What is “true” critical decolonization?
In the ‘bad old days’ up
to the end of World War II, South Africa was a handful of quasi-independent
provinces home-ruled by a Heath Robinson, Anglo-centric, segregationist, explicitly
structurally colonial/racist/sexist and exploitative government and socio-economy.
In the ‘really bad old days’ during
1950-1990, South Africa ‘decolonized’ from the United Kingdom, and became a highly
organized, brutally effective, Afrikaner-centric, emasculating, oppressive,
still racist/sexist and Balkanized ‘federation’ of ‘real’ (=’white’) South
Africa and a system of Bantustans.
During the 1990s ‘good old days’, a single, post-Apartheid, non-racial
“Rainbow Nation” attempted to transform South Africa synergistically. Indeed, the hyper-managerialized
University of Cape Town (UCT) even created a highly paid deputy
vice-chancellor’s post to ‘deal’ with its “transformation”.
The most effective
advocate of transformation at UCT was Vice-chancellor Mamphela
Ramphele.
During her three-year ‘reign’, she drove the process of transforming UCT
from an excellent, residually, ‘colonial’, racialist and sexist university [that,
too often, produced unemployable, Eurocentric, Afro-irrelevant graduates] into
a world leading (and competitive) centre of Afrocentrism.
So far, during this
millennium, the Afro-anything momentum has been lost at UCT and transformation
has been transformed into “decolonization”.
In the last few years, this has culminated in amorphous Fallism
bent on “really decolonizing” UCT, no matter the ‘Price’. Extreme Fallist decolonists now dominate its illegitimate
Students Representative Council and gerrymandered Convocation, Alumni Association and Internal Reconciliation and
Transformation Commission Steering Committee IRTC SC). The achievement of this dominance has been
aided and abetted by a pro-Fallist UCT Executive and Council and an emasculated
Senate whose members pitch up at meetings expecting “done deals”.
So far at UCT, all that the multi-clemencied-amnestied-pardoned
lawbreaking Fallists demand is further amnesty from the IRTC SC in the “spirit of
expansive, indigenous and religious restorative justice”. [Whatever that means.] Once they have this, they will inevitably call
for epistemic ‘cleansing’ of curricula and academic staff that/who culturally
“other”, “suffocate” and cause “pain” to “black,
LGBTIQA+, poor students, and staff”.
This is because these oppressed (never identified and counted) masses
are tormented relentlessly by demographically (also unidentified/uncounted) surreptitiously
dominant white racists who employ (undocumented) ongoing “invisible and visible cultural, epistemic, structural
and psychological violence with
historical roots going back to 1829”.
In the midst of all this,
Alex Broadbent calls
for “critical, thorough scrutiny to truly decolonise knowledge”. He correctly describes academic
‘colonization’ as curricula,
ideas and knowledge as being “shaped in part by considerations that are
political, economic, social, cultural or otherwise tangential to the ideals of
academic inquiry”. In short, “knowledge is [rather than conveys in the Baconian sense] power”. It can be imposed by
those uninterested in “the fair-minded pursuit of truth” and thus may need to
be “disinfected”.
I have no objection to ‘disinfecting’ tainted ‘politically correct’
knowledge such as Lysenkoism, an attempt to re-impose the long-discredited Lamarckian theory of evolution by
acquired characteristics in Stalin’s Soviet Union. This resulted in massive famines and
executions of scientists who disagreed with Lysenko. Locally, we had the
Mbeki’s views of HIV/AIDS.
But Broadbent
is not done. He also suggests the
possibility that decolonization can also involve “cultural relativism”
resulting in “a rejection
of the idea of objectivity, which is seen as a sort of heritage of colonial
thinking”. “Facts and truths are local”.
“What is discovered or expressed in one time or place will necessarily be
inapplicable in another”. In support of this way of thinking he refers
to philosopher Michel Foucault’s “thought that power and truth are closely
related, or even the same thing”.
Some Fallists
and eminent decolonists Mahmood Mamdani (this year’s UCT TB Davie Academic
Freedom Lecturer) and Achille Mbembe use such thinking to argue for replacing academic scholars who strive to discover universal
truths/laws with Gramscian “organic intellectuals” who derive their ‘knowledge’
from the masses. Further, it is
undesirable “to critically evaluate the opinion of another person” [= organic
intellectual?] because it is “an exercise in power politics”. In short, anyone is entitled “to assert that
something is true, is a fact, or works, contrary to anyone else’s belief”,
thereby “adopt[ing] a certain very broad kind of relativism”.
Fortunately, Broadbent seems to reject this
“Critical Decolonisation”.
Then he refers to “the risk of being wrong”
and correctly points out that BOTH indigenous knowledge systems and western science might contain truths
that have not been properly assessed, or just may be plain wrong. Then he writes that this is somehow must be “a
very scary and painful question for academics who have devoted their lives to
the study of what they have been told are works of genius”. Why should it not be equally “scary” for
proponents of indigenous knowledge?
Why shouldn’t all who profess to have knowledge (even university
professors!) face up to the possibility that their ideas, hypotheses and
paradigms may just not be applicable when tested in a novel situation? Isn’t that what “falsifiability’ is all
about?
But, Broadbent takes the position that:
“If done properly and critically a lot of what we count as great
[Western knowledge] will fall in the process of decolonising knowledge. A lot
of formerly unvoiced and unheard ideas [indigenous knowledge] will come to
light. “
The key words here are “done properly and critically” and “come to light”. How one interprets and implements them is
“critical”. I and most modern
researchers worldwide use falsifiability and parsimony as ‘proper’ criteria. Organic
intellectuals and dogmatic believers of myths may use others and “see the
light” forever in “context”.
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