed and universalized to serve colonial vested interests.
#Tamale
The ideologies that amplify the significance of racial differences are so effective that they are deeply embedded in our psyches and for most of us, very difficult to shake off. #Tamale
The Caucasian is strategically constructed as superior, while the African is placed at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, closest to apes in the “mapping of species.” Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory provided the doctrine for White supremacy. #Tamale
Race is forced on us; biological races do not exist. The meaning attached to our skin-colour and other outward physical attributes is definitely a social construction, an arbitrary fiction backed by pseudoscience. #Tamale
[Race] is a colonial construction based merely on people’s phenotype, i.e., their general bodily characteristics established through the interaction of genotype (genetic constitution) with the environment. #Tamale
Coloniality deploys a certain type of “science” that is positivist, that stems from the enlightenment obsession with knowing and categorizing, that is dualistic and hierarchical to undermine Indigenous knowledges. #Tamale
The very nature of “The Academy” is borrowed from colonial structures meant to commodify knowledge and produce an elite class that dominates power and resources. #Tamale
If the African university mimics Western universities to date, is it any wonder that Africa’s best brains are routinely drained to the West? The looting of Africa does not spare its human capital.
#Tamale
#Tamale
Through selective immigration schemes, Western countries promote brain drain from the continent, sucking up the continent’s best human capital, including intellectual thinkers for their own development. #Tamale
Like most institutions in the world, the Academy is a gendered institution in that it was created by men, for men and is still largely about men. Women are considered and treated as an aberration in African Academies, constantly reminded that they do not belong. #Tamale
The bulk of what is taught and learnt in the African Academy is colonial, being deeply rooted in orthodox Western philosophical thought and not grounded in the lived realities of its people. #Tamale
“Colonial schooling was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion and the development of underdevelopment." Rodney #Tamale
The ultimate outcome of these gigantic curricular “blind spots” that invisibilize our Indigenous histories, languages, ways of knowing and being, is to instil and perpetuate internalized colonialism. #Tamale
"As long as theories and concepts that inform our research are generated from Western experiences or the foundational questions that guide our studies are generated in the West, we shall not escape the colonial mentality." Oyeronke Oyewumi
It is deplorable that six decades after flag independence no African state has undertaken any radical overhaul of the colonial education systems left behind by the imperialists. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
Not only is the continent still wedded to hegemonic Eurocentric paradigms of knowledge and modernity, but most countries will protect and defend colonial educational policies to the hilt. #Tamale
Perhaps Tanzania made the best efforts on the continent to indigenize their primary and post-primary curricula but their science curricula remain colonial. #Tamale
Indigenous content needs to be purposively and thoughtfully interwoven into curricular frameworks that are informed by Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
It does not make sense, for example, for a science curriculum to ignore traditional ecological knowledge that has been “developed through generations of contact by Indigenous peoples with their lands. #Tamale
China offers a model eg. of decolonized/decolonial education where the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine alone boasts of 19 doctoral programmes in Chinese medicine & herbal Chinese medicine & 24 Masters programmes that integrate Chinese medicine with Western medicine.
Unlearning or conscientisation not only requires exposure to knowledge and understanding of the historical processes of colonial domination and Western modernity, but also to the gendered ordering of human relations. #Tamale
Such histories wouldunlock the concealed truths about the Western modernity project which was achieved at the great expense of Indigenous populations. #Tamale
A few Academies on the continent have embarked on serious decolonial programmes. The Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan University (MPAU) founded by Professor Wadada Nabudere in eastern Uganda is one such example. #Tamale
<- In addition to on-campus learning within the four walls of a lecture room, the university set up off-campus centres where students engage with local communities. #Tamale
The university’s radical curricula, based on the philosophy of Afrikology, sought to reinstate and mainstream Indigenous knowledge systems that were distorted by Greece and Rome. #Tamale
Through the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC), the University of Johannesburg has radically transformed its curriculum, placing Africa at its epistemic centre. #Tamale
Using Indigenous languages as a medium of learning is crucial in the decolonial process as colonial languages alienate and silence many African students in our Academies. #Tamale
During the Fourth Symposium of the East African Academy held at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, Chiraghdin strongly argued for promoting Kiswahili as the official academic language for East African Academies. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
Sadly, only Tanzania managed to overcome the multi-linguistic barrier by adopting Kiswahili as its national language. But even in Tanzania, Kiswahili is only used as a medium of instruction in pre-university education; the Academy returns to the colonial language of English.
The Academy is a hub of scholarly research which powerfully shapes discourse and is heavily relied upon for public policy & governance. Do the theoretical connotations of the research conducted in your university perpetuate colonial concepts, stereotypes, imaginaries & cover-ups?
Colonialism maintains a stranglehold on knowledge production through an elaborate publication infrastructure largely based in the global North which plays the role of gatekeeping on what qualifies as “legitimate” publishable knowledge. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
Growth and development of African academics is tied to a biased system of peer reviewing that promotes Eurocentric orthodoxies and hierarchies. #Tamale
Hence, the Afro-feminist decolonial project must not only challenge colonial research methods but also other tools that impinge on our potential for knowledge production on the global stage. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
Such a decolonial turn can be achieved through developing our own publication outlets, with our own peer review processes, producing Afrocentric knowledge that will liberate us from Eurocentrism. #Tamale
The decolonization/decolonial project must not parochially focus on the damage that racist ideologies and practices have done to African Academies, but also be critical of the other related ‘-isms’ created by colonial encounters and inequities. ->
#Tamale
#Tamale
In particular, decoloniality must pay attention to all systems of oppression that intersect with racism including gender, socioeconomic status, age, disability and so forth. #Tamale
The ideals of the African university should not be based on the tradition, “I am because you are not” but rather, on the non-colonial ethos “I am because we are.” #Tamale
Decolonial processes are about us, as Africans, as women, recentring, re-humanizing, reconstructing and resisting. The decoloniality of African Academies and education systems would ultimately deal a significant blow to imperialism, racism and national chauvinism. #Tamale
End of Chapter 7, Rethinking the African Academy #Tamale
Chapter 8, Decolonizing Family Law: The Case of Uganda #Tamale
One of the litmus tests for assessing the status of women in any political economy is its family law. Hence, analyzing the position of women within the institution of the family is extremely important. #Tamale
Modern law in the African context is a product of colonialism. Indeed, juridical technologies played a crucial role in the development and success of the colonial project. #Tamale
The transplantation of the European legal system along with its liberal jurisprudence to Africa was packaged by the colonialists as part of their “modernizing” and “civilizing” mission in Africa. #Tamale
Among the significant developments introduced by the colonialists when Uganda became a British protectorate in 1894 was the conceptual and legal separation of state law from personal law. #Tamale
The manufactured reason for separating the domestic family was the need to shield it from any kind of state intrusion. #Tamale
The actual reason was to create and maintain heteropatriarchal-capitalist conditions where male “heads of the family” took charge of domesticated women whose primary role was to engage in biological and social reproduction. #Tamale
One of the first “truisms” which students of family law in Uganda encounter in the lecture room is the constitutional provision which declares: “The family is the natural and basic unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” #Tamale
->
->
That seemingly innocuous statement is so loaded with different interpretations that a critical professor could spend the rest of the semester simply unpacking its various components and bringing to light the subtle and hidden interests behind its text:
->
#Tamale
->
#Tamale
What type of family are we talking about? What is so “natural” and “basic” about the legally sanctioned family structure? What is so important about the institution of the family that society and the state must guard jealously?
->
#Tamale
->
#Tamale
What ideology underpins such a declaration? What is the origin of the declaration? How does the reality differ from the ideal? #Tamale
Exploring family law beyond its Black letter is imperative for anybody genuinely interested in decolonizing this area of learning. #Tamale
Teaching family law in its historical, colonial-capitalist, political and socioeconomic contexts provides us with a 20/20 holistic vision of its nature, purpose and underlying interests. #Tamale
It exposes the inconsistencies, contradictions, instabilities and fluidities within the “regimes of the normal.” The standard model of what is considered “normal” in society is given power and legitimacy through legal rules. #Tamale
Ugandan family relations were reshaped and transformed by British colonialism. At the centre of these changes was the emergence of a new domesticity, geared to align Indigenous households to the capitalist exploitative system. #Tamale
When the British took over Uganda, they were faced with the challenge of raising revenue for administering the nascent colonial state and mobilizing labour for agricultural production to supply the industries back in the metropole. #Tamale
They subsequently sought to kill two birds with one stone by introducing and imposing taxes of three rupees on men. That way men had no choice but to work on British plantations in order to pay the hut tax.
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Men who were too destitute to pay the tax in cash were required to pay it by sale of their labour. #Tamale
Jonathan Earle reports that “By 1930, Uganda was Great Britain’s largest producer of African cotton, exporting approximately 23,428 metric tons of cotton lint annually and generating revenues of 31,107,000/-.” #Tamale
Although men were the ones taxed, it was women who bore the burden of growing the new crops. The result was a pattern seen across Africa of increasing workloads for women while men controlled the household budget and cash. #Tamale
So, women’s work was vital for monetizing the Ugandan economy and building the requisite infrastructure to facilitate the export of raw materials and trade of goods. Men’s absence from the homesteads translated into more work for women. #Tamale
Colonial policies and structures reshaped familial gender relations in Uganda to progressively shift towards a capitalist economy. Feminists have long argued that the capitalist-patriarchal state depends on the heteropatriarchal family institution to consolidate its power.
Coloniality of power also unfolded through the control of women’s sexuality within the family institution.
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Beginning with the 1890s, there was a severe population decline in the Ugandan protectorate as a result of drought, famine, and disease. For the colonialists, a dwindling population translated into reduced labour power. #Tamale
In other words, because of the exploits of colonial expansion, new diseases were introduced to Uganda with significant consequences for family relations.
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It is believed that the trading Arabs had first introduced syphilis to the coastal towns in the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1906, syphilis had reached epidemic proportions in Uganda. #Tamale
it was not just a medical or health problem. Colonialists instrumentalized syphilis and other venereal diseases to evangelize Christian morality and motherhood. #Tamale
New laws were enacted to control (mostly women’s) sexuality. The Dangerous Diseases Ordinance of 1909, the Townships (Venereal Diseases) Rules of 1913 and the Penal Code of 1930 which introduced prostitution as an offence are clear examples of such laws. #Tamale
Such double standards are clearly reflected in family law: for eg, applying the crime of adultery to women & not to men. That same inconsistency is also seen in the offence of prostitution that penalizes only the sellers (the majority being women) & not the buyers (men) of sex.
Same-sex sexual relations have been outlawed in Uganda since the late nineteenth century when legalized homophobia was introduced through the importation of colonial penal laws. #Tamale
The nature and meaning of family formations and relations in the East African Nyasa region prior to the construction of the artificial borders drawn by the colonialists at the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 were quite varied and different from what they look like today. ->
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The typical traditional African family was characterized by so-called extended households.
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The adjective “extended” used to describe Indigenous families connotes a colonial reading of African family arrangements; it presupposes an expansion from some (superior) standard—the Western nuclear household being the norm/default, while the extended one is the exception. ->
Composed of extensive family networks, Indigenous families comprised a much wider scope than the (contracted?) nuclear family unit common in Western tradition. #Tamale
Further east, in what came to be baptized Kenya, several communities practised woman-to-woman marriages, for example, the Simbete, the Kikuyu, the Nandi and the Kiisi of present-day Kenya. #Tamale
The Kuria of present-day Tanzania and the Nuer of present-day Sudan all engaged in [woman-to-woman] marriages for reproductive, economic and diplomatic reasons. This shows how flexible and mutable domestic and sexual relationships were. #Tamale
When the colonialists arrived in the geographical area of Africa now baptized Uganda, with their mission to convert the “natives” to Christianity, they found many of the traditional family practices strange insofar as they were different from their own. ->
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At best they noted such “strangeness,” but at worst considered them to be “uncivilized.” Using Eurocentric lenses to interpret and understand the ways of the Indigenous communities meant that they often misunderstood and misrepresented traditional practices. #Tamale
Through the doctrine of “coverture” (or the unity principle), women were denied legal, political and economic rights.
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This common law doctrine was imported to Uganda through the Statutes of General Application and throughout the colonial period Ugandan women could not own property in their own right.
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In fact it was not until the 1977 High Court case of Uganda v. Jeninah Kyanda that it was formally recognized that women in Uganda—regardless of marital status—could own property in their own right. #Tamale
Where there had been multiplicity, diversity, fluidity & hybridity in traditional Ugandan marriage forms, colonialism neatly straitjacketed them into 1 distinct category of “customary marriages” which were potentially polygynous & legitimized through the exchange of bridewealth.
Where the definition of “wife” had been adaptable and changeable, the colonialists sought to streamline it, resulting in contentious legal battles that continue to this day. #Tamale
When the colonialists arrived, they reorganized production in bureaucratic economic enterprises outside the domestic arena.
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In other words, where there had been a blurred distinction between “private” and “public” life, new ideologies and policies evolved new structures and forms of domination, greatly affecting gender relations in Uganda. #Tamale
Criminal law was used to proscribe and punish all practices that ran counter to the heteropatriarchal-capitalist system and ideology of the family; it was vital to normalize women’s roles as reproducers.
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Hence the Penal Code Act introduced crimes hitherto unknown to customary criminal law such as prostitution, adultery, bigamy, elopement, abduction with intent to marry, sex against the order of nature, procuration and abortion.
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These crimes were painted with a heavy brush of immorality and constructed as being against natural law. In this way, double standards were deployed in favour of men and to the detriment of women, and selectively enforced. #Tamale
The colonialists generally failed to appreciate the roots and contexts of local culture and treated it as static and inflexible. The early missionaries treated culture as satanic and it was generally depicted as backward and primitive. #Tamale
Uganda’s divorce law was based on England’s 1857 Divorce Act, which was framed to discourage divorce. This is not surprising given the centrality of heteropatriarchal marriages to capitalist structuralist dynamics. #Tamale
No amount of legal reform without dismantling structures of power or the persistent paradigms that support them will engender social transformation in family relations. #Tamale
The Ugandan constitution, like those elsewhere on the continent, is inscribed in the tradition of Western liberalism with a bill of rights that emphasizes individual rights. #Tamale
Traditional family and marriage arrangements prior to colonialism were not only diverse but were also set up to address the realities and needs of the time. Today’s monolithic heteropatriarchal families/marriages do little to address the realities on the ground. #Tamale
<- Instead, they exacerbate inequalities and exclusions and are impervious to changing economics, demographics and values. They are unable to address the emerging trends and challenges within households. #Tamale
When today’s politicians and religious leaders call for a return to “traditional family values,” it is not a mere expression of a nostalgic sentiment, but a projection of a coherent and systematic capitalist-patriarchal agenda. #Tamale
There is a need to delink the African family from its colonial heteronormative nuclear ideals. The African decolonization and decolonial agendas will never be achieved without adopting progressive strategies for women’s liberation from the oppressive family institution. #Tamale
Such action entails acknowledging the diverse family/marriage arrangements that existed in pre-colonial African societies and critically engaging with the imported notions of “family” introduced by the colonialists for their own interests. #Tamale
In particular, the teaching of family law should clearly disclose the entanglement of “the family” with multiple relations of geopolitical and economic power.
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Africa’s reframed and decolonial family should embrace the complexities of the continent’s ever-changing societies and their contemporary realities of diversity. #Tamale
African feminists should rethink the efficacy of law reform as a pathway for engendering gender justice and increase sensitivity to the colonial nature of the law. #Tamale
The family must cease to be an instrument of capitalism and gender oppression and be reconceptualized to fit the desires and interests of the wananchi. #Tamale
End of Chapter 8, Decolonizing Family Law: The Case of Uganda #Tamale
Chapter 9, Towards Feminist Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Feminism #Tamale
Almost all African cultures have variants of the above saying. Others include: “Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable,” “One tree is not enough to build a fence,” “The teeth can only bite when they work together,” “Many hands make light work,” “I am because we are.” #Tamale
Pan-Africanism is both ideology and praxis. The historical vision for the continent’s integration has persisted since the nineteenth century and is closely linked to Black consciousness, socialism and Afro-Feminism. #Tamale
Chigozie Nnuriam makes it clear that Pan-Africanism “is grounded on the doctrine that unity is essential to economic, social, and political progress and aims to bring and uplift people of African origin.” #Tamale
The urgency for African nationalism has never been greater than in this age of neoliberal capitalism which has cast a long shadow over the continent’s progressive advancement. #Tamale
Colonialism in Africa thrived (and still does) on the continent’s disunity and ideological cleavages. Decolonial politics act as a constant reminder of the unfinished business of Pan-Africanism. #Tamale
At the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, the colonialists ensured that the continent was arbitrarily divided into numerous fragmented and impotent nations. #Tamale
It is difficult to associate Pan-Africanism with African women or even feminist issues. This is not because women made no contribution to this centuries-old movement but because, as is the case with political movements elsewhere, ->
<- women are excluded from the spotlight and male-dominated narratives omit their contributions. #Tamale
The fact is that alongside the familiar forefathers named in the history of Pan-Africanism, many foremothers contributed to the emergence and ideology of the Pan-African Movement in significant ways. #Tamale
Significantly, the initial stimulus for the African Association came from three young Black people living in the UK at the time: Alice Kinloch from South Africa, Thomas J. Thomson from Sierra Leone and Henry Sylvester Williams, who was of Caribbean origin. #Tamale
Not only were women in the vanguard of the Pan-African Movement, but they enriched it with significant feminist insights. #Tamale
Five Pan-African Congresses (PACs) were organized in Europe and the USA between 1900 and 1945. Although all were male- dominated, several African-American and Caribbean women participated in them. #Tamale
Claudia Jones, for instance, was a communist revolutionary who articulated the concept of intersectionality in the early twentieth century before Kimberlé Crenshaw developed its critical lexicon.
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Her approach to eliminating racism was fully integrated with anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal & anti-imperialist ideology. With Amy Ashwood, Jones was a member of the Intern'l African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA), set up in 1935 to protest Mussolini’s aggression against Ethiopia.
The representation of Africans from the continent in the first four congresses was only token and it was not until the fifth congress held in October 1945 in Manchester, UK, that their presence was significant. #Tamale
Among the delegates from the continent were Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Kamuzu Banda(Malawi), Obafemi Awolowo (Nigeria),Jaja Wachuku (Nigeria),Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya) & Wallace Johnson(Sierra Leone)—all of whom went on to climb to the helm of post-colonial governance in their countries.
<- All subsequent congresses have been held on the continent—Dar es Salaam (1974), Kampala (1994) and Accra (2015). #Tamale
Apart from the names already mentioned here, there were many other African female liberators and Pan-Africanists that mainstream history books have omitted. ->
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<- These include Bibi Titi Mohamed, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Constance Cummings-Jones, Winnie Madizekela-Mandela, Wangari Maathai, Thenjiwe Mtintso, Djamila Bouhired, Huda Sha’arawi, Charlotte Maxeke, Albertina Sisulu and many others. #Tamale
Aged 39 in 1913, Maxeke—the first female Black graduate in Apartheid South Africa—led her fellow women to protest against the racist policy that required non-Whites to carry identity passes. #Tamale
Five years later, Maxeke went on to form the Bantu Women’s League, which continued to fight for freedom against exploitation and oppression. #Tamale
Kenya’s Wangari Maathai was the first Professor of African Renaissance Studies and the founder of the International Journal of African Renaissance Studies. #Tamale
The intellectualism of this ecofeminist was fiercely channeled into preserving nature and challenging the neocolonial exploitation of the earth—pursuits for which Maathai received the Nobel Prize in 2004. #Tamale
African women did not just look on as their male counterparts elbowed them out of mainstream spaces where the politics of their continent was being discussed. #Tamale
Frustrated with the lip service that men in the liberation movements paid to their plight, women established the Pan-African Women’s Organization (PAWO) in 1962. #Tamale
Under the leadership of Guinean politician Jeanne Martin Cissé, women in the African independent movements organized an All African Women’s Conference in Tanganyika. #Tamale
While the AU’s Agenda 2063 (“The Africa We Want”) promises to move Africa towards structural transformation that empowers African people, particularly women and youth, it is fraught with gaps and contradictions.
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Bob Munyati points to the glaring omission, for example, of the interests and concerns of sexual minorities from Agenda 2063. One wonders who exactly is included in the “We” of the Agenda 2063 slogan. #Tamale
[T]he ideal of Pan-Africanism cannot be achieved within the institutionalized coloniality of state politics. #Tamale
Another threat to Pan-Africanism lies in the UN-led sustainable development goals (SDGs). #Tamale
Ironically, the only woman ever elected as an African president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who led Liberia between 2006 and 2018, played a significant role in the processes of developing the SDGs as co-chair of the High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda. #Tamale
The SDGs, which are the epitome of neoliberal strategies and coloniality practices to achieve “developmental” goals, do not dovetail with the political economy of Pan-Africanism. #Tamale
During the colonial period, it was impossible for Africa to act as a bloc in its fight against colonialism, so the push-backs against colonial forces of power prior to formal independence were atomized, uneven and underpowered. #Tamale
Today, Africa’s pushback against globalized neocolonialism is even weaker, thanks to its unviable states that are commandeered by imperial powers and their African comprador enablers who benefit from the system. #Tamale
Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere referred to African nations as “mini-states” because they have no substantive presence at the global table of geopolitical influence. #Tamale
The Pan-African Movement was given a welcome boost in January 2019 when the AU adopted the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in Africa. #Tamale
Thirty out of the 54 African states signed on to the Protocol and it needs 15 ratifications to come into force.
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However, the two economic giants on the continent, namely Nigeria and South Africa, have not yet signed up, highlighting the challenges that the continent still faces in transcending narrow nationalistic sentiments.
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Are there lessons for Pan-Africanism to be learned from the millions of “border-blind” African women who engage in cross- border trade around the continent? How can the “panyarization” of Africa be achieved? ->
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It will take tremendous political will and feminist revisioning on the part of those at the helm of power and economic statecraft to achieve this daunting strategic objective of the African Union. #Tamale
African feminists are extremely wary of the Pan-African strategy that prioritizes the achievement of state power before tackling other oppressive structures->
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Kwame Nkrumah’s famous words, “Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added onto you” epitomized this empty promise.
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African feminism has been operating sans frontières (without borders) for decades, constructing bridges across the complexities of cultures, languages, religions, skin tone, educational status and generations.
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Somehow, African women always come out on top and sustain their communities despite the challenges. ->
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Feminists may remain invisible in mainstream spaces and discourses but they impact societies. In many ways they are “superwomen” when it comes to creativity and adaptability in all their work. They have seriously been intellectually engaged with Pan-African politics. #Tamale
Pan-African feminist organizing reached its peak in 2006 when AWDF organized the first ever African Feminist Forum (AFF) in Accra, Ghana. Significantly, Accra remains the city where the Pan- Africanist political fervor still flows, decades after Nkrumah’s demise. #Tamale
Over 200 delegates from all corners of the continent attended this important conference where they adopted the Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists. #Tamale
So far, the Charter has been translated into Kiswahili, Wolof and French. Three subsequent AFF convenings have been held in Uganda (2008), Senegal (2010) and Zimbabwe (2016). #Tamale
The regional forum has created important national spinoffs in various countries around the continent, including Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Senegal, Liberia, Mali and Rwanda. #Tamale
According to Wadada Nabudere, Africa is trying to reimagine and reinvent itself in the twenty-first century through the concept of the African renaissance. But to be successful such renaissance must be rooted in African cultures. #Tamale
The Pan-African Movement and the African feminist movement need to find a nexus between their agendas. #Tamale
Despite all the challenges, the spirit of Pan-Africanism is still alive both on the continent and in the diaspora which provides a firm basis for rebuilding the movement. #Tamale
The decolonization agenda and decolonial politics are closely bound up with the Pan-African one. Therefore, if Africa is ever going to realize its liberatory vision, it must consciously revitalize Pan-African nationalism outside state structures & mainstream institutions. #Tamale
A Pan-African Movement divorced from statecraft and patriarchal politics. Only then would Africa breathe life into the symbolic date of May 25–African Liberation Day. #Tamale
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