The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena
MUCH like other Western philosophers and political activists that were smitten with the spirit of conquest, the German idealist Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel enjoyed the political habit of boasting and vaunting.
Triumphalism and euphoria are the true stuff of those that conquer and dominate, they can afford to boast.
One of the boasts that Hegel issued was that: “The Owl of Minerva only spreads its wings with the falling of the dusk.” In the West, from Greece to Rome, the Owl became a metaphor of philosophy itself.
The Greek Goddess of wisdom, Athena is supposed to have moved around with a little owl as her accompaniment. In Rome they called her Minerva. That is how every Western philosopher came to be understood as an owl, a seeker of and companion of wisdom. And part of the Western wisdom that philosophers like Hegel held was a belief in the supremacy of Europeans and the white race.
The power of the white man and his supremacy and dominion became an object of vaunting, even by the ultimate thinkers, the philosophers.
In the boastful claim that the Owl of Minerva only flies at dusk Hegel meant that only when the day ends, when history has taken place, does the philosopher begin to reflect on the events, alone, when all others go to bed. In other words, Hegel boasted of philosophy that is a patient opportunist.
It waits for history to unfold and then ponder and pontificate on it. As a philosopher of Empire that thinks from the privilege of power and dominance, Hegel could not even imagine that there are philosophies and philosophers of other parts of the world that do not only fly at the dusk of history but can spread their wings at dawn; and ponder history before it happens.
Hegel never imagined it that in other parts of the world the Owl itself is not a symbol of wisdom and a metaphor of philosophy but a representation of witchcraft and evil. Such enablers of Empire as Hegel have a narrow and also shallow view of the world; they can afford the luxury of mistaking their village for the entire planet.
That there are other worlds and other people with other histories and realities, other interests, dreams and visions, is frequently lost to Empire and its enhancers and enablers.
From its position of power and dominance, Empire is able to use its privilege to believe that it owns the world, knows the whole truth and can impose its interests on everyone and everything under the sun. It is from that position that Hegel could exclaim that he was the Owl of Minerva that only flew at dusk, and that Rene Descartes could say “I think therefore I am!”
At its most powerful and triumphalist, Empire is deaf and blind. Power and dominance are like that, first maddening then finally blinding. Hegemony insulates the powerful from the real world and insulation from the real world is the finest form of insanity that leads to tragi-coming failure. When power has maddened and blinded the powerful what follows is their indecorous fall.
When power begins to be sure of itself and is able to boast of its victory then it has become mad and has reached its post-political crisis.
Tell No Lies
In 1965 Amilcar Cabral wrote what was to go down in history as a novel reflection on the struggle for liberation. The speech was titled: “Revolution in Guinea.” It is in that speech that Cabral reminded the leadership of the liberation movement in Guinea that: “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”
In those words and others in the historic speech, Cabral spoke to all liberation movements in the Global South at large and Africa in particular. The movements, then and now, frequently forgot that the mass of the people need a better life and not just slogans, promises and claims.
People, especially the colonised, oppressed and exploited, expect the realisation of utopia, the arrival of liberation and the goods and services that it comes with, not just names and the heroism of certain leaders, Cabral was clear about that.
Dystopia means the dark times that befall a people when their dreams of liberation turn into nightmares and when heroes become monsters that eat people and feed on the revolution itself. Times are dark and dystopia is real when freedom fighters stop fighting for freedom and start fighting freedom itself.
The light at the end of the historical tunnel turns out to be a monstrous ghost and vampire that is approaching to swallow the people. By warning about such, Cabral became the Owl that flew at dawn.
He did not wait to witness the way liberation movements of the South betrayed liberation and turned against the people; he foresaw the tragedy and predicted the catastrophe. It is in the speech under consideration that Cabral gave the political and philosophical warning to all leaders and revolutionaries of the world: “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories!” Nothing is easier, for people in powerful positions of leadership, as telling some cheap lies and claiming easy victories that people on the ground do not see and can only wonder what the leadership is talking about, claiming paradisal utopia when their daily reality is dark and hellish dystopia.
Cabral exhorted us to face the darkness and bloodinesses of our world and name and understand them as such, so that we could then fight the real fight, against them. If we give sweet names to monsters we do not only mislead ourselves but we also cannot fight the real fight. Comforting myths and fictions about ourselves and the struggle can only lead to defeat and loss.
Cabral saw the importance of us being true to ourselves, especially true about ourselves, and fighting the real fight that can lead to the real victory where people do not have to be told by the leaders about victory but the people tell the leaders of victory that they see and which they experience daily in their lives.
The Crisis of Post-Political Thinking
The world once got enchanted by a bewitching post-political vision. The end of the Cold War gave Empire confidence and certainty about its victory. All sorts of prophets, among philosophers and political theorists arose; I have Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington in mind, to express the triumphalism of neo-liberal economics and politics the world over. The world had arrived at its post-ideological moment, enemies were over and the planet was a new Euro-American paradise.
It turned out that it was all a telling of lies and claiming of easy victories. In all politics and history there is not supposed to be a total winner and total losers. Total victory and total loss lead to new wars and cannot sustain peace. Simply, the world is shared space, the moment there is a total winner and total loser the victory of the winner is temporary and the loss of the loser a passing phase.
The wisdom is that those who win, if they really win, should do so in a way that they won’t have to fear the losers, and the losers if they really lose, should do so in a manner that they do not have to hate the winners, or plot hold some vendetta.
Total loss on the one hand and total victory on the other is the true stuff of post-political thinking that is at best innocent and at worse naïve thinking. True political and economic power is that which is buttered with sobriety and humility, and cannot afford to boast of its power that is not and must not be total power.
True power is the one that understands and knows its limits and its perpetual incompleteness. True winners know that they are nothing without the losers, or they are not true winners in the very first place. The Euro-American Empire could have avoided a lot of turmoil in the world, including 9/11, if it understood and knew that the world is bigger than Europe and North America.
To reduce the world to your own, compress power to your property and boast about it is to live in a post-political world that is a true fool’s paradise. That is a telling lesson that Empire refuses to learn, that almighty power that does not bend is just pride that is waiting to break beyond repair.
Decoloniality and Disensus
My observation is that Empire and its enhancers such as Hegel and others have missed, and continue to miss the point that, the world is a shared place. I doubt Donald Trump understands that there are other interests under the sun besides interests of the American political right. The world can only be a shared place. A place to be negotiated and navigated and where difference is not criminalised but embraced as critical and fruitful friction.
As such, boasting of victory, no matter how big and small, can only be innocence or naivete itself. The dream of a consensual world where there is one powerful Empire and many other powerless entities that agree with and follow Empire is not a dream but a nightmare from which the world must urgently wake up.
Power and the powerful lust after a world of agreement where the whole world would just follow their lead like a herd of cattle and some sheep to the slaughter.
Decoloniality recognises that different people can have different observations and present different arguments but still have the same insight, vision and purpose for the world. The world, therefore, is a place that can only be preserved with more disensus and less consensus.
We need more questions and fewer answers. Answers are a totality and a certainty. They cannot lead to new novelties and inventions but a repetition of the old tried and distasted failures.
As 2020 unfolds one can only wish that the world including our own province in it would wake up to the spirit of that difficult but also real, shared world where power needs weakness and weakness needs power. Dystopia can only set in and settle if we ignore that our power and the weakness of others are mythical realities that we cannot only handle and survive by telling no lies and claiming no easy victories.
In its engagement with the world Decoloniality has no boast but it carries the responsibility to multiply and amplify, truth, beauty and above all, Justice.
– Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Hogsback Village, in Mathole, Eastern Cape, South Africa: [email protected]
