A Colloquium at UNISA 4th-5th March
2014
Call for papers
At the time when the 50th anniversary
of attempts at African unity are being celebrated, it is perhaps also important
to reflect on the general demands and struggle for freedom which underlay the
pan-African dream and which African independence had promised its peoples. Rather than merely celebrating an
organisation of states, it is fundamentally important to reflect on the ideals
which produced them and how they have been experienced by people since. After all it was as recently as the 1980s
that a Nigerian peasant was asking ‘When will independence end?’ (Raufu Mustapha, 1996)[1]. It is a sad fact that popular dissatisfaction
with the state in Africa is widespread.
The so-called ‘second liberation’ of the
continent which lay stress on democracy rather than on independence, announcing
with much fanfare a Renaissance founded on a combination of neo-liberalism and
good governance, has also not been able to produce the promised results as
civil wars, xenophobic and ethnic violence and internecine strife have affected
even the most democratic of African states.
Neo-colonial interference in African affairs has continued unabated, and
not only in the economic sphere where the myth of the lack of African
integration in the world economy has been used a pretext for even more plunder
of African natural resources, although now taking different forms from the
past. In the ex-settler colonies of
Southern Africa, racism has persisted, fuelled it seems by a neo-liberal consensus which while creating a small but
new wealthy elite from among the previously disadvantaged, has followed the
rest of Africa in promoting a form of accumulation parasitic on the state. Simultaneously levels of social exclusion do
not seem to have decreased post-1980 but have persisted and even, in many
cases, seem to have increased. As a
result, a number of commentators are talking of a crisis of social cohesion on
the continent despite positive predictions on the economic front due to recent
mineral discoveries.
Some argue that the problem lies with the
self-serving habits of politicians, although it is rarely stressed that such
politicians are regularly chosen by the people.
Others stress the need to build lasting institutions, while yet others
insist that the problem is the fact that the state itself has not been rooted
among the people, but has simply been grafted on a foreign system of domination
- foreign not only in nationality terms but more fundamentally in the sense of
an external imposition on popular culture, thought and society in Africa. Within this overall context, it is important
to submit many of the assumptions of the 1960s and 1980s to renewed critical
scrutiny. And in this instance, one can
do worse than to refer to the critical analysis of the post-colonial state
outlined in the work of Frantz Fanon.
Written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, precisely as African
independence was being achieved continent-wide, Fanon’s mature work expanded on
his youthful analysis of racial oppression in the metropole to examine not only
the character of popular nationalist consciousness, but also the failure of
post-colonial states to deliver on the freedom which they had promised their
peoples. Not only did Fanon notice the
deterioration of the party of liberation from a popularly based organisation to
one ‘lording it over the people’ but he vehemently decried the interests of the
‘national bourgeoisie’, the repressive nature of the new states and the
tendency to xenophobic exclusion.
Since Fanon wrote, the continuities and
discontinuities between colonial/apartheid and postcolonial/post-apartheid
state forms have not always been analysed at sufficient depth; in this African
scholars can learn much from other parts of the South. Literature from India of the ‘subaltern studies’
school in particular asked the central question as to why nationalism in its
various forms tended to simply reproduce the repressive features of colonialism
which it itself had criticised. In
particular, given the fact that colonial societies never experienced modernity
as a liberating process, but as one of exclusion and oppression, why were so
many of its features simply adopted wholesale after nationalists came to
power? Is there something about
modernity itself which makes oppression along a multitude of dimensions
inevitable? Is there something even
about ‘scientificity’ itself which reproduces racism? Is capitalism the appropriate category for
understanding post-colonial Africa? And if so how is economic interest to be
understood both within and between societies and nations? To what extent is
class still a relevant concept and, if so, is it more than a simply
sociological category with no political import?
Is there something regarding human rights discourse itself which - as
Aimé Césaire noted - is simply hypocritical when connected with power and
interest in Africa? Indeed is analysing
identity politics - the politics of interest - the proper way to think about
freedom on the continent today? Is a
category of ‘social cohesion’ imported from 1950s American functionalist
sociology the most useful way to think about the problems linked with social
upheavals, or would a notion of ‘exclusion’ (and its opposite ‘inclusion’) - social or political - be of greater use?
These are some of the issues and questions which
this symposium intends to address at a high level of theoretical and empirical
sophistication, including contemporary postcolonial perspectives. To this end papers are requested on any topic
pertinent to the general theme of the conference. It is hoped to invite plenary speakers who
have been thinking and writing about these issues for a long time and who
therefore can provide parameters for thought and raise questions for general
discussion. The number of presentations
will be limited so selection will be made on the basis of originality and
intellectual rigour.
It is intended to hold this 2 day colloquium
during the 2014 Research and Innovation week at UNISA from 4th-5th March 2014
In the first instance a 250-300 word abstract
should be submitted to Hanli Wolhüter (wolhuhs@unisa.ac.za)
by 30th October 2013. Authors
of selected abstracts will be informed soon thereafter. Full papers will be expected no later than 31st
January 2014.
[1] Mustapha, A. R.
1996, “When Will Independence end? Democratisation and Civil Society in Rural
Africa” in L. Rudebeck and O. Tornquist (eds.) Democratisation in the Third World: concrete cases in comparative and
theoretical perspective, Uppsala
