Decolonising African vernacular rooted sculptures of selected contemporary Nigerian and South African artists

I am interested in a decolonial reading of African vernacular rooted sculptures of selected contemporary South African and Nigerian artists and compares them. Although vernacular arts were produced in indigenous or traditional African arts context, there are still several forms of vernacular art practices jostling for space with canonical modes in contemporary art in various African contexts. However, I argue that the contemporary representations of cultural imagery and symbols from indigenous cultures or urban areas in South Africa and Nigeria suggest a different mode of engagement, even though the term vernacular is used to narrate them as a rethink in narrating art practices. Therefore, my paper argues that even though contemporary artists from both countries continue to represent cultural imagery (vernacular) in their artworks, they are not a continuation of traditional African art. I adopt formal analysis, cultural history methodologies for the critical analysis of the works of two South African and two Nigerian artists that were purposively selected and compare the ideas that unfold from the interrogations for a wider continental understanding of contemporary issues and artistic trends.

Miseducation in South African Public Schooling: the case of To Kill a Mockingbird

A racial incident revolving around the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird in a South African school has prompted this examination of how set works are implicated in the dissemination race-related beliefs. The way the book is taught, it is argued, cements the continuation of the alienation of blackness by affirming ubiquitous white normativity. It perpetuates the notion that the fault lies in an ‘existential deviation’ that inheres in black people. This examination highlights how, through the purposive propagation of white normality, the book exhibits anti-black sentiments. The sympathetic white psyche that subsists simultaneously with the continuing enjoyment of racial favouritism, is appraised. The stance of the book is confronted by noting the contrived largely absent voices of black people in the narrative. This book positions the black characters as props, for the absolution of the white protagonists (and by proxy sympathetic white people) during circumstances of the unremitting and deadly racial oppression.

Did Ethiopia Survive Coloniality: Eurocentric colonial interpretations of Ethiopian history; Struggle against territorial colonialism; The three unique historical aspects of Ethiopia; Challenges of modernization; Did Ethiopia Avoid Colonialism

What is unique about Ethiopia is, the history of survived colonial conquest. The Ethiopian patriotic forces defeated Italian army at the Battle of Adowa in 1896. Ethiopia has a long history of voluntarily pushing modernisation in the context of development. The major drive of modernization aimed at transforming Ethiopia from feudal ‘traditional’ society to ‘modern’ society. Hence, Ethiopia has been in-charge of its development trajectory, compared to other colonised Africans. Ironically, alike other African countries Ethiopia is still struggling with challenges of development. This is historical, an interpretive and conceptual study, executed in thematic terms. Theoretically, the study predicated on decolonial epistemic perspective, that articulates application of modernization to development, as its units of analysis. The findings indicate the need for epistimic decolonization to avoid the invasion of cognitive empire with its modernist influences of civilisation and development.

Rethinking Development in Africa

In an intertextual assessment of Jacob’s Ladder (1987) and The Resolutionaries (2013), we are conducting a post-colonial analysis with the aim of showing that the post-colonization systems of sociopolitical and economic organization in African countries has no other objective but spoliation and subjugation of African economies to Western countries. For these two writers, and especially Armah, the international meetings which often gather the great leaders of this world in Africa and elsewhere are only “bloody ritual” meetings organized to make sure that the system of pillage is working perfectly. In this work, our objective is to show how Williams and Armah make use of the power of the imaginary to open the way to development in Africa, specifically by shaping a new African leadership which is ready to challenge the devil plan of Western hegemonic powers with as defiant programs as Fasseke’s nuclear project in Jacob’s Ladder (1987) and Nefert’s plan of unified linguistic construction in The Resolutionaries (2013).

Exploring disruptions of the coloniality of knowledge, power and being to enable agency as disciplinary activists for curriculum change

The #RhodesMustFall (RMF) movement of 2015 and 2016 challenged universities across the nation to interrogate how the curriculum serves as an alienating and marginalising device that stymies student success. Consequently, the HE sector has been challenged to respond to student calls for decolonisation by reviewing existing university curricula which promote forms of knowledge production that do not reflect an African worldview or a global South context. Academics have refocused their attention on exploring what an alternative, decolonial curriculum would entail. This paper reports on a professional development course, designed to support academics to ‘decolonise their curricula’, and explores what it meant to facilitate and participate in a course that disrupted who they were as disciplinary experts in the university. Drawing on decolonial scholarship, the authors use auto-ethnography to engage with two disciplines, namely midwifery and journalism, to see how the metaphors of (de)coloniality surfaced in these disciplines and how they were mediated through a decolonial approach to course re-design and re-imagination.

Tracing Histories of 'Black' Servants at Zwartkoppies Farm through Narratives

The purpose of this study was to trace histories of black individuals who were employed at Zwartkoppies Farm by the Marks family. I refer to them as servants as they spent their lives serving the Markers. Although it is apparent that Sammy Marks had both white and black servants, little is known about the black servants. Here I also deal with the issue of child labour and forced removals and discuss how the colonial and apartheid laws were enablers in violating black people' s human rights. I do so within the context of oral histories provided through interviews with descendants of 'servants' conducted between August 2018 and March 2020. This study is part of a masters research project entitled " Un-Silencing Histories of Black 'Servants'at Zwartkoppies Farm: A Transition from the Sammy Marks House to the Sammy Marks Museum", (2020).

Drawing a line in the sand: social mapping of responses to calls to ‘decolonise the university’

The task of decolonisation is convoluted as the complexities of meanings as well as the multiple dimensions of decolonisation are vast and textured, depending on one’s vantage point and vested interests. This situation warrants a critical examination of what decolonisation has come to mean in the global South and how different subjectivities at a particular academic institution in the country are responding to the call for change. The academic, social and political movement of decolonisation evokes a variety of reactions, responses and repercussions from a wide spectrum of the university community and its stakeholders. Ranging from conservative to radical, these responses reflect the range of discourses, values, beliefs and actions that the academic community embraces and might determine the extent to which the decolonisation movement can in fact succeed in its goals. This chapter critically analyses responses to the calls for decolonisation of the academy by #Fallist student movement. The aim is to ascertain whether the vision for transforming a largely socially exclusive and unjust academic project into one that is socially just, inclusive and transformed can be actualised in spite of resistance from those who wish to maintain the status quo. Reproducing old ways and patterns based on views of gratitude and charity by some academics has become confused with a social justice agenda and needs to be called out. Drawing on the work of Andreotti et al (2015), the paper uses social cartography (Paulston, 2009) as a discursive and analytical tool to understand the vocabularies and imaginaries of decolonisation at a research-intensive, traditional university.

Human Rights in the zones of non-being: Lessons on [not] speaking about and on behalf of “others” from J.M. Coetzee’s Foe

One of the modern dictates of freedom is a human’s right to free speech as enshrined in the United Nations’ (2015) Universal Declaration of Humans Rights (UDHR) of 1948. The very concept of “universal” rights foregrounds the question on what and who is human. Following this universal doctrine, all freedoms, including the freedom to free speech translates ultimately to “beings” that are critically self-conscious, or at least beings who are regarded as human-beings, who are allowed to exist, to live, and to be free. Indeed, to examine what has happened to those who exist in Fanon’s (2008) zones of non-being who are denied their right to free speech even after the “universal” pronouncements of 1948 is equally important. In fact, all along and even today (and because of coloniality) the Third World citizens may still be denied their right to free speech, their right to be free from economic bondage or otherwise – which are, after all, their natural rights to be human. To be “free”, to be “human” or to “live” denotes that one has the ability to speak as the universal declaration accords. The voice (an ability to be heard) or its lack creates beings that are not regarded as human. Indeed, the effects of talking or not talking of the anthropos, or on behalf of them is explored, somewhat as the unreliability and the corruptibility of the authority of language and authorship. This is to say, the meaning and intentions (of the voice) that belongs to those in the zones of non-being are most often misunderstood, mistranslated and sometimes misread and unheard – stripping them of one of their essential human rights to be heard. This way, I seek to investigate the dilemma of the right to free speech in J.M. Coetzee’s novel Foe (1986) as well as challenge the UDHR declaration that all humans are born equal with a right to freedom of speech. I argue that the possession of language in the world where there are two zones, as illustrated in John Maxwell Coetzee’s Foe (1986) does not guarantee one to be heard or liberated.

Decolonising legal education in South Africa: Is it time to press the reset button?

South Africa has, like many other African countries, inherited a foreign legal system. The democratic Constitution of 1996 altered the country’s legal framework such that it became reflective of societal change, while recognising plurality in South African legal culture(s). Owing to the 2015‒2016 #FeesMustFall student protests, another ideological shift in legal education is being precipitated by the changing socio‒political landscape of the country. This shift is framed as decolonisation, which entails shedding the colonial yoke of exclusive western ideologies and thinking, thereby requiring an inclusive educational approach. Such a transformed education would incorporate local African traditions, customs and ideologies that existed prior to colonial imposition. Legal thinking and culture is dependent on legal education, and legal education is consequently reliant on the legal framework. Considering this chain of influences, I argue that decolonisation cannot be achieved merely as a change in legal education alone: it requires an ideological shift in the country’s legal framework.