Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa

Decolonisation of Higher
Education in Africa
This book discusses the status and importance of decolonisation and indig-
enous knowledge in academic research, teaching, and learning programmes
and beyond.
Taking practical lessons from a range of institutions in Africa, the book
argues that local and global sciences are culturally equal and capable of syn-
ergistic complementarity and then integrates the concept of hybrid science
into discourses on decolonisation. The chapters argue for a cross-cultural
dialogue between different epistemic traditions and the accommodation
of ‘Indigenous’ knowledge systems in higher education. Bringing together
critical scholars, teaching and administrating academics from different dis-
ciplines, the chapters provide alternative conceptual outlooks and practical
case-based perspectives towards decolonised study environments.
This book will be of interest to researchers of decolonisation, postcolo-
nial studies, higher education studies, political studies, African studies, and
philosophy.
Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis is an Associate Professor of Higher Education

Studies at the Ali Mazrui Center for Higher Education, University of Johan-
nesburg, South Africa. He has published several academic works on theories of
regionalisation, student mobility, cost-sharing, partnership models, and harmo-
nisation of higher education systems in Africa.
Irina Turner holds the position as Academic Councillor at the chair of African
Language Studies I at Bayreuth University, Germany. Her research interests are
interdisciplinary questions of cultural and media studies, political communica-
tion, and applied linguistics with a focus on multilingualism in South Africa.
Abraham Brahima is currently a Research Associate at the African Centre for

Advanced Studies (CAHE, Université d’Abomey-Calavi), Benin. His research
and teaching interests include African philosophy, philosophy and sociology
of science, theory of knowledge, language policies in Africa, and postcolonial
translation.
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Decolonisation of Higher
Education in Africa
Perspectives from Hybrid Knowledge
Production
Edited by Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis,

Irina Turner, and Abraham Brahima
First published 2021
by Routledge
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Contents
List of contributorsvii
Acknowledgmentsxiv
Foreword by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatshenixv
Introduction 1
IRINA TURNER, ABRAHAM BRAHIMA, AND EMNET T. WOLDEGIORGIS
1. The emergence of decolonisation debates in African

higher education: A historical perspective 17
EMNET T. WOLDEGIORGIS
2. An integrated approach towards decolonising higher

education: A perspective from anthropology 36
VANESSA WIJNGAARDEN AND GRACE ESE-OSA IDAHOSA
3. Rethinking linguistics at Nelson Mandela University:

Emerging decolonial insights 60
JACQUELINE LÜCK
4. What is the point of studying Africa in Europe?

A micro-ethnographic study of decolonising
African studies through international
postgraduates in Germany 78
IRINA TURNER
5. The relationality of knowledge and postcolonial

endeavours – analysing the definition, emergence, and
trading of knowledge(s) from a network theory perspective 100
IRIS CLEMENS
vi Contents
6. Conceptual decolonisation, endogenous knowledge,
and translation 118
ABRAHAM BRAHIMA
7. Linguistic coexistence and controversy in Algerian

higher education: From colonialisation via the
Arabisation movement to the adoption of hybridity 140
ABBES SEBIHI AND LEONIE SCHOELEN
8. Class and literature: Cross-cutting theorisations and

practices of Ngũgĩ wa thiong’o and Mao Zedong in
education 159
MINGQING YUAN
9. “Borrowed” languages in Africa: A reflection on the

reader–writer imaginary 177
TSEVI DODOUNOU AND BILLIAN K. OTUNDO
10. Must decolonisation occur on an island? The role of

occupation in developing future visions within the
#RhodesMustFall 193
ANTJE DANIEL
11. Decolonisation of knowledge on land governance 213

LAMINE DOUMBIA
Epilogue: A long way towards a decolonial future

in African higher education 230
ABRAHAM BRAHIMA, IRINA TURNER, AND EMNET T. WOLDEGIORGIS
Index 241
Contributors
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (University of Bayreuth) sjndlovugatsheni@gmail.

com
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is currently a Full Professor and a Chair
of Epistemologies of the Global South with emphasis on Africa at the
University of Bayreuth in Germany. Before this current position, Professor
Ndlovu-Gatsheni worked as a Research Professor and the Director of
Scholarship at the Department of Leadership and Transformation (DLT)
in the Principal and Vice-Chancellor’s Office at the University of South
Africa (UNISA). He previously worked as an Acting Executive Director
of Change Management Unit (CMU) in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office
at the University of South Africa (UNISA) ( January 2018–September
2019), Director of Scholarship at CMU (2016–2017), founding Head
of Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI)
(2012–2015). He is also the founder of the Africa Decolonial Research
Network (ADERN) based in at the University of South Africa. Professor
Ndlovu-Gatsheni has published over a hundred publications and his
major book publications include Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa:
Myths of Decolonization (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2013); Decolonizing the
University, Knowledge Systems and Disciplines (North Carolina, Carolina
Academic Press, April 2016) co-edited with Siphamandla Zondi;Epistemic
Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (London & New
York: Routledge, July 2018) and recently Decolonization, Development and
Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over A New Leaf (Routledge, May 2020).
Emnet Woldegiorgis (University of Johannesburg) emnetw@uj.ac.za
Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis is curreny an Associate Professor of Higher
Education Studies at the Ali Mazrui Center for Higher Education,
University of Johannesburg. He has been researching higher education
issues in Africa, since 2006 and published several academic works on
theories of regionalisation, student mobility, cost-sharing, partnership
models, and harmonisation of higher education systems in Africa. Prof.
viii Contributors
Woldegiorgis did his Ph.D. at the University of Bayreuth, Germany,
where he has also been working as a post-doctoral researcher between
2015 and 2018. His research focuses on various issues of higher education
processes in Africa. He did his joint master’s degree in Higher Education
Studies at Oslo University in Norway, Tampere University in Finland,
and Aveiro University in Portugal. He has also been working as Head of
Quality Assurance Office, Department Head and team leader at Mekelle
University, Ethiopia. He is currently working on diverse themes of
decolonisation of higher education in Africa.
Abraham Brahima (African Centre of Advanced Studies-Université d’Abomey-
Calavi) saniyaro@posteo.net
Abraham Brahima is currently a Research Associate at the African Centre
for Advanced Studies (AFCAS/CAHE, Université d’Abomey-Calavi
(Benin) and an International Consultant at AgriPerformances Consulting
(Benin). He obtained his Ph.D. in Comparative Studies at the University
of Bayreuth, Germany, a DEA in Philosophy (Logic and Epistemology) at
the University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal and a Maîtrise (MA) in
Sociology of Science at the Université d’Abomey-Calavi, Benin. His long
time ‘on the field’ (1999–2006) as an international journalist and reporter
(Benin, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, and Senegal) is the main source of his
enduring academic interest in questions and problems such as endogenous
knowledge(s), language policy, and translation. His current research and
teaching interests include African philosophy, philosophy and sociology of
science, theory of knowledge, language policy in Africa, and postcolonial
translation. His present research focus is on the connection between local
knowledge(s), conceptual decolonisation, and formal modern science.
Irina Turner (University of Bayreuth). Irina.turner@uni-bayreuth.de
Irina Turner currently holds the position as Academic Councillor at the
chair of African Language Studies I and she is a Member of the Cluster
of Excellence Africa Multiple at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Her research interests are interdisciplinary questions of cultural and media
studies, political communication, and applied linguistics. Her focus is on
communication practices and multilingualism in South Africa – especially
in connection to isiXhosa. Of particular interest to her is the intersection
of digital technology and language as well as linguistic realisations of
science communication in postcolonial contexts and within networks of
multiple knowledge systems. Within the AVVA programme at Bayreuth
University, Irina teaches Semiotics, Methods, Writing, and Language
Philosophy among other courses. She holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth
International Graduate School of African Studies in English Linguistics,
a M.A. from the University of Cape Town in Media Theory and Practice
and a degree in Arts Management from the University of Applied Sciences
in Potsdam.
Contributors ix
Vanessa Wijngaarden
( University of Johannesburg) vanessa.wijngaarden@
gmail.com
Vanessa Wijngaarden h olds cum laude MAs in political science
(international relations) and cultural anthropology (sub-Saharan Africa)
from the University of Amsterdam. Her Ph.D. in social anthropology
(University of Bayreuth) introduced novel methodological practices in
her discipline and contributed to theoretical and epistemological debates
in tourism studies, visual anthropology, and African studies. Recurring
themes in her work include ‘othering’ and (stereotypical) imagery;
the political aspects of poverty and environmental challenges; and the
relationship between people and animals. With a passion for reflexive
approaches, extensive fieldwork, and creative research dissemination,
she has made several nominated and award winning documentary films,
and her feature ‘Maasai speak back’ was created as part of a Wenner
Gren Fejos Fellowship. She has taught Q methodology and worked as an
ATLAS.ti registered consultant and certified senior professional trainer
on three continents. Currently, she is a senior research associate at the
University of Johannesburg, executing a research project on non-verbal
human–animal communication in European and African societies that
contributes to the ontological and species turns.
Iris Clemens (University of Bayreuth) iris.clemens@uni-bayreuth.de
Iris Clemens is currently a Professor for general pedagogy at the University
of Bayreuth, Germany. She is the vice-president and the founding
member of the German Association for Network Research and Principle
Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple – Reconfiguring
African Studies. Her main research interests are network theory or
relational approaches, cultural perspectives on education and scientific
theories, transdisciplinary theories and research designs, indigenous
knowledge formations, concepts of identity and globalisation processes,
and their consequences for education. She has worked extensively in and
about India.
Grace Ese-Osa Idahosa
( University of Johannesburg) idahosagrace@gmail.
com
Grace Ese-Osa Idahosa is currently a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at

the Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
She holds a Ph.D. and an MA in Political Studies from Rhodes University.
She is currently a Guest Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute and a
Visiting Scholar at the School of Social Science, Education and Social
Work (SSESW), Queens University Belfast. Her current project, titled
‘Mid-level Managers Agency for Transformation in Post-Conflict Higher
Education,’ funded by the SRHE, interrogates how university middle-
management, who are in key positions to engender social change within
x Contributors
the higher education sector in South Africa and Northern Ireland, can
be better empowered to enact their agency; and in what ways this is
impacted by their social location. She employs a structure, agency and
transformation framework to understand how and under what conditions,
individuals have the agency to effect transformation. Furthermore, her
research interrogates how social factors like gender, race, class, sexuality
and ethnicity, intersects to enable/limit agency within specific contexts.
Jacqueline Lück (Nelson Mandela University) Jacqui.Luck@mandela.ac.za
Jacqueline Lück was the Head of Department from 2017 to 2020 and
currently is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Language
Studies as well as the Acting Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Humanities
at Nelson Mandela University. Her Ph.D. from Rhodes University,
South Africa, was on inclusion of students into disciplinary knowledge
and how language constrains or enables this. Her department offers
modules in Linguistics, Translation, and Interpreting, Professional
English Communication and Academic Literacies to 6500 students. She
has lectured the following modules: Identity, Discourse, and Ideology,
English for Humanities, Professional English Communication, and
Academic Literacies to first year students; Critical Discourse Analysis to
second year students; Sociolinguistics to third year students; Language
Acquisition and Learning to Honours students and Tesol (Teaching English
to speakers of other languages). She has supervised postgraduate students
on the impact of English as medium of instruction for second language
speakers; language and identity; language acquisition; sociocultural
practices and their effect on writing; language as social practice in higher
education; and the effects on student success. Her research interests are
Language, Knowledge, and Academic Literacies; Identity, Discourse, and
Ideology; Postgraduate student success; Language Policy; Decolonisation
of Linguistics and Decolonisation of the Curriculum. She was part of a
National Research Foundation project that looks at how knowledge
includes or excludes students in higher education. She also works closely
with the university’s teaching and learning community in their quest
to transform curriculum and language policy. She is the chairperson of
her faculty’s teaching and learning committee. She strives to publish and
present at conferences regularly. She has received awards for her teaching
and grants for teaching and learning innovations. She was nominated by
her university for a national fellowship from 2017 to 2019. She is Acting
Deputy Dean concerned with teaching and learning in her Faculty.
Abbes Sebibi ( Institute for General and Intercultural Didactic, AIKUD) abbes.
sebihi@gmail.com
Abbes Sebihi is currently a Senior Education and Training Specialist, an
expert in the field of international higher education, technology-mediated
learning and pedagogies, technical and vocational education and training
Contributors xi
(TVET), and institutional and capacity development. He has more than
eight years of experience in the development context dedicated to tracking,
performance evaluation, including the assessment of metrics, comparative
analysis, results-based monitoring, reporting, and future projections
based on improvement. Dr Sebihi possesses a solid technical and strategic
management background in computer engineering, international affairs,
and quality assurance in Higher Education. After completing IT master
degree studies, he pursued academic research programs in the field of
higher education, e-learning, and pedagogies both in Germany and
Canada. With more than 20 years of project management experience
in four continents, in the technology sector, he has been working as
an IT expert for several companies including Bosch, Volkswagen, TüV
Nord, ABB, and IBM global service. During the past 10 years, he has
served the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation and
Development (GIZ), contributing to a number of projects essentially in
international higher education and Technical Vocational training, where
he has been working as a team leader, output manager, and other senior
roles in cooperation with key stakeholders from Africa, Southeast Asia,
Middle East and Europe, such as AU/HRST, European Union, UNESCO,
ASEAN, ILO, OECD, SEAMEO, BMZ, BMBF, and ADB. Mastering
French, Arabic, German, and English, Dr Sebihi has mediated between
corporate, academic and institutional stakeholders through cross-cultural
communication and management of international relationships.
Leonie Schoelen
( Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) leonie.schoelen@
gmail.com
Leonie Schoelen w ith “defended her PhD in Sociology and Education
Sciences at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, and Paris
University, France. Her thesis is entitled: Facing the Global: Ambivalent
Coping Strategies in the Algerian Academic Field. She received a full doctoral
scholarship. Following a B.A. in English Studies, Politics and Society at
the University of Bonn, Germany, and an M.A. in Peace and Conflict
Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland/UK, Leonie Schoelen
started her career with an internship at German International Cooperation
(GIZ) in India. She continued with GIZ Benin before working as a
consultant supporting the establishment of the Pan-African University
Institute of Water and Energy Sciences (PAUWES) with GIZ Algeria. She
previously took up a position of Project Associate with the United Nations
University Institute of Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)
in Bonn, Germany, and, in parallel, as Research Assistant with the Centre
for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn. As of 2020,
she works as a GIZ consultant supporting the Pan-African University
(PAU) Rectorate in Cameroon in strategic plan implementation, quality
assurance, and programme review.
xii Contributors
Mingqing Yuan (University of Bayreuth) yuan.mingqing1227@gmail.com
Mingqing Yuan is a Ph.D. student at the Bayreuth International Graduate
School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany
with a focus on ‘China-Kenya encounters in literary narratives since
decolonizing time.’ She did her undergraduate studies in English Literature
and postgraduate studies in Intercultural Communication both in China
and Germany. During her doctoral studies, she has presented her works
at African Literature Association (ALA) conference in 2017, European
Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in 2019, and spent one semester
under the department of African Languages, Cultures, and Literatures at
SOAS. She has carried out field research in Kenya and China. Currently,
she is also a member of Future Migration: Network for Cultural Diversity.
Her research interests extend from decolonisation, postcolonial studies,
translation studies to Afro-Asian solidarity, China-Africa relations, world
literature, and transnational movements. In addition to her native language
Chinese, she also speaks English and German and has learned French,
Swahili, Bambara, and Japanese.
Tsevi Dodounou (Montmorency College) tsevi.dodounou@gmail.com
Tsevi Dodounou d id his BA and MA at the University of Lomé, and held
his Ph.D. by the University of Bayreuth and the University of Lomé.
2012, he joined the French and Literature Department, and currently
a Professor in francophone literature at the Montmorency College. He
teaches literatures in French language (Africa and diaspora, America,
and Europe) and French literature from the Middle Age to the modern
world at the undergraduate level. His areas of interest and research are in
the cultures and literatures of contemporary African countries, mainly
in the study of African literary productions from a postcolonial point of
view. Research and publication interests include issues of identity, social
discourses, readership in the African context. He is also interested in the
contemporary African literary productions and the indigenous literatures
in Canada in a comparative approach. He is an alumnus and member of
the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS).
Billian K. Otundo (Moi University) billiankhalayi@gmail.com
Billian Khalayi Otundo is a Researcher and Lecturer at Moi University
with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education sector,
including its administration. In 2019, Billian was a Visiting Researcher
at Radboud University, The Netherlands, where she completed her
Postdoctoral Fellowship as a collaborative research of Moi University,
Kenya, and Leiden University and Radboud University, The Netherlands.
There, she focused on the linguistic strategies utilised by social movements
advocating for land rights. Billian pursued her Doctor of Philosophy
Contributors xiii
in English Linguistics from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, a
Masters in Educational Communication and Technology and a Bachelors
in English and Literature, both from Moi University, Kenya. She has
been teaching and researching in the areas of phonetics and phonology,
language contact, conversation analysis, language and gender, language in
literature, language in education, and higher education. In pursuing these
interests, Billian has learned and applied both qualitative and quantitative
methodologies comprising: case study analysis, (audio-recorded) interview
material, comparative analysis, and acoustic analysis; within which she has
equally published.
Antje Daniel (University of Vienna) antje.daniel@univie.ac.at
Antje Daniel i s substitute scholar in sociology at the Department of
Development Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. She is also an
Associated Researcher of the Institute for Social Change at Johannesburg
University, South Africa. Previously, she researched and touched in
Berlin, Bayreuth and was a guest scholar in Durban, South Africa. Her
works include social movements, political participation, environment,
feminist theories, utopias and visions of the future as well as development
theories. She locates her research in Eastern and Southern Africa (Kenya,
South Africa), Latin America (Brazil) and Austria. One of her recent
researches is titled ‘Aspiring to alternative futures: Protest and living
utopia in South Africa.’ She recently co-edited a Femina Politica special
issue on queer*feminist utopias and is co-editor of a special issue on
future in social movements for Social Movement Studies.
Lamine Doumbia (German Historical Institute DHIP) ldoumbia@dhi-paris.fr
Lamine Doumbia Ph.D. (DHIP/CREPOS - University Bayreuth, Germany)
is an anthropologist from Mali who, after studying Cultures and
Societies of Africa and Geography of African Development at the BA
level obtained a Master of Research in Cultural and Social Anthropology
from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. During his studies, he
conducted ethnographic research in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, leading
to an anthropological critique of the planning processes of the city of
Addis Ababa. He completed his doctoral thesis in legal and political
anthropology of urban land governance at the Bayreuth International
Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), which was published in
the series ‘Topics of interdisciplinary African Studies’ of Rüdiger Köppe
Verlag with the Title Une sécurisation foncière urbaine dans l’impasse –
Exemple de Bamako. He is currently Postdoctoral Researcher in the
international program ‘The Bureaucratisation of African societies’ of the
German Historical Institute in Paris (DHIP) and the Center for Research
on Social Policies (CREPOS) in Dakar for a research project on ‘Land
tenure and Bureaucratisation in Mali, Senegal, and Burkina Faso.’
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all contributing authors for their dedication, patience,
and critical remarks. Thanks goes to advising colleagues especially Gilbert
Ndi Shang and Moulay Driss el Maarouf for their critical reading and helpful
comments. Further, we would like to thank Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni for
his appreciation of our project and wish him a wonderful start to his new
journey.
Foreword
Planetary Decolonisation and
Ecologies of Knowledges
Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa: Perspectives from Hybrid Knowledge

Production is a timely contribution to a topical and planetary issue of decoloni-
sation. It is written at a time when the modern world has entered a simultane-
ously exciting and scaring moment in the domain of knowledge. On the one
hand, it is the reality of an epistemic crisis that is manifesting itself in systems,
institutions, and world orders—and indeed as a global systemic crisis. This
has created what Wallerstein (2004) has termed ‘the uncertainty of knowl-
edge.’ On the other hand, the epistemic crisis has provoked new questions
about knowledge of knowledge itself and rethinking and even unthinking
of thinking itself (Hoppers and Richards, 2012). What has been opened are
the basic and key epistemological and ontological questions. What is upon
the modern world is the challenge of structural reorganization and reartic-
ulation of the world of knowledge. It is within this context that a planetary
decolonisation of knowledge as a struggle and process has entered the global
public domain.
The current resurgent and insurgent decolonisation is better understood
as a planetary process because it reverberates across the North–South divide.
While the decolonisation of the 20th Century was characterized by polit-
ical demands for self-determination and the storm-troopers were modern
educated elites emerging from colonized societies aiming to take over state
power from white colonial elites, the decolonisation of the 21st Century is
expansive and its key trope is epistemic freedom (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018;
Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2020a; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2020b). At the centre of epis-
temic freedom is the imperative of cognitive justice, that is, the recognition
that all human beings were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems
necessitating the demand for the recognition of the diverse ways through
which different people across the human globe make sense of the world and
provide meaning to their existence (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a; Ndlovu-
Gatsheni 2013b; Santos 2014; Santos 2018).
In the Global South, the definitive entry of the descendants of the racial-
ized, enslaved, colonized, feminized, and indeed dehumanized into the
modern academies across the world has resulted in challenging and ques-
tioning of the very idea of the university; institutional cultures underpinned
xvi Foreword
by patriarchy, sexism, elitism and classism; curriculum which has remained
hostage to Eurocentrism; as well as scholarship and epistemology that is
exclusionary and discriminatory of other knowledges. Within the erstwhile
empires, the young generation has also been inquisitive about why their cur-
riculum for instance was white within a world characterized by planetary
human entanglements. The very celebrated Western rationalism and secular-
ism is said to be in crisis, for example, Patrick Chabal wrote a book entitled
The End of Conceit: Western Rationality after Postcolonialism and he concluded
that ‘the end of conceit is upon us. Western rationality must be rethought’
(Chabal, 2012, p.335).
While numerous book and articles have been produced on the subject
of decolonisation of the 21st Century, what has continued to be elusive
are the practical ways of doing epistemological decolonisation. This fore-
word to Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa: Perspectives from Hybrid
Knowledge Production contributes a framework for decolonising knowledge
and curriculum.
The first tenets of decolonising knowledge and curriculum is (re)provin-
cializing Europe and (de)provincializing the world that has been colonized
and peripherized. This approach helps to deal with issues of overrepresenta-
tion and underrepresentation of some knowledges. At the centre of this trans-
formative, tasks are a number of practical moves ranging from decentring and
recentring, shifting the geography and biography of knowledge, and expand-
ing the shoulders of giants beyond the dead white males from Europe and
North America.
The second tenet of decolonising knowledge and curriculum is reviewing
of disciplines so as to escape what Lewis R. Gordon (2006) termed ‘disci-
plinary decadence.’ This transformative task entails delving deeper into the
constitutive formation and emergence of modern disciplines and how they
have travelled across the modern world so as to be ubiquitous in any modern
and westernized university’s organization of knowledge. At the centre of this
process are the urgent issues of the fitness of disciplines for purpose, their
relevance, and their value for money and public service. Disciplinary deca-
dence kicks in when disciplines are reified and naturalized to the extent that
human thought becomes hostage to them. The decadence manifest itself in
terms of obsession with disciplinary issues and academic tribes at the expense
of focusing on human problems.
The third tenet is a decolonial approach to knowledge, which is not about
addition, subtraction, or replacement but rather is about how to establish
ecologies of knowledges. It would seem the concept of ‘hybrid knowledge
production’ is part of the move towards a decolonial approach to knowledge
production. The easiest by no means the best approach is to adopt a position
of ‘remove and replace.’ This approach amounts not only to revenge but also
to repetition without change. The best way to do it is to first of all establish
and make a clear case that knowledge has always been a product of encoun-
ters and exchanges but through the imperial and colonial processes, Europe,
Foreword xvii
and North America committed what became known as ‘theft of history’ so
as to claim to be the originator of all legitimate and valid knowledge systems
while disqualifying and delegitimizing all other knowledges. What therefore
is needed is an epistemic restoration of denied interconnections, interlink-
ages, and convivialities in the knowledge domain (see Nyamnjoh 2017). This
book prefers to call for ‘hybrid science,’ ‘integrative research,’ and ‘transcul-
tural knowledge.
The fourth tenet is a radical shift from miseducation to re-education involv-
ing the painstaking process of unlearning what was imposed by modernity/
coloniality and re-learning in non-colonial ways, which recognises that all
human beings were born into valid and legitimate knowledge systems. At the
centre of this transformative task is the rethinking of thinking itself propelled
by questioning knowledge of knowledge itself. This move has the potential
to open up to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014; 2018) termed ‘episte-
mologies of the South,’ ‘born in the struggle’ (see Santos and Meneses 2020).
Taking all this into account, it becomes clear why the editors of this impor-
tant book defined decolonisation within higher education as ‘a radical pro-
cess of redefining and re-designing systems and standards, which ensure that
teaching and learning occur in and emerge from appropriate local contexts
of relevance.’ Hybridity and cross-cultural dialogues bringing diverse epis-
temic traditions into the academy enable the practice of ecologies of knowl-
edges capable of enriching diverse human experiences. But always vigilance
must be exercised to guard against the simplistic neoliberal ideas of diversity
informed by the equally simplistic idea of mixing and stirring so as to pro-
duce integrated and hybrid knowledge. The decolonial approach is predi-
cated on de-hierarchization of knowledge so as to open up for ecologies of
knowledge – a reality that is well-captured in this book, where reflexivity
cuts across the eleven chapters.
Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa is a book that grapples with the
theme of decolonisation from diverse vantage points – connecting theory
and praxis. At the centre of the book are such topical issues as the politi-
cal economy of knowledge, how to integrate diverse epistemic traditions,
how to develop local southern multilingual knowledge, how to take seri-
ously student voices in the decolonisation project, how knowledge travels,
the challenges of using indigenous African languages in research, teaching
and learning; testing the possibilities of a transcultural perspective of decolo-
nising, and many others. It is indeed a treasure trove of transformational ideas
that put decolonisation at another level.
Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Chair in Epistemologies of the Global South
University of Bayreuth
Germany
xviii Foreword
References
Chabal, P. (2012). The End of Conceit:Western Rationality after Postcolonialism. London and New
York: Zed Books.
Hoppers, C. O. and Richards, H. (2012). Rethinking Thinking: Modernity’s ‘Other’ and the
Transformation of the University. Pretoria: UNISA Press.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2020a). ‘The Cognitive Empire, Politics of Knowledge and African
Intellectual Productions: Reflections on Struggles for Epistemic Freedom and Resurgence
of Decolonization in the Twenty-First Century.’ Third World Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.
1080/01436597.2020.1775487.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2020b). Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning
Over A New Leaf. London and New York: Routledge.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2018). Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization.
London and New York: Routledge.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013a). Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity. Oxford:
Berghahn Books.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013b). Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization.
Dakar: CODERIA Book Series.
Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2017). Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd: How Amos Tutuola Can Change Our
Minds. Mankon, Bamenda: Langaa Research & Publishing CIG.
Santos, B. de S. and Meneses, P. ed. (2020). Knowledges Born in Struggle: Constructing the
Epistemologies of the Global South. New York and London: Routledge.
Santos, B. de S. (2018). The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of
the South. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Santos, B. de S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder and
London: Paradigm Publishers.
Wallerstein, I. (2004). The Uncertainties of Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Introduction
Irina Turner, Abraham Brahima, and Emnet T. Woldegiorgis
Background and positioning

Discussions on decolonisation processes, in general, are neither new nor
exclusively an African phenomenon. The debate prominently came to the fore
during the mid-twentieth-century anticolonial movements that sought to
dismantle European colonial rule across the Global South. Broadly speaking,
decolonisation can be interpreted as various efforts to withstand the distinct
but intertwined processes and outcomes of colonisation; it envisages alter-
native, just, and inclusive futures (Stein & Andreotti, 2016). Decolonisation
within higher education, in particular, refers to a radical process of rede-
fining and re-designing systems and standards, which ensure that teaching
and learning occur in and emerge from appropriate local contexts of rele-
vance. Throughout this edited volume, decolonisation of higher education
has been discussed as processes of re-centring and de-centring1 (Morozov,
2013). That is, recognising and prioritizing 2 Indigenous methodologies and
ways of knowing; specifically, with regard to African contributions to the
production, dissemination, application, promotion, protection, control, and
utilisation of knowledge.
Especially in the last decade, decolonisation in higher education has been
discussed broadly in academic research, focussing mainly on various power
dynamics and coloniality of different epistemological traditions. A bulk of
literature deals with decolonisation and cultural responsiveness of pedago-
gies, student activism, a transformation from Eurocentric to a local perspec-
tive, scholars from the Global South and Indigenous knowledge as well as
systems and values (see Bhambra, Gebrial, & Nişancıoğ lu, 2018; Davidson,
et al., 2018; Huaman & Brayboy, 2017; Kapoor, 2009; Pirbhai-Illich, Pete, &
Martin, 2017). Most of the debates as of today, present various valuable per-
spectives on epistemic traditions seen as exogenous to colonial contexts and
the need to decolonise them, as well as an emphasis on the status and impor-
tance of Indigenous knowledges. Nevertheless, further systematic and multi-
disciplinary assessment of the articulation between Indigenous knowledge
and decolonising higher education based on current academic discourses is
still crucial (see, for example, Emeagwali and Shizha 2016). Furthermore,
2 Irina Turner, Abraham Brahima, and Emnet T. Woldegiorgis
in the light of increasing calls for ‘endogeneity’ in postcolonial academic
contexts (Dei, 2000), there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the connection
between Indigenous knowledge(s) and higher education through their inter-
connectedness, as suggested by the notions of ‘hybrid science,’ ‘integrative
research,’ or ‘transcultural knowledge.’
One can notice the challenge of objectively approaching the discussion of
decolonisation processes as much of the literature seems normatively bur-
dened and tempted to drift into sensational narratives (Dei, 2000). The con-
cept of decolonisation in its application to higher education appears to be
ideologically loaded, theoretically partial, and epistemologically misleading.
Many authors lay strong emphasis on sensitive and emotionally laden histori-
cal facts such as the misdeeds of the colonisers, who despised and undermined
or even destroyed local ways of knowing by regarding them as unworthy
or non-scientific; and in consequence enduringly marginalised local pop-
ulations and/or minorities. This historical focus narrows down to a criti-
cism of Eurocentrism as the single cause of stagnation in science, knowledge,
and technology in former colonial societies and happens at the expense of a
thorough evaluation of the local socio-political and historical dynamics also
involved in the epistemic dependency, structural inadequacy, and unsound
policies that still characterize many higher education institutions in postco-
lonial contexts.
Focusing on the context of African higher education, this edited volume
critically discusses the question of alternative futures of decolonisation that
accommodates a cross-cultural dialogue among different epistemic traditions
and centres Indigenous knowledge systems and African thought in higher
education. The editors of this volume conceptualise decolonisation within
integrative approaches fully informed by the notion of ‘hybrid science’; i.e.,
the conviction that what is perceived as Indigenous (local) and Western
Eurocentric (global) sciences are equally culturally situated, and therefore
equally valid and capable of synergistic complementarity.
At the same time, we are aware that integration, for instance seen from
a political economic perspective in higher education, carries the danger
of hegemonic silencing and is thus a highly politicized process; which can
be observed in the publishing sector for instance.3 African studies per se is
not free from colonial baggage (see Turner this volume), continued silenc-
ing (Kothor, 2019) and sustained gatekeeping structures (Kaijage, 2019).
Decoloniality is therefore not a matter of acknowledgement but of critical
self-rendering in dialogue. Hence, integrative approaches are crucially con-
tingent on local agency, conceptualization, and theorization from the schol-
ars of the so-called Global South. We therefore read decolonial integration in
the sense of fragmented fusion; i.e., resulting from intellectual and academic
activism, genuine dialogue, and non-consensual debates.
While the focus of this book is on Africa, decolonisation is a worldwide
process with multiple perspectives and cross-relations (on Arab and Eastern
influences see for instance Woldegiorgis, Clemens, Sebihi & Schoelen, and
Introduction 3
Yuan this volume). A decolonial approach focusing on hybridity must not
exclusively be oriented vertically from South to North or be misunderstood
as an attempt to harmonise Western knowledge with Indigenous systems.
Instead, it must remain open to a multiplicity of alternate modernities;
‘transmodernities’ in the sense of Dussel (2012). In that sense, hybridity can
gain the potential of liberating formerly colonised territories from confin-
ing hybridity to Western/non-Western knowledge systems, opening it up
to a symmetrical cultural dialogue that harnesses the best out of African,
European, Latin American, and Asian cultures.4
The current volume provides both conceptual and empirical insights on
decolonisation of higher education and a way forward accommodating dif-
ferent epistemic traditions. It explores the importance of pluralistic ‘hybrid
science’ as an alternative perspective taking Indigenous knowledge systems
as an important building block of knowledge production. We argue that
African knowledge systems and Euro-American epistemic traditions are not
necessarily parallel and contradictory, rather complement each other in the
process of knowledge production. Thus, this volume provides a compre-
hensive discussion and alternative conceptual outlooks on decolonisation of
higher education in Africa, drawing empirical insights from various case-
based studies.
In being aware that resurfacing hybridity might bring up old reproaches
of elitism, of silencing material and political differences, or of re-centring
Eurocentric notions, we as editors5 feel the need to make transparent our
own positionality and relationality towards decolonisation in higher edu-
cation in Africa. We are scholars and practitioners in higher education with
long-term living, studying, and working experiences both on the African
continent and in the North. Hence, we either sit between the chairs, or − if
you prefer − have a foot in several doors and it is therefore not surprising that
we are intrigued by hybridity. As such, we are a breed of a privileged dias-
pora with a particular gaze on indigeneity and globalisation. Our focus on
hybridity is thus not merely an analytically abstract exercise of provocation
to trigger attention in the fatigued academic community. Rather, the idea
of this book emerges from a practical personal need and genuine conviction
that only a reconciliation of knowledges and the acknowledgement that any
innovation is of necessity hybrid in nature will enable the survival and revival
of African thought on a global scale. In editing this book together, our dif-
ferent disciplinary schools of thought made things challenging but in the end
also more nuanced. We can thus rightly claim that this volume is a product
of genuine hybridity.
(Re)conceptualising the postcolonial:

Decolonisation as an expansive concept
From a conceptual standpoint, the ‘postcolonial’ is a highly expansive notion6
and one of the most misunderstood terms along with the postmodern and
the poststructural (Battiste, 2004). The main problem lies in the ‘infamous
and falsely periodizing “post” in postcolonial,’ which entails ‘the misleading
suggestion that colonialism is over’ (Byrd & Rothberg, 2011, p. 4).
Battiste (2004) consequently talks about the postcolonial rather in terms
of an ‘aspiration, a hope not yet achieved.’ For Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2012,
p. 49) the postcolonial is problematic and elusive as a temporal marker because
of the inherently uncertain nature of periodization as such and the resulting
divergences in opinion along disciplinary lines and power relations.7 He fur-
ther argues that ‘every postcolonial, as periodization, must carry the posts of
the colonizer and colonized, and they can’t very well mean the same thing’
(wa Thiong’o, 2012, p. 50). It is the insidious presence of the main features of
colonialism in the postcolonial that makes any attempt at strict periodization
a challenge, and a definite conceptual delineation an impossibility.
Similarly, the conceptual framing of de-colonisation often overlooks the
fact that because there are multiple historical forms of colonisation, there
also has to be various approaches to decolonisation. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2017)
describes colonisation as a vast project encompassing the alienation of space,
time, nature, being, power, spirituality, gender, aesthetics, and knowledge.
Consequently, ‘if colonisation was this vast, then decolonisation must of
necessity be a vast project, tracking colonialism and coloniality in all the
crevices and corners, where it is hiding, particularly in its institutional forms’
(p. x). Indeed, not all colonial experiences were identical and the discourse
on decolonisation as a monolithic entity risks repeating the logic of colo-
nialism, which is paradoxically hegemonic and homogenizing at once. As
Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza (2017, p. 272) rightly observes, ‘homogeneity,
when it appears, is the result of an attempt, on the part of the powerful, at
eliminating heterogeneity.’ Analysing the unequal power relations character-
istic of colonial regimes and the rhetorical games that go along with them,
Menezes de Souza (2017) identifies a rigid conceptual line between colonialism
and coloniality. The former refers to systemic ‘imposition of one nation and
its values over another,’ while the latter encompasses unequal ‘patterns of
power relations that emerged from and persist after the end of colonization’
(de Souza 2017, p. 275). Despite the assumed exclusive difference between
these concepts, they are in fact complementary. The temporality of colo-
nialism suggests inscription in an imaginary past. Both coloniality as well as
colonialism, however, still contain the same outright power relations under
the disguise of subtle political mechanisms and deceitful phraseologies (see
also Ashcroft et al., 2003). For the soft ‘British indirect rule’ as much as for
the French and Portuguese assimilationist colonial policies, the distinction
between colonialism and coloniality is a wordplay with the distracting effect of
putting a conceptual make-up on the hideous face of colonization. Alleged
differences are just ‘a matter of detail, and of emphasis’ but the outcome is the
same (wa Thiong’o, 1994, p. 19).
The decolonial project as applied to higher education and hybridity in the
present publication purposely resists the temptation to define the postcolonial
Introduction 5
in terms of radical and definite discontinuity between a ‘pre,’ a tangible epi-
sode of coloniality and a ‘post.’ The ‘post’ is inherently situated in a cognitive
relation to the ‘pre’ and the ‘colonial.’
Hybridity in decolonisation of higher education

The way decolonisation processes are conceptualised and framed determines
the nature of alternative futures that any decolonial debate envisages. This
volume approaches the discussion of decolonisation of higher education in
Africa with an emphasis on hybrid forms understood not as complementary
binaries but as simultaneous multiples. From the very outset, the notion of
hybridity entails and acknowledges the existence of multiple and diverse cul-
tures and knowledge bases. In decolonial higher education, acknowledging
this multiplicity aims at forging alternative futures that accommodate these
heterogeneous epistemologies. The concept of hybridity was comprehen-
sively discussed in cultural theory foremost by Homi Bhabha (1994) who
in turn was influenced by Said (1978), in developing the idea of the ‘third
space’; i.e., the location where hybridity becomes evident. Applied to scien-
tific knowledges, from the 1990s to the millennial turn − the decades dom-
inated by discourses of multiculturalism and borderless mobility − hybridity
has been celebrated for its cosmopolitanism and usefulness in transcending
Eurocentric modernity (Mitzutani, 2009, p. 2). In unsettling this self-refer-
ential narrative, Bhabha clearly explicates the problematic self-understanding
of whiteness as an ‘unmarked’ entity representing progress and modernity
untouched by the colonial encounter (Mizutani, 2009, p. 5).8 Instead, he
advocates taking ‘the cultural and historical hybridity of the postcolonial
world […] as the paradigmatic place of departure’ (p. 31).
Far from being an irreversible historical matter of fact, the idea of hybridity
points to the optimal space in which Fanon’s ‘wretched of the earth’ and their
former colonial masters should position their common destiny. Rather, hybrid-
ity is in fact the logical consequence of the ‘cross-fertilisation’ of two heter-
ogeneous or even antagonist actors on the colonial scene, or ‘agonistic space’
to borrow Lyotard’s (1978) words. Accordingly, the notion of a ‘third space’
points towards this fatally intermingled future at the cross-roads between the
endogenous and the exogenous, the particular and the universal, but more
importantly between the local and the global which are all dimensions sit-
uated in provincially anchored power relations. Beyond epistemic nativisms
and pathological fixations upon imagined identities, the ‘colonial encounter,’
even in light of its subsequent violence, has transformed the colonised and the
coloniser. They are bound to refer to their common future as human beings in
this space in-between where their entangled future is defined forever.
Zooming in on this so-called ‘third space’ as a productive transcultural
contact zone can assist in balancing out the unhealthy tendency of some
voices in the decolonisation debate to be absorbed by Afrocentric narra-
tives and ethnocentric readings of epistemic lineages that demonize Western
epistemologies and romanticize endogenous knowledge bases. Bhabha’s
hybridity can be read as an alternative conception of the future where the
challenges of cultural hegemony and the Eurocentric history of the Global
South are readdressed. Hybridity is as an ideal space of symbolic interaction
‘in-between’ different individual identity dimensions as well as ‘in-between’
heterogeneous identity factions. According to Bhabha, ‘this interstitial pas-
sage between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of cultural hybrid-
ity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy’
(1994, p. 5).
Nevertheless, this utopian longing for a heterogeneous togetherness −
similar to the South African idea of the Rainbow Nation (Turner, 2019) −
negates material and political differences that are so vitally put forward in
discourses of decoloniality. The concept of hybridity has also been criticised
by a number of scholars as a neocolonial discourse complicit with transna-
tional capitalism, cloaked in the hip garb of cultural theory (Chow, 1993;
Dirlik, 1994; McClintock, 1995; Young, 2006). ‘By stressing the transform-
ative cultural, linguistic, and political impacts on both the colonized and
the colonizer,’ Mabrol (2016) points out −while suggesting that Bhabha was
misread− ‘has been regarded as replicating assimilationist policies by masking
or “whitewashing” cultural differences’ (p. n.a).
While acknowledging the critiques on hybridity in the decolonisation
debates, we would like to emphasise the potentially reconciliatory function
of the concept among diverse sources of knowledges and innovation as an
important venue for the revival of African thought on a global scale. Hybridity
is discussed as a process of intercultural dialogue that recognises the existence
of not only diverse epistemologies but also the possibility of forging alterna-
tive hybrid systems. As argued by Bronfen, E. & Marius, B. (1997). hybridity
is neither a peculiar feature nor a to-be-averted danger of globalisation but
the basal foundation of any culture. Transferring that thought into the con-
text of this book, hybridity is not a ‘peculiar feature’ of African studies or the
African university, not a ‘to-be-averted danger’ in a decolonised utopia but a
‘fundamental foundation’ of it. Therefore, it is not the aim of this volume to
introduce hybridity into decolonised universities but to lay it open and care-
fully re-appropriate it in a productive and just way. We attempt to bring the
notion of hybridity back into the debate, with the assertion that it has a solid
and practical potential that can enable genuine contemporary decolonisation
within globally operating institutions of higher education. We furthermore
argue that hybridity can be productive in highlighting aspects of temporality,
mutuality, and anti-essentialist understandings.
Decolonising local knowledge, and transcending

the boundaries of ‘colonial science’
With regards to the enduring influences of colonialism on epistemologies
in Africa, Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ (2018) notion that colonisation is a
Introduction 7
‘cocreation’ between colonisers and colonised − in the sense of a program-
matic relegation of Indigenous ways of knowing into the realm of pseudo-
science, subaltern knowledge or ‘savage science’ − holds remarkable significance.
Indeed, the call for ‘cognitive decolonisation,’ needs to be informed by the
precondition that ‘however asymmetrical, decolonising entails decolonising
both the knowledge of the colonised and the knowledge of the colonizer’
(Santos, 2018, p. 107). According to Santos, the way out of the current col-
onisation-driven epistemological deadlocks is to devise a cognitive ‘third
space’ in terms of theory and methodology development ‘along the lines of a
decolonised mestizaje in which the mixture of knowledges, cultures, subjec-
tivities, and practices subverts the abyssal line that grounds the epistemologies
of the North’ (2018, p. 107).
Consequently, there is a need to decolonise the concept of Indigenous
knowledge along with the preconceived negative ranking by its comparison
with modern science. As a rule, Indigenous forms and ways of producing,
archiving, and disseminating knowledge are put in opposition to scientific
research as if they belonged to two radically contradicting realms. A thor-
ough deconstruction of the concept of ‘science’ is accordingly also neces-
sary for decolonised higher education in Africa. The decolonial project needs
to interrogate the enduring consignment of traditional knowledge(s) to the
‘periphery of the periphery’ (Hountondji, 2002, p. 252) within institutional
scientific knowledge.
The varied but complementary views expressed in this edited volume show
an acute awareness of this important task of deconstruction. The focus on the
ontologically hybrid nature of knowledge is based on the conviction that
beyond broadly admitted Manichean distinctions, Indigenous, traditional or
local and scientific, modern or global knowledges are complementary (see
also Silitoe 2007). Beyond criticizing suppressive Western epistemologies, a
responsible posture on decolonising science requires a clear articulation of the
‘silent coexistence’ (Hountondji, 2002, p. 252) between ‘scientific’ discourse
and traditional knowledge. ‘Voices from the Academy’ (Semali & Kincheloe,
2011) interrogating the status and role of Indigenous knowledge in higher
learning actually speak from a position of legitimacy bestowed upon them
by their professional practice as scientists and the subsequent awareness of the
fundamental unity of knowledge. Furthermore, the task of constantly ques-
tioning the ideological fundaments and implications of science and research
is also a requirement of the profession of scientist; particularly for the postco-
lonial scholar and researcher. Donaldo Macedo argues that it is only through
the decolonisation of his/her mind and heart that the African scholar ‘can
begin to develop the necessary political clarity to reject the enslavement of a
colonial discourse that creates a false dichotomy between Western and indig-
enous knowledge’ (1999, p. xv). In a well-balanced education system, ‘the
learning process should be a two-way affair, not only facilitating the adoption
of scientifically informed ideas by local communities, but also the informing
of scientific understanding with local knowledge’ (Silitoe, 2007, p. 3).
All this should not conceal the equally relevant facts that all quests for knowl-
edge strive for universality and that at the same time, there is no ontological
marker of locality or indigeneity as radically divergent from universality.
Law and Lin (2017, p. 5) argue accordingly that ‘the claim that all knowl-
edges are situated is self-contradictory’ and amounts to a ‘formal paradox.’
For instance, cognitive standards are universal but not necessarily the ways
and means people choose the object(s) of their knowledge and how they pro-
ceed to incorporate them into their mind and life experience. Scientific or
academic knowledge is no exception to this general rule (see also Sarewitz,
2010, p. 1001).
Nevertheless, from a strictly theoretical point of view, the most important
issue about knowledge is not so much its relation to particularity or univer-
sality seen in their respective spatial configurations but about the relation of
knowledge to truth, i.e., of what people can believe in, and human well-
being. The challenge for a hybrid conception of knowledge in decolonising
academic contexts is to hold on to the unstable balance and mutuality among
endogenous and exogenous sources of knowledge; what is considered local
or particular one day, may well become global and universal another day.
Ultimately, as Appiah (1992, pp. IX-X) cautions, ‘ideological decolonization
is bound to fail if it neglects either endogenous “traditions” or exogenous
“western” ideas.’ This implies that the decolonial project must transgress
theoretical academic realms of higher education and be mainstreamed
into or rather feed by society as a whole. Decoloniality, in its essence an
anti-monolithic endevaour, has to rhyme with and be aware of other forms
of social agency taking place in African societies outside the confinements of
scholastic practices.9
Chapter outline
The current volume presents 11 logically sequenced chapters organized along
historical, conceptual, and thematic areas. The notion of decolonisation of
higher education and hybridity is elucidated as a central organising theme,
binding together the diverse perspectives of the authors. The subsequent sec-
tion provides a brief introduction and overview.
Decolonisation of higher education in Africa:

Background and current debates
In its first part, the volume tackles some essential deliberations on decol-
onisation such as approaching a common definitory ground and historical
narration of its evolution as well as of the role of hybridity in this discourse.
Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis opens with a bird’s-eye view reflection on
debates of decolonisation in higher education (Chapter 1). In an attempt to con-
ceptualize African higher education from a historical perspective, the author
explores the political economy of pre- and postcolonial African universities
Introduction 9
and their ‘academic oligarchies’ set among society, the market, and the state.
In the process of transformation from colonial to postcolonial setting, higher
education institutions in Africa shouldered multiple responsibilities as agents
of economic growth, Africanisation, and state building in the 60’s and 70’s.
Since the 1990s, however, the growing popularity of liberal economic prin-
ciples, new debates on the notions of ‘knowledge economy,’ ‘knowledge
society,’ and commercialization of higher education, triggered a whole new
philosophical debate on the social responsibility of higher education.
Providing the methodological groundwork for doing decolonisation in
higher education, Vanessa Wijngaarden and Grace Ese-Osa Idahosa offer an
integrated approach (Chapter 2) from anthropology as a social scientific field
that is specialized in dealing with a multitude of knowledge systems, and
suitable to facilitate cross-cultural dialogues as well as highly critical reflec-
tions on its own knowledge constructions. They argue that if science (natu-
ral, social, and humanities) is to be a truly global knowledge system, scientific
endeavours have to move beyond dualistic binaries of Indigenous versus
Western, towards a dynamic dialogic approach that centralizes intersubjec-
tivity, relationality, and contextualisation. Around the concepts of ‘radical
multivocality’ and ‘adamant reflexivity,’ the authors convincingly explicate
how the self-transformative effort of anthropology with its focus on self-
reflexivity equip the discipline beautifully for developing transdisciplinary
methods in decolonising science and thus the self-understanding of a univer-
sity by treating science ‘as a form of culture’ and ‘co-creative dialogue.’ The
authors advocate for a resistance against ‘integration/incorporation,’ which
necessary implies hierarchisation and appropriation.
From the lived experience of applied decolonisation, Jacqueline Lück (chap-
ter 3) offers the perspective of applied linguistics in a southern context. The
chapter introduces a ‘bottom-up transformative African-centred model for
Linguistics.’ Applied here refers to the specific ways that the discipline trans-
forms itself into a decolonial endeavour by stressing that ‘decoloniality is con-
text’. The chapter provides practical examples from case studies that explore
what it means to develop local southern multilingual knowledge projects and,
to also enter into northern conversations. The chapter explores how Linguistics
is navigating decoloniality in different spaces from workshops, curriculation
spaces to the classroom at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.
By so doing, it considers what it means to learn about language and to learn
through languages in South Africa. The chapter rightly points out the dangers
of an uncritical revival of hybridity in romanticising diversity and obscuring
inequality in service of clearing the consciousness of northern academia: ‘A
“new” hybrid science would have to pay attention to these critiques, if it is to
serve a decolonial Linguistics agenda.’ The challenge is to create something
new from the old while at the same time avoiding assimilation.
Expanding from linguistics proper and looking at decolonisation from
an interdisciplinary perspective, Irina Turner’s contribution (chapter 4) –
coauthored with Masters students – integrates students’ voices with regards
to decolonisation. Emphasising the critical stance according to which decolo-
nisation is not only for the former colonised to be undertaken, Turner insists
on the self-critical engagement of academia from the North as a condition for
success. Because of their influence in the continuation of neocolonial struc-
tures and power relations, the decolonial project also entails decolonising the
institutions of higher education in the North, foremost and especially, the field
of African studies. Implementing one step into this direction, the chapter pre-
sents the results of discussions with and among Master students of the AVVA
programme (African Verbal and Visual Arts) at Bayreuth University in their
visions of decolonisation as such and decolonsing learning spaces in particular.
Accordingly, this discourse analysis is preceded and framed by a critical histor-
ical overview on German Afrikanistik, which is both the hosting discipline of
AVVA as well as a carrier of ideological colonial baggage. The chapter is located
in the realm of language sociology based on focus group interviews. Thus, it
contributes to the current redefinition and re-legitimization of African studies
in the North with a focus on art, literature, and language studies.
Iris Clemens (Chapter 5) focuses on the relationality of trading knowl-
edges. Starting from an analysis on the contested terrain of the very defini-
tion of knowledge in science and the biased discussion in the past, she draws
attention to the approach of trading zones (Galison, Raina) and travelling
knowledge in the educational field from a network theory perspective. The
author is also aware of the problematic entanglements of hybridity and asks
whether bringing this up inadvertently might reinforce the notion of pure
science: ‘Notions such as hybrid science discussed in this volume raise the
question of whether there is – or could be at all – a science, which is not
hybrid? Calls to indigenize the Anthropocene and hear epistemologies from
the South DeLoughrey & Handley, 2011; Nixon, 2005; suggest that knowl-
edge or knowledge production would normally be without such “contami-
nations”’ (Clemens, 2009).
We agree with Clemens that hybridity must not be mistaken for ‘false
copies’ of the original, universal knowledge: ‘The search for “origin” or first
source of a concept is reducing the possible analyses and the gain of knowl-
edge unnecessarily. Any knowledge we could know of today is per se hybrid
then’ (Clemens, 2009). While we don’t see the point of this book to establish
whether or not pure science does exist, we rather strive to rewrite the ahis-
torical representation of this very notion.
The subsequent section on languages and literatures presents some case
studies from these disciplines which maintain a central position in the decol-
onisation debate.
Literature and languages of teaching in

decolonising African universities
Abraham Brahima (Chapter 6) looks at the ramifications of translation in aca-
demic contexts. The aim of the chapter is to critically examine the conceptual
Introduction 11
problems arising from the on-going discussion about language-in-education
in Africa, with special attention to challenging issues such as translating
‘culture-bound’ or ‘tongue-dependent’ concepts, towards the formulation
and teaching of modern science in Indigenous languages and cognitive frames.
The chapter is based on the general observation that beyond the initial stages
of primary and secondary schools, very few countries in Africa have imple-
mented the use of local languages for teaching and learning at higher edu-
cation level. Are those local languages that are still left out of academic life
definitively defective because they intrinsically lack the required conceptual
resources for formulating and transmitting modern scientific knowledge? Are
the reasons for the enduring use of former colonial languages as exclusive
vehicles for science and technology fundamentally to be found in the lack of
a culture of systematic translation? Looking beyond widespread dichotomies,
this chapter reconsiders some conceptual and practical implications of trans-
lation in African postcolonial academic contexts.
From the North of Africa, a historic perspective on the language issue in
decolonisation is taken by Leonie Schoelen and Abbes Sebihi (Chapter 7).
The objective of the chapter is to bring a highly politicised issue to scholarly
debate, where it is currently muted. It contributes to highlighting options
for integration by coexistence of linguistic diversity according to scientific
rather than ideological considerations on the one hand, and the need to raise
awareness that the (partial) discontinuation of a language marked by former
colonisation alone is not sufficient for decolonised academia on the other
hand. The modern People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria unifies centu-
ries of occupation. Colonial influences on science are subject to continuing
political re-negotiation. Social sciences in particular have been Arabised yet
not decolonised. To varying extents, these epochs have left their traces in
today’s hybrid culture and linguistically diverse landscape. The subsequent
linguistic coexistence mirrors the development of the decolonisation process
towards hybrid knowledges in Algerian higher education. In addition to the
Arabic dialect, French, the official language inherited from colonisation, as
well as English, continue to be used in administration and higher education.
Drawing on the notions of structural violence and the concept of language for
peace, Schoelen and Sebihi argue that incorporating rather than condemn-
ing hybridity counteracts the currently prevailing policy-making based upon
emotional and ethnocentric decisions. Consequently, the authors emphasise
the chances and future perspectives for consequent higher education reforms.
A transcultural perspective on decolonisation is taken by Yuan (Chapter 8),
who analyses traces of wa Thiong’o’s ideas in Mao Tse Tung’s writings. Even
though China and Africa have gone through different forms of colonisation,
wa Thiong’o and Mao share a similar understanding of the role of literature,
language, and education in decolonisation. These links are constructed not
only through Marxism but also through anticolonial struggles and divisive
politics in the Cold War era. This chapter focuses on the similarities and
differences, changes and revisions between and within the works of Mao and
wa Thiong’o in decolonising and intellectual debates on language, literature,
and education. The chapter moves beyond Eurocentric orientations of region
and nation–state and explores arrays of a possible Afro-Asian epistemology
through a comparative close reading, revisiting, and reviewing of the two.
Continuing in the emphasis of the prominent role of literature in decolo-
nisation, Otundo & Dodounou re-interrogate the language in ‘African litera-
tures’ (Chapter 9). Using Desk Research, this chapter reflects on the deficiency
of reading and writing in African Indigenous languages, while foreground-
ing the question of the imaginary. It further exemplifies pertinent issues
inherent in the language-in-education policy of African multilingual coun-
tries, where European languages are still dominating the media, academia,
and social realm. The chapter argues that as a consequence of the imposed
Eurocentric educational norms, an overwhelming number of Africans can
neither read nor write in their Indigenous language(s), thus stripping them
of their representations, identity, culture, heritage, and especially their imag-
inary. Despite the discrepancies in the language-in-education policy across
Africa, the countries continue to underutilise Indigenous languages in for-
mal education, which leads to a shrinking reading and writing culture in
Indigenous languages. Due to the incapacitation of Indigenous languages,
which have been underpinned by Eurocentric knowledge systems, the epit-
ome for expression of specific representations, worldviews, experiences,
thoughts, ideas, culture and particularly the imaginary of many Indigenous
African communities is under threat.
Highlighting the close link of the mental realm to physical realities, this
volume closes with two contributions on decolonisation as a project revolv-
ing intrinsically around territorial objections and the postcolonial subject’s
demands for legitimate space.
Contested colonial delineations and spatial reappropriation

In her contribution, Daniel asks whether decolonisation must ‘occur on
an island’ (Chapter 10). The chapter offers a close up of the FeesMustFall
protest at the University of Cape Town and dwells on the sustaining signif-
icance of occupational spaces for conceptual and real social transformation.
Daniel reminds us that conceptual change is generated in a lab situation.
Occupation as a particular form of protest does not only capture discontent-
ment and claims for change, rather it can be understood as a laboratory for
developing alternative visions because it offers the possibility for a particu-
lar kind of interaction among protesters. The limited and somehow exclu-
sive space of occupation is the precondition to experiment with new forms
of living, implement alternative social norms and values, or to elaborate
new forms of decision making. The chapter discusses the role and ambiv-
alences of occupation during the protest of students at the University of
Cape Town and the relevance of the limited space for decolonial struggles.
Introduction 13
Exploring the fringes of higher education in the sense of decolonising
institutionalised bureaucracy, Lamine Doumbia (Chapter 11) examines
as a case study the African Union initiative – Network of Excellence on
Land Governance in Africa (NELGA) – as a frame to analyse the relation-
ship between higher education and the relevance of local knowledge in
land governance in Bamako (Mali) as an example of decolonisation. The
research is carried out to answer the question: to what extent can endoge-
nous knowledge on land governance be decolonised through higher edu-
cation? NELGA is a partner of leading African universities and research
institution with proven leadership in education, training, and research on
land governance. This chapter analyses different actors’ control and nego-
tiating patterns of urban land tenure in Bamako. Among them are not
only state institutions, but also international organisations, local communi-
ties, and individuals who claim their own usufructs at the grassroots level.
Paperwork is central for all those actors because the legal framework of
Mali’s State’s Land Code (code domanial et foncier) is not in line with
the Indigenous land regulations of Malian communities. The focus of this
chapter is the ethnography of how the subsequent legal discrepancy entails
sociopolitical, historical, and linguistic issues that go far beyond the prob-
lem of land administration. Indeed, in the specific context of postcolonial
Mali this question discloses subtle, albeit socioculturally significant tensions
between endogenous conceptions of land as an ontological space of belong-
ing and foreign models of governance that turn it into an object of political
and financial transactions.
In the concluding chapter, the epilogue, the editors recapitulate some of
the arguments discussed in the diverse contributions and restate the call for
the genuine decolonisation of African higher education systems within the
framework of hybridity.
Notes
1. As our colleague Driss El Maarouf noted, this can be construed as steering away
from the colonial gestures of worlding (after Gayatri Spivak) in which cultures and
epistemes of the South wait to be placed on the world’s map. De-centring relativ-
izes Western hegemonies and politics of naming.
2. Though this particular discourse on capitalisation mainly emerges from the Ameri-
cas, where it conveys the notion of nationhood and might not be wholly applicable
to Africa, we decided to follow this argument and capitalize Indigenous to recog-
nize these epistemes as equally valid as Western etc. ontologies.
3. Literary scholar Driss El Maarouf: ‘There are contemporary exclusionary practices
in the academic publishing industry that systematically block the dissemination of
knowledge(s) coming from the Global South in general and from Africa in par-
ticular. Many African scholars today show profound concerns as to whether they
should (or should not) heavily draw on local scholarship, and whether their built
bibliographies will result in the rejection of their contributions altogether. Bibliogra-
phies get scrutinized carefully, discriminated discursively, showing that the existing
conflict and clash around “who should be cited in the good journals run by the
West” lie elsewhere in a longer conflict over land, resources, knowledges’ (private
correspondence).
4. We are grateful to our colleague Gilbert Ndi Shang for this thought and phrasing.
5. I, Irina Turner, co-editor of this volume, am acutely aware that as a white Euro-
pean person my writing about decolonisation in Africa is – not without grounds-
considered by some as illegitimate and in fact, undermining the agenda perversely.
What makes matters worse, is that the stance we take in this volume could be mis-
construed as a glossing over political injustices and thus be a repetitive violating act
of the ‘white gaze’ (Ahmed, 2007) coming with all discursive and symbolic institu-
tional power I seemingly hold. However, it is exactly that small window of power
that I – together with my colleagues – try to use for the cause of mainstreaming
decolonisation. I hope this effort can be read as an added heterogeneous voice in
the quest, rather than as an attempt of appropriation and assimilation.
6. ‘The concept [of postcolonialism] has been rendered even more incoherent by the
appropriation of paradigmatic postcolonial concepts (hybridity, borderlands, etc.)
for social distinctions that have little to do with colonialism in a strict sense, such
as gender, race, ethnicity, etc. … The incoherence also has implications for our
understanding of the present. … Increasingly from the 1990s, the postcolonial has
dissipated into areas that had nothing to do with the colonial and has been rendered
into a literary reading strategy rather than a social and political concept—largely
under the influence of the likes of Bhabha’ (Dirlik, 2005, p. 8).
7. Beyond the apparent indication of the end of an era, ‘the period that follows the
act and fact of colonization’ the post in postcolonial could legitimately refer to
the neo-colonial period so as to subsequently validate an odd phraseology such as
‘postcolonial colonialism’. This uncertain conceptual delimitation could go so far
as to ‘raise the spectre of countless posts’ not to talk about the ‘postcolonial of the
colonizing’ [Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2012, p. 49f.)].
8. ‘To remain the universal originator of historical change, the white subject had to
always be ‘extra-environmental’ and ‘extra-racial. ‘But would it ever be possible for
the white subject to stay completely aloof from the land he colonises? Could he not
possibly become altered by environmental influence, by acculturation, and/or by
miscegenation? The mere idea of ‘change’ appears logically inconsistent with the
discursive designation of the ‘English gentleman’ as an ‘ever-present example’. But
if anything, the anxiety over ‘change’ was deeply entrenched in the white commu-
nity of the British Raj. And this logical contradiction made the colonial discourse
of enlightenment equivocal and internally split. Or in Bhahba’s phrase, it made the
‘tongue’ of that language ‘forked, [but] not false’’ (Mizutani, 2009, p. 5).
9. We are grateful to our colleague Driss El Maarouf for this idea and phrasing.
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1 The emergence of
decolonisation debates in
African higher education
A historical perspective
Emnet T. Woldegiorgis
Debates on decolonisation of African higher education have evolved over

time framed by various socio-economic and political imperatives. The dis-
cussion has also been embedded within different historical contexts of the
region and the ongoing global transformations. Thus, in order to properly
understand the conception of and ongoing debates on decolonisation, it is
essential to analyse the historical trajectory of African higher education and
its dynamic interactions with African societies. Understanding the histori-
cal context allows an in-depth perspective into present debates. The debates
range from the initial call for the dismantling of colonial systems estab-
lished on African territories, to the ideal of liberating institutions from their
hegemonic Western ideologies, philosophies, and structures that marginal-
ized African heritages and experiences. African universities were urged to
revisit their curriculum to create spaces and resources for dialogue among
all epistemological traditions and knowledge systems concerning what was
being taught and how it framed the world. The objective of this chapter is,
therefore, to provide a historical perspective on the debates of decolonisation,
starting with a brief history of African higher education, the early discourses
on Africanisation, and then the foundations for the emergence of the decol-
onisation debates.
Introduction
Discussions on decolonisation processes of higher education beg for a clear
understanding of the historical trajectory of the sector itself, which neces-
sitated the debate from the very outset. The origin of African higher edu-
cation is a much debated phenomenon (see Abdi, 2005; Ajayi et al., 1996;
Assie-Lumumba, 2006; Lulat, 2005; Mngomezulu, 2013). This debate is
prompted, among others, by the fact that there is no consensus on the point
of departure. As the chapter argues later, some authors trace the devel-
opment of higher education in Africa to the precolonial era (Abdi, 2005;
Mngomezulu, 2013). Others argue that African higher education institu-
tions are products of colonial intervention (Ajayi et al., 1996). Whatever the
point of emphasis, the reality is that African higher education cannot escape
18 Emnet T. Woldegiorgis
the debate on the legacy of colonisation still being felt decades after inde-
pendence. Most current African higher education systems, programmes,
curricula, degree structures, mediums of instructions, and organisational
settings are based on colonial models. Moreover, their knowledge bases still
maintain Eurocentric epistemological traditions that marginalize African
perspectives. Thus, in order to properly understand the conception of and
ongoing debates on decolonisation, it is essential to analyse the diachronical
trajectory of African higher education and its dynamic interactions with
African societies. Understanding the historical context allows an in-depth
perspective into present debates.
It is important to underline the fact that the debates on decolonisation
processes in Africa are not a new phenomenon; they have rather come to
the fore in the period of independence. Initially, decolonisation referred to
the political phenomenon of creating self-governing states (Mazrui, 2003).
Nevertheless, the notion has rapidly expanded to incorporate a broad spec-
trum of issues related to colonial institutions, including their political, eco-
nomic, and cultural aspects. The debates range from the initial call for the
dismantling of colonial systems established on African territories, to the ideal
of liberating institutions from their hegemonic Western ideologies, philoso-
phies, and structures that marginalized African heritages and experiences. It
is, however, important to bear in mind that discussions on decolonisation and
decoloniality are not uniquely African.
Early debates on decolonisation in African higher education were framed
within the notion of ‘Africanisation’ that calls for the inclusion of African
perspectives into postcolonial African institutions. As explained by Makgoba
(1997), Africanisation was taken as ‘a process of inclusion that stresses the
importance of affirming African cultures and identities in a world commu-
nity’ (p.1). Since the 1980s, however, the debates have culminated in the
search for a more structural and fundamental transformation of postcolonial
institutions and their epistemic basis. Thus, the debates have extended both
in-depth and breadth challenging the epistemological foundations, contem-
porary relevance, and representation of African perspectives among higher
educational institutions in the contemporary knowledge systems.
Although the legacy of colonisation considerably influenced the decoloni-
sation debate on higher education, the roles that postcolonial African insti-
tutions have played in the construction and production of knowledge since
political independence have also held a significant share in postcolonial dis-
cussions. This is partly because the challenges of postcolonial African institu-
tions have also been intrinsically linked to and embedded in ongoing global
transformations. Thus, understanding the historical context of their estab-
lishment and their roles in the current global knowledge systems is impera-
tive for any decolonisation debate.
The objective of this chapter is, therefore, to provide a historical per-
spective on the debates of decolonisation, starting with a brief history of
African higher education, the early discourses on Africanisation, and then
A historical perspective 19
the foundations for the emergence of discussions on decolonisation. It is
important to keep in mind, however, that this chapter does not cover the
post – 2015 decolonisation discourses in South Africa, since other chapters in
this book exhaustively reflect on that.
The emergence of higher education in Africa

The origin of African higher education is still a debatable subject as scholars
are yet to agree on the point of departure for the history itself. Scholars have
been debating whether the precolonial learning spaces in Africa can be con-
sidered as higher education (e.g., Ajayi et al., 1996). This is mainly because if
the controversy over the meaning of ‘higher education’ in historical contexts
and over what constitutes a ‘higher education system.’ It is quite conven-
ient to define higher education within the historical context of the medieval
European universities, which were institutionalized in the 17th century. The
challenge, however, is how to conceptualize and explain higher education
spaces abundantly available but not institutionalized outside the context of
European experiences. Thorens (2006) for instance defines higher education
as ‘an institution created or allowed by society and the state to participate in
the development of knowledge and its dissemination through research and
higher education for the welfare of mankind’ (p.19). This definition implies
that higher education exists only as an institution and has constant interac-
tions with the state and the society. In one of his comprehensive books on
higher education systems, The Higher Education System: Academic Organisation
in Cross-National Perspective, Clark (1986) also explained the concept of higher
education systems within the context of medieval universities. Clark argues
that higher education systems are results of a triangle of forces: profession-
al-collegial, state-managerial, and the market. The professional-collegial are
the faculties, departments, and professors, who are part of day-to-day teach-
ing, learning, and researching processes. They are considered autonomous
in the process of knowledge production and own professional authority in
their disciplines. On the other corner of the triangle, there is the state, which
has political power and authority to direct the functions of universities.
According to Clark, the third end of the triangle, the market, represents var-
ious stakeholders such as society, students, professional associations, employ-
ers, etc. These three entities of the triangle interact and negotiate with each
other all the time, cooperating, or competing in policy processes. Clark also
states that knowledge is the epicentre of the higher education system around
which activities are organised. Clark’s discussion was within the historical
context of Europe and America as he presumably took nation states as the
sole political authorities, disregarding other forms of political structures such
as traditional kingdoms and endogenous organizational structures, which
abundantly exist in African societies. According to him, in the absence of
the above interactions among – institutions, state, and stakeholders – higher
education systems do not exist.
Contrary, Ajayi et al. (1996); Assie-Lumumba (2006), and Lulat (2005)
argue that higher education does not necessarily have to be institutionalized
and they opt for a broader definition. They argue that higher education can
also exist as an assembly of scholars, as a self-directed and independent learn-
ing space of peer-to-peer interactions serving the purpose of higher learning.
They argue that, even though European models of higher education as an
institution were non-existent during precolonial Africa, higher education as
an assembly of scholars has already been in place since the 3rd century AD
and indigenous forms of learning and transmission of knowledge had been
there long before Western colonial hegemony. Within this line of argument
scholars (see for instance Assie-Lumumba, 2006; Gennaioli & Rainer, 2007;
Lulat, 2005; Michalopoulos & Papaioannu, 2013) extensively documented
the genesis of African knowledge systems tracing back to various precolonial
foundations that produced complex civilisations, and socio-economic and
political institutions. Accordingly, early century African institutions includ-
ing the various kingdoms, learning spaces like the library of Alexandria,
Islamic institutions of North African, the 2,700 year-old tradition of Judeo-
Christian education of Ethiopia with Ge’ez script are some of the examples
cited as evidence for the existence of learning spaces in precolonial Africa.
The University of Qarawiyyin in Fes in Morocco, founded in AD 859; the
University of Al-Azhar in Cairo in Egypt, founded in AD 972; and Sankoré
University in Timbuktu in Mali, traceable to the 12th century, constitute
some of the oldest universities in the world.
Precolonial African philosophers including the ancient Egyptian phi-
losopher Ptahhorep, the 17th-century Ethiopian philosopher, Zera Yacob
(1599–1692); and the Senegalese philosopher, Kocc Barma (1586–1655) were
also considered as products of such African foundations (Lange, 1987). Thus,
the exclusive interpretation of higher education only within the context of
medieval universities in Europe does not provide us with a comprehensive
explanation of higher learning spaces in the Global South. Without a thor-
ough understanding of diverse contexts, it is easy to leave with an inadequate
analysis that may create the condition for ill-informed conclusions of histor-
ical facts and a self-sustaining cycle of misunderstandings and resentment.
Despite the discussions on the interpretations of higher education and their
historical origin, however, there is a consensus on the fact that the current
higher education systems in Africa are products of colonial interventions.
By the end of 1885, after the Berlin Conference on the scramble for Africa,
virtually all African countries were under the control of European colonial
hegemony, which led to the introduction of European institutions among
African societies. Even though a multitude of colonial powers including
Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have shaped
Africa’s roots of modern institutions including higher education, Britain and
France played a dominant role and have a legacy on African higher edu-
cation systems. The European model of higher education was introduced
in Africa around the mid-19th century. Fourah Bay College was the first
higher education institution established by colonial powers in Africa in
1827 in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The college was established by the Church
Missionary Society of London as an institution for training African clergy-
men and schoolmasters. In the later years, more institutions were established;
including the University of Cape Town (1829), Stellenbosch University
(1866), University of Khartoum (1902), Cairo University (1908), University
of Algeria (1909), Makerere University (1922), Egerton University (1939),
University of Ghana (1948), University of Ibadan (1948) of Niagara, Addis
Ababa University (1950), and University of Zimbabwe (1952).
It is crucial here to understand the context of their establishment for the
decolonisation debate, since the historical emergence and purpose of these
institutions were far from the very essence of higher education − the pursuit
of knowledge and enlightenment of societies. Historically, the purpose of
introducing higher education in the colonies was to train local ‘elite’ required
for the smooth running of colonial administration (Ashby, 1961). As a result,
only a handful of institutions established in the colonies and enrolments were
open to a selected few. At the end of the 1960s, for example, Sub-Saharan
Africa had only six universities for a population of 230 million people (Teferra
& Altbach, 2004). The University of East Africa (serving Tanzania, Kenya,
and Uganda) had a total of only 99 graduates for a combined population of
23 million in 1960 (Teferra & Altbach, 2004). Courses and curricula were
also introduced to meet this colonial objective.
Lulat (2005) in his book ‘A History of African Higher Education from Antiquity
to the Present: A Critical Synthesis’ comprehensively documented the pro-
grammes introduced in colonial institutions in Africa. According to Lulat,
they were related to theology (to train local priests and pastors), language and
cultural studies (mostly for interpreters), health assistants, and other techni-
cal disciplines including bookkeeping (to assist colonial administration). The
interests of local Africans in the making and development of these institu-
tions and programmes were neither reflected nor accommodated. Moreover,
in most instances, where a significant number of European settlers existed,
for example, in the Southern part of Africa, locals were significantly margin-
alized from accessing higher education institutions.
The British were the first to have relatively structured policies of educa-
tion for their colonies (Ajayi et al., 1996). British colonial higher education
policies were products of recommendations from various advisory groups
under the supervision of missionaries, who used to serve as informants for
colonial administration. One of the British colonial policies on higher edu-
cation was crafted by Richard R. Madden based on a survey conducted on
West African Colonies of Gambia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast in 1941
(Commission, 1945). This policy was framed within the concept of ‘indirect
rule’ where the matter of handling the issues of education in colonies was left
for missionaries, British universities, and local administrators. Even though
these universities had been established in Africa, the entire functioning of
the institutions including granting degrees, assigning professors, curriculum
approvals, leadership of the universities were left to British universities in the
United Kingdom. Thus, in a true sense, they were not African institutions;
rather, they were British universities in the colonies.
Contrary to the British colonial higher education policy, the policy of the
French colonies of Africa was shaped by their colonial ideology of ‘assimila-
tion’ and ‘direct rule.’ The French assimilation concept was first introduced
by the philosopher Chris Talbot in 1837 (Zeleza, 2006). It was based on the
idea of expanding French culture to the colonies outside of France in the 19th
and 20th centuries. Natives of these colonies were considered French citizens
as long as they adopted French culture and customs. The official statements of
governors general of France in the 1920s clearly indicate these:
Above all else, education proposes to expand the influence of the French
language, in order to establish the [French] nationality or culture in
Africa … it is a matter of training an indigenous staff destined to become
our assistants throughout the domains, and to assure the ascension of a
carefully chosen elite, … to bring them nearer to us and to change their
way of life (Bulletin de l’Enseignment en AOF, No. 74, 1931.).
Though the French provided a considerable number of basic education in

Africa, they established a small number of higher education institutions
in their colonies. French colonial powers found sending few Africans to
France to learn the French language, culture, and way of life easier and
cheaper than establishing higher education institutions in their colonies.
As Assie-Lumumba (2006) describes it citing Ajayi et al. (1996), this policy
basically left the mass of Africans uneducated and groomed a selected few as
modern, co-opted as loyal upholders of French culture and colonial rule, by
encouraging them to complete their education in France and to feel more
at home in Paris than in Africa (Assie-Lumumba, 2006). As a result, there
were only a few higher education institutions until the 1950s in French
colonial Africa.
Among the few institutions established by French colonial power were the
Tananarive Medical Institute (1896); Medical College of Dakar (1918); the
École Normale William Ponty (1903); and a school of veterinary medicine
and polytechnic in Bamako (Zeleza, 2006). Just like the British establish-
ments, French colonial higher education institutions were not autonomous
African institutions; they were considered overseas campuses of French
universities. When the University of Dakar was established, for instance, a
decree from the French Ministry of Education named it as the 18th university
in the French higher education system (Lulat, 2005).
Portuguese colonies also had a similar experience as the French. Even
though the Portuguese were in Africa much earlier than other colonial pow-
ers, their efforts to expand education in their colonies were meagre, and
no form of higher education existed in Portuguese colonial Africa until the
early 1960s. The illiteracy rate, as indicated among Africans in 1958, for
instance, was close to 100 per cent in Portuguese colonies of Angola and
Mozambique (Azevedo, 1980; Kitchen, 1962). Establishing educational insti-
tutions for their colonies was not on their colonial agenda at all. Even though
in 1962, Portuguese set up two higher education institutions, which in 1968
would become the University of Luanda and the University of Lourenco
Marques, both universities were established to serve only Portuguese settlers
(Woldegiorgis & Doevenspeck, 2013). Out of a student population of 540 at
the University of Lourenco Marques in 1966, for instance, only one student
was a Mozambican African (Azevedo, 1980, p.199). All other institutions in
lusophone Africa were established after the Portuguese had left. Establishing
higher education in post-Portuguese colonial Africa was not an easy venture
as the entire system started from scratch. For instance, at the time of inde-
pendence, Portuguese African countries had no single African professor even
in the established universities (Woldegiorgis & Doevenspeck, 2013).
In general, the objective of colonial powers in establishing higher educa-
tion institutions in Africa was not to address the socio-economic problems
of African societies; instead, it was basically to facilitate the smooth running
of colonial administrations. The programmes, courses, and training selected
were based on colonial interests. Not only were African heritage, languages,
religions, and cultures ignored and excluded but they were also depicted as
backward and uncivilized; as the only way to become civilized was to uphold
the European way of life − to learn a colonial language, to be baptized as a
Christian and to accept European culture.
Colonial higher education institutions in Africa were not only exclusion-
ary in nature and irrelevant to African societies but also distractive to the
pre-existing indigenous learning spaces. Indigenous learning is a complex
accumulation of locally contextualized knowledge that embraces the elements
of ancestral knowing as well as the legacies of diverse histories and cultural
experiences (Dei, 2008). To precolonial African communities, indigenous
knowledge was a feasible tool for reclaiming their context relevant ways of
knowing that had deliberately been suppressed by Western knowledge and
often been branded as inferior, superstitious, and backward. As a result, tra-
ditional notions of learning and the philosophy of education in Africa have
been disconnected from their historical past and new exogenous models of
institutions, which were not along with African roots, were imposed through
colonisation. This resulted in a structural collapse of the African societies
illustrated in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). Achebe demonstrates
the erosion of African institutions, in his most authentic narrative, showing
what happened in the Igbo society of Nigeria at the time of its colonisation
by the British. Because of structural collapse within the social fabric of the
locals and the divided nature of Igbo society, the community of Umuofia in
this novel is unable to withstand the tidal wave of foreign religion, way of
learning, technology, and government.
In principle, the role of higher education and its philosophy evolves through
time with continuous interaction of the state, the society (the market), and
the academic oligarchy, as Clark (1986) demonstrates. Even in postcolonial
African higher education, however, these interactions have always been
imperfect since the current higher education systems did not evolve out
of the interaction of the aforementioned; instead, they were imposed over
pre-existing learning spaces. Thus, in any decolonisation debate, it is impera-
tive to understand the context of ‘the colonized society upon which Western
knowledge was imposed … its motives and compare them to their indigenous
way of knowing’ (Akena, 2012, p.603). Failing to do so would lead to mis-
apprehension and distortion of the foundation of the decolonisation debate.
Even though at the end of the 19th century European models of education
were set up by colonial administrations, the process of disrupting indigenous
learning spaces and introducing colonial institutions in Africa was not an
easy adventure for colonial powers. As stated by Assie-Lumumba (2006) ‘the
reaction of Africans in general, when European education was first intro-
duced, was characterized by the overwhelming rejection by leaders and the
general population’ (p. 30). African societies considered rejecting European
schools and education systems as one way of resisting the disconnection
from their own historical heritage. Colonial education at the early stage was
communicated through Christian missionaries who brought in new reli-
gions, languages, and cultures foreign to African realities. This situation
was understood as a threat to Indigenous culture, religions, and traditional
institutions. For instance, in North Africa, Muslim families were resisting
to send their children to colonial schools (Kane, 2016). They were perceived
as ‘Christian’ (nasr ā n ī) institutions even if the French had developed laic
principles for their school curricula. The introduction of the medersa1 could
not dissolve the hesitations, and, as a result, these institutions did not turn
out to be successful.
Over time, however, the European model of education and its institu-
tions became hegemonic in Africa, and access to higher education became an
instrument for serving the colonial administration and for assuming a better
position in the society. Thus, more and more people started to aspire for
European education including higher education as it became the most impor-
tant avenue towards upward mobility in the socioeconomic and political lad-
der and an instrument for self-determination. The significance of accessing
higher education for upper social mobility has undoubtedly been recognized
and positively embraced by African societies but the relevance of African
institutions in their colonial forms has always been scrutinized.
Even if most African countries have managed to obtain political inde-
pendence and regain colonial institutions since the 1960s, liberating them
from colonial epistemic traditions has not yet been a success story. Thus,
it is within this historical context and trajectory that discussions on decol-
onisation of African higher education started with the objective of having
an inclusive and pluralistic epistemic approach in the production, dissem-
ination, application, promotion, protection, control, and utilisation of
knowledge.
The rise of decolonisation debates
in African higher education
Even though the discussion on decolonisation of higher education in Africa
has been there for a long time, the way how the debates have been framed
changed. The early debates in the 1960s and 70s were contextualized within
the notion of ‘Pan-Africanism,’ ‘Africanisation,’ or ‘African Renaissance.’
In the post-1980s, however, the discussions have become more structural,
questioning the very essence of Eurocentric epistemologies and alternative
ways towards decolonisation. This section discusses these developments from
a historical perspective.
Africanisation
The years following immediately after independence, were considered
landmarks in the struggle for consolidating African identity as the newly
independent states were working on various postcolonial restructuring
issues including nation/state-building processes, decolonisation of colonial
institutions, reconstructing African identity, and embarking on policies of
economic development. This was also the beginning of the so-called ‘devel-
opment decade’ as declared by the United Nations in the 1960s, whereby
issues of development dominated the political discourse of African govern-
ments. Thus, the higher education sector, along with primary and secondary
education, was given high priority by newly established African governments
in order to train more professionals and skilled workforce to replace and
expand the newly decolonised African institutions (Yesufu, 1973).
Emerging out of the colonial experience with new socio-economic and
political aspirations that represent African societies was the core ideological
base of African nationalists of the time, including Kwame Nkrumah, Julius
Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Patrice Lumumba. Some
of these pan-Africanists were also intellectuals who were on the frontline of
decolonisation discourses. Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, for
instance, was a historian and economist trained at Edinburgh University in
Scotland. He was the first black chancellor of the University of East Africa2
and known for his articulation of African socialism. He also translated two
of Shakespeare’s plays into Kiswahili – Julius Caesar and The Merchant of
Venice – which was published by Oxford University Press in 19633. Nyerere
was critical about the dilemma of Africanisation facing African universities of
his time. As he indicated in his 1965 speech at the University of East Africa:
There are two possible dangers facing a university in a developing nation:

the danger of blindly adoring mythical ‘international standards’ which
may cast a shadow on national development objectives, and the danger
of forcing our university to look inwards and isolate itself from the world
(cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017, p. 63).
Prior to his leadership as the president of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic
of the Congo), Mobutu Sese Seko was also a reporter for the daily L’Avenir
‘The Future’ and later editor of the weekly Actualités Africaines, where he
started to vent his criticisms on colonisation. His ideas of decolonisation of
African institutions, however, became more vocal after he assumed power
in 1965. Questioning the relevance of African universities of the 1960s, for
example, he said:
We need to emancipate the educational system in the Congo from the

Western model by going back to Authenticity while paying due attention
to scientific knowledge…It would be more desirable to have an educa-
tional system, which shapes the youth according to our requirements.
That would make them authentically Congolese. Their ideas, reason-
ing and actions would be Congolese, and they would see the future in
Congolese (cited in Mkandawire, 2005, pp. 22-23).
The origin of the discourse of decolonisation of higher education was, there-

fore, framed within the notion of ‘Africanisation’ in the 1950s and 60s. It was
during this time that discussions on the process of Africanisation and later
decolonisation have emerged as a debate in higher education with the intent
of deconstructing colonial epistemologies and emancipating African institu-
tions from neocolonial and Eurocentric orientations. In order to pave the way
for this to happen, the argument was that African higher education systems
needed to address the challenge of creating a mindset shift from Eurocentric
to an African paradigm. Citing Ntuli (1999), and Nkoane (2006) explained
Eurocentrism as: ‘anti-universalist, since it is not interested in seeking possi-
ble general laws of human evolution. [Yet] it does present itself as a universal-
ist, for it claims that imitation of the Western model by all peoples is the only
solution to the challenges of our time’ (p. 51).
The notion of ‘Africanisation’ at the beginning was not, however, a
well-articulated academic debate but rather started as a movement along
with the idea of Pan-Africanism among intellectuals of the black diaspora.
It however, gradually evolved and became the foundation for the decoloni-
sation debate on the continent (see Makgoba, 1997; Ramose, 1998). One of
the most prominent intellectuals of the black diaspora who led the founda-
tion of Pan-Africanism and its congress was the sociologist W.E.B Du Bois.
The congress also attracted black nationalists of African background, includ-
ing Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya (Mkandawire, 2005). It was on
this Pan-African Congress that for the first time the idea of Africanisation
vaguely surfaced at the end of the 1940s. As a political movement in the
diaspora, Africanisation was expressed as a conscious and deliberate socio-
political movement with an assertion of nothing more than the right to be
African and the demand for an economic and political inclusion stressing the
importance of affirming African cultures and identities (Mkandawire, 2005).
The early Pan-Africanists articulated ‘Africanisation’ as upholding of African
aspirations, descent, cultural heritage, and identity (Seepe, 2004). Moreover,
the notion of Africanisation was also loosely equated with the essence of
liberation, cultural ownership, and reclaiming African heritages, including
languages.
Defining and conceptualizing ‘Africanisation’ in higher education is
complex because the concept itself is all-encompassing; from embracing
African culture and identity to a fundamental ‘mindset shift from European
to African paradigms’; to borrow the expression of Makgoba (1997). This
was also reflected in the first ever structured conference organized by the
Association of African Universities (AAU) on the theme ‘Creating the
African University’ in 1973 in Accra, Ghana. The fundamental question that
shaped the conference discussion was ‘what does it mean to be an African
university?’ with responses mostly being related to the relevance of what is
taught (Yesufu, 1973). The principal argument was that African universi-
ties should embrace African identity by revisiting their colonial structures
in order to include African thoughts in their curricula, courses, and sylla-
bus. The conference was a call to take the notion of Africanisation beyond
pan-African rhetoric and frame it into a more actual policy debate towards
the emergence of an ‘African identity’ in higher education.
Ajayi (1973) in his paper ‘Towards an African Academic Community,’
for instance, argued that having a community is a precondition for iden-
tity construction and therefore strengthening an African academic com-
munity is paramount for any Africanisation endeavours. His argument
emphasized the importance of having an African academic identity paral-
lel to curriculum restructuring processes. In his discussion, however, Ajayi
fails to clearly address the question of what makes an academic community
African. Or how do academic communities embrace an African identity?
Nevertheless, the debates of the time on Africanisation resonated mostly with
the socio-cultural and political emancipation of African institutions from
European institutional culture.
Even though the call for socio-cultural and political emancipation domi-
nated the early discussions on Africanisation, they later embraced the notion
of ‘economic empowerment’ and ‘development’ in the late 1970s. This com-
bination was framed within the notion of ‘African Renaissance.’ The idea
of African Renaissance was also coined as a movement and aspiration to
overcome the postcolonial challenges of Africa and achieve cultural, scien-
tific, and economic restoration (Nkoane, 2006). The concept was first artic-
ulated by Cheikh Anta Diop in a series of essays, which are collected in his
book ‘Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in Culture and Development, 1946-
1960.’ Underlying the view of ‘renaissance,’ the Africanisation discourse has
embraced the notion as ‘the rebirth’ or ‘reawakening’ of African institutions,
a ‘reconstituting of that, which has decayed or disintegrated’ (Nkoane, 2006,
p. 59). Nkoane (2006) explained African Renaissance within the context
of higher education as ‘the re-invigorating of Africa’s intellectuals, and the
production of knowledge, which is relevant, effective, and empowering for
the people of the African continent, and more particularly, the immediate
African societies the universities serve’ (p. 49).
The early discussion on Africanisation, however, was not comprehensive
enough to bring out fundamental epistemological issues – methodology, the-
ories, or production, dissemination, application, promotion, protection, con-
trol and utilisation of knowledge – since the core area of the debate rather
existed as a movement focused on matters of representation and embracing
African identity within postcolonial institutions. Generally, actions such as
replacing foreign professors by locals, introducing African languages in the
education systems, deconstructing Euro-centric narratives of African cul-
tures, introducing Africa focused courses and programmes, reorienting edu-
cation systems, and curriculum towards the development needs of African
societies, etc. were seen as manifestations of Africanisation in the late 1960s
and 70s.
At the same time, Africanisation was not free from criticism since
some scholars (see Eicher, 1973; Fanon, 1963; Ki-Zerbo, 1973) considered
Africanisation as a normative Afro-centric notion of nationalism, which
could leave Africa in isolation from the rest of the world. For instance,
Ki-Zerbo (1973) argued that such a sense of extreme desire to disconnect
African universities from their European origin to the extent of replacing
European professors by Africans might lead to intellectual isolation. Fanon
(1963) also criticized the movement of Africanisation as ‘an Afro-centric
political agenda,’ which hardly could survive in the context of higher edu-
cation because of the universal and international characteristics of modern
universities.
In a recently published book, titled ‘Partnership in Higher Education’
Woldegiorgis and Scherer (2019); also indicate that as African universities
establish more international collaborations with other knowledge nodes
across the world, they tend to internationalize their curricula, instead of
localizing them. The authors argue that it is hardly possible to material-
ize the notion of Africanisation, in its narrow sense, as African universi-
ties engage more in partnership with their international peers. Moreover,
those Africans who were replacing European professors, in the 1970s and
80s had also been trained either in European universities or by European
professors in Africa. Thus, there was a considerable pessimism about the
prospect of Africanisation in the sense of making a fundamental ‘African
mindset shift from the European to an African paradigm’ as claimed by
Makgoba (1997).
However, Fanon (1963) criticized the Africanisation movement of the 1960s
based on the political context of the time. In the aftermath of independence,
Africanisation was hijacked by narrow nationalists and interpreted as merely
getting rid of all foreigners from colonial institutions, including those from
other African countries (Mbembe, 2016). After witnessing events like, what
we call now ‘xenophobic’ or ‘Afrophobic’ attacks against other Africans in
the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and the Congo, Fanon, Sartre & Farrington (1963)
was extremely critical of the way how the concept of ‘Africanisation’ had
been misinterpreted (Mbembe, 2016). He argued that Africanisation tends to
lead to inverted racism.
Despite the debates and criticism, however, Africanisation as a concept is
still used explaining ‘the process or vehicle for defining, interpreting, pro-
moting and transmitting African thought, philosophy, identity, and culture.
It encompasses an African mindset shift from the European to an African
paradigm’ (Makgoba, 1997, p.203).
Decolonisation
The debate on retaining African identity through Africanisation, however,
later framed more within the notion of ‘decolonisation’ attracting more
African scholars in the field of social science and humanities. African scholars
such as Cheikh Anta Diop, Jacob Ade Ajayi, Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o, Chinua
Achebe, Achille Mbembe, Ali Mazrui, Okot P’Bitek and Wole Soyinka
critically debated the process of decolonisation and postcolonial theories.
Prominent African novelist and postcolonial theorist Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o, for
example, published one of his postcolonial theories ‘Decolonising the Mind’ in
1981 implying that it is not only the institutions that need to be decolonised
but also the infrastructure of thinking. Wa Thiong’o brought the politics of
language or mother tongue at the centre of the decolonisation debate and
became a leading advocate for a critical rethinking of the legacies of coloni-
alisation and its accompanying epistemologies.
Wa Thiong’o (1981) did not often use ‘Africanisation’ rather decolonisa-
tion as a revolutionary approach to the search for what he calls ‘a liberating
perspective’ – a perspective that can allow us ‘to see ourselves clearly in rela-
tionship to other-selves in the universe’ (p. 87). He argues that the construc-
tion of knowledge is fundamentally embedded in language and culture, as
language is a fundamental infrastructure for epistemic access. Thus, for the
African mind to be genuinely decolonised, according to Wa Thiong’o, the
language of instruction should be the mother tongue. He argues that decol-
onising is about liberating the mind with a different set of knowledge para-
digms; belief systems, experience, and social capital – and language become
the instruments for all these (Fomunyam, 2019).
Taking the above discussions into account, one can clearly observe a con-
ceptual overlap and similarities between Africanisation and decolonisation as
both concepts aspire to have a fundamental transformation of colonial struc-
tures and systems to a perspective that accommodates and recognized African
heritages. The concept of decolonisation, however, goes beyond introducing
African values; rather it aims at a fundamental epistemological transforma-
tion towards an inclusive approach of what should count as knowledge. It is a
call for a deliberate change of Eurocentric epistemologies that have excluded
African perspectives. Decolonisation in the context of higher education fun-
damentally challenges the Eurocentric notion of knowledge production that
asserts Western values and ideals as closest to objective truth and claim to be
the standard of measuring rationality, truth, reality, and civilisation in other
parts of the world. Decolonisation of higher education is, therefore, an ideal
that goes against the notion of Eurocentrism; urges, however, to consider
alternative paradigms that accommodate African epistemologies.
One of the decolonisation arguments in the postcolonial universities is also
based on the assertion that colonial systems created a legacy that violently
silenced local knowledge systems and undermined their role in higher edu-
cation. For instance, Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (2012) in their essay
‘Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa’
discussed the violent nature of Eurocentric approaches disarming indigenous
epistemologies in Africa. Decolonisation consequently is a call against this
hegemonic project, which violently delegitimized and repressed indigenous
knowledge systems and intrinsically portrayed the colonial subjects as prim-
itive ‘others.’ Thus, it is both a political and an academic project against the
Eurocentric mindset of knowledge production, which asymmetrically oblit-
erates the trace of that ‘other’ in its subjectivity through undermining local
enlightenments. This is also what Spivak (1998), following the post-structural
critical theorist Michel Foucault, described as ‘epistemic violence.’ The con-
cept of epistemic violence has been part of the decolonisation debate to draw
attention to the problematic and constitutive entanglements between power
and production of knowledge. In this context, decolonisation is a demand
for a fundamental transformation of the politics of knowledge in higher edu-
cation institutions to bring epistemic justice recognizing and accepting the
epistemological paradigm of ‘others’ as one among knowledges that ought to
inform education curriculum in Africa.
Decolonisation is often induced as an event of interruption of a specific
process or characteristic considered ‘colonial’ and therefore, undesirable
(Spivak, 1998). Nevertheless, a quest for a fundamental transformation of
knowledge structures in Africa does not, however, mean that Africans should
stretch back to precolonial settings to reach epistemic closure. This kind of
understanding tends to wrongly imply that epistemic decolonisation begs for
closure holding that the solution for Africa’s existing challenges lies in going
back several decades and starting again. Such kinds of dualistic narratives
that romanticize the precolonial heritage and demonize the rest lead us into
a self-sustaining cycle of misunderstanding and resentment.
Instead, decolonisation is a quest for a genuine and active measure to break
Eurocentric epistemic canon – especially those that continue to alienate,
marginalize, and silence the African experience in the theorisation, pro-
duction, and distribution of knowledge. As discussed by Mbembe (2016),
one of the reasons, which still makes decolonisation a relevant debate, is the
abundance of Eurocentric canon within African higher education institu-
tions, which attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge pro-
duction. ‘It is a canon that disregards other epistemic traditions’ (Mbembe
2016, p. 32).
Thus, the debate on decolonisation is the ideal one to reorient, restructure,
revisit, African universities – epistemologies, spaces, systems, curriculum, lan-
guage, etc. to make them more inclusive and relevant for Africa. Decolonising
African universities and African societies are closely related since African uni-
versities have been part of the major chain of dependency that continues to tie
Africa to the Western world. Mazrui (2003), for instance, argued that ‘African
universities have been the highest transmitters of Western culture in African
societies. The high priests of Western civilisation in the continent are vir-
tually all products of those cultural seminaries called “universities”‘(Mazrui
2003, p.147). Mazrui stated that higher education in Africa is caught up in the
tension between its ambition to promote genuine decolonisation and its con-
tinuing role in the consolidation of Eurocentric epistemological dependency.
The decline of decolonisation debates in the 1980s

Emerging out of colonial experience in the 1960s and 70s, many African
intellectuals needed to deal with and debate about issues of Africanisation
and decolonisation within African institutions. There were great hopes and
aspirations to transform colonial institutions and make them reflective of
African realities. There had also been relatively high political commitment
among African governments and development partners to revitalize the
higher education sector in the continent as an engine of development for the
renaissance of Africa immediately after independence. These early aspirations
and initiatives were, however, shattered during the 1980s economic crisis,
which deteriorated and hit the African higher education sector hard. Most
economies of Africa states were on the verge of collapse, and in some cases,
it took them 20 years to recover (Bennell, 2017).
The economic crisis affected not only institutions but also the daily lives
of African academics. For instance, the high rate of inflation of the time
made real values of wages meagre, and in most African universities, they
fell by 30 per cent on average between 1980 and 1986 (Ogom, 2007). At
the end of the 1980s, a lecturer’s salary in Uganda, for instance, was just
USD 19 a month; barely enough to buy a week’s worth of food. According
to Ogom (2007), public university salaries in Nigeria in 1987 were only
10 per cent of their 1978 real value. This was also the period where several
African intellectuals left the continent, and brain drain became a significant
concern. According to Teferra and Altbach (2004), Africa lost a third of its
professionals to the developed countries in the 1980s; the same study, for
instance, indicated that Sudan lost 20 per cent of its university teaching
staff in the early 1980s. Mazrui (2003) discussed the academic crisis of the
1980s as ‘the decline of African intellectualism’ in his paper ‘Who Killed
Intellectualism in the Post-Colonial Era?.’ He argues that the 1960s and
70s period in Africa had been the peak of African intellectualism whereby
debates on Pan-Africanism, Africanisation, and decolonisation flourished
but then declined at the end of the 80s.
The combination of socio-economic and political challenges of the time
contributed to the higher education crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s, which
was manifested through deteriorating infrastructure, inadequate finance, and
funding, poor educational facilities, problems of quality and relevance, a crit-
ical shortage of faculty, and colossal brain drain. The aggregate effect of all
these challenges made the African higher education sector assume a marginal
position in the global market for knowledge production and dissemination
since then. The economic crisis also made African governments weak and
incapable of meeting the promises of independence, which later made them
more dependent on international financial institutions and donors. This is
also the time where structural adjustment programmes were imposed by the
International Monetary Fund and implemented by many African governments
(Helleiner, 1983). Thus, the 1980s crisis somehow discouraged the notion of
Africanisation of higher education and made most African governments look
for international support and integration into the global knowledge system.
The economic recovery in the post-1990s, however, changed the higher
education landscape of Africa and brought it to the forefront of policy dis-
courses among African governments and scholars. This led to a discussion of
repositioning and realignment of the sector once again as a significant player
in African societies. The higher education sector has also expanded not only
in terms of size and number of institutions but also in terms of having diversi-
fied programs. This period marked the introduction and expansion of not only
private higher education institutions but also Information Communication
Technology in the higher education sector which facilitated cross-border,
distance, and online education in the region. These developments have facil-
itated the movement of capital and labour across borders, which further pro-
moted international student mobility and a shift in focus into the discourses
of ‘internationalization’ in higher education. Internationalization is ‘the pro-
cess of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into
the purpose, functions, or delivery of higher education’ (Knight, 2008, p.2).
Thus, the decolonisation discourse gradually declined in most African
countries in the post 1990s, as internationalization started to dominate the
higher education policy discourses. Nevertheless, it resurfaced and emerged
as a new debate in post-apartheid South Africa in the new millennium.
Conclusion
The chapter discussed the foundations of decolonisation debates in higher
education within their historical context of origin in Africa. Tracing back
to precolonial learning spaces, it argued that Africa had distinct learning and
epistemological traditions embedded in Indigenous cultures yet disrupted by
colonial models. Thus, decolonisation is a call for embracing and includ-
ing African perspectives in the current higher education systems of Africa.
The chapter argues that the historical trajectory of the decolonisation debates
in higher education goes back to the early Pan-African movement among
African intellectuals in the diaspora. Initially, the discussion was framed as
Africanisation and socio-cultural and economic emancipation from colonial
institutions. The debate gradually evolved and consolidated as a quest for
epistemological transformation of knowledge systems. African universities
were urged to revisit their curriculum to create spaces and resources for dia-
logue among all epistemological traditions and knowledge systems concern-
ing what was being taught and how it framed the world. The fundamental
objective of decolonisation in higher education is to consider multiple per-
spectives and make space for a pluralistic approach and thereby challenge the
widespread assumption that the most valuable knowledge and the most valu-
able ways of teaching and learning come from a single Eurocentric tradition.
Decolonisation calls for the reinvigoration of Africa’s higher education, and
production of knowledges, which are relevant for the people of the African
continent, as well as for the societies these universities serve.
Notes
1. ‘Madrasa, is an Islamic college, literally a “place of instruction,” especially instruc-
tion in religious law. In medieval usage, the term referred to an institution provid-
ing intermediate and advanced instruction in Islamic law and related subjects. This
contrasted with elementary schools, which provided basic Quran instruction, and
non-religious institutions, which provided instruction in such subjects as medicine.
In modern usage, the term usually applies to schools offering Islamic religious
instruction at any level. The madrasa can be considered as a building, as a legal
entity, and as a n educational institution.’ Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East
and North Africa Spellberg, Denise A.
2. Consisting of the University of Makerere in Uganda, the University of Nairobi in
Kenya, and the University of Dares Salaam in Tanzania.
3. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare Translated into Kiswahili by Julius Kam-
barage Nyerere London and Nirobi, Oxford University Press, 1963. p. 96
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2 An integrated approach towards
decolonising higher education
A perspective from anthropology
Vanessa Wijngaarden and Grace Ese-Osa Idahosa
Introduction
If science1 is to be a truly global knowledge system, then why is African
knowledge considered specifically African but European knowledge often
automatically deemed universal?2 In the modernist view of the West as a
‘culture of no culture’ (Franklin, 1995, p. 179), Western contexts are often
approached as more neutral, forgetting that the West is home to the minority
of the world’s population, and many of its conditions are specific, temporal,
and diverge from other areas. This also happens in scientific knowledge pro-
duction. Even though, here, the need for conscientiousness and responsibility
is magnified; first, because science is such a powerful knowledge system and
second, because it hopes to produce a global kind of knowledge created by
and of service to all of humankind. Academic debates are defined by a spe-
cific set of rules and conventions, and guided by preferences for and exclusion
of certain languages, knowledges, and media; while day to day academic
practices take place within unequal processes of socialisation and subordi-
nation. The unequal representation and positioning of Western knowledge
systems as universal and dominant, to the detriment of other knowledge sys-
tems, prevents science from being a truly global knowledge system.
In critiquing this dominance, scholars have underlined the significance of
engaging in a radical process of redefining educational standards, to ensure
that teaching and learning in the Global South and North occurs within
appropriate contextual relevance and takes into account a broad spectrum
of perspectives, ideologies, and knowledges (Makgoba & Seepe, 2004;
Mamdani, 1998; Mbembe, 2016; Ndlovu Gatsheni, 2016). How epistemic
diversity can be achieved in practice, has been less clear. In this chapter, we
provide some practical pathways towards the achievement of a cross-cultural
dialogue within academic debates and knowledge production contributing to
insights into blind spots as well as to the creation of spaces for disruption and
possibilities for transformation. We will focus less on the associated organi-
sational aspects of decolonisation of higher education, for example, through
de-privatisation and rehabilitation of the public space and democratisation
of access, as argued for by scholars like Mbembe (2015). Instead, we focus
A perspective from anthropology 37
on the personal and internal aspects involved in decolonising higher educa-
tion, exploring an openness towards multiple ontologies, epistemologies, and
methodologies and subjecting our everyday experiences, assumptions, and
motivations to critique. We believe our ideas will contribute to Mbembe’s
and others’ visions of creating classrooms without walls, in which various
publics will come together using new forms of assembly to redistribute dif-
ferent kinds of knowledges.
In our discussion, we approach knowledge as an intersubjective achieve-
ment 3 and use the term ‘knowledge system’ to indicate that knowledge is
developed, shared, interpreted, and understood within its ontological and
epistemological context (a corpus of substantive assertions about the world),
which facilitates concepts, narratives, and symbols (media) to acquire mean-
ing and be communicated (within a series of social relations) (Barth, 2002).
We acknowledge that knowledge systems are not closed or static, but essen-
tially dynamic networks of relations with semi-permeable boundaries. We
use the term ‘Indigenous’ to represent local and often marginalized knowl-
edge systems, ways of knowing and being, and the term ‘Western’ to refer
to historically Eurocentric knowledges, ways of knowing and being, which
have been dominant and have been employed to serve colonial and imperi-
alistic objectives. We understand that both these terms have their difficulties.
We take into account that the term Indigenous is often used in an exoti-
cizing and romanticizing way and associated with the traditional, cultural,
non-modern ‘other’ (Kuper, 2003) and approach it ‘not as a stable point of
reference or remnant of the past, but a subject position that is actively claimed
and enacted in the present’ (Schramm, 2016, p.133). From our point of view,
modernity is cultural, too. We take into account that multiple modernities
exist (Eisenstadt, 2000; Wijngaarden, 2018), and that we are all Indigenous to
the localities and spaces, which form the centre of reference and belonging in
our lives. We acknowledge that the apparent dichotomy between ‘the West
and the rest’ (Hall, 1996) is, in fact, a faulty product of modernist ideology
(Latour, 1993). Therefore, we approach the Indigenous and Western not as
binary opposed, but as intertwined notions that bring each other into being,
through an assemblage of inter-reliant contrasts and continuities.
We are deeply aware that in the decolonisation debate the question of
ideas and tools developed by whom is critical. This chapter is the result of
exchanges between two authors who acknowledge that their insights are
stimulated as well as limited by their ongoing socialisations in and affiliations
with multiple European and African contexts, and who draw upon their
interdisciplinary backgrounds in social and cultural anthropology, political
studies, social theory, and communication studies.
Using an integrated approach, we start from an anthropological perspec-
tive that places the decolonisation of academia within the unresolved tension
between universalism and cultural relativism, i.e., the search for common
ground in terms of universal commonalities and the problem of ethnocen-
trism (the blindness to the specifics of our viewpoints and standards, which
38 Vanessa Wijngaarden and Grace Ese-Osa Idahosa
seem natural or universal to us). For science to be a global knowledge sys-
tem, a minimum of common ground needs to be present, but the interests
of those with a privileged position or voice easily come to dominate and
continue their tendency to be oppressive. The approach proposed here is
aimed at making scientific thoughts and processes less vulnerable to ideo-
logical hijacking, which takes place when a scientific theory is understood
as universal and timeless and when political interests are obscured under the
guise of objectivity. The minimalistic scientific basis, we outline in this chap-
ter is dedicated to making science an open conversation (accommodating for
different knowledge systems, epistemologies, and ontologies to exist side by
side), which is rooted in reflexivity (a dedicated critical process to control
quality as well as politics of knowledge production4). We aspire to contribute
to a scientific knowledge system that is increasingly global by expanding the
recognition that it constitutes a perpetual dynamic process of reflexive and
multivocal potential.
We start by discussing the entanglements of the concepts of knowledge and
colonisation, using historic colonial developments as a backdrop to introduce
some of the responses present in the decolonisation debate. Subsequently,
we establish why an anthropological perspective can further the process of
decolonisation beyond these responses and outline radical multivocality and
adamant reflexivity as two inter-related strategies. Finally, we will conclude
how these strategies fulfil important prerequisites in the decolonisation pro-
cess called for in the literature.
Entanglements of colonisation and knowledge

Throughout history, a variety of knowledge systems have been present, which
have influenced each other (Diamond, 1998; Hoppers, 2001; Wolf, 1990).
Many of the theories that form the basis of current curricula worldwide are
drawn from a multicultural conglomeration of knowledges, which have roots
in Hebrew and Old Greek myths (forming the tacit groundwork to the cri-
teria used in the philosophy of science to measure truth and the development
of logic), Chinese technologies (inventions of compass, gunpowder, paper,
and printing press technique), and Arab disciplines (mathematics, geography,
astronomy, medicine) (Diamond, 1998; Scarborough, 1994).
Through the periods of colonisation and Enlightenment, the interplay
between Western power and knowledge reached a hegemonic level, fuelling
the development of the modern scientific knowledge system. Even though
this system has been extensive and powerful, it is far from absolute or com-
plete, and one of its greatest weaknesses is that it remains strongly biased by
its development in Western societies. Scholars from Africa and other beyond
have for example criticized the underlying Newtonian Cartesian epistemol-
ogies for favouring specialisation above holism, structures above processes,
materialism above spirituality, individualism above communalism, and
answering ‘how’ questions but remaining silent on ‘why’ questions (Goduka,
1999; Millar et al., 2006). Consequently, these epistemologies ‘present a view
of reason that excludes and marginalizes other ways of knowing’ (Goduka,
1999, p. 26; Mbembe, 2015). These scholars argue that modern scientific
knowledge is disembodied and disembedded, as there is a supposed divi-
sion between mind and world, which results in a splitting of the observer
and the observed, objectifying ‘the other’ (Badat 2017; Visvanathan, 2002).
The knowing subject is supposedly able to know the world without being
part of that world, and produce knowledge that is presented as universal and
independent of context, while somehow remaining rational and outside of it
(Mbembe, 2015).
Interestingly, the philosophy of science prescribes that academics should
always keep an open mind regarding their conclusions, even if these conclu-
sions might appear absolutely correct and final for the time being (Popper,
2002; Scarborough, 1994), because theories are constructed by human beings
within contexts and cannot be value free. As a result, scientific knowledge
production is not static but dynamic, including shifts of paradigm5 (Kuhn,
1962; Popper, 2002, 1963; Scarborough, 1994). Nevertheless, in daily appli-
cations, scientific knowledge is often ‘naturalized’ and treated as a timeless,
universal, and objective ‘truth.’ When turned into an eternal essence beyond
question, it is disguised that a certain explanation was chosen from a variety
of options available. The objective realism modern science envisions ‘pretends
to be determined by things in and of themselves [while other knowledge] is a
cultural ontology, comprehending nature in terms set by human relationships
and activities’ (Sahlins, 1995, p. 158). In the process, the Western cultural bias
underlying most scientific theories is ignored.
Moreover, the naturalisation and essentialisation of scientific theories
as objective, universal principles, fuels an ideological use of the scientific
knowledge system, which is referred to as ‘scientism.’ In this constellation,
theories are no longer viewed as tools to help order and explain the world
but are treated as unfalsifiable and immutable. Instead of merely being an
attempt to describe how the world works, they are used to prescribe how the
world should work and/or how the world should be perceived or understood.
These normative components are politically charged, because they not only
contain a material or realistic element, but also an idealistic element, and thus
cannot be separated from the question of interests. Specific perspectives and
frames of thought, although in the interests of some, are now claimed to be
in the interest of all. In this political programme, it is proposed that science
demythologizes religious beliefs and superstition, replacing them with facts
and reason. As a result of the overall Eurocentric basis and character of these
scientific theories, scientism effectively intertwines with the process of colo-
nialism, in which Europeans portrayed themselves as the holders of specific
forms of thought (rational and logical), through which they could generate
universally valid knowledge (Wiener, 2013). Those who follow the logic of
Eurocentric science were − and often still are − deemed superior to those
who follow other systems of thought, which are denigrated as not reasonable
or not practical, and thus approached as irrational or ignorant of the immuta-
ble laws of nature (Kisiang’ani, 2004).
Decolonisation beyond dualisms

Against this backdrop, decolonisation debates have developed; includ-
ing the prominent call to re-centre Indigenous knowledge. Scholars from
this perspective argue for a recognition, centralisation, and prioritisation
of Indigenous methodologies, ways of knowing, and being in the processes
of knowledge production, reproduction, and legitimation (Ajayi, Goma, &
Johnson, 1996; Mamdani, 1998; Mbembe, 2016; Nakata et al., 2012), advocat-
ing an approach to knowledge production that is tailored to the local cultural
context. In Africa, this means fitting the university, its practices, process,
and modes of knowledge production and legitimation within the African
identity and context (Le Grange, 2014; Makgoba & Seepe, 2004; Mamdani,
1998). This implies decolonisation of dominant Eurocentric knowledges.
This is a difficult task because structures and knowledge practices of many
universities in the Global South are based on Eurocentric values and ideol-
ogies. Decolonisation would thus involve a rethinking of the current model
according to which universities are organised; a reconstruction of existing
disciplines; and a shift to transdisciplinary knowledge (Le Grange, 2014).
Scholars like Le Grange (2014), Makogba and Seepe (2004) have argued that
while the centralisation of the African identity takes primacy, it should not be
the sole focus of the Africanisation – and we would add – the decolonisation
process. This implies addressing the possibilities of decolonising against the
backdrop of colonial (and in some regions, apartheid) legacies.
These responses imply a contestation and dualism between Indigenous and
Western knowledges. This is especially problematic as the arguments often
exist in conjunction with a hierarchical understanding that positions one way
of knowing as ontologically prior, leading to arguments that one should be
subsumed within or incorporated into the other (Le Grange, 2014; Nakata
et al., 2012). Thus, the strategy towards reclaiming, reversing, and rewriting
Indigenous identities and knowledges runs the risk of inadvertently repro-
ducing colonial binaries and replacing one knowledge, ideology, identity,
body or text with another (Horsthemke, 2017; Le Grange, 2014; Nakata et al.,
2012). It fails to take into account the complexity and entanglements of cul-
tures and identities (Horsthemke, 2017; Nakata et al., 2012), and the unequal
geopolitics of knowledge (re)production and legitimation processes.
In our move away from a simplistic, reductive, and dualistic approach towards
and integrated treatment, we agree that the focus on the local is imperative, but
also envision African universities as contributors to global knowledge (Makgoba &
Seepe, 2004). We thus understand decolonisation not as a mere reversal or turning
back the clock (Le Grange, 2014), but as an incentive to create a space that enables
a co-creative dialogue between knowledge produced in different geographical,
cultural, and social environments. We present strategies for the construction of
an academic space in which a multitude of knowledge systems − including their
epistemologies, theories, methodologies, as well as the history and the politics of
their (re)production, centralisation, and legitimation − can be critically examined
(Nakata et al., 2012).
The challenges and prospects of

anthropological approaches
If the (re)production and legitimation of knowledge cannot take place
transcendent of social, cultural, and political influences, how can science be
expected to produce global knowledge, relevant to, and congruent with the
divergent multitude of local knowledges and experiences? We found resources
in anthropology. This is the discipline that aims to analyse (groups within)
societies from an insider perspective, using participant observation to expand
the knowledge of human diversity, as well as to search for issues that are
fundamentally human (Eriksen, 2001). An anthropologist tries to approach
knowledges from within their respective knowledge systems ‘via direct and
repeated exposure to the linguistic, social, bodily, motivational, and affective
contexts in which concepts and categories appear’ (Cohen, 2010, p.201).
Through engaged and immersive participation anthropologists aim to
expand and practice their ability to deal with multiple, diverse kinds of
knowledge (systems). In turn, these exposures fuel the critical examination
of their own (sub)culture by defamiliarizing, deconstructing, and denatu-
ralizing seemingly self-evident ‘truths’ and taken for granted institutions,
for example, by questioning how knowledge is defined (Eriksen, 2001), as
well as by engaging in cultural critique. Thus, anthropologists constantly
ask themselves reflexive questions to prevent the use of a universalizing lan-
guage when they actually view the world from a particular social, ‘racial,’
ethnic, gendered, and sexual location (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997). From the
1970s on, the ‘anthropology of knowledge’ tradition has greatly contributed
to approaches of ‘self ’ and ‘other,’ which take into account that all knowl-
edge is deeply socio cultural; that necessarily multiple definitions of knowl-
edge co-exist (including rational, abstract and analytic as well as embodied,
experiential, and intuitive forms of knowing); and that the ‘truth’ which is
propagated most effectively, is deeply influenced by power constellations in
society and academia (Barth, 2002; Cohen, 2010; Crick, 1982).
Anthropology’s dedication to criticise and relativize its own knowledge
(tradition), has grown out of the discipline’s problematic onset as the sci-
ence of analysing and comparing cultures of the supposedly primitive, irra-
tional, non-modern ‘other,’ treating the own culture as neutral, scientific,
and the legitimate purveyor of true knowledge, thus contributing to imperi-
alist incentives and the production of faulty dichotomies (Hall, 1996; Latour,
1993; Lutkehaus & Cool, 1999). Anthropologists played a role in construct-
ing myths about Indigenous populations, fetishizing Indigenous peoples, and
cultures, positioning them as exotic and analysing their societies through ‘the
imposition of Western bourgeois categories’ (Rigby, 1996, p.81) that were
irrelevant to these populations. Like other social sciences (Connell, 2007),
anthropology developed theories of social evolution and racial hierarchy,
and played a dark role in the racism of the late 19th and early 20th century
(Ellingson, 2001; Harrison, 1995, 1998; Mullings, 2005), with the incentive
to study other people’s point of view originally being conditioned by colonial
needs (Pels, 2018).
Anthropologists still question the concept of representation (Lutkehaus &
Cool, 1999) and criticize themselves for being ethnocentric and dominated
by Western concepts (Amory, 1997; Burns, 1999; Karp & Kendall, 1982;
Thomas 2018); for not providing enough opportunity for Indigenous persons
to express themselves (Rigby, 1996); and for insufficiently subverting misrep-
resentations of Indigenous communities (Crick, 1985; Rigby, 1996). Francis
Nyamnjoh, who holds the chair of Social Anthropology at the University
of Cape Town, has argued that anthropology on Africa still exhibits the
structural and geographical, ‘monological, non-reflexive, and non-inclusive’
characteristics of its white colonial past (Nyamnjoh, 2012, p.68; Osha, 2013).
It is anthropology’s ‘sustained critique of its practices [which] has kept it “in
crisis” since at least midcentury’ (Franklin, 1995, p.179), and has heightened
anthropologists’ awareness of the relativity of their own knowledge. This
intense process of self-reflection has been aided by a variety of neighbouring
disciplines, including postmodern, postcolonial, and feminist critiques, but
also non-academic experts and these processes are far from complete.
Anthropology’s non-hierarchical approach (rooted in the attempt to do
justice to other people’s ideas without delegitimising them in the process)
makes it a discipline exceptionally well suited to, on the one hand, accept
and accommodate alternative knowledge systems – i.e., Indigenous perspec-
tives and methodologies that have been considered un scientific, for example,
concerning spirits, magic, and alternative ontologies (e.g., Stoller & Olkes,
1989); and on the other hand, engage in cross-cultural dialogue – i.e., being
practiced in facilitating for translation between different knowledge systems
and dealing with multiple epistemologies and ontologies (Pickering, 2017).
Moreover, anthropology is a discipline that has the critical and reflexive tools
to understand science as a form of culture, and thus question and contextual-
ize the scientific knowledge constructed, as is done in critical science studies
(Franklin, 1995). This allows it to approach its own knowledge in the same
(critical) way as other systems of knowledge production, and confront the
power with which knowledge is used (Campregher, 2010; Weiler, 2011). In
the remainder of this chapter, we will formulate two inter-related strategies
towards decolonisation that anthropology may offer.
Radical multivocality
Many scholars have pointed out that if the scientific knowledge system is
to be truly global, the points of view it incorporates have to be multiplied
(Connell, 2007, 2014; Moichela, 2017). We take this idea a step further and
propose a radical multivocality, which rejects approaches that advocate for the
inclusion of multiple voices by incorporating them. Incorporation necessarily
implies the subjugation of one knowledge system into another, meaning that
one frame of reference validates or invalidates another. Instead, we propose a
model where all voices are approached as equally valid, so that the variety of
voices can exist as a multiplicity, with each voice remaining unrestricted and
unsubdued, representing different worldviews and ways of knowing.
The Nigerian critic Chinweizu (1987) pointed out that although it is
legitimate to compare Greek and African myths, Greek mythology should
not be the frame of reference for the interpretation of African literacy.
His argument illustrates the fact that in a lot of current scientific work,
Western social constructs of truth continue to be taken for granted, in
the process centralizing Western experiences and interests (Chilisa, 2012;
Connell, 2007, 2014; Smith 2012).6 When alternative points of view have
been taken into account, this is often only in the form of data which has
to be analysed, and not as ideas which are part of the dialogue of theory
construction (creatively addressed, e.g., by Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012).
Moreover, ‘even when discrete pieces of Indigenous knowledge are seen as
valuable by Western scientists, the ways of knowing and cosmological ori-
entation from which the knowledge originates is often not acknowledged’
(Harmin, Barrett & Hoessler, 2017). Thus, the scientific narrative has not
only been a vehicle of knowledge production and sense making, but also
obscures, deletes and masks insights by leaving them untold (Bruner, 2005;
Selwyn, 1996). This leads to an ‘erasure of the experience of the major-
ity of humankind from the foundations of social thought’ (Connell, 2007,
p. 46). Catherine Odora Hoppers asserts that using Western scientific knowl-
edge to inform education is a form of cultural imperialism that produces a
cognitive crisis, with ‘millions of … people … bearing the uncomfortable
burden of speaking and living in unfamiliar cultural idioms within all areas
of everyday life’ (2015, pp. 98–99). This does not only result in insecurity
and self-doubt but is relevant for community livelihoods, human rights, and
democratic citizenship.
Because scientific knowledge – like any other knowledge system – rests on
a body of tacit, taken for granted assumptions (Scarborough, 1994), ensuring
that a greater variety of people are involved in the scientific dialogue, will
broaden the relevance and validity of the knowledge produced. Moreover, the
engagement with discourses, viewpoints, and understandings of others is the
most efficient mechanism towards becoming aware of unsound, incoherent,
absent, or unproductive aspects in our own ways of thinking (Keet, 2014).
This is because aspects which group members deem to be self-explanatory,
are more easily visible to an outsider, who uses a different reference system
(Idahosa, 2020; Idahosa & Vincent, 2019; Schütz, 1964). Hence, contrasting
views are of great value for (self-critical) analysis and deconstruction of con-
cepts, theories, and understandings.
Anthropologists have often contributed to accessing these contrast-
ing views, breaking down ideas of what was once thought to be factual or
objective (Sahlins, 1995) or universal (Surrallés, 2016; Wierzbicka, 2008).
An impactful instance is how ethnographic engagements with Papua New
Guinean and Amazonian peoples (Descola, 2013; Strathern, 1980; Viveiros
de Castro, 2004, 2012) disrupted Western frames of thought and academic
premises of a single objective nature upon which culturally divergent mean-
ings are imposed. This had far reaching implications for how academics
understand the relations between themselves, other organisms and their life
worlds, causing some to speak of an ontological turn (Candea & Alcayna
Stevens, 2012; Paleček & Risjord, 2012; Pickering, 2017).
The radicality of the multivocality that we propose here, first lies in the
fact that alternative knowledges are not simply included in the existing sys-
tem. While incorporation leads to a certain diversification, in the process of
framing and subduing one type of knowledge by placing it in the context of
another knowledge system, it also strengthens the dominant frame of refer-
ence without questioning its basis. We propose that the variety of voices nei-
ther needs to be incorporated into a single, comprehensive, or unified whole
nor subjected to a certain monopoly of understanding.
The epistemological and ontological turns in anthropology and science
and technology studies have shown that although a multiplicity of episte-
mologies and ontologies may involve problems of translation, it also inspires
a focus on comparative transitions (Pickering, 2017) and relational aspects
(Barad, 2006; Latour, 1993). Actor Network Theory (Campregher, 2010;
Latour, 2005) fields of new materialism (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2011),
more than human and multi-species approaches (Kirsey & Helmreich, 2010)
are successfully moving beyond Cartesian dichotomies, and in the process
centralize multiplicity and relations, for example, including non-human
agencies in ways that resemble cosmologies anthropologists have accessed
(e.g. High, 2010; Kohn, 2013). This exemplifies how knowledges of people
who live and think according to these cosmologies are/can be in conversa-
tion with Western knowledge systems and of (continued) value to theoretical
developments. The developing awareness that new insights can be generated
by focusing on the interface between multiple knowledge systems further
underlines this (Durie, 2005).
Second, the radicality of the multivocality we advocate, requires a multi-
plicity of ways of coming to know, and thus a radical divergence of research
methodologies. We already pointed to the usefulness of the method of par-
ticipant observation, which was made famous in anthropology through the
early reflexive writings of Malinowski (1922), and aims at grasping the point
of view and lifeworld of the people one does research with, by sharing aspects
of life with them (Davies, 1999). Its execution has increasingly shifted focus
from documenting information about others, towards cooperatively studying
with and learning from others, and this foundation lies at the basis of a range
of fieldwork methods, which all require ‘being there,’ and allowing oneself to
become immersed and changed, through engagement in interactions, partic-
ipation in activities, and by subjecting oneself to certain socialisation, which
we deem useful starting points in the attempt to access or understand alter-
native world views. At the same time, a critically focused engagement is also
required, which includes looking beyond our self-interests and its attending
blind spots, disrupting our comfort, acknowledging our subjugated/dominant
positions, recognising current relations of domination as strange, and imag-
ining a different order of things7 (Idahosa, 2020; Idahosa & Vincent, 2019).
Promising embodied and practice based research strategies continue to
be developed in anthropology and beyond, and include phenomenological
approaches and (multi)sensory research designs which question dominant
hierarchies; multi-disciplinary applications of participatory (action) research;
contemplative methods; and the use of internal boundary practices such
as ‘embodied practitioner knowledge’ by psychologists and neuroscientists
(Wiles, 2019; Zajonc, 2003). Central to all these approaches is that the use
of the researcher’s ‘self ’ as a research instrument, facilitates the creation of
translations between epistemologically, and perhaps even ontologically, dis-
tinct domains.
Working with an alternative or multiple research paradigms certainly leads
to challenges but it also makes it possible to hear the voices of people who
would otherwise not be heard (Datta et al., 2015). Practicing novel methods
can engage us in new perspectives, and thus make it possible to approach
ways of knowing that would otherwise remain inaccessible; for example,
because they are relational, intuitive, spiritual, embodied, bound to place,
expressed in local languages, ritualistic or existent only in ‘we’ form, in a way
that is foreign to the researcher.
Helpful in this regard is Chilisa’s (2012) indigenous research paradigm,
which includes participatory, liberatory, and transformative research
approaches that reflect a variety of Indigenous ways of knowing; including
talk circles, songs, cultural practices, and techniques based on philosophic
sagacity and ethnophilosophy, among others. Chilisa’s Indigenous research
paradigm assumes ‘socially constructed multiple realities, shaped by the set
of multiple connections that human beings have with the environment, the
cosmos, the living, and the non-living’ (Chilisa, 2012, p. 40). Its openness
to multiplicity and focus on relational aspects make that it not only holds
great potential to contribute towards the development of a radical multivo-
cality, but the ongoing dialogue and co-creative efforts with non-academ-
ics are imperative to developing novel tools, spaces and processes to share
knowledge.
It is important to add here that a radical multivocal approach does not only
affect methods of research design, data gathering, and analysis, but also forms
of communicating findings. This includes reporting not only through various,
innovative, and creative forms of text (Campregher, 2010), but expanding
new and existing audiovisual (Harper, 2009) and performative forms; the use
of installations and other creative outputs; as well as the development of hybrid
forms combining these. Experiments in this direction have been ongoing in
the laboratories of large anthropological conferences, which in recent years
have included crafts, drama, embodied experiences, dance, and experimental
use of media (European Association of Social Anthropologists, 2018).
The vision of a symmetrical anthropology (Latour, 1993) provides a pos-
sible model for how a multiplicity of knowledge systems can exist side by
side and interact within the academic space. In a symmetrical anthropol-
ogy, knowledges are compared without setting aside one’s own culture
and its understandings as if these are neutral or have more access to ‘truth’
(Campregher, 2010). The result is that analytic efforts are not focused on
explaining and accounting for the falsehoods of other thought systems (in the
process shielding the weaknesses of the own reference system), but aimed at
finding and understanding the values of other perspectives on the world. This
does not imply an absolute relativistic approach that deems all hierarchies
equal but instead is based on a relativist relativism or ‘relationism’ (Latour,
1993), which is rooted in fostering a reflexive awareness of the relative yard-
stick one uses to achieve commensurability. This means it will always be
taken into account in which context and from which perspective, certain
concepts will be compared (Kirby, 2011).
Following symmetrical anthropology, the key to the radical multivocality
we propose here is a relativist form of relativism in which ‘the self ’ ceases to
be an exception and is regarded from a relativist standpoint, too. For academ-
ics, this means that they turn a critical eye onto themselves (through adamant
reflexivity outlined below). It challenges the prevalent assumption of ‘intellec-
tual superiority’, which is the idea that ‘our ways of knowing are superior to
those of fellow academics or those we study’ (Nyamnjoh, 2013, p.136). Radical
multivocality enhances the principle that ‘science is a collective pursuit, and
… no one has a monopoly on insights and the truth’ (Nyamnjoh, 2012, p.65).
The approach enables cultural relativism and universalism to come together8
and would lead to the end of absolute binary oppositions while doing justice to
the fluid, interactive, and dynamic aspects of cultural production (Sismondo,
2004). It acknowledges that meaning is created intersubjectively, making it
possible to understand people’s behaviours as open and ongoing processes that
can incorporate patterns as well as novelties. Distinctions do not exist in a
fixed or absolute way and can only be made contextually.
The consequences in academic teaching would be that the curriculum
would no longer be focused on the binary positioning of Indigenous and
Western theories while one is deemed central, but shift towards under-
standing a multitude of ideas and thinkers in their historical, social, and
geographical contexts, fostering awareness of the existence of multiple
epistemologies and ontologies. This co-constitutiveness will be cognisant
of the asymmetrical power relations between different theories as a result
of the reflexivity involved. Furthermore, students will necessarily engage
with more non-academic and non-textual sources and processes of obtaining
knowledge, which are partly locally based.
Exemplary are ongoing initiatives to cooperate with Indigenous popu-
lations in Canada, such as between the Universities of Saskatchewan and
Regina, and the Beady’s Okemasis First Nation. Researchers did not only take
into account Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and community based
ethics and cultural protocols, for example, by asking for spiritual support and
engaging in sweat lodge ceremony with the community members, but also
analysed the data in collaboration with the community, and published the
results with the Community Elders Research Advisory Group as a co-author,
acknowledging more than human beings as critical to the insight obtained
(McGinnis et al., 2019). Engagement with local approaches to knowledge
opens spaces for new voices to be part of the conversations and knowledge
production processes, and for novel insights to be made operant; not only
about the topic, but also in discussions concerning empirical contexts, ethical
issues, academic practices, and interests. Similar initiatives could illuminate
the entanglements of knowledge, colonialism, land, power and well-being,
which are reflected in localities throughout Africa (Wijngaarden, 2016).
The problem of incommensurability may be heightened when working
with different knowledge systems, and due to their experiences, Indigenous
people have a lot of insight to offer in this regard. Elder Albert Marshall
from the Eskasoni Mi’kmaq First Nation offers us the concept of two-
eyed seeing, which includes recognizing, assessing, and using each type of
knowledge on its own terms, as well as weaving them together in a back
and forth movement, without assimilating one with another (Barrett, 2013).
Torres Strait Islander Nakata (2002) theorizes the ‘cultural interface’ as the
place where life and the re-making of knowing take place as ‘knowledge
systems … interact, develop, change and transform’ (p. 286). These contri-
butions indicate that when dominant Western knowledge systems are not
used as a necessary overarching model to legitimize or frame other knowl-
edges, this results in an increased epistemological openness. Moreover, as
other (e.g., transrational, embodied, and storied) ways of knowing come
to be acknowledged, this leads to an increased awareness of intersections
and overlaps between the variety of Western and Indigenous knowledges
(Barrett, 2013).
Ultimately, scientific knowledge production has been a multivocal practice
all along, but its multivocality has been limited and was often made invisible.
Critical reflexive approaches reveal that incommensurability has always been
present, even within modern scientific knowledge systems. This is particu-
larly evident in the social sciences, where one could never (perfectly) measure
one theory or perspective relative to another 9. Increasing the awareness that
inconsistencies and incommensurability are present throughout, may disrupt
and dismantle the still often present notion of science as a unified whole
(Sismondo, 2004) and the assumption that all academics share or should share
a certain epistemological or ontological approach. A commitment to radical
multivocality will divide the hegemonic system, questioning, and destabiliz-
ing the imaginary idea of a singular academic knowledge system, towards an
understanding that focuses on the dynamic, dialectic, and rhizomatic aspects,
fragmenting and diverting power from the centre.
Adamant reflexivity
How can we rely on scientific knowledge if it is neither universal, objective
nor timeless? Alasuutari (1996) proposed that science can be distinguished
from day to day thinking as it contributes to the systematic production of
‘deconstructions of the way in which we construct realities and social condi-
tions and ourselves as subjects in those realities’ (p. 382). This is because sci-
entific thought starts with the awareness that ‘blindness … which comes from
preconceptions, prejudices, and assumptions about what constitutes reality
[is] a blindness of which all humans are guilty’ (Nyamnjoh, 2012, p. 65). This
begs the question of ‘how one keeps one’s preconceptions in check to do jus-
tice to encounters with a difference?’ (Nyamnjoh, 2012, p. 65).
We propose that the answer lies in reflexivity. We do not have in mind
nihilistic reflexivity associated with post-modernity, in which nothing can
be known but the knower, but rather ‘a turning back on oneself, a process
of self-reference’ (Davies, 1999, p. 4) centred around the ability to contex-
tualize and criticize one’s own assumptions, findings, theories, epistemol-
ogies, and ontologies, thus putting one’s own knowledge into perspective.
This process includes (critical) reflections upon the culture, conventions,
socio-political positionality, and unspoken or even unconscious practices of
the academic community. Reflexivity fosters the awareness of how ‘the self ’
and the research process and encounter affect the knowledge constructed,
produced, and legitimized, and is important in all levels of the research pro-
cess, from the initial selection of the topic up to the dissemination of results
(Davies, 1999). This self-consciousness must first be utilized at the personal
level, as only from there it can trickle through to the disciplinary, research,
knowledge production, and legitimation processes.
Inescapably, the very act of reflecting on something already involves tacit
assumptions (Scarborough, 1994). However, reflexivity is the mechanism
through which these assumptions might be made explicit. It forms the bed-
rock of the dynamic scientific knowledge system, where science turns its
gaze onto itself, thus safeguarding the central consciousness that theories are
eternally falsifiable. Through reflexivity, academics engage with knowledge
while attempting to prevent their full immersion in it; producing knowledge
without naively believing in it. Reflexivity is the fundamental character trait
of science which has often not been lived up to, and this is what underlies the
need to decolonise academia.
Decolonisation involves a process of questioning and subjecting our
implicit assumptions to critique. This is facilitated and stimulated by engag-
ing with previously unconsidered modes of thought, knowledges, and meth-
odologies through radically divergent voices, and sensitizing ourselves to the
asymmetrical nature of power relations both in our modes of interaction on
a daily basis and in the knowledge (re)production and legitimation process by
engaging with a multiplicity of perspectives. The process entailed in reflexive
praxis is essential to ‘decolonising the mind’ (Thiong’o, 1981), which begins
with the self and needs to be internalised before it can be externalised, and
is deemed central to the decolonisation process (Ndlovu Gatsheni, 2016). It
is the process of internal deliberation that enables the questioning and chal-
lenging of the self vis-à-vis the context. The decolonisation of our thoughts
and behaviours is essentially and necessarily, a reflexive process as no one else
can change our mind our actions.
Reflexivity is thus an important key towards unlearning oppressive
modes of interaction and healing our thinking from the forces of colonial-
ism, because it enhances the awareness that our thoughts are not independ-
ent of our circumstances and stimulates us to find out which assumptions
underlie our own perspectives. It brings the temporal and spatial relativity of
knowledges into view, thus undermining absolutist usage of claims to truth
for particular interests or groups because the circumstances of the speaker
and the contexts of the idea communicated are always taken into account.
The exposure to a broad variety of voices by engaging with the knowledge
and knowledge production processes of a global variety of actors fosters and
broadens reflexive prowess.
It is an adamant approach to reflexivity that brings the otherwise cacoph-
onic reality of radical multivocality into a conversation that is centred around
the goal of global knowledge production. Through this unrelenting commit-
ment to reflexivity, academia can become a space that facilitates the dialogue
between different constructions of reality, to enhance the understanding of
these varying constructions, including academics’ own constructions. It cul-
tivates the awareness that studies of others and the world outside us, are also
studies of ourselves and our relationship with others (Davies, 1999), stimulat-
ing the ability to stand back from existing social relations and transform them
(McNay, 1999). Adamant reflexivity is personal and transformative, a strategy
to challenge routinised action and normalised (thinking) processes. It resides
in the awareness that not only knowledge, but also ‘the self ’ is continually
under construction. It requires a conscious openness towards the possibility
that in the process of knowledge production, also ‘the self ’ is transformed,
and the questioning, disrupting and altering of our ‘selves’ is what ultimately
makes decolonisation possible.
In academic teaching, the practice of adamant reflexivity can be fostered
and practiced in conjunction with radical multivocality, introducing students
to the groundwork of academic knowledge (re)production and legitimation.
For example, reflexive exposure to a variety of contextualized knowledges
(where, when, and by whom) and multiple ontologies may be used as a start-
ing point to ask students fundamental questions regarding what they con-
sider reality, knowledge, and theory, and how these might be dealt with
intersubjectively. These questions can be part of introductory courses, which
also involve the basics of philosophy of science combined with exercises that
enhance reflections upon the own and the scientific thought systems, inspired
by social anthropology and critical reflexive practice (Cunliffe, 2004), includ-
ing the keeping of reflexive diaries.
Promising too is the technique of ‘epistemological stretching,’ employed, for
example, in environmental education to simultaneously engage with modern
scientific and Indigenous worldviews, and facilitate transformative and epis-
temic learning, which are strategies aimed at shifting people’s operative ways
of knowing and ways of being in the world (Sterling, 2010). Epistemological
stretching practically combines the multivocal and the reflexive in higher
education learning and has been proven effective to facilitate deconstruc-
tions of power, bridging of worldviews, re-conceptualisations of relationships
and increased validation of Indigenous’ points of view (Harmin, Barrett, &
Hoessler, 2017). Still missing are practices inspired by Indigenous approaches,
which are to be increasingly present over time as a result of engagement with
radical multivocality.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we began from the premise that knowledge is established
intersubjectively and discursively. As a result, relationships and contextual-
isation are central, and knowledge constructed never forms an end station.
Our approach is in line with Nyamnjoh’s statement that ‘knowing is a life-
long commitment to reflexivity, dialogue, and accommodation’ (Nyamnjoh,
2012, p. 81). In criticising the modern scientific system, we have taken up
the challenge to provide tools towards decolonising the academic space by
furthering a co-creative dialogue between knowledge from a multitude of
geographical, cultural, and social environments.
Drawing on insights and practices from anthropology, we propose an
approach to decolonising higher education that ‘connotes not a transcendent
viewpoint but simply the perennial possibility that human beings can move
beyond their local or particular identifications through broadened horizons
of intersubjective engagement’ ( Jackson, 1998, p. 205). Thus, we have taken
the debate of decolonisation of higher education beyond responses that dual-
istically oppose Western and Indigenous knowledges, and refuse to subdue,
incorporate, or integrate one type of knowledge (making) into another
because such non-dialectical approaches obstruct the ideal of science as a
truly global knowledge system.
Instead, we argued for a radical multivocality that enables an openness
towards multiple ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies (worldviews,
ways of knowing, and ways of coming to know), advocating their treatment
as equal partners amidst a myriad of knowledge production strategies, which
have the opportunity to contradict, complement, and sharpen each other.
This symmetrical approach of radical multivocality is enabled by academics
exercising adamant reflexivity, which forms the unyielding and imperme-
able foundation of an open scientific system and holds great transformative
potential. In turn, this adamant reflexivity is stimulated and deepened
through academics’ exposure to the co-creative dialogue between a variety
of knowledges. This minimalistic meta-approach is geared to draw attention
to the limits of any knowledge system, so that science can function as it has
been envisioned, not as a dogmatic narrative that is used ideologically to
exert power, but as consisting of multiple dynamic knowledge production
processes through which dogmas are constantly challenged and disrupted.
The two inter-related strategies presented may help to decolonise and
transform higher education in several ways. In the first place, they will allow
a new generation of academics to enter the academic discourse and to use
Indigenous knowledges, approaches, and methods in synergy with existing
scientific knowledge, or to explore and criticize it. Second, they will enhance
the role of higher education institutions and their members to contribute and
transform scientific knowledge, which according to the philosophy of sci-
ence, has always been a space where new narratives arise, meta-narratives are
challenged, and different narratives are related to each other. In the current
context, we see the usefulness of a curriculum, which presents knowledge
as multiple and dynamic, including education on reflexivity and paradigm
shifts, as well as relativistic approaches towards objectivity, timelessness, and
universality.
‘Current demands to decolonize the university not only concern demo-
graphic, institutional, or representational matters, but they also challenge
modes of academic knowledge production in profound ways’ (Schramm,
Krause & Valley, 2018, p. 254). The strategies presented fulfil important pre-
requisites called for in the literature, promoting the understanding of ‘indige-
neity as a fluid, embodied and rightful existence,’ furthering a ‘paradigmatic
and epistemic shift’ and facilitating for an approach that enables Indigenous
and Western epistemic frameworks to stand alongside each other (Almeida
& Kumalo, 2018, p. 1). They de-centre the normality of dominant Western
discourses at the university, which many students and lecturers continue
to experience as alienating, disempowering, and exclusionary (Costandius
et al., 2018). The proposed strategies also reinforce Le Grange’s (2014) sug-
gestion that Africanising the university involves the flattening of perceived
hierarchies between the Western and African (and we add other Indigenous)
knowledge systems. Specifically, they form practical avenues to address the
principle of the ‘detached observer,’ and the colonial implications of such an
epistemology. As such, they align with calls for an approach to decolonisa-
tion that is sensitive to the politics of knowledge production, is contextual,
cognizant, and responsive to social conditions, and takes into consideration
the presence and intersections of multiple knowledges in the knowledge pro-
duction process (Nakata et al., 2012).
The call to decolonise knowledge has often been perceived as a call for
cognitive justice, which is the right for a multitude of knowledges to exist,
be valued and used to serve the needs of people in their societies, and is
thus deeply related to the struggle for global social justice (Hoppers, 2001;
Idahosa, 2019; Visvanathan, 2009). Its proponents aver that all knowledge is
partial and complementary, and cognitive justice forms a dialogic approach
that gives meaning to the relationships between different knowledges
(Visvanathan, 2009). In line with these arguments, we acknowledge that
there is a deep seated need for healing in education, as many people have been
systematically excluded from participation in knowledge building in society.
We argue that when science is transformed to become a truly global knowl-
edge system, where ‘truth’ is constructed not through a claim to objectivity
but through a commitment to a radical multivocal, deeply methodological
divergent, and adamantly reflexive dialogic process of intersubjective vali-
dation, higher education will alter from a place where people are excluded,
socialized, and subdued to accommodate a certain knowledge system, into a
space of expansive self-transformation.
Notes
1. In this chapter, we use the term science to refer to the totality of the natural and
social sciences/humanities. We treat science as a whole, because the division into
natural and social sciences/humanities is based on the modernist Cartesian dichot-
omy of nature/culture, object/subject (Hauhs et al., 2018), which does not hold in
many Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies (Descola 2013; High 2010; Ingold
1994; Mullin 2002; Viveiros de Castro, 2004) and, therefore, cannot be taken as an
a priori in a decolonised approach to science.
2. There is no unproblematic definition of what may be referred to as African (Kuper,
2003) or European (see, for example, Wittrock’s (2000) observations with regard to
modernity in Western and Central Europe). Both can include a variety of territories,
institutional and cultural forms. For example, it is unclear if African knowledge
should be used to include only Indigenous or also white writers who were part of
the struggle against Apartheid. Also, it’s unclear if members of the black African
diaspora such as Du Bois and Fanon, or Arab Africans as Amin should be part of this
group, and those born in Africa but with non-African descent (Connell, 2007).
3. In line with Haverkort & Rist (2004, p. 4), we consider that ‘every form of knowl-
edge – including the one produced by natural and quantitative science – is socially
constructed.... This means that “truth” is not so much determined by objectivity,
but by “intersubjective validation”.’
4. With politics of knowledge we refer to the normalisation and legitimisation of spe-
cific knowledges, values and ideologies as the accepted norm and standard, a pro-
cess which simultaneously misrecognises and marginalises other ways of knowing.
5. Interestingly, the theoretical notion of a Cartesian divide, which underlies modern
scientific thought, has been challenged even in elementary natural scientific exper-
iments. The most famous example is the double slit experiment, which ‘throws
into question a basic premise of science ... that the real world is essentially the same
when we are not observing it as it is when we are observing it’ (Hobson, 1995,
p. 350). Wave particle duality cannot be understood from the current paradigm in
natural sciences, however it cannot be done away with as a marginal side issue, as
it forms a fundamental, central aspect of physics (Davies, 1999; Eibenberger, Ger-
lich, Arndt, Mayor, & Tüxen, 2013). These kinds of issues show the potential for
a future scientific paradigm to sweep current understandings away (Kuhn, 1962;
Popper, 2002 [1963]; Scarborough, 1994). Incompleteness, subjectivity, and tempo-
rality of knowledge play an even greater role in the social sciences, because instead
of describing mathematical ‘laws,’ social scientists develop concepts to understand
phenomena and behaviors (Klute, 2007), and as a result are more fluid and reliant
on tacit assumptions and meanings.
6. Instead of the terminology West and non-West several authors use the terms
(Global) North and (Global) South.
7. See Idahosa and Vincent (2019) and Idahosa (2020) for a broader discussion on
critical engagement.
8. This has been an important objective in anthropology all along (Eriksen, 2001;
Jackson, 1998).
9. An example can be found in the classical political theories of Hobbes (2009,1651)
and Locke (1690), which start from fundamentally different assumptions concern-
ing humans’ ‘state of nature’ but exist side by side. Similarly, in our society, differ-
ent historical accounts written by different historians can exist side by side and be
considered true, without us being shocked that they are not exactly the same, as we
focus on what is basically similar and neglect the differences (Lévi Strauss, 1978).
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the support from the University of Johannesburg
and specifically to Prof. Gert van der Westhuizen of the Department of
Education for his engagement during the initial stages of the writing process,
including the advice on useful literature and fruitful discussions with regard
to the subject. The views expressed here belong solely to the authors and are
not necessarily the opinion of these institutions and individuals
3 Rethinking linguistics at
Nelson Mandela University
Emerging decolonial insights
Jacqueline Lück
Introduction
Those of us teaching Linguistics at South African universities are often con-
fronted with epistemological ironies and injustices that are deeply concern-
ing. We often teach courses on first and second language acquisition, the
marginalisation and loss of Indigenous languages; the value and relevance of
multilingualism; the hegemony of English and Afrikaans in South Africa;
through English as the language of teaching and often, solely through the
epistemological and ontological lenses of northern linguistic thought. Many
of us do, however, situate our teaching and research firmly in southern con-
texts and use approaches and theories that speak to multilingual contexts.
This chapter is an attempt to make sense of some of these ironies and injus-
tices that endure, as well as explore some of the transformative work being
done in this space.
A decolonial tide swept across South African higher education shores in
2015 and 2016 with student led protests. The call by students included for fees
to fall but also for the decentring of northern knowledge and hegemonic and
colonial languages, and the re-centring of African epistemologies. The impact
of the student movement1 was felt in all corners of the academy, including in
the discipline of Linguistics. This chapter discusses the responsiveness to the
decolonial call by the Linguistics scholarly community at national and local
levels. Case studies of an institutional language policy process and Linguistics
curricular transformation at one university are explored as examples of what
it means to develop local multilingual language knowledge projects and to
enter into northern conversations. By doing so, it considers what it means to
learn about language and to live and learn through languages in South Africa
and draw on both local and northern epistemologies.
The chapter’s theoretical lenses draw on both global south and north schol-
ars to recalibrate epistemologies that largely are north gazing and to invoke
non-binary and non-essentialised entangled knowledges ( Jansen, 2017) that
are pluriversal and hybrid in nature. The chapter begins with a brief over-
view of transformation and decoloniality in South African higher education.
Next, it briefly looks at the evolution of western linguistic thought and how
we ‘received’ this canon in South Africa. Then, it discusses transformation
in Linguistics on a national level. Finally, it considers the case of the Nelson
Mandela University and our explorations towards a transformed language
policy and Linguistics curriculum. The case studies show how ‘entangled
knowledges’ can be used. The perspectives of Humanising Pedagogy, African
philosophy of Ubuntu and African scholar Jank’s (2010) Critical Literacy
Model are drawn on in the chapter. The chapter also draws on LCT (Maton,
2007), an approach that studies knowledge structure and knowers and offers
an explanation for who claims to be a legitimate knower and what legitimate
knowledge is. These are pertinent concerns for the decolonial project.
Discourses of transformation and decoloniality

in South African higher education
To understand the chapter’s concerns with Linguistics and decoloniality, it
is important to provide some historical background to higher education in
South Africa. South Africa attained democracy in 1994 after a long and bru-
tal history of colonialism and legislated apartheid. The 2015 and 2016 stu-
dent protests reminded us that while political freedom was gained in 1994,
economic freedom had been elusive. Pre-1994 the South African higher
education sector had been characterised by racially designated institutions,
resources, and educational inequities. Much work thus had to be done to
achieve social inclusion in the academy in alignment with the new democracy.
Access for Black South African students was a critical concern with only 55%
in higher education by 1994 (Le Roux & Breier, 2012). The South African
National Plan for Higher Education (NPHE, 2001), therefore, sketched a
vision for higher education to eliminate exclusionary processes and to be
responsive to globalisation and the knowledge economy. The discourses were
framed around transformation and social cohesion as the overarching ways in
which to achieve change in higher education. Equity of access (broadening
higher education access to all) and equity of outcomes (fair chance of success
for all South African students) (NPHE, 2001) were also integral to transfor-
mation endeavours and discourses in higher education. Understandings of
transformation were based on the White Paper 3 – A Programme for Higher
Education Transformation. This paper had advocated transformation for
all, irrespective of race, gender, age, creed, or class or other discrimination
forms; representative staffing components in the academy; transformation of
governance structures and institutional climates; provision of quality teach-
ing; and learning with a regionally and nationally responsive curriculum
(Department of Education, 1997).
So, what transpired in South African higher education after these lofty
and well-intentioned policy goals? Access has been broadened, with 73.7%
African, 6.2% Coloured, 4.8% Indian, and 14% White students in 2017
(DHET, 2019). However, the lack of transformation in teaching and learning
practices continued to mitigate systemic change. The Soudien report tasked
62 Jacqueline Lück
with investigating discrimination in the higher education sector found that for
most institutions equity was a matter of compliance and they did not engage
in an examination of the underlying assumptions of institutional climate
and governance and epistemologies (Soudien et al., 2008). Epistemological
concerns were highlighted as one of the most significant obstacles given its
decontextualised and de-Africanised approaches, and macro-reviews of cur-
ricula were recommended (Soudien et al., 2008). A later report, the SAHRC
Report (2016) also examined factors that hindered transformation and found
that ‘public universities have not sufficiently transformed in the past 20 years
and that discrimination remains prevalent in public universities in South
Africa, particularly on the ground of race, gender, disability, and socio-
economic class’ (p.viii). Two recommendations made in the SAHRC report
(2016) speak to the language and curricula processes universities should be
engaged with when they urged the ‘reviewing [of ] current language policies
to determine appropriateness, practicality, and impact on university culture’
and ‘the redesigning of universities’ curricula to ensure its social responsive-
ness (both locally as well as regionally)’ (p.ix). The case studies in this chapter
will later discuss language policy review processes and the redesign of cur-
ricula at Nelson Mandela University.
Transformation sluggishness was thus the backdrop for the student led
movement in 2015. This sluggishness that has been the source of much
research and findings point to an array of reasons from persistent and resistant
colonial-apartheid institutional cultures to an inability to see our students
and our epistemologies for who and what they are (Durban statement on
transformation in Higher Education, 2015; Badat, 2009). The Rhodes Must
Fall campaign is widely seen as the impetus for decoloniality across South
African higher education. In this campaign, students protested against the
presence of a statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town
(UCT). Matebeni, UCT researcher, and member of Rhodes Must Fall,
reflects that Cecil John Rhodes, a symbol of racism and colonial conquest,
a constant reminder of alienation and dehumanisation and the university’s
namesake, had to be removed (Heinrich Böll Stiftung, 2018). During the
statue’s removal in 2015, a Fine Arts student, Sithembile Msezane, protested
on a plinth with the feathered wings of the Zimbabwean Chupungu bird
that Rhodes had removed from Zimbabwe and which is still to be found on
his estate. Her art installation depicts hierarchies of difference and its power
producing binaries in its white/black, old/young, art/science juxtapositions
as well as the unequal hierarchies in higher education (Murris, 2016).
The Rhodes Must Fall movement culminated in a wider spread national
student protest in 2015, under the hashtag #FeesMustFall. Jansen (2017)
attributes the #FeesMustFall protests to the decline in state subsidies for uni-
versities, as increased access for students led to increased subsidy but a decrease
in output (student success and graduation). Universities had raised their fees
in attempts to cope with the declining state subsidies, but many poor students
found themselves unable to afford higher education. The decrease in outputs
could be attributed to a system unable to facilitate success for students, from
a previously disadvantaged schooling system. As access was now broadened
and many students, mostly from a disadvantaged schooling system, now
entered a higher education system ill-equipped to facilitate their success.
Boughey and McKenna (2016) argue that the university places the blame on
students’ innate attributes for their lack of success and do not glance inward
at the academy’s socio-cultural practices that are alienating for students. This
applies particularly to previously disadvantaged students. They are labelled
as under-prepared for higher education when the weakness and under-
preparedness is systemic. Many universities do not critique how students are
given access to disciplinary (and institutional) practices and do not use ideo-
logical models that see disciplinary practices as socially embedded (Boughey &
McKenna, 2016). Such practices have also affected students doing Linguistics
as they draw on traditional models of language learning. These concerns all
came to a head in 2015 and 2016 with student protests highlighting a system
that was slow to transform. Since then the decolonisation project has gained
traction and dominated the national higher education agenda. Jansen (2017)
argues that this project will decline with activist graduation and we will
once again slip into business as usual. As there are no national educational
policies that have emerged placing pressure on the sector to decolonise its
curriculum, this prophecy is of concern. Many institutions have, however,
taken up the task in earnest and have instituted deep reflective processes such
as UCT and Nelson Mandela University’s curriculum change processes. Of
late, the discourse of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and online learning
amidst a global pandemic is gaining traction in national discourses and in
higher education. So too are discourses of racial injustices in global society as
result of police brutality in the United States. All these issues are pertinent for
Linguistics and lead me to a discussion of the discourses related to language
and curriculum that emerged during #FeesMustFall.
Discourses of language
Among student concerns, were the languages of teaching and learning.
While the Language Policy Framework for South African Higher Education
(LPHE, 2001) had encouraged universities to embrace multilingualism and
the intellectualisation of Indigenous languages, many institutions were slow
to implement these. Even in the face of the LPHE (2001) and evidence of the
cognitive benefits of multilingualism, English, and Afrikaans are still largely
used as mediums of instruction at universities (DHET, 2015). McKinney
(2017) challenges us to recast the languages our students bring as valuable
resources and not as problems. This is in response to the common sense
assumption that students who speak Indigenous languages are linguistically
impoverished. A video called Luister (Listen) made by Stellenbosch University
students in 2015 on the alienation suffered at the university as a result of
Afrikaans went viral in South Africa and elicited much dialogue on the role
64 Jacqueline Lück
and history of Afrikaans. The protests targeted Afrikaans specifically as a
language of teaching and learning at Afrikaans medium universities (Dube,
2017) as the language carries deep symbolic meaning of oppression in South
Africa. Ironically students demanded that Afrikaans be replaced with English
at such universities. Despite its colonial legacy and hegemony, English does
not carry the same symbolism as Afrikaans does in South Africa. It is often
viewed in positive ways with fluent speakers seen as sophisticated and well
educated and the vehicle to economic empowerment, given its hegemony in
public discourses. Many conferences and publications have been devoted to
the benefits of multilingualism at universities and moderation of the obsta-
cles against its implementation but progress towards a multilingual academy
has been slow. The Draft Language Policy for Higher Education (2018)
places more pressure on universities to develop inclusive and multilingual
language policies for access and success. The policy (2018) requires that vice-
chancellors report annually on the implementation of the policy provisions
that places an obligation on universities to implement multilingualism and to
develop institute Indigenous languages as languages of teaching and learning.
The policy is up against the firm foothold English has in the academy and
perceptions that indigenous languages cannot, and perhaps should not, func-
tion as languages of teaching and learning (Ndebele & Ndimande-Hlongwa,
2019). This chapter later discusses a project that has undertaken innovative
work in Language Policy implementation.
Decoloniality: Believers and unbelievers

Student led movements also demanded that the curriculum in South Africa
be decolonised. The academy is divided on this project and can be compared
to the Believers and Unbelievers in Mda’s (2000) novel The Heart of Redness.
In the novel two groups find themselves on opposite sides of a prophecy to
kill their cattle so that all dead ancestors arise and restore the amaXhosa
to glory in brutal colonial times. So too, in the academy, there are various
fight back or fight for strategies to pursue ideals to attain decoloniality or
maintain the northern knowledge hegemony. This chapter will not explore
these strategies as the purpose of this section is to contextualise notions of
decoloniality. Suffice to say that there are proponents for and against the
decolonial project. Some feel the tide has risen but will ebb again and with it
the demand for decoloniality. It should not, however, be viewed cynically as
something trendy that will go out of fashion but as a social justice concern in
South African higher education, and a way in which we can develop our own
knowledge that do not necessarily exist as a way of speaking back to northern
knowledge, but exist in its own right.
Decoloniality is context. There are thus several questions that can be posed
about decoloniality and context. How might decoloniality be unfolding in
Linguistics at a South Africa university? How are Linguistics scholars reacting
and rethinking or retracting and resisting the decolonial call? Are they doing
so in coherent ways nationally? What makes for understandings of difference
− as opposed to essentialised understandings − of African intersections and
scholarship in Linguistics? How responsive is Linguistics to decoloniality in
my particular context, that is, an urban comprehensive (with both skills and
theoretical based programmes) university in South Africa? Before I attempt
to answer these questions, let me first grapple with useful meanings of deco-
loniality for my context.
Zembylas (2017) argues that the fundamental questions around decolonisa-
tion are what it is; why there is a need for it; its challenges; how it could take
place; and query the tensions, complexities, and paradoxes that emerge from
this project. There is a difference between colonialism and coloniality, the
former being a period of oppression and the latter being the logic of a clas-
sification system of knowledge that valourises western thought (Zembylas,
2017). Colonialism involved economic exploitation ruthlessly inflicted on
enslaved Africans (Magubane, 2007). The decolonial project essentially is an
interrogation of how Eurocentric thought, knowledge, and power structures
are linked to the marginalisation, exploitation, and exclusion of colonised
subjects (Zembylas, 2017). Northern Linguistic thought with limited add-on
approaches from multilingual perspectives has dominated the Linguistics
canon we teach at our university. These perspectives include flawed concep-
tualisations of language, with languages seen as idealised bounded entities
and as cognitive and literate objects that are separate from social relations
(Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). An alternate southern view would be that of
Ubuntu translanguaging, where language boundaries are blurred and one
cannot exist without the other (Makalela, 2017).
There should be a displacement of northern epistemologies given that
we are a global citizenry and although African knowledge should be recen-
tred, there are caveats that one form of knowledge should not be valorised
above another. Linguistics has been complicit with coloniality (Pennycook
& Makoni, 2020) and the recentering of African epistemologies in our con-
text would mitigate against such inequalities in global knowledge produc-
tion. Jansen (2017) talks of globally connected entangled knowledges that
the decolonial project should concern itself with. This adds to the notion
of a ‘hybrid’ science of knowledges across the globe. Notions of a hybrid
science − as proposed by this volume − should not lead to essentialised ‘sci-
ence’ versus ‘hybrid science’ binaries, and the valorisation of one over the
other. In this view, a hybrid science would not be seen as a token nod to
knowledges from the south. Nor should a hybrid science ignore difference
and inequalities but involve the discovery of multiple language knowledges.
Keet (2019) urges us to discover the historical conditions of our production
to gain theoretical control of our structures and to reject simplified inclusion
and epistemological pluralism that lack associated political ethics. Hybridity,
a postcolonial concept, working against binaries of coloniser and colonised,
and for an in-between space is more often used in literary theory than in
Linguistics. Hybridity is critiqued for its focus on diversity at the expense
66 Jacqueline Lück
of racial and socio-economic inequalities and for how it romanticises and
celebrates diversity (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020) and for ignoring power
relations and differences in its quest for mutuality (Mambrol, 2016). A ‘new’
hybrid science would have to pay attention to these critiques, if it is to serve a
decolonial Linguistics agenda. Linguistic power relations as it intersects with
race, class, communities, and gender, its historical constructions and current
articulations would need foregrounding in such an approach in South Africa.
This approach would not be reclaiming an idealised and fixed version of lan-
guage as is critiqued above, but asking what are the new ways of seeing our
southern and northern contexts through fluid language practices, and fun-
damentally, taking our cue from Pennycook and Makoni (2020, p. 76) asking
what our languages are as ‘embodied, embedded, and cultural processes.’
The notions of decolonisation, transformation, and Africanisation have
received much attention. Decolonisation, what we should be teaching chil-
dren in Africa, is different from Africanisation, which refers to the politics
of the mother tongue, a recentering of knowledge, (wa Thiong’o, 1981) and
a decentring of western knowledge (Oelofsen, 2015). To decolonise is to
engage in a process of ‘seeing ourselves clearly’ (wa Thiong’o, 1981, p. 87) in
the languages we use and the curricula we teach and learn. Decolonisation
of university structures equals the creation of a pluriversalism showing an
openness to ideas that are new (Mbembe, 2016). Oelofsen (2015) argues
that African intellectual spaces should be reclaimed and this should be done
by starting from a person’s place – geographically and contextually. This
leads me to the questions of the normative history of Linguistics and what is
happening in the disciplinary space I occupy, which is the Linguistics cur-
riculum. Furthermore, do Indigenous languages remain ‘folkloric’ at our
universities as Mamdani (2019) states they do?
Discourse of the canon of linguistics

How did we get to be where we are in Linguistics in South Africa? Linguistics
and Applied Linguistics are said to involve the study of Languages, how they
work and how they are applied to solve language-related problems. The latter
description of Applied Linguistics shows the deficit focus of the field, which
took the form of a great linguistic fixing quest in the South. The discipline
can be said to fall into two broad approaches or schools: formal or theo-
retical study of languages like those of Morphology or Syntax and Applied
Linguistics, an interdisciplinary field (drawing on education and psychology
for example). Applied Linguistics included first and second language acquisi-
tion, language teaching, translation, language policy, and planning. In South
Africa, we ‘received’ the northern canon of these two broad approaches
through our colonial education with much of it enduring today.
Robins (2013) writing on the history of Linguistics, states that all science
develops from its past. As much of African epistemologies were erased in our
curricula and their history not foregrounded in colonial texts, for northern
scholars they may appear to have no past and thus our work not seen to con-
stitute science. Europe can show a continuous line from its Greek origins to
Latin grammarians in Rome to the Middle Ages and the lack of discontinuity
in the European tradition is seen to make it a superior science (Robins, 2013).
It is more likely that that the hegemonic powers of colonialism foregrounded
this knowledge and the subalterns were not allowed to speak their histories
and understandings of language. The histories of those in the south were
mostly not studied and so ignored, in epistemically violent ways. Makoni and
Meinhof (2004) note that when African languages outside of Europe were
studied, they were codified and reduced to ‘writing.’ They cite the example
of Swahili that was first written in Arabic script in the 15th century and later
in Roman script, and that in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries simplified
and standard spelling and grammar systems were developed for African lan-
guages. This has resulted in orthographies that are invalid and incomplete,
and now also being cited as reasons for inertia in implementing multilingual
teaching (Ndebele & Ndimande-Hlongwa, 2019).
The framework of western linguistic thought is one which survived from
Socrates to Saussure and beyond and is that which we often reproduce and
privilege in South Africa to make sense of our linguistic lived realities. This
thought flows from Greek preoccupation with logos or speech that distin-
guishes humans from other animals to the Romans (Harris & Talbot, 1997)
and Saussurean thought on structural linguistics, with language seen as stable
and structured. The post-colonies also developed and strengthened Linguistic
thought in approaches such as the Generative Approach, for example, in North
America. First and Second Language Acquisition theories were developed
from the 1960s and 1970s by Chomsky and Selinker. These approaches spoke
mostly to a ‘monolingual’ individual and context, and the notion of language
as separate bounded systems, or what McKinney (2017) calls an ‘anglonor-
mative’ ideal. These approaches are being contested by notions of language
fluidity in southern work done on Ubuntu translanguaging (Makalela, 2017),
and multilingual mediation (Dyers & Antia, 2019).
In many South Africa universities, we have been schooled to first teach our
students the ‘canon’ of syntax, phonetics, morphology, and language acquisi-
tion, for example, as received from the ‘modern world.’ We glean the infor-
mation from several northern textbooks that our publishers make available to
us each year. We argue that students need to know the foundational, indeed
‘seminal,’ principles of Linguistics first before venturing into multilingual
approaches. This gives these approaches a secondary status. We do much
work to contextualise our field to and in Africa but what remains problem-
atic is the theoretical framing of this work. It is still dominated by global
north epistemologies2. African Linguistics is presented as a module in this
canon – this too is problematic if it relegates the study of Linguistics in Africa
to a stand-alone offering. It also separates it from the other core modules in
Linguistics. It may also essentialise Africa as singular. There is no compara-
tive ‘Linguistics in Europe’ module as the western canon remains normative.
68 Jacqueline Lück
The notion of a canon that is largely received from northern thought is one
that needs problematising. A key question is one that asks how a different
canon of Linguistics might look like.
While many universities have Linguistics modules that can be said to be
locally contextualised, in that the data and examples are local, the theoretical
lenses applied to it, however, are mainly northern. This does not mean to say
that such theories do not have teachings for our context. We need to have a
nuanced interrogation of these theories to see what fits, is not applicable, and
should not be applied. A theory such as critical discourse analysis has a signifi-
cance for our context. The problem is if a theory becomes the sole theory used
to examine African contexts and the lack of attempts to look into philosophies
and epistemologies developed in Africa as ontological lenses. Legitimation of
southern Linguistics can occur if they are treated as equals. If critical discourse
analysis engages with the critique of it being an approach that uses northern
assumptions, logo-centrism, and not coloniality and southern knowledges
(Pennycook & Makoni 2020), then it can be a more nuanced approach for
our contexts. South African scholar Janks (2010) has a critical literacy model
used for language teaching that speaks to African worldviews and topics and
critically looks at the redesign of texts that are exclusionary.
Entangled knowledges as theoretical framing

How then might entangled knowledges or a hybrid science look in a new
canon of Linguistics? It could mean giving equal inclusion to theories from
the global north and south. This is not a mere pluralisation but a critical inter-
rogation of what is best able to excavate knowledge (Keet, 2019) in southern
contexts. In my own Linguistics context at Nelson Mandela University, I
have used Freirean Humanising Pedagogy, Ubuntu and Janks’s (2010) Critical
Literacy Model, Social Realism and LCT (Maton, 2007, 2013); Literacy as
Social Practice (Street, 2006); First and Second Language Acquisition fields;
Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2015) and Poststructuralist perspec-
tives of language and identity (Baxter, 2016), for example, to examine local
linguistic realities, and to trouble northern thought and generalisations.
The notion of a Humanising Pedagogy is one that resonates in higher
education, given its focus on voice and voicing. Freire (2005) conceptualised
it as a mutual humanisation. The Nelson Mandela University has adopted a
Humanising Pedagogy as curriculum philosophical framing that underpins
all our teaching and learning. Humanising references how we centre actions
in teaching and learning in ways that reflect our humanity. What it means to
be human, treating others as human and having agency are placed at the cen-
tre of our curriculum at Nelson Mandela University. The relations of power
in the classroom and curriculum thus become critical as we seek to transform
the curriculum so that students can achieve their full potential. This enables
us to talk about marginalised southern ways of knowing that are political
and historical and are linked to the broader struggles in South Africa. These
struggles included economic exclusion, gender-based violence, race, and rac-
ism. They counter northern notions of linguistics in the south as languages of
loss and death and as fixed (Pennycook & Makoni, 2020). Zinn and Rodgers
(2012) concluded that the South African ‘educational arena remains a battle-
front’ as it is characterised by inequities (p.76). They look to Odora-Hopper
and Richards’ (2011) act of rethinking, thinking in intentional ways to inter-
rogate knowledge production in the academy, and its inherent exclusionary
practices, as well as the creation of humanising learning experiences for rec-
ognition and legitimation of all knowledges. In practice, this means seeking
out and developing new southern knowledges.
The Afro-communitarian framework of Ubuntu of ‘umntu ngumntu
ngabantu’ or ‘a person is a person because of other people/I am because we
are’ aligns to a Humanising Pedagogy as it sees the significance of others, his-
tory, context and community in forming identity, as well as interdependency
between the individual and the collective (Oelofsen, 2015). In Linguistics,
the contexts provide data but this alone is not powerful epistemology if it
remains at the level of contextual examples and does not include Africans
thinking about Africa using African knowledge and ways of being.
This means that we need to ask whose knowledge is being valued and
who are considered the knowers in the Linguistics curriculum. This is
where a northern theory such as LCT is very useful. It poses these ques-
tions about knowledge and power and illuminates how intellectual fields are
structured, how they build cumulatively and transfer knowledge (Maton,
2007). Knowledge claims and practices are understood as languages of legit-
imation with knowledge structures and knowers for all fields (Maton, 2007).
The knowledge structure of Linguistics is one that builds on and is predom-
inantly oriented towards northern linguistic thought with strongly bonded
knowers who recontextualise this knowledge in the curriculum and repro-
duce it in the classroom. It is not powerful knowledge as it excludes African
knowledge and how we function in an African world. If we use LCT’s
lenses to examine our Linguistics knowledge structures, they can be useful
to show which normative northern notions we have held onto. Janks’s (2010)
Critical Literacy Model also asks us to consider who has power and access
to the knowledge in the Linguistics curriculum and whether it is a diverse
knowledge. Her model goes beyond an analysis of text and has the critical
dimension of the redesign of multimodal texts to be more inclusive of differ-
ent knowledges. We use this model in our Critical Discourse Analysis classes
to add to Fairclough (2015)’s model.
Rethinking a linguistics canon

At Nelson Mandela University Linguistics is being rethought so that it
draws on entangled knowledges or a hybrid science that both troubles and
embraces different knowledges. We are also grappling with these concerns on
national and local levels. The section below first outlines the broader national
70 Jacqueline Lück
Linguistics decolonial responsiveness as background to the case studies that
are later discussed.
Transformation in linguistics on national level

The Linguistics scholarly community in South Africa is deeply aware of
these pressing issues of transformation and decolonisation. We have under-
taken much soul searching in national transformation workshops. Scholars
have gathered to examine Linguistics at two transformation workshops in
2016 and 2018. These workshops have challenged us to re-articulate how
we think about Linguistics in a transforming South Africa (Resolutions of
the first Transformation in Linguistics Summit, 2016). The report (2016)
notes that the Linguistics community needs to consider student and staff
alienation and pressures; create a balance between competing tensions
of Africanisation and globalisation and rethink hegemonic language and
intersectionality in its transformational and decolonial work. It calls for a
non-essentialist and non-parochial approach, a pluralism, acceptance, and
inclusion of diverse voices and linguistic repertoires (Busch, 2012). It sees
the curriculum as ‘broadly construed to encompass the totality of struc-
tured learning experiences of a student, including modes of interaction
and learning; philosophies of teaching and learning; assessment criteria
and practices; the selection of theory and analytical paradigms; outcomes,
intended or not; the object of study and the language of exemplification and
access and institutional culture’ (Resolutions of the first Transformation in
Linguistics Summit, 2016, p. 4). The broader Linguistics scholarly commu-
nity in South Africa is thus supportive of the decolonial project. It provides
a framework that allows us to address transformation of the curriculum in
ways that are contextual yet global. It is mindful that transformation can
be used in counter-productive ways to serve different agendas that may not
constitute authentic change.
The case studies that will now be discussed are those of an institutional
language policy process and Linguistics offerings at the Nelson Mandela
University. This university is a comprehensive institution offering both voca-
tional or skills based and theoretical programmes. The notion of compre-
hensive thus means that it is not a research intensive university. Linguistics
is offered by the Department of Applied Language Studies in the Faculty
of Humanities. The department also offers what is known as service mod-
ules to a range of faculties at the university. These modules essentially are
Professional English or Business English courses that seek to equip stu-
dents with workplace literacies. Academic literacies are also offered by the
Department. The Linguistics modules are offered to both undergraduate and
postgraduate Bachelor of Arts students. Since 2016, the department has been
involved in reimagining its curricula change. A new cohort of staff with var-
ious expertise and consultations with sister universities such as Rhodes and
the University of the Western Cape are deepening our understanding of our
identities in the department while the university’s centre for teaching and
learning is assisting us with our curriculum endeavours.
Language policy process at Nelson Mandela University

Language Policy Planning and Practices are not only institutional concerns
of the language of teaching and learning but are also embedded as core mod-
ules in Linguistics at the Nelson Mandela University. Uncovering the intel-
lectual richness and history of indigenous languages lay at the heart of this
project. Nationally many conferences, workshops, and colloquia have been
held to review key elements that fail in implementation of a multilingual lan-
guage policy across the South African higher education landscape, and what
the implications are for the teaching of Language Policy and Planning mod-
ules in the curriculum. These have pointed to costs of implementation, lack
of political will, claims about a lack of corpus on Language Policy Planning
research in South Africa or a sparsity of translanguaging research in South
Africa. Still, there are many instances of best language practice such as the
University of Kwa Zulu Natal with its isiZulu terminology development pro-
gramme, with disciplinary terms being excavated for all disciplines, a com-
pulsory isiZulu course, and the University of Limpopo’s bilingual Sesotho
sa Leboa and English B degree in Contemporary English and Multilingual
Studies. The measures taken towards a multilingual university environment
are, however, not coherent across the sector.
One key element that Nelson Mandela University has identified as a stum-
bling block to the implementation of multilingual language policy is the
process we undertake to arrive at our policy. The process is crucial as it will
determine the knowledge structure of this policy and its knowers. Our pre-
vious policy had failed as it was a top–down policy process with power and
access to it by the few knowers who had constructed this discursive text. The
policy was deemed unimplementable by the National Department of Higher
Education as the hegemony of English was reinforced and, while staff was
encouraged to implement multilingualism, there was no obligation to do so.
This resulted in the maintenance of the status quo.
Our new policy process is attempting a more inclusive and humanising
process that creates spaces for the entire university community to be heard
and to talk about their linguistic experiences at the institutions in ways
that are powerfully evocative and lead to a reimagining of an inclusive and
multilingual institutional environment. So doing, it invokes the social jus-
tice concerns of language policy planning that Mayaba, Ralarala, and Angu
(2018) urge us to be mindful of. This process is designed to be iterative
and dynamic so that the policy becomes a living document and one that
ensures access and success for the university community in all its domains.
It is a deeply decolonial process that disrupts hegemonic languages as tools
of subjugation for most of our university community. It is not a quick fix
process as a university wide consultation and the design of safe ‘courageous
72 Jacqueline Lück
conversation’ spaces take thought and time. The entire university commu-
nity is invited to these conversations to speak of their language experiences
at the university and to develop an alternative policy that considers the ways
of knowing of this community. The process is led by language and linguis-
tics practitioners, scholars, students, and includes staff from a variety of levels
at the university. It is a scholarly process with entangled local and global
epistemologies such as humanising pedagogy, coloniality of language, and
critical pedagogy.
We are using the process to inform our Language Policy and Planning
postgraduate Linguistics programme to trouble the cynicism around the
implementation of institutional language policies. We show that a process
that is deeply contextual and one that can draw on good practices from both
local and global spheres is one that can have success. The reclamation of
indigenous languages is a decolonial imperative.
Transforming linguistics at Nelson Mandela University

As noted above, the Linguistics curriculum at our university is undergo-
ing an intensive identity search. We have undergraduate programmes in our
Bachelor of Arts degree as well as postgraduate studies. The curriculum was
developed around the northern ‘canon’ and the particular interests of staff,
many whom have left the department. It includes Formal or Theoretical
Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. At the first year levels, it has autono-
mous grammar modules – seeking to develop the language ‘skills’ of stu-
dents in neutral and technical ways, as opposed to ideological models of
literacy that sees literacy as embedded in disciplinary domains (Street, 2006).
Morphology, Syntax, Phonetics, Discourse Analysis, World Englishes, and
the rather vaguely named Sociolinguistics module, all constitute the modules
in the undergraduate degree. Postgraduate studies include both Formal and
Applied Linguistics, Language Acquisition Studies, Model and Practices of
Teaching, Lexicography, Creative Writing, Translation and Interpreting and
Language Policy Planning and Practice. It is a rather mixed bag of offerings
and one that does not reveal our particular identities and areas of interest as
a Linguistics department in Africa. What it does reveal is the adherence to a
northern canon.
Staff has started to develop their areas of interest around these modules
and we are more and more drawing on multilingual approaches and schol-
arship in Africa. For example, in the first year, a first-year module entitled
language, ideology, and identity uses both global south and north paradigms
and notions of how language, common sense assumptions, discourse, and
identities are constituted. The module provides space for students to critically
deconstruct the validity of their common sense assumptions about language
groups in South Africa in attempts to deconstruct apartheid linguistic ide-
ologies (Lück & Rudman, 2017). A second year Critical Discourse Analysis
module includes discourse underpinnings of Gee (2008), Fairclough (2015),
Foucault (1970), and African scholar Janks (2010). Students can undertake
Critical Discourse Analysis work on texts that reflect their own and global
realities, so using knowledges that are local and global. Our postgraduate
studies include modules that reference linguistic repertoires and Ubuntu
translanguaging and include southern case studies.
While these attempts are valuable and work towards a decolonial ideal,
they are not coherent and consistent across our offerings and significantly,
are not codified in the module core outcomes and so we are undergoing a
deep curricula introspection. In our introspection, we pose the following
questions: What is it that we want to offer? What is it that we can offer? We
respond that we wish to be Africanised, multilingual, and globally competi-
tive. These are not mutually exclusive as our students are exposed to different
knowledges and so should navigate a challenging and complex world better.
Our students need to be independent and critical thinkers who can cope in
the digital age. Ubuntu and Humanising Pedagogy frame our teaching and
learning. Renewing the curriculum is a process, not an event and so this is an
ongoing and dynamic endeavour. It will involve iterations of design, imple-
mentation, and evaluation.
Another example shows how a Language Acquisition module can be
co-constructed with academics and postgraduate students. In its original
conceptualisation, the ‘core outcomes’ of the module were to teach First and
Second Language Acquisition Theories. No space was given to multilin-
gual theories of acquisition. Many of our students have found the theories
impenetrable, diffuse, and alienating to their realities of learning languages,
given that it views language as separate and bounded systems. The notion
of an inter-language (Selinker, 1972) as a gateway between first and second
language was particularly perplexing to them as they wondered if they had
many interlanguages. Translanguaging (Garcia, 2009) and multilanguaging
(Makalela, 2017) best describe their language experiences, where languages
are fluid and one moves between them to make meaning. The module is
being reframed as one that speaks to languages acquisition and language
reclamation (Leonard, 2019). This is because often Indigenous languages
are diminished to second class status in South African schooling, leading
to lack of proficiency. With maturity and insight, individuals often actively
seek to reclaim and reaffirm languages that were absent in their primary
and secondary schooling and use these with more agency in their linguis-
tic repertoires. The module is co-constructed through student engage-
ment with reflective questions that seek to trouble the seminal literature on
Second Language Acquisition Interlanguage theory in particular. Students
become co-constructors and generators of new knowledge. The proponents
of Second Language Acquisition theory are focused on identifying factors
that lead to fossilization (Selinker, 1972), that is, consistent ‘errors’ that recur
in language learning despite instruction and exposure to correct form and
how best to deal with these ‘grammatical errors’ in the classroom. This is in
opposition to theories of trans- and multilanguaging that speak to the use of
74 Jacqueline Lück
multiple languages as meaning making endeavours. Nevertheless, we teach
these ‘seminal’ northern theories as students can only speak back if they have
knowledge of the theories. They may also have historical importance for
what once was considered to be a monolingual norm. In this module, stu-
dent research is based on language acquisition among children and adults in a
multilingual context like South Africa, where most people speak more than
one language. This module out the epistemologies of the impact of African
contexts on language acquisition processes. It critically examines what counts
as valid knowledge for a Language Acquisition module in an African setting
and how this knowledge and its knowers can be legitimated.
The above examples highlight how we are seeking to transform Linguistics
on national and local institutional levels by troubling northern epistemologies
and seeking out African epistemologies. Our work is based on our linguistic
and the impact of economic inequalities, race, gender, and class on these.
Conclusion
This chapter has shown that Linguistics in South Africa − like all other
disciplines − is confronted by social justice imperatives of decoloniality in
higher education. It has given some background to the received tradition of
a northern Linguistics canon. At the start of this chapter, the following ques-
tion was posed: How might decoloniality and Africanisation be unfolding in
Linguistics in South Africa? I have shown that Linguistics scholars are react-
ing by rethinking the decolonial call. They may not be doing so in coherent
ways but are striving to account for understandings of difference as opposed
to essentialised understandings of African intersections and scholarship in
Linguistics. I have shown that we are responsive in Linguistics to decoloni-
ality in my particular context, that is, an urban comprehensive (with both
skills and theoretical-based programmes) university in South Africa. The
chapter has shown that Linguistics scholars and are students, are rethinking
and being responsive to the decolonial call nationally in ways that are non-es-
sentialist and draw on our historical and political pasts and present. On a local
university level, we are engaged with the complex work of entangled and
ecological linguistic knowledges – so contributing to new ways of thinking
about Linguistics. What is emerging is that our decolonial project is serving to
reclaim what was marginalised and to take back the African linguistic knowl-
edges that were erased in the canon.
Notes
1. The student protests can be seen as a movement as it spread across the country and
the impact of student demands reverberated across the country and continues to
impact it.
2. We are starting to use our own locally produced textbooks in our department like
language, society, and communication by Zannie Bock and Gift Mheta.
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4 What is the point of studying
Africa in Europe?
A micro-ethnographic study of
decolonising African studies through
international postgraduates in Germany
Irina Turner1
Do you ask rhetorically with Spivak […] whether the subaltern can
speak, or should you […] ask the sovereign to shut up? Do you, […] call
for the decolonisation of the African mind, or should you change the
focus and call for the decolonisation of the European mind?
(Macamo, 2018, p. 4)
Introduction
In his keynote lecture at the 7th European Conference on African Studies
(ECAS) in Basel, Switzerland, Elisio Macamo asked about the legitimi-
sation of African studies in Europe. In order to ‘vouch for the intellec-
tual integrity of [European] research’ in African studies, Macamo (2018)
argued, constant reflection ‘on what makes it possible to know’ was neces-
sary (p. 4). This epistemic reflection also comes with a methodological one:
‘We study Africa because we want to know how to study Africa’ (Macamo,
2018, p. 8) [emphasis in original]. Macamo emphasized that methodolog-
ical focus is the fundament of scholarship; i.e., it is not only defined by
research conclusions but by the quest to find and reflect ‘on the best way
to organize our ways of knowing’ the world; and from this knowledge
emerges great responsibility (2018, p. 8). The success of the decolonial
project in academia requires self-critical engagement of the North with its
own influence in the continuation of neo-colonial structures and power
relations. On a practical level, this also refers to decolonising curricula and
organisational structures, foremost and especially in the field of African
studies. Though some might argue the process has already taken place to
some extend during various waves of critical renewal in the field (Brahm,
2010), this harbours a saturated and static viewpoint and does not do jus-
tice in acknowledging and anticipating the impact of current developments
on the African continent such as the #FeesMustFall movement, which
calls for decolonisation of the academia in South Africa. The consideration
Micro-ethnographic study of decolonising African studies 79
and integration of socially relevant trends in Africa is core for maintain-
ing legitimation within the field of African studies in Europe. 2 Instead
of talking of postcolonialism, where the evils of the past seem overcome,
Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) prefers to name the current status-quo a ‘post-
colonial neo-colonialized world’ describing ‘an entangled situation, where
the African and the Western world meet under highly racialised, hegem-
onic, hierarchical, and unequal terms’ (p. 3f ). Before the utopia of a genu-
inely ‘post-colonial African world’ can become a reality, ‘some dangerous
myths of decolonisation and illusions of freedom’ need to be exposed
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013, p. 13). Since this is a matter of discourse, African
languages, and ontologies play an important role in this endeavour. While
the linguistic study of and communication in African languages is a field
that will become increasingly relevant for the future, the ongoing critical
deconstruction of the field’s past is necessary to enable the survival of this
niche subject. Decolonisation is not only a top–down approach, as students
have a legitimate say in what their education and preparation for the future
should look like. At the University of Leipzig, for instance, a student initi-
ative calls for decolonisation of African studies in Germany. 3 The views of
African postgraduate students studying in Germany can be a contribution
to decolonisation of African studies in Europe. Students from Africa can
bring their diverse educational socialisations and insights from all over
the continent to Europe and can thus play a key role in deconstructing
neo-colonial structures at Northern universities.
From the perspective of language sociology, this chapter presents a
micro-ethnographic study among Master students in inter-disciplinary
African studies. While the umbrella term is broad and unspecific, the focus
of this chapter is anchored within the tradition of German Afrikanistik, the
study of African languages, literatures, and linguistics, and related subjects
such as media and arts. The students speaking here, in the majority, studied
the Master Programme African Verbal and Visual Arts: Languages, Literatures,
Media and Art (AVVA). While a nationwide comprehensive survey on decol-
onisation in German African studies is in need, the scope of this contribution
can only relate the example from Afrikanistik in Bayreuth. The following
questions are explored: What was the students’ motivation to study Africa-
related subjects in Germany? What role did and does coloniality − in the
sense of Grosfoguel (2007) as lasting structural oppression − play in the stu-
dents’ academic life and educational history? What do they hope to gain
from their studies and how can they contribute to a decolonisation of African
studies in the North? What are the problematic areas in the current set up of
the AVVA programme?
The chapter opens with a brief history of the hosting discipline Afrikanistik,
which had influenced the emergence of African studies in Germany to a
major extent (Probst, 2005) to set the contextual background. In the follow-
ing, it explains the method and scope of the empiric core, the ethnographic
micro-study. The results of the interviews are then thematically discussed
80 Irina Turner
under the headlines: concepts of decolonisation, biographical experiences of
colonial structures, motivation to study Africa in Europe, traces of decolo-
nisation and decolonised utopias, as well as a critique of AVVA. Concluding,
results are discussed in the light of African studies in Germany and Afrikanistik
in particular. This micro-study can contribute to the debate on the current
redefinition and re-legitimisation of African studies in the North. The main
purpose of this enquiry is to unravel traces of coloniality within African
studies in Germany.
The role of German African language

studies – Afrikanistik
The new inter-disciplinary Master and Bachelor programmes AVVA:
Languages, Literatures, Media, and Art4 at Bayreuth University have their insti-
tutional intellectual and historical roots in African Language Studies – the
German Afrikanistik. Although an inter-disciplinary opening and integration
of newer research fields within African studies – such as Curation and Media
in Africa – were an important part of the new concept, the pillars of the pro-
grammes remain African languages, literatures, and linguistics. Hence, it is
worthwhile revisiting the (de-)colonising history of the discipline, in order to
understand the context in which current students operate.
The term Africanist is quite ambiguous. Within the African context, it is
used to name an intellectual activist, who politically advances the African
interests through scholarly means taking ‘a perspective that is focused on
defending and promoting the cause of Africa’ (Lamola, 2015, p. 64f ).
Africanists have never been able to afford scholarship for its sheer luxury,
in whatever field, we have worked with an unwritten command to tell
our people about our people. We have had to work our way out from
under a number of historical boulders rolled over us by foreign interests
(Thuynsma, 1998, p. 185).
In the contemporary German university context, however, the Afrikanist

exclusively refers to a scholar of African languages; as the expertise areas of
the respective chairs and its lobby association Fachverb and Afrikanistik eV.
(2019) states. This delineation is neither conclusive nor without objection; as
the role of media and literatures, communication practices, and other socio-
logical aspects gain more ground in contemporary research foci side-lining
pure linguistic concerns. German research on Africa at large, including the
social sciences and art studies, are lobbied by the African Studies Association
Germany (VAD e.V.), whose members also claimed to be Afrikanists (Probst,
2005). These research foci are better represented under the umbrella term
African studies precisely due to its multi-valency.
In the early days of German African studies, linguists clearly dominated
the scene (Probst, 2005). The term Afrikanistik had first been mentioned in
its narrow linguistic sense around 1914 by the founding father of Afrikanistik
Carl Meinhof and later been expanded to include African literatures
(Stoecker, 2008). Meinhof is seen as the ‘most important early 20th Century
scholar of African Studies,’ whose ‘theories on language and ethnicity were
uncompromisingly racist’ and influenced racial thought and politics in the
early 20th Century in Germany and beyond; e.g., in South Africa (Pugach,
2012, p. 19). One important instrument of colonialism was the taxonom-
ical and hierarchal classification of African people and the establishment
of hypothetical cultural boundaries based on grammar, lexis, and cultural
conventions:
German scholars imagined that Africans spoke and acted in a certain man-
ner and were unlikely to deviate from a specific set of behaviours. The
Africa of their imagination did not correlate with what they encountered
on the ground, but that was of little consequence (Pugach, 2012, p. 4).
German Afrikanists, such as Lepsius, Westermann, and Meinhof, played

an important part in assisting the colonial project by bringing order into
a blurred image of African cultures confining it onto ‘a neatly ordered
map’ (Pugach, 2012, p. 4). The process of racialisation of African Language
Studies was tied to the professionalisation and establishment of the aca-
demic discipline and ‘an increasing objectification of Africa’ (Pugach, 2012,
p.3). Since the 1920s, professionalisation of the field has led African stud-
ies away from the missionaries into the German universities, and fostered
the establishment of research chairs, specialisations, and differentiation of
the field, and a distinct academic education with its own curriculum and
examination standards (Stoecker, 2008). Along with the categorisation and
linguistic standardisation, also came a reduction of complexities; of ‘messy
human life-worlds in the form of highly standardised grammars, dictionar-
ies, and illustrative texts resulting in a profound and persistent epistemolog-
ical dislocation’ of African realities (Beck, 2018, p. 2). While the history of
Afrikanistik can by no means be simplified as a product of ‘European dom-
inance and African submission,’ since it has always been a heterogeneous
discourse with many African stakeholders involved (Pugach, 2012, p. 5), it
is nevertheless closely tied to colonial history and therefore in need of thor-
ough continuous deconstruction.
Meta-reflection of Afrikanistik thought and impact has accompanied the
discipline, since its heydays but initially rather aimed at firmly establish-
ing the field within the university on a competitive international scale
(Stoecker, 2008); instead of critical self-reflection on political and social
effects of research outputs. After the second world war, according to emeri-
tus professor of Afrikanistik at the University of Vienna Norbert Cyffer, any
critical engagement with the political implications and colonial agenda of
the founding fathers of Afrikanistik was considered a taboo and only from the
1990s, have colonial aspects of German African studies been systematically
82 Irina Turner
and critically examined (Stoecker, 2008). Originally, Afrikanistik knowledge
emerged from the missionaries where fieldwork done by people living in
Africa was the norm. Later, with the establishment of professorships at the
universities, the knowledge production travelled to the German metropoles
Hamburg and Berlin along with an increasingly racialised discourse about
African languages and cultures such as the Hamit-Theory propagated by
Lepsius and Meinhoff (Pugach, 2012). These so called armchair scholars
relied heavily on African informants (Pugach, 2012), which is also why
Akfrikanist ontology cannot reductively be framed as a purely Western
invention. Despite their crucial importance in the establishment of the disci-
pline, Africans within European African studies largely were for a long time
deemed to resort to the role of ‘informants’ and ‘assistants’ (Stoecker, 2008,
p.311). Eventually, with scholars trained in Germany, Afrikanist knowledge,
e.g., about the classification of African languages, has partly been re-im-
ported into Africa (Pugach, 2012). The end of the German colonies also
brought about the end of the immediate political relevance of German
Afrikanistik (Pugach, 2012; Stoecker, 2008). From this time, Afrikanistik
remained within self-serving ivory towers, where the research outputs were
of little political or social relevance since the colonies no longer needed
practical assistance (Pugach, 2012). Though the period and scope of German
colonialism was relatively short and small compared to other European
nations, German Afrikanists internationally nevertheless contributed to
intellectual colonialism (Pugach, 2012) and later partly supported the Nazi
regime (Probst, 2005).
From the 1960s, there were some activities to decolonise African stud-
ies at large and the field experienced a massive re-politisation and boost
in inter-disciplinarity in Germany; this time in the direction of seeing
Africa on eye-level and supporting decolonisation in African countries
(Probst, 2005). Since traditional Afrikanistik, however, has largely deliber-
ately stood away from these discourses (Probst, 2005), there is a sense that
up to today, the discipline has not recovered from this loss of its former
prestige also due to a failure to re-invent itself appropriately and purge
from colonial infections. In sum, colonial elements are central to the his-
tory of German Afrikanistik. It is less a question of direct impact or political
and personal allegiances than of providing epistemological authority for
racialised politics:
Language formed the basis for understanding Africa’s complicated

ethnic map, and it showed Europeans how to draw boundaries
between groups that might earlier have appeared indistinguishable.
Whether or not Afrikanistik affected German colonial policy in con-
crete terms is thus not the most important issue. What is significant
is how Afrikanistik allowed Africa to be parcelled out in discrete,
easily definable categories that could then be hierarchically arranged
(Pugach, 2012, p.193).
Today, Afrikanistik in Germany is no longer the racialised science from the
past but has a more inter-disciplinary and contextual approach; although the
theoretical lineage is often still drawn back to Meinhof and Westermann
(Pugach, 2012, p.195).5 Nevertheless, proactive distancing from the colonial
past has not been comprehensively carried out nor decidedly been imple-
mented structurally, which might be felt by contemporary students, espe-
cially from Africa who are sensitized to neo-colonial structures. Decolonising
Afrikanistik in Germany must ultimately be a bottom up approach, which is
why the students’ voices are so vital.
Method and scope

The data are drawn from two focus group interview with Master Students
from consecutive cohorts in African studies (Linguistics, Literatures, and
Literature) at Bayreuth University6. The majority of the students studied the
newly launched AVVA master programme. AVVA has been developed to
broaden the scope from linguistics and enable fruitful connections with the
field of literatures, media, and curational studies. It came to life through stu-
dents with an international profile and close personal connections to Africa.
While residing on four major blocks – African languages and linguistics,
literatures in African languages, media and art creation in Africa – students
can individually specialize and the programme can be tailored to specific dis-
ciplinary and regional interests. The students thus infuse a decolonial outlook
on African linguistics and related fields. The following presents a themati-
cally grouped analysis of the points raised during the interview and group
discussion.
Data analysis: Students’ voices
Concepts of decolonisation
When being asked about their concepts of decolonisation, the students – with
reference to Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986) – describe it as a psychological con-
dition ‘like a virus’one needs to be healed from:
A textbook definition is a lack […] of political colonial presence. And so,

some people talk about the sixties as the period of decolonisation, but I
think that, that is not the whole truth. […] Rather than a lack of colonial
power, decolonisation is the uncolonising of the mentality in so-called
postcolonial places (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
‘Mental colonisation’ is the worst and the most difficult form to undo since it
‘stole the African souls, invaded their consciousness, destroyed, and distorted
their imagination of the future’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013, p.50). Ironically,
mental purging was the hardest for the forefathers of the postcolonial struggle
84 Irina Turner
because they usually were educated at Western universities and colonial
schools and were thus immediately exposed to a Eurocentric knowledge
hegemony (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). The idea of re-connecting to a preco-
lonial ideal utopia and rebalance pre-existing power relations is seen critically
by the students:
Negotiating that something can come back as it was before all these
interferences came […] that is like nearly impossible. I think decolonisa-
tion is just a way that allows for an integration. Like accepting this past.
But then how do we move on from this? (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
The notion of integration is echoed by Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013), who

describes a genuinely postcolonial world as one that does not reject Western
knowledge but democratizes this epistemic hegemony ‘so that it recognizes
other knowledges from the ex-colonized world as equally important and
relevant’ (p. 60). Democratisation of knowledge then must actively facili-
tate critical negotiation of given truths and power structures. Decolonisation
seems linked to Africanisation or Afrocentricity, defined by Asante (1988) as
a ‘critical perspective placing African ideals as the centre of any analysis that
involves African culture or behaviour’ (p. 6). This might inevitably result
in an essentialising exercise about Africanness; a move that African studies
urgently attempts to undo as the students are aware of:
To define [African] becomes […] a problem […]. What is so African

about you to say: ‘I am an African? ‘When already you are growing up
with all these additions and spices […] and salts and all these things. What
is then African about me? (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
The question of who an African is and what makes this person African is
relevant and yet unsolved. Africanism can be seen as a response to and result
of imperialism and colonialism and racial aspects of Africanness are attrib-
uted to the emergence of African Diasporas and of course colonial ideology
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) argues that being African
is a collective historic experience that justifies ‘claim of common identity’
(p. 111); i.e., a common experience of coloniality.
Biographical experiences of colonial structures

The AVVA students are between 20 and 40 years of age; i.e., most have
grown up in independent African states. Yet, they all have to a greater or
lesser extent encountered colonial structures within their education biog-
raphies. To ask about these is relevant when considering a bottom up uto-
pia of a decolonised study environment; the current status-quo in liberal
Western academia is in some respects not so far from the experiences made
in Africa. Traces of coloniality become evident in neo-colonial conditions.
The repetition of supposedly transcended oppressive structures brings about
awareness of the need for action. One aspect is concerned with teaching
material. A curation student related experiences made during her under-
graduate studies at Chinoyi University, Zimbabwe, where she searched the
university library in vain for African artists and philosophers but only found
‘Bruegels and Picassos, and Michaelangelos,’ which did not make sense nor
inspire her. Instead she felt stuck with Socrates and Plato asking herself: ‘What
am I actually supposed to learn from it?’ (Focus Group Interview, 2018). The
prevalence of Western thought in the curriculum is creating resistance, as
it is not offering a platform for the identification or any sense of reciprocal
relationship:
There is no Ugandan on the syllabus. There is not even… no African. It

is either Europe or America […]. And I feel that [these are] people, you
don’t have to know. Because they don’t even know if Uganda is in Africa
or somewhere (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
And indeed, Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) confirms that the time has come for
‘an African epistemological rebellion’ which places ‘the African experience at
the centre of intellectualism and the African taking a leading role in the pro-
duction of situated and relevant knowledge’ (p. 52). The quest to ‘Africanize
global scholarship and globalize African scholarship’ (Zeleza, 2003, p.97)
entails a tackling of institutional structures as much as an ontological edi-
fice, which is built on the foundation of universalized Western experience
At the same time, questioning the universality of science should not hap-
pen at the expense of ‘an essentialising cultural revivalism that homogenizes
Africa’s diverse cultures’ (Zeleza, 2003, p.97) but rather aim at undoing the
lack-oriented framing of African knowledge. From the perspective of polit-
ical economy, the consciousness for ontological dependency and disciplinary
obligation from and to the West had been instilled early in the students’
minds:
S1: In primary school, everything was being taught in French.[…] all

the materials, all we had. […] Everything was coming from outside the
country. All the books and everything. I don’t even know of a book that
was published in Rwanda or in Africa.
S2: But even, how do these books get into our libraries? Most of them
are donations. […] At your house what would you donate? The things
you don’t need.
S3: Some of these books are even no longer used by the people in
America. (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
Physical restrictions such as access to and availability of relevant textbooks

have been a major stumbling block in the advancement of decolonisation
for a long time (see Brock-Utne, 2017). This ongoing systemic material
86 Irina Turner
shortcoming continues into the digital age as access to quality and diver-
sified publications continue to be subject to gatekeeping. Normalising the
Western canon through the selected provision of textbooks can be seen
as one route in the ‘coloniality of knowledge;’ a notion coined by Arturo
Escobar (2007):
Coloniality of knowledge addresses the epistemological questions of how

colonial modernity interfered with African modes of knowing social
meaning-making, imagining, seeing knowledge production, and their
replacement with Eurocentric epistemologies that assumed the character
of objective, scientific, neutral, universal and only truthful knowledges
(in Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013, p. 8).
The resulting sense of alienation is common in postcolonial teaching envi-

ronments (e.g., Everatt, 20167). Language politics play a major part in these
suppressive dynamics, maintain the students:
I think what the system does, it makes you an alien in your own sys-
tem; beginning with language. […] I find that I can’t text fluently in
my mothertongue because from the moment I was born: English. You
know. And then you begin to even not like your mothertongue. […]
Small things like language […] they penetrate you deeper (Focus Group
Interview, 2018).
Two students recalled how they were disciplined at primary school for
speaking their mothertongue on the school grounds through corporal pun-
ishment or by carrying a foul smelling bone which was to symbolize the
primitivism of African languages. Epistemic violence is but a close step from
physical violence evident in moments of transgression. This shows that colo-
nial conceptions of language still linger on in postindependence African
contexts but also Europe is not free from such notions, as Beck (2018) argues:
The language disconnect – the differentiation between word and world,

between language and society, and its effects on our current world […] is
itself indicative of the apparatus of modernity. […] Our understanding of
the dynamics of language production in Africa as a joint effort of science
and politics, productive of Africa as well as of Europe in the sense of a
‘double inscription’, is little understood (p. 3).
Based on Baumann and Briggs (2003) as well as Lacan and Fink (2006),
Beck here refers to the inseparability of culture and language in identity
formation and the entanglement of Africa and Europe as a platform for dia-
lectically establishing a European identity. As long as language is still seen as
an autonomous entity and separable object of study, it carries the academic
authority to be a ‘boundary-making apparatus that produces difference and
inequality’ (Beck, 2018, p. 4).8 In education and the university, ‘inequali-
ties resulting from colonialism are codified and perpetuated’ and due to the
seemingly neutral and context-free claim to universality of science, academia
is also ‘deterritorialised’ and ‘hegemonic’ upheld and driven by language’ as a
standardised, normative entity,’ which assists in formal institutions and their
power structures (Beck, 2018, p. 6). Apart from material and curriculum,
pedagogical aspects, too carry forward colonial structures and the sense of
being caught in insurmountable hierarchies is an experience made here as
there, as the students explain:
Choosing what you should learn. They don’t teach you to think with the
brain. […] The education system back home […] it brings a few things
to you and you are supposed to get them as they are. You are not told
to question, you are not told to think out of the box […]. Basically you
become a slave to this knowledge. It is not teaching you to liberate your-
self. […] Never ever […] challenge your teacher. Never. […] You are sup-
posed to think you are down there and the other person is up there and
you never have to meet. This kind of [dis]empowering the mind is what
I think is affecting many of us. […] They put just a few people in those
places of power and these people are maintained there for years and noth-
ing changes for a long period of time (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
Bureaucratic structures are also an important way of purporting colonial

ideologies (Kalpagam, 2006). A student from Rwanda recalled how during
her early school years in the late 1980s, the relicts of the ‘Belgian [educa-
tion] system’9 taught people to complicate matters unnecessarily for the sake
of complication: ‘Everything was really complicated because you were just
obliged to do it that way. It is still like really, really colonising’ (Focus Group
Interview, 2018).
A student from the USA made evident how growing up in a Western
education system can be an equally colonial experience of white supremacy:
Growing up it is normal and at a certain point you look back and think,
wow that shouldn’t be normal. […] In public school, we kids […] in
America basically learned that we were friends with native Americans
and that we all got along until they disappeared. […] We don’t talk
about that we committed genocide. […] And then the same with slav-
ery. […] ‘These black people came over from Africa and helped us with
our economy’. […] There is a lot of focus still on white people and
how they are the abolitionists. […] We are always seen as the protago-
nists, the active agents in any sort of historical unfolding (Focus Group
Interview, 2018).
The backgrounding of white agents in favour of alternative voices is a tan-

gible goal that can be pursued by contemporary Africanists and lecturers of
88 Irina Turner
African studies. One main concern for all students is the social and ontolog-
ical relevance of their studies for local contexts:
If I am going to get out and then become someone in my own commu-

nity, [they should] […] benefit from those things. Because the commu-
nity already got its own philosophies. And I cannot bring something that
I got from Socrates. […] How do I then […] adopt the granny who is
there, because she is already a philosopher, […] take her words and make
meaning to myself and get rid of Socrates, who I had spent four years
with? (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
In the case of AVVA, an additional difficulty is to communicate the signifi-

cance of museum’s curation to the communities back home:
I have to defend [my degree choice] almost every day. If I was doing
Engineering it would be a bit more valid. But Curating? […] ‘Are you
going to master nails and labels?’. […] Curating people can sort of pro-
nounce and [that] makes it a bit questionable for those who want to do
it more professionally. ‘What are you going to add on the table? What
should we expect beyond just hanging artwork on the wall?’ (Focus
Group Interview, 2018).
When transferring these experiences made in the past outside Europe to the
current system, presumably many aspects are maintained or to some extent
repeated; even within the system of African studies in Europe: Hierarchical,
un-democratic, and paternalistic structures within the academia, lack of
African thought in the curriculum, economic dependency relationships
geared towards the North in appointments, funding, and publishing; lin-
guistic hegemony10; bureaucratic and systemic alienation of foreign people
(Auer, 2013) as well as lack of social and ontological relevance of research
for local contexts. The latter argument of local relevance should be taken
seriously also with regards to the German context. The Humboldt ideal of
the free universal scholar has its merits and the increasing functional quan-
tification and commercialisation of academia has been so far successfully
defeated in the realm of Afrikanistik, which draws its legitimisation largely
from representing a niche subject in a pluralistic and diverse research envi-
ronment. The principles of free research are thankfully held high in the
German context:
Research is, by its very nature, dealing with what we do not know […].
Research evaluations should not create a situation in which predomi-
nantly ‘normal’ science is conducted which, while offering the scope
to be easily planned and well-documented, hardly leaves any place for
serendipity11 (Bornmann, 2013, p. 231).
Nevertheless, the call for public accountability and communication of the rel-
evance of research results is nationally and internationally growing; especially
for African contexts. This is not to say that Afrikanistik must produce tangible,
marketable ‘outputs,’ but rather emphasize and promote its research’s social
‘(e.g., stimulating new approaches to social issues, informed public debate, and
improved policymaking)’ and cultural benefits (‘e.g., understanding how we
relate to other societies and cultures, contributing to cultural preservation and
enrichment’) (Bornmann, 2013, p. 218). And this is mainly not only in a ‘devel-
opmental’ trajectory from Europe to Africa, but more urgently in a self-sus-
taining agenda of ‘what can be learned from Africa.’ One way of refraining
from falling into the radar of the rating frenzy shaking up the natural sciences
is the proactive promotion of best practice case studies (Bornmann, 2013,
p. 222). In this light, Afrikanistik in Germany seems to have a special mandate in
promoting postcolonial thought as well as self-critically and proactively assess-
ing its own colonial history as this is relevant for the broader public discourse
for instance on migration and integration. Entering the public debate about its
own relevance, the discipline can ‘decolonise’ and emancipate from the past.
Motivation to study African studies in Germany

Asked for their motivation to study Africa-related subjects in Germany, stu-
dents expectedly gave practical reasons such as scholarship opportunities,
existing collaborations, and unique programme concepts such as Curation of
African Art. However, on a psychological level, it became evident that this
choice does not come without ideological baggage:
AFRICAN Verbal and Visual Arts. That first thing ‘African’. Already,
[people at home] have a problem with that: ‘You are an African. You
are leaving Africa to go to Germany to study Africa. What is that?’ And
many a times, I get stuck for an answer. […] I am now taking out the
‘African’. I am just saying: ‘I’m studying Verbal and Visual Arts’ […].
Even if you want to tell them, there is no university here that is going to
offer me a curatorial understanding. […] Still they are just going to hang
me on the cross: […]’You can’t leave Africa to go and study Africa […] It
is a very dangerous question’ (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
The implicit danger in this question lies in its potential to affirm a Eurocentric
notion of Africa by being part of a system – in this case a study programme –
under the ‘Africa’ label,12 as Mbembe (2001) has pointed out:
Africa as an idea […] continues to serve as a polemical argument for the

West’s desperate desire to assert its difference from the rest of the world.
In several respects, Africa still constitutes one of the metaphors through
which the West represents the origin of its own norms (p. 2).
90 Irina Turner
On a macro-level, this phenomenon, which Mudimbe calls the ‘Invention of
Africa’ (1988), serves as a backdrop for Western identity construction. On a
meso-level, the label ‘African studies’ fulfils this function for a group of schol-
ars united by the fascination to a particular Southern world region and its
metaphorical implications. By being part of this arrangement as a student, one
silently accepts and stabilizes this delicate mobile. The main reasoning for stud-
ying in Europe seems to have been a change of physical and cultural perspec-
tive. In a postcolonial ‘afterlife’ global integration seems key to the students:
I believe that it is really important that we think about Uganda on a

global level. […] To tap into all this integration it’s important that people
get out. […] You see the problem more clearly. You see how you can be
part of a solving agent (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
Though a change of perspective also has potentially problematic implications

of assumed superiority: ‘When I was still in Africa, I was seeing Africa around
me. […] But now that I am in Germany, I am looking at Africa from the top’
(Focus Group Interview, 2018). In the case of the American student, practical
economic and geographical reasons seem to overlap with ideological ones:
Being in Germany is sort of like being between America and Africa. […]
I was considering studying in Ghana but […] by stepping back I have the
opportunity not just to study Twi but […] I can study West Africa and
then at the same time be involved in it. I can […] go there much easier
than I could from America. There is a sort of a middle ground […] by
being in Germany that allows me certain privileges and opportunities but
at the same time access to the continent (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
This middle ground is not only geographically but also ideologically tan-
gible as German African studies ‘manouver’ between the Anglophone and
Francophone tradition (Probst, 2005, p.405).
Traces of decolonisation and a decolonised utopia

Without a doubt, there has been progress in decolonising the academia in Africa
as well as in Europe. The students describe an ideal decolonised study environ-
ment as one that gives space for individual centred identities and provides options:
I need [a programme] that prioritizes my interests and teaches me how to

analyse things and […] to even know who I am. […] I think none of that is
there now. […] For me [a study programme] is like a platform. […]: This
I want to study, because it is going to help me and this I won’t study,
because it won’t help me. […]. If this curriculum was thinking about me
[…] it would start […] mentoring me into making an informed choice of
who I want to be (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
Unfortunately, the sense of compulsion has apparently been maintained for
that particular student within the AVVA programme (see emphasis). While
AVVA tries to create spaces for individual scholarly interests wherever pos-
sible, some adherence disciplinary standards, such as the learning of African
languages, is deemed necessary on the one hand, to maintain the stability of
the discipline, and on the other, to speak from a common canon that very
well might be altered, discussed, and deconstructed again.
Interestingly, the promotion of English as a ‘neutral’ language in this con-
text is ubiquitous, as in the example of Rwanda: ‘[High School] Teachers
were obliged to switch to English […] It was almost impossible. How can
you just switch to English in one year or two years coming from the French
system?’ (Focus Group Interview, 2018). English, however, despite its ‘deter-
rioralised’ global character is in no ways ideologically neutral but ‘closely
associated with global knowledge and the promises of upward social mobil-
ity’ and ‘figures both as colonial inheritance and as an instrument of uni-
versal knowledge production’ (Beck, 2018, p. 10). Traditional Afrikanistik
is backgrounded within the new AVVA programme in favour of an inter-
disciplinary opening to African studies, which does not come without criti-
cism itself. The question of the legitimisation of area studies is a current topic
not only in Germany (Melber, 2009) and also concerns the students:
I think in an ideal world we wouldn’t study African studies in the first

place. […] We group all of these really different fields of study under
a huge geographical heading […] to make the field seem reputable, to
make it bigger than it is. […] It creates this idea that Africa is a culture, or
a country, or an entity which it is not. […] I think we need to get rid of
that heading. […] You can pick one [African] language or one literature,
or one tradition […] and it is as legitimate as studying Rococo architec-
ture (Focus Group Interview, 2018).
Melber (2009) argues that – for Europe and globally − African studies main-
tain their political and social relevance beyond the ‘utilitarianism of eco-
nomic, geopolitical, and strategic interests’ (p. 188). African studies draw
strength from their inter-disciplinarity while at the same time feed relevance
back into the disciplines by being bound together under the Africa label; and
thus represent a ‘dialectical understanding of scholarly work’ (Melber, 2009,
p. 192).
Critique of AVVA
One year after inception, in 2018, students were in a better position to see the
shortfalls of AVVA. The second cohort benefitted from the experiences of the
pioneers and therefore had a more critical approach to the study programme.
As the liminality of the beginning started to fade, structures emerged that
could be opposed and transformed and the students also emphasized their
92 Irina Turner
productive role in transforming the curriculum and research hierarchies.
Three Master’s students from the group, i.e., Monika Rohmer, Martha
Kazungu, and Kamran Sehgal analysed the second Focus Group Interview
from 2019. The following section is written by the students and covers aspects
of pedagogy, theory, access to and selection of literature, the conceptualis-
ation of research objects, and the role of languages.
Pedagogy
This setting − us students commenting on the group interview − is of impor-
tance, since it aims to undermine dominant conceptions of science in several
ways. First, we challenge a hierarchic understanding of academia in which
we, the students, are supposed to listen and learn what is presented by the
teachers, authorized by academic titles and positions. Second, we are blur-
ring the line in between researcher and researched. Thereby, we stay subjects
through the whole experience; being able to re-comment and re-formulate
at every stage of the process. Third, in commenting, we primarily draw on
our own experiences and everyday knowledge, in opposition to scholarly
literature. This implies, a critique of what is seen as ‘knowledge’ in scholarly
discourses.
Theory
Recently, as I was catching up with a friend about the progress of a term
paper, he was astonished at the response given by a professor, who said that
the student should stick to the reading list provided. The student referenced
a Rwandese comic, which the professor did not know about. There was no
Rwandese or African authors on that reading list. In all the fields AVVA
covers, readings are being dominated by Western academics and universi-
ties. Rarely do we engage with African writers’ theoretical texts. It seems
like ‘[there is] no theorizing outside of Europe. And then, of course, there
are people applying these theories to the African context without admitting
that they have a biased background’ (Focus Group discussion, 2019). We are
given European theories, often with clear biases and prejudices, with African
subjects upon which to apply them. This does not imply that European and
African theories are solely applicable to the continents on which they were
birthed. Further, there has been an interplay between the continents’ knowl-
edge productions. Rather, the unequal ratio given in our studies gives us a
poor understanding of African theory. How can we move away from see-
ing African Arts through a European gaze? How can we move beyond the
‘European centre point of view’? How can we even start seeing the African
knowledges, replacing European knowledges about the continent?
Semiotics, for instance, exist in Africa but not on white paper. There are
certain occurrences that are considered premonitions or signifiers of some-
thing to happen in the near future. In most cases, these occurrences are paired
in a way that once the first occurrence happens, societies prepare themselves
for the respective expected event. For example, among the Basoga of Eastern
Uganda and the Luhya of Western Kenya, the occurrence of two cocks fight-
ing is a signifier of uninvited guests to arrive in the near future. Another
way of knowing that an uninvited guest will be arriving soon among the
Basoga is when one sees a bee buzzing around objects in the homestead. This
kind of knowledge, which is not recorded on white paper becomes useless in
the academic domain. In consequence, students, especially from an African
background, feel side-lined in what is possibly accepted as ‘citable’ literature.
Literature, standard, and access

Throughout our studies, we are trained to gather information from books,
cite them correctly, and condensate again in writing. However, when we
encounter a structural absence of literature, what can be the next step? As
students within the African Arts, we sometimes encounter scientific stand-
ards as boundaries in making meaning of our research field. While standards
are of significance, we feel they are misplaced when hindering in gathering
all available information. Classical research in the library is well suited for
historic accounts but is less fruitful in interpreting contemporary artworks,
present popular cultures or decolonising methods within the African studies.
Within the focus group discussion, we discussed two approaches to handle
this problem: On the one hand, furthering to integrate digital publications
of several kinds, on the other, fostering decolonised theories through decol-
onised field research.
African universities hold a significant amount of unpublished papers due to
access barriers to journals and a lack of own resources. This is a longstanding
issue that needs to be tackled by the ‘international’ science community if
there’s really a commitment to knowledge expansion. Here, the digital era
offers various tools for creative approaches. ‘I just feel that’s where the deco-
lonial knowledge to a certain extent lies because the Internet does not have
the barriers scientific journals have and so maybe in our context we have to
be less rigid [with] some things that were always taught’ (Focus Group dis-
cussion, 2019). As ‘digital natives’ we rely on a range of web-based platforms
in gathering information. We watch lectures online on university-based plat-
forms as well as on YouTube. We take online classes from our own university
as well as from private institutions. We engage in discussions on our research
topics through instant messaging. We experiment with online-based writing
tools, comment, and blog.
Defining a research object

‘My first study was anthropology. […] Now in retrospect I’m quite shocked
about how it was taught in a way that you always learned how to study about
someone. […] And maybe that’s also something that we could try to teach in
94 Irina Turner
AVVA: […] to study with instead of studying about an artist. Because this is
already this gesture− […] I would say it’s a colonial gesture −to study about a
subject’ (Focus Group discussion, 2019).
Field research has a history of being taught in German universities as the
study about the other. A decolonised field research reverses this concept. As
voiced above, the aim should be to study with instead of studying about our col-
leagues on the African continent. We want to learn from and with our fellows.
We expect the AVVA curriculum to provide us with a basis for encounters
on eye-level, within and beyond the university. We need to move away from
classifications in books to a politics of the fellow-creature (Mbembe, 2008).
This might entail the necessity to formulate ‘codexes’ or a ‘guideline, so to
say how to behave as a researcher, who is doing research on arts, literature or
whatever’ (Focus Group discussion, 2019). In the framework of field research
history, this is an especially challenging task. However, it is through decol-
onised fieldwork that we attempt to move beyond an analysis of the past to
study the present and the future.
African languages in AVVA and at SOAS13

The Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa seems to be the genesis of
our current discourse on decolonisation. Though it is often not relayed onto
European universities, peculiarly, as the rise in tuition fees was one serious
cause for a protest at SOAS when fees were trebled in 2010. Bayreuth, at
the time of writing, does not have this problem as the institution is basically
tuition free.
Another source of complaint I observed at SOAS was frustration with the
academic spotlight being focused on a handful of countries. The majority
of readings and lectures in our courses dealt directly with countries for-
merly under British rule. The professors of African origin came from
Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa; giving the university a thoroughly
Anglophone atmosphere. An introductory ‘African cultures’ course was
nicknamed ‘Nigerian culture’ due to the almost exclusive focus on Nigeria.
Bayreuth seems to be breaking this mould with many lecturers being
fluent in both English and French and avoids an explicit Anglophone or
Francophone focus. I have been refreshingly exposed to Francophone Africa
in both literature and linguistics courses. But still, there is a blind spot with
the invisibility of Lusophone Africa being somewhat the final frontier in a
full African studies programme. The whole debate further shows how far we
are from decolonised African studies. Still, the African continent is divided
scholarly by means of the languages of the European colonizers. The selec-
tion of languages [at SOAS] included Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Zulu, Somali,
and Amharic with only the last not being spoken in a former British colony.
SOAS was built with the original purpose of training civil servants in the
languages of subject peoples and the correlation between the languages being
taught currently with this original purpose is not hard to miss. In contrast,
Bayreuth, established after the period of African independence, offers
Swahili, Hausa, Bambara, Arabic, and an online course in Xhosa. The choice
shows no links to or any preference to a geographical or colonial language
area. When we parade that we are teaching African languages, what does
that actually mean, since the African continent has thousands of languages.
How do we explain the selection of having just five languages as the ‘African
languages’? The facilitators responded that the reason for this is logistical. But
it goes back to the whole thing of the African brand. The students therefore
request for more options. That the university should be able to have a fair
number of languages to qualify the label ‘African languages.’
Conclusion: Getting rid of Socrates

As the students rightly pointed out, so far, there is still a void of African
theory within AVVA. Especially for students with a focus in African Arts,
standardized academic methods and gatekeeping processes of ‘quotable’ lit-
erature feel oppressive. While the colonial heritage and ties, and therefore
biases, are stronger in the Anglophone world where most times universities
are businesses, inequality in higher education is also existent in Germany
through centuries of elitist gatekeeping and colonially rooted institutionali-
sations of oppressive structures. These historic baggages need to be laid open
for genuine transformation.
Nevertheless, the example of the AVVA programme shows that German
Afrikanistik has the capacity to renew from within without abolishing itself. The
programme has managed to attract inter-disciplinary, transcultural students
with active interests in African contexts. It has striven to provide a guiding
structure for studying while at the same time keeping content open and flexible
for students’ interests and backgrounds. The integration of African perspectives
is an ongoing endeavour but leaves room for expansion. Decolonisation should
be purported in the areas of curriculum and literature, protagonists (students,
lecturers, and administrators), naming, deconstruction of claims of ontological
objectivity and language as a closed entity, democratisation and empowering
in teaching methods and contents, and last but not least an opening up to the
increasingly loud call of African scholars14 to make research socially relevant.
This requires some unlearning of known truths and certainties within the dis-
cipline; foremost, the conceptualisation of language itself:
As long as [Africanist linguists] defend their role as guardians of language

as an autonomous object: by keeping it in theory and practice ‘pure’ –
disconnected from all matters social – they reify the very colonial lan-
guage–culture–territory figuration and ensuing discourses they helped
produce. More importantly, they place a conceptual restriction on the
development of their discipline, which is no longer able to grasp the new
phenomena that keep emerging in the context of accelerated globalisa-
tion and transnationalisation (Beck, 2018, p. 8).
96 Irina Turner
The foremost aim should not be integration and accommodation of black peo-
ple into Afrikanistik. Rather, it is the proactive acknowledgement by a field of
predominantly white people that there is another world out there outside of the
realm of vowel pushing, that African languages are not an object to be taught
and researched but that the institution itself is part of a mutual living relationship
with its interests and agendas. Neither Africa nor language can be an object of
enquiry per se. This realisation fundamentally impacts on the researchers’ iden-
tity. Afrikanistik needs to proactively distance itself from the ‘imperial knowl-
edge’ production it was historically part of and which assisted in systematically
humiliating and marginalizing Africans (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013, p. 53).
While the early Afrikanists were driven by the exotic quest to discover ‘human
origins and inter-relationships among far-flung people’ (Pugach, 2012, p. 17),
today’s research should be more concerned with inter-relationships of the study
object to the self. This self-reflexive agenda is tackled by the newly launched
intercontinental collaborative project ‘Recalibrating Afrikanistik,’ which is a
cooperation between the University of Leipzig, University of Bayreuth, and
Cologne University as well as Stellenbosch University, Eldoret University, and
Wukari University15 It aims at fostering physical, mental, and epistemic mobil-
ity for students and teachers of Afrikanistik.
While this chapter has highlighted the need for further decolonisation of
African studies and Afrikanistik in particular, more concrete AVVA students’
visions in that regard are yet to be developed and a nationwide study of the
field could be fruitful. To fill AVVA with truly Africanist content − in the
sense of Thuynsma (1998) − knowledge and means, the programme might
need to accrue a little longer history to reflect and work upon. The chapter
has shown that the point of studying Africa in Europe is to be a constitutive
part of a productive deconstruction of the notion of Africa as well as African
languages as enclosed and objectifiable cultural and ontological artefacts.
Notes
1. This paper is a collaborative writing/editing effort with the AVVA MA students
of class 2017 and 2018. In particular, I am thankful to Monika Rohmer, Martha
Kazungu, and Kamran Sehgal who took time and effort to contribute to this
chapter.
2. For a discussion of the relevance of African studies on a global scope see
Melber 2009.
3. As a critical reaction to the seminar ‘Was macht die Bundeswehr in Mali?’ students
of African studies in Leipzig demanded a public forum for debate on the ‘Milita-
risation and Ethics in African Studies,’ which was held in January 2018. Further-
more, from this resulted a reading group ‘Critical African Studies’ that focuses
explicitly on postcolonial contents. (Information based on e-mail correspondence
with the Institute of African Studies at Leipzig University, August 2018).
4. The programmes have been launched in October 2017. The language of instruc-
tion is English. This comes with its own ideological baggage as a colonial lan-
guage assuming ‘superiority’ to other languages: ‘In the university, being a colonial
export to Africa, English figures both as colonial inheritance and as an instrument
of universal knowledge production’ (Beck 2018, p. 10).
5. Some crude ideas, like the ‘Hamit Theory’ by Meinhof, is seen as a contextual
by-product of history, a ‘strange artefact based on a wrongheaded idea,’ instead of
a founding pillar of contemporary research (Pugach 2012, p.195).
6. Transcript available on request: Irina.turner@uni-bayreuth.de. Students wanted to
remain anonymous.
7. This refers to the South African higher education context specifically: ‘For many
students, much of the academy is an alienating, overwhelmingly white, Eurocen-
tric space, and experience. Students arrive and are expected to meet imported
norms, seminar room sarcasm, unknown customs, foreign authors, hard marking,
and plain hard slog of tertiary education, while being young and going through
their own life transitions, and doing so in ‘othered’ spaces, out of vernacular, and
so on (Everatt 20 October 2016).
8. For a deconstruction of ‘language’ as a monolithic concept see Pennycook & Sin-
free (2012).
9. For an analysis of the many changes in the Rwandan education system throughout
the 20th Century and its role in fostering ethnocentrism leading up to the genocide
see McLean Hilker (2011). The role of education in driving conflict and building
peace: The case of Rwanda. Prospects 41(2), 267–282.
10. The Bavarian government demands knowledge of German from AVVA Master
students even for an English taught study programme, where learning of two addi-
tional African languages is compulsory.
11. Referring to Ziman, J. (2000). Real science: What it is, and what it means. Cambridge,
United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
12. For an etymology of ‘Africa’ see Mudimbe 1988, 1994, Spivak 1991, p. 170; Zeleza
2006. (In: Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013, p. 107).
13. A student with a BA background at the School of Oriental Studies in London
was able to provide a direct comparison and so carve out the idiosyncrasies of
AVVA.
14. Since the inception of AVVA in 2017, several scholars have emphasized this aspect
in their presentations at the Research Colloquium in Bayreuth: Prof Gratien Atin-
dogbe (University of Buea): Achieving the SDGs through Documentary Linguistics.
April 2018. Chijoke Uwah (University of Fort Hare): Exploring the Prophetic Dis-
courses on the Realities of Post-Apartheid South Africa in the Plays of Zakes Mda. January
2018. Prof Kithaka wa Mberia (University of Nairobi) Reality and Dreams: The Place
of the Writer in Present-Day Africa. May 2018.
15. h t t p: //p o r t a l .v o l k s w a g e n s t i f t u n g . d e /s e a r c h /p r o j e c t D e t a i l s . d o ? s i t e
Language=en&ref=96797
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5 The relationality of knowledge
and postcolonial endeavours –
analysing the definition,
emergence, and trading
of knowledge(s) from a
network theory perspective
Iris Clemens
Introduction
Since concepts such as ‘diffusion’ have been criticised fundamentally
(Krücken, 2005) to describe the mobility and transformation of knowledge,
the way is free to see multiple contributions to the emergence of knowledge
worldwide. The diffusion approach (Meyer & Ramirez, 2003) is based on
a centralistic model in which knowledge or concepts have emerged in the
so-called West and from there, it spread throughout the world. This is criti-
cized in postcolonial perspectives (Raina, 2016), and the global contribution
to the flows of knowledge at all times is stressed. In this perspective, knowl-
edge is always a product of encounters (Galison, 1997) and therefore, a hybrid
phenomenon. This enables us to overcome the often nationalistically con-
noted questions regarding sources of knowledge and to appreciate dynamic
processes of on-going encounters of knowledge instead. Colonial entangle-
ments also of recent influential concepts such as the Anthropocene point
‘towards the necessity of Non-Euro (and even non-Anthropo) centric under-
standings’ (de Groof, 2019, p. 92f.), and towards changes of perspectives.
Starting with some comments on the contested terrain of the very defi-
nition of knowledge and the biased, discriminating discussions in the past,
the following Section draws attention to the approach of trading zones of
knowledge as a basis for further argumentation of knowledge encounters.
In the next step, the process of travelling knowledge in the educational field
from a network theory perspective (Clemens, 2015) will be discussed. While
borrowing the notion of generative tensions by Verran (2001), the last part of
the chapter uses an example from math classes in Nigeria to show the crea-
tive potential of such encounters of logic or knowledge. Then, some conse-
quences will be discussed. The main goal of this chapter is to contribute to
the decolonisation of the definition of knowledge as well as the analysis of its
emergence and movement and to argue for the innovation potential through
the encounter of knowledges.
Relationality of knowledge and postcolonial endeavours 101
Decolonising the definition of knowledge
Notions such as hybrid science discussed in this volume raise the question
of whether there is – or could be at all – a science, which is not hybrid? In
other words, is there or has there ever been a ‘pure’ science? And what could
that be, how could it look like, and most of all: how could that emerge? The
concepts of hybrid science and epistemic diversity refer to at least two related
differentiations, namely cultures and disciplines. On the one hand, it implies
sociocultural differences of knowledge and related ideas of ‘contaminations’
through cultural contents. Purity would mean knowledge without such con-
taminations from cultural specific contents in consequence. This also touches
the question of universality of knowledge versus cultural specific or diverse
knowledges. Epistemic diversity, on the other hand, brings up as by-product
questions regarding disciplinary differences in epistemologies. Here, purity
might imply knowledge that is based only on one epistemological approach,
or from a single discipline only. In general, purity means singularity, definite
borders, no contact, and no contaminations from something that is ‘behind’
that imagined border. In other words, in both cases of cultures and disciplines,
the object at hand – knowledge, or science, or epistemology – is constructed
as a distinct entity, separated and pure, unaffected from influences from ‘out-
side,’ wherever that is. In such a logic of purity, this pretended purity is con-
structed as the normal case, with hybrid science or indigenous knowledge as
deviations. As previously indicated, the discussion of indigenous knowledge
(Hwang, 2005; Mukherji, 2004; Raina, 2016a for recent calls to indigenize
the Anthropocene and hear epistemologies from the South, e.g., DeLoughrey
& Handley, 2011; Mukherjee, 2010; Nixon, 2005) suggests that knowledge
or knowledge production would normally be without such ‘contaminations’
(Clemens, 2009). This is highly questionable. This chapter rather argues in
line with other authors, especially from the sociology of scientific knowledge
and postcolonial debates (Raina, 2009, 2016), that knowledge is per se a
product of interfaces and therefore not ‘purely’ national or cultural. This is
important for the process of decolonisation, as it questions a certain distinc-
tion between forms of knowledge as pure or scientific and other, culturally
contaminated forms.
Knowledge, its emergence and movement is a controversial, often con-
tested terrain (for education Bhattacharya, 1998). Any analysis of knowl-
edge, its emergence, transformation, and mobility start with the problem
of defining it. For the last centuries, in the dominant narratives, Europe
and later North America (often forgotten: Australia/New Zealand) have
been the main or more or less the only producers of ‘valuable’ – especially
scientific – knowledge. Non-European/North-American constructs were
marginalized, overlooked, or diminished to a large extent1. Only when this
dominant European/North-American narrative faded, a more pluralistic
debate became possible about what knowledge can be. That led to a grow-
ing awareness of different knowledge forms. For example, the struggle for
102 Iris Clemens
Indian perspectives to be accepted as scientific knowledge – or in the case
of philosophy as logic – is long (Gokhale, 2012). In this specific case, the
tendency to include social and psychological components in the consider-
ation of all levels of knowledge construction (Raina, 2009) has been one
of the reasons why, e.g., Indian 2 approaches have been neglected and were
denied a scientific or philosophical status in the European/North-American
scientific discourses.
Interestingly, there is a parallel to more recent approaches in the sociol-
ogy of scientific knowledge and postcolonial positions as Raina (2009) has
pointed out. For example, in postcolonial perspectives, the production of
scientific knowledge ‘is viewed from a contextualist perspective across the
frames,’ and the ‘sociology of scientific knowledge highlighted the distrib-
uted nature of the process of knowledge production, argued for the socially
embodied nature of scientific knowledge and thereby brought into the field of
visibility a variety of actors hitherto invisible to the gaze of the historian or
sociologist’ (Raina 2009, p. 621, accentuations IC). An interesting question
here would be whether one can see an assimilation of viewpoints, analysing
parallels as well as distinctions in how the social embeddedness of knowl-
edge is conceptualised in the both perspectives of Indian approaches and
sociology of scientific knowledge/postcolonial positions. In both cases, the
social conditions and embedding of knowledge and its emergence come to
the fore. The main arguments of this contribution are in line with these
thoughts.
One very basic problem is that discussing knowledge in different contexts,
and for instance comparing it, already presumes that one can indeed find
everywhere the specific concept of universal knowledge. Here again, the
European/North-American concept of knowledge has long set the frame and
delivered the criteria of what to talk about, and other forms of knowledge or
knowledge from other contexts have been diminished. For example, the label
‘indigenous’ knowledge opposed to other forms such as scientific already
implies a hierarchical view, and the European/North-American knowledge
is not labelled as indigenous (Clemens, 2009), but as universal. Nevertheless,
the assumption of universality of this specific European/North-American
concept of knowledge is questionable. It is, e.g., not easy to identify the
idea of universal, singular knowledge in Indian epistemological literature.
The general problem is, that all too often, ‘cross-cultural dialogue between
philosophical traditions has been set within the frame of the Western philo-
sophical tradition, which provides a vocabulary and a grammar within which
to apprehend or translate the Indian [or in general: other] philosophical tra-
dition’ (Raina, 2009, p. 622). The difficulties of the so-called comparative
method become visible here, because according to Raina, comparison was
always done from the European/North-American perspective. In conse-
quence, the ‘foreign’ (Indian or else; in any case, it is important to underline
that there is no such thing as the Indian philosophy etc.)3 always had prob-
lems fitting into the framework of a different way of thinking4. ‘Even in
well-intentioned dialogues,’ Raina (2009) argues in his critique of the com-
parative method, ‘attention is not often paid to the systemic levels at which
the dialogue is organized’ (p. 623).
With regard to the European/North-American concept of knowledge, the
challenge is that it is constructed in a normative way. According to Gokhale
(2010), the English concept of knowledge then ‘is supposed to stand for “true
belief ” or “ justified true belief ” and hence knowledge is not supposed to be
truth-value-neutral, whereas belief is supposed to be so’ (Gokhale, 2010, p. 2,
accentuations IC). This pre-supposition has many implications such as that
there is indeed true knowledge and that one can make a distinction between
true and false knowledge. It marks the difference between knowledge and
belief in the European/North-American thinking, as belief is seen to be
truth-value-neutral. Nevertheless, some Indian epistemologies, for instance,
Buddhist tradition, know truth-value-neutral forms of knowledge, so we
find here an alternative concept of knowledge. It is only ‘mainly in Vedanta
tradition that the word jñ āna is used in the sense in which it necessarily
yields truth’ (Gokhale, 2010, p. 2f ). ‘Hence we can perhaps translate jñ āna as
knowledge in Vedanta context, but we cannot do so in Nyāya, Buddhist or
Purvamimamsa context’ (Gokhale, 2010, p. 2f ). We can see that the question
of defining knowledge becomes trickier. A deeper look into the very idea
of true and false knowledge and its rejection can be instructive for under-
standing the far-reaching consequences of the dissimilarity of concepts. In
the European/North-American tradition, something is either true or false,
knowledge or no knowledge. It is a two-valued logic system, which builds
on singularity and decidability. On the contrary, in the case of Jaina5 logic,
this noncontradictory, two-valued characteristic need not be necessary cri-
teria of logic in general. The same might be true for knowledge. Brought up
within a specific logic system and school of thoughts in the European/North-
American context, it is rather difficult and in any case against intuitions that
there are knowledge forms that are knowledge and yet contradictory and/or
truth-value-neutral. Running counter to these intuitions, Jaina philosophers
hold that reality cannot be expressed in simple and absolute statements at all.
If we think of the immense complexity of reality, indeed this sounds reason-
ably doubtful. In their view, such an approach would simplistically reduce
complexity of being:
A valid claim of knowledge, according to the Jainas, is described through

seven propositions6, which encapsulate the multifaceted nature of a phe-
nomenon. Furthermore, each proposition should be explicit about its
conditional character and therefore begin with the term ‘somehow’ or
‘in a certain sense,’ e.g., ‘somehow I am writing this text.’ Although
in principle everything can be seen from infinite perspectives, since
each of the propositions can be further analysed from seven standpoints,
Jainas hold that the seven standpoints themselves cannot be reduced or
increased further (Clemens & Biswas, 2018, p. 14).
104 Iris Clemens
We see here a much more sophisticated view of reality and accordingly of
knowledge besides the European/North-American logical difference of
knowledge to be either true or false. In Jaina thinking, relationality of any
observation, and accordingly of the act of sense-making itself, is included in
the concept of logic and knowledge.
The definition of knowledge is complicated as we can see. It is connected
to the questions of ‘criteria, the problem of perception and the status of the
external world’ (Raina, 2009, p. 623). These questions are, for instance;
What is identified as knowledge and why? What are the differences with
regard to ignorance? Where is knowledge located – in the observer or in the
observed, the object – and is there a world independent of the observer? And,
regarding perception, how can we ever know about that external world, if
existent? Different traditions have found different answers, e.g., rationalists
stress reason as a source of knowledge and empiricists science. Again, alter-
native ways of thinking about basic conditions and relations of knowledge
become obvious, as ‘the Sanskrit tradition has no equivalents for either of
these terms’ (reason and science), and rightly Raina (2009) asks in the follow-
ing the general question: ‘how do we transit from the discussion of “knowl-
edge” in one system to another, when there are differences in some essential
conceptions?’ (p. 623).
So obviously, decolonisation of knowledge has to start with problematiz-
ing the process of defining knowledge. If the analysis and critical reflection
of power imbalances and hierarchies established through colonial structures
are one first step of the endeavour of decolonisation, the study of defini-
tion processes of knowledge is crucial. Facing these basic contradictions for-
mulated by Raina, and taking into consideration the social embeddedness
and emergence of all kinds of knowledge, the text will argue here for a
more value-free definition of knowledge. In consequence of the discussion
above, value free means the exclusion of an evaluation regarding truth and a
relational perspective on knowledge. Accordingly, knowledge is aggregated
meaning that emerged in a certain social context and survived within the
selection process of social evolution. Of course, there can be no culture-free
characterization of knowledge though and therefore normative implications
are always involved. Consistent also with Systems Theory (Luhmann, 1998),
any semantics (or ideas/concepts, etc.) are culturally and historically contin-
gent and structurally coupled with the social structures, in which they are
emerge. This means, they are entangled with their context, and this is true
for scientific theories as well. In consequence, for a heuristic proceeding, here
knowledge will be taken very broadly as meaning patterns that are systemat-
ically collected and assembled in a certain context to a more aggregated form
to explain, to explore, to observe, etc. the world. It consists of reciprocally
related meaning forms. This characterization does not include a postulation
of truth, rationality, or logic. Building knowledge is taken as a generic pro-
cedure, a social, and interactive process (Lawson & Lorenz, 1999). Therefore,
a theoretical perspective of knowledge necessarily implies an analytical focus
on relationality in social action (Glückler et al., 2017). The network theory
or relational approach following, e.g., Emirbayer (1997), White (2008) , and
others, provide a fruitful perspective on knowledge in accordance with the
argumentation so far. Hence, network theory is used here to analyse the
emergence and travel or trading of knowledge as well as for an overall decol-
onisation of thinking about knowledge. Before doing so, the chapter starts
with a general view on the global movement of knowledge and brings in an
alternative concept of travelling that seems to be helpful for the enterprise of
decolonisation of knowledge.
Describing the fluctuation of knowledge

through trading zones
As stated before, a dominant explanation for the global movement of knowl-
edge is the concept of diffusion, based on a centre-and-periphery-think-
ing (Meyer & Ramirez, 2003). In this perspective, ‘modern’ knowledge is
mainly produced in the European/North-American context and diffuses
from there in the ostensible periphery. After arriving, the mobile knowledge
turns into hybrids or false copies (Krücken, 2005). The neoinstitutional
approach (Meyer & Ramirez, 2003) – also quite popular in educational
science – can be mentioned here as an example. It focuses on organiza-
tions and competition; exchange and cooperation are emphasised. The main
drawback of this approach is the assumption of a single modernity and sin-
gularity of the origin of knowledge that moves from a centre to peripheries.
When concepts travel, so-called myths arrive in another context and are
adopted as signs of modernity and development according to neoinstitution-
alists. For example, worldwide, total quality management and other tools
are implemented in one way or another in companies, hospitals, municipal-
ities, etc., to show that one fulfils the latest international standards of man-
agement tools. However, this does not necessarily mean that the structures
and organization of institutions really change due to the argumentation of
the neoinstitutional approach. Accordingly, the process can be described
as a mimetic adoption of myths of modernity accompanied by resistance
at the same time. The main point is that arrows of travelling point more
or less only in one direction here (Raina, 2016), from centre to periphery,
and periphery is always situated opposite to the European/North-American
context: peripheries are always the others.
Another approach to explain landscapes and dynamics of knowledge
starts with the assumption of ‘trading zones of knowledge’ (following
Galison, 1997; Raina, 2016). This approach originates from thoughts on
the relation of scientific sub-disciplines and cultures that are near enough to
trade: they ‘share some activities while diverging on many others … [They]
encounter(ing) one another through trade, even when the significance of
the objects traded – and of the trade itself – may be utterly different for the
two sides’ (Galison, 1997, p. 803). Arrows of travelling point in all kinds of
106 Iris Clemens
direction here: knowledge travels not only from a (however defined) centre
to peripheral spaces, but a continuous flow and circulation of knowledge
forms is assumed from early times on. There is, however, no teleological
drive towards ever-greater cohesion, following Galison, ‘it is altogether
possible that, at some moments, fields previously bound, fall apart. Just as
some pidgins or creoles die out, so too can scientific interfields atrophy or
mutate to the point of being unrecognizable’ (Galison, 1997, p. 805). As the
terms of trading zones already suggest, knowledge is also seen rather as a
volatile process than an entity; an object of permanent communication (as
negotiation, bargaining, etc.) between many different actors. Additionally,
in this view, a mutual emergence of knowledge forms is considered. From
that perspective, the search for ‘origin’ or first source of a concept is reduc-
ing the possible analyses and the gain of knowledge unnecessarily. Any
knowledge we could know of today is per se hybrid then. It is clear here
that ‘both sides impose constraints on the nature of exchange’ (Galison,
1997, p. 806).
In consequence, knowledge can be described as a product of such con-
tinuous trading zones from early ages onwards, with an increased pace of
mobility and volume of knowledge in the last decades due to new media and
globalization in general. Important for a decolonisation of knowledge is not
only the description of the proceeding of these trading zones but the recogni-
tion of their sheer existence in the first place and the contribution of various
actors involved in the emergence of knowledge beside the European/North-
American context. As processes of definition of knowledge are interlinked
with power structures like described above and therefore such established
(e.g., colonial) power structures affect what is defined as knowledge and what
not, a genuine multiplicity of knowledges should be taken more seriously. In
consequence, in the following, the term knowledges will be used to stress
this perspective. This multiplicity also holds resources for innovations and
productions of new knowledges, especially through encounters of them, as
we will see below. A precondition for such encounters is that various knowl-
edges such as so-called indigenous knowledges manage to survive and are
valued. In the next step, the emergence and movement of knowledge in
general will be analysed in a more detailed way for a better understanding of
the process at hand, taking into consideration the mentioned relationality in
social action.
A network theory perspective on the

emergence and trading of knowledge
Following the definition of knowledges as meaning patterns that are system-
atically collected and aggregated, as reciprocally related forms of meaning for
explaining phenomena of the world, we first have to analyse the emergence
of meaning, before we discuss its accommodation as knowledge. This is the
basis for analysing mobility and transformation of knowledges in a next step.
Following the relational approach and its focus on social embeddedness, any
meaning attribution in communication is processed and assessed by actors
from the standpoint of their footing. This is a basic assumption of network
theory, and footing itself is a process, not a fixed state like a ground on
which one stands. The relation of emergence of meaning and the positions
of the actors is a starting point for all further assumptions. No footing of
an actor is ever equal to that of another though, but it can be structurally
equivalent (White et al., 1976). Meaning is always processed and assessed in a
specific way and never superimposable. Communication, on the other hand,
needs social footing as source and destination: an attribution must be possible
regarding who communicates what and to whom or what communication is
directed at. Footing is the basic condition for any meaning procession, with-
out it ‘social life would be “A tale told by an idiot, Full of sound, and fury,
Signifying nothing” (Shakespeare, Macbeth) and communication would not
be triggered’ (Godart & White, 2010, p. 570).
As a precondition, actors must find footing in the different networks
between what they switch continuously. Our lives are endless flows of
coupling and de-coupling in networks and switching between them: from
family to colleagues, sport teams, neighbours, friends, as patients, etc. The
footings in different networks can differ widely for the same actor. In con-
sequence, processing the meaning can differ from network to network too.
With any event or switching between networks, footing is disrupted and
must be established anew together with an adapted form of meaning: what
makes sense in one network may not necessarily make sense in another. In
consequence, meaning is always in movement. We see this very basic relat-
edness of meaning with context in network theory. If meaning is always
coupled with the context in which it emerges, this also implies a culture
inclusive view on knowledges, as this explains the emergence of differ-
ing meaning forms in different networks. White (2008) uses the term of
network-domain – shortcut: netdom – to stress this relationality between
social embeddedness (network, referring to pattern of social ties) and corre-
sponding meaning (domain, comprising stories, symbols, expectations, etc.).
The inclusion of meaning in his network theory is often described as part
of the cultural turn in network research. Meaning is never ‘out there’ but
emerges through communication among actors and is therefore coupled to
specific networks – other networks, other meanings. Therefore, meaning
lies neither in the actor nor in the network, but is generated through switch-
ing between networks and is always dependent. Biophysical settings as well
as sociocultural ones originate contingency and uncertainty because they
generate events, and these events lead actors acting across different networks
to try to attempt control. White (2008) uses control in a very broad sense,
including sheer kind of any influence or even being, up to more strategic
actions. While actors act in their ‘struggle for control,’ they too trigger new
events as well – a starting point for other actors to start their control struggle
to react, and so on.
108 Iris Clemens
Actors generate specific meanings along with new netdoms. Stressing
the ‘new’ here means stressing the switching between networks, as mean-
ing emerges through the process of switching – again we see the impor-
tant role of the betweenness. Only through switching between netdoms, can
new meaning emerge. Here, also lies the potential of innovations through
encounters. The mobile actors experience differences, irritations, deviations,
etc., while switching from one netdom to another. Things done in a par-
ticular way in one netdom might be offending in another. It does not nec-
essarily mean though that a specific actor must make the actual experience
of switching between networks (which triggered the meaning) by him- or
herself. Here, communication comes into play, as it enables the sharing of
meaning that was triggered by switching processes. Actors who made the
experience of switching can communicate it to others, and so experience
can travel across networks. The new meaning can then arrive at a distanced
actor via another actor and its communication of his or her experience of
switching. The driving force behind the emergence of meaning, however,
is contrast: ‘perceptions and representations come only with and from con-
trast; it is through contrasts as processes that meanings are communicated and
shared’ (Godart & White, 2010, p. 572). This fusion of network and domain
is a radical departure from common sense according to Godart and White
(2010), ‘because, we simultaneously consider networks and semiotic domain,
structure, and culture’ (p. 570). There is no meaning independent of the
network that is transported across contexts like in the concept of common
sense. Networks form the way of making experiences ‘a “matrix” of practices
and representations’ (Godart & White 2010, p. 570), but it is the process of
switching between netdoms that generates perception, representations, and
meanings, and not the netdom itself. The question regarding the movement
of meaning must take this into account: first, that there is no stable form of
meaning that can be transferred from one context to another without trans-
formations, and second, that the experience of moving between matrixes of
practices and representations modify any meaning. After this short clarifica-
tion of the process of emergence of meaning, now the flow from one netdom
to another will be explained. What are the pre-conditions that aggregated
meaning forms – knowledges – travel, and how can this process be described?
The concept of stories

According to White (2008), more stable meaning forms are cumulated in
interdependent patterns. In such stories, meanings are not only aggregated,
but merged. Following network theory, in stories meanings are combined
in transportable patterns of relation. Networks of meaning come together
in stories, and they can be transferred or activated in different contexts.
One can take an example from recent educational discussions to highlight
what is meant: obviously, the idea emerged that education contains universal
and objective knowledge; therefore, it is thought that tests can be created
‘measuring’ this education; in conclusion one can create a test in one con-
text, take it somewhere else and test education with it there. This whole
concept – or story – implies different forms of meaning, which all relate to
each other: only if education is conceptualized as objective, can one attempt
to create a test and measure it. Only if it is universal, can one take the test
and use it globally. And only based on all these related meaning forms, can
one believe that one actually does compare education by this procedure. We
see several meaning forms combined to a bigger concept or pattern that can
be packed in a story and travel to different networks. Meaning is organized
in such stories. Stories are important to explain to actors what is going on
and why. Stories can encompass more than one relation and extend to a set
of specific relations. This is why they can guide or canalise action. But sto-
ries do not capture the specific experiences of an actor. Stories are in charge
of the bigger picture, they express more commonalities and can be used in
different netdoms. This is their advantage. They are scripts with the capacity
to be reproduced across historical, geographical, and social contexts (Godart
& White, 2010, p. 572).
This description makes stories especially interesting for the analysis of
the process of knowledges travelling. Stories embed events through causal
relations: they are relational, not temporal (non-temporal telling). In stories,
meanings are organized and related into patterns in publics. In consequence,
stories must always be seen in relation to their public. Stories are incubated
in publics, which are defined as a union of many netdoms. Public ‘is a space,
a horizon of virtual meanings, of allowable expectations that frame and
form stories’ (Godart & White, 2010, p. 572). In their specific publics, stories
inter-relate meanings in coherent wholes. As already said regarding the fact
that stories express more commonalities, they function on a higher level of
aggregation. A specific public enables the perception and representation of
certain events. In other words, the public influences the perception and pro-
cessing of events. In this specific public, an event emerges as event. Maybe, in
another public, it would not even be perceived at all. In consequence, also the
production of meaning is always related to the given public. Certain publics
(e.g., markets) are characterized by relatively stable conceptions and under-
standing of specific social phenomena or concepts such as, e.g., ‘quality.’ In
this way, publics sharpen expectations. Joint actions create a shared space
that constitute a situation in which actors feel a certain need to be socially
accountable and therefore tend to act in a specific manner. But stories rely
on their use in concrete social situations; they are always activated through
interactions. For interactions, existing stories can be mobilized. The advan-
tage is that one knows what is expected, what others expect from me and cer-
tain behaviour is more likely to be shown than others. However, other than
Bourdieu (1984) and the concept of habit, White (2008) stresses the variations
between networks. Such existing stories can travel across networks, they are
generalized constructs that can be transported across contexts. Nevertheless,
how does this work? And why does it happen?
110 Iris Clemens
Thriving, spreading, and travelling of stories
According to network theory in order to thrive and spread, meaning struc-
tured in stories must be transposed across contexts and become a basis for
communication. They must be epidemic (Sperber, 1996). An example given
by Godart and White (2010) is business analytical frameworks and ‘rules of
thumbs,’ which can be applied in other contexts than that of their emer-
gence. ‘The art of business strategy… lies in the ability to transpose stories
of different scales, scopes, and levels’ (p. 574). The failure or success of such
rules or frameworks as well as the reasons for failure or success will influence
if and how they will be applied in future. In the case of a general business
analytical framework, its application in a specific context will always also
imply feedback modifications of the framework as well, which means that
it will be modified. The process of transposition is always context specific
including a specific way of application, and this forms the basis and sets the
context for further transpositions and applications, and so on. Actors use
both meanings and stories to cope with contingency and uncertainty. To
be able to act in different contexts, stories can be taken from one network
to another.
In this process, new vocabulary establishes itself in a network, and while
new concepts are used in one discourse ‘they have the tendency to diffuse
into the wider public’ (Fuhse, 2015, p. 30). If meanings assembled into stories
travel, they can generate fresh action and switching. The ‘new’ is stressed
here, as only new meaning can generate fresh action according to White.
It introduces a difference, functions as an interruption, and blocks ‘more
of the same.’ Therefore, the process of travelling of stories (or knowledges)
implies a potential for innovations, e.g., in the scientific public, where one
gets ‘infected’ by new stories, which create fresh action in new networks.
This is, however, not the only way for stories to travel, as we have seen, e.g.,
with the transition via actors and communications.
To sum up what has been said so far: we have heard that meaning is
dependent on the social footing of involved actors and on stories, in which
meaning is melted and organized. Stories express commonalities used in
different networks and combine meaning in transportable, related patterns.
They create networks of meaning which can be transferred or activated in
different contexts and guide or canalize action. Stories are related to their
publics, an assemblage from diverse netdoms, which form and frame stories
mutually: the application of stories in specific contexts implies modifications
through feedback. Therefore, stories are not stable units, which can simply be
transferred into different contexts without modifications. While travelling,
the process of switching between practices and representations always modi-
fies knowledges. This analytical view helps to understand the role of culture
in the process of emergence and movement of knowledges. In this perspec-
tive, knowledges is always relational and dynamic, and different social net-
works contribute to diverse knowledges that emerges. This helps to establish
a decolonising perspective on these dynamics in general in at least two ways.
First, it overcomes concepts such as diffusion in which knowledge moves one
way from centre to periphery, and stresses a continuous emergence and mod-
ification of knowledges instead. This also implies an entitlement of a simulta-
neous plurality of knowledges. Second, it includes many diverse actors in the
process of knowledge production, which are overseen in other approaches.
The last section analyses what happens in case of encounter of knowledges,
now understood as circulating stories that ‘meet’ in a network. The concept
of generative tensions by Helen Verran will be referred to in order to stress
the potential for innovations through such encounters.
Generative tensions through encounters of

knowledges: Division in a Nigerian Yoruba class
In opposition to social sciences, certain other disciplines are often labelled as
‘hard science,’ and are described as disambiguate, objective, universal, etc.
However, rarely recognized, also, e.g., in mathematics there are cultural
differences in operations that are used to solve certain given mathemat-
ical problems. In the theoretical frame used here, one can say that obvi-
ously diverse stories circulate in diverse networks to solve mathematical
problems. By referring to the Indian mathematician Yesudas Ramchandra,
Raina and Habib (2004) show that the problem of maxima and minima
can be considered in alternative ways and propagate the ‘realization that
mathematics is done one way but can as well be done another way’ (p. 27),
depending on the sociocultural context and cognitive preferences. In a cer-
tain way, any knowledge is indigenous (Clemens, 2009) though. Raina and
Habib (2004) demonstrate that in the 19th Century, Ramchandra, ground-
ing his assumptions on old Indian mathematical texts, stated that Indian
learners might prefer another way of problem solving than English learners
(Clemens, 2009). Trained as a mathematician in both contexts (India and
England), he was aware of the different approaches and their specific cog-
nitive and epistemic grounding. Epistemic diversity was and is a fact and
knowledges has been encountering, since humans and stories travel. In her
book Science and African Logic (2001), Verran reports about an encounter of
such different ways of ‘doing mathematics,’ which will be analysed now in
a little more detail. Focusing on encounters of different logics, in general,
she struggles with a position neither following universalistic nor relativistic
logics and stresses ‘generative tensions’ (Verran, 2001, p. 21) instead which
appear when different knowledge forms or logics come together. Following
the relational approach discussed here, we can translate this situation and
say that circulating stories meet in a given network, and according to the
network approach, fresh action might be a result. This will be explained
now by the example given below. According to Verran (2001), generative
tensions are a sign of creativity typically for collective life. As explained in
Section 3, following network theory, switching among networks typically
112 Iris Clemens
creates new knowledge. Hence, fresh action is a by-product of such encoun-
ters and probably an incubator for creativity. Of course, fresh action can be
a destroying power as well.
Verran7 (2001) reports of a math class by a Yoruban teacher in Nigeria
teaching division to Yoruba children. She knew the teacher from courses
at a Nigerian University, where she taught teachers and developed teaching
material and strategies together with them for several years. While observing
his class and anticipating what would happen, Verran expected the teacher
to follow a certain script of division teaching, ‘some sort of “serial process,”
something like the reverse of multiplication, understood as serial addition’
(Verran, 2001, p. 13), e.g., 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 20. In other words, there was a
certain story on how to teach division, which both shared at the university,
and she anticipated that the teacher would act accordingly now in his class.
The teacher started in English but shifted to Yoruba soon and acted against
the expectations of the Australian observer though. In his explanations, the
teacher did not start from the parts (5 + 5 is 10) but from the unity, the inte-
gral number. Therefore, he used a completely different logic. His approach
was to identify division as definitive of whole number and he states: ‘You
will not understand a number unless you understand the many ways it can be
divided’ (Verran, 2001, p. 13). He stressed not the single factors of a division
but the number that should be divided and its integrity. All children in the
classroom understood the teacher and paid full attention. In the following,
he first presented a Yoruba number ‘and showed it as a multiple of 20 plus or
minus various factors of 20, in translating it into a base-ten English-language
number’(Verran, 2001, p. 13). This becomes understandable when one con-
siders the nature of Yoruban numbers, which show similarities to French
numbers:
márùúndínlógórin (-5 + (20 × 4)) 75 (Verran, 2001, p. 57)

(similarities in French, for example: Quatre-vingt-cinq (5 + (4 × 20))
= 85).
Yoruban numbers are based on a logic of 20 and are already like a sum
of a calculation. The teacher used this nature of the numbers to explain
how a number can be divided. After showing the nature of Yoruban num-
bers, he used English numbers for the reverse process and converted them
into Yoruba, ‘using division into sets of 20 as the first and defining process’
(Verran, 2001, p. 13). He brought together the two distinct stories and cre-
ated something new. The Yoruba base-twenty logic and the English base-ten
thinking were interwoven, and this encounter let emerge a new form of
learning division. Fresh action in White’s words emerged. Several exercises
in translating numbers in the different systems by division followed. And
then ‘came the fun. Each translation could be done in more than one way,
yet clearly, some ways were more elegant than others’ (Verran, 2001, p. 13).
So, the math class moved into a competition on who finds the most elegant
translations, Verran describes wincingly:
[Amid] much laughter and shouting, children jumping out of their

seats to rush to the blackboard to demonstrate an alternative, a gener-
ally agreed-upon best translation [eventually not understandable for the
non-Yoruban] were gradually reached for each of the 20 numbers. All
thought of serious focus on the process of division vanished in the delight
of the game, yet the game was all about division of whole numbers’
(2001, p. 13).
What we see here are diverse and slightly competing stories about division –
serials and sequences versus an understanding of numbers as integral units,
which are defined and fully understandable only by the ways in which they
can be divided – both circulating in a network and meeting there. As Verran
(2001) shows, this leads to generative tensions and in the following to a very
fruitful and stimulating learning process that can even build on aesthetic
experiences: the actors agree on more elegant solutions and experience fun
while searching for new combinations. Fresh action emerges through the
transfer of a story in a new network and through its encounter with another
story. On the one hand, we have the common setting of a math class teaching
division in a serial way and with English numbers. This is accompanied by
a specific set of meaning forms assembled to a certain, existing and already
circulating story. The Yoruban teacher, as well as the Australian researcher,
knows this common story of teaching in serials and sequences, and it circu-
lated most probably in the university, where the education of the teacher took
place. Most probably, it entered the network years back, as well a story in net-
work theory terms travelling into a new network and guided fresh action that
time. However, on the other hand, the teacher in Verran’s observation brings
in another story, which generates indeed fresh action: division is taught here
in a new way relational with the network of Yoruba children who under-
stand these meaning forms and the associated pattern. In another network
with other actors, these specific meaning forms would not have emerged.
This story forms the network and it is modified by it in return as well: the
network and story transforms relational with each other. The emotions such
as excitement and fun were associated with this process – desired but seldom
achieved components of learning processes.
Concluding remarks – Decolonisation and education

What does all this mean for the project of decolonisation of education in
general and the decolonisation of higher education in particular? At least two
conclusions can be drawn. First, an awareness for the problems explained
in the first two sections – (1) the contested terrain of defining knowledge
114 Iris Clemens
and the attached power imbalances, and (2) the trading zones of knowledge
implying that all parts of the world have and do contribute to knowledge
production and not only the so-called West – must find its way into all levels
of educational institutions, especially into the (re)production of scientific
knowledge at universities. From there, this awareness can make its way into
schools as well. Theoretical tools such as the relational approach can help
to understand the relational character of knowledge and its corresponding
principal hybrid nature and how it travels and emerges anew in new net-
works: never without transformations. Additionally, a sensitisation for power
structures in the very process of defining knowledges is crucial and neces-
sary; also to frame the discussions on so-called indigenous knowledge. Who
defines knowledges and, e.g., alternative knowledge, and on which basis?
This awareness includes to accept the possibility of knowledges, which may
be even (although not necessarily) contradicting but yet equally valuable.
This brings in competition and dimensions of power, too, as questions might
arise about who has the ‘better,’ more valuable or the right knowledge, and
even more problematic, the question who should judge this. The one who
dictates the judgment criteria undoubtedly channels the judgment itself.
Exactly this has been the case for the definitions of knowledges as well as of
philosophy and logic for a long time when the European/North-American
definitions provided the criteria and by this delivered the frame for what was
accepted as knowledge and what not. From the perspective of decolonisa-
tion, the process of defining knowledges must, therefore, be opened up and
permanently negotiated. The reflection of relationality between network
and knowledges and the attached dynamics can influence actual discussions
in many disciplines. In educational science, for instance, the awareness of
relationality of knowledges and insights into the dynamics of trading zones
of knowledge can lead to a critical reflection of recent trends such as global
standardisation of education. Claims of an idea of more or less universal
education (concerning content as well as concepts) become dubitable in the
following (Clemens & Biswas, 2019), with far reaching consequences. If
knowledge is culturally contingent (Clemens, 2015), one should be careful
with assumptions of universality with regards to knowledge that can easily
be transferred, taught, and tested globally. The one single story does most
probably not fit in every network but must show its appropriateness in every
network anew. The Yoruban case, however, also shows the creative pro-
cesses that can be provoked by the encounter of stories.
This leads to the second conclusion: to promote encounters of knowledge.
A precondition is that knowledges must be accepted in plurality (Clemens
& Biswas, 2019). The case of the Yoruba class indicated why encounters
of knowledge are desirable. If one thinks of supporting conditions for the
emergence of new knowledges from a network theory perspective, mobility
of stories holds a central position. Circulating stories entering new networks
are crucial for the emergence of new meaning and accordingly, knowledges.
As new meaning emerges only within new networks, and as only through
switching between networks new meaning emerges, trading zones are the
space where new knowledges can emerge. This again is only possible if stories
have the chance to spread, and different stories meet in networks. This also
implies the not at all trivial precondition that knowledges from the majority
world (some call Indigenous) manage to survive in the first place, and are
taken seriously. One can assume a high potential for innovations through
these encounters – including maybe fresh action. Creating such encounters
seems to be a promising way for inspiring future knowledge production and
therefore the question is how to support such processes. Last, also the obser-
vation of fun through the connection of already circulating stiles and stories
with new ones is crucial for thinking about educational concepts.
Notes
1. For example, Gokhale (2012) points out that the Indian philosophy is treated often
as ‘Religious studies’ in Western universities and therefore the status of philosophy
is denied.
2. As the author has worked in and about India for the last 20 years, the reference
in the theoretical parts is India and not Africa. However, this does not mean to
simplify dynamics and processes and recur to a somehow uniform ‘Global South.’
The concept of Global South perpetuates binary thinking, suggests questionable
similarities of contexts in the so-called South, and is therefore part of the problem
as well. Apart from this, something is not ‘western’ or ‘southern’ as such, but for
such a relational description, a clarification of the position is always needed. These
thoughts are the reason why the expression European–North-American is used in this
text.
3. As Raina puts it: ‘an issue that needs to be addressed is that Indian philosophy itself
is internally quite diverse and large constructions of systems such as Indian philos-
ophy collapse the internal distinctions between the different streams that comprise
the Indian philosophical tradition’ (Raina, 2009, p. 622).
4. In the case of Indian philosophy, this had led to descriptions like idealistic, intu-
itive, experiential, or pragmatic in opposite to self-description of the European–
North-American philosophy as intellectual, abstract, theoretical, etc. (Raina 2009)
what again implicates a hierarchy and evaluation of course.
5. Jaina philosophy is among the oldest schools of thought in the Indian context dat-
ing back assumingly to the 6th century BC.
6. ‘The physical phenomena of doing something, which resembles reading would be
adequately described through the following set of seven standpoints: Somehow, I
am reading. (+) Somehow, I am not reading. (-) Somehow, I am both reading and
not reading. (+ . -) Somehow, this is indescribable. (0) Somehow, I am reading and
this is indescribable. (+ . 0) Somehow, I am not reading and this is indescribable.
(- . 0) Somehow, I am and I am not reading and this is indescribable. (+ . - . 0)’
(Clemens & Biswas, 2018, p. 246).
7. Helen Verran is an Australian anthropologist, who has tremendous experiences
with cross-cultural knowledge processing and did field research in Africa and Aus-
tralia for many years, including working with various indigenous groups. One
focus of her work is the encounters of different logics. Her work is full of descrip-
tions of such encounters of different logics in various forms and not reduced to
school situations. For example, she also did research about alternative fire regimes
in Australia by Aboriginal landowners (Verran, 2002), a knowledge that might
could have helped preserving the country of the recent fire disaster (2019/2020).
116 Iris Clemens
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6 Conceptual decolonisation,
endogenous knowledge,
and translation
Abraham Brahima
Introduction
The relevance of translation to the need for conceptual decolonisation, i.e., the
effort to divest African thinking of all undue influences from the colonial past
(Wiredu, 1998, p. 1), ultimately points to a tension between two orders of dis-
courses historically divergent and pragmatically incommensurable. On the one
hand the discourse of the so-called ‘colonial science’ with its set of projections
and representations constructed as a response to scientific needs exogenous to
the African subject and his intrinsic worldviews. On the other hand, an increas-
ing demand by postcolonial African intellectuals to formulate an autonomous
and authentic discourse about themselves, their thought, history, social prac-
tices, ways of knowing, and cultures. At the strict academic level, this request for
an endogenous epistemological discourse refers to the process of ‘Africanisation.’
This concept encompasses requirements for institutional transformations and
the decolonisation of the African mind in such a way that the relevance and
inter-relatedness of African culture, African identity, and African knowledge
systems could be clearly articulated and implemented in teaching, learning, and
researching in and about Africa (Makgoba & Seepe, 2004).
This chapter aims at critically accessing the role and status of translation in
the decolonial project. The main underlying question is how to decolonise
a practice that is ontologically non-autonomous, intrinsically dependent on
the text-to-be-translated, and which is definitely situated ‘in-between,’ at the
crossroads of many cultures, languages, and worldviews. First, the chapter
analyses the historical and conceptual connections between translation and
coloniality. This section emphasises the theoretical and practical characteris-
tics that differentiates translation in decolonial contexts from other forms of
interlinguistic and intercultural transfers of meaning. Second, with regards
to the fact that decolonisation is a complex and multifarious historical phe-
nomenon, the chapter examines how these specificities apply to translation in
postcolonial African contexts. How does translation in postcolonial African
settings reflect the socio-historical specificities of the African colonial expe-
rience and contributes to efficiently address them? Finally, what is the sta-
tus, role, and importance of translation in the process of decolonising higher
Conceptual decolonisation, endogenous knowledge, and translation 119
education in Africa and what is the African translator’s task in this process?
This chapter eventually suggests the notion of systematic creative translation
as a way to address the lack of a tradition of massive translation aimed at
domesticating into African languages and cultures the most significant liter-
ary and scientific productions available in the world.
Colonial enduring traces: Translation and decolonisation

According to Young (1999), ‘nothing comes closer to the central activity and
political dynamic of postcolonialism than the concept of translation’ (p. 138).
From a conceptual point of view, translation and decolonisation share a lot
of similarities. Both concepts convey the idea of projecting oneself elsewhere
or carrying, bearing across. Translation is a metaphorical displacement of
a text from one language and cultural space into another. As such, it mir-
rors the movement of the colonial metropolitan centre towards the colonies,
with the ultimate purpose of building there a copy of itself. Historically, the
relation between translation and decolonisation derives from the fact that
‘colonialism and translation went hand in hand,’ the latter ‘facilitating’ the
former by grammatizing, domesticating and appropriating the languages and
cultures of the colonised (Bassnett & Trivedi, 1999, p. 5). As Tageldin (2011,
p.15f.) argues, ‘the translated word – luring the self to forget itself (if not its
language) in the memory of another – annexes a colonised people far more
effectively than arms’ (as cited in Baer, 2014, p.240).
Under the colonial regime, translation was a ‘one-way process, with texts
being translated into European languages for European consumption, rather
than a reciprocal process of exchange’ (Baer 2014, p.233). The effect of this
unequal and extroverted linguistic power relations is a postcolonial practice
of translation overwhelmingly dominated by transfers between European
languages and textual productions. According to Wiredu (1996), ‘the prob-
lems […] having to do with translation from African, into foreign, languages
are especially urgent since at present very much more of that take place than
the reverse (p. 100). In this context, as Baer (2014) rightly states, ‘European
norms have dominated literary production, and those norms have ensured
that only certain kinds of text, those that will not prove alien to the receiv-
ing culture, come to be translated’ (p. 233). The Need of Translation in Africa
(2012), one of the rare, systematic studies on the practice of translation on the
continent found out that albeit growing, ‘Africa’s share of the global trans-
lation market is tiny, with only about a quarter of the world’s total transla-
tion revenue’ (p. 1). Based on a representative group of individuals from 49
African countries who work in the field of translation1, the study confirms
that the translation sector is still heavily dominated by transfer from and into
European languages. As the authors concede, ‘the most popular combina-
tions among [their] respondents were English into and out of French’ (p. 9).
These are followed by pairings involving Afrikaans, Swahili, and Arabic,
Zulu, Sesotho, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Amharic.
120 Abraham Brahima
Concerning the translation of literary works in general, Ngugi wa Thiong’o
(1993) bemoans the fact that ‘there is very little mutual translation between
African languages, and, say English and French’ (p. 40). He further argues
that this state of affairs is even getting worse since the ‘colonial dominance
of English and French in African lives has made African languages so suspi-
cious of one another that there is hardly any inter-African communication’
(p. 40). Even at the level of development aid programmes, where translation
and interpretation are crucial for any successful action, Marais (2014) notices
the same deficiency. According to him, translation studies and development
studies have ‘neglected’ their mutual relationship as well as their interde-
pendence, ‘to the detriment of both’ (p. 143). Dedieu (2007) reads the play
between the colonial project and translation as a nexus that still legitimises
most of the colonial structures in the postcolonial linguistic and discursive
framework; as illustrated by French colonial policy:
Linguistic homogenisation by the recusal of African languages and the

imposition of the French language permitted the creation of a subsidiary
rhetorical space which for the purpose of a simplified exercise of struc-
tural subordination, purely and simply did away with the symbolic and
material costs of translation (p. 114).
Colonial powers have even pretexted the untranslatability of indigenous

languages as a strategic subterfuge to enforce an agreement or avoid legal
accountability. Young (2011) states accordingly that ‘the problems of trans-
lation, the impossibility, for example, of producing a perfect translation,
became manipulated in certain power games’ (p. 4) by colonial rulers. Young
further discloses that alleged untranslatability ‘was utilised for the colonizer’s
benefit, as in the Treaty of Waitangi2, where the English version [was] very
different from the Maori [in which] the language is simplified and vaguer’
(p. 4). In the colonial period, the outcome of a translation could be a matter of
life or death at individual level as well as wars and destructions at states level.
As eloquently illustrated by the Treaty of Wichale (1889) between Ethiopia
and Italy, a word or a concept purposely (mis)translated was sufficient to set
territorial discords to the benefit of the translator’s party or country. In this
particular case, a twist was intentionally introduced in the translated version
of the treaty, substituting the verb ‘could’ by ‘must,’ hence legally allowing
Italy to reclaim Ethiopia as its protectorate.3
Eco (2006) informs us that in such historical contexts of asymmetrical lin-
guistic and political power relations, a translator’s position in the chain of
decisions endowed him with the supreme privilege of deciding about the fate
of other human beings.4 Similarly, Young (2011) argues that professional trans-
lators and interpreters had a crucial role in the postcolonial world, because of
their ‘tremendous power in legal processes’ (p. 5). Their competence, as well as
their capacity to exert power through various ‘forms of control and reduction,’
could be decisive in the outcome of the gravest social or human situations.
As in the legendary dialogue between King Thamus and Theuth around the
pharmakon in Plato’s Phaedrus (Derrida, 1981a), the translator embodies the
character and role of Theuth trying to acquire Thamus’ approval. In order to
obtain the king’s authorisation to propagate his last invention (the writing),
Theuth presents it as a pharmakon, a remedy against forgetfulness, while cun-
ningly concealing the second meaning of the term which is poison. The ability
of the translator to juggle with meanings and her/his relative freedom in the
process of rendering a text or a speech (in the case of interpretation) in another
language goes as far as to involve diverse strategies of manipulation and sub-
version generally embedded in the notion recurrent in colonial contexts of
‘false translation.’ This practice which consist in intentionally mistranslating,
as a form of anticolonial resistance (Young, 2003, p. 141), is also a demonstra-
tion of the implicit relations between translation and power, namely in situa-
tions of fundamental asymmetry such as the colonial regime.
Translation, power, and subversion

As ‘an activity that always takes place in a specific social, historical, and polit-
ical context, [translation] involves – voluntarily or not – asymmetrical power
relations.’ (Wolf, 2000, p.127). This interaction between translation and hier-
archical power is well-illustrated by Romàn Àlvarez & M. Carmen-Àfrica
Vidal (1996) in their volume ‘Translation, Power, Subversion.’ Contrary to the
admitted definition, they contend that translation is not the production of
mere equivalence between source and target texts. It is rather ‘a complex
process of rewriting that runs parallel both to the overall view of language
and of the “Other” people have through history and to the influences and
the balance of power that exist between one culture and another’ (p. 4).
Similarly, Young (2003) observes that translation cannot avoid political
issues, or questions about its own links to existing forms of power. In his
view, ‘no act of translation takes place in an entirely neutral space of abso-
lute equality. […] The colonized person is also in the condition of being a
translated man or woman.’ (p. 140) Thus, the uneven power relation and
the subsequent struggles for domination instigated by the colonial regime
are the principal raison d’être of postcolonial translation studies. As Bandia
(2017) points out, ‘postcolonial translation theory is all that deals with trans-
lation between dominant language cultures and minor cultures and minority
contexts, including […] “ethno global minorities,” not just minorities in the
former or post-colony’ (p.n.a).
In situations of linguistic hegemony, translation can end up serving the
purpose of politico-phatasmatic constructions and manipulations leading
to the ‘rape of a cultural usurpation which means always essentially colonial’
(Derrida, 1998, p.23). Pointing out the symbolic violence inherent to the act
of translation, which essentially consist of moving a text from its linguistic
space of origin into another, Derrida (1981, p.20) describes it as ‘a regu-
lated transformation of one language by another, of one text by another.’
122 Abraham Brahima
Transformation not only in terms of technical requirement of the act of trans-
lating, an infinite task essentially based on a constant process of differen-
tiation between signified and signifier, but as a substitute for the colonial
power. Similarly, Young (2003) argues that ‘to translate a text from one
language to another is to transform its material identity. With colonialism,
the transformation of an Indigenous culture into the subordinated culture
of a colonial regime, or the superimposition of the colonial apparatus into
which all aspects of the original culture have to be reconstructed, operate
as processes of translational dematerialisation’ (p. 139). More than a simple
transport of ‘signifieds’ (signifiés) from one language to another, or within one
and the same language, that the signifying instrument would leave virgin
and untouched’ (Derrida, 1998, p.23) the act of translating drives the source
text off its roots towards another linguistic, cultural, and mental space. This
transformation, or literally this uprooting, of the original text from its initial
linguistic and cultural universe implies the exercise of a symbolic violence.
This view contrasts remarkably with the romantic vision of translation as a
fair-minded activity in which the translator operates as a candid and impartial
culture ferryman. According to this ideally constructed perception, transla-
tion is a process of ‘negotiation’ between two texts and ultimately between
two cultures (Eco, 2006, p.17), a ‘mediation between cultures’ (Tonkin &
Frank, 2010) a ‘language ferrying’ [passage de langues] (Ricard, 2011), or
a space where ‘linguistic hospitality’ is offered and accepted following ‘the
model of religious confessions’ (Ricœur, 2006, p.23). Contrary to this ideal-
istic view, Àlvarez and Vidal (1996) stress the intrinsic connection between
translation and power. They argue that translation is essentially a ‘political
act’ (p. 4), a literary battlefield where power struggles are the order of the day.
These power games aim at mastering and domesticating the ‘Other’ to finally
maintain her in long-lasting bondage by way of one’s language. Accordingly,
the translator’s stance vis-à-vis source and target texts, languages, cultures,
and institutions is never innocent. The very nature of his task drives him
to undertake what Àlvarez and Vidal describe as ‘a labour of acculturation,
which domesticates the foreign text, making it intelligible and even familiar
to the target-language reader, providing him with the narcissistic experience
of recognizing his or her own cultural other’ (p. 4f.).
The translator’s inherent and unconscious identification with the tar-
get language – in general her mother tongue – is expressed through the
impulse to erase or normalise all instances of oddity from the source text.
This attitude illustrates the ‘deforming tendencies’ of translation listed by
Berman (2000) in his essay Translation and the Trials of the Foreign. Even if
these misleading practices are more or less unavoidable, Berman advises the
‘conscientious translator’ to do his best at circumventing or mitigating them.
However, the process of textual normalisation is commonplace in postcolo-
nial translation processes. It is generally expressed by compulsive omissions,
impoverishment, regularisation of non-conventional use of the language, and
all instances of ‘defamiliarised language’ (Tymoczko, 1999, p.255) that look
opaque to the reader of the target language and culture. These occurrences
of cultural untranslatability are typographically marked in translated texts
by the use of italics or other signs. In fact, these treatment of postcolonial
source texts in order to render them pleasant for Western readers do not
necessarily correspond to concrete expectations formally expressed by the
latters. Instead, as Batchelor (2014) argues, these markers indicate that ‘the
drive towards linguistic correctness and clear delineations in translations does
not come from publishers’ general assessment of what readers are willing to
tolerate, but from their views on translation and the priority given to correct
or idiomatic use of the target language’ (p. 217).
Beyond any sentiment of good faith and constructive intentions, a trans-
lator undertaking what Eco (2006) calls ‘translation proper’5 (la traduction
proprement dite), ‘the type of translation practiced by publishing houses,’ is
constrained to perform in a complex institutional framework. His profes-
sional horizon is defined not only by the injunctions and guidelines of his
publisher, his own financial interests and the corollary prerequisite to fulfil
the will and expectations of the readers but also ‘the political logic at work
in the processes of translation’ (Dedieu, 2007, p.114). Building upon Venuti’s
(1998) characterisation of translation as a process that ‘constructs a domestic
representation for a foreign text and culture’ (p. 68), Jean-Philippe Dedieu
(2007) observes that ‘the advent or the postponement of a translation’ in a
national context is the outcome of economic [factors] as well as the political
assessment of its legitimacy.’ Dirkx (1999) argues that this process of legit-
imation goes, as a rule, through extremely ‘opaque editorial strategies of
selection’ (p. 71).
Reflecting on some current problems of translation in the area of African
studies, Dedieu (2007) contends that the idea of ‘linguistic hospitality’ to
describe translation is quite generous. Contrary to the powerful colonial
translator or interpreter, the modern translator is a marginal actor in the
processes of edition, which is essentially dictated by the logic of economy,
vetted institutional practices, and national policies. Accordingly, a structural
homology exists between the political act of allowing foreigners to cross the
territorial borders of a country and the ‘politics of translation’ consisting of
strategic decisions aimed at regulating the admission of foreign texts into
national literary borders:
The incorporation of foreign texts in a national language pertains to

the constituting of state-controlled symbolism and to political consen-
sus. The naturalisation of literary taste, economic preference or civic
sensitivities is linked to these practises which are concealed from public
attention and scientific observation. (Dedieu, 2007, p. 113)
This, Dedieu further argues, is confirmed by the analysis of selections made

from among innumerable foreign textual indexes, which reveal the exist-
ence and reproduction of a political consensus regarding editing policies that
124 Abraham Brahima
regulate the acceptation, postponement, or rejection of foreign texts into the
French culture via translation. As the textual craft of welcoming the foreign
in one’s language and culture, translation is not exempt of resistance strate-
gies in the form of insidious censorship or postponements. These are expres-
sions of socio-political mechanisms of antagonism towards translation and
sheer symptoms of a fear of alienation. Instead of an opportunity to practice
‘linguistic hospitality,’ the intrusion of the Other in one’s existential space
triggers an ‘ethics of discomfort’ (Foran, 2015) leading to linguistic and cul-
tural autarchy. As Morrison (2017) sums it up in her essay The Origin of the
Others, ‘the danger of sympathizing with the stranger is the possibility of
becoming a stranger’ (p. 30).
To be fair, this sentiment of losing oneself during an intercultural encoun-
ter is not an exclusive mark of colonial/decolonial struggles but a universal
expression of human uncertainty when faced with the unknown. As such,
the fear of the stranger often degenerates in absurd xenophobic reactions and
various expressions of ‘the dark desire to get rid of the foreigner’ (Mbembe,
2016, p.34) even within apparently homogenous entities such as nations
that were historically victims of colonial violence. As a rule in intercultural
encounters, the initial fear of the foreigner is often resorbed in the process
of deeper mutual knowledge and understanding. As far as decolonial trans-
lation is concerned, the ideal platform for mutual and genuine intercultural
understanding lies in the concept and process of ‘thick translation,’ which
Appiah (1993) defines as ‘a different notion of literary translation […] that
seeks with its annotations and its accompanying glosses to locate the text in a
rich cultural and linguistic context’ (p. 817). According to Appiah, this is also
the ideal type of academic translation which holistic intrinsic characteristics
make it eminently worth doing.
Translation as an instrument to ‘Dis-Enclose’6

the postcolonial African academic space
According to Santos (2018), the problem of postcolonial intercultural trans-
lation is essentially about ‘how to articulate and entertain a conversation
among different knowledges that, in some instances, are anchored in different
cultures’ (p. 16). These ‘epistemologies of the South,’ as Santos (2016, 2018)
calls them, are mostly indigenous ways of knowing that are still ‘marginal-
ised, even denigrated [even if they] sustain millions of people economically,
socially and spiritually as a living framework for continuing creativity and
innovation in most fields of technology’ (Odora-Hoppers, 2017, p.8). The
ultimate implication of the programme of conceptual decolonisation is to
achieve scientific autonomy for and within these particular knowledge sys-
tems. To this end, many scholars argue that Africans have to deconstruct, in
their main features, the entire knowledge accumulated on Africa by foreign
researchers. According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2017), the paradigmatic shift
necessary in ‘tackling global coloniality on a world scale […] can only be
possible if we can introduce new vocabularies/concepts that are usable in
unmasking invisible crimes taking place in the knowledge domain so as to
produce restitutive knowledge’ (p. x).
A restitution of African worldviews and the perception of Africans by
themselves is precisely the project assigned by Mudimbe (1979) to Nara, the
main protagonist of his novel l’Écart,7 and which is also recurrent in the writ-
ings of many other African scholars and writers. Mudimbe illustrates this
point by exposing how ‘colonial science’ has, as a rule, (re)presented a shat-
tered image of Africa and Africans. Similarly, Wiredu (1996) argues that a
large part of the western scientific discourse on Africa has to be retranslated
into African languages, using African categories of thought through an effort
of conceptualisation or endogeneisation of the main concepts from science
and technique to adapt them to the specific African canons of thought.
At the linguistic level, Wiredu (1996) states that the ‘lack of continental
lingua franca is a disincentive to the use of the vernacular as the medium
in academic work’ in Africa (p. 3). The common assumption in this regard
is that if African scholars were in possession of such a common linguistic
platform, they would have developed more direct, intensive, and productive
academic exchanges. The development of many African languages as efficient
vehicles for teaching and researching at academic levels testifies to the fact
that they are not scientifically defective as Mazrui (1974, p.87) once stated.
In contrary, this development is a statement of the fact that ‘African languages
have been and still are legitimate sources of knowledge’ (wa Thiong’o, 2018,
p.124f.).
However, a lingua franca does not automatically warrant the possibility of
scientific integration. The idea of a unique continental linguistic medium as a
mean to resolve the consequences of the extreme multilinguism in Africa has
proved to be unworkable. Because this idea is based on ‘the illusion of a uni-
fying language, [it] leads to a deliberate marginalisation of African languages
and an almost fierce emphasis on the spread and dominance of English or
other European languages’ (Kilolo, 2020, p.350). Furthermore, it has the dis-
tracting effect of concealing more realistic and applicable alternatives towards
linguistic and conceptual autonomy in Africa. Cheikh Anta Diop (1979) has
once warned against idealistic visions of pan-African linguistic unanimity:
One could object the multiplicity of languages in black Africa. One

should not forget that Africa is a continent as is Europe, Asia or America,
but on none of these is linguistic unity a reality. Why should it neces-
sarily happen in Africa? The idea of a unique African language, spoken
from one end of the continent to the other is inconceivable as is the
notion of a single European language. (p. 405) [My translation].
Indeed, a radical academic turn towards a linguistic policy essentially based

on local languages ‘would immediately make, for example, the philosophical
excogitations of Kwame Gyekye of Ghana a closed book to Peter Bodunrin
126 Abraham Brahima
of Nigeria and vice versa’ (Wiredu, 1996, p.4). According to Zeleza (2007),
the epistemic communities in Africa are fragmented along national, geo-
graphic, and linguistic lines making the need for translation even more
crucial while also posing evident challenges. In the particular context of
academic exchanges, one needs to go beyond the admitted definition of
translation as a mere transfer of meanings from one language to another. The
kind of translation required in this particular case encompasses ‘cross-cultural
access, reading, and interpretation of scholarship on areas of mutual interest
produced in different national intellectual traditions’ (Zeleza, 2007, p.11).
Elaborating upon Alan Tansman’s (2004, p.184) idea of translation as ‘the act
par excellence of area studies,’ Zeleza (2007) equates academic exchanges in
transnational and multilingual context in Africa with processes of translation:
Scholarship across national boundaries or epistemic communities, how-

ever, constructed, especially in the human sciences, can be conceived as
acts of translations, in which scholars grapple with foreign textual and
lived experiences – languages, materials, and perspectives – and strive, if
they are scrupulous, to understand them on their own terms and in terms
that are also meaningful to their own cognitive universe and training.
(p. 11)
The notion of ‘transnational translation’ reflects Berman’s (1984) conception

that translation, as expressed by the German word ‘Übersetzen’ is inherently
a movement of transcendence, ‘Über-Setzung’, a constitutive move beyond
oneself, ‘un se-poser-au-delà de soi constitutif’ (p. 78). Both the movement of
transcendence inherent to translation as such and the transnational academic
expectations it fulfils by bridging the gap between linguistically fragmented
scholars justify its importance for the process of conceptual decolonisation
in Africa. Tymoczko (1999) accurately illustrates this duality through her
description of translation as a metaphor for postcolonial writing that ‘invokes
the sort of activity associated with the etymological meaning of the word:
translation as an activity of carrying across’ (p. 19).
Thus, translation in the postcolonial context primarily serves the purpose
of transcending the artificial borders constructed along the lines of the ‘colo-
nially derived nation-states’ (wa Thiong’o, 2016, p.55), which have subse-
quently been validated by the formally independent African countries. Even
today, more than half a century after ‘independence,’ the circulation of ideas
and experiences within the African academic sphere is still hampered by its
fragmentation along regional, national, and linguistic lines. So much so that
scholars and students from contiguous countries having different national
languages are reciprocally ignorant of mutual academic life, events, innova-
tions, constructive reforms at disciplinary levels and publications.
But a scientific dialogue among African scholars sharing the same vernac-
ular is still possible and should be encouraged. In prelude to the establish-
ment of a continental lingua franca, a good start at decolonising could be
a resolute deconstruction of the virtual academic fences constructed along
the colonial nation-states’ borders. One could start by solving the problem
of language-in-education versus language of daily life, which continues to
maintain scholars and students in a state of intellectual schizophrenia. The
South African translanguaging movement is a systematic attempt to resolve
this issue. This programme is fundamentally a pedagogic reaction to prevent
the ‘disconnect between the dominant language of the classroom and the
home language of South African learners [which] may lead to dehuman-
ising experiences in classrooms’ (Childs, 2016, p.22). According to Garcia
(2014, p.3), translanguaging in education is ‘a process by which students and
teachers engage in complex discursive practices that include all the language
practices of students in order to develop new language practices and sustain
old ones, communicate and appropriate knowledge, and give voice to new
socio-political realities by interrogating inequality’ (as cited by Childs, 2016,
p.25). Translation could play an important role towards this end.
Teaching and learning involve a translation activity at cognitive levels. The
scientific language is an academic and specialized language made up with
images and concepts (Cummins, 2000), which always call for the acquisi-
tion by students of a specific vocabulary, syntactic structures, and discursive
characteristics. A student who learns science must learn to speak scientif-
ically as well, i.e., he has to define the concepts studied in his own words,
describe the objects of study, explain the phenomena observed, design and
describe some experimental process, draw conclusions and write reports
about some of his scientific experiences (Lemke, 1990). These functions
of language (describe, explain, and formulate) have a linguistic dimension
as well as a conceptual scientific one. Thus, to be able to master these lan-
guage functions, the learner must understand the scientific concepts involved,
know and be able to use the necessary correct vocabulary, syntactic structures
and the discursive characteristics suited to each of these functions.
Any learning process can therefore be expressed in terms of linguistic
knowledge (speak scientifically), a procedural knowledge (to do sciences), and
conceptual knowledge (understanding sciences) (Laplante, 2001). However,
in the discussion about decolonisation in teaching and researching in Africa,
opinions driven by nationalistic convictions and epistemic nativism tend to
set the pace and programmatic suggestions have set aside imperative issues of
practical applicability.
Even if teaching, researching, writing, and publishing predominantly
in African languages is difficult at present for various reasons, a massive
programme of translation could already be set off. Such a programme has
been implemented with success elsewhere and would certainly help to
deconstruct, by symbolically transcending them, the artificial borders of
nation-states. This undertaking will also have the effect of making African
academic microcosms visible to each other and to the global community.
Another action to that end would be that African scholars initiate right now
a scientific dialogue, in their vernacular, with their compatriots not literate
128 Abraham Brahima
in the dominant foreign official languages. Even more importantly, scholars
who are conscious of the linguistic impasses confronting life and thought in
postcolonial Africa should start to ponder the major theoretical problems of
their discipline in their own vernaculars.
This suggestion echoes Jakobson’s (1959) notion of ‘intralingual translation’
or ‘rewording’ which he defines as ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means
of other signs of the same language’ (p. 233). Many scholars in literary and
translation studies have even identified an implicit translation work in the
background of any discursive or creative textual production by African writers
and thinkers. Such texts are in general hybrid in nature because of their
inherently plurilingual, plurivocal, and heteroglossic distinctive features. As
a rule, incommensurability is a marker of distinctiveness of the postcolonial
text and a tool for resistance and subversion. In this sense Rushdie’s (1989,
p.24) self-description as a ‘translated man, […] born-across’ fully makes sense.
Because he constantly works at the intersection of overlapping worlds
(the local and the colonial), the postcolonial writer, thinker, and translator is
engaged in an everlasting process of hybridisation. The cognitive processes
involved in this inherently hybrid literary or discursive production has been
described under different and complementary labels8.
A productive assessment of the relations between translation and knowl-
edge in postcolonial Africa requires a recourse to counter-essentialist under-
standings of the concepts of decolonisation and Africanisation. As Mudimbe
(1988) argues, the main question, as far as one wishes to stay away from any
uncritical essentialist view about knowledge in Africa is: to what extent can
one speak of an African knowledge, and in what sense? Mudimbe considers
the reflection on the form, content and style of ‘Africanising knowledge’ on
the one hand, and the status of traditional systems of thought and their pos-
sible relation to the normative genre of knowledge on the other hand, to be
the major tasks of a philosophy taking African gnosis as the main object of
investigation. The main purpose of this analysis is to rethink ‘the processes of
transformation of types of knowledge’ (p. 9).
Besides the ‘violence of representation’ (Van Binsbergen, 2003, p.148) inher-
ent to any scientific enterprise taking the ‘culturally other’ as object of investi-
gation and the ‘inevitable distortion-transformation-innovation that invariably
and inevitably adheres to any hermeneutics, the use of foreign, dominant lan-
guages to interpret, translate and disseminate African life, and thought often
led to inconsistencies. This is the epistemological and historical background in
which Mudimbe’s following interrogation takes its full significance:
Does this mean that African Weltanschauungen and African traditional

systems of thought are unthinkable and cannot be made explicit within
the framework of their own rationality? My own claim is that thus far the
ways in which they have been evaluated and the means used to explain
them relate to theories and methods whose constraints, rules, and sys-
tems of operation suppose a non-African epistemological locus. (p. 10)
A distortive epistemological order that points to the validity and soundness of
other ways of knowing, namely ‘knowledge produced on Africa by African’
(Hountondji, 2009). The main issue at stake being the ‘theoretical depend-
ency or extraversion’ leading the majority of African intellectual creations to
be produced for and consumed elsewhere (Hountondji, 1997). This is com-
plemented by an uncritical and systematic recourse to canons of thought
elaborated under different sociohistorical circumstances to respond to spe-
cific epistemological needs. Adopting them straightforwardly, without any
critical distance, and even behaving as if these were the canonical way to
produce knowledge and science obviously raises the question of the status and
relevance of other ways of knowing. Hence, the importance and urgency of a
thorough work of deconstruction at the epistemological level, but also in the
field of translation as an ideal instrument towards the conception, conserva-
tion, and transmission of knowledge.
Decolonising translation, deconstructing

the ‘colonial phrase’
The complex and insidious presence of the main features of colonialism in
the ‘postcolonial’ makes any attempt at conceptualising it or delimitating it
according to a strict periodisation a real challenge. Indeed, the ‘noncolonial,’
as wa Thiong’o (2012) calls it, warrants the possibility of continuity under the
disguise of spurious terminology. Hence, there is a discursive impossibility to
think the postcolonial in terms of radical and definite discontinuity between
a ‘pre’ and a ‘post’ perceived as temporal blocks. In their volume ‘The Empire
Writes Back,’ Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin (2004) testify to this difficulty. They
justify their use of the term postcolonial in the encompassing sense of an
imperial process that affects other cultures ‘from the moment of colonisation
to the present’ by the existence of a ‘continuity of preoccupations through-
out the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression’ (p. 2).
The common feature of the subsequent literary productions, Ashcroft et al.
further argue, is their emergence ‘out of the experience of colonization.’
Furthermore, the postcolonial text asserts itself ‘by foregrounding the ten-
sion with the imperial power, and by emphasizing [its] difference from the
assumptions of the imperial centre. It is this what makes [it] distinctively
postcolonial’ (p. 2). It is precisely the continuity between the order of dis-
course prevalent in the colonial time and the period that followed it that
scholars, writers, and translators are called to challenge in the framework of
mental or conceptual decolonisation.
As a rule, subjective and biased representations of Others ultimately aim at
overstating their moral, physical, discursive, and cultural difference(s) with
the Self. As Laurent Dubreuil (2008) notices, political and military dom-
ination is generally built upon and perpetuated within (dans) and through
(par) a specially devised type of discourse. Dubreuil further asserts that the
French colonial enterprise and the subsequent project of Francophonie were
130 Abraham Brahima
rooted in the construction of a stigmatised ‘Other’ through the ‘colonial
phrase,’ a set of stereotyped pieces of discourse such as ‘sub-human,’ ‘back-
ward’ and even ‘possessed’ by evil spirits (p. 13). Against this backdrop, it
is understandable that for many African scholars and writers, language, and
translation issues in postcolonial Africa are not only a matter of transferring
concepts from European scientific jargon into local African languages. It is
more about subverting the old epistemological order established in the colo-
nial context on the exclusive basis of Western categories of thought. These
should eventually be replaced by a new set of paradigms taking into account
other epistemologies more suitable to host and express the particular world-
views of their societies.
Ashcroft et al. (2004) describe decolonisation as involving two comple-
mentary elements: abrogation and appropriation. The former is defined by
a refusal of the categories of the imperial culture, its aesthetic, its illusory
standard of normative or correct usage, and its assumption of a traditional and
fixed meaning inscribed in the words. The latter is ‘the process by which the
language is taken and made to “bear the burden” of one’s cultural experience’
(p. 37). In other words, postcolonial writing is ‘a movement that seizes the
language at the centre and re-places it in a discourse fully adapted to the colo-
nised place’ (Ashcroft et al., 2004, p. 37).
The same could be said of translation in the postcolonial context. For a
translation process to be fully ‘relevant’ (Derrida, 2001), the translator needs
to share the same language as the writer, and a close affinity in the form of
shared meanings (Wiredu, 1996). Indeed, it requires a greater attention to the
inherently heterogeneous, heteroglossic, and hybrid nature of the postcolo-
nial text. Besides, translating in a postcolonial mind-set requires an affinity
with the subtext(s) from the standpoint of its intentions but also its literary
form. Some scholars and translators even require a sort of nativist identifica-
tion with the source text as a prerequisite for any adequate translation. Bandia
(1993) views the translation process as a kind of diving into the worldview(s)
embedded in the source text and sharing its fundamental ontological features.
For him, ‘it is advantageous, therefore, for the translator to share a similar
“life-world” with the author. For instance, if s/he is African s/he will be
more familiar with the cultural background of the narrative to be translated’
(p. 55).
D’almeida (1981) shares this point of view and goes even further into the
description of the ideal affinities between writer and translator. For her,
‘impersonation is easier and more effective when it is an African person
who is translating an African writer’ (p. 24). According to Bandia, the
‘conscientious translator’9 is capable of better perceiving any cultural practice
or daily event described in an African literary work because, as D’Almeida
further adds, ‘they are part of a shared experience’ (p. 24). Simpson (1979)
even denies the possibility of any sound translation of African texts by the
‘uninitiated European translator’ whose single cultural competence is his
mother tongue.
The advent of the practice of translation between African and diasporic
African languages would be the f irst step towards the realisation of
‘intellectualism “in the vernacular” ’ (Mazrui, 2003, p.145) to which so
much literary interest has been given in publications about linguistic decol-
onisation. However, regarding translation as a systematic way to appropriate
‘all the knowledge available in the world’ (Hountondji, 2002, p.243) and the
equally urgent question of linguistic autonomy, the ‘Promised Land is still
very, very far away,’ to borrow Werrema’s (2012) words. As far as translation
into African languages is concerned, the current efforts are still confined to a
handful of languages. A systematic effort at appropriating the major texts of
world literature and the current state of world affairs could effectively serve
many purposes.
Wa Thiong’o sets the discussion about translation in postcolonial con-
texts on the firm ground of its probable positive outcomes for African
peoples. According to him, translation could contribute to the empower-
ment of Africans not literate in European languages by providing them with
the keys towards their intellectual self-determination. In his essay Secure the
Base. Making Africa Visible in the Globe (2016), he accurately states that
Enriching the languages people use and encouraging dialogue among

them through the tool of translation is the best way to create a cultural
basis for African unity. Imagine if all the books written in different
African languages, and even those produced by continental and dias-
poric Africans in any language, were available in each and every African
language. Would this not create a sense of common inheritance and a
basis for more intellectual production? (p. 53)
This would be an extremely empowering way to finally start addressing the

issue of decolonisation from a concrete and effective point of view. Up to
now, the literature on the subject of decolonisation is confined in an aca-
demic and elitist monologue with anecdotal endeavours in the direction
of the ‘illiterate’10 majority. Circumstantial efforts quite often occur in the
form of opportunistic translations for development projects through vulgar-
isation supports. However, apart from the recent (2016) ‘Jalada translation
project,’ which shall be further described later, there is still no systematic
effort in Africa towards the implementation of something similar to the ‘poly,
omni-translation’ Berman (1984) describes in the specific case of German
Romanticism.
Much has been published about the importance of linguistic decoloni-
sation as an essential step towards mental and/or conceptual decolonisa-
tion (Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa & Ihechukwu, 1980; Wa Thiong’o, 1986;
Wiredu, 1996) but the connection between language policy, translation,
and decolonisation seems to be overlooked. Bandia (2008) states that
‘there is not even a single study as broad in scope as a book that critically
assess [African] literature from the standpoint of the latest development in
132 Abraham Brahima
translation theory’ (p.1). It seems, as Ricard (2011) notices, as if ‘the contem-
porary literary production in Africa is not interested in the issue of translation
as such: few texts are translated into African languages, very few are trans-
lated from these languages. […] The question of translation remains an issue
for these literatures’ (p. 42). According to Batchelor (2014):
In the existing literature, translation theory frameworks developed in

response to the specific challenges posed by the translation of hybrid
postcolonial texts are limited to broad outlines, or indications of a direc-
tion in which translation theory might move, rather than full explora-
tions of possible translation approaches. (p. 5)
In his reflection on how to ‘re-Africanise’ higher education on the conti-

nent, Mazrui (2003) underlines the inexistence of a tradition of systematic
translation, which could provide Africans scholars and students with major
texts of world literature. Mazrui’s remarks are still broadly valid even if, as
Kilolo (2020), founding member of ‘Jalada’ a pan-African collective of young
African writers puts it, as far as literary translation in Africa is concerned,
‘there is much cause for concern, [but] the situation is changing for the
better’ (p. 350). Indeed, in 2016, the collective translated wa Thiong’o’s short
story ‘Ituika Ria Murungaru: Kana Kiria Gitumaga Andu Mathii Marungii’
(‘The Upright Revolution: or Why Humans Walk Upright’) originally written
in Gikuyu into 92 languages of which more than 50 are African vernaculars.
An achievement which illustrates that translation between African languages
is not only practically possible but constitutes a necessary step toward the
development of literary and scientific traditions in these languages. As wa
Thiong’o (2018, p.124) states, this initiative is a confirmation of the fact that
‘thought can originate in any African language and spread to other African
languages and to all the other languages of the world’ (as cited by Kilolo,
2020, p.348).
The Jalada translation project brought together a tremendous number of
translators and scholars from all over the continent to ‘carry across’ the orig-
inal text of wa Thiong’o into their mother tongue, individually, in pairs or
even with other members of their family. Remarkably, since only a few trans-
lators were literate in Gikuyu, most of the translations had to transit through
a number of former colonial languages, namely English, French, and Arabic.
As such, this experience is an eloquent expression of the subversive poten-
tial embedded in a decolonial practice of translation as well as its intrinsic
hybrid nature. Furthermore, such initiatives reflect the vision of ‘translation
culture’ (Wolf, 2000) in which ‘translation will no longer means bridging a
gap between two different cultures but, rather, producing meanings which
are created through the encounter of cultures that are already characterised
by multiculturality’ (p. 10). At the heart of this ideal space where translations
fully endorse their ontological purpose of bearing across different languages
and culture towards a ‘third space’ of mutual understanding, the translator
‘operates in an environment characterised by the hybridisation of language,
culture, behaviour, institution, and communication’ (Wolf, 2000, p.10)
Strikingly enough, history is full of examples of people under (foreign)
domination who endeavour to appropriate the linguistic and cultural par-
ticularities of their ruler in an attempt to subvert the hegemonic asymmet-
rical relation and turn it to their own advantage. As Osha (2005) observes,
‘the factors that guarantee a language’s survival include the economic power,
military superiority, and cultural prestige of the people who speak it’ (p. 68).
Translation has always played a major role in this attempt at appropriating
the secret of the ruler’s power. This was the case in Germany during the
Reformation and the 19th Century, and in Japan during the 20th Century
where ‘a “Civilisation and Enlightment” movement was translating the
classics of the French Enlightment and British liberalism into Japanese and
advocating catching up with the West through democracy, industrialism,
and the emancipation of women’ (Morris, 2011, p.14). The Japanese were
so convinced of the power of the Western colonial nations residing in their
cultural production that some were not satisfied with a mere appropriation
of the major works through translation. They even wanted to go beyond
and straightaway made English be their national language. After a series of
military and political setbacks, ‘by 1900 Chinese intellectuals were following
the Japanese lead, translating Western books on evolution and economics’
(Morris, 2011, p.15).
With regards to these historical examples, it is legitimate to ask why such a
tradition of massive translation has not been implemented within the decolo-
nising processes in Africa? Cheikh Anta Diop’s work stating the importance
of translation and the re-appropriation of local languages aim at demon-
strating, in the context of colonial denegation, that African languages can
conceptualise and express the most abstract concepts of science and literature.
In order to substantiate his claims, he endeavours to translate various scientific
and literary texts including the theory of relativity into Wolof. One should
also single out Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, Rabearivelo, Joaquim Dias
Cordeiro da Matta, Eno Belinga, Wole Soyinka, Robert Shabaans, Amadou
Kourouma, and Ousmane Kane. Their work as translators, thinkers, and
writers in African languages have contributed to a better understanding of
the challenges of translation in postcolonial Africa.
Conclusion
For decades, the African postcolonial translation scene has been a desert like
landscape, dominated by a one-way transfer from local languages and culture
in the colonies towards the metropolitan Centre. Today, many universities on
the continent have their own faculty or departments of Translation Studies11
and there are various translators’ associations with a continental spectrum and
134 Abraham Brahima
academic journals. These organisations aim at providing students and scholars
in Translation Studies with a platform for reflection and exchanges mainly
through academic encounters. One of these structures is the Association for
translation studies in Africa (ATSA).12 However, the principal aim of these
institutions, schools, and programmes is to train professional translators and
interpreters whose skills are primarily dedicated to earn a living and to lead a
successful career. The systematic form of translation required in the postcolonial
context of Africa is more demanding but less rewarding in terms of material or
financial gains. Besides their professional engagements, translators, and scholars
well-informed about the future challenges of Africa in the postcolonial era and
eager to contribute to an authentic human development on the continent should
engage in a translation practice which would turn them into creative systematic
translators as illustrated by the Jalada translation project.
As shown by the historical examples mentioned above, if Africans really
mean to decolonise conceptually and linguistically, they should initiate a vast
programme of systematic translation of world literary or scientific works into
their vernaculars. This may sound paradoxical in the context of a discussion
about self-determination and de-linking from the vestiges of colonial domi-
nation. But if this promethean task has succeeded in endowing other peoples
with the moral and intellectual strength necessary for the leap into the mod-
ern scientific age, why should Africans not follow through? This option is at
least worthy of being seriously considered with regards to the long series of
fruitless attempts at appropriating science and technology on the continent in
the postcolonial era.
As such, the integration of indigenous languages and worldviews into the
academy is one of the biggest challenges to the project of Africanisation,
as well as the most promising prospect for the establishment of an auto-
centered, productive, and sustainable culture of science and research in
Africa. That said, one cannot overlook the fact that translation is after all
an instrument which primordial function is to carry meaning, feelings, and
stances across languages and cultures. Its primordial purpose is to create a
‘third space’ in which different worldviews could meet and interact. The
practice of translation occurs in a hybrid space (Wolf, 2000), where the natu-
ral need to communicate, share others thought and feelings is mixed up with
power struggles. However, one cannot reasonably expect from translation
only to provide for the deep structural changes needed today in the domains
of science and higher education and which primarily depend on determined
political decisions and enthusiastic engagement.
Notes
1. The primary target population of the survey was individual translators and organisations
that provide translation services. This initial group was extended to academics, mainly
professors of languages at universities, freelance translators based in Africa and other
people involved in translation in Africa.
2. Historic pact signed on Feb. 6, 1840 between Great Britain and a number of
New Zealand Maori tribes of North Island. It purported to protect Maori rights and
was the immediate basis of the British annexation of New Zealand. […] Negociated at
the settlement of Waitangi, the treaty’s three articles provided for (1) the Maori signato-
ries acceptance of the British queen’s sovereignty in their lands, (2) the crown’s protec-
tion of Maori possessions, with the exclusive right of the queen to purchase Maori land,
and (3) full rights of British subjects of the Maori signatories. [Encyclopedia Britannica
online, https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Waitangi].
3. Signed on May 2, 1889 at Wichale (or Ucciali) in Ethiopia by Menelik II, Emperor
of Ethiopia and the Italians, this treaty granted Italy the territories of modern Eritrea
and northern Tigray in exchange of a sum of money and weapons. Article XVII of the
Treaty stated that the emperor of Ethiopia “could” have recourse to the good offices
of the Italian government in his dealings with other foreign powers; but the Italian
text translated that it “must”. On the base of their own text, the Italians proclaimed a
protectorate over Ethiopia. A year later, having found out the subterfuge, Menelik II
denunciated and rejected treaty, which led to the Battle of Adwa and the Treaty of Addis
Ababa (Oct, 26, 1896). [Encyclopedia Britannica online, https://www.britannica.com/
event/Treaty-of-Wichale].
4. An Italian adventurer followed the occupation troops and was eventually appointed
as interpreter for Arabic, without having a clue about this language. And so, an alleged
rebel was captured and questioned.The Italian officer asks the question in Italian and the
false interpreter said a few sentences in his own-devised Arabic. The questioned did not
understand and answered God knows what (obviously that he did not understand). The
interpreter translated as he pleased in Italian that the rebel did not want to answer or that
he admit being culprit and most of the time the later was hanged.] (My Translation)
5. According to Jakobson who devised it, this expression refers to ‘interlingual translation’
(or “translation proper”) one of the three elements of his typology, along with intralingual
(rewording, reformulation) and intersemiotic translation (transmutation).
6. This odd compound is borrowed from the English translation of Jean-Luc Nancy’s
(2005) neologism “déclosion,” which he uses to designate the opening up of a formerly
closed space. Its meaning as a reversal process of a foreclosure is pertinent to the indis-
pensable process of academic integration in postcolonial Africa.
7. Confronted in his readings with the overwhelming (mis)representations of Africans in
colonial ethnological discourse, Nara decided to deconstruct them all, start from scratch
and decolonise all the knowledge accumulated about his people: ‘J’aimerais repartir de
zéro, reconstruire du tout au tout l’univers de ces peuples : dé-coloniser les connais-
sances établies sur eux, remettre à jour des généalogies nouvelles, plus crédibles, et pou-
voir avancer une interprétation plus attentive au milieu et à sa véritable histoire. Souvent,
je me surprends hésitant. J’ai alors envie de me moquer de cette envie de faire surgir
des parcours nouveaux. […] Craindre la convoitise… Leur impertinence, également. «
Quelle utilité ? Les Kouba ont été étudiés en profon-deur… – Par un Noir ? – Vous
pensez que cela changerait quelque chose… ? » Que les Allemands commencent par se
contenter des descriptions de leur passé faites par des Français… Ceux-ci, par des études
anglaises… Alors seulement, je céderai.’ (p. 27)
8. ‘Unconscious translation process’ [unbewusster Übersetzungsvorgang] (Mayanja 1999),
‘introspective translation’ [innerliche Übersetzung] (Fall, 1996), ‘african subtext’ (Kolb
2009) to ‘linguistic consciousness’ or ‘subliminal translation’ (Ricard, 2011).
9. According to Bandia, the term means ‘an African author writing in a European language
or a translator of African works’ (1993, 55–78).
10. The term ‘illiterate’ as applied to African communities in this chapter always means
‘non-literate in European languages.’
11. Among others, the ‘South African Translator’s Institute’ (SATI) in Bloemfontein; the
Nigerian Institute of Translators and Interpreters (NITI), the Advanced School of
Translators and Interpreters (ASTI) in Buea (Cameroon). In addition to these, many
136 Abraham Brahima
universities in Africa currently offer courses and qualifications in translation and
interpretation like the Master of Arts in Translation Studies at the Africa International
University in Nairobi, Kenya and at many universities in South Africa.
12. In its online presentation, the association states that its most important task is to provide
‘a voice to translation scholars in Africa. Making their voice heard implies decolonising
their minds’. According to ATSA, scholars and students in translation studies in Africa
are in urgent need for an academic space open ‘to the most recent trends in transla-
tion theory and practice’ as well as a forum ‘for discussing uniquely African notions of
translation.’
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7 Linguistic coexistence and
controversy in Algerian
higher education
From colonialisation via the Arabisation
movement to the adoption of hybridity
Abbes Sebihi and Leonie Schoelen
Introduction
For centuries, Algeria has occupied a strategic geopolitical position, with
more than 1,000 km of coastline at the Mediterranean Sea separating Europe
and Africa. Contrary to other countries formerly colonised by France, as
Département outre-mer, Algeria had a unique status as an integral adminis-
trative part of France under its rule, starting in 1830, until independence in
1962. Algeria’s official languages are modern standard Arabic – with the spo-
ken Algerian dialect Daridja – and Tamaziɣt/Tamazight (so-called ‘Berber’),
since 2016 constitutionally, after being awarded national language status in
2001. French continues to be widely used in administration, (higher) edu-
cation and commerce. English is not widespread as of now, however, the
academic integration of the South presently pushes for more English in the
country’s higher education system, as do representatives of science disciplines
(Bensouiah, 2020b).
There are many reasons for Algeria’s linguistic diversity: historical, cultural,
geographical, and political influences. It was marked by the coexistence of
several linguistic and dialect varieties, starting from the first recorded lan-
guage brought to the region from the ‘Berber’.1 Their languages were made
up of the current ‘Berber’ dialects, an extension of the oldest varieties known
in the Maghreb, or rather in the ‘Berber’ speaking area, which extends from
Egypt to Morocco, and from Algeria to Niger. These Tamazight languages, as
we now call them, constitute the oldest linguistic substrate of this region and
are, therefore, the mother tongue of parts of the population (Chaker, 1998).
This still existent language is rich and dynamic in practices and behaviours
of speakers, who adopt diversity to their expressive needs. It is substance to the
different foreign languages having marked Algeria over time, by way of the
Arabic language as a vector of Islamisation, and the French language, origi-
nating in colonisation. This coexistence, therefore, turns out to be turbulent,
Linguistic coexistence and controversy 141
fluctuating, and sometimes conflictual in a symbolic and cultural field crossed
by relations of domination and linguistic stigmatisation.
A recurring source of conflict past and present is the controversy surround-
ing language of instruction and science in general as an issue that is highly
politicised. With the policy obligation to decolonise, social sciences and
humanities have been Arabised, whereas experimental sciences continue to
be taught in French. In 2019, the interim minister Tayeb Bouzid announced
the reinforcement of English alongside Arabic, which, in principle, is upheld
by the new Minister taking up office in 2020, Chems-Eddine Chitour, who,
however, stresses quality of teaching regardless of the language it is dispensed
in (Bensouiah, 2020a).
It must be noted that this discourse points at an emotional statement to
apply pressure on the French government to underline Algerian sovereignty
and thus decrease French linguistic and cultural influence, communicated
as a strategy, lacking any implementation measures, however. As of now,
the debate is political rather than scientific, and, with ideology prevailing,
does not take into account the chances provided by the Algerian plurilin-
gual environment also in academia. Notwithstanding, curricula have rarely
been changed and updated in the non-technical disciplines, which makes
the intended decolonisation policy incomplete as well as ineffective as both
lecturers and students may lack respective passive and active language profi-
ciency, in addition to the non-availability of (translated) resources.
Theoretical approach, hypothesis, and argument

This contribution draws on a theoretical approach of structural violence
(Galtung, 1969), a concept first coined in peace and conflict studies.
Simplified, it describes violence with victims, yet no visible perpetrators.
Hence, the violence is in, and exercised by, structures, systems, and policy.
The continued influence of these colonial elements can be labelled struc-
tural violence. As a result, there is a need to decolonise structures, too,
such as in higher education systems. From the background of language
as social practice, and identity building through language choice in an
Arab context (Serreli, 2019), Algeria is an example of a postcolonial society,
which is marked by multilingualism, as was described by Homi K. Bhabha
(Bhabha, 2003). Decolonisation, including, but not limited to higher educa-
tion, has so far taken place predominantly by linguistic means: since the first
reform of the colonially inherited system in 1971 (MESRS, 1971), Algeria
has been endeavouring to nationalise its higher education. Nevertheless, this
policy has been implemented only partly. In this context, the notion of
‘language for peace’ (Belmihoub, 2015) can account for the existence of
hybrid, heterogenous knowledge (Bhabha, 2003). In the case of Algeria,
recently emerging English has the potential to fulfil this role. Due to its deco-
lonial connotation in this setting, it is apolitical, more neutral, and linked to
industry, information technology, and, increasingly, globalised trade.
142 Abbes Sebihi and Leonie Schoelen
In the following, we present a review of the presence and development of
languages in Algerian history and its impact on the national higher education
agenda. Linguistic influences and their implications for the present situation
in higher education are systematically exposed to facilitate an understanding
of its relevance. We trace back the language conflict of Arabic versus French
in higher education in Algeria: while these are the only two references today,
this dichotomy fails to pay tribute to the country’s multilingualism past and
present. In conducting a situation analysis, we highlight the present position-
ing and argue how a ‘language for peace’ could offer a solution to prevail-
ing emotional policymaking, based on ideological considerations rather than
rational choice.
Ever since, there has been individual preference based, unplanned, and
incomprehensible decisions regarding official, including educational, language
policy, instead of study informed reforms accompanied by well-planned
implementation. There has not been consolidation between Algeria’s two
official and an additional working language to this day. Young Algerians
define themselves by being either proficient in Arabic or French, or yet,
Tamazight, not seldom as a protest reaction. It can be observed that policy
choices were not well reflected but aimed at a temporary solution, oriented
towards global trends rather than national needs. This status quo is rooted
in French colonial practices based on a ‘divide-to-rule’ approach with the
objective to create internal conflict between Arabs and Tamazights, and
thus to weaken both languages in Algeria in favour of French as the only
language of administration and education. Consequently, there has been no
coherent definition, let alone strategy of what decolonisation, Arabisation,
or the Algerian university means – instead, impulsive legislation without the
involvement of any stakeholders, either in academia or in civil society, has
taken place. Nowadays, rather than building bridges between African, Arab,
and European countries, there is resentment.
Historical overview of the presence of languages through

settlement in Algeria
This section necessarily remains fragmented, given its brevity, and focused
on an examination in the context of Algeria’s history and its impact on the
linguistic praxis. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the reader needs to be
introduced to the historical context in order to reconstruct the impact of lan-
guage in education. Furthermore, we highlight the colonial use of the term
‘Berber’ in order to correct and thus decolonise it.
Compared to other, land locked African countries, there has been exchang-
ing through trade in Algeria, which is the root of the hybridity observed
today. Over time, the settlement by many cultures in Algeria has exerted
their respective influence, however, today, there remains no linguistic impact
except of colonial nature.
Algeria occupies a prominent place in the panorama of world prehistory.
The number and the quality of its traces, from the oldest Palaeolithic to pro-
tohistory, give it an exceptional position and make it one of the first cradles
of humanity. The first traces of human occupation, which marked Algeria’s
Prehistorical area, begins 2 million years ago and ends with the first Libyan
texts called Tifinagh, in the 1st millennium before time.2 The so-called
Tighennif Man is the oldest known fossil human in North Africa.3 Algerian
‘indigenous’4 population dating from sometime in the myriad before time
has been incorrectly referred to as ‘Berbers,’ a term derived from the Roman
label ‘Barbarian’ in addition to another group, ‘Moors,’ since the century
later Arab Muslim presence and indeed to this day. In fact, what is routinely
portrayed as one people were many different civilisations – Moors (Mauri),
Mauritanians, Africans, and many tribes and tribal federations such as the
Leuathae or Musulami, all of whom did not share a common ancestry, cul-
ture, let alone language (Rouighi, 2019a). The modern, acceptable term for
members of peoples in a multitude of countries is Imazighen (plural)/Amazigh
(singular) (Rouighi, 2019b).
The history of ancient Algeria is linked to that of the Mediterranean. From
approximately 4000 before time, the Libyan ‘Berber’ populations, whether
nomadic or sedentary, participate in the economic and cultural movements
of the region. Before the arrival of the Romans the last centuries before
time, Numidians (‘Berbers’) and Punics (Carthaginians) mingle in what
corresponds to Eastern Algeria. Greek is the common language, Punic is a
semi-official language; they coexist with the languages spoken by the people,
Libyan (or ‘Berber’). The spread of classical science and educational institu-
tions does not yet take place, as settler peoples mostly adapted to the native
population at the time.
The Graeco-Roman civilisation’s traces varied greatly in its different
provinces. While there existed various degrees between a mere facade and
quasi-total extinction of local cultures, mostly, a mixture or coexistence of
both cultures was found, the situation of which also extended to language
presence and practice prevailing alongside Greek and Latin (Millar, 1968).
The commonly spoken native languages of Roman Africa, around time
record until the early 5th Century – in Hippo Regius, the location of modern
Algeria – were Punic and a language often incorrectly referred to as ‘Berber,’
which has since been labelled ‘Libyan.’ It might indeed have been a coded
language incomprehensible to outsiders but it is not known whether or to
what extent it was in daily use at all, neither whether there is a connection
nor it is even at the origin of modern day Tamazight (Millar, 1968).
Arabisation of present day Algeria took place through two (of a total of
seven) large flows of populations arriving from the Arabic peninsula during
the period of Islamisation. The first stage directly follows the Islamic con-
quest of the 7th and 8th Centuries. This Arabisation is only superficial since
it concerns only the conquered cities, where the Arabs settled and constituted
a scientific and aristocratic class that allowed access to the language, power,
and science to the rest of the inhabitants of these cities (Remaoun, 2000).
The countryside remains purely ‘Berber.’ The dialects dating from this time
are called pre-Hilialian (Meynier, 2007).
The second stage is the result of Bedouin incursions in Algeria in the 11th
and 12th Centuries, principally, the Banu Hilal and the Banu Maqtil. This
Arabisation was much stronger and deeper than the first, since it affected
not only the cities but also the high plateaus, the plains, and certain oases,
thus causing the gradual Arabisation of the country between the 15th and
18th Centuries (Russell & Russell, 1999). The ‘Berber’ languages were
maintained in the 19th Century in the densely populated mountains, the
adjacent plains, and in certain oases of the south called ‘Ksours.’ The dialects
resulting from this Arabisation are referred to as post- Hilialian (E.B., 2001);
(Hamet, 1932).
However, it should be noted that the influx of population from the Middle
East has never been large enough to Arabise a majority of Algerians. Linguistic
Arabisation was therefore done mainly through the Zaouïas and religious
brotherhoods, who used Arabic as the liturgical language and language
of instruction, as well as by the political powers of the different medieval
kingdoms of the Maghreb – who, with a few exceptions, all used Arabic as
the one and only official language. Consequently, in the mid-14th Century,
a university in the modern understanding with disciplinary departments,
academic staff, visiting researchers, student residences, and scholarships, was
established in Tlemcen,5 in the West of Algeria, by one of these scholars, Abū
l-’Abbā s Ah . ammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāh
. yā b. Muh
. mad b. Yah . id al-Wanshar īsī, as
the first institutionalised form of higher education.6
Algerian ground breaking intellectual and commonly regarded founder
of modern sociology, Ibn Khaldoun (1333–1406), publishing a history of
the Maghreb detailing successive Arab and ‘Berber’ dynasties as well as
their Eastern and Western contemporaries called ‘The Book of Examples’
(in Arabic) had taught there, and it was similar in its academic programmes
with European medieval universities of the time. Yet, the pioneering uni-
versity ceased to exist for unknown reasons (Kateb, 2014). As a consequence,
outside of intellectuals’ circles in principal Mosques of main cities, there
had been no formalised higher education in Algeria for centuries, with stu-
dents being sent abroad to Islamic institutions of higher learning in Egypt,
Morocco, or Tunisia, to pursue tertiary level studies (Daghbouche, 1982;
Dahmane, 2014).
The Ottoman Algeria, 1516–1830, marked a period of a distinct, tradition
oriented Sufi culture and a maritime rule orientation, seeking to prevent
European – primordially, Spanish Christian, as opposed to the Muslim
Spanish, the Andalous – conquest of North Africa. Rulers, who called the
states of the region the ‘Maghrib’ as the Muslim West for the first time, over-
whelmingly lacked knowledge of the Arabic language, and, hence, there was
little recognition of the importance of learning, intellectual development,
and progressivist science beyond religious curricula. Coupled with political
instability and bad governance, it led to the failure of educational institu-
tions in the late 18th and beginning 19th Century and widespread isolation.
Overall, the enlightenment movement of the time on the other side of the
Mediterranean did not reach Algeria, and, therefore, needed educational
reform did not take place (Ladjal & Bensaid, 2014).
To sum up, the ancient ‘Lybian’ language disappeared. The Romans had
been engaged in science, yet, they resided in Algeria primarily to show stra-
tegic political presence, and did not take interest in learning local languages,
neither spreading their own. During the time of Arabic conquest and cen-
turies of settlement then, there was no pressure to assimilate linguistically
for the population, as the Arabic language was a symbol of education and
hence prestige and political power. Rather, the Arab motivation was based on
Islamisation. The Spanish, like the Romans, used their presence in Algeria as a
medium term backup security against the Muslim Andalusians. Thus, Spanish
linguistic influence, beyond a few words, is negligible as is the Turkish, due
to priorities other than education during the Ottoman period. By the 18th
Century, the two artificially separate identities had been constructed, Arab
versus Berber, and been adopted by the people in the now Maghrib, includ-
ing modern Algeria. Consequently, at the time of the early 19th Century,
with the beginning of French colonisation, Arabic and Tamazight varieties as
the only surviving languages since pre-historic times were spoken in Algeria.
The investment in education and science during Arab settlement spread not
least by religious practices, such as the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Hadj,
and thus went well beyond trade. Science, through the Arabic language, was
not monopolised as it had been during Roman times. Centres of knowledge,
such as the 14th Century university, were much more accessible. The pres-
ence in Timbuktu, for instance, embraced Blacks, and merged Africans and
Arabs fostering exchange, and building hybrid cultures.
Colonial rule: French as de facto unique language of higher

education in Algeria (1830–1962)
At the time of French occupation, Arabic language illiteracy rate in
Algeria was as low as 14 per cent, which rose to over 90 per cent by 1901
due to suppressive French educational policies, which confiscated endow-
ments allowing operation and closed existing local, Islamic institutions
(Ladjal & Bensaid, 2014). Up until the first World War period, the rate of
school age Muslim children in primary school was less than 10 per cent of an
age cohort (Kadri, 2007).7 The concept of French higher education in colo-
nies8 was to establish institutes of tertiary education covering specific needs
of the European settler society, the écoles supérieures, rather than implant
the system present in Paris at the time. As early as 1832, in Algiers, the
École de médecine was established − although it was only operational four
years before reopening in 1858 − requiring an authorisation by the French
Minister de la Guerre (War) for all non-French students, i.e., Maures, Turks,
and Jews (République Française, 1960). In that ‘Elle devrait contribuer à la
conquête des indigènes et à leur soumission,’9 it had a clear cut ideological as
well as missionary function of colonial supremacy (Guerid, 2010).
Medersas10 were established as Franco-Muslim secondary cum tertiary edu-
cation institutions in Tlemcen, Medea (transferred to Blida and then Algiers
shortly after) and Constantine by decree in 1850. They were aimed at dispens-
ing instruction of a professional nature11 by training assistants or midlevel civil
servants for the colonial administration only, which is shown by the fact that
they were put under military authority (Kateb, 2014). They were integrated
in the Academy of Algiers as the French public instruction system in 1876 and
underwent reforms in 1895, reinforcing French language instruction in addi-
tion to Arabic, at the detriment of theology education.
The first Algerian teachers were therefore trained at the École Normale
Superiéure (ENS) in Bouzareah, Algiers – which exists to this day – from
1883 until 1939. This further illustrates the fact that the objective of divide
between French and Algerians was achieved in a double manner; Algerians
not quite like the Europeans but – admitted to their institutions – the elite
among the locals (Colonna, 1975). Consequently, there were few bilin-
gual Algerian intellectuals. In general, only two languages were used for
instruction. The French adopted a ‘split-to-rule’ policy by the promotion of
Tamazight, reinforcing an artificial separation, justified by a mistranslation
of Ibn Khaldoun’s work, widespread in the 1850s, claiming an Arab-Berber
race divide, in a form of racialised Islam to disenfranchise the local Algerian
Muslim population, thus benefiting French settlers (Rouighi, 2019b). The
foundation for Algerian colonial higher education was then laid by a law
in December 1877, separating theory focussed institutions and those with a
more practical orientation (République Française, 1960).
Modern day higher education, including its postgraduate training and
research mandate, in colonial Algeria thus begins with the founding of the
University of Algiers as well as its two annexes in the west of the country,
Oran, and in the east, Constantine, in 1909. By this act, the former écoles
were transformed into faculties of the new institution. In its early times,
only law and medicine continued to be proposed for higher learning (Mélia,
1950). In line with its ideological outset of promoting, and sustaining colo-
nialism, the university was mainly aimed at educating settlers of European
origin (Ronze, 1930). Therefore, Algerian students only made up as little as
approximately 5 per cent between 1882 – then in the écoles – and at the single
university until the end of the First World War. In contrast, both Morocco
and Tunisia had private, i.e., non-French but local administered institutions,
with religious and Arabic instruction as central elements. Those – El Azhar
University in Cairo, Karaouyne University in Fes and Zitouna University
in Tunis – continued to be frequented by so-called ‘indigenous’/musulman
(Muslim) Algerians in the first half of the 20th Century (Kateb, 2014).
Overall, Arabic was the language of the heart and the spirit, whereas
French was made the language of education by and of force, accessible to
European settlers almost exclusively with regards to education.
Colonialism implies structural violence by aggressive francophonie culture,
achieved by Algeria being conceptualised as a settlement colony par excellence.
More than 130 years of French occupation thus marked a backwards turn
for education and science in Algeria. Local culture and structures were not
only overturned by colonisation but indeed destroyed by the French. They
consciously did not take on existing education infrastructure to build on, but
in arrogant superiority ideology, created inferior, separate pathways for the
so-called ‘indigenous/indigène’ status – while primary education was made
mandatory already in the late 19th Century, this only applied to European
male children (Colonna, 1972).
Independence and nation building: Coexistence of French

and Arabic in Algerian higher education following reform
(1962–2000)
To begin with, education in independent Algeria is a cultural conflict (Heggoy,
1973). This conflict is most evident in language, which showcases hybridity, yet
also identity orientation. This section traces the development of the language
conflict Arabic versus French as the only two references in higher education,
and thus officially, until recently. The Evian agreements, preparing Algerian
independence and formally ending the eight years, brutal liberation war 1954–
1962, foresaw and determined the continuation of French interests by means
of cooperation (Algeria, 1962).12 This meant French services in the form of
lecturers, teachers, books – education and culture, not technology, knowledge
transfer, and economic cooperation. The French strategy was to continue col-
onisation by and through education – both system and language as a means of
structural violence in a win lose situation. Therefore, the language conflict in
the postcolonial society, as well as in educational planning caused by the fran-
chisation of education went on for decades (Benrabah, 2007, 2013).
In its second year of Algeria’s independence, following the national movement
in its ideological options and the process of appropriation of identity, Ahmed Ben
Bella, the first President of the Republic, in his first public and official speech,
unequivocally established the framework for the definition of Algerian identity:
‘We are Arabs, Arabs, ten million Arabs’ (Chaker, 1990). The first Algerian
Constitution (8 September 1963) was inspired by two articles in particular: Art.
2: ‘Islam is the state religion,’ and Art. 3: ‘Arabic is the national and official lan-
guage.’ The State was working to generalise the use of the national language at
the official level, according to the Constitution of 1976. This provision of the
Constitution was planned to be implemented through a series of laws, though
none of them could be applied since all positions in administration, related to
political power, were taken by and given to francophones or francophiles. Those
did not want to adapt and there was no time through hasty, unprepared roll out.
Throughout the 1960 then, higher education in Algeria remained French
by curricula, academic staff, diplomas, and its elite orientation, to the extent
that: ‘En cette période, rien ne distinguait l’université algérienne de l’uni-
versité française’ (Guerid, 2007, p.282).13 The inherited French law on the
university remained valid until further notice (Mahiou, 2015, p.14) and
prominent sociologists from Europe, such as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean
Claude Passeron, taught during stays in Algiers. Still in 1966, there were
seven French modelled Écoles Nationales, one École Normale Superieure, and
two Écoles Superieures, as well as seven Instituts Nationaux (Ministère de l’Ed-
ucation Nationale, 1966). This state of affairs shows the structural violence as
French colonial legacy. Most lecturers were French coopérants (Siino, 2014),
although arabophone professors − mainly Egyptians − had started coming
to Algeria. In the beginning of the 1970s, there were only about 10,000 stu-
dents, still less than 2,000 Algerian academic staff (Guerid, 2010), and as little
as 811 university diplomas were delivered to Algerians (Kateb, 2014).
1971 then marked the year of the creation of the ‘Algerian university’ by
the introduction of the reform La Refonte. This political term was used to
distinguish the now founded novel, national university, from its inherited
French origin. The discourse, however, is proof of the prevailing ideologisa-
tion as opposed to rational, evidence based policymaking. During the ded-
icated press conference, the then Minister of Higher Education, Mohamed
Benyahia, defines the objectives of the Algerian university, first of all, in ‘(…)
former les cadres, tous les cadres dont le pays a besoin’ (MESRS, 1971).14 Not
least, the then President Houari Boumediene (1965–1978) stated in one of his
speeches on arabisation in the framework of the commission that ‘la langue
arabe est la langue de la sidérurgie et de l’acier’15 (Mahiou, 2013, p.301).
Arabisation was made priority for national development as was the policy
of the ruling party since independence, the Front de Libération Nationale cul-
tural commission, which sought ‘indépendance linguistique’ after political
independence from France. Then Minister and president of the commis-
sion, Ahmed Taleb, took over to define the four pillars of higher education
reform: Algerianisation of academic staff, Arabisation of instruction in a
‘de facto’ bilingual environment, democratisation of higher education in
line with other levels of national education, and scientific modernisation
(Mahiou, 2015, p.10).
Arabisation in higher education according to the criteria above was
implemented in several phases. First, in the 1960s, it only applied to his-
tory and philosophy; second, in the 1970s, law, social sciences, and sciences
were taught bilingually, respectively, in parallel Arabic French. Third, in
the 1980s, social sciences were entirely Arabised, and – as is the status
quo still today – fourth, from the 1990s, the division of social sciences
and humanities in Arabic and experimental sciences in French manifested
itself (Benghabrit & Haddab, 2008; Benguerna, 2011; Coffmann, 1992;
Geneste, 1983; Guerid, 2010; Henry & Vatin, 2013; Sebaa, 1996). The con-
cept of Arabisation is interpreted as an unplanned decision of visibility and
fast impact, based on historical reasons to have wider political acceptance,
and maintain peace by trust from the population. It was not strategic and not
doable to implement overnight as there were no tools, no roadmap, and only
marginal support by the few Egyptian and Syrian lecturers.
Hence, the definition of the institution university is its integration in the
larger political project with a national outlook (Kadri, 1991). Many activists,
mayors, and deputies of the then single opposition party are the product of
this proclaimed national, reformed university (Kadri, 1991), who demanded
the establishment of an Islamic Republic with Arabic as the only official lan-
guage as per the first national agenda from 1954, without any negotiations,
which led to the so-called décennie noire (‘black decade’) of civil war. Higher
education was in fact the missing piece in the nation to be decolonised, both
linguistically and in terms of structures. Universities and military academicist
continued to be staunchly francophone and French modelled. During years
of terrorist attacks ravaging the country, departures into exile, and the subse-
quent professional insertion of university professors in France and elsewhere
in Europe and North America was rampant, which cannot be compared to
so-called ‘brain drain’ in academia elsewhere as the economic situation in
Algeria was comfortable for most lecturers (Guerid, 2007, p.303). Scientific
activity came to an almost complete standstill. Not least, the phase of politi-
cal instability in the 1990s fostered the first appearance and use of English in
Algeria (Belmihoub, 2018a).
It is important to note that, again, Arabisation was conceived as ‘a goal
and a means’ (Taleb Ibrahimi, 1981) to transform the colonial administra-
tion into that of ‘an Arab Muslim state,’ and thus inherently political. The
most important is undoubtedly the law no. 91–05 of January 16, 1991 relat-
ing to the generalisation of the use of the Arabic language. It aims to exclude
the use of French, and all public administrations, institutions (including uni-
versities), companies, and associations, whatever their nature, are required to
use the only Arabic language in all their activities such as communication,
administrative, financial, technical, and artistic management. Nevertheless,
to this day, all government documents appear bilingually, which shows that
since 30 years, the situation has not changed significantly. The lobby of
the francophones in powerful positions, backed by France, continuing their
influence in exercising structural violence, remains strong and resists full
Arabisation. For this reason, Algeria continues in its ambivalent, defacto
linguistic dichotomy.
To sum up, in the decades following independence, decisions promoting
Arabic or discontinuing French in higher education and beyond were based on
high ranking army officers’ or ministers’ personal preferences corresponding to
their own linguistic competences, which is reflected in the respective decrees
and laws from the mid-1960s till the late 1990s ( Jean, 2019). Therefore,
those were decisions by predetermined political blocks against the other.
There has not been a single reflection or a study on the country’s needs.
Rather, emotional short term decisions were taken. The ‘black decade,’ too,
is based on language conflict, as arisen from the frustration of elites only tak-
ing decisions. Many francophone academics were killed because they did not
believe in Arabic as a language of instruction for pragmatic scientific reasons
and refused to be overruled by ideology.
Competing interests between internationalisation and
Arabisation in contemporary Algerian higher education
After long resistance by the government, the adoption of Tamazight in 2016
as second official language in Algeria in addition to modern standard Arabic is
a first sign of an overdue shift in policy recognising its equal status, as can also
be seen by the decree for the creation of an Algerian Academy for Tamazight
Language as of June 2018, and the subsequent commission set up at the African
Union from November 2019 (University World News, 2019). However, in a
domestic sphere, its overall role in higher education institutions throughout
the Algerian national territory beyond its centre in the Kabyl region remains
insignificant as of today. In this context, while schools have been completely
Arabised, based on a primordially ideological religious monolingual policy,
which is referred to as ‘polemic’ (Arezki, 2008), this is not the case for higher
education, where the francophone versus Arabophone dichotomy prevails;
mainly, but not exclusively reflected in disciplines’ language of instruction.
As of January 2020, the Algerian higher education system counts 106 insti-
tutions in 58 – since a district reform accounting for the great Southern region
in December 2019 – Wilayas as administrative units, out of which 50 universi-
ties, 13 university centres, 20 écoles nationales supérieures, 10 écoles supérieures, 11
écoles normales supérieures, and 2 annexes (Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur
et de la Recherche Scientifique [MESRS], 2017). Out of these, about 30 per
cent of Universities and 90 per cent of University centres were created since
the millennium (Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche
Scientifique [MESRS], 2019). Those are divided into three regions, namely,
Centre (11 universities), East (22) and West (17), each with a governing body,
the regional conference of universities. No conference has been established for
the Algerian South yet, while higher education policy is implemented on the
principle of having one university in each administrative region (Wilaya).
Since the turn of the millennium, the Algerian university − while partly
imposed for competitive, economic reasons due to globalisation as well as
domestic civil pressure − has featured an increasingly liberal orientation.
Although the conditions had already been set in 1999 and updated in 2008,
16finally, since the end of 2016, private institutions of higher education are
formally permitted by ministerial decree. This constitutes a novelty as, since

independence, there have only ever been public universities in Algeria, in
contrast to its neighbours Morocco and Tunisia which, despite their much
smaller size and population, are host to a number of private academic institu-
tions – among them, branch campuses of foreign universities. American uni-
versities present in a number of countries in the Middle East, such as Egypt
and the Lebanon, for example, do not exist in Algeria. Although there is no
private comprehensive university in Algeria yet,17 operations are expected
to start in the near future, and have the potential to mark the beginning of
a new era in the Algerian higher education system; not least introducing an
exclusively foreign language instruction option.
Furthermore, there has been an announcement of the prospect of a
common Arab university classification spearheaded by Egypt recently
(Bensouiah, 2019). There are two binational cooperation agreements,
namely, with the Republic of Iran, ratified by Presidential decree in 2017, and,
more recently, with the United States of America, since the beginning of 2019
(MESRS, 2020). The recognition of degrees obtained abroad has also been
updated and facilitated after its first provision in 1971, complemented by decrees
in 2013 and 2015, and, by ministerial decree in 2018.18 By means of research
support, Algeria is also involved in the European Commission’s ‘Horizon
2020’ as well as European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST)
programmes.19 Algeria has participated in the EU’s Erasmus + programme for
many years.20 With regards to research, a focus is placed on developing interna-
tionalisation according to different indicators in the coming years until 2025 as
outlined in the provisional strategy ‘Horizon 2025’ (DGRSDT, 2019a).
The persisting competition and conflict between Arabic and French are
reflected in bibliometric data and become apparent in international com-
parison. Due to overall low research output, Algerian universities are hardly
visible as they presently rank low worldwide and also regionally. While inter-
national rankings must generally be examined critically in terms of meth-
odology and their often inherent Anglo Saxon system as well as English
language bias, as an indication, in the 2019 Times Higher Education Universities
World Ranking edition, five Algerian institutions appear, out of which 2 are at
800–1000th position and three at 1001+. In this classification, within African
universities, those perform well in occupying 17th–30th place, although
there is only one, at 25th position, in the 2018 Arab World ranking (Times
Higher Education (THE) World Universities Ranking, 2019).
Out of close to 11,000 co-authored publications involving Algerian
researchers analysed in 2000–2011, about 42 per cent were written with
France, while only 3 per cent with the United States, 2 per cent with the
United Kingdom and less than 1.5 per cent each with Canada, Tunisia, and
Morocco (DGRSDT, 2015). These figures show that French continues to
dominate the scientific output visible internationally, whereas Arabic is virtu-
ally non-existent. Further, in 2018, Algeria is among the top three in Africa
in Physics, Chemistry, Material Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics; as
opposed to economics/finance (11) and psychology (19) (DGRSDT, 2019b).
The first mentioned disciplines are franchised, whereas the latter are Arabised.
Accordingly, the citation rate per document as indicator of the national scien-
tific production is most obvious in arts and humanities and social sciences at
only one-third of the national average, which is likely due to default Arabic
language publications in these fields as well as lower standards for journal
reputation compared with experimental sciences, according to the authors, a
Ministerial agency (DGRSDT, 2019b).
Not least, as an effect of increasing higher education internationalisation
worldwide, the Algerian higher education system has been increasingly sub-
jected to external pressure, mainly by an – even if masked – emigration
trend by its graduate students, who enroll in French universities through the
French public agency Campus France, established in 2010, which promotes
France as a destination to pursue, or continue, higher education. Hence,
a significant number of Algerian graduates is striving to go to Europe or
North America – not primarily to study but to emigrate (Chachoua, 2018;
Chachoua & Schoelen, 2019). Consequently, the language sought after to
master at least in the academic field is French rather than Arabic.
Portaying the contemporary situation, in general, Arabic and French are
not complimentary, but conflictual. Identity is reflected in language, and the
politisation is due to the fact that this very identity had been destroyed by the
French. In addition, Arab countries’ support in cooperation remains weak as
it had been in the past. There is neither methodology nor a strategy, which
gives way to French francophonie promotion and the upkeep of an education
system that has not yet been decolonised.
Conclusion
To conclude, as a synthesis, more than a millennium of history could not exert
as much linguistic influence on present day Algerian higher education as 130
years of French colonisation. Not even if the latter is based on the aggressive
implementation of a Francophonie ideology, coupled with the exclusion of the
overwhelming majority of Algerians from both basic and higher education
throughout occupation. Decolonisation indeed had not taken place at the
beginning of Algerian independence, but, through the persisting presence of
the French language at the country’s higher education institutions, de facto
continues, as does structural violence in the form of a system featuring ancient
structures. As a consequence, academics in Algerian higher education suffer
as well as the system more broadly, since the ideological linguistic conflict is
an obstacle to scientific publications with regards to quality and quantity, and,
more generally, the further development of a research promoting culture. The
new generation neither masters Arabic nor French, which results in weak aca-
demic performance and destabilises the further development of higher educa-
tion in the country, albeit exceptional gross enrolment rates.
At the time of state/nation building, French was practical and pragmatic.
More than 20,000 academics as elites were comfortable in their position and
did not want to lose their jobs, the fact of which led to them pushing back
Arabisation in a rational manner (Jean, 2019). The subsequent political rejec-
tion of French, on the other hand, has been expressed by emotional, short
sighted, individual dependent policy, as has been exposed above. The relation-
ship with France, however, remains of love hate nature, which is ambiguous.
At the Algerian university nowadays, there exists increasing resentment of
the French language with its colonial connotation, and the challenge of a
postcolonial setting with Arabisation not being fully implemented yet. This
status quo demands reforms by a hybrid form of a dual Arabic English lan-
guage of instruction policy, which can be observed in other countries in the
MENA and Gulf region.
In the Gulf countries as members of the Arabic League, English has
been widely and successfully integrated in an educational context, as is
shown by studies as early as the late 1990s from the United Arab Emirates
(Benjamin, 1999). Policies are based on dualism as coexistence of Arabic
and English in higher education in particular (Findlow, 2006). With increas-
ing higher education internationalisation in the Gulf, English is increasingly
being introduced as the language of instruction, which poses questions of
acceptance, compatibility with the national language (Badry, 2019) as well as
its embedding in the specific sociocultural context ever since its appearance
(Syed, 2003). These issues concern learners’ Arab identity and culture (Al-Issa
& Dahan, 2011). Nevertheless, as the case of small European countries such
as the Netherlands or Denmark shows, the approach is bilingualism rather
than discontinuation of their own national language. Germany and France,
too, for instance, embrace English without comprising on their respective
languages in higher education.
Most topical, in Algeria, with the arrival of the new Minister of Higher
Education and Scientific Research in January 2020, lecturers have voiced
their demands of considerably improving their salary, working conditions,
and living allowances. Furthermore, they require to discontinue the reformed
Bologna adopted system in favour of the previous – French modelled degree
system, as well as to switch to English and abandon French as the language
of instruction (Bensouiah, 2020b). A recent empirical study among students,
too, found that they prefer English as a ‘useful vehicle for economic oppor-
tunity and knowledge transfer’ (Belmihoub, 2018b). In addition, with the
new government from mid-2019, there have been outreach activities to the
Algerian Diaspora (Bensouiah, 2020c).
Consequently, as elsewhere, economic advantages – connected with the
surge in service rather than agriculturally or fossil fuel based industry sectors
both domestically and globally – are the main driver of the demand for digital-
isation, which again is inextricably linked with the English language. Indeed,
developments may be facilitated by a strong promotion of, and interest in ICT,
which is adapted to the Algerian context of a young, technology savvy popu-
lation, as well as the recent academic inclusion of the South, with universities
being established in the Wilayas administrative regions in the Algerian South,
where French is not widely spoken. However, such a dual language policy has
not been adopted yet, which is likely due to unsolved issues related to cultural
conflict subject to politisation, as has been shown with its languages. There is
a need for access to information, too, and for equity in this process.
Hence, English is both an attractive and feasible option and concrete policy
recommendation for Algeria as an expression of effective and pragmatic,
bottom up movement rather than a top–down way of symbolic decolonisa-
tion in its presently prevailing highly politicised higher education. Indeed,
it is the first time that a language is chosen rather than imposed externally.
Existing hybridity can be embraced in accounting for the need to access
information, and equity in the process, and adequately reflect in hybrid
knowledges of an environment of multilingualism as is the case in Algeria.
While English is problematic – it poses questions of the lack of accessibility
in learning and mastering, and its adoption, too, can be a form of colonisation
and structural violence – there is the possibility to resort to an alternative.
A needs assessment is mandatory, as is an impact study in order to collect,
and draw on, empirical data for evidence based policy making. The criteria
to apply are complementarity rather than replacement, which will ensure
hybridity instead of exclusion. As an outlook, this also applies to the Chinese
language. Moreover, a lesson learned is that an issue that persists is the lack
of participation in decision-making by stakeholders and civil society. If only
elites decide, it can have a dramatic outcome, leading to frustration, emigra-
tion, political unrest, or outright violent civil conflict, as has happened in the
past. The first step, however, is to consolidate the interrelationship between
the three languages present in the country, respectively, in national higher
education, and their deficits. English, after all, is only a temporary solution to
avoid this very confrontation.
Notes
1. The colloquial use is incorrect as it carries a derogatory origin (see below). The authors
therefore adopt quotation marks to highlight this discrepancy.
2. See Sahnouni, M. ‘The Site of Ain Hanech Revisited: New Investigations at this Lower
Pleistocene Site in Northern Algeria’, Journal of Archaeological Science’, 1998, vol. 25,
pp. 1083–1101, and Balout, L., Biberson, P. and Tixier, J. (1970) « L’Acheuléen de
Ternifine (Algérie), gisement de l’Atlanthrope », in: Actes du VIIe Congrès Interna-
tional des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques, Prague, UISPP, 21-27 août 1966,
pp. 254–261.
3. See Dutour (1995)., « Le Peuplement moderne d’Afrique septentrionale et ses relations
avec celui du Proche-Orient [archive] », Paléorient, 1995, vol. 21, no. 21–2, pp. 97–109.
4. The authors disapprove of this terminology, which is marked by quotation marks, due
to its colonial connotation, yet – lacking alternatives – have adopted its use.
5. This university concept was then perfected and implemented in Fes, modern Morocco.
6. Unpublished manuscript of an (undated) lecture available to the authors, entitled
‘The Madrasa in the Maghreb from the 6th/12th until the 19th/15th Century’ given
by Wadad Kadi, Professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
7. See Kadri (2007) for a comprehensive history and detailed statistics of school-level edu-
cation in colonial Algeria.
8. See Singaravélou (2009) for an overview of higher education in former French colonies
worldwide. See Anderson (2016) for an account of the colonial French West African
region as present-day Saharan countries including Algeria.
9. It should contribute to the conquest of the natives and their submission.
10. See Bettahar (2008) for an inventory of primary sources on higher education in colonial
Algeria available at the Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence,
France. See Bettahar (2014) for a comprehensive history of the University of Algiers.
11. This is also shown by the fact that, finally in 1951, they were transformed into lycées
preparing for the baccalaureat as university entrance diploma (Kateb 2014), thus equiv-
alent to grammar school in the system of secondary education.
12. Cf. Chapter II, ‘Cooperation Between France and Algeria’, Part B, Article 3: ‘French
personnel, in particular teachers and technicians, will be placed at the disposal of the
Algerian Government by agreement between the two’.
13. During this period, nothing distinguished the Algerian university from the French
university.
14. (...) train the executives, all the leaders that the country needs.
15. The Arabic language is the language of steel and the steel industry.
16. https://services.mesrs.dz/DEJA/fichiers_sommaire_des_textes/50%20FR.PDF, pp. 33–37.
17. Business school-type specialised institutions, mostly in cooperation with French écoles,
do exist.
18. Cf. Chapter III, Section II, Les documents demandés pour le dossier d’obtention d’équivalence
des diplômes et titres universitaires étrangers https://www.mesrs.dz/fr/chapitre3
19. http://www.h2020.dz/#programme
20. http://erasmusplus.dz/index.php/fr/accueil/
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how-the-west-made-arabs-and-berbers-into-races Aeon Media Group Ltd
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8 Class and literature
Cross-cutting theorisations and
practices of Ngũgĩ wa thiong’o
and Mao Zedong in education
Mingqing Yuan
Introduction
Since the 1960s, the debate about English and local languages has been a
crucial issue in African literature (Bandia, 2006, p.373). In Decolonising the
Mind published in 1986, Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) declares his ‘farewell to
English as a vehicle for any of [his] writings’ (p. xiv)1 and announces his deci-
sion to publish exclusively in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. This decision often
leads to the criticisms of him being Afrocentric, Nativist, and even extremist
as reviewed by Bandia (2006) and Roy (1995). These comments actually
show a conceptualisation of decolonisation through dichotomies established
between local and global, between Africa and the West, between periph-
ery and centre without considerations of the interconnectedness among the
‘wretched of the earth’ in Franz Fanon’s term against colonialism and impe-
rialism. Interactions and connections among authors and ideas from Africa,
Asia, and Latin America are often overlooked in this dichotomy and within
theorisations of decolonisation and postcolonial studies.
Even wa Thiong’o (2018), admitted himself that he ‘had always assumed
that [his] intellectual and social formation was tied to England and Europe,
with no meaningful connections to Asia and South America’ (p. 194) due to
his education and the anti-colonial struggle focusing on ‘we, Africa, against
them, Europe’ (wa Thiong’o, 2018, p.194). His apparent lack of interest in
the influence outside Europe is both the result of colonial history and the
continuing Euro-centric knowledge structure in postcolonial era, repeat-
ing an Orientalist gaze from Europe and on Europe. The temporal simul-
taneity of anti-colonial struggle and the Cold War further imprisons each
other in a binary politics that reduces the vigour and force of decolonisa-
tion. There have been many attempts to trace and integrate the dimension
of Marxism and class analysis into anti-colonial struggles and postcolonial
theorisations (Brennan, 2002; Larsen, 2002; Parry, 2002), but the lineage of
classic Marxism in Europe or the Soviet experience are often the yardstick of
160 Mingqing Yuan
analysis in studies of wa Thiong’o’s writings (Gikandi, 2000; Popescu, 2014).
Very few consider Mao’s reformulation of Marxism in relation to African
Marxist intelligentsia or writers,2 especially in postcolonial literary studies.
Questions about intellectuals’ position in decolonisation have haunted wa
Thiong’o for a long time, because of his own experience of the cruelty of
colonialism reinforced by his colonial education. As Gikandi summarises,
wa Thiong’o ‘has to negotiate three social positions in order to establish his
authority: the split between his subjective experience and his public com-
mitments, the inscrutability and dissonance of the history that generated his
work, and the tension between the bourgeois aesthetic and the realities of
class society’ (Gikandi, 2000, p. 13). These dilemmas and contradictions are
not faced by him alone. In Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art (1942),
Mao addressed similar issues, which wa Thiong’o cited in his own article
Literature and Society (1981). Both have cross-cutting views on class, positions
of intellectuals, and revolutionary aesthetics. Duncan Yoon’s article (2015)
exhibits similar but more tangible literary links between China and African
established through the Afro-Asian Writers Bureau (AAWB) and Afro-Asian
People’s Solidarity Organisation, which also awarded the Lotus Prize to wa
Thiong’o in 1973, but Yoon’s usage of ‘symbolic Maoism,’ a term coined by
Fredric Jameson without specific definition (1984), does not delve into the
intentional branding and reformulation of Mao’s thought as part of PRC’s
cultural and political diplomacy globally, which deeply influenced Chinese
writers’ activities in AAWB (Vanhove, 2019; Xiong, 2018). Fully fixating
on Mao’s Thought in connection with China’s foreign policy, political and
economic outreach certainly overlooks some philosophical, ideological, and
theoretical differences as well as discussions of identification and positioning
both in China and Africa. Ignoring it, however, might hinder a contextual
and historical understanding of Mao’s appeal and reception in Africa, which
might further neglect the local agency in theoretical and philosophical debate
and political bargain and negotiation.
In addition to the literary connections, wa Thiong’o and Mao share similar
interests in reframing education and restructuring knowledge. Wa Thiong’o’s
roles both as a writer and lecturer in English literature at University of Nairobi
between 1967 and 1977 are also separated in discussions related to his lin-
guistic practice. Wa Thiong’o’s non-fictional writings are often received in a
way similar to his fictional writing instead of being understood as discussions
about knowledge and educational practice. As noticed by Mbembe (2016)
in his speech addressing the ‘Rhodes must fall’ movement, wa Thiong’o’s
‘Decolonising the Mind’ is not simply about language politics but also about
education and knowledge structure (pp. 34–36). Thus, ‘Decolonising the Mind’
is not only an explanation and declaration of a choice of language in literary
writings, but also a plea for educational and epistemological reforms. Besides
this theoretical discussion, the memo of wa Thiong’o On the Abolition of the
English Department 3 is said to have ‘lay[ed] the principles and foundations of
a curricular and disciplinary consolidation for the rise of African literature
Class and literature 161
in the schools and universities of independent Africa’ ( Jeyifo, 1990, p.43)
and is deemed as a ‘curricular revolution’ (Sicherman, 1998, p.130), whose
impacts reconceptualises ‘national identity and African literary institution in
Africa’ (Gikandi, 1992, p.141). These conclusions hold a firm and convincing
ground about the contribution of the memo to institutional and curricular
changes, but the reorientation and reconstruction of knowledge structure
implied in it as well as its connection to international context are not given
much attention. Similar to the Kam ĩr ĩĩthu project that produced and per-
formed Ngaahika Ndeenda in Gikuyu in 1977, it is often taken as a crucial turn
in wa Thiong’o’s literary practice but what wa Thiong’o actually contributed
is not only a play but also a way of rethinking and practising education.
Furthermore, this contribution is about the role and relationship of intel-
lectuals with society, which are also mentioned in Mao’s Talks at the Yan’an
Forum on Literature and Art (1942).
The relative paucity of studies on Mao and wa Thiong’o might be related
to the Cold War context and disciplinary categorisation. Despite their own
political leaning and aesthetic autonomy, writers and artists often find them-
selves or their works stamped and linked with the Cold War. As Hammond
(2012), summarises, ‘that novelists were not only social commentators but
also foot-soldiers in a global Kulturkampf is evidenced by the superpowers’
choice of authors for translation, for inclusion on education syllabi and for
the receipt of Nobel Prizes’ (p. 3). Shringarpure (2019) has also scrutinized
the rise of New Criticism within English studies and the burgeoning of area
studies during the Cold War era. The previous one ‘legitimized an intel-
lectual and literary practice that disavowed political or historical connec-
tions within the academy’ (p. 104). The latter established politics and history
according to geographical lines with the assumption of the existence of a uni-
fied culture (Shringarpure, 2019, p. 107), which further separates and delinks
interregional connections within academia. These jointly contributed to the
underestimation of the aesthetics of leftist writings and to the concentration
on relationship between the West and the rest instead of looking at the vast
network of intellectuals and writers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Thus, even though Mbembe states that wa Thiong’o’s conception of
‘Africanisation’ has a ‘liberating perspective’ and is ‘a project of ‘re-centering’
on ‘ourselves’ and ‘other selves in the universe’ (2016, pp. 34–35), I would
argue that this is not only a re-centering on ‘selves,’ but also a re-centering
of relationships and re-structuring of knowledges. Instead of positioning
oneself against Western knowledge structures, what wa Thiong’o proposes
is a self-positioning in a network with more emphasis on non-Western rela-
tionship, or ‘third world’ interactions in education and knowledge struc-
ture. Decolonisation is not only a process of inwardly looking back on Africa
or focusing on the colonial relationship, but also looking outward beyond
Europe and even beyond Africa for different lineages and connections. As
wa Thiong’o (2000), notices, ‘One of the inherited traditions of Western
education in the last 400 years is that of putting things in compartments,
162 Mingqing Yuan
resulting in an incapacity to see the links that bind various categories. We are
trained not to see the connections between phenomena, we become locked
in Aristotelian categories’ (p. 120). In this sense, dichotomies within decolo-
nisation in the struggles for national independence are replaced by dynamics
of multiplicity. Decolonising is no longer a divisive battle between coloniser
and colonised or defined as ‘a process during which hard-won battles were
waged between nationalists and metropolitan colonial powers’ (Le Sueur,
2003, p.2); instead, it is a step towards complexity, heterogeneity, and hybrid-
ity moving beyond Europe towards a focus on local contexts in alliance with
the global. This means to revisit and review parallels, connections, and inter-
actions within and among Africa, Latin America, and Asia, a growing field
that needs more attention within postcolonial studies and decolonisation.4
This chapter is an effort of linking Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o’s critical writings
with Mao Zedong’s thought to trace their shared efforts and stance towards
decolonisation as well as to lay open tensions and conflicts within them. It
intends to examine the complexity and multiplicity of interactions of dif-
ferent contexts and identities in face of colonialism, post-independence,
imperialism, and the Cold War. It asks how issues of language and litera-
ture feature in relation to decolonisation in the texts. The textual links and
parallels between Mao and wa Thiong’o will be first reviewed and then be
followed by a contrasting comparison between their respective theorisation
and practice of language, literature, and education. Similarities and differ-
ences between them reveal the complexity of decolonisation and the need to
put together de-Imperialism, de-Cold War, and decolonisation in order to
achieve a more comprehensive view of the provincialised Europe.
Mao’s thought (毛泽东思想) and Ng ũg ĩ wa Thiong’o

The wide dissemination of Mao’s thought in the middle and late 20th Century
is partly due to its attraction in anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles5 and
partly due to the effort of translation and circulation made by the Foreign
Language Press.6 The later was a publishing house founded in 1952 in China,
who targeted readers that are ‘politically between the radical leftists and the
rightists, and geographically in the ‘in-between’ regions including those in
the capitalist and imperialist countries, as well as in the developing countries,
mainly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were fighting for independ-
ence from imperialism’ (Xu, 2013, p.77). This implies that the circulation
of Mao’s works along with other Chinese literature was beyond ideological
leanings and not limited to socialist nations. The publications were not only
a literary endeavour, but also closely related to the realpolitik and context in
the Cold War that “not only left a devastating trail of violence across the post-
colonial world, but also turned culture into an active site and a potent agent
for disrupting and constructing narratives during a precarious, significant,
and decisive historical period’ (Popescu, 2019, p.VIII). Even though the PRC
had declared its independence in 1949, it was not recognised by the United
Nations till 1971 and was both diplomatically and economically isolated.
China’s split with the Soviet Union since the late 1950s further made it to
position itself to reach out to more newly independent nations as itself and to
advocate for world revolution and anti-imperialism. As Friedman points out,
‘the PRC, a non-white, non-European, primarily agrarian nation, which has
suffered tremendously from the depredations of imperialism, […]felt com-
pelled to mount this challenge in order to build its own global constituency
to protect it from American aggression and Soviet betrayal’ (Friedman, 2015,
pp. 5–6). The PRC’s anti-imperialist stance in diplomacy, different from the
Soviet’s emphasis on anti-capitalist or ‘scientific socialism,’ attracted many
who shared similar concerns when facing the demands of the Soviet or the
United States and the political tension during the Cold War. In this context,
translation and propaganda of Mao’s revolution theories were both a call for
a united revolution against foreign world economic and political structures.
This was also an attempt to increase Chinese diplomatic influence by way of
those ideas reaching individuals far beyond the nation-state.
As Dirlik (2014) summarises, ‘the appealing factors of Mao Zedong
Thought lay in its resonance with the aspirations that accompanied decolo-
nisation in the Third World’ (Dirlik, 2014, p. 234). Mao’s Thought contains
both a global, non-western universalized dimension through Marxism, and
a national dimension related to Marxism, ranging from its focus on peasants
instead of proletariat and support of guerrilla war to Cultural revolution and
the three-world theory.7 ‘Sinification of Marxism’ is often used to refer to
this alternative way of classic Marxism or Soviet model to decolonise and
modernise. Mao has become a revolutionary symbol in anti-colonial and
anti-imperial struggles beyond Chinese territory and outside the polarized
world order in the Cold War era, a ‘selling point’ of Chinese revolution
strategies around the world. However, different threads and parts of Mao’s
Thought as well as contextual understandings of it often got lost in the process
and formed a rigid ideological representation of China, which constructs,
confirms, and circulates a discourse of the particularity of China as the alter-
native, different, orientalist, socialist Other.
Moreover, the anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements in the United
States increased the popularity of Mao, who even becomes a cultural icon
for revolution both in North America and western Europe (Friedman, 2015,
p.178), even though at the beginning of the cultural revolution, all diplomatic
works of the PRC had all stopped and previous work has been devasted
(Friedman, 2015, p.149). It is implausible that wa Thiong’o, who entered
Leeds University in 1964, participated in the Afro-Asian Writers conference
in Beirut in 1967 and stayed in Dar es Salaam in 1968 as a visiting lecturer, the
same year that Julius Nyerere visited Beijing for the second time, could have
unheard of Mao’s Thought. Thus, it is not surprising that traces of Mao’s writ-
ings are found in wa Thiong’o’s works, even though publications of Foreign
Language Press were banned by the Kenyan government in October 1967.8
His article ‘Literature and Society,’ which appeared in the 1981’s original
164 Mingqing Yuan
version of Writers in Politics, quoted Mao Zedong’s ‘Reform our Study’
(改造我们的学习, 1941), ‘Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art’
(延安文艺座谈会上的讲话, 1942, short as ‘Yan’an Forum’) and ‘Combat
Liberalism’ (反对自由主义, 1937). The 1973 conference of teachers of liter-
ature held at Nairobi School, Kenya where wa Thiong’o read his text for the
first time was ‘cosponsored by the Department of Literature and the Ministry
of Education.’ This text triggered the ‘Nairobi literary revolution’ and spread
important reforms from higher education level to ‘changes in the secondary
school curriculum’ (Sicherman, 1998, p.136).
Even though the Cold War context was influential globally as well as on
a local, national levels, not all events should be attributed to it. In the fore-
word of Detained, wa Thiong’o vehemently rejected Hilary Ngweno’s claim
in the Weekly Review of 9 January, 1978 that he had been detained ‘because
of the Chinese and other literature found in his possession at the time of
the police search in his study’ (wa Thiong’o, 1981a, p. xvi), since these were
banned in Kenya at that time. Ali Mazuri’s speculation that he was detained
because of ‘Soviet support in the process of his writing a critique of Kenya’s
economy’ (wa Thiong’o, 1981a, p.xvii) also met wa Thiong’o’s objection. For
wa Thiong’o, it is a matter of internal Kenyan politics, the government’s fear
of mass movement. Ngweno and Mazuri interpret wa Thiong’o’s Marxist
leanings as the cause of his detention. Both copy the logic of the Cold War
by replicating the binary antagonism onto a local scenario without consid-
ering the complexity of local politics, the agency and active intervention
of local government in publication and literary productions. On the one
hand, the Cold War division, exaggerated the ideological divide and repro-
duced international politics onto local contexts without considering the local
agency. On the other hand, this often reduced complex situations to binary
antagonisms, ignoring the intricate, sophisticated, and entangled dynamics
among and within nations. In this sense, decolonisation cannot go far with-
out disentangling its complexity with the Cold War. As Chen proposes, only
through ‘combined movements for decolonisation, deimperialisation, and
what “de-cold war” confronting the legacies and continuing tensions of the
cold war’ can ‘reopen the past for reflection in order to make moments of
liberation possible in the future’ (Chen, 2010, p.x). ‘De-Cold War’ does not
only mean to reduce the dichotomy and antagonism established during the
Cold War, to focus on the microlevel and local narratives and agency but also
to trace the historical connections, construction, and impacts of the Cold
War on lasting emotional and knowledge structures.
All these entangled politics might partly explain the relative scarcity of
research on the links between African writers and Maoist aesthetics and the-
orisations. Oliver Lovesey’s (2000) monograph on wa Thiong’o might be one
of the few books on the links between wa Thiong’o and Mao. He points out
the similarities between Mao’s Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature in
1942 and wa Thiong’o’s aesthetic views, the implication of the name Barrel of
a Pen (1983) to Mao’s sayings and emphasis on land and peasantry. However,
Lovesey’s connection of wa Thiong’o and Mao remains on the surface with-
out delving into the deeper social cultural contexts or history and politics.
The other article that links Mao’s Yenan forum with African literature, is by
a Chinese scholar, which regards wa Thiong’o’s return to Gikuyu as a mod-
ification of Mao’s call for writing for the peasants ( Jiang, 2018, p. 11). This
reduces to some extent the anti-colonial or decolonising dimension in the
debate on language to a class division, ignoring the national and ethnic com-
plexity, the tension between urban and rural areas in cultural decolonisation
in Kenya. Both Lovesey and Jiang have associated wa Thiong’o’s writings
with a larger context, either with pan-Africanism as imbedded in writings
of Marcus Garvey, C. L. James, Amilcar Cabral (Lovesey, 2000) or with
‘third world literature,’ which in Jiang’s term refers to literature of resistance
and liberation against colonialism and imperialism ( Jiang, 2018, p.3). Those
parallels imply the entangled threads between the ‘Third World’ dimension
in Mao’s Thought and Pan-Africanism, which in its origin has three appar-
ent thoughts ‘African unity, black nationalism, and socialism’ (Nelkin, 1964,
p.63). This further links Mao’s Thought with African socialism, especially
Nyerere’s conceptualisation of Ujamaa (Lal, 2014). In the following section,
the conceptualisations of class in relation to the role of writers and intellectuals
in revolution and education will be closely looked at through a comparison of
Mao and wa Thiong’o’s theorisation and practices.
Class, writers, and education

In 1965, a document entitled ‘Sessional Paper No. 10 (1963-1965): African
Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya’ was passed in the Kenyan
House of Representatives, which marks Kenya’s official ‘adopt[ion] of African
Socialism as a national ideology’ (Sun, 2019, p.359). Deprived of any call for
redistribution or changes in land policies, the paper ‘was in fact a development
strategy based on private property and private foreign investment’ (Branch,
2011, p.54). As Sun summarises, ‘rejecting the Marxist principle that class
was the key division in society, Kenya’s African socialism rather sought to
prevent the emergence of intra-Kenyan class antagonisms’ (Sun, 2019, p.366).
Wa Thiong’o’s position is closely related to this national stance on socialism.
On the one hand, he acknowledges the survival of African cultures through
colonisation (Gikandi, 2000a, p.254), echoing the view of African socialists
in reviving the communal spirits of African traditional society (Friedland &
Rosberg, Jr., 1964, p.8). Hence, he shares with Nyerere the valuing of indig-
enous languages and their link with culture and society and harbours the
wish of reviving an idealized traditional culture in the present as Ujamaa.
On the other hand, different from Kenyan government, wa Thiong’o holds
up the notion of class divisions as analysed by Mao. He subscribes to Mao’s
analysis of class, regarding Kenyan ruling elites as ‘Comprador bourgeoisie’
and writers as ‘petty bourgeoisie’ (wa Thiong’o, 1981, p.58), as he concedes
that ‘[Mao’s] class analysis of Chinese society was seen as providing a more
166 Mingqing Yuan
relevant model for analysing African postcolonial social realities than the
European Marxist model’ (wa Thiong’o, 2018, pp.197–198).
This actually implies a different lineage of Marxism in wa Thiong’o’s
understanding of class. Instead of emphasising the relationship between the
property possession and class division, wa Thiong’o adopted Mao’s under-
standing of class, and sees it in line with political and ideological leanings and
relationship with peasants and workers. In this sense, intellectuals, writers,
and artists, despite their familial upbringing, economic status, or education
background, can become part of the revolutionary mass if they align their
political and ideological stance with those of peasants and workers.9 For Mao,
class position is exhibited in the loyalty to the Chinese communist party
(CCP) and the nation (Liu, 2010, p.343), while for wa Thiong’o, it is a lin-
guistic issue. Wa Thiong’o does not delve into the class differences within
one language but dwells on the structural hierarchy between English and
native languages. For him, the use of English or Kikuyu is a class issue.
Linguistic choice, in his opinion, is an ideological and political statement of
the writer and of his/her relationship with peasants and workers. Language
is the forefront of anti-capitalism and decolonisation, which further deter-
mines the relationship between the writer and his/her readers. In the
Speech wa Thiong’o delivered at the Kenya Press Club in 1979, shortly after
his release from detention, he states that ‘although [he does] not share the
assumed primacy of language over the world, the choice of a language already
pre-determines the answer to the most important question for producers of
imaginative literature: For whom do I write? Who is my audience?’ (1981,
p. 53–54). These questions are closely related to issues of subject and object
in decolonising; more precisely, which class has the strength and potential to
carry on or battle the ‘arrested decolonisation’ project, and how intellectuals,
writers, and education feature in the process, and finally, what is the object
of decolonisation precisely?
Mao asked a similar set of questions in the Yan’an talks, ‘literature and art
for whom?’ ‘who are the masses of the people?,’ ‘how to work for the masses,’
and ‘should we devote ourselves to raising standards, or should we devote
ourselves to popularisation?’ (Mao, 1942). As a talk delivered in the 1940s
when the CCP faced Japanese invasion and the persecution of Nationalist
Party of China (国民党), it was to mobilize all resources and all forces despite
material division in classes to fight along with the CCP. Yan’an, which is in
the northwest hinterland of China, with its distinct local culture and dialect,
attracted writers and artists from the urban space and other regions of China.
This diversity in dialects and backgrounds combined with the war context
drove Mao to call them to be part of the political war machine (Zhang 张,
2018, p.4) against the enemies, to mobilize them politically and organisation-
ally and transform them ideologically (Zhang 张, 2018, p.6). Thus, writers
and artists should work for workers and peasants by ‘learn[ing] the language
of the masses’ and by knowing and understanding people in order to ‘ensure
that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a
component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and edu-
cating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy’ (Mao, 1942).
This means that only through an ideological transformation of these writers,
the popularisation of revolutionary literature and political education among
peasants and workers can be realised. For Mao, writers and artists serve as a
medium between illiterate and unenlightened masses and the revolutionary
subject (Zhang 张, 2018, p.11). On the one hand, writers and intellectuals
are asked to shift their positionality and class consciousness to align with
peasants and workers, to identify both ideologically and emotionally with
the masses. On the other hand, peasants and workers depend on writers and
artists for their education and transformation since the goal of ‘popularized
enlightenment is the self-educating, self-transforming, and self-realizing of
the revolutionary mass’10 (Zhang 张, 2018, p.13).
wa Thiong’o’s answer to this question is framed as ‘national audience’
(1981, p. 54). The nation here actually refers to peasants and workers, which
is actually both national and international and certainly beyond ethnic
boundaries. Wa Thiong’o (1986) identifies ‘two mutually opposed forces
in Africa today: an imperialist tradition on one hand, and a resistance tra-
dition on the other’ (p. 2). According to him, the imperialist tradition sur-
vives through the international bourgeoisie and the ‘native ruling classes,’
while resistance tradition is from ‘the working people (the peasantry and the
proletariat) aided by patriotic students, intellectuals (academic and non-
academic), soldiers, and other progressive elements of the petty middle class’
(wa Thiong’o, 1986, p.2). African writers, who are defined by wa Thiong’o as
‘petty bourgeois’ (1981, p.58), are asked to ‘put all their intellectual resources
into the service of the peasant/worker struggles not by haranguing the rul-
ing class, […], but by giving correct images of the struggle for the direct
consumption of the only alliance that matters in Africa’s historic struggle for
its dignity; the alliance of workers and peasants’ (1981, p.58). Wa Thiong’o
points out a way for African writers to write for the nation through an alli-
ance with workers and peasants. He shares with Mao the class categorisation
of writers, who are not naturally with peasants and workers, but who can
achieve the alignment through ideological transformation, self-re-orientation,
and education. Peasants and workers as a historical subject for revolution
need the help of intellectuals to realise their function. This mutual process
requires decolonisation of both literary practice and education. To some
extent, ‘Decolonising the Mind’ is not simply a declaration of linguistic change
but a manifesto and declaration of war against colonisation through litera-
ture. Literature and art are the forefront and battlefield of the war against
colonialism and imperialism and they entail an educational function to raise
political awareness and to increase participation among peasants and workers
in decolonisation and anti-imperialism. Wa Thiong’o even used the meta-
phor ‘barrel of a pen’ to symbolise the role of writers in politics, although he
does not have a real army as Mao did. What Mao and wa Thiong’o do not
discuss is the materiality of language and class distinction. They diverge in
168 Mingqing Yuan
the class definition’s association with material possession, different from clas-
sic Marxism and share a belief in transformation of class through changes in
ideological consciousness. In the meantime, both bestow art and literature,
a place within the revolutionary or decolonisation machine, which requires
a maximum mobilisation of population and resources to fight against their
enemies.
In Kam ĩr ĩĩthu, wa Thiong’o finally put his theorisation of literature and
education in practice by producing Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When
I Want) in Gikuyu in 1977 together with Ng ũ g ĩ wa Mirii and local peas-
ants and workers. He defines the moment as his ‘epistemological break’
(wa Thiong’o, 1986, p.44), but Gikandi takes it as incentivised by ‘simple
necessity’ (Gikandi, 2000a, p.271), since using Gikuyu language is required
by the audience and only in this way can the play attract audience. This con-
clusion is only partly true because it does not consider transformation of class
and the unlearning process in the production of the play for wa Thiong’o
himself. The play is written in Gikuyu, a native language and incorporates
song, dance, rituals, and mimes contributed by ‘PhDs from the university of
Nairobi: PhDs from the university of the factory and the plantation: PhDs
from Gorky’s “university of the streets”‘(1968, p. 56). In this phrasing, both
peasants and workers are taken as the subject of knowledge production and
their knowledge is recognised with the same importance and value as those
taught at university. Through cooperation with the locals in producing the
play, wa Thiong’o attempts not only to decolonise literary production as an
individual creation but also the bourgeois education system and university,
‘a process of alienation [that] produces a gallery of active stars and an undif-
ferentiated mass of grateful admirers’ (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 57). He acted
as the medium, as the student and educator of peasants and workers, through
which he believed to achieve his own ideological transformation and to break
‘the four walls of the school, the social hall, the university premises, and also
to the boundaries of the English language’ (wa Thiong’o, 1986). In this sense,
Kamĩrĩĩthu is a learning and unlearning process for him as a university grad-
uate and intellectual out of the colonial system. As wa Thiong’o states him-
self, this was an experience of ‘learning of what obtains in factories. Learning
our language, for the peasants were essentially the guardians of the language
through years of use’ (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p.45). Thus, the significance of
this project does not only lie in his linguistic change or adding local narrative
form and content into play, but in his learning, self-reform and transferring
of his own positioning and class categorisation from petty bourgeois to peas-
antry and working class.
The class dimension is important in understanding his writings, because
it reveals a different framework within wa Thiong’o’s works and is able to
explain the contradictions that Gikandi points out in his statements on lan-
guage (1992, p.138). On the one hand, classic Marxism, which was based on
European history, does not fully apply to nations and regions, which were
colonised and for whom anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism were more
pressing issues; on the other hand, the shifting in the reference point shows
the shared concerns and demands in decolonisation and national independ-
ence among the ‘Third World.’ Even though the Kamĩrĩĩthu project seemed
to be influential in Kenyan theatre history and its production has been incor-
porating participants’ contribution in rehearsals, its impacts on realisation of
another alternative reality were not prominent due to the unripe situation
and complexity of positionality of participants, who might not have been
‘fully committed to [Marxist ways]’ or ‘have [not] envisaged structural trans-
formation of the society that would protect their sectional – particularly class
and gender – interests’ (Ndigirigi, 2014, p.56).
Institution, education, and knowledge

When Nyerere (1964) announces that ‘[o]ur first step [to build a socialist soci-
ety], therefore, must be to re-educate ourselves’ (p. 242) as part of reviving
African traditional culture, wa Thiong’o calls for a similar strategy in his the-
oretical writings. The memo On the Abolition of the English Department submit-
ted by wa Thiong’o and his colleagues in 1968, asks for a curriculum reform
aimed at abolishing the English department and establishing a Department of
African Literature and Languages (wa Thiong’o, 1972, p. 146). It does not mean
to abolish the teaching of English literature but instead to re-centre the focus
of the university curriculum on Africa and to diversify teaching, languages
and literatures, integrating Swahili, Arabic, and other languages as well as
focusing on oral tradition (wa Thiong’o, 1972, pp. 146–147). Sicherman reads
this memo as an effort of the abolitionists to ‘redefine the nation’ (Sicherman,
1998, p.129) and Gikandi detects a dilemma by wa Thiong’o in his attempt to
promote a national culture while opposing the one endorsed by the national
government (Gikandi, 2000a, p. 255). Both of them situate wa Thiong’o’s
call for changes in education and culture in relation with nation building and
acknowledge the link between literary education in institutionalised and pro-
fessionalised education and national identity construction.
However, instead of calling for a replacement of colonial literature with
African literature, which is often taken as wa Thiong’o’s ethnocentrism and
literary nationalism (Amoko, 2010, pp. 9–10), his plan of re-educating and
call for changes in higher education institutions entails a pan-African and
‘third world’ view, an attempt to delineate Kenya’s positioning in the world
and to map the world from a Kenyan perspective. Even though wa Thiong’o
still follows a centre–periphery model with the metropolitan colonial power
as the centre, his provincialisation of colonial English literature and emphasis
on Caribbean literature and Asian literature dilute the racial, ethnic, and
national focus in his ‘re-centering’ project. In opposition to the government’s
obvious leaning towards the United States in the Cold War (Sun 2019), wa
Thiong’o asks ‘to create a revolutionary culture, which is not narrowly con-
fined by the limitations of tribal traditions or national boundaries but looks
outward to Pan-Africa and the Third World, and the needs of man’ (wa
170 Mingqing Yuan
Thiong’o, 1972, p.19). Here, the national boundaries are replaced by class dis-
tinctions across the world, integrating anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism
into decolonisation. It also inserts Kenya into another narrative of universal-
ity imbedded in “Bandung humanism,”11 advocating for deeper knowledge
and understanding between Asia and Africa. Wa Thiong’o does not deny
the importance of national identification but his national identification is
constructed not in line with western European culture or previous colonial
power but in parallel with other parts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, a
plurality of centres of knowledges. On the one hand, this ‘third world’ alli-
ance is a result of the Cold War context, an opposition to the bipolar power
axis endangering newly acquired independence. On the other hand, the
advocate for plurality and re-centring beyond the rigid division in the Cold
War era expresses a wish of knowledge restructuring and inserts local culture
and agency into a global world-mapping. For wa Thiong’o, decolonising the
curriculum is not simply a re-centering on African literature and languages,
on African traditions within higher education out of a demand of nation-
alisation and localisation. It is about establishing new connections between
academic intellectuals and peasants and workers, between Africa and Asia,
beyond European conceptual delineations, according to which Kenya is situ-
ated in a pluri-centric world within a multi-directional decolonising process
instead of a dualistic self-positioning with the coloniser.
In addition to the ‘third world’ relationship, neither Sicherman nor
Gikandi have paid attention to wa Thiong’o’s call for democratisation of cul-
ture and higher education, since both of their discussions rest on the elite’s
formation and construction of national culture within the institutionalised
education system inherited from the colonial system. They neglect his advo-
cacy for inclusion of knowledge beyond university into the education system.
In Towards a National Culture, wa Thiong’o (1972) writes that ‘the university
should also be accessible to regional music and drama groups, to ensure a
healthy mutual exchange of ideas and skills’ (p. 17). This acknowledges other
forms of knowledge and regional groups as knowledge holders or producers,
which in fact deconstructs the institutionalised knowledge structure. Wa
Thiong’o also asks the university and intellectuals to go out for these knowl-
edges. He states that:
[t]he universities and our schools should go to the countryside; there

must be total involvement with the creative struggle of the peasants and
workers. The present dangerous, unhealthy gap between intellectual and
practical labour, between the rural and urban centres, would be bridged.
The centres of learning, the villages, the towns, would all be part of the
blood stream revitalizing the whole body (p. 18).
This statement is a call for changes in education institutions and knowledge

structure. It points out the need for intellectuals to rethink their political and
ideological positions in relation to peasants and workers and to scrutinize the
knowledge structure, namely whom it empowers and whom it disadvantages.
‘Going out’ does not simply mean the university opening to the masses, but
also implies a deconstruction of knowledge-power structures and a shift in
knowledge production, where peasants and workers become teachers for uni-
versity intellectuals. This is similar to the Down to the Countryside Movement
(上山下乡), which started in China in the 1950s on a small scale and reached
its peak during the cultural revolution in Mao’s call for educated urban youth and
secondary school graduates to go to the countryside to learn from the peasants.
Certainly this ‘rustication of educated youth’ (Bonnin & Horko, 2013) was not
simply ideologically motivated but also had a political and socio-economic
agenda. Through the movement, Mao intended to ‘realize social equity,
especially in terms of eliminating the division between city and countryside,
elites and commoners, and mental and physical labour’ (Cheng & Manning,
2003, p.360).
In the Kam ĩr ĩĩthu project, wa Thiong’o practised this view by moving the
centre of higher education institutions and the performing stage in the cosmo-
politan urban space to the rural Kam ĩr ĩĩthu to produce a play together with
locals. Different from Nairobi as a hub of theatre and knowledge production,
Kamĩrĩĩthu was less connected to the outside world and had less access to
resources. Wa Thiong’o’s effort of ‘returning’ the literature to the people is
a step from the positionality of a cosmopolitan intellectual to rural or more
marginalised areas. His play Ngaahika Ndeenda does not only bring progressive
ideas to the peasants and workers but also puts Kamĩrĩĩthu on the literary map
around the world, which challenges the paradigm that often ‘Kenyan play-
wrights and Kenyan directors emerged with a growing circle of actors around
Voice of Kenya radio and television, the Kenya National Theatre, and the
University’ (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p.39) concentrated in the city.
Mao and wa Thiong’o share a lot of similarities with regard to their
support for ‘down to the countryside’ and acknowledgment of differences
between urban and rural spaces as well as transformative forces of the peas-
ants and workers. Nevertheless, sharp differences exist between the two.
Mao was able to subject a whole nation to a political movement regardless of
individual will, while wa Thiong’o’s discussion only took place within the
academia. Wa Thiong’o advocated for changes from the position of an intel-
lectual writer standing in opposition to the ruling class of the postcolonial
nation. If Mao is said to be a model of unification of individual ideology and
nation, wa Thiong’o in Kenya occupies a more classic position as an intellec-
tual with social influence in face of a national regime with different visions
and plans. To some extent, wa Thiong’o attraction towards Mao lies in his
shifting from actor of political change to the masses, especially the peasants,
which offers an alternative amid the growing disillusionment of the rul-
ing elite produced by the colonial university. Workers and peasants are not
only passive objects of knowledge but also active subjects who dynamically
172 Mingqing Yuan
produce knowledge. Wa Thiong’o’s hope of change is bestowed on them as a
revolutionary and transformative force in the cultural and academic spheres,
even though the principal initiator of change is still situated in the academy.
He regards universities as ‘nerve-centres for experiments in new forms and
structures’ (1972, p. 17). What wa Thiong’o calls for is not a re-centering
with the rural at its core as Mao did, nor a call for migration from the urban
to the rural but a development of higher education involving and integrating
the rural to a national cultural project with higher education institution as
the head or cultural centre.
Conclusion
The connections between Mao and wa Thiong’o show a joint struggle
against imperialism and colonialism beyond national frameworks on the issue
of localisation and re-centering of life styles and languages. Even if from
a practical perspective, their conceptualisation and writings have initiated
different discussions and movements, they both share the spirit of shifting
the Eurocentric literature and knowledge production to a more localised but
also connected visions. The connections between them, between Chinese
and African intellectuals are seldom discussed, which might derive from the
persisting Euro-centric orientalist knowledge structure and the anti-socialist
emotions inherited from the Cold War era. The process of decolonising,
for learning, re-learning, and unlearning about people, for re-discovering
hidden links, should be continued to construct emotional bonding and to
counter global structural problems.
Notes
1. After Decolonising the Mind, except fictional writings, Ngũgĩ’s essays including Moving
the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (1993), revised edition of Writers in Politics
(1981b), Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-
colonial Africa (1998) and others are still in English. Simon Gikandi defines this Ngũgĩ’s
‘return’ to English as the result of his exile (Gikandi, 2000b).
2. More are focused on the link of guerrilla war, China’s aid to Africa. Details can be found
at Lovell, J. (2019). Maoism: A Global History. London: Bodley Head.
3. It is a memo submitted to the dean of the Faculty of Arts at University of Nairobi
written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Henry Owuor-Anyumba and Taban lo Liyong in 1968
(two years after the beginning of Chinese cultural revolution).
4. Studies on ‘Third world’ and non-alignment movements have discussed extensively
about the connections and interactions among Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but these
connections are seldom under scrutiny within postcolonial studies. Exceptions to this
include but not limited to Cooper, Frederick. “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking
colonial African history,” which connects Indian Subaltern studies with historiography
of Africa (Cooper, 2003), Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution, an article by
Robin D.G. Kelly and Betsy Esch published in 1999, tracing the connections between
China and African American movement in the United States in the 1960s and several
articles in Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives
edited by Christopher Lee published in 2015.
5. Maoism in China and Maoism outside China have different expressions and generate
different understandings and influences in different contexts. As Wang Ning observes
in his introduction to Global Maoism and Cultural Revolution, ‘within the Chinese ter-
ritory, the term “Maoism” has never been used’ (Wang 2015). Instead the term Mao
Zedong Thought (毛泽东思想) is used to emphasize a ‘more individual and personal’
(Wang 2015, 2) dimension. As Mao’s writings went beyond China, Frederic Jameson
referred to it as ‘symbolic Maoism’ (1984) to highlight the symbolic force of Maoism
as an alternative ‘politico-cultural model,’ while Wilson & Connery 2007 defines it as
‘the practice of the Chinese revolution.’ To avoid a rigid understanding and simplified
description of Mao’s writings and controversial political movements, this article uses
Mao or Mao Zedong to refer to his thoughts and writings instead of Maoism to exam-
ine a joint efforts and impacts of Mao’s influence over the internal and international
politics within and outside China both in theorisation and practices.
6. Selected works of Mao Zedong were first collectively translated in the early 1950s and were
authorized to be published by Lawrence & Wishart in London and International Pub-
lishers in New York in 1954. Later in the early 1960s, another round of translation on
Volume 4 started and due to the end of the contract, Foreign Languages Press became the
main publisher and distributer of all the first four volumes of the translated works of Mao
Zedong. Details can be found in Pingping (2013). ‘Paratexts in the English Translation of
the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung.’ In Text, Extratext, Metatext and Paratext in Translation,
edited by Valerie Pellatt (2013). Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 33–46.
7. The Three Worlds Theory (三个世界) was brought up by Mao in 1974, which divides the
world into three, with the Soviet Union and United States as the first, the Western Europe
and Japan as the second, and Africa, Asia, and Latin America as the third. It emphasizes
different levels of economic development and political stance instead of ideologies and
entails a ‘middle zone’ (中间地带) that could be mobilized in anti-imperialist movements.
8. Details and reasons leading to this prohibition can be found in Sun, Yuzhou (2019):
‘“Now the Cry was Communism”: the Cold War and Kenya’s Relations with China,
1964–70.’ Cold War History, pp. 39–58.
9. This is theoretically speaking, but in practice, more in the time of anti-Japanese war, it
changes after the establishment of PRC. Family background and connections were also
considered in the cultural revolution.
10. The original text goes:“普遍的启蒙”归根结底诗革命大众的自我教育、自我转化、
自我超越和自我实现。
11. It is a term first used by Lydia Liu to refer to the points or humanism revealed in
Bandung Conference bulletin, which proposes that Africa and Asia 1) acquire knowl-
edge about each other’s countries, 2) mutual cultural exchange, 3) exchange of infor-
mation. More details see Lydia H. Liu: “After Tashkent: The Geopolitics of Translation
in the Global South.” Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Lecture, 22 Jun 2018.
https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/lydia-h-liu/ accessed on June 25, 2020. Liu Hong,
Zhao, Taomo. “Bandung Humanism and a new understanding of the global south: an
introduction”. China Asian studies,Vol. 51. Issue 2, 2019, pp. 141–143.
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9 “Borrowed” languages in Africa
A reflection on the reader–
writer imaginary
Tsevi Dodounou and Billian K. Otundo
Introduction
Decades after the formal end of colonisation, Indigenous knowledge,
and languages in Africa continue to be neglected. They have been viewed
as backward to the extent that they are passive recipients of Western norms.
Consequently, Indigenous knowledge is still shelved by local people long
after freeing itself from European potency. The implemented Eurocentric
educational system in some cases, attempted to completely erase or mar-
ginalise Indigenous knowledge – its know-how, soft skills, representations,
and practices – through a persistent and aggressive plan of assimilation. The
underestimation of Indigenous knowledge contributed, among others, to the
loss of African Indigenous languages and heritages for the benefit of European
languages. In turn, this facilitated the ban of the use of Indigenous languages
in educational institutions committed to Eurocentric knowledge, in numer-
ous sectors of government and administration, and in families that considered
it degrading to express oneself in their Indigenous language(s). In relation to
the incapacitation of Indigenous languages by Eurocentric knowledge systems,
this article aims to reflect on the question of the language used by the African
writer, as language constitutes the epitome for the imaginary – the expression of
specific representations, worldviews, experiences, thoughts, ideas, and culture.
On indigenous languages and literacy

During the early years of independence, governments of most multilingual
states in Africa resolved to pick a second language as the official and school
language. For countries like Zambia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe among oth-
ers, Simwiinga (2003) indicated that ‘the reasons for selecting English as a
medium of instruction and for official use was for political expediency and
not a sociolinguistic one’ (p. 5). In French speaking countries for instance,
the ‘choice’ of French led to a low production (in some cases, no production)
in the field of written literature in Indigenous languages. Despite the linguis-
tic challenges of literacy in Indigenous languages and the language problem
of ‘African literatures’ as voiced by the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o
178 Tsevi Dodounou and Billian K. Otundo
in his essay entitled ‘Decolonising the mind. The politics of Language in African
Literature’ (1986), wa Thiong’o testifies about the reception given to his work
Caitaani Mutharabaini (1980) written in Gikuyu, his mother tongue:
A family would get together every evening and one of their literate mem-
bers would read it for them. Workers would also gather in groups, par-
ticularly during the lunchbreak, and they would get one of them to read
the book. It was read in buses; it was read in taxis; it was read in public
bars. One amusing aspect of all this was the development of `professional
readers’ but in bars. These were people who would read the book aloud
to the other drinking but attentive customers. When the reader reached
an interesting episode and he discovered that his glass was empty, he
would put the book down. ‘Give him another bottle of beer!’ some of
the listeners would shout to the proprietor. So, our reader would resume
and go on until his glass was empty. He would put the book down and
the whole drama would be repeated, night after night, until the end of
the novel (Wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 83).
This process sufficiently shows the reappropriation of the literary product if

it comes to integrate the sociohistorical and linguistic space within it. For
this, necessary attention has to be given to Indigenous languages and review
of school curricula for incorporation and implementation of the same in
order to promote literary artistic writing as well as reception across Africa.
Unfortunately, three decades after the publication of wa Thiong’o’s book,
the questions raised about the language of authorship by African writers are
still pertinent. Swahili, for example, which is a vernacular or a vehicular
language spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Mozambique1 has a rich and varied his-
tory in its language and literature (Mazrui, c2007). Despite this, its written
productions still remain less representative compared to those in colonial
language. The same applies to languages such as Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ge’ez,
Amharic, Twi, Ewe, Sotho, Xhosa, Shona, Somali, Zulu, Wolof among oth-
ers, which are spoken in different countries within Africa. Elizabeth Ann
Wynne Gunner and Harold Scheub (2018) offer more insights on literature
in African languages including the oral (riddle, lyric, proverb, tale, heroic
poetry, and epic) and the written productions. All the productions from
these Indigenous languages emerged from countries, where English is spo-
ken as an exogenous language. In Togo for instance, the quasi-absence of
written literature in Indigenous languages is noted in the literary field. In
an interview, the writer Kangni Alem reveals the lack of a relevant corpus:
One day, we will realise that even to teach national languages, we need
a literary corpus and we must produce this corpus. […] I learned Ewe,
and the texts we were given to learn Ewe were taken from the Bible
(Gehrmann & Yigbe, 2015, p.270)2 [Translation ours].
“Borrowed” languages in Africa 179
Regarding the neglect of Indigenous languages and the continued prolifer-
ation of writings in colonial languages, several reasons have been assigned
as indicated in Mwangi (2012), among them a limited audience for writing
in Indigenous languages, underdeveloped publishing networks, and harsher
censorship at home than abroad. Moreover, most influential works are pub-
lished in Western metropolises or by subsidiaries of metropolitan publishing
houses in European languages (Mwangi, 2012). In support of Indigenous
languages for formal education in Africa, Alidou (2003) observes that to a
large extent the low academic achievement of African students at every level
of the educational system is attributed to the use of exotic languages as means
of instruction in schools. Indeed, if there is an African readership for the
limited literature in Indigenous languages, it remains constricted to a certain
‘privileged’ class, intellectual class, and to a lesser extent a minority that still
have a taste for books for various reasons like religion, academia, and pres-
ervation of cultural and historical experiences. As such, imported languages
have become a norm with prescriptive values in African formal education.
These observations contribute to this chapter’s reflection on authorship and
readership in borrowed languages across Africa.
The problem of “borrowed” language(s)

Language plays a crucial role in determining authorship and readership. By
force of circumstances, as exposed in the preceding section of this chapter,
exogenous languages have dominated as the medium of instruction in edu-
cation across Africa. This has consequently altered the feeling of the masses
to the point that they develop the impossible familiarity or the impossible
proximity with the exogenous language(s) – the language(s) of the coloniser.
Prieur (2007) explains that the ‘feeling of a language’ is founded by sub-
jective elements such as interiority, familiarity, proximity, self-confidence,
and identity (p. 294). 3 [Translation ours]. As languages such as French,
English, or Portuguese are not intrinsically African, the feeling of the lan-
guage cannot completely inhabit the African users, particularly the African
writers, as opposed to the connection with their own Indigenous languages
(also referred to as mother tongues/languages). Thus, there is a relationship
of alienation for the African writer with European languages, a relationship
of exteriority rather than a relationship based on familiarity and interiority.
Importantly, a language cannot be thought of without the effect of identity,
which is intrinsic to it. It appears that there is a misunderstanding insofar
as the writer thinks that he has the same relationship with the borrowed
language as his reader when this is not the case. Accordingly, one can won-
der about the degree of adhesion and commitment of an individual African
reader, which culminates to the popular reading culture. The African writer
has a problematic relationship with the borrowed language, which (s)he does
not dare to admit, least (s)he is viewed, perhaps, as incompetent or less edu-
cated. (S)he faces this problem in solitude in the sense that sometimes (s)he
encounters difficulty in expressing herself/himself and in faithfully trans-
lating certain experiences of her/his African culture in the borrowed lan-
guage. The Mauritian4 writer Ananda Devi (2007), for instance, embodies
this problem of the double relation to the ‘mother tongue’ and the borrowed
languages. Linguistic awareness in this writer is of such magnitude, all the
more since she finds herself in a fairly complex linguistic situation, shared
between the ‘mother’ language and the language of writing. Ananda says
that the Creole is spoken to her by her father, while the Telugu was spoken to
her by her mother – the latter, she distinctly calls her mother’s language. Yet
her languages of writing are French and English. Regarding this linguistic
situation, in an interview, she says:
I know my eyes are avoiding that mirror. That the discomfort is there,
noticeable. French, Creole, Telugu, all these languages are shadows that
taunt me, lights that elude me. None of them belong to me. I open my
mouth, and I know that my real language is silence (Devi, 2007, p. 41)5
[Translation ours].
Furthermore, in a fictional dialogue entitled ‘Flou identitaire’ (a title reveal-

ing this uncomfortable linguistic situation), Ananda expresses her refusal to
choose a community and therefore a language; she claims belonging to any
of the languages. Thus, she fails to anchor in an intimate language, which
constitutes her deep identity, the language of expression of her individual and
social experience and states:
My mother’s language was Telugu. My language as a Mauritian is Creole.

My writing language is French. My language of scientific expression is
English (Devi, 2010, p.183)6 [Translation ours].
Clearly, she chooses French or English her language of writing or scientific

expression, thus abandoning the language that would most define her cul-
tural identity. This author eloquently illustrates the situation of the African
writer, the one who chooses the language of the coloniser as the language of
authorship. Another problem with which Devi is confronted is the fact that
she cannot entirely escape the mother language, the language with which
a relationship of proximity, intimacy, and familiarity is intrinsic. It is this
naturally innate relationship that qualifies the mother language as a visceral
language, to use an anatomical metaphor to signify the depth and vivacity of
the attachment to the said language. This demonstrates vividly the untrans-
latability (Brahima, 2014), namely that certain sociocultural experiences can
only be expressed through the language in which this culture is connected.
As these experiences cannot be expressed by an exogenous language, the
African writer is obliged (as an internal call) to write them in his text as
they are; whether they are lexicons, cultural scripts or culturally specific
syntaxes, which lead to the multilingualism characteristic of certain works.
This confirms the hypothesis that each language carries linguistic concep-
tualisations, which vary from one language (with its culture) to another. In
addition, this episodic appeal of the language of the first culture in literary
practice is explained in some cases by the sake of the realism of fiction or
by the writer’s concerns about reception. The latter case is in line with the
interest of this chapter: which language register should be chosen in order to
attract African local readership? Multilingualism is very emblematic of the
work of Ananda Devi, who confides her deep desire to write in Creole, her
mother language, in order to avoid weighing down her French texts with
glosses and footnotes:
The use of Creole in my novels is mainly related to dialogues, therefore

I could even say that it is a question of listening and musicality. I mean
that often the dialogues come in Creole to also respond to the desire
to listen to the sounds of the country, of the everyday language which
is the true language spoken in the popular circles where my characters
come from. This is what happened for Pagli for example: when I wrote
the titles of the chapters, I put ‘Nuit’ (Night) and after I thought of the
equivalent in Creole ‘Lanwit’, where the article and the words are pasted,
and I said to myself that, basically, the sounds are similar, but we hear
something a little more dreamy in ‘Lanwit’; it’s something a little bit
more elongated, maybe even a little more poetic (Corio, 2005, p. 152)7
[Translation ours].
This justification reveals the point to which the soul of an entire people – its
inner heart – is carried by its own language, and to which point the appeal
of the intimate language remains strong and irresistible at a given moment
but at the same time confirms the thesis of linguistic conceptualisation. In
this instance, although Creole is etymologically linked to French (Creole was
born from the contact of French and the languages spoken by slaves), the two
languages do not have the same vision of the world, as we see through the
Creole word Lanwit whose semantic load is different from the one carried by
the French word Nuit.
Reflecting on the imaginary in “borrowed” language(s)

Following the work of Paulhan (1929), it is necessary to clarify the sense in
which we understand the notion of language as an imaginary, symbol, and
construction of the mind. This imaginary is reflected in the use of verbal
signs, which are collective and arbitrary signifiers – symbols which everyone
has inherited and constructed for their own use. Learning to speak or write,
amounts to acquiring linguistic imaginary tools (words, sentences, images
among others) preexisting at our birth. We designate these imaginary tools
here as figure of the Other:
Learning to speak, then, means acquiring ‘means’ to explore this des-
tiny8, to invest in the symbolic place that falls to us at birth, it is to learn
the rules of common life and the values of the social universe which is
ours. It is to learn the relationships of existence with others, to internalise
the ‘laws of speech’ and the categories of the prohibition which founds
them (Prieur, 2007, p. 293)9 [Translation ours].
This imaginary dimension is explained by the common ground that lan-

guage constitutes because of its heritage character and its institutional nature,
making us the place of deposit of other voices – that is to say a ‘shared culture’
(Galisson, 1988, p.325–341), ‘a product of habit’ (Galisson, 1991, p. 164), the
result of interactions and daily communication practices. This fact summons
a dual relationship of the speaker with the language: on the one hand, a sym-
bolically embedded relation (integration of the imaginary of the language);
on the other hand, an identifiying relation, which doubles the first one –
language establishes a factor of identity. In a symbolically embedded relation-
ship, words are signs of images, ideas, perceptions, and knowledge that any
native speaker naturally acquires in the case of a ‘mother tongue’ after a long
immersion (Lafontant, 1995, p.228). These signs are also integrated by the
nonnative speaker in the case of learning a second language. By establishing
language as an identity factor, the question of dual embedding and identi-
fication relation in the speaker of a foreign language arises. This is because
language determines and shapes the collective identity of every individual.
Therefore, it is problematic to assert that, in line with Fath (2016), the identity
of the speaker of a foreign language (in the case of learning carried out in
an exogenous context) and the native speaker of the same language is the
same. Both do not have the same degree of cultural immersion, which can
strongly determine their identity in relation to the language or their feeling
of language. Ezikeojiaku (2001, p.47) notes that:
Any literature worthy of its name ought to be written in the society’s

language, for a proper creative assessment of the work. Literature does
not exist in a vacuum; it is imaginative work of art embodying ideas sig-
nificant to the culture that produces it.
Literature in Indigenous languages, as indicated by Ezikeojiaku (2001), is an

embodiment of aspects of people’s culture. Just because a speaker has learned
French, Mandarin, or Hindi in an exogenous context, this does not mean
(s)he identifies with French, Chinese, or Indian culture. In other words,
learning these languages, in no way makes him/her French, Chinese, or
Indian, because of the plurality of identity, its heterogeneous character, par-
ticularly the cultural identity (Scott, 1995).10
A non-native speaker, insofar as his learning path takes place (or took
place) in an exogenous context, is deemed, ipso facto, not to be sufficiently
imbued with this culture. Certainly, such a speaker can perfectly demon-
strate a relatively good communicative competence, when, in particular,
to understand certain unspoken social relations and certain types of con-
versational implicits, he shows himself capable of mobilising, alongside
linguistic data, certain rules of use and behavior, which are necessary
in the circumstances, and to reason from this information. However,
he cannot keep himself from stumbling over a number of words and
expressions, which have the fundamental property of being culturally
marked (Fath, 2016, p. 146)11 [Translation ours].
From this point of view, the dual embedding and identification relation is
greatly lacking in the African writer who is borrowing English, French,
Spanish or any foreign language as a language of authorship. In the same way,
borrowed languages are incapable of satisfactory translation, of ‘adequate’
representation of realities or social and individual experiences from the cul-
ture of origin that intimately and intrinsically determines its identity because
of the specificity of each language to express reality. This view is supported
by what has come to be called the Whorf (1956) hypothesis on linguistic rel-
ativity. Indeed, the two authors maintain that a language expresses a vision
of the world, starting from the fact that certain realities, certain elements
of meaning are undeniably untranslatable or difficult to translate from one
language to another, given their cultural roots or their strong cultural load.
This is because they are determined by the singular way of perception of
this reality within a given social group, in which perception is itself dictated
by mental and cultural factors varying from one individual to the other or
from one group of individuals to another. This difference in perception is
found, for example, in the structures and registers specific to each language
and determined by the specific way of acting and thinking particular to each
individual or each social group. In a joint meeting held in New York City, on
December 28, 1928, Sapir stated:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in
the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much
at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium
of expression of their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one
adjusts to the reality essentially without the use of language and that lan-
guage is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of com-
munication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’
is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the
group. … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we
do because the language habits of our community predisposes certain
choices of interpretations (Sapir, 1929, p. 209-210).
Although Wilhelm von Humboldt (1836) by studying languages (Chinese

and some Amerindian languages), sees them as prisms or grids covering
extralinguistic reality, so that each language reflects its own vision of the
world (or Weltansicht in German), the credit goes to a disciple of Edward
Sapir,12 Benjamin Lee Whorf, who clearly formulates the theory of linguistic
relativity:
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages … We

cut nature up, organise it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we
do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organise it in this
way – an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and
is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course,
an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we
cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organisation and classifi-
cation of data which the agreement decrees (Whorf, 1956, pp. 213-214).
Before this, Whorf (1940) held that we are ‘introduced to a new principle
of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical
evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic back-
grounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated’ (p. 214). This reflec-
tion was already present in the work of John Locke (1689), who argued that
in all languages there are ‘many words that cannot be found in any other
[language]’(p. 226). For the English philosopher, these specific words of a
language are the representation of ‘complex ideas’ stemming from the ‘cus-
toms and ways of living’ of peoples (Locke, 1976, p. 226).
The work of supporters of linguistic relativity (Sapir, Whorf among others)
and recently that of Delbecque (2006) are particularly significant and elo-
quent on this subject. From their study of ‘Indian’ American languages and
cultures, Sapir and Whorf (1958) point to conceptual differences between
languages. Delbecque (2006) then demonstrates convincingly the culturally
untranslatable specific lexicons, syntaxes, and scripts. These linguistic facts
are so strongly determined by the surrounding culture that no other language
can be able to faithfully convey the socio-cultural realities ‘represented’
without seriously altering the thought expressed through these particular lin-
guistic means. The proponents of linguistic relativity were particularly inter-
ested, not only in the structural categories of grammar, which differ from
one language to another and which thus reveal differences in conceptualis-
ation of the reality from an individual to another or from one cultural group
to another, but also in the culture-specific words that reflect the distinctive
socio-historical experiences of a given linguistic community. Linguistic rel-
ativity is also noted at the level of cultural scripts (description of the cul-
tural norms, which govern certain types of behaviour), which encompass
linguistic formulas, ways of saying or speaking in a culture-specific manner,
reflecting the cultural norms enforced in a linguistic community, and the
scripts which also vary from one culture to another. These different catego-
ries that have been inventoried are, therefore, linguistic facts that are difficult
to translate into another language without alteration. If we try to convey
them in another language, the underlying reality will undoubtedly be cut
off, and we will strip them of their own value, thus resulting in a distortion
of the intended thought. The South African Mazisi Kunene (1992) affirms
that, ‘European languages are totally inadequate to express the African phil-
osophical reality’ (p. 38). Whether acquired (in the social environment which
is naturally attached to it, through daily contacts, exchanges, relationships
with the other) or learned (in the case of codified and programmed learning
of a foreign or second language), language remains the expression of a vision
of the world, a ‘reserve of thoughts’ (Hountondji, 1982, p.402). Indeed, lan-
guages, as constructions of the mind, shape reality differently because of the
individual and social subjectivity inherent in this construction:
The imaginary is nothing other than this path in which the representa-
tion of the object allows itself to be assimilated and shaped by the drive’s
imperatives, and in which reciprocally, […] subjective representations are
explained ‘by the subject’s previous accommodations’ to the objective
environment (Durand, 1992, p. 38).13 [Translation ours]
Learning a language is not only the integration of a different linguistic system,

but it is also to be in the presence of another culture and, therefore, of another
vision of the world with, so to speak, new categorisation schemas of reality
(Lavaur, 2005, p.171) and new interpretative schemes (Blanchet, 2004, p. 7).
Therefore, beyond its communication function, language has also a symbolic
function, a function of meaning, expression of an imaginary:
In social life, the role of language is quite clear. It ensures up to a certain

point, by allowing them more richness and complication, by nuancing
them much more finely, partial identity, the resemblance of knowledge,
images, ideas, beliefs, the convergence of opinions and impressions,
harmony of actions. This resemblance is necessary for social life, at
least it makes it easier. […] It is good or necessary that all the mem-
bers of the same social group, all the members charged with a similar
function […] have a certain number of beliefs, knowledge, common
feelings. Language collaborates there but with an imperfect but real effi-
ciency and in very varied ways, […] but where words and sentences are
signs of realities more or less well understood (Paulhan, 1929, pp. 7-8)14
[Translation ours].
To this end, language constitutes a cultural creation specific to a social group

that a certain number of factors determine the constitution; it is a conven-
tion, an arbitrary, a conventional system of symbols. Language is, therefore,
a real imaginary, to be understood in the sense of creation of the mind, just
like any imaginary, whether this (imaginary) is a scheme, archetype, idea,
image, symbol, sign, myths, and take a visual or narrative form, according
to the typology of Durand (1992, pp. 60–66). Furthermore, its constitution as
a symbolic and semantic system or universe makes language a singular and
differentiated mode of being or of presence in the world. From this point of
view, one language does not equal another, even if it is translated. To this
end, the adage could say that ‘translating is betraying.’
Literature in borrowed languages:

The imaginary for which reader?
The question of the language of literature does not arise without raising the
question of reception. The two being interconnected, there is no literature
without reading. Eco (1985) emphasises on the interpretative cooperation
of the reader, which is indispensable for a full transmission of the writ-
ten message. The reader is vital for the written text because (s)he cooper-
ates to complete, construct, and actualise the text for the reason that (s)he
reads the text with a system of rules, provided by the language, for instance,
encyclopaedic and intertextual (Eco, 1985), including cultural skills and
knowledges, personal experiences, among others. This is in line with Louise
Rosenblatt`s (2005) reader-response theory, which posits that the reader`s
personal feelings, knowledge, and experiences contribute to the author`s
text to create meaning for the individual reader. Which audience does lit-
erature target written by Africans in borrowed European languages? Is it
the African reader or the European reader in search of exoticism? Can we
label these as ‘literature for Africans’ yet they are ‘intended’ for a public so
‘distant’ and convey a truncated imperfect African imaginary (history is
African, language is not)? The Nigerian writer Gabriel Okara (1963), per-
haps frames the paradox in a way that is understood better by confessing in
the midst of an article he wrote in English, ‘you see, I am already groping
for words to make you understand what I really mean as an African’ (p. 15).
Can such literary productions gain the support of the African public, if it is
not a scholarly public, a cultivated minority elite, which Ngugi wa Thiong’o
(1986, pp. 20–22) terms ‘the petty-bourgeoisie’ readership? One thing is cer-
tain, the popular public, those who speak more of their mother tongue, or
Pidgin, or French ‘petit moussa’ (French limited to popular speech) has only
relatively little interest in African literary texts written in a classical lan-
guage learned at school. Can we hope that this popular mass weaves an iden-
tification relationship with these texts? The conditions are clearly not made
to gain its membership because the language spoken by the masses is Pidgin
or popular French (as far as African Francophone countries are concerned)
and, for example, Sheng (a hybrid colloquial contact variety with English,
Kiswahili, and other local languages in Kenya) or non-standard Englishes
(as far as Anglophone African countries are concerned). These are illustra-
tions of languages acquired on the job, or in everyday activities, thanks to
social phenomena, including urbanisation. In his paper, Bissiri (2001) already
asked the question about popular French as a literary language. It would at
least serve literature to join the masses:
The French education given to African children under colonisation did

not allow them, contrary to what was happening in the English system,
to some extent, to learn to write in their mother tongue. In a practical
way, they could not in any case use it in writing when they grew up,
they wanted to express themselves in literary terms. […] It is obvious that
French-speaking authors would have had no readership by writing in
their language, even if they could; for all the other colonised it was the
same case. Objectively, nothing linguistically could therefore allow
the first authors of French-speaking Africa to write in their mother
tongue (Bissiri, 2001, p. 772).15 [Translation ours]
The experience reported here by Bissiri, dates back to colonisation. It no

longer prevails years after independence. However, writers from African
countries who have adopted French or English as the language of education
continue to write in the said languages, with exceptions of a few novels,
plays, and poems. Since the context has changed a lot, one can perfectly
well wonder, like Bissiri (2001), about the persistence of the ‘refusal’ (p. 774)
to write in a native language or at least in popular French; this language of
hybrid essence which derives its substance (lexicology, syntax, morphology,
phonology) from French and African languages.
Conclusion
As we have reflected thus far, it is imperative to formulate a necessity for
literary writing in African languages to give them back their entirety.
This chapter has shed light on the concept of the imaginary in literature
for the African reader and writer. We have foregrounded that authorship in
Indigenous languages bears wealth and liberty, to identify and sustain itself.
For which reader are they truly intended? Authorship and readership are
conflicted concepts about African literatures; and for these literatures to reach
maximum potential, it is at literary, cultural, ideological and political levels
that the interest for these literatures lies, and more so in taking into account
linguistic and sociocultural realities of their natural environments. This is
imperative given the fact that there is no literature, which is not a product
of the sociocultural and historical context in which it is born and exists.
Culmination from reflections of this chapter incline towards the claim that
literature by Francophone and Anglophone writers originally written were
not linguistically in line with their African environments. It is apparent that
language is a fundamental criterion for the identity of a literature. Regarding
literary practices within African countries, there is a lag between the soci-
ocultural context and the written literary production, which justifies ‘the
inexistence’ or the resistance of the readership. To bridge this lag, it is urgent
that we get involved individually and collectively in the development of read-
ership and authorship in Indigenous languages to first thrive in the African
self and subsequently the African environment. Taking this into account
would go a long way in relaying the realistic illusion (mimesis) and leaving
behind the hybridity that has so far characterised written literature in Africa.
The contemplations of this chapter reflect an alarming urgency for education
systems in Africa to foster and nurture reading and writing in Indigenous
languages as early as possible, particularly because of Africa`s linguistically
sundry environments that provide a rich contribution to written literature.
This beckons for a (re)positioning of Indigenous languages in Africa`s formal
education right from lower through to higher education levels, perhaps even
accorded similar privileges as European languages. The use of Indigenous
languages for literary purposes should not only encourage intracultural com-
munication but also ensure coexistence and cohesiveness between the author
and his/her community. Moreover, literacy in Indigenous languages should
contribute to the creation of new ways of thinking, new imaginary, new myths,
new languages (due to the suggestive or creative function of language), symbols,
legends, and new aesthetics. This will bridge the gap between written litera-
ture and its linguistic environments, that is to say, the literature in Indigenous
languages will be in sync with regard to time and space. As a result, this will
restore African languages and prevent their attrition and death as has already
been experienced in several parts of the continent. Indigenous languages will
not only be preserved at the place, which represents their origin, social, indi-
vidual, and identity concerns, but also and above all the unique worldview that
characterises them and that they serve to convey. In turn, this contributes to the
enrichment of universal heritage. Significantly, on the evolution of African art,
Okot p’Bitek (1964) in Sévry (1997, p. 36) remarked that ‘the revival of African
art should be for ourselves, to satisfy our own cultural interest, and not to be
(re)resented at airports for tourists and distinguished visitors’16 [translation ours].
To sum up, this chapter lends to the concern raised by Musanji Ngalasso-
Mwatha (2010, p. 41–71), which still remains valid because Indigenous lan-
guages, particularly in Francophone and Anglophone African countries,
are in danger of disappearance (Moseley, 2010) if the governments of these
countries do not work to (re)develop their linguistic policy and sustain their
linguistic space. Moreso, the crux of this chapter`s reflection adds to the
debate about language, which remains central in the ongoing configuration
of African literature. Of course, it is imperative to acknowledge the fact that
African languages are not homogeneous and that this process beckons for
meticulous strategy, revision, and reflexivity.
Notes
1. This list may not reflect current changes that are yet to be documented.
2. Original quote: ‘Un jour viendra, où l’on se rendra compte que même pour enseigner les
langues nationales, on a besoin d’un corpus littéraire et il faut produire ce corpus. […] J’ai
appris l’ewe, et les textes qu’on nous donnait pour apprendre l’ewe étaient tirés de la Bible.’
3. Original quote : ‘Intériorité, familiarité, proximité, confiance en soi, identité sont autant
d’éléments subjectifs qui viennent fonder le sentiment de la langue.’
4. There is no similarity in the language issue in Mauritius and the major part of the con-
tinent, as Mauritius’s population is originally composed with descendants from Africa,
Asia, and Europe, as the land was uninhabited before its first visit in the Middle age,
and later in the 16th Century. Therefore, there was no originally Indigenous language.
However, the language problem addressed by Ananda Devi is not different from what
the African writer faces after the colonisation.
5. Original quote : ’Je sais que mes yeux évitent ce miroir-là. Que le malaise est là, percep-
tible. Français, créole, telugu, toutes ces langues sont des ombres qui me narguent, des
lumières qui m’éludent. Aucune ne m’appartient en propre. J’ouvre ma bouche, et je sais
que ma véritable langue, c’est le silence.’
6. Original quote : ’La langue de ma mère était le telugu. Ma langue en tant que
Mauricienne est le créole. Ma langue d’écriture est le français. Ma langue d’expres-
sion scientifique est l’anglais.’
7. Original quote : ’L’utilisation du créole dans mes romans est liée surtout aux dialogues,
par conséquent je pourrais même dire que c’est une question d’écoute et de musicalité.
Je veux dire que souvent les dialogues viennent en créole pour répondre aussi à l’envie
de faire écouter les sons du pays, de la langue du quotidien qui est la véritable langue
parlée dans les milieux populaires d’où mes personnages viennent. C’est ce qui est arrivé
pour Pagli par exemple : quand j’écrivais les titres des chapitres je mettais Nuit et après
je pensais à l’équivalent en créole Lanwit, où l’article et les mots sont collés, et je me
disais que, au fond, les sonorités sont semblables, mais qu’on entend quelque chose d’un
peu plus rêveur dans Lanwit; c’est quelque chose d’un peu plus allongé, peut-être même
d’un peu plus poétique. ’
8. In the quoted article, Jean-Marie Prieur terms ‘destiny’ the fact that language and name
come from a contingent and external ‘choice’ from which we cannot escape: (’Autant
la langue et le nom sont constitutifs de notre être, et en forme en partie l’étoffe, […]
autant la langue et le nom ont aussi la contingence et l’extériorité d’un “choix” qui nous
échappe’).
9. Original quote: ‘Apprendre à parler, alors, signifie acquérir des “moyens” d’explorer ce
destin, d’investir la place symbolique qui nous échoit à la naissance, c’est y apprendre
les règles de la vie commune et les valeurs de l’univers social qui est le nôtre. C’est
apprendre les relations d’existence avec les autres, intérioriser les “lois de la parole » et
les catégories de l’interdit qui les fonde”.’
10. According to Joan W. Scott in Rajchman J. (ed.), The Identity in question, New York_
London, Routledge, 1995, p. 5: ’Within the pluralist framework [...], identity is taken as
a referential sign of a fixed set of customs, practices and meanings, an enduring heritage,
a readily identifiable sociological category, a set of shared traits and/or experiences ’.
11. Original quote: « Un locuteur non natif, dans la mesure où son cursus d’apprentissage
a (ou a eu) lieu en contexte exogène, est réputé, ipso facto, ne pas être suffisamment
imprégné de cette culture. Certes, un tel locuteur peut parfaitement faire preuve d’une
relativement bonne compétence communicative, quand, notamment, pour comprendre
certains non-dits des relations sociales et certains types d’implicites conversationnels, il
se montre apte à mobiliser, à côté des données linguistiques, certaines règles d’usage et
de comportement, qui s’imposent en la circonstance, et à raisonner à partir de ces infor-
mations. Il n’en achoppe, cependant, pas moins sur nombre de mots et expressions, qui
ont pour propriété fondamentale d’être marqués culturellement.’
12. Sapir, E. (1958). Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality.
Edited by David Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press.
13. Original quote : ‘L’imaginaire n’est rien d’autre que ce trajet dans lequel la représenta-
tion de l’objet se laisse assimiler et modeler par les impératifs pulsionnels du sujet, et dans
lequel réciproquement, les représentations subjectives s’expliquent « par les accommo-
dations antérieures du sujet » au milieu objectif.’
14. Original quote: ‘Dans la vie sociale, le rôle du langage signe est assez clair. Il assure
jusqu’à un certain point, en leur permettant plus de richesse et de complication, en
les nuançant bien plus finement, l’identité partielle, la ressemblance des connaissances,
des images, des idées, des croyances, la convergence des opinions et des impressions,
l’harmonie des actes. Cette ressemblance est nécessaire à la vie sociale, au moins la faci-
lite-t-elle. […] Il est bon ou nécessaire que tous les membres d’un même groupe social,
tous les sociétaires chargés d’une fonction semblable […] aient un certain nombre de
croyances, de connaissances, de sentiments communs. Le langage y collabore mais avec
une imparfaite mais réelle efficacité et en des manières bien variées, […] mais où les
mots et les phrases sont des signes de réalités plus ou moins bien compris.’
15. Original quote: ‘L’éducation française donnée aux enfants africains sous la colonisation
ne permettait pas à ces derniers, contrairement à ce qui se passait dans le système anglais,
dans une certaine mesure, d’apprendre à écrire dans leur langue maternelle. De manière
pratique, ils ne pouvaient en aucun cas s’en servir à l’écrit lorsque devenus grands ils
voulaient s’exprimer sur le plan littéraire. [...] Il va de soi que les auteurs francophones
n’auraient eu aucun lectorat en écrivant dans leur langue, même s’ils le pouvaient ; tous
les autres colonisés étaient dans le même cas. Objectivement, rien sur le plan linguistique
ne pouvait donc permettre aux premiers auteurs de l’Afrique francophone d’écrire dans
leur langue maternelle.’
16. Original quote : ‘Le renouveau de l’art africain devrait être pour nous-mêmes, pour
satisfaire notre propre intérêt culturel, et non pour être représenté dans les aéroports à
l’intention de touristes et de visiteurs de marque. ’
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10 Must decolonisation occur
on an island? The role of
occupation in developing
future visions within the
#RhodesMustFall
Antje Daniel
Introduction
South Africa has been described as the ‘protest capital of the world’ (Ngwane,
2017; Runciman, 2017). In South Africa, we can observe protests, riots, or insur-
gence almost every day; especially since the economic decline after 2008, which
resulted in the so-called service delivery protests (Alexander, 2010; Beinart &
Dawson, 2010; Runciman, 2015). In South Africa, protest is a legitimate, publicly
visible, and common way to bring in a new vision of the future. This is the reason
why the South African political scientist Steven Friedman states: ‘If you want …
change in South Africa, create a crisis – then stand by to negotiate a way out of it’
(Friedman, 2018). Therefore, the students’ uprising in 2015 is not a surprise but
rather a line up to previous and ongoing protests in South Africa grasping with
grievances such as lack of state services, the claim for human rights, or general dis-
contentment with politics. Nevertheless, the scope of students’ uprising and their
demands are remarkable.
On the 9th of March 2015, Chumani Maxwele threw faeces at the statue of
the British colonialist and racial theorist Cecil Rhodes, marking the birth of
the student movement #RhodesMustFall (RMF) at the University of Cape
Town (UCT). The protest against Rhodes, which grew continuously into a
nationwide protest movement called #FeesMustFall (FMF) became the big-
gest uprising of post-apartheid South Africa concerning the scope and per-
sistence of protests over three years. By considering the student protests, we
are witnessing a shift from the colonial/apartheid ‘idea of South Africa’ to a
decolonial ‘South African idea’ (cf. Mbembe, 2017) within a context, where
coloniality of markets have reduced education to a commodity only acces-
sible to the middle and upper classes. The student protests became a symbol
for decolonial practice, which claims for free education for everybody and
aspires to a decolonial future of knowledge production at the universities.
194 Antje Daniel
Therefore, students revive visions on decoloniality and relate them to trans-
formation at the universities and even in society and politics. Decoloniality
was framed in different ways including the search for future visions, which
interrupt previous practices at the universities, and introduces a debate and
reflection on politics and the nature of an ideal society.1
By so doing, occupation became an important strategy for RMF at the
University of Cape Town. In March 2015, students occupied the adminis-
trative building Bremner House on campus and renamed it Azania house.
Beside the occupation at UCT, also in Johannesburg, an occupation occurred.
However, not all student protests in South Africa used occupation as a strat-
egy to protest; rather occupation remained exceptional. For UCT − which is
in focus in this chapter − the Azania occupation was important for establish-
ing a debate on a decolonial future.
Azania refers to precolonial social boundaries and black pan-Africanism.2
At this point, the socially constructed spaces show how students combine the
occupation and the symbolic meaning of Azania with a vision of the future.
A student explains:
Azania is … an original name of South Africa, which is pan-Africanist.

It comes from a pan-Africanist tradition. You can trace it from Steve
Biko. Azania is a name for free liberated space for black people. We said
that Bremner House must be changed to Azania because it is a place
for black people to speak about their pain and to reengineer the society.
And we start with the University of Cape Town. And decolonialisation
becomes a relevant point of departure (Interview student 23.03.2017).
Azania becomes a symbol for the search of alternative decolonial futures and
gives students a space to express their discontentment. Literature on occu-
pation highlights the imaginary dimensions of limited spaces (Feigenbaum,
Frenzel & McCurdy, 2012; Frenzel, Feigenbaum & McCurdy, 2014). For that
reason, the question arises what role did the occupation exactly play for the
movement and the claim for decoloniality at UCT?
The following arguments result from qualitative research at the University
of Cape Town, which I have been conducting since 2016 on future visions
of activists. The data collection is based on 15 biographical interviews with
diverse occupants who have been part of Azania occupation in March 2015
and 13 guided-interviews with academics who supported the movement and
external experts.3
The chapter is structured in four parts: First, I will introduce the genealogy
of student protests and will refer to the grievances for the protests at UCT.
By referring to the reasons why the movement emerged, different meanings
of decolonialisation as future vision will become visible (2). Before analysing
the Azania occupation, I will discuss the spatial dimension of occupation and
whether it is a precondition for elaborating new ideas, practices, and future
visions (3). The empirical part offers a deeper understanding on how students
Must decolonisation occur on an island? 195
used and experienced (4) and how emerging hierarchies and cleavages contra-
dicted the imaginary perception of the Azania occupation (5). Finally, I will
discuss the role of occupation in understanding the movements’ dynamics
and their aspiration to a decolonial future.
Decolonialisation as a future vision

within the student protests
Decolonialisation as a future vision and political strategy for transformation
leads back to liberation movements during colonialism (Geiss, 1968). The
lived experiences of colonialism, which was built on exploitation and imperi-
alism, became a reason for imagining and aspiring to alternative futures. The
imaginations were expressed in fictional literature of decolonialised societies
(Ashcroft, 2012, 2013)4 and even by appeals for resistance resulting in emerg-
ing movements against the colonial regime (Melber, 2011). Decolonialisation
was related to emerging black consciousness and the idea of a pan-African unity
(Ndaba et al., 2017). Up to today, liberation from structural violence has
attraction and leads to a revival of decolonial thinking (Ndlovu-Gatsheni,
2013, 2018). This is also the case in South Africa, where black citizens expe-
rience structural violence and discrimination almost every day. The rain-
bow nation as central metaphor and imagination of a multicultural society
of post-apartheid (after 1994) is questioned and criticised due to the existing
cleavages in society (Turner, 2019). Frustrations about the society, transferred
to the microcosmos of the university, were the starting point for student pro-
tests at universities in South Africa.
At the University of Cape Town, a wave of protest emerged after a student
threw faeces at the statue of the British colonialist and racial theorist Cecil
Rhodes. The student protests #RMF culminated in the #FMF movement.5
From the students’ perspective, Rhodes symbolises the imperial, exploitative
system of colonial rule, which continues up to today. This is symbolically visible
in the imperialistic statue of Cecil Rhodes and the lived experiences of discrim-
ination of black people. One activist describes the birth of RMF as follows:
Post-1994, we have been brainwashed with the idea of the ‘rainbow

nation.’ What is clear is that we live in a post-apartheid South Africa
where inequality, racism, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy contin-
ues to oppress black people in the country. The movement comes out of
the feeling desperate, angry, and frustrated by the state of things in the
country (quoted from Ndelu, 2017, pp. 62–63).
Therefore, students deplore that 20 years after the end of apartheid, govern-
ment has failed to keep the promise of the multicultural rainbow nation and
to overcome the discrimination of the black majority. With reference to deco-
lonialisation, especially black students perceive a continuation of discrimina-
tion in post-apartheid South Africa.
196 Antje Daniel
What emerged as a protest against colonial heritage in South African
universities, developed into one of the most powerful movements of post-
apartheid that challenged the university and politics for three years (Booysen
2016a, Ngcaweni & Ngcawni, 2018). When the University of Witwatersrand
announced a 10.5 per cent increase in tuition fees at the end of 2015, the
slogan #FeesMustFall replaced RMF (Booysen, 2016b). Universities all
over South Africa called for the abolition of tuition fees and referred to the
discrimination and precarisation of black students. Although the universities
opened up to black students after the end of apartheid, so that their numbers
grew steadily, sustainable access to education remains dependent on income,
race, and gender. According to the Department of Higher Education and
Training in 2018, black students account for 73.7 per cent, white students
account for 14.3 per cent, 6.2 per cent for Coloured, and 4.8 per cent for
Indian/Asia at South African universities. This numbers show that the demo-
graphics at South African universities moving slowly to the overall demo-
graphic of the population (DHET 2018, p.25). This trend is quite different at
UCT due to the white dominance in history: In the year 2014, white students
account for 35.8 per cent, black account for 29.7 per cent, while Coloureds
account for 15.9 per cent and Indians for 8.1 per cent (and 12.9 per cent
account for that they do not know in which category they belong) (Ndelu,
2017). Not least, stagnation in economic growth and increasing youth unem-
ployment exacerbate the situation, as black students can no longer afford tui-
tion fees and have little prospect of finding a job (Booysen, 2016b). Therefore,
decolonialisation is related to the claim to enhance the number and the gradu-
ation of black students at universities and to ensure free education. Since UCT
is also the highest graded university in Africa according to the worldwide
classification of universities, and regarded as ground-breaking in research and
education, a rethinking of the curriculum would be all the more necessary and,
at the same time, trailblazing because UCT has the potential to use the leading
position to be a model for decolonialisation of higher education. Therefore, the
elitist identity of UCT becomes questioned on the one hand (Interview student
23.03.2017), while students expected and confirmed this status by emphasising
that the university should take on a leading position in the struggle for decolo-
nialisation on the other hand (Interview student 07.09.2018).
Due to the lower presence of black students in addition to the low presence
of black academics, the persistence of white leadership and a curriculum, which
is culturally, socially, and politically suitable for the context, many perceive
an isolating culture in South African universities. During colonial, apart-
heid periods and a long time into post-apartheid, the universities remained
a place dominated by the white minority. Research and learning curriculum
refer to and are oriented towards European and North American academia
( Jansen, 2017). The Western-oriented content of education is a reason for
criticism as a student explains: ‘In South Africa, educational institutions were
built to cultivate European ideologies and to create an “enlightened” Africa’
(Matandela, 2015). A student complements:
I found it actually violent to read some of that stuff and read about like
myself and my history in these unbelievable racist demeaning works that
were held as being kind of core studies in the field and I just felt like okay,
that’s the field and I don’t want to participate in it, but I was actually
pushed (Interview student 25.03.2017).
Consequently, UCT (and many other universities in South Africa) is strongly

oriented towards international standards and does not pay sufficient attention
to the history and culture of the black majority (Cornell & Kessi, 2017;
Kessi & Cornell, 2015). This becomes evident in musicology, for instance,
where the focus is on classical European music. A student describes: ‘I started
finding it problematic and became highly aware of how African music is
taught to African students from a Western perspective in this African institu-
tion’ (Interview student 25.03.2017).
Due to structures and university culture, students perceive the university
as alienating. A student explains:
And I in a retrospective I was depressed and had a lot of anxiety and

I didn’t have the language to explain how I was feeling of blaming kind of
the situation here. So I generally thought that I was going crazy and that
I was like seeing things that were not there in terms of how people were
treating me and how I was occupying spaces and I felt completely like
I didn’t deserve to be there, that I wasn’t welcome and I worked really,
really hard because I felt I had to like proof myself and proof my work to
continue being in the space. So I was really, really stressed out for a very
long time (Interview student 25.03.2017).
The alienation of black students manifests itself in experiences of discrimination

amongst students, in class and in getting access to the same services (such as
accommodation) as other students, in marginalisation of education contents,
which refer to black culture or the use of Afrikaans and English as dominant
teaching language (cf. Cornell & Kessi, 2017; Kessi & Cornell, 2015).
This social experience of alienation and isolation is expressed as a reality
in terms of individual physical suffering. Commonly, this feeling relates to
embodied emotions such as inferiority, isolation, shame, or anger. Particularly
anger plays an important role as a student illuminates:
So I had a lot of anger because I felt like those things could have been
avoided. These are the things that have been set up by white supremacy,
by apartheid so I was angry at white people and angry as a result of the 100
of years of human indignity (Interview student 07.09.2018).
Therefore, alienation became the embodied experience of students at the

university. Student realise that these emotions are due to the structural vio-
lence at the university, which is expressed in discrimination and racism.
198 Antje Daniel
In relation, students argue that decolonisation involves the search for one’s
own black identity. Concerning the Black Consciousness Movement, to the stu-
dent protests against apartheid in 1976, and to the American Black Power
Movement in the 1970s (Booysen, 2016a), students aim at recognition of black
identities. Hence, the body is a means and object of identity. Students refer
to decolonial writings by Steve Biko and anti-colonial thoughts of Franz
Fanon to reflect on the meaning of being black. The philosophy of Black
Theology or Negritude plays also a role for identity formation (Ndaba et al.,
2017). Consequently, students perceive decoloniality also as a search for and
regaining of a black identity through self-liberation and cultural cohesion
(Interview student 28.08.2018). A student explains:
I think that’s [black identity], what kept us all there, is that we were all
black and we were all fighting the system, yes, but were not all fighting it
for the same reasons. But, yeah, so we ended up all staying, simply because
under the umbrella we were all black. (Interview student 29.08.2018)
Besides, some students called for a broader social and political change: under
the ‘Outsourcing campaign,’ students drew awareness on the exploiting work-
ing conditions of university staff. The campaign showed that discrimination and
precarisation is not just a student matter but rather part of the social and political
structures in the country. Others follow pan-Africanism and perceive decoloni-
sation as political transformation. Pan-Africanism becomes a metaphor for the
search of a political order beyond the nation state. Partly, this interpretation of
decolonisation is linked to the search for precolonial forms of living and is inter-
linked with debates on land ownership. Increasingly students who belong to par-
ties such as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or the Pan Africanist Student
Movement of Azania (PASMA) refer to this dimension of decolonialisation.
The previous analysis shows, that students use the notion of decolonial-
isation for varying injustices at UCT and in society and relate them to the
demands for free education, change of curriculum as well as university cul-
ture, and for a formation of a black identity and political transformation. The
manifold meanings of decolonisation facilitate a broad countrywide mobili-
sation of students and alliances across gender, socio-economic background,
or political affiliation (Daniel, 2020). The growing pressure of mass protests
finally led to the introduction of free tertiary education for students with less
income in 2017 (see Langa, 2017; Nyamnjoh, 2016).
Must decolonialisation occur on an island?

Decolonialisation remains the key demand of the students’ protests. A mile-
stone of the students’ debate on decolonialisation is the Azania occupation. In
the European debate on occupations, they are perceived as a space in which
liberation and an alternative future vision can be introduced (Feigenbaum,
Frenzel & McCurdy, 2013; Frenzel, Feigenbaum & McCurdy, 2014). Isolation
in the form of an island is needed to ensure that new practices, moral claims
or a social and political order can be established. The image of an island goes
back to utopian imaginations. Usually perceived as the pioneer of utopian
thinking, Thomas More introduced the notion utopia in his same-named
book in 1516. More mixed the Greek eutopia (the good place) with outopia
(the place that does not exist) to devise the notion of utopia and located uto-
pia. Therefore, utopia is a nonexisting place that we aspire to and which we
inevitably fail to reach. More developed his fictional imagination of an ideal
society on an island.6 Isolated from the rest of the world, the imagined good
society could be introduced and lived there. A certain closeness or limited
space – as in form of locating utopia on an island – is important for establish-
ing new imaginations, ideas, moral claims, or political orders.
Social movement studies perceive protest as resulting from a situation of
discontentment. Protest demands aim at regaining control over one’s life and
at creating imaginations about how a society should be (Neidhardt & Rucht,
2001). By so doing, social movements offer a space for practicing things dif-
ferently. The aspired future becomes present (Daniel, 2018; Yates, 2015).
Particularly protest camps or even occupation offer such possibilities.7 They
do not only capture discontentment and demands for change, rather they
can be understood as a laboratory for developing alternative future visions
and imaginations. These forms of protest establish an infrastructure for daily
life. In the process, they are elaborating new forms of living, implement
alternative moralities or elaborate new forms of power (Feigenbaum, Frenzel
& McCurdy, 2012; Frenzel, Feigenbaum & McCurdy, 2014). While many
studies focus on protest camps or occupation as a strategy, just few understand
them as a focal point for the movement developing, negotiating, and prac-
ticing alternative visions. Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy (2013, p. 1f.)
describe protest camps as follows:
Not only do protest camps encompass a diversity of demands for social

change, they are also a space where people come together to imagine
alternative worlds and articulate contentious politics, often in confron-
tation to the state.
The authors Feigenbaum, Frenzel, and McCurdy (2013, p. 202) complement:
Protest camps enable all their participants to experience political pro-

cesses and they re-create life by developing alternative ways of housing,
feeding, actions as intervention and democratic processes. … They are
laboratories of radical, tangible democracy that can help to imagine and
build blueprints for alternative worlds.
Therefore, protest camps or occupations can be understood as laboratories for

social or political transformation, namely a concrete utopia (cf. Bloch, 1959).8
The concept of concrete utopia by the German philosopher Ernst Bloch
200 Antje Daniel
argues that utopia is not a fiction rather it becomes reachable through con-
tinuous learning, consciousness, and hope. Therefore, concrete utopias are in
contrast to More’s fictional ideal societies not located in an undefined future,
they are located in the present and can be realised. Hope is the driving force
of concrete utopias and a feeling which – under certain conditions – offers the
capability for agency and therewith the capability to be actively involved in
social change. Following Bloch (1959), hope is a learnable feature of human
beings; it is always there but sometimes human beings have to discover it.
Hope goes along with a vision because without a vision of what we as actors
aim for, what we hope to achieve, consciously or unconsciously, we would
not engage in any practice, neither individually nor as a group (Heller, 2016).
Following this argument, utopian visions are not fictional but a real possi-
bility for transformation and can be realized within an appropriate social
constellation. Images of an alternative future are less universal; here, utopia
begins with the belief, the certainty of a better future, and determines the
action in the present (Heller, 2016).
Although fictional utopias as conceptualized by More and concrete uto-
pia differ concerning their assessment to what extent future vision can be
realised, they coincide with regard to the importance to limit the space (or
island) for realising future aspiration because the limited space offers a par-
ticular form of interaction among participants. An occupation is a particular
concrete utopia, which is shaped by a limited and somehow closed space
(Frenzel, Feigenbaum, & McCurdy, 2013). In occupation, the limitation of
space combined with the participants’ diversity demands the development
of social norms and values to organize everyday life and to reflect on the
undesirable present and to develop alternative visions of the future. Thus, the
occupation offers the possibility for elaborating alternative behaviour, life-
styles, moralities, or political orders and therewith the possibility to experi-
ment if the utopian vision is realizable. Beyond the undesirable present, the
limited space is a symbol and a role model for alternative forms of living and
political orders. Therefore, occupation reverses existing limitations of the
present and exemplify how the world can be when we are willing to protest
and develop alternative future visions. The concept of heterotopia by Foucault
(1966) points to places beyond social norms of otherness, of deviation or of
counter-placement. Heterotopias represent, criticize, and create something
new. Heterotopia − similar to the concept of concrete utopia − exposes that
the desirable might exist in the present and that utopia can be localized. This
is in contrast to Thomas More’s fictional idea of an ideal society in an unde-
fined future but underlines that the future might be localized in the present
and can be reached. In heterotopias, the invisible and impossible becomes
present. Moreover, heterotopias are characterized by processes of openness
and closure. While some are closed and isolated, other heterotopias seem to
be open but are restricted to a particular circle of people. Occupation offers
such a space. The limited and somehow exclusive space of occupation is the
precondition to liberate and to experiment with something new. It seems that
there is a need for isolation and to create an island for heterotopia to liberate
and create alternatives.
Following these arguments, a heterotopian space is one, which is socially
constructed. According to Lefebvre (1974), socially constructed spaces are
shaped by practices. Lefebvre (1974) argues that the social production of
spaces is shaped by three modes: the practices within, the emerging order and
representation of and the symbols and meaning of that space. Therefore, an
occupation can be perceived as a socially produced space. The social produc-
tion of spaces is shaped in a heterotopian way because the practices are driven
by the aspiration for an alternative (decolonial) future.
Against this backdrop, the question arises whether the Azania occupation
at UCT in 2015 creates a space for alternative futures? How did the students
aspire to and practice alternatives? And was Azania occupation shaped by
closure, isolation, or exclusion in order to establish a decolonial future?
The Azania occupation: Aspiring to decolonialisation

On Friday, 20 March 2015, students at UCT occupied the administrative
building called Bremner and renamed it Azania House. In the beginning,
there were just few students while throughout the weekend and the follow-
ing week, about 50 to 60 students were all over the building and stayed for
six weeks. Initially, the staff tried to continue with their daily work while
students were all over penning on doors or organizing their daily life in the
occupation (Interview staff 19.09.2017). Later, the staff left the occupation.
They experienced the occupation as threatening; some feared the students
and tried to avoid them. For staff, the singing and throbbing at the door was
traumatising (Interview staff 19.09.2017). In Azania House, students estab-
lished their working and living place and created a space for organising the
movement. Students cooked and slept in the offices, they organised pub-
lic debates, movie screenings and other events. Even academics from UCT
joined the occupation during the day and partly overnight. Some of the sen-
ior lecturers even brought them food. An academic expounds: ‘There was
such remarkable energy and solidarity at the beginning’ (Interview academic
30.09.2017). Beyond the core of occupants who stayed the entire time in
Azania, further students participated in debates and events.
The Azania House aimed at offering a heterotopian space to reflect and
to learn (1), to create belonging and healing (2); to develop a future vision,
(3) and to practice nonhierarchical intersectional decolonialisation (4).
1. Azania House aimed at offering a place to reflect and to learn about deco-
loniality. A student explains:
What people don’t know about Rhodes Must Fall is that, we didn’t just
occupy and drink and smoke or become hooligans and don’t want to study.
No. We occupied and we had … a school. (Interview student 16.09.2018).
202 Antje Daniel
The students established the ‘Decolonial School of Thought,’ which also
aimed at creating alternative, artistic ways to produce knowledge and
to question existing knowledge production at the university (Interview
student 13.09.2018). The school, which exists up today, was supposed to
give the lived experiences of students’ space, to learn from each other
and to learn about decolonialisation. For many students, participation
at Azania House was the starting point to ref lect on decolonialisation.
Students learned to relate their experiences to academic concepts and
to understand the dimensions of structural violence and the need for
transformation. Avoiding structural violence and overthrowing exist-
ing hierarchies became the ground for ref lections about transformation.
Amongst the occupants, the atmosphere was full of hope and driven by
the wish to learn.
Academics who solidarised with the students gave occupants reading rec-
ommendations (Interview academic 20.08.2018). Students asked academics
for readings on decolonialisation and started reading groups on that litera-
ture. A lecturer who was part of Azania occupation explains:
We were collectively learning. Once in a while they came to me and

said please explain this to me I didn’t get it. And they would say can
you advise me what we need or help to solve the dilemma. I was not
there to teach. It was a collective teaching process (Interview academic
20.08.2018).
Therefore, Azania House created a space for alternative learning in which

decolonial thinking was in focus and which was shaped by the idea of a
nonhierarchical way of learning.
2 In contrast to the experience of alienation, Azania House was supposed

to be a home for students. The exchange between students became the
ground for the creation of belonging and healing. A student raves:
I think at first it was like completely just that overwhelming finding

people who are feeling the same as you and like feeling very validated
in your experience and like saying that a whole lot of people felt super
isolated … So I think at first I was like oh, my goodness this is just a
daydream (Interview student 11.04.2017).
For students, Azania was a place for healing and unpacking belongings.
Several students used the space to talk about their experiences at the uni-
versity and to reflect and create belonging based on blackness. Hence, some
students describe Azania as a place, which allows a healing process from the
experiences of discrimination (Interview student 29.09.2017).
3. Students used Azania House to develop an alternative future vision. A
student describes the aim of the occupation as follows:
In those occupations there was much deeper conversation about how do

we imagine our society, how do we imagine the thing we just started
and notions of decoloniality and ideas around decolonialisation came
into the picture. That we are not here for transformation, we are here for
decolonialisation. Because if societal disease is colonial the only remedy
should, therefore, be decolonial. You can’t apply a remedy to a colonial
disease (Interview student 23.03.2017).
The Azania House became a lively space for developing future visions
and strategies for transformation. Therefore, students had varying moti-
vation to be part of the occupation. While for some the individual or col-
lective learning aspect was decisive, others used the space to speak out,
to create belonging or to heal from the experience of discrimination and
alienation. Further students participated because they aimed at contribut-
ing to the decolonial project and to develop future visions and strategies for
transformation.
4. Not least, students aimed at implementing decolonialisation and elaborat-

ing on new practices through a practice of an intersectional decolonialisation:
For the students, their absence from class was a precondition for decolo-
nial practice while decolonialisation became a future demand and a practice.
Students constructed a heterotopian space in which they elaborated prac-
tices perceived as being different. Decolonialisation as practice, for instance,
becomes visible in the flat structures of the movement. Direct democratic
procedures are practiced to contradict hierarchical structures at the univer-
sity. The students who became responsible for the strategy of the movement
aimed at challenging and avoiding hierarchies. In their opinion, flat struc-
tures, and direct democratic forms of decisionmaking should path the way to
a decolonial future.
Moreover, intersectionality became a focal point for organising the

movement. Students understood intersectionality as an overlapping form of
oppression of black students that relates to gender, class, physical, and men-
tal limitations. Intersectionality is, therefore, a tool to unpack overlapping
forms of discrimination. At the beginning of the movement, and even dur-
ing the occupation, intersectionality in the students’ movement describes
the cause and process of decolonisation. This perception was an outcome of
long debates of black feminists and queer activists. They managed to establish
intersectionality as a key term in the Mission Statement of RMF (2015) but
the notion and meaning of intersectionality immediately became contested
(see below).9 A student explains the relevance of intersectionality:
204 Antje Daniel
So, I think for me, there cannot be a decoloniality without intersec-
tionality. In the sense that for me decolonization is about liberation
and justice and self-determination for people and if we are going to
decolonize and the only issue that we are going to focus on race, then
oppression will continue to be perpetuated in the sense that, for exam-
ple, if it’s just about race you putting black man in the same position as
white man and then black women and black queer people and black trans
people are going to continue to be facing superior suppressions and
working class people will be oppressed and so it’s about challenging
all of those issues, dealing with them all at the same time (Interview
student 28.09.2017).
Apart from this interpretation, intersectionality describes the political aspi-

ration for decolonisation and the overcoming of power relations. This is
the reason why students established an Intersectional Audit Committee at
Azania, for instance. At this point, Azania House revealed the lived heter-
otopian space in which equality between the sexes or for nonbinary gender
identities were practiced. Therefore, Azania House became a heterotopia for
gender equality at a university and in a society in which gender and queer
discrimination still exists.
The student occupants received a lot of support. Most black students sup-
ported the student protests (Interview academic 30.09.2017). The hetorotopia
was a place for learning, belonging, healing, imagining, and exploring alter-
native practices by establishing flat structures and intersectional practices.
Therefore, the occupation was a socially constructed niche, in which other-
ness became the norm. By so doing, the imagined otherness was a reality in
the limited space of the occupation.
Finally, the university management contested and destroyed the hetero-
topian occupation. Security entered the building violently and dispersed the
students. What started as a heterotopia became a nightmare due to the vio-
lence of security and police. A student describes her experience:
And one night, I was working and writing an essay and the univer-
sity had sent security police to remove everyone from the space and it
was like a completely terrifying night. They laid off tear gas inside the
building. It was just absolute mayhem and I partly lost hearing in my left
ear. I don’t think it’s permanent. I feel like I hear okay now (Interview
student 23.03.2017).
The occupation ended abruptly and although other (and even shorter) occu-
pations took place elsewhere, it remained the most important one as it created
a heterotopia. However, conflicts about practice and representation of the
place already emerged during the occupation.
Pitfalls of the occupation – processes of exclusion
While the student protest started as a direct democratic, power critical, and
nonpartisan movement, in the course of the occupation, conflicts arose.
These conflicts reveal the diversity of students and highlight that positions
and demands in the movement changed continuously and even that percep-
tions on gender or race are time bound. For instance, students who follow
a masculine and more radical understanding of decolonial transformation,
which is based on black identity gained leadership positions. Many of the lead-
ers belong to the political student groups of the Economic Freedom Fighters
(EFF) and the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA). While
at the beginning, students maintained a sense of unity across political divides,
later on, different fractions emerged. For instance, PASMA increasingly
dominated the plenaries, mass meetings, and negotiations with management.
A student explains:
It became more of a populist movement rather than one that was actually
engaging with challenges and trying to unpack them and speak very crit-
ically and very strongly and it’s definitely become an issue of partisan in
politics and it’s very hard to tell what’s coming from where. So, Rhodes
Must Fall, the founding intent was not partisan …, but everyone was
asked and committed to kind of leaving the party affiliation and kind of
the party ideology at the door of that space and that didn’t really happen
(Interview student 23.03.2017).
Likewise, a conflict emerged between occupants and the Students Representative

Council (SRC) about how to interact with university management. While
the SRC acted as a broker between management and students, a group of
students rejected the formalised interaction and strived to be more confron-
tational (Interview academic 30.09.2017).
During the occupation, the openness of the movement became con-
tested. More and more, experiences of poverty, discrimination, and being
black became a precondition to be part of the occupation. For example, a
black student describes that because of his middleclass background he did
not subscribe to the narration of poverty and thus almost lost his voice in
the student protests (Nyamnjoh, 2017). Whiteness as an embodied privi-
lege was increasingly perceived as disturbing. As a result, white students
partly were excluded or were asked to leave for some debates. A student
explains:
White people were incorporated into the space as mere allies and were
frequently reminded that they ought to be aware of their positionality
when engaging in the space and should anticipate being accepted to leave
the space (Ndelu, 2017, p.67).
206 Antje Daniel
An academic completes:
This space is for the understanding of ourselves. … No white people are

allowed … We are expressing a need, and we are expressing the need to
learn − a learning need. What does it mean to be black in post-apartheid
South Africa (Interview academic 20.08.2017).
During the protests at UCT, some students rejected interactions with white
people per se because of their embodied privilege, others argued that the ref-
erence to black identity should necessarily lead to a partial exclusion of white
students. Only in the differentiation from the other can one identify one’s
own (Daniel, 2019). However, even a couple of students do not care about
race in their aspiration for decolonialisation.
Further conflicts emerged about intersectionality and gender. During the
occupation, the extent to which an intersectional position was necessary for
the decolonial project or whether it had to be a heteronormative project,
had been hotly debated. For example, students used buzzwords such as black
consciousness or black identity to impose heternormative positions, to con-
test intersectionality under the guise of the overriding goal of decolonisation.
Nonbinary perceptions of gender were described as un-African (Khan, 2017).
A participating academic describes the debates on gender during the occupa-
tion as follows:
And it was a difficult learning process. I remember the first night ….

A conversation started on patriarchy and sexual orientation. … And
nobody knew how to explain patriarchy without getting angry. … And
then the conversation started on sexual orientation. And now all the
lesbian and gay students, and the trans students have the feel that they
have to be the spokespeople about sexual orientation. But by the way,
nobody knew the difference between sex and gender. … They started to
teach themselves in the way they know best by sharing their own expe-
riences. And that was the most painful day for me. … I realised that the
smartest people of the campus … and in this room there were the best
thinkers of the university and that they can’t understand, and they can-
not listen to a young women saying ‘you should be ok with the fact that
I have chosen not to have an intima or sexual relationship with a man`.
They couldn’t accept that. And for me it was a sense of failure (Interview
academic 20.08.2017).
What began as an intersectional promise, turned against those students

who were most affected by discrimination and exclusion. Consequently,
a student observes ‘patriarchy, sexual violence, ableism, and queer-an-
tagonism were either normalised or ignored as negative elements of the
movement’ (Xaba, 2017, p. 96). Feminists and queer activists experienced
the student protests as exclusionary and increasingly left the movement
or created a counterstrategy against the movement to ensure that deco-
lonialisation was intersectional (Daniel, 2020; Ndlovu, 2017). A student
confirms:
But it turned out that black men in the movement wanted black male
freedom and continue to rape black women and that the straight people
were homophobic (Interview student 07.09.2018).
The emerging conflicts in the heterotopian space challenged the demands of

the movement, the aspiration for an alternative future, and revealed processes
of exclusion and isolation. Even, the claimed direct democratic procedures
were replaced by positions of power. However, it becomes apparent that het-
erotopian spaces are socially constructed, subject to change, and are shaped
by practices and emerging forms of power relations. In this phase of conflict
and reorientation, males (and even females) with a partisan orientation, an
exclusionary position to blackness, and a heteronormative position increas-
ingly gained leadership. All these processes reveal that the open heterotopian
space turned to be closed and exclusionary.
Conclusion: Heterotopia between openness

and closeness (and being an island)
Referring to the main question of what role did the occupation (and there-
with the limited space or island) exactly play for the movement and the
demand for decoloniality at UCT, it became obvious that Azania occupa-
tion offered an important space for sharing experiences and for developing
a shared language on discrimination and marginalisation. Azania House
offered a heterotopian place for learning, healing, belonging, and for devel-
oping alternative visions of a decolonial future and practicing the future
in the present. Individual and collective learning about decolonialisation
during Azania occupation enabled the students to define their experienced
injustices in relation to structural violence at university and in society.
During that time, the occupation offered a space for diversity. The heter-
otopian place constructed itself as participatory and open. Likewise, stu-
dents elaborated new visions and practices at the heterotopian space. This
socially constructed space of Azania stands for a decolonial future in which
learning and the hope for a society without discrimination, racism, and
marginalisation is possible. Azania House also became a role model for an
intersectional and decolonial practice that was visible in a flat, nonpartisan
practice, and an intersectional practice such as the Intersectional Audit
Committee. Foucault (1967) ascribed heterotopias the possibility to bring
different realities together. In this sense, Azania was a socially constructed
heterotopia.
The heterotopia of Azania became contested because cleavages emerged
along with party politics, representation, and heteronormative positions.
208 Antje Daniel
The heterotopia turned to be dystopian for many white students, black middle
class students, feminists, or queer activists.
Critical voices emphasize that the structures of the movement are responsi-
ble for dystopia. They argue that by striving for nonhierarchical and flat struc-
tures in decision-making, and by being open to everyone, the movements
would have failed to anchor the student protests demands of creating an inter-
sectional and decolonial practice (Interview civil society expert 12.09.2018).
The openness of the movement, for instance, created space for negotiations
and enabled the emergence of power positions. The flat structures and there-
with the possibility to discuss the fixed demands and practices constantly,
let to a shift from an intersectional declonialisation to a decolonialisation in
which black identity came first and in which male leadership dominated. A
student explains:
They decided to take up the mental of ‘we’re black before we’re anything
else’ and so you were not woman before you were black, you would not
be queer before you were black … And that was the only thing that was
keeping us all there. I think everyone, despite how violent the space
ended up becoming, the men would just take over and their voices were
the loudest (Interview 29.08.2018).
Following this argument, heterotopias always face the challenge that their
openness invites positions that threaten to throw over the very core ideas
and practices of the heterotopia. Likewise, the closeness of a heterotopia risks
being not socially accepted; to create a niche that is not acknowledged by
a broader public. Heterotopias are confronted with this dilemma between
being an island and a bridge to a broader public. Not least, decolonialisation
as future aspirations is increasingly interpreted as a vision, which is relevant
for the society or from a pan-Africanist perception for the whole continent.
Therefore, the scope of transformation, which is aspired contradicts the nar-
ration of an island. In thinking about the spatial dimension of heterotopia,
the picture of an island is not consistent with the vision of decoloniality.
At least, the romantic idea of an ideal utopian or heterotopian island, which
emerged out of European tradition, has to be questioned. Therefore, the idea
of an island helps us to understand social movement practices as processes of
inclusion and exclusion. Moreover, considering the heterotopian practices
encourages asking which future is aspired to and whether the liberation for
an alternative future (re)produces exclusion – as in the case of the student pro-
tests. This approach offers a precise understanding of conflicting actors in social
movements beyond the widespread perception of a movement as an entity.
However, the analysis also contradicts the romantic European idea and shows
that future aspirations are always contested, that they are timely and related to
the particular context. Therefore, processes of inclusion and exclusion refer to a
broader context relating to the understanding of the respective society.
Notes
1. The meaning of decoloniality varies in different universities. In this chapter, I focus
on UCT.
2. The etymology of Azania is contested: Some refer to Azania as the land of Zeus
and roots in Greece while others argue that Azania has the same roots as Zanzibar
and this refers to the meaning of black. Since then the name contains different inter-
pretations (Hilton, 1992) and is related to South Africa and the black consciousness
movement (Ranuga, 1986).
3. The research is part of a broader qualitative research project on future aspirations
of protest movements ‘Aspiring to alternative futures: protest and living utopia in
South Africa.’ Beyond the student protests, the project considers housing and envi-
ronmental activism.
4. While for most European authors, colonialism inspired to develop utopian visions
of how the society should look like, colonialism was dystopian from an African
perspective. From those Europeans who left home for finding the promised land
overseas, colonialism was thought of as a vision of an alternative life in paradise.
Dystopian novels emerged in a context of colonialism and described the horror sce-
nario and exploitation during colonialism and the authors elaborated the aftermath
of decolonialisation (see Pordzik, 2001).
5. Even before, protests and critical debates shaped the space of the university (see
Godsell & Chikane, 2016; Ndelu 2017; Xaba, 2017, pp. 98).
6. The notion of an island for utopian imagination has been discussed in different
ways (see Andreas 2013).
7. The occupation of public space is an old phenomenon and can be traced back
to miners’ movement in the 17th century. Occupation have been part of colo-
nial resistance and can be rediscovered within the so-called New Social Move-
ment, the peace, student, and environmentalist movement (Feigenbaum, Frenzel
& McCurdy, 2012). Occupation of places intends to hold public space whereby
political and economic legitimacy will be questioned. Constant forms of occupa-
tion will be established through protest camps (Frenzel, Feigenbaum & McCurdy,
2014; Mörtenböck & Mosshammer, 2012).
8. For further information about the research on utopia see Levitas (2011) or Saage
(1991). For the debate on utopia in Africa see Ashcroft (2013).
9. The relation between intersectionality and decolonialisation is fixed in the mission
statement, which highlights that intersectional discrimination is a cause for calling
into decolonial practice (which was defined as a practice free of discrimination).
This was just one way of interpreting decolonialisation and intersectionality. Other
relations exist among students.
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11 Decolonisation of knowledge
on land governance
An ethnographical experience
from West Africa
Lamine Doumbia
Introduction
This sets out to examine an of African Union initiative – Network of
Excellence on Land Governance in Africa (NELGA) – as a frame to analyse
the relationship between higher education and the relevance of local knowl-
edge in land administration in Bamako (Mali) as an example of decolonisa-
tion. The research will be carried out to answer the question: to what extent
can knowledge on land governance be decolonised through higher education?
NELGA is a partner of leading African universities and research institution
with proven leadership in education, training, and research on land govern-
ance. Currently, NELGA has more than 50 partner institutions across Africa.
The NELGA branch of Francophone West Africa, which this paper’s author
is a member of, is based at the University Gaston Berger of Saint Louis in
Senegal. The network set itself the objective to promote ‘good’ land govern-
ance by strengthening human and institutional capacities for the implemen-
tation of sustainable land policies in Africa.1 Decolonisation evokes, in this
paper, the fact that the legal framework of Mali’s State and Land Code is not
in line with the land regulations of Malian communities.
The State and Land Code is considered strange and foreign because it is
mainly influenced by colonial legislation and reinforced by the independ-
ent postcolonial State (Doumbia, 2018a; Le Roy, 2018). As Le Roy (2018)
asserts, if land governance was not decolonised 70 years after the countries’
independence, it is for more utilitarian reasons because it benefited the polit-
ical executives, these national and local elites who replaced the coloniser by
pouring into procedures at the base of their contemporary heritage enrich-
ment and corruption. The focus of this paper is the ethnography of how the
debate on ‘local’ knowledge can be approached regarding decolonisation of
land administration. Autochthonous knowledge is incontestably relevant to
African studies (Hountondji, 19942; Diawara, 20033). Knowledge, no matter
its nature, is never universal. Therefore, it should be characterised as ‘local’
rather than ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous.’ However, from an anthropological
214 Lamine Doumbia
perspective local knowledge is not immutable. But local knowledge or peas-
ant knowledge can only be analysed from a local perspective. It is generally
placed in a translocal context implying a relationship to the State and the
urban settings (Spittler, 2003, p.43).
Local knowledge is a collective term for a variety of names and concepts
such as indigenous, autochthonous, or indigenous/endogenous knowledge,
peasant knowledge, traditional knowledge, or folk knowledge (Neubert &
Macamo, 2004). Against this backdrop, this research uses the concept of local
knowledge to describe its dynamism, relevance, and impact on land ten-
ure administration in Mali. Several actors control and negotiate urban land
tenure in Bamako. Not only State institutions, but grassroots people also
claim their usufructs at the local level. In an article on land tenure ‘between
embeddedness and political alienation,’4 Doumbia (2018b) demonstrated that
on the one hand, State institutions deliver land titles and produce administra-
tive texts and laws. They claim to own, administer, and/or control the land.
Moreover, they enforce their regulations by expropriating and displacing
people to implement urban ‘development’ plans. On the other hand, based
on their everyday life and their habits, people at the grassroots level, however,
challenge and contest this policy (Doumbia, 2018b). A letter collected in my
fieldwork shows discussions on traditional chieftaincy of the neighbourhood
of Sabalibougou (Doumbia, 2019). This letter is a correspondence between
the chief and the governor of Bamako about the chief ’s recognition by the
State that the governor represents.
This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part is the description
of the hybrid nature of land administration in Sabalibougou, which is an
urban neighbourhood in Bamako. The second part points out the relevance of
endogenous land regulations in Mali and the third part emphasizes the contri-
bution of Nko. The Nko is above all a specifically African indigenous writing
system, invented Thursday, April 14, 1949, in Bingerville in Côte-d´Ivoire by
the Guinean encyclopedian Soulemana Kanté (1922–1987). Originally from
the Kankan region of Guinea, Soulemana Kanté is the author of 183 books
written in 38 years (1949–1987). His work is diverse because it covers several
areas of knowledge. The inventor of the Nko system also had the merit
of founding a literary language and literature written in the Mandinka
language, 5 using the characters Nko.
Laws and decisions of land tenure policies rely on the code Faidherbe and
the codifications of the French colonial administrator Maurice Delafosse.
Considering the plurality of actors in the dynamics of land regulation; this
paper describes an imbroglio of norms concerning higher education. This
is what the NELGA is interested in. The NELGA branch of francophone
West Africa reconfigures the focus of research on land tenure in West Africa.
The network brings together several stakeholders to shape academic masters
programmes at universities. The University works to influence and impulse
decision-making processes of land reforms by inviting policy makers and prac-
titioners to participate in conferences, workshops, and publications. In this
Decolonisation of knowledge on land governance 215
manner, professional specialists of land issues can be graduated for under-
standing and securing land tenure in Africa. That is to say, land governance
offers only one way out but is currently in a vicious circle of speculation,
injustice, and power play. The stakes are increasing in proportion to the mul-
tiplication of actors in need of urban land and management rules.
Demographic pressure, as well as immigration and rural exodus in
Bamako, are causing rapid urbanisation and a growing need for urban space.
Meillassoux (1968), in his book ‘Urbanisation of an African community,’
points out that Bamako, like other African cities, is one of the cities whose
urbanisation process was the fastest. As a result, the management of that
urbanisation process represents a considerable potential for conflicts that are
either latent or even violent and that have persisted for several years. Among
the modes of management, which are attributed to institutions or agencies,
communities, associations, corporations, groups, and even individuals, there
is a distinction between the mode of management of the State and the cus-
tomary mode of management. The intention is not to maintain a dichotomy
in the management of the land issue in Bamako but to articulate different
actors’ perceptions for a better description. It is important to mention, in the
context of this research, that the State is a protagonist, whereas the associ-
ations, coordination, and unions of the so-called deprived individuals are
antagonists to the State in the management of land because their plots are
expropriated.
Hybridisation of forms of land administration

in Sabalibougou
The data collected for this study was gathered during ethnographical field-
work in Bamako from 2013 to 2015 and 2018. It focuses on one of my field-
work findings, which are an administrative letter that has been addressed
in 2012 to the governor of Bamako by the ‘chef de quartier’ (neighborhood
councilor) of the Sabalibougou neighbourhood, Hamidou Dembélé, claim-
ing his nomination and recognition as ‘chef ’. Sabalibougou is currently one
of seven neighbourhoods that constitute the district V of Bamako. It became
populated in the 1970s in the context of fast urbanisation when Bamako’s
population doubled in only five years (between 1971 and 1976) due to rapid
migration to the city. Until 2009, Sabalibougou was the neighbourhood with
the highest density. Housing conditions were shaped by the settlers according
to their living conditions and income.
In an interview in summer in Mali in 2014, Hamidou Dembélé described
himself as a founding member of Sabalibougou. In another interview, Bamba,
a connoisseur of Nko explained that ‘everyone has the right to use a plot of
land in Manden (empire of Mali) except for those who would want to put it
into their pocket and leave [without working on the land]6).’ Land in Bamako
is conventionally administered by first settlers, who first cleared the area.
This is called ‘le droit de hache’ (Kassibo, 1998). Hamidou Dembele and his
216 Lamine Doumbia
brother came first to Sabalibougou. So, they are called Bamanankan Sotigi.
When they arrived, they had to ask the dugukolotigi, (the local ‘chef de terre,’
chief of land) of Kalaban Koro for the permission of settlement. This point is
explained further in the paragraph dedicated to Nko and the endogenous land
administration below.
Hamidou Dembélé, the customary authority, claims his right of nomina-
tion and recognition based on the governor’s decision no. 093/GBD – CAB
of January 31st, 2007. This nominated Hamidou Dembélé as the interim ‘chef
de quartier’ of Sabalibougou as well as legalised and formalised the legitimate
social fact that Dembele was the first occupant of Sabalibougou and so the
customary depositary of the land tenure. The chief possessed a letter from
the district’s governor of Bamako that combines customary administration
based on social norms and the administration of the State with offices and
papers. Yet, the city administration is more complex than that, and in the
case of Hamidou Dembélé the governor may have supported his nomination
as ‘chef de quartier,’ but Dembélé has no support of the District V of the
Bamako’s municipality. In the evolving conflict, all sides mobilised both
social relations and paperwork. Analytically, there is a metaphorical tension
between the local ‘right of axe’ (droit de hache), which demands the use of land
(usus fructus) – not necessarily to own it – and the ‘Code domanial et foncier’
(the land tenure code) of Mali, which does not necessarily demand only the
use of land, but to own a title deed, a ‘titre foncier.’ In terms of the issue of
paperwork and bureaucracy, the case of Bamako does not make an exception
in Africa.
Hornby et al., (2017) assert for the South African context that ‘the daily
reality of most South Africans is strongly influenced by “off-register” tenure
arrangements, the complexities of which neither policies nor laws adequately
confront’ (p. 4). The authors describe a case study from South Africa, in
which the traditional chief interacts through a letter with the State insti-
tutions on the issues of formalisation of land tenure. This is mentioned to
illustrate the use of bureaucratic practices by local grassroots actors in their
interactions with modern State institutions. In the rural area of Ekuthuleni,
the traditional chief claims land. Wanitzek (2005), who has worked on a
similar case of land management reform in Tanzania, says: ‘For a peasant or
pastoralist community in Tanzania and its members, […] land is the means
for the production of their livelihood’ (p.182).
This quotation of a Tanzanian case study gives a wider representation of
the issue in Africa and stronger social relevance to the analysis. That is the
reason for the NELGA initiative. The case of Bamako evokes an urban situ-
ation, where the legally recognised interim chief claims his right as chief on
land because he holds the ‘right of ax’ (droit de hâche). Endogenous landhold-
ing systems are adaptable from society to society, but they do not stop outside
the city borders. The point is that people migrate with their social rules and
norms and mix them with those of their new place of settlement.7 Over time
we can, indeed, see a process of overlapping between the administration of
land titles based on paperwork and the customary/endogenous administra-
tion based on social norms. The concept of ‘travelling models’ (Behrends et al.,
2014; Olivier de Sardan et al., 2017) is referred to in this context to analyse
how certain models of knowledge on land governance travelled from a different
social cultural realities to collide with other models in another social cultural
context. The result is mimicry and hybridisation of norms and practices.
The relevance of endogenous land regulations

Before coming to the main point of land governance, the historical context
of the urbanisation of the capital of Mali should be taken into consideration.
This city was urbanized with the advent of French colonisation, but custom-
ary (endogenous) regulations were already in place and operating. The land
organisation reflects this important feature of history, especially since it is
part of the socio-political habits of society, at least in the context of this study.
Nevertheless, land rules are not static (Lavigne Delville et al., 2000). They
evolve according to the evolution of the land, the availability of resources,
the evolution of the modes of exploitation and their economic status. In other
words, local rules are part of a customary regime, as is still the case in the
neighbourhoods of Bamako, which does not mean that they are ancestral,
traditional, or frozen in time. Often, they evolve very quickly. This means
that the principles on which they are based are customary (endogenous) and
that the authorities responsible for defining and implementing them have, in
most cases, customary legitimacy. Beyond the great diversity of situations,
local land tenure systems (especially in Mali but also elsewhere in Africa) are
based on several distinct principles (Lavigne Delville et al., 2000, p.11).
The control of space is linked to the act of foundation, which goes through
an alliance with the spiritual forces, the geniuses of the place. This act gives
the founders (and their descendants) the power to clear (transform the bush
into cultivated space or residential use), to allow other families to settle and
clear, and to make sacrifices. Then, it is about a politico-religious power,
which exerts the descendants of the founder on the other families that were
authorised to settle. The permission is given through the control of the fer-
tility of the soil of the territory that they control. Therefore, the Sabalibougou
district (of Commune V) of Bamako district is under the customary authority
of the Kalaban Koro chiefdom, which is an administrative district of the Kati
Circle. It is the customary chiefdom of Kalaban Koro, who reigns on the right
bank of the Niger River in Bamako. Thus, there is an inconsistency between
State administration and customary rules because of the lack of codification
and standardisation.
The conceptions of territory are based on the ‘topocentric’ logic of space,
(Le Roy, 2011). The living resources of the territory (and the land itself )
are under the influence of a protective tutelage, which emanates from the
altar of the earth, which is a ‘topos,’ a place marked by a sign visible: stone,
piles of attic stones, dormers, jars, a tree, or a combination of these elements.
218 Lamine Doumbia
From this place, the ‘strength’ of the altar radiates concentrically decreasing
as one moves away from the centre of origin and gradually enters the area of
influence of the altar of another land.
Around the founding families (dugukolotigiw), such as Niaré and Touré, in
the case of Bamako, other families (sotigiw) were authorized by the head of
the latter to settle, to found neighborhoods and have portions of the bush to
clear. The families (sotigiw) integrate into the community through matrimo-
nial alliances and have permanent and transmittable rights of use over the
spaces they have cleared. Other families may remain ‘allochthones,’ although
they are residents for many generations. Relationships between lineages are
thus causally linked to the local socio-political history and the mode of alli-
ance with the first occupants. This is what happened when Baco Djicoroni and
Sabalibougou were founded. The different resident families thus have different
statuses: families settled by the founding lineage, having established with
them matrimonial alliances and having a portion of the bush; ‘allochthones’
families who arrived more recently and benefit only from loans from ‘settled’
lineages (Lavigne Delville et al., 2000, p.16). That is to say, the ‘autochthones’
in this case allow ‘allochthones’ to settle.
Another important principle to note is that the invested brand of work
gives a priority right of exploitation and is a form of appropriation: the rights
to space or a resource depend on the investment that has been made there.
The fallow land remains a property of the family that cleared it, and no one
can cultivate it without permission. The priority of use remains as long as the
trace of the initial clearing work has not disappeared. This is true for families
who have invested to build a home in the area. The evasions of Sabalibougou-
Est claim only this priority right of exploitation. Any permanent investment
gives permanent rights. Thus, a well remains the property of the lineage that
drilled it. Planted trees are the property of the one who planted them.
Stressing these principles helps to emphasize on the fact that the Malian
State legislation does not take into account the embeddedness of these prin-
ciples of practice (Doumbia, 2018b). The administrative reform in terms of
decentralisation and democratisation was eminently placed under the sign of
‘modernity’ (Amselle, 2006). It is, therefore, natural that it has been driven
by donors, both international and national. This extroverted nature of the
decentralisation implemented in Mali did not consider the use of local cul-
ture and embeddedness on the African soil. This is what makes Kassibo
(2006) and Béridogo (2006) write that the insertion of decentralisation was
done in a double speed movement; which explains the accentuation of the
incompatibility of two political systems of which one is exogenous and the
other endogenous. This congenital imperfection is more blatant in the sense
that the endogenous system of customary rights is deemed to be uncodified
or sometimes non-modifiable.
Against the disqualification and oversimplification of endogenous modes
of regulation, the Nko adherents have struggled since the 1950s for the codifi-
cation and perpetuation of politico-social regulations rooted in West African
societies and Bamanan-Mandenka in particular. One of the Nko teachers
Sékou Diakité told a Mandenkakan proverb about the creation of writing in
our Nko course: N’i ye bugu dɔ tufa ta k’i b’a sigi bugu dɔ kunna, ni a ma
bonya a ma, a bɛ dɔgɔya a ma.
If you take the roof of one box to put it on another, if it is not too big, it is
probably too small. This then emphasizes the question of size and the ques-
tion of adjustment or even authenticity in using the Latin alphabet to write
Mandenka languages. Political reform in a society rejecting the socio-cultural
realities rooted in this society for the benefit of foreign models of governance
is the reproach of the supporters of Nko, who also campaign in civil societies.
Nko and the endogenous land tenure

During my fieldwork in Bamako in 2013, I encountered Karamoko
Mahmood Bamba who is a student of Souleymane Kanté. Bamba explained
that Kanté founded the Nko in 1958 during a stay in Abidjan in Ivory Coast
pursuing his commercial and marabout activities. Souleymane Kanté came
across a Lebanese newspaper in which he read an article criticizing the oral-
ity of African languages for the inability of the interlocutors to write and
perpetuate messages and knowledge of the said languages (Mandenkakan,
Bamanakan) and societies. In response to this article, Souleymane Kanté
pondered and developed an alphabet and numbers to write. It transcribes
what is said in characters that have nothing to do with Arabic except the
direction of writing from right to left or with Latin that is unable to write the
sounds and tones of the languages Maninka and Bamanan. But the founder
used Arabic and Latin writing systems to elaborate the Nko which means
‘I say.’ The struggle of Kanté was carried out concomitantly by Amadou
Hampaté Ba and Cheikh Anta Diop. These two authors also emphasized
the development of African languages. Hampaté Ba put his accent on the
codification of African languages using the Latin alphabet since this alphabet
is already well known with the influence of French colonisation. Cheikh
Anta Diop intended to invent, like Kanté at the same time, a writing system
appropriate to African languages with the same explanation, without collab-
oration. Indeed, Amselle (2006) goes on to describe the struggle of Kanté
Souleymane and his criticisms to the interlocutors of Mandenka, who depos-
itories of Mandenka customs and habits are:
En fixant par écrit la tradition orale, ce que Souleymane Kanté reproche

à Sunjata de n’avoir pas fait, on pourra non seulement sauver le patri-
moine mandé, mais également démontrer, par exemple, l’antériorité de la
“Constitution” de Kurukan Fuga au Bill of Rights anglais de 1689 ou à la
Déclaration française des Droits de l’homme et du citoyen de 1789. (p. 54).
The interpretation of this quotation shows that by writing the oral tradition,
which Souleymane Kanté blames Sunjata for not having done, we can not
220 Lamine Doumbia
only save the Mande heritage but also demonstrate, for example, the prece-
dence of the ‘Constitution’ of Kurukan Fuga to the English Bill of Rights of
1689 or the French Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of Citizen
of 1789.
From the interview given by Karamoko Mahmoud Bamba during
extended ethnographic fieldwork in 2013 about the importance of endoge-
nous land management, we can see that land is the ratio of human interac-
tions to itself.
Every inhabitant of Mande has the right of access to the land. Whether
autochthonous or allochthones, land is the basis of the existence of all
inhabitants. But its management is entrusted to someone. This is the first
occupant or the one who first used the ax to clear the area .If someone
comes in the morning and the other in the evening, even if it’s the same
day, the one who came in the morning is the dugutigi (chief of land) for
the other. The only one who is not entitled to a parcel is the one who
wants to put it in his pocket to bring it.8
By remembering the aim of the Malian land and land code, which makes
land title the document that guarantees individual ownership on the land, it
seems that the interview of the traditionalist and Nko tenant Bamba contests
this form of ownership. The challenge is based on the Mandenka tenure
regulation: ‘Dugukolo ka kan ka di bèè ma Manden, fo min bè a fè k’a bila
a jufa ka taa n’a ye…’
This sentence can be translated to mean that every inhabitant of the Mande
(former empire of Mali) is entitled to a lot except the one who wants to put
it in his pocket. As the title deed is a documented representation of a plot of
land, this document confirms private ownership. The interpretation is that
the owner metaphorically puts the plot of land in his pocket, which makes
him or her keep the property even if he or she is/must be absent for a long
period. As we do in this work, the land must be approached in terms of
use, settlement, and occupation. The whole range of land management tech-
niques is governed by habits and customs. This has a long history of resistance
and tenacity of the local authorities and institutions which, year after year,
was to ensure tranquillity and peace in communities.
For Traoré, the land issue puts us in the opposition between tradition and
modernity (2007). Malians are being sent back to their own image, which
forces them to face the future while keeping in mind that the land remains the
only viable capital that can secure populations. It is in this sense that Kassibo
(1998), looking back at the genesis of the land question and the decentral-
isation in Mali, demonstrated how good management of natural resources
remains one of the keystones of local governance. Villages or fractions are at
the base of the constitution of the rural municipalities and are the real base
of the social pyramid. The village council is the place of expression of family
solidarity, lineage, and communication among and between communities.
They are manifested through social relations and the modalities of access
to the resources that come together on the register of customary rights.
Kassibo (1998) believes that the village land is a socialized space controlled
and portioned according to ancestral decision-making systems.
The land is assigned to rights holders, recognized by all, and enjoying a
legitimate authority over the exploitation of the resources. The member-
ship groups (founding lineages, masters, allies, and foreigners) regulate access
to the resources according to the usage rights. These, according to Kassibo
(1998), are based on a hierarchical order legitimized by custom. The village
is made up of several families or lineages grouped under the authority of a
chief. Lineage or extended family leaders designate village council represent-
atives to assist with day to day management. Traditionally, the chieftaincy is
devolved according to the principle of the primacy of installation. The eldest
of the founding lineage establishes his authority over the village community
under the principle mentioned. But the chieftaincy can also be acquired by
conquest.
In addition to political chieftaincy, there are holders of master’s rights:
Master of Water, chief of pasture, chief of the land, bush, etc. These functions
are for the most part sacerdotal, since authority is granted to the holders by
the tutelary powers (spiritual genies), who are the true masters of the resource
whose usufruct they confer on them. These rights are inalienable and are
transmitted only within the recipient lineages. The village heritage is made
up of the village soil, which in turn is controlled by lineage groups. Access to
land is dependent on this customary mode of organization, which guarantees
its exploitation. The custom serves as a framework for the settlement of land
disputes and the chieftaincy is the entity best informed on the traditional
State code and the rules of management of the resource.
The village is nowhere recognized as an administrative unit; it is the con-
stitutive element of the municipal council and is placed under its authority.
In the context of a territorial reorganisation, it still retains some preroga-
tives in the management of natural resources but remains subordinate to
the authority of the municipal council recognized as the main centre of the
decision making. However, the first mode of access to land and even to natu-
ral resources in village areas is based on a legal system that relates to farming
rights that go back to the first occupant, ‘the one who gave the first blow’
(Kassibo, 1998). In this system, land is managed by a community that is the
custodian. But it belongs to genies, spirits, and ancestors. This study therefore
questions the idea of private appropriation of the land. The term customary
land ownership refers to the communal possession of land use rights on agri-
cultural or pastoral land. The chief of land, or customary chief also referred
to as traditional chief or district chief, in urban areas, is usually responsible,
on behalf of the group and with his agreement, for the assignment of land use
rights (Durand-Lasserve et al., 2004).
Indeed, among rural populations, land remains an essential and unavoid-
able element in the satisfaction of their essential needs. Hence, the relevance
222 Lamine Doumbia
of managing land for them is their motivation to hold the land according
to their own customary realities. Although urban land is rarely a factor in
agropastoral production, it is increasingly a crucial social and political issue.
The importance of land in urban areas is further demonstrated by the fact
that all urban development projects or programmes have land as one of its
components. Cissé (1997) was also interested in the origin of ‘customary law’
and its evolution in Mali. Cissé argues that the term ‘customary law’ dates to
colonisation. The social phenomenon that this term refers to was to be chal-
lenged and transformed by the policy of the colonial State with the aid of the
Faidherbe decree of March 11, 1865.
This judgment served to give customary holders the chance to regularize
their possession. Article 3 stipulates that aboriginals ‘who have the land
according to local custom shall have the right to apply for regular concession
titles. However, holders have not made use of this opportunity in practice.
The 1986 federal code − in effect today and inspired by the colonial
judgment − provides that ‘the customary collective or individual rights can
be transformed into a rural concession right for the benefit of their holders.
Nowadays, the rural concession will be purging the land plot in the sense
that it should be free from the old norms of appropriation and usufructs.
Previously, decrees have succeeded one another within the framework of
land management policy in Mali. While customary rights had been tolerated
and recognized in colonial legislation, they were marginalized in those of
the independent State (Cisse, 1997). Among the texts quoted by Cisse, dating
from 1904 to 1955, it follows that all legislations have formally recognized the
existence of customary land rights and have granted it value to some degree.
Nevertheless, procedures have been designed to establish these customary
rights. French Sudan (current Mali) is, however, one of the few territories
to have taken the decrees of applications of the land decree of May 20th,
1955 (the last text of the colonial legislation). Contrary to the measures of
this decree, the text of the Malian republic which came after independence
(the law 82-122/AN-RM of February 4, 1982) did not refer to customary
rights. This can be explained by the disorder that prevailed because of the
exceedingly long absence of the State in the management of the land. As a
regime of dictatorship in Mali, the executive excluded all plurality to regain
control and claimed the absolute monopoly of management. Customary
rights, not being, on the one hand, codified and on the other hand, complex
and diversified in space, had been excluded. It is also important to note that
customary rights do not fit well with the concept of individual ownership of
land, because it belongs to the Civil Code (the legislation of the colonizer).
Despite this marginalisation, one can observe that customary rights have
not ceased to apply in most parts of the country. Therefore, the 1986 land
and tenure code demonstrate the recognition of customary rights in only
eight articles out of a total of 334 articles. From article 127 to article 134, the
land code formally recognises the existence of individual or collective cus-
tomary rights that are exercised on the lands of the private domain of the State.
The registration of all lands in the name of the state removes the so-called
customary rights; the former owners see their rights transformed into a simple
right of use in the field and a right to compensation when the State wants to
dispose of these lands.
Similarly, the land code admits the possibility of transmission or modifi-
cation of these rights, but only for the benefit of communities or individuals
who may have the same rights under customary rules. Furthermore, the code
confirms that if customary rights include an obvious and permanent hold
on the ground, they may be transformed, at the request of the holder, into a
rural concession right. Subsequently, the code possesses the principle that if
the State for reasons of general interest or the public utility wants to dispose
of land on which customary rights are exercised, this situation requires the
purging of the said land, which must be ordered by the Minister of Lands and
State Land Affairs. Customary holders are entitled to compensation for con-
struction, real estate development and, exceptionally, to facilitate the reset-
tlement of habituated customary holders. Finally, the land code holds that
the common (civil) civil court has jurisdiction to rule on all disputes over
customary rights (Cisse, 1997, p.35).
By legislating in this way, the national land code refers copiously to colo-
nial texts. As a matter of form, customary rights are recognized by the code
in some articles, but in principle, there is essential adequacy that explains
the non-practicability of these articles on the field. Customary land tenure
is based on the logic of collective heritage. So, it is not compatible with the
logic of ownership that the Civil Code (State) knows. Maurice Delafosse is
an Africanist, ethnologist, a linguist, and the author of ‘Le Haut-Sénégal et
Niger’ (1912) and the colonial administrator who notes that:
Au point de vue indigène, il est donc illégal de la part de l’autorité

française de considérer comme domaine de l’État français et d’accorder à
des sociétés ou des particuliers, sous forme de concessions, des parcelles
quelconques du terrain (Delafosse, 1912, p. 15).
From the indigenous perspective, the above can be interpreted to mean that;
it is illegal for the French authority to consider any parcels of land as an area
of the French State and to grant them to companies or individuals, in the
form of concessions. Delafosse was the chief administrator of the French col-
ony of Sudan (now Mali). In his time, this author attempted to inventory the
endogenous norms relating to the land practice of the Malian societies of the
time. He inspired many French ethnologists, perhaps because he was persua-
sive in the justification of his method, as Diawara (2003) suggests:
Les chroniques orales et écrites sont collectées successivement, compilées

et traduites. Il les fond – selon son propre terme (cf. infra) – dans le canon
créé par l’auteur lui-même. Le bon manuscrit résulte de cette compila-
tion, de cette refonte des documents, de l’histoire (Diawara, 2003, p. 11).
224 Lamine Doumbia
In other words, this quote in English explains that oral and written chron-
icles are collected successively, compiled, and translated. Delafosse melts
them down according to his own term in the canon created by the author
himself. Valuable manuscripts result from this compilation, this redesign
of the documents, and history. This assumption can be analysed based on
the passage that is paraphrased from the source of the colonial report of
Le haut-Sénégal-Niger.
L’immense majorité des Soudanais constitue, par excellence, une pop-

ulation rurale et agricole. Les produits spontanés du sol étant moins
abondants que dans la forêt côtière et d’un rapport généralement moins
considérable, c’est vers la terre cultivable que s’est concentré surtout le
sentiment de la “propriété (Delafosse op. cit, NP, p.6).
Through these lines, Delafosse argues that most Sudanese (French Sudan)
constitute, par excellence, a rural, and agricultural population. The sponta-
neous products of the soil being less abundant than in the coastal forest and
of a ratio generally less considerable, it is towards the arable land that the
perception of the ‘property’ is mainly concentrated. The usufruct concept
seems more appropriate than the concept of property for at least two reasons.
On the one hand, it is an inalienable land that one appropriates if it is culti-
vable. On the other hand, this land is being quickly exhausted. Therefore,
the inhabitants must have large areas that allow them to move their crops in
case of need. Therefore, the land belongs on the one hand to territorial polit-
ical domination, on the other hand to the exercise of land control. Whether
they are cultivated (exploited) or not, if vast expanses of land are vacant, the
fact remains that they are not without a master. There are always customary
chiefs of land. Also, in Delafosse’s colonial report, the characteristics of local
land tenure are well reported.
Qu’il s’agisse des populations encore plus ou moins sauvages de la

Haute-Volta, des paisibles Sénoufo établis à cheval sur les territoires
du Haut-Sénégal-Niger et ceux de la Côte d’Ivoire, des Mandingues
répandus un peu partout de l’Atlantique au méridien de Tombouctou ou
des nombreux peuples divers disséminés à travers l’étendue des régions
soudanaise et sahélienne, partout on nous signale un même régime de
propriété foncière. Un régime caractérisé par une double conception de
l’idée de propriété, selon que l’on envisage le sol lui-même et ses produits
spontanés ou bien tout ce qui est le produit du travail de l’homme (p. 7).
This means that wherever the Mandenka and other diverse peoples scattered
everywhere from the Atlantic to the meridian of Timbuktu, across the expanse
of the Sudanese and Sahelian regions, Delafosse and his colleagues opine that
wherever they went, they established the same statist (i.e., Boone, 2014) regime
of land tenure. A regime characterized by a dual conception of ‘ownership’ is
a misnomer in the sense that the appropriation of the land is preferable to the
ownership of the land especially concerning the customary land tenure sys-
tem in Mali. Lavigne Delville’s argument explains what Delafosse meant by a
double conception of idea. Customary land tenure combines two distinct but
articulated registers: the level of territorial control and the level of exploita-
tion rights (Lavigne Delville et al., 2000). The soil and all that it naturally
produces is the property of the community represented by its leader, or the
head of the political unit in a monarchical system of governance.
It should be noted, however, that it sometimes happens that the political
leader, although an effective master of the territory as a result of the conquest
made by his predecessors, nevertheless recognises the right of the leader of
the conquered natives to appropriate it. The hereditary or elected head of
the community gradually divided the territory, as the population grew and
dispersed, between the different heads of families, who later became chiefs of
the village. Each village chief thus has the administration of part of the soil
of the native state, and he, in turn, delegates his rights over certain parcels to
the heads of families under his control. This fact has been observed in many
parts of French Sudan, particularly Djenné (Delafosse, 1912).
It is in this way that each head of a family, each nobleman or lord, has his
land and his fields well determined, without however being the owner. The
soil of the indigenous political unit, cultivated or uncultivated, built or not
built, really belongs in its entirety to the head of this unit, who can dispose
of all the parcels at will and take them back to their current usufructuary to
give them to others. Provided that by doing so, it does not harm the interests
of the community of which it is, according to the case, the hereditary king,
or the elected representative. So, the land tenure is a matter of common and
is, therefore, inalienable (Kassibo 1998; Le Roy, 2011). Neither the head of
the political unit, as Delafosse writes, nor the usufructuaries can claim a
‘property.’ The question of ownership does not and cannot arise.
In practice, however, the long usufruct of land in the same family is almost
tantamount to beneficial ownership of that right of use. With the resulting
rights of use and exploitation, the family has inherited, may be entirely or
partly assigned by the head of the family to another native. Therefore, it can
be conceded, for a fee and subject to certain reservations. But this usufruct
cannot be alienated for the benefit of a stranger without the approval of the
village chief or, most often, without that of the head of the community
(Delafosse, 1912).
As for the alienation of the right of property on the soil itself, it cannot
exist in principle, and, if it takes place sometimes, it can be done in any case
only with the approval of the assembly and most of the time she brings with
her the vassalage, vis-à-vis the alienator, of the person or persons for whom
it has consented. The ownership or usufruct of land includes the ownership
or the usufruct of all its spontaneous products and all that is naturally on its
surface such as trees, lianas, herbs, any plants not planted or maintained by
human labour, stones, ores, clays, rivers, lakes, marshes, etc. However, in many
226 Lamine Doumbia
areas of French Sudan, as a precautionary measure, the holder of the right
to harvest was prohibited from cutting down certain fruit trees without the
authorisation of the chief landowner or administrator. All that is the product of
the work of man is the strict property of the individual or collective owner-
ship of the work, who may at his pleasure use it and alienate it by sale, dona-
tion or contract of some kind; here we leave the domain of landed property,
always collective in sum, to enter that of movable property, which alone can
be properly individual, as we shall see later.
As we have tried to show, the vocabulary used by Delafosse influenced his
conception of custom and culture even though he developed a document
in which he attempted to explain the endogenous forms of land regulation.
These forms are, by their complexity and their social and dynamic variability
exceedingly difficult to discern. The attempt to understand land ownership
is done here from an anthropological rather than politico administrative
perspective. The purpose of the following section is to describe the role of
NELGA through higher education is to understand and reshape land govern-
ance in West Africa and especially in Mali.
Land tenure in the context of

decolonisation of higher education
The articulation of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial land governance
done in this extended ethnographic research assumes that decolonisation
higher education is a manner to academically decolonise perceptions and
politics on land governance in Africa. In terms of database management
and knowledge transfer in social science and the humanities, contemporary
scholars cooperate with the commission technique: Foncier & Development
in France and the NELGA to redefine and adapt methods of research and
teaching of land governance in Africa. The NELGA is creating in African
Universities (Senegal, Ghana, and Mali) masters programmes on land gov-
ernance in cooperation with the governments of the countries and univer-
sities as well as non-African partners. NELGA aims to improve land-related
curricula in graduate and postgraduate training courses in quantity and quality;
to provide and facilitate academic education and training for African land
professionals and practitioners; to define an agenda for research and conduct
applied research on land-related issues pertinent to the AU agenda on land;
and to Promote knowledge management, dissemination, and networking in
support of land policy and governance in Africa by enhancing the commu-
nity of practice for land policy experts throughout the African continent.
As described in this paper, Land governance remains a key factor in African
communities’ development and as such, it is a source of daily interactions
and contestations. Besides, land tenure continues to draw scholars’ academic
intentions. The main added value of this paper is that norms and regulations
as well as definitions of land tenure in Mali but also in Africa need to be
decolonised and more embedded in the grassroots people’s aspirations.
Conclusion
Endogenous knowledge plays a key role in the land tenure administration
and decolonisation of higher education in Africa since, as described in the
text, the land tenure regulations in Africa and especially in Bamako are an
imbroglio of numerous endogenous and exogenous systems of regulations.
Therefore, the central question of to what extent is knowledge on land
governance able to be decolonised through higher education includes the
NELGA initiative. The official land code in Mali, called le Code domanial et
foncier, is inspired by the colonial land regulations, which are French. That
code includes some elements of the customary tenure regulations. This chapter
tries to show, that these elements are mostly based on the customary regula-
tions that were collected and transcribed by Maurice Delafosse, who used a
vocabulary that is not appropriate.
This issue raises the question of translatability of the local phenom-
enon related to the custom into another context using a foreign language.
Knowledge production in higher education in Africa also requires the use of
African local languages for understanding the social local context. In the sense
that local knowledge and colonial and postcolonial knowledges constitute one
hybrid knowledge that is manipulated by the actors (Diawara, 2010, p.480;
Dulucq, 2006, p.32). Ouédraogo et al., 2018 address issues arising from the
claims to universalism in the process of producing knowledge about diverse
African social realities. They show that the idea of knowledge production as
translation can be usefully deployed to inquire into how knowledge of Africa
translates into an imperial attempt at changing local norms, institutions, and
spiritual values. Translation, in this sense, is the normalisation of meanings
issuing from a local historical experience claiming to be universal.
Thus, land Administration is based on practical norms that are plu-
ralistic, transitional, and transactional (Doumbia, 2018a). The endoge-
nous context has always been plural as well as the exogenous context of
land tenure regulations. There is a crucial need for more ethnographic
research because land tenure conceptions are different across societies and
the colonial and postcolonial influence increases the imbroglio of the
whole phenomenon. African higher education and social science scholars
are urged to conduct deep and fundamental research on endogenous
knowledge in Africa.
Notes
1. https://nelga-afrique-ouest-francophone.org/category/nos-missions/
2. Les savoirs endogènes : pistes pour une recherche. Paulin Hountondji. Dakar,
CODESRIA, 1994, 356 p., ISBN : 2-86978-039-7
3. Diawara, Mamadou 2003 L’interface entre les savoirs paysans et le savoir universel.
Bamako: Le Figuier
4. Doumbia, L. (2018) “Land Tenure and the Grassroots’ Concern in Bamako,”
Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, [S.l.], v. 6, n. 2: 33–54, Dec. 2018.
https://edu.uhk.cz/africa/index.php/ModAfr/article/view/207
228 Lamine Doumbia
5. Condé, Ibrahmina S. (2008) “Soulemana Kanté entre Linguistique et Grammaire :
Cas de la langue littéraire utilisée dans les textes en N’ko.” Deuxième congrès de la
linguistique et des langues mandés 15 au 17 septembre 2008, St -Petersbourg, Rus-
sie Retrieved from: http://mandelang.kunstkamera.ru/files/mandelang/konde.pdf
6. My additions.
7. Parts of this ethnography have been published in Doumbia, L. 2019 « De la
périphérie au centre-ville – Un terrain d’anthropologie juridique et politique »,
Hüsken, Th. et al. (éds.), The Multiplicity of Orders and Practices. A Tribute to Georg
Klute, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag: 200-220.
8. This interview was collected by the author in Bamanankan, transcribed with F4
and translated into English. “Taking land in the pocket” refers to the transforma-
tion of the property into title deed.
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Epilogue: A long way
towards a decolonial future
in African higher education
Abraham Brahima, Irina Turner, and Emnet T. Woldegiorgis
New foci in decolonisation
The time is past that others than Africans were in a position to define
and advocate whatever is good for Africa and its future: imposing
research priorities, identifying blind spots and issuing exhortations and
directions. … Let it be Africans who define the future of scholarship in
Africa, and when doing so they subject their views to the international
academic community, then is the proper moment for others … to comment.
(Wim van Binsbergen, 2003, p. 126)
This statement provides an ideal depiction of a decolonised higher educa-

tion system in postcolonial Africa. Its apparently programmatic and relatively
extroverted wording suggests the enduring existence of some external actors
whose influence and power of decision upon the current state of affairs and
the future of scholarship on the continent are still determinant. In inviting
them to renounce their hyperactive interventionist attitude for constructive,
respectful, and collaborative input upon the policies, guidelines, and general
direction of higher education institutions and programmes, van Binsbergen,
as many other scholars and writers, is advocating the implementation of a
truly decolonised higher education in Africa. As reflected by and through the
different chapters of this edited volume, there is indeed an imperative need
to make higher learning institutions in Africa more relevant to the societies
for which they are primarily intended for. Unfortunately, as the contribu-
tors also notice and express in various tones and empirical observations, the
promised land of a fully decolonised higher education in Africa is still far
away.
As recurrently emphasised by the various chapters of this book, decolo-
nising higher education from a structural point of view without indulging
its principal and living agents into a conceptual process of change would
amount to superficial ‘cosmetic changes’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017b, p. x).
A limitation that frequently occurs in many publications about decoloni-
sation in Africa is the sliding into essentially theoretical arguments and
A long way towards a decolonial future in African higher education 231
programmatic suggestions. Evidently, a lot has been achieved since formal
independence all over the continent and the end of the apartheid in the par-
ticular case of South Africa. As the opening chapter shows through the con-
ceptual and historical overview it provides, there have been a lot of positive
changes, reforms, and adjustments in the development of higher education in
postcolonial Africa. However, a much is still to be done, namely, as Mbembe
(2016) puts it, at the level of ‘imagining what the alternative to [the dom-
inant Eurocentric academic model] could look like’ (p. 36). It is obvious
that the combined efforts of anticolonial nationalism, the ‘formulation of a
new philosophy of higher education informed by African histories, cultures,
ideas, and aspirations’ in the 1960s (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017a, p.61) and the
current continental wave of decolonial frenzy triggered by students protests
in South Africa has not yet succeeded in completely uprooting the enduring
impact and vestiges of colonialism. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2017a) rightly states
that there is still a strong imperative to fundamentally redefine ‘the role of the
university [by navigating] carefully not only the imperatives of “standards”
set in Europe and the African local imperatives of the “social function” of
the university but also the dangers of looking “inward” at the expense of the
universal aspect of knowledge’ (p. 61).
In other words, the centripetal (re)orientation primarily required by the
decolonial project in higher education entails not only fundamental insti-
tutional changes, a transformation of the main actors (academic staff and
students), the contents and teleological significance of teaching and research
but also and notably a wilful effort to keep postcolonial African institu-
tions of higher learning open to global knowledge trends and innovations.
According to Mbembe (2016), ‘to decolonise the university is … to reform
it with the aim of creating a less provincial and more open critical cosmo-
politan pluriversalism’ (p. 37). As such, the concept of pluriversity refers to
a process of knowledge production that is open to epistemic diversity, the
universality of knowledge and its accessibility to all epistemic traditions
notwithstanding their diversity and particularities. Along the same line
of thought, Boaventura Santos de Sousa (2017) acknowledges the decisive
impact of globalisation on institutions of higher learning bringing forth
difficult challenges in ‘such proportions that the university finds itself at a
turning-point and its future is uncertain’ (p. xx).
The purposely empirical orientation of the contributions to this volume is
informed by the heuristic potential of emphasising the intrinsic connections
between hybridity and decolonisation on the one hand and the application
of this conceptual pair to the imperative need for decolonisation in higher
education in Africa on the other. To this end, this volume endeavours to
avoid the shortcoming, not infrequent in the debates about decolonisation or
Africanisation of higher education, of taking the concepts at stake, their his-
torical background, and their concrete implications at the empirical level for
granted. At a quite basic level, this appears in the cognitive pattern of assum-
ing ‘as a given the existence of an entity with some general characteristics
232 Abraham Brahima, Irina Turner, and Emnet T. Woldegiorgis
called the university, which is identically present all over the globe’ (Santos, 2017,
p. xv). This hasty generalisation is oblivious of the fact that the university
as such has obvious universal characteristics, but as Santos (Santos, 2017)
further argues, ‘the realities it covers are so diverse from country to country,
and within the same country that any generalisation may become abusive’
(p. xv). Mbembe (2016) is quite categorical about the conceptual status of the
university. In his opinion, ‘there is hardly any agreement as to the meaning,
and even less so the future, of what goes by the name “the university” in our
world today’ (p. 32).
Indeed, conceptualising decolonisation in higher education is a complex
endeavour considering the ambiguous relationships and power dynamics
underlying this notion. It is also challenging to discuss decolonisation of
higher education in isolation, since it is part and parcel of the overall socio-
economic and political ‘project of re-centering’ (Mbembe, 2016). Coined by
Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his eponymous essay (1993), the notion of ‘moving
the centre’ refers to the rejection of the ‘assumption that the modern West
is the central root of Africa’s consciousness and cultural heritage. It is about
rejecting the notion that Africa is merely an extension of the West. It is not
about closing the door to European or other traditions’ (Mbembe, 2016,
p.35). Instead, re-centering aims ultimately at dis-placing ‘the Eurocentric
basis of looking at the world [and replacing it] with a multiplicity of spheres
in all cultures’ (wa Thiong’o, 1993, p.14). However, this ideal way of con-
jecturing the future of relations between nations, peoples, cultures, and lan-
guages in an imaginary decentred world, should not overlook the fact that
despite all ‘forms of trying to “move the centre,” [it] remains unmoved’
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017b, p.x).
The postcolonial landscape is still fundamentally dominated by asym-
metries of all sorts concealed under subtle forms of continuities of the colonial
order. The academic aspects presented and analysed in this volume are just
a few features of ‘a sedimented [colonial] history that cannot be undone by
good intentions and token hirings’ (Baer, 2014, p.237). This book acknowl-
edges the complexities inherent in decolonisation processes as well as the
variety of struggles implicated by the multiplicity of colonial experiences and
envisages an alternative future within the concept of hybridity. The premise
of hybridity as specifically applied to science, knowledge, and higher educa-
tion lies in the conviction that there are multiple and heterogeneous episte-
mological systems. There is also a meeting place of all knowledge systems,
which would be an imaged hybrid alternative for a pluralistic future. The
book emphasises the urgency of addressing epistemic injustice involved in the
hegemony of Eurocentrism and endorse the notion of ‘restitutive knowledge’
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017b, p. x) as a way towards genuine decolonisation in
the domain of higher education in Africa.
Knowledge is established intersubjectively and discursively that makes
the process of knowing a lifelong commitment to reflexivity, dialogue, and
accommodation. Thus, it is imperative to march towards decolonising the
academic space by furthering a co-creative dialogue among knowledges from
a multitude of geographical, cultural, and social environments. Nevertheless,
the fundamental question of place, perspective, and orientation needs to be
addressed in any reconceptualisation and decolonisation of education. In this
context, a restitutive decolonial undertaking entails not only a thorough
re-examination of all the knowledge accumulated on Africa and Africans but
also an inquiry into the epistemological characteristics that define endoge-
nous ways of producing and disseminating knowledge as specifically African.
Conducted in a spirit of openness, beyond any kind of essentialism or rel-
ativism, while keeping in mind that knowledge as such is a universal feature
of humankind, the epistemic decolonial project has a huge potential in pro-
viding decisive insights into and productive answers to many human prob-
lems that the Western-centric configuration of scientific knowledge cannot
resolve. In the area of scientific knowledge as well as in other domains of life,
thought, and experience, barring some parts of humanity from contributing
to the common good is a loss for the whole humanity. This general truth
applies to higher education as well. In the framework of a reflection on the
contemporary crisis in the Western-centric perception of the university,
due to an obstinate focus on obsolete visions and namely a tacit rejection of
the ‘epistemologies of the south,’ Santos (2017) argues that:
Focusing on general answers to be given by the ‘university’ as a general

type of educational institution may lead us to ignore the highly creative
and very paradigmatic answers that specific universities in specific coun-
tries are providing, as well as those that are emerging in the shadow of
the university. Focusing on the absent university may mislead us into
ignoring the emergent university (p. xv).
In the same fashion as the colonial encounter, which led to a profound trans-
formation of colonisers as well as colonised at various levels and degrees, the
decolonial project is ultimately an endeavour whose moral and teleological
outcomes are simply about common humanity. Seen in this perspective, as a
project that ultimately will lead to a ‘supplement of soul,’ to borrow Bergson’s
(1935, p. 299) words, decolonisation would at once cease to be perceived as the
sole affair of a formerly (or still neocolonised) part of the world and become a
common struggle from which the whole humankind would benefit. Still, we
are not yet there and despite the wide-ranging spectrum of topics, questions,
and experiences that make up this volume, there remain several issues that it
could not cover for obvious practical and pragmatic reasons.
Outstanding trails for future decolonial explorations

The book provides various complementary perspectives on decolonisation
process in higher education covering many corners of ‘invented Africa’
(Mudimbe 1988) by narrating case studies and perspectives from Algeria,
Mali, South Africa, India, Germany, and China. Beyond that, the volume
also provides some bird’s eyes views on looking at the continent as a whole in
terms of decolonisation, literature, and translation, as well as methodologies.
It reconceptualises and adds substantial empirical contributions to the body
of theoretical knowledge on the subject of decolonisation by feeding back
from hands-on examples from different African universities. Despite their
various ontological and disciplinary backgrounds, the contributors in this
volume have drawn a strong and coherent insight towards a hybrid future in
the decolonisation debates.
It was neither the objective of the volume to provide a comprehensive pre-
scribed manual nor to offer a mere sensitisation exercise on decolonisation.
Rather, we aimed at providing an intermediate state-of-the-art reflection of
where decolonisation in African higher education currently stands. Except
for the contribution by Clemens who looks at teaching mathematics, the
current volume did not address the lack of research on decolonising natural
sciences as it focused on the humanities. The branch of postcolonial Science
and Technology Studies and related fields, however, that is interested in deco-
lonial research and teaching of natural sciences (e.g., Beisel, 2019; Harding,
2011; Schramm, 2017; Warwick, 2002) is a growing field of importance,
which cannot be ignored in the long run. In the same way, discussions on
Indigenous ways of knowing and their importance for the decolonial project
in higher education focus more and more on natural science-related fields,
such as appropriate technology and innovation (Ezeanya, 2016, 2019; Popp,
2018; Tharakan, 2017).
In a recurrent fashion, many scholars emphasise the indispensable con-
nection between the university and its social function (Brock-Utne, 2003;
Mazrui, 2003; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017; Nyerere, 1966; Santos, 2017; Wa
Thiong’o, 2016;). In Brock-Utne’s (2003) words, ‘the link that is missing in
most of the universities in the South is the link between the academia and
the ordinary people… Knowledge creation has to be one produced together
with the local people’ (p. 47). She further argues that most departments in all
universities in Africa demonstrate the effectivity of this missing link because
the know-how they teach has come about through the study of texts ‘that are
relevant in the North but not necessarily in the South’ (p. 48). This remark
brings to the fore not only issue related to the relevance of higher education
formation and productions to the social expectations of local communities
but also the question of epistemic justice and its corollary, the (in)equality of
access to higher learning.
According to Santos (2017), the historical identity and vocation of the uni-
versity as such is to be a public good which task is to maintain the connection
of a society with its own history and cultural identity through the knowledge
and training it offers. Ultimately, the university is a privileged public space
potentially dedicated to the exchange of ideas on a critical and open basis.
Unfortunately, ‘in the past 30 years, for different but convergent reasons, in
various parts of the world the university has become – rather than a solution
for societal problems – an additional problem’ (Santos, 2017, p.xiii). Indeed, the
wave of protests that spread from South Africa five years ago to almost all the
continent and beyond, namely as a demand to abrogate study fees is an indica-
tor of a profound rift between the ideal of the university as an institution ded-
icated to the free development and advancement of the intellect, life, reason,
and mind and its modern reconfiguration as ‘a springboard for global markets’
(Mbembe, 2016, p.38). It is undeniable that one of the most challenging issues
that face the university today is the radical turn towards its transformation into
a capital-based institution that functions like any other business enterprise. As
Mbembe (2016) pithily puts it, ‘today, global markets are in many ways shaping
university reforms worldwide. Contemporary changes in higher education are
based on the deepening of functional linkages between higher education and
knowledge capitalism’ (p. 39). This is an issue that a reflection on how to decol-
onise higher education in Africa can definitely not overlook in future.
One of the main consequences of global incentives to turn the university
into a capitalist enterprise is the widening of the poverty gap and the reduc-
tion of the possibilities to access higher education for the most financially
fragile social layers. This would turn the university into an institution that
fosters injustice and social inequality instead of being a haven for the promo-
tion and of humanistic values and ideals. Gorostiaga’s (1993) words bemoan-
ing the dramatic loss of ontological direction by Latin American universities
and their silent sliding into counter-values are strikingly relevant to most
African universities in the postcolonial era:
What, then does it mean to train “successful” professionals in this sea

of poverty? Does an institution that does not confront the injustice sur-
rounding it that does not question the crisis of a civilisation that is ever
less universalisable to the great majority of the world, merit the name of
“university”? Would not such an institution be simply one more element
that reproduces this unequal system? (as quoted by Brock Utne, 1993, p. 47).
These are important issues that call for a ‘refoundation of the university’
(Santos, 2017, p. xxi) and a renewed effort to rethink its status, role, and
pertinence in postcolonial African socio-political contexts. The question of
how to concretely achieve such a refoundation in the particular context of
postcolonial Africa remains open, especially with regards not only to the
number of higher education institutions1 but foremost to the variety of their
status and role within national political agendas, disciplinary configurations,
socio-cultural engagements, and scientific priorities. Closely related to the
disciplinary issue, is the question of decolonising natural sciences. Do they
share similar specificities like the humanities so as to make the decolonisation
process in higher education run along homogenous lines? Beyond any debate
about academic freedom and self-determination, these are also issues related
to national policy and political decisions as it is the case with questions of
adequate funding for universities or research institutes.
Other general questions could not be thoroughly examined in the present
volume for the same reasons stated above. These are, for instance, the per-
petual issue of low research output and innovation, the lack of harmonisation
among higher education systems at a continental level, particularly evident in
the absence of study in Africa programs (Mbembe, 2016, p.42). But there is the
utmost important question of the global expansion of higher education lead-
ing to unprecedented students and academic staff mobility. Dovetailed in this
last point is the delicate question of the financial status, social perception, and
work conditions of the main actors of higher education institutions. These
conditions which are generally known to be inadequate or even disastrous
are most of the time an indirect outcome of obsolete structures and laws
inherited from colonial administrations (Ndiaye, 2000, p.169). On top of all
this one should also take into account the increasing presence and influence
of China and other countries (India, Gulf States, and Singapore) on the aca-
demic scene causing a shift in academic mobility from West to East. Is this
new pole of attraction paving the way for a new form of cultural colonisation
for which a new struggle for decolonisation will have to be initiated in a few
decades? The future will tell.
However, it is apprehended or conceived of, the future is always the outcome
of our (mis)management of the present and our resistances to the lessons of the
past. There are numerous and legitimate voices predicting the loss of signifi-
cance of the university as such at a global scale. Higher education in Africa,
even if completely freed of colonial external influences through decolonisation
will remain, as an entity and an institution, a microcosmic representation of a
universal production of humanity as a whole. As well-reflected in its etymol-
ogy, the concept of university is one of the most salient expression of the unity
of humanity against all forms of relativisms. As such, its future is also closely
related to the future of humanity as a whole. This is to say that the current
uncertainties about the future of academic institutions that eventually prompt
Santos to ask ‘whether the university, as we know it, indeed has a future at all’
(p. xiv) are global issues that should be a matter of concern for everyone inter-
ested in the progress of knowledge and science.
In this context, the impact of the 2019/2020 Corona pandemic on the
academy globally and on higher education institutions in Africa in particular
cannot be overlooked in the framework of a reflection on postcoloniality
and decolonisation. Besides their deadly deplorable consequences, natural
catastrophes and pandemics have always been valuable sources of knowledge
and leap forward for humankind.
Hybridity in times of Corona

While some might argue that the pinnacle of the decolonisation discourse is
over and publications start to become repetitive, we find it more than timely
to continue to speak of decolonisation in times of Corona; especially through
our foregrounding of hybridity. The multiplicity of realities is tangible more
than ever in every living room across the globe brought by media coverage
on the Corona virus of 2019/2020. ‘COVID-19 constitutes a catastrophic
experience … an event that escapes the homogenizing influence of teleolog-
ical narrative’ (El Maarouf et al., 2020, p. 2). It signifies an interruption and
therefore a hybrid third space in Bhabha’s sense. Differentiation in the sense
of fanning out instead of essentialising, can be read as a decolonial prac-
tice. Moroccan sociologist Abdelkebir Khatibi recommends using Western
theorems of difference as spelled out by Bhabha and his contemporaries as
a strategic weapons for ‘effective decolonization’ and ‘concrete thinking of
difference’ (Khatibi, 1983, p.20, as cited by El Maarouf et al., 2020, p.3).
Representing a crucial turning point, Covid-19 might mean for decolo-
nisation in higher education a chance as well as a demise. Thinking through
the virus about the end – of no less than the world as we know it – ‘informs
people’s ability to find a new thread (a new beginning) at the end of the line’
as implicit in the original Greek meaning of apocalypse as ‘uncovering, dis-
closure, and revelation’ (El Maarouf et al., 2020, p. 3). Corona has sharpened
inequalities in every realm and brought to light ‘coexisting temporalities’
that offer analysing and – subject to critical suspicion – seeing ‘decoloniality
and decoroniality’ (El Maarouf et al., 2020, p.16) through the same analyti-
cal grid. Medium and long-term effects of the pandemic are not yet to be
estimated. Inevitably, this will also affect higher education globally; especially
in terms of available funding. While most lecturers and students excelled their
digital skills within weeks and by now are in the majority quite familiar with
the new ways of teaching and communicating (provided they had the required
infrastructure available), Corona threw some of us back while others speeded
ahead in studies and research (Flatherthy, 2020; Minello, 2020). What is
more, Corona discourses of constant crisis will push aside decolonisation
debates for instance in South Africa, as there are seemingly more urgent
issues to deal with.
Or not. It seems that the killing of George Floyd in the USA and the sub-
sequent global renaissance of BlackLivesMatter does not accidently coincide
with the pinnacle of the Corona catastrophe:
It is indeed ironic if not paradoxical how the way this coronavirus micro-
scopically manifests and reveals that it has already come with the “invisi-
ble” vaccine (the furtive hope) for shuttering our coloniality. In the way,
it wages a raid on the ‘human’ category, irrespective of visatic proto-
cols, genetics of nobility, dialectics of skin, or politics of class, it helps us
“center our concerns and world views” (Smith, 2012, 39)2 (El Maarouf
et al., 2020, p.16).
The reasonable wearing of masks is at the same time a physical reminder

and strong symbol of silencing and restriction of participation. Worldwide,
people feel suffocated by the rise of white supremacists and authoritarian
populism and after a long period of physical immobility, have a strong urge
to act and march. In their wake, they also pull down statues of colonialists
following the famous example of the Fallists at the University of Cape Town
(see Daniel this volume). So, the movement embodies a distinctly decolonial
process going beyond the realm of higher education but affecting this field
in return nevertheless. When awareness of persisting colonial structures in
society and politics at large is achieved, the way for overdue changes such
as reprioritizing and ‘recharging of ethics’ (El Maarouf et al., 2020, p.15) in
higher educated is paved. In sum, while economic restrictions caused by the
pandemic will locally impede transformation on the one hand, the current
global discoursive salience of decoloniality, on the other hand, will bring
about the necessary political power to effect profound institutional changes.
Towards a hybrid future

The central argument of the book lies in the importance of constructing a
heterotopia (Foucault, 1984) [See also Daniel’s contribution to this volume],
hybrid alternative future that recognizes and accommodates diverse episte-
mological traditions. Instead of understanding hybridity as a simplistic binary
equation of adding ‘the West and the Rest’ (Ferguson, 2012) we, quite con-
trarily, value Bhabha’s notion of liminal spaces, where productive conceptual
innovation can emerge.
The multiplicity of realities is tangible more than ever in all epistemic
traditions and knowledge production processes across different cultures
challenging Eurocentric concepts and ways of knowing (see Clemens this
volume). The German Afrikanistik case discussed in Turner’s chapter also
proves that hybridity in the decolonisation process can reform curriculum
from within without abolishing itself.
Reflecting on diverse experiences from history, translation studies, cur-
riculum, linguistics, land administration, and literature, the book discusses
different perspectives of decolonisation, which started as a process against the
domination of the Western conception of knowledge that has historically
marginalized, silenced, stereotyped and decentred alternative epistemologies.
We acknowledge that the argument towards hybridity as a re-centering and
decolonisation approach might trigger controversy and criticisms within the
context of postcolonial theory. Nevertheless, it is important to contract a
practical argument that reflects the empirical realities on the ground, which
this book endeavours to carry out.
Hybridity as discussed and interpreted in this book, stresses the impor-
tance of interdependence, mutual construction of subjectivities, and inter-
cultural dialogue among different knowledge traditions. The book argues
that African knowledge systems and Euro-American epistemic traditions are
not necessarily contradictory, rather complement each other in the process of
knowledge production. The general stance of the various chapters parallels
Bakhtin’s (1981, p.358) definition of hybridisation as ‘an encounter,’ in the
space of an utterance, between different linguistic consciousness’s, separated
by time, social differentiation, or some other facto.’ Hence, the persevering
focalisation of the contributions in this volume on historical and conceptual
convergences, and the subsequent effort to stay beyond sterile crystallisations
on colonial responsibilities, at the expense of the more urgent task of defining
a future within the de facto hybrid space historically created. We argue that
decolonisation is not an exclusive process and business of the Global South,
but a complex interdependent process of both the so-called global South and
North. It is about creating a common meeting/contact zone as a third space
to overcome the exoticism of cultural diversity in favour of the recognition
of empowering hybridity.
Notes
1. According to the ‘UniRank’ database in 2020, there are currently 1.225 officially
recognized higher education institutions in Africa representing 8.9% or the world
total which reveal a remarkable underrepresentation when one considers that
Africa represent 16,1% of the world’s population. The subdivision public/private
institutions of higher learning reveal quite a well-balanced parity with 586 public
universities and 601 private. Source: UniRank, “Universities in Africa/Higher
Education in Africa”: https://www.4icu.org/Africa/
2. Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous
Peoples., 2nd ed. Zed Books.
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Index
Note: Page numbers followed by “f ” AVVA, African Verbal and Visual Arts
means the dealing of the respective key- 79f, 83ff
word stretches on to the next page; “ff” Azania 194, 201ff
means the term is discussed over more
than the following page. Bakhtin, Mikhail 238
Berber 140ff
Actor Network Theory 44, 105, 106ff, Bhabha, Homi 5f, 141, 237
110f; see also Network Theory Black 52, 206ff, 209
Adamant reflexivity 9, 46, 48ff, 52 Black students 195ff, 208
Africa (definition and in relation) 2f, 32, BlackLivesMatter 237
89–90, 96, 125, 159, 162 Blackness 202f, 207
African 18, 22, 52, 84, 206 Bourdieu, Pierre 109, 148
African heritage 18, 20, 23, 232
African knowledge (systems) 3, 20, 36, China, PRC 160ff, 234, 236
52, 60, 65, 66, 85, 118, 126, 128–129, Chinese 38, 133, 154, 160ff, 182f
213–214, 233, 238; see also African Civil society 142, 154, 208,
epistemology Cold War 159, 161ff
African languages 67, 79, 82, 86, 94f, 96, Colonial, colonialism 4, 7f, 11, 14, 17f,
119–120, 125, 127, 131–132, 177ff, 219 20ff, 40, 42, 47, 65, 67, 81f, 84f, 87,
African socialism 165 118, 119ff, 129, 142, 145ff, 196, 209,
African Studies 77, 79, 80ff, 88, 91, 123 222ff
Africanisation 6, 7, 9, 18, 25ff, 40, 51, Colonial administration 21ff, 146, 149,
62, 66, 70, 84, 118, 128, 132, 134, 236
161 Colonial science 116, 125, 6f
Afrikaans 60, 63f, 119, 197 Coloniality xvii, 1, 4f, 65, 72, 79, 84ff,
Afrikanistik 80ff, 89, 95f 86, 124f, 143
Afro-Asian 160, 163 Colonisation 1, 38
Algeria (People’s Democratic Republic Conceptual decolonisation 118, 124, 126,
of ), Algerian 21, 140ff 131
Amharic 94, 119, 178 Consciousness 48, 83, 85, 135, 167f, 195,
Anthropocene 100f 198, 200, 206, 232, 238
Anthropology 9, 41ff, 44, 46 Creole 106, 180f
Appropriation 9, 14, 130, 133, 147, 178, Cross-cultural xv, xvii, 42, 102, 115, 126
218, 221 Cultural conflict 147
Arab/Arabic 2, 38, 67, 95, 119, 132, 135, Culture 6, 9, 36, 41f, 52, 86, 101, 104,
140, 142ff, 169, 219 110, 122, 132f, 162, 170, 182
Arabisation 141ff
Asia 170f De Sousa Santos, Boaventura xvii, 6f,
Authorship 179ff 124f, 231ff
242 Index
De Souza, Menenes Lynn Mario 4 220, 222–227; education system 24, 85,
Decolonial xvi f, 2, 4 155n13, 155n17; language and culture
Decoloniality 2, 6, 61ff, 74, 194, 198, 201, 91, 94, 119, 120, 124, 132–133, 140–
209, 237 142, 151–153, 177, 179–183, 186–187;
Decolonisation xv ff, 1ff, 17ff, 38, 40ff, numbers 112
66, 79, 83ff, 90ff, 113ff, 119ff, 130ff,
159, 162, 166, 195ff, 231ff Galison, Peter 10, 100, 105–106
Decolonising the Mind 29, 49, 159, 160, 167, Gikuyu 132, 159, 161, 165, 168, 178
172, 178 Global: globalisation 3, 6, 61, 70, 95, 150,
Diaspora 3, 26, 33, 52, 84, 153 231; knowledge 7, 9, 18, 32, 36, 38,
Diffusion 100, 105, 111 40–41, 49, 50, 52, 65, 91 231; North
Diversity 9, 37, 41, 65ff, 101, 140, 200, 53n6, 67–68; science 38, 41, 50, 52, 85,
207, 231 87, 93; South 1, 2, 6, 13, 20, 36, 40,
Domination 129 53n6, 60, 72, 115n2, 173n11, 239
Gnosis 128
ECAS 78 Grosfoguel, Ramon 79
Education, higher education xvii, 1ff,
17ff, 51, 61ff, 68, 87, 97, 101, 108f, Hegemony 6, 20, 60, 64, 71, 84, 121, 232
113ff, 144ff, 160f, 164, 167, 169ff, 188, Heterogeneous 5, 6, 14, 81, 130, 182, 232
193, 196, 236f, 239 Heterotopia 200, 201, 204, 207, 208, 238
Encounters 5, 100, 111ff, 124, 132, 238 Higher education 1–11, 13, 17–33, 36,
Endogenous 5f, 8, 118, 214, 217ff 50–52, 60–64, 71, 74, 95, 97, 113, 132,
English 60, 63f, 71, 86, 91, 96, 103, 112, 134, 140–142, 144–155, 164, 169–172,
119f, 139, 141, 151, 153ff, 159, 160, 166, 188, 196, 213, 214, 226, 227, 230–240
168, 169, 172, 177, 180, 184, 186 Hybridity 3–6, 8–11, 13, 14, 76, 140,
Enlightenment 14, 38, 145 142, 147, 154, 188, 230–232, 236,
Epistemic xv ff, 2, 13n1, 24, 30, 78 238, 239
Epistemic diversity 36, 44, 46, 101, 111, 231
Epistemic violence 30, 67, 68 Identity 6, 9, 10, 12, 25, 27–29, 35, 40,
Epistemology xvi, xvii, 5f, 7, 28ff, 38–39, 56, 68, 69, 72, 84, 86, 90, 96, 118, 122,
50–51, 60ff, 67, 85, 102f, 124, 128ff, 238 141, 147, 152, 153, 161, 169, 179, 180,
Escobar, Arturo 86 182, 183, 185, 187–189, 196, 198, 205,
Essentialism 39, 65, 67, 84f, 128, 233 206, 208, 234
Ethnography 213 Indigenous 7, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 20, 22–24,
Eurocentrism, Eurocentric 1ff, 26, 30, 37, 30, 32, 56, 58, 64, 71, 72, 101, 102,
65, 84, 97, 177, 232 106, 111, 114–116, 120, 122, 124, 134,
Europe, European 19ff, 36, 52, 67, 78ff, 143, 146, 147, 177, 213, 214, 223, 225,
86, 90f, 101ff, 119, 130, 147, 158, 170, 240
185f, 196f, 208, 209 Internationalization 32, 55, 150, 152,
Eutopia 199 153, 155
Ewe 178
Extraversion 129 Knowledge systems 7, 240
Fanon, Franz 5, 28, 52n2, 159, 198 Learning spaces 19, 20, 23, 24, 32
FeesMustFall, Fallism 60, 62, 78, 193, 196 Legacies 23, 29, 40, 164
Foucault, Michel 30, 73, 200, 207, 238 Liberating perspective 29, 161
francophone 90, 94, 148–150, 186–188, Local 1, 2, 5–9, 11, 13, 15–17, 21, 30, 37,
190n15, 213–214 40, 41, 45, 47, 50, 55, 60, 68, 69, 72–74,
francophile 148 88, 125, 128, 130, 133, 143, 145, 146,
Freire, Paulo 68 162, 164, 166, 168, 170, 177, 181, 186,
French: colonial rule 4, 11, 22, 129, 213, 214, 216–218, 220, 222, 224, 227,
145–149, 155n8, 155n12, 214, 217, 219, 229, 231, 234
Index 243
Makgoba Mogobe 18, 26–29, 34, 36, 40, Postcoloniality 236
56, 137 Post-colony 121
Mbembe Achille 16, 28–30, 35–37, 39, Power: access 71, 143; asymmetry 121–
40, 56, 66, 76, 89, 94, 98, 124, 137, 124, 133; binaries 62; Black 198, 199;
161, 175, 193, 211, 231, 232, 235, 236, colonial 20–23, 67–68, 106, 120, 129,
240 162, 169–170; decentring 48, 207–208;
deconstruction 50, 112; economic 133;
Ndlovu-Gatsheni Sabelo 4, 7, 14, 15, 17, epistemic/knowledge 30, 36, 42, 51,
18, 15, 25, 35, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 96, 65, 69, 171; institutional 14n4, 15, 106;
97, 98, 124, 138, 195, 211, 230, 231, play 215: 221, 230, 232; relations 4–5,
232, 234, 240 10, 41, 46, 48, 66, 78, 84, 87, 104, 114,
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 14n6, 29, 162, 172 119, 204; struggles 134
Pre-colonial 17, 19–20, 23, 30, 32, 84,
Occupation 12, 175, 200, 209 194, 198, 226
Outopia 199 Protest 12, 60–64, 74n1, 94, 142,
193–209, 231, 235
Pan-African, pan-Africanism 25–26, 31, Public administration 149
125, 132, 165, 169, 194–195, 198, 208 Purity 101
Paradigm: African 26–30, 39; alternative
45, 51, 52n5, 72; postcolonial para- Radicality 44
digms, 14n5; shift 124 Raina, Dhruv 10, 100–6, 112, 116n3–4
Philosophy: education 23, 231; ethno- 45, Re-centering 161, 163, 169, 170, 172, 174,
Indian 102, 115n1, 115n3, 115n4; 114, 232, 238
Jaina 115n5, 128, 148, Negritude 198; Relationality 3, 9, 10, 100, 103, 105–107,
science 38–39, 49, 51; Ubuntu 61 114
Pidgin 106, 186 Relativity 42, 49, 133, 183–186
Pluralistic 3, 24, 33, 88, 101, 227, 232 Rhodes Cecil 62, 70, 162, 193, 195, 197,
Policy: AAU 27, 32; Algerian 141–142, 203, 207, 213
146, 148, 150, 153; British Colonial Rhodes Must Fall 62, 94, 160, 193, 195,
21–22; China 160; French 22, 120; 201, 205
German colonial 82; land management
214, 222, 226; language/linguistic 61, Science 2, 7, 9–11, 36, 39, 44, 46–49, 51,
62, 125, 131, 142, 154, 188; LPHE 62, 67, 83, 86, 88, 104–105, 114, 127,
63–64; national 235; process at NMU 129, 133, 134, 140, 144–145, 147, 151,
71–72 232, 236; colonial 6, 118, 125, 152;
Politics: Kenyan 164–165, 194, 196, 207; hybrid 2, 3, 9, 10, 65–66, 68–69, 101;
knowledge 30, 38, 40–41, 51, 52n4; natural 9, 52n5, 89, 141, 152, 234–235;
language 29, 66, 86, 160, 178; naming social, 11, 29, 42, 47, 80, 111, 141, 148,
13n1; race 81–82; 94, translation 123; 152, 226–227
159; Writers in 164, 167, 172n1 Scientific 2, 5, 7–9, 11, 26–27, 36, 38–39,
Portuguese 4, 22–23, 179 41–43, 47–48, 50–51, 52n5, 86, 93,
Positionality 3, 48, 167, 169, 171, 205 101–102, 104–106, 110, 114, 118–119,
Postcolonial, postcolonialism xvi, 2, 3–5; 123–128, 130, 132–134, 141, 143, 148–
governance 226; knowledge 227, 232; 153, 163, 180, 233, 235; knowledge, 5,
nation/state 171, 213; science 234; soci- 7, 11, 26, 36, 38–39, 42–43, 47–48, 51,
ety 141; 153; studies 159, 160, 162, 166, 101–102, 114, 233
172n4; subjects 12, 14n5–6, 18, 24–25, Seepe, Sipho 27, 36, 40, 78, 118, 139
27–28; teaching/education 86, 89–90, Sesotho 71, 119
96n3, 100, 102, 118–120, 230–231; Shona 178
theory 29, 129–130, 159; translation Sinification 163
121–136; university 30; 65, 79, 83–84, SOAS 94
231, 235 socialism 25, 163, 165
244 Index
South Africa 6, 9, 19, 32, 60–74, 78, 81, Truth 8, 30, 38–39, 41, 43, 46, 49, 52,
94, 97n7, 97n14, 127, 135–136, 136n11, 83–84, 95, 103–104, 233
193–197, 206, 209n2–3, 216, 231, 234, Twi 90, 178
235, 237
Spivak, Gayatri 13n1, 30, 78, 97n12 Ubuntu 61, 65, 67–69, 73
Stories 107–115 Ujamaa 165
Structural violence 11, 141, 147–149, 152, Universal 5, 8, 10, 14n7, 28, 36–39, 44,
154, 195, 197, 202, 207 48, 86, 88, 91, 96n4, 102, 108–109, 111,
Subversion 121, 128 114, 124, 188, 200, 213, 227, 231–233,
Swahili 25, 33n3, 67, 94–95, 119, 169, 236
178, 186 Universality 8, 51, 85, 87, 101–102, 114,
Symbol 37, 107, 145, 163, 181, 185–186, 170, 231
188, 193–194, 200–201, 237 University 6, 9, 10, 12, 20–23, 25, 27, 31,
Symbolic 6, 14n4, 64, 120–122, 141, 154, 33n2, 51, 60–66, 68–72, 74, 79–81,
160, 173n5, 182, 185–186, 189n9, 194 83, 85, 87, 89, 93–96, 96n3, 97n11,
System 1, 6, 7, 17, 23, 30–32, 50, 63, 65, 97n14, 112–113, 136n11, 142, 144–146,
67, 73, 86–89, 91, 97n9, 103–104, 112, 148–151, 153, 154n5, 155n10–11,
115n3, 145–147, 185–188, 190n15, 195, 155n13, 160, 163, 168–171, 172n3,
198, 218, 221, 225, 235; education, 13, 195–198, 202–207, 209n5, 213–214,
18–20, 22, 24, 26, 32, 140–141, 150– 231–236, 238
153, 155n11, 168, 170, 177, 179, 230, University of Cape Town 12–13, 21, 42,
236, 238; knowledge, 2, 3, 9, 12, 17, 62, 193–195, 238
18, 20, 29, 33, 36–39, 41–44, 46–48, University of Nairobi 33n3, 97n14, 160,
51–52, 118, 124, 128, 214, 216–217, 168, 172n3, 172n8
219, 227, 232 Untranslatability 120, 123, 180
Utopia 79, 80, 84, 90, 199, 200, 208,
Tamazight 140, 142, 143, 145–146, 150 209n3
Tensions, generative 100, 111, 113
Third space 5, 7, 133–134, 237, 239 Verran, Helen 100, 111–113, 115n7
Tifinagh 143
Trading zones 10, 100, 105–106, 114–115 Weltanschauungen 128
Transformation 1, 9, 12, 17, 18, 29–30, Westermann, Dietrich 81, 83
33, 36, 52, 60–62, 66, 70, 100–101, Western knowledge 3, 23, 24, 36, 40, 44,
106, 108, 114, 118, 121–122, 128, 47, 66, 84, 161
167–169, 194–195, 198–200, 202–203, Whiteness 5, 205
205, 208, 228n8, 231, 233, 235, 238
Translanguaging 65, 67, 71, 73, 127 Xhosa 95, 119, 178
Translation 11, 42, 44, 45, 66, 72, 112–113,
118–134, 135n4–6, 135n8, 135n11, Yoruba 94, 111–114, 119, 178
136n12, 161–163, 173n6, 173n11, 183,
227, 234, 238 Zedong, Mao 159, 162–164, 173n5–6
Zulu 71, 94, 119, 178

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Decolonisation of Higher

Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis is an Associate Professor of Higher Education

Abraham Brahima is currently a Research Associate at the African Centre for

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For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

Edited by Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis,

ISBN: 978-0-367-36060-3 (hbk)

1. The emergence of decolonisation debates in African

2. An integrated approach towards decolonising higher

3. Rethinking linguistics at Nelson Mandela University:

4. What is the point of studying Africa in Europe?

5. The relationality of knowledge and postcolonial

7. Linguistic coexistence and controversy in Algerian

8. Class and literature: Cross-cutting theorisations and

9. “Borrowed” languages in Africa: A reflection on the

10. Must decolonisation occur on an island? The role of

11. Decolonisation of knowledge on land governance 213

Epilogue: A long way towards a decolonial future

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (University of Bayreuth) sjndlovugatsheni@gmail.

Grace Ese-Osa Idahosa is currently a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at

Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa: Perspectives from Hybrid Knowledge

Background and positioning

(Re)conceptualising the postcolonial:

Hybridity in decolonisation of higher education

Decolonising local knowledge, and transcending

Decolonisation of higher education in Africa:

Literature and languages of teaching in

Contested colonial delineations and spatial reappropriation

Debates on decolonisation of African higher education have evolved over

The emergence of higher education in Africa

Though the French provided a considerable number of basic education in

There are two possible dangers facing a university in a developing nation:

We need to emancipate the educational system in the Congo from the

The origin of the discourse of decolonisation of higher education was, there-

The decline of decolonisation debates in the 1980s

Entanglements of colonisation and knowledge

Decolonisation beyond dualisms

The challenges and prospects of

Discourses of transformation and decoloniality

Decoloniality: Believers and unbelievers

Discourse of the canon of linguistics

Entangled knowledges as theoretical framing

Rethinking a linguistics canon

Transformation in linguistics on national level

Language policy process at Nelson Mandela University

Transforming linguistics at Nelson Mandela University

The role of German African language

In the contemporary German university context, however, the Afrikanist

11. Decolonisation of knowledge on land governance 213