On August 10th at the University of Pretoria, the Gauteng cohort had a session with Dr. Morgan Ndlovu; a senior lecturer in the department of Development Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA).
Dr. Ndlovu took us on a deep and thought provoking journey of self-introspection and reflections on the meaning of the concept of decolonization as we use it today. We explored the historical background of the idea of oneness as an approach to decolonization. Where does the idea of 1 nation, 1 God, 1 wife come from? We question humanity when we encounter people that lead a life different from ours. Instead of living together and learning from each other, we suffocate knowledge and kill language so that we are left with one language and one culture, and zero knowledge of everything else. He compared this to the current economic system, specifically the nature of capitalism, saying that if we want people to be equal, we need to get rid of capitalism. Capitalism in its nature is unapologetic-ally exploitative; someone must be at the bottom of the economic system for someone else to be at the top. Hence the linear movement of the economy and the concept of “catching up” in the modern world system. Dr. Ndlovu expressed that we need to decolonize time to understand what we are trying to catch up on, and if it is the right thing. He used the example of advancing weapons. Half of the world is occupied with trying to design and make the latest human killing machines, while the other half compromises humanity in attempt to “catch up” on those latest designs. We constantly tell one another “you are still living in the past, so uncivilized” when civilization really was when the world had no weapons to kill each other.
We need to deconstruct and create a plurination state, where there are no standards to being a South African (nor to belonging anywhere in the world). When the world was open, no one could commit genocides, because there were no boarders to trap anyone in, now you want to kill thousands of innocent people you simply close the boarders and kill. Our minds are clouded by problematic knowledge of not belonging. “Go back to where you came from” ,we say; but are we not all from the same planet? We have gradually applied the same approach to nature and the environment. Nature is no resource to man, man is supposed to co-exist with nature. We fail to do this and in the end we cry of natural disasters caused by climate change. If we are the cause of climate change, are we then not the very same cause of natural disasters?
Decolonization is supposed to be against all kinds of fundamentalism. It must promote co-existence not oneness. It is against all forms of hatred. We need to do away with the idea that decolonization means the oppressor must be oppressed and the oppressed must be the oppressor, because that in itself is colonization; reversed colonization. Dr. Ndlovu made the point that we need not to say “i finished mine you must finish yours” instead we must have the “how did you preserve yours” attitude. The idea of women empowerment is a good example. “Do not say let us empower women, simply remove the power structures that dis-empower women in the first place, address the root cause not the symptom”, he said. When a car has broken down, you do not change the car driver, instead you change the broken car parts. Although the reality is that when you are oppressed, you will always speak the mind of the oppressor; against yourself. In reality we suffer from the crisis of alternatives. Oppression has become like a fish in water that dares not to question the water. We have become dangerously adaptive we lack innovation. “Adaptation encourages subordination and innovation comes out of necessity”, expressed Dr. Ndlovu.
He concluded the session by saying that the modern world system is a dangerous game, where committing a crime is not a crime, the crime is getting caught. However, at the rate at which the world is changing, we have no choice but to adapt to modernity; even though “modernity is a death project, we are dead if we do, we are dead if we don’t”