The Sunday News
The most dangerous evil under the sun is that which presents itself to humanity as the good news. It is deadly, that weapon which comes to its victim as a generous gift. I compare modern colonial education, that gift from the missionaries, our passport to modernity and civilisation as that sweet poison which behind its obvious flavours conceals death itself.
Thinking about modern and colonial education as the sweetest poison and a deadly gift is important these days when almost everyone who cares about higher education in Africa is talking about the decolonisation of the university. Such currents of struggle as the “Rhodes Must Fall” and the “Fees Must Fall” movements are very important, but in their importance, I argue, they deal with only the hardware and not the software of the trouble with our education systems in Africa. For that reason, these currents of struggle for decoloniality in education conceal rather than reveal what fundamentally is the problem with the modern and colonial regime of education that is presently in place in Africa and the entire Global South. There is a danger that well meaning proponents of decoloniality in education might expend energies and efforts in boxing the shadows when Lucifer himself hides right in front of their nose, or inside their minds and hearts.
The colonial encounter in education
Before we run with the activism of decolonising education and knowledge in Africa, it is of importance to reflect on how colonisation of knowledges and of education took place, in the first place. To start with, the philosophers who conceptualised capitalism and its ends of imperialism, slavery and colonialism remained in their libraries and academies in Europe while the scum of the earth, hooligans, hoodlums, vagabonds and outlaws were volunteered to go out there and conquer the colonies with brutal force. After the natives were overcome, pacified with gun powder, the missionaries came not only as preachers but also as scholars and philosophers who administered mental violence, poisonous knowledge and thought that changed the mental universe of the native forever.
Where the indigenous people had many knowledges they were forced to accept only one knowledge as true, the knowledge of the white man. Where the natives had many gods, they were forced to accept only one God as the true God, the God of the white man.
The knowledges and religions of the natives were condemned as paganism and primitive witchcraft. Slavery and colonialism took a mental and a spiritual turn, it was total. What we have today as the African University is actually the European University in Africa in content and in spirit. Geographically, these institutions of higher learning might be located on the African soil, the chancellors and vice-chancellors being black men and women but the content of the knowledge being produced and circulated, the software of the education remains Eurocentric and colonial poison. So, dethroning the physical statue of Rhodes might be one victory, the victory of dethroning the content of our education system, the software, the sweetest poison is painfully pending. We are far from it when black pre-school kids are still singing “BHA BHA Black sheep”, in self mockery and ridicule.
As Wilhelm Georg Hegel observed, nothing as large as the imperial onslaught and the colonial adventure can succeed without the force of great passion. Coloniality was designed with massive intellectual, spiritual and physical passion and energy.
The philosophers, men of thought who designed coloniality, Hegel included were evil geniuses and intellectual monsters. Only such intellectual Satanists could imagine and conceive racism and apartheid. The violence of the Maxim gun was nothing compared to the psychological and mental violence that was persuasively administered in the church and in the colonial classroom. Modern colonial education that is still intact today does not kill the body of the conquered; it kills his soul itself and leaves him a “walking lie,” and and educated lost soul.
The limits of our struggle
In our tent, the camp that seeks to decolonise the university in Africa we have a big problem. In South Africa where the “Rhodes Must Fall” and “Fees Must Fall” slogans are loudest, we are still okay with 30 percent as a pass mark at matric. This invites the fundamental question of whether 30 percent people can have the intellectual and mental equipment to dethrone a system that was designed by evil geniuses. Intellectually we are really not exerting ourselves enough; we keep allowing quality and rigour to remain a preserve of whites and Europeans. Decolonising the university, education and knowledge in Africa requires more gravitas and intellectual stamina than that which we are willing to provide presently. Decolonising knowledge and education in Africa calls for decolonial excellence and passion, we need our own monsters.
Further, all researchers in our universities know by now that the theories and methodologies that still guide our researches are still the rusty colonial relics that lead us back to the findings and conclusions of intellectual imperial masters. If your conqueror has given you a mathematical formular he does not have to wait for your answer, he knows that you will arrive at a destination that he set for you in advance. How in the world are we to dethrone the system that Hegel and others designed using Hegelian theories, thinking and methodologies?
Even when the researchers in our universities claim to be excavating and preserving indigenous knowledges, they still have to rely for funding on Western foundations and institutes that then have the power to veto away Afrocentric researches and silence the voice of indigenous thinkers. Opportunistically some researchers have mastered the art of drafting research proposals that are sweet music to European foundations and institutes, lending themselves good money and conducting researches that reinforce colonial knowledges and thinking.
These clever professors enjoy the sweet money and are happy to produce poisonous knowledge that kills their people. These are the slippery power point type intellectuals that Mamdani has described as “scholars in the market place.” Consultants who know where their bread is buttered, the economists and political scientists who dutifully endorse the wishes of IMF and World Bank, human scientists who are happy to echo Hegel and Thomas Hobbes for the sweet jingle of coins, the three pieces of silver. One of the greatest successes of the slavish and colonial adventure has been to get its victims to be its most eloquent defenders. The system pays big money for that service.
The modern and colonial education system was designed to produce obedient, domesticated and docile educated natives that functioned as convenient labourers in the colonial and capitalist economy. Today the education system produces loyal functionaries of the system who are happy to get paid for defending the biased research findings of the colonial master, what we call education today is just the measure of how much one has mastered the ways and thinking of the imperial master. For that reason, decolonising the university in Africa entails much more than pulling down colonial statues, we still need to pull down colonial theories, methodologies and knowledges from our academy. As long as that remains the case, society if it takes liberation seriously, needs to be careful of educated people.
The mistake of Ngugi wa Thiongo
In the circles that take decolonising the mind and decoloniality seriously in Africa, Ngugi wa Thiongo is a titan. The demons of racism and Eurocentricism shiver at the mention of that moving library from Kenya, a human institution that has dealt intellectual blows on coloniality in word and indeed. The mistake that Ngugi made, a mistake that has dangerously misled many readers that follow his work is that abandoning the English language and writing in his mother tongue, Gikuyu was a solution to cultural imperialism. It was radical intellectual activism but largely useless. That is why Ngugi himself was forced to translate his Gikuyu writings to English, back to what he sought to escape.
Retreating to our mother tongues alone is not a solution to coloniality in the African knowledge economy; it creates the problem that our brothers and sisters from other tribes, countries and locations in Africa can no longer be in conversation with us as we retreat to our villages and clans instead of forging solidarities.
Further, coloniality has since entered our mother tongues and mother cultures; so many times we Africans become racist, tribalist, xenophobic, sexist, ageist and classist in our mother tongues against our own African brothers and sisters. So many times we have also listened to our brothers and sisters talking serious African decoloniality and liberation in English, French and Germany.
Give it to Chinua Achebe, that decolonist from Nigeria who noted that the English language can be arrested, domesticated, hammered and chiseled to be used to rebuke and exhaust English imperialism and coloniality. In a word, decolonising the university and knowledge in Africa demands from us hard work and monstrous intelligence.
- Cetshwayo Mabhena writes from Pretoria, South Africa. [email protected]
