Decolonisation in Africa: love or litigation? Mandela as moral capital

ABSTRACT

The Rhodes Must Fall social movement infused new life into the decolonisation discourse in Africa. However, whereas most scholars agree on the need for decolonisation, there is little consensus or even clarity on what it actually means in our everyday encounter with others and engagement with reality. Indeed, much of the debate on the issue consists of a recycling of the arguments employed by the first generations of anticolonial/postcolonial scholars and political leaders – a pattern of anti-imperialist thinking and litigation of the past which fails to enhance African self-understanding. This article examines the structure of thought that underlies that pattern and much of Africa’s intellectual decolonisation. I argue that Nelson Mandela understood the risks of the decolonisation arguments embodied by the likes of Robert Mugabe and intentionally adopted a different approach, anchored in encounter as an ethical and epistemic imperative. I therefore propose a theoretical approach drawing on Mandela’s thought and actions and argue that his politics of encounter constitutes a hermeneutic condition for a proper constitution of epistemic decolonisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonisation
• Nelson Mandela
• wounded psyche
• litigation
• love
• encounter

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Chielozona Eze

Chielozona Eze is a professor of Africana Studies at Carleton College, Minnesota. Prior to this, he was Bernard J Brommel Distinguished Research Professor at Northeastern Illinois University. He is the author of Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination: We, Too, Are Humans (Routledge 2021).