African voices

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In search of a decolonial turn This book discusses the contributions of African thinkers and actors to what Paul Tiyambe Zeleza calls recentering Africa in discussions about major African phenomena. It makes an input into ongoing debates about: what it means to decolonise knowledge; the university; the school; the library; the archive; and the museum. The book responds to the need for Africa-centred literature to be used by those who teach, discuss and implement the decolonization and Africanisation of knowledge, power and being. The book hopes to stimulate further conversations about many other African voices engaged in epistemic disobedience.

Foreword

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Chapter 1: An Argument for Revisiting African Voices in Search of a Decolonial Turn

Chapter 2: Mahmood Mamdani’s Contribution to Rethinking Thinking on Africa

Chapter 3: From North Africa to Europe: Almohadism, Ibn Rushd and Rationalising Reform

Chapter 4: ‘The Camel can never see its own Hump’: Metahumanism in the Fiction of Ibrahim al-Koni

Chapter 5: A Dialogue of Civilisations: A Decolonial Reading of Chinua Achebe

Chapter 6: On African-American Consciousness of Africa: Reading Bernard Magubane’s The Ties That Bind

Chapter 7: African Self-Reliance, Self- Determination, Unity and Repatriation: Reflections on Marcus Garvey

Chapter 8: Africanity as Self-Assertion, Self- Affirmation and Self-Determination: The Legacy of Archie Mafeje

Chapter 9: [Re] Visiting Molefe Kete Asante’s Theory of Afrocentricity.

Chapter 10: Ad Fontes: The Divergent African Political Aesthetics of Steve Biko, Sédar Senghor and Taha Hussein

Chapter 11: Wangari Maathai’s Afrocentric Decolonial Environmentalist Struggle

Chapter 12: Claude Ake’s Critical Thinking about African Democracy

Chapter 13: Daring African Resolutions to African Problems Insight from Ali Mazrui

Chapter 14: The Manichean Structure and Fanon in Post-1994 South Africa

Chapter 15: The Weapon of Theory Some

Cabralian Theses on the African Political Predicament

Chapter 16: IB Tabata on the Purpose, Trajectory and Limitations of the Liberation Struggle

Chapter 17: Adebayo Adedeji on Africa’s Regional Integration and Self-Reliance

Siphamandla Zondi is a professor in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria. He writes on decolonisation and Africanisation in relation to political thought, as well as on Global South studies, including BRICS and Africa in the world. His work covers the areas of: decolonial peace; Afrocentric development; decolonising international relations; decolonising diplomatic theory; Cabralian political thought; and decolonising university knowledge. Zondi is a member of the Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN).

Endorsements:

This authoritative compendium is about African scholars of note, who have succinctly articulated the African viewpoint whether in contrast to or critique of Eurocentrism, or affirming the self and the African identity suffering the weight of the colonial grip. What is left is to take all these insights, and, without duress, raise the bar to the next level: from theorisations to transformative interventions in the institutions that sustain the codes and maintain the constitutive rules of colonialism.

Here, we should go beyond prescriptive rebuke of Eurocentrism to a focused, purposeful and determined dialogue among knowledge systems, in order to set new normative protocols that govern dignity and ideal standards of conduct.’– Professor Catherine A. Odora Hoppers, Professor Extraordinarius, Unisa, and Founder/Director: Global Institute of Applied Governance of Science and Innovations ‘Recent and ongoing developments, especially crises and failures of the state, of globalisation and social formations, have challenged the social sciences and humanities to rethink extant paradigms and perspectives. This volume represents a bold and significant attempt at mainstreaming African contributions to the debates in their own rights, rather than as merely reactive – and colonised – perspectives to which they have been consigned for so long by dominant paradigms of the global north.’– Professor Eghosa E. Osaghae, Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

‘A timely excavation and reclamation of long muted voices on Africa’s rich and diverse past and present. This book is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature that unequivocally quashes myths long reified that African scholarship needs to be validated elsewhere. Africa can and will claim her long silenced knowledges. A must read!’ – Professor Alinah Kelo Segobye, Dean of Human Sciences, Namibia University of Science and Technology, Windhoek, Namibia.