Locating Ourselves after Colonialism

Though Europe is (and should be) held responsible for the part it played in Africa’s current state of underdevelopment, it is important to acknowledge the nuances that should dissuade us from the fallacy of ascribing perpetual victimhood to all of Africa. The caste systems established by imperialism made it possible for the colonization of Africans to occur on different levels for different people (even though social hierarchy was not new to Africans by the time the Europeans invaded Africa). The extent of this can be argued on epistemological grounds—that is, were ‘privileged Africans’ any less colonized in comparison to the ‘common African’? The privileged Africans were those who were granted education by the colonizers—those who were further incorporated and made appendages to colonial administrations. The common African, on the other hand, had no place at the colonizer’s table and were considered only as valuable as the hard labour they could contribute to the empire.

Often, some say Africa should return to its precolonial state, and mine its indigenous knowledge systems in order to annihilate imperialism. But I think this is not possible, considering the current global landscape. This landscape is one of identity fluidity and combinations. It is the transracial, transhuman, transcultural, transgenerational and transnational world. Both individual and collective identities are no longer fixed and so are the methods of constructing these identities—and because of this, Africa needs to prepare to engage in the most transdisciplinary ways in order to cope and deal with its colonial past in this postcolonial era. While discussing the kind of ideological commitments Africa should be engaged with in a previous essay in The Republic, I noted that:

By saying that returning to our precolonial state is not possible (above) I do not mean that Africa should not search for wisdom from its past, what is not possible is to return to that past and apply these wisdoms as they were. That is impossible. What is possible, however, is, as I have noted above, Africa’s exploration of ideas from everywhere possible and harnessing these for development and progress. This exploration should be both internal and external.

Every experience we have as humans is coloured by our knowledge claims. In the context of Africa in the postcolony, it is necessary to ask questions regarding the sources of knowledge consumed by the average African. How do I, as an African, know my reality? What do I know about myself, and where (or from whom) does such knowledge come from? This line of questioning forces us to reflect on how Africa’s colonial experience has influenced the process of knowing for Africans today. This process, which, prior to colonialism, was the responsibility of various knowledge systems constructed by Africans, has been substituted with colonized ways of knowing and thinking. During the colonial era, indigenous knowledge systems were abruptly substituted with Western(ized) education systems. To make matters worse, such education was not aimed at furnishing Africans for a prosperous life, but to serve the colonial master—birthing a kind of enslaved mimicry of the master. Regarding this mimicry, Nigerian historian, Toyin Falola writes, ‘Educated Africans served in the civil service, mainly in the lower levels. As many of them enjoyed privileges, they began to imitate European ways of life.’ This process not only ‘educated’ Africans to solely serve the colonizer, but also became a tool to lead Africans down the path of westernization and imperial assimilation, where eventually, the ‘educated’ Africans began to mimic the colonizer and eschew indigenous culture. This model of education that ensured that ‘educated’ Africans secured esteemed positions in African societies, also established a hierarchical social structure. Consequently, it laid the groundwork for the cultural, social, and intellectual hegemony, perpetuated not only by the colonizers but also by the indoctrinated colonized populace.

The era of colonialism may be over, but it has only paved the way for the era of coloniality—where Africans live with the vestiges of the endemic aftermaths of psychic colonization: identity crisis, Western complex and internalized oppressive epistemic systems. Falola, within the academic and scholarly scene, notes:

Africa’s epistemic location is one with (de)colonial demands. Africa has experienced what scholar of epistemologies of the Global South, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, calls: ‘epistemicides (killing of indigenous people’s knowledges)…’; and, a century later, the continent has still not recovered from this. Ndlovu-Gatsheni further acknowledges: