Episode 35 - Dr Lwazi Lushaba: Why Africa Must Rethink Decolonisation, Science & Power

In conversation with Dr Lwazi Lushaba, we explore some of the most important philosophical questions shaping Africa and the world today.

Transcript

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Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 0:01

Maybe uh maybe we we we start with the fact that you were in the United States uh Northwestern University for a teaching gig when um Donald Trump was getting elected. Uh I thought maybe you could just surely these those elections concerned you and uh may since it was American society you were in would have been at the center of a lot of public discourse at the time and for political um commentators politics students, politics colleagues in the politics uh in uh just a sense of how it was like being there at that time and did your coming back have anything to do with that election?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Outcome? Very relevant question. Um so let me expand it a little and say that um I I have had the fortune as a student of society and a student of politics to be in the U.S. at very critical moments. Um 2019, Joe Biden announced his candidacy not too far from where I was, you know, in Boston. Um I was attached to Harvard University at the time. And, you know, um he went to a fire station, and that's where, you know, to symbolize his working class, you know, uh affinities. Um, and I saw those elections um when he defeated Trump. I this time around saw the reverse of it, you know, being in Chicago at Northwestern, as you've correctly pointed out, um, in the Department of Politics and African studies. And I taught in the Department of Politics, which, you know, would come back to your point about the discourse that unfolded in the course of the elections. But there was something else that was happening in the US whilst I was there in 2019. And now, it is that I saw the American society, particularly the black American society, you know, at moments when it mourned, you know, the passing of its most iconic cultural, you know, um, cultural uh practitioners. So uh, you know, in in in um 2019, uh that famous you know scholar who gave us the book The Bluest Eye and uh what's the other book? Uh uh I remember the name just now. Um, you know, had just died. Um uh Tony Morrison. Tony Morrison had had just died. And this time around, you know, uh Giovanni, Nikki Giovanni, you know, had had just passed, in fact, passed whilst I was there. Now these are two. Remember, you know, uh one received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Uh, you know, uh one considered herself, you know, a ghetto poet. Uh and they they were very key to preserving the black American, you know, history. And so I saw the American society, the black American society mourn. Uh, maybe mourn is not quite the right word, but go through the process of losing some of the very key people who were central to maintaining the memory of the black American slave. Um and those years coincided. The passing of you know, Tony Morrison, the passing of Nikki Chiovan coincides with elections, you know, in both ends. So I was, as you said, you know, in the US and I saw the elections, I saw the campaign. I saw the campaign, you know, uh a whole almost a year and a couple of months campaign leading up to the election of Donald Trump. I was teaching political science. I taught a course, you know, to third year students, uh, you know, which we titled Um Theories of Modernity. But it was about politics, basically. Uh, you know, um, and increasingly as the campaign unfolded, it became difficult in class to say certain things. Um not because one was not able to say them or capable of saying them, but I hadn't gone to the US, you know, to attract unnecessary attention, you know, and not that I feared what would happen, you know, uh, but I hadn't gone to attract unnecessary attention. But I also saw how the political space for debate in the university was closing because we had a black professor of channelism, you know, at Northwestern who was expelled, you know, for supporting the Palestinian encampments, you know, in my campus. And by the way, if you were South African, you would laugh at those protests. People erect tents, they have water in foot, they are sitting there, not a single class breaks. You know, nothing, you know. You walk past them, you go to class, they would never disturb class, you know. They just sit there on the lawns. You know, uh, it's nothing really that approximates a protest as we know it. Um so we had a colleague in journalism, a black American professor of journalism, who was uh expelled for supporting that encampment. In history, we had, you know, a professor of North African history, um, particularly Egyptian history, who was asked, you know, because many of the students who organized, you know, the encampments were from her course. You know, they were from Egypt, you know, uh, and somehow many of them wanted to understand that part of the world, gravitate to her course. So it appeared she supported the protest, and as it is a right for everyone to, but she was then charged for instigating, you know, the protest and was asked to submit her phone, you know, in order that the university may check if you know she had been, you know, deliberately instigating. So the political space for debate was closing, you know, gradually. That was within, so these examples are within the university, but there was also a larger debate in the public society that reflected an even more aggressive closure or contraction of the space for debate. The universities somehow still had to try and maintain a pretense that they were open, but you know, uh in the open public, there were no inhibitions. And so there the political space, you know, for public debate was was closing much faster. Trump came to you know a state not too far from Chicago, where I was, uh Ohio. And Ohio has had a large number of immigrants from Haiti. You know, we know the history of Haiti and the relationship with America. Um, has had a large number of immigrants from Haiti and went to Ohio basically to sympathize with white voters uh in Haiti who were complaining that these black people were actually eating their dogs and their cats, their pets. And it sounds, it sounds bizarre, but the truth is that the stadium was full and you had old people, you know, volunteering stories of how my cat disappeared, and I heard that it was, you know, slaughtered down the road by black people, and another one said my dog disappeared. Um so if you had a public discourse along those lines in the 21st century, and there was nothing wrong, you know, society found nothing wrong. Because I I think that what we must point out is that this is not a Trump thing in America. This is a resurgence of whiteness, basically, you know, of white racism, you know, coming back, you know, aggressively to the fold. So you had those kinds of discourses, and one wondered really what was left, what could not be said about us as black people. If we were back into, you know, you remember the Enlightenment philosophers who said all sorts of things about us, the Hegels, you know, the cats and all of those guys. It was as though they were having a second coming, you know, if we were eating dogs and cats. And lo and behold, there was never in the public discourse where Trump, there were sections of the press true, you know, that uh disagreed and rebuked him, but there was never really a downpour basically of outrage that would lead to him, for instance, retracting such statements. Um, so the counter was basically absent to that kind of discourse. And, you know, there were several other things I could go on that would make it obvious to one that um he did make a point that I thought was um sorry, he did make a point that I thought was um was a jest, but it was also a statement on us as Africans. Um when um he said we must all go back home, you know, the immigrants, uh and some other people who were saying, but you know, we bring skills, we bring expertise. He said, you know, if you are educated and you are skilled, your countries need you. It was a double-edged statement. It was a double-edged sword. The truth is true. Our countries, the continent needs us. You know, uh, why are we why are we? But I don't think that's what we want to discuss now. But I think at some point we must reflect on the double-edged nature of that statement. You know, um so at that point I realized that it would be very difficult for me as a student of politics and a professor of politics, you know, in a university in America to sustain my, you know, uh engagement with students and public uh engagements generally. And so when the results came, um I had a two-year contract. Uh I had a two-year contract. I then decided that no, maybe it was better to go. Maybe Trump was right that if we're educated, our countries need us. I see. And I I decided, you know, to return uh as a result of that, uh, I couldn't take on my second my second year of uh of of appointment.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 12:12

Hi, but um you've had also a very direct interaction with the Venezuelan people, Venezuela itself, um in light then of what looks like one of the most dramatic uh single-handed act, you know, in relation to Gaddafi, there was African participation. There was a participation of international forays. But the United States woke up in the morning and went to take Maduro and his wife on the basis that they are now called terrorists inside their country. Your leading of that movement um on the one hand, but also tell us on the other your own journey uh and interaction, the story of your interaction with the question of Venezuela.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

So um 2017, uh 2017 or 18, thereabout, um Maduro had ascended to power following the unfortunate passing of uh Hugo Chavez, uh Commandante Hugo Chavez. Um and about two, three years into his rule, you know, um Maduro was under siege, particularly from Western Marxists, you know, based in America and in Europe, who were beginning to denounce him, you know, as not a Marxist, you know, or basically casting dubitability on his Marxist credentials, um, and somewhat comparing him to Hugo Chavez, Command Hugo Chavez and you know, uh Fidel Castro. And unfortunately, whether they had ideological, you know, reasons for this, this, you know, barrage from Marxists, white Marxists, and we must be specific, it was from white Marxists, coincided with America's, you know, counteroffensive against, you know, um, against uh Venezuela. You would remember that America has done what it did to Maduro before, to Hugo Chavez, but did not succeed, you know, because the people rose and they had to return him. You know, um and this parage by white Marxists, by white Marxists coincided with America's, and there was legitimate fear within, you know, the political circles in Venezuela that there might be, you know, a confluence of these leading to America doing exactly what it had done to Commandante Hugo Chavez, which was to abduct him. And so Venezuelans realized that part of what was missing in the analysis of the white Marxists was the fact that they were so overly concerned with the conditions of living in Venezuela simply on the basis of class analysis. What their analysis led was two things, race and colonialism. And so I got an invitation, you know, from you know uh the government of uh Maduro in 2016, 2017, 2018, um to visit, you know, uh to visit uh Venezuela and travel the country and have a conversation with the people um in Venezuela about the experience of being colonized and of being racially, you know, dominated. Because what was missing, you know, in the whole discourse at that time was basically the history of slavery, the history of colonialism, and the history of racial domination. And so we were speaking back, we were invited by the Venezuelans, you know, to speak back to the white Marxists who were speaking right from the heart of the metropole that had been responsible for colonialism, and they somewhat had developed an amnesia about the fact that their own societies, and they were saying nothing about their own societies, casting aspersion on Maduro and odd enough, some of these critiques came from within America. You know, some Marxists from within America who forgot that a large part of the destabilization of Venezuela was actually America. So this very insular Marxist analysis allowed them to be ignorant of race and racism, to be ignorant of colonialism, and to be ignorant of slavery. So I was invited, you know, to spend some time. I think I spent a month and some weeks in Venezuela traveling the country, having a conversation with, you know, different people on TV, visiting uh the barrios, you know. So it was not the typical, you know, the typical uh elite visits that you see today when people visit. I I was taken to the rural areas, slept in the barrios. The barrios are the equivalent of Imjohn Doll. I stayed there. There was never five-star treatment. You know, uh I lived with the people, and it was my fortune once there to visit the grave of uh Comandante Chavez uh and developed a strong bond with the people of Venezuela. You know, uh we had from a distance admired the revolution that uh, you know, Comandante Chavez had instigated. But now I got to study closely the history of that revolution and that society. And since then I've maintained a very strong bond with the people of, you know, Venezuela, uh, the progressive forces, you know, in Venezuela. And I may digress and tell you what I saw in Venezuela because I'm a student of society, so wherever I go, I study society. They had, when Command Chavez took over, had said, we have always complained about, you know, the colonial nature of universities. Let us then have an alternative, you know, structure of a university. So they have something called UNEARTE, which is an experimental university of the arts. So they experiment about everything, the structure of the disciplines, you know, and everything, you know, and it allows them to break away or break out of the disciplinary boundaries, humanities, political science, and this, you know. I didn't have the time. I did give a few talks at Une Arte, but I didn't have the time to study closely the model. But it fascinated me because there was nothing set in stone. It was an experimental university. If we found that this didn't work this year, next year we changed it. And they said, until we are able to settle to a model that is an alternative. That's what decolonization means in real sense. Not the people who patronize, you know, they talk about decolonization and they are not ready, you know, to take such, you know, what here would be called risky steps. There was nothing risky about Une Arde. It was a fantastic university, it still exists, you know, uh, and it trains people in various ways. But to return to what has happened in the recent past, now, you know, American, within the American official dome, there is a part of the Pentagon that does what is called war gaming. Now, war gaming basically is a discipline where people, different experts, you know, gather to explore from different positions. So you would sit around the table. You are against the abduction of Maduro. I'm for the abduction of Maduro. This one is looking at Latis, stands for Latin America. So we would have gone away for six months, uh, and we had been experts in the area, would have gone away, visited the countries, and said, I have come from Latin America. This is the mood within Latin America. If you did that, this is what is going to happen. You know, and then the other person who says who's for this, it doesn't matter. If we go the realist way, they can't beat us militarily. And then the other person, so you may have about 15 people who look at, you know, the different, and they are experts. These are not uh chance takers, you know, these are people who've been engaged with, you know, different aspects. Some of them are economists. What would happen economically? Some of them trade, oil trade, you know, what would happen to? So we know that the abduction of Maduro was not discussed this time around for the first time. It had been discussed. Discussed before, uh, there had been a session on war gaming, you know, uh when um, in fact, twice before, when uh Obama was still in charge, and then when uh Biden was in charge. And on both occasions, it would seem that those who argued against it won. You know. And this time around, even those who were engaged in the previous experiments, you know, war gaming, were a bit surprised that it had happened. Um, because they say if that had happened, if that war gaming had happened in this instance, they don't see the facts supporting, you know, uh that that action. Um, which means that we are in a somewhat different era of politics, you know, spearheaded by Trump. It is that students of politics who see it and extrapolate on the basis of reason, on the basis of propositions, you know, argumentation and deductions, where we've we've long left that era behind. So when you then see it and try and make sense on the basis of such extrapolations based on objective rational argumentations, you're likely to miss basically what uh what Trump is all about. Racism, remember, thinks of itself, when European man becomes man-gode, it is what I want as man-gode. Everything else has to adapt to what I want. Trump represents the resurgence of the European man and you know, Western racism basically putting white people's interest at the forefront. Every other thing would have to follow suit. So if you start from why would it do that? It's undemocratic, you know, laws of international, you know, international law does not permit, you know, the white man doesn't care. He's the law, he's he's God, you know. Uh, and so we are going to expend a lot of energy trying to, you know, make sense on the basis of reason and rationality, you know, as to what is happening. Racism has never been rational. You know, it has never, it's never founded on reason. In fact, reason had to be in its savings, you know. Now, the the the the the abduction of Maduro, um, I know the the the regime closely because I I visited and I continue to visit Venezuela. We can blame Maduro for everything else, but you know, socialist regimes have never really been drug dealers. Uh socialist regimes have always prided themselves with a certain moral superiority. He may be guilty of other things, but certainly not a drug. Not drugs. Not, not, not drugs. But why are Americans buying the drugs?

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 25:02

Why are they buying the drugs? Yeah, I mean I mean the the argument uh of drugs makes no sense. Yeah. I want to propel you back. Something about the discourse on decolonization. I am not part of the academy. You know that I've uh had uh my share of it, but something about that I wanna I mean for a moment, maybe as a way to come back to the continent. Yeah. In in recent conversations, maybe there are ways of finding uh in the past where there may be connections, but I fear that often the African remains in the discourse of decolonizations, at least in these recent conversed versions of it, um as this figure whose uh form of knowledge must be outside of structure, okay, outside of um uh of structure seems to be the rejection in the main of the scientific proposition, okay. The African is this figure who must be released from science so then they can rely on spirits and on the one hand, but secondly, they can rely on uh impro improvise. They they must they have this capacity uh of it's not transcendence, but you know, in the colloquial sense. Yeah, yeah, it's not counted transcendental element, yeah. But in the uh the African must must uh rely on the spirit, must be allowed uh to go and rely on the spirit as a form of constituting a province of knowledge about the world, about themselves and all of that. They must improvise, yeah. Uh and I find that the it has produced quite mediocre and you you will tell me quite mediocre uh since it it premises itself on the rejection of drug science so that uh then it produces very mediocre responses to understandings of the world or understandings of the African question itself or the African condition. Um I don't want to go to uh you know my my references, but I I mean I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Exactly. Yeah. Which I I'd like to to invite you then to give us your thoughts on the relationship between decolonization and science. What should it be?

SPEAKER_00 28:47

So it's a it's a pretty involved question. Um I'm hoping that uh the time we have would be enough so that we're able to explicate it, you know, uh, you know, in in a manner um adequate to to the complexity. Let's let's first agree with you. The scholarship on decolonization is very mediocre in South Africa today. Uh in fact, I would go further than you and say that it is now used, you know, uh for career advancement. So people who write about write about decolonization, you know, uh sometimes decoloniality. Uh in fact, they they mostly prefer the disc the language of decoloniality. It is nothing but a ruse, you know, for for African mobility within the cultures. Um it it's a scholarship that, you know, basically mimics, you know, or repeats the same old methods of according to Walter Mignolo, decolonization is this, according to Maldonado Torres, you know, it is this. It is not in any way embedded in the lived experience of the black colonized that people are talking about. In fact, you can see the distance between the people who write, who make black people who are colonized, they make them objects, you know, of their study. Whereas they are saying they want to decolonize, and one of the things they want to do in decolonizing is to preach the subject-object cartesian distinction. But when you look at their writings, they still reproduce the black colonizers, basically the objects of their study. Um, so I'm there, I'm just going beyond the fact that I mean there's nothing really. There is as a body of thought. There are individual good works here and there. They are they are too far between, you know. Um, you know, so that we don't get into trouble. I won't mention those good, you know. But there are there's good scholarship in between. But as a body of thought, as a recognizable body of thought, basically decoloniality in South Africa is a rush. You know, it's it it it's it's it's it's in the language of young people, it's a scam. It is a scam. Yeah. Um now let us get back to the question that you are asking, uh, which is what is the relationship between decolonization and science?

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 31:21

This is, it seems to me, a very important question. It is. Because epistemically, yeah, uh after we we do we have to actually begin with what are we doing about the fact of having to know when we say we are decolonizing, that we have to know ourselves, our history, that we have to produce out of this knowledge solutions to the water problem, to the bread problem, uh, to artistic creativity, to beauty, to love. But the initial a priori qualification or other um uh question of what it is to know. Uh and I mean the West's answer is science. Yeah, it seems, or at least the West says that this science is theirs, but I mean, I'm I'm sure we all know that's another lie. But what is the relationship between decolonization and science? Because Jesus, are these chaps even scientists? Which ones? The ones were doing decolonization.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

No, no, but so that the the question is not lost, because it's a fundamental question, so that the the the the the seriousness of the question is not lost to to subtitle. Let let us let us contextualize it. So the coming into out of Europe, into the extra-European world of what you call modern science was not just the coming of modern science as what does it mean to know? You know, what are the basis of verification, what is an objective truth. That aspect, you know, of the export uh from Europe or import, you know, from Europe into Africa and the extra-European world, was the coming of what we call the modern meaning totality. Now, what is the modern meaning totality? It is science and more. It is that the advent of modernity in Europe from the 16th century onwards, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the Cartesian Revolution, the Copernican Revolution, and religious reform or Lutheran reform. As a result of these four, you know, processes, basically there was a transformation or a transition of society from in Europe what was the medieval society to the modern society. And that transition created what is called the modern, what I call a modern meaning totality, which is the way of being in the world, it's a way of thinking. It's so we I call it the modern meaning totality because it is a like carpet, you know, a wall-to-wall carpet. It such as everything. It leaves nothing unattended, it transforms meaning, you know, of anything. You would know as well as I do that the meaning, for instance, of pleasure changed as a result of modernity. We now think of tragedy, we now think of, you know, all sorts of things. You know, uh sorrow, the meaning of sorrow changed. Even how we feel, changed. Boredom. Even boredom, you know, assumed a different meaning. Alcohol was not always a source of pleasure. It is as a result of this transition, you know, from the medieval period to the modern meaning totality. Now, science, as it emerges in Europe, is encapsulated in large part by two of those four processes that we mentioned. It is the Copernican Revolution and the Cartesian Revolution. Fair enough.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 35:46

So there is I don't know why you would exclude industry there, but it's okay. Um I'm I'm with you for that.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Okay. Um these two encapsulate basically, let's call it the refinement of Western science into disciplinary knowledge. Because, you know, there's never always been chemistry, physics, and whatnot, pioneers and whatnot. How do these things arise? Because of that transition, industrialization leads to urbanization of society. New social exigencies arise and there has to be a response. Populations are cramped in the cities, the factories have been emerged as a result of industrialization, social housing becomes an issue, public health becomes an issue. And so disciplines emerge, all modern disciplinary knowledges, all of them, you know, without exception, as we know them today, as they are taught in the university, as they represent science, they emerge as a response to the exigences thrown up by industrialization. And so they are attached to the logic of capital. And so when you talk about science in the Western sense, remember I said this is a modern meaning totality, it's world to warm. When you accept science or when you accept the Copernican Revolution and the Cartesian Revolution, you've also accepted other things. Invariably, you've also accepted the generalization of Judo-Christian values in society. That's why we study the Protestant ethic, for instance, in sociology by Weber, you know, who tells us that societies with the Protestant ethic tend to do better economically. And it's held to be, you know, a proposition worth debating in science. Because there is a generalization of Judo-Christian values. So the acceptance of modern science is also an acceptance of these other generalizations that emerge from religion, particularly Judo-Christian religion. What I'm trying to drive at is that you may be on to a point, but the way you articulate it misses it, which is that the protestation against science, as it has emerged out of, you know, Europe's transition into the modern period is an acceptance of the modern Western meaning totality. And there is a problem then with that, because the ethic of that knowledge is an ethic of domination. Remember how that knowledge comes to us, it is via colonialism. Two, remember that that, you know, knowledge comes to us on the back of capital. So there's a close relationship between capitalism and, you know, this knowledge, because it's in service, you know, of capitalism. So what do you see as a pushback? Sometimes it's a pushback that is inarticulate, because it is an acceptance of science that basically teethers us onto capitalism. But because people haven't studied this, you know, they pretend to have understood it. They aren't able to articulate it. So once you accept modern science as formulated by the West as objective rational knowledge, you also have accepted the logic of capitalism. Now, this modern meaning totality that imposes itself on us via colonialism and violence today continues to perpetuate itself through violence. But it may not be physical violence. Remember, violence does not only have to be material and physical, it's also symbolic. So what people are protesting against is what they don't understand. How is it that we are teethered into this modern meaning totality in the name of science? They can't see, they look around, but it is symbolic violence. And what is symbolic violence? You must go to school, study this science, and society will reward you with a job, you know, and then it would attach to you a definition of success you were not party to. And then you are going to be termed successful when you were not there, when success was being defined, you know. So what people are pushing against, what you hear is an inarticulate analysis of what is the problem with modern science. That it is teethered or it teethers us into the Western modern meaning totality. Now, there are other meaning totalities that have existed in the extra-European world. But the dominant ethic of the Western modern meaning totality expresses itself in this way. You see, this Western form of science that we are talking about is very intolerant. It does not allow other forms of knowledge to coexist with it. If you want to suggest, you know, other forms of knowing and other modes of being in the world, this modern meaning totality says, come and justify them to me. You say you have ancestors, what is that? How do you know that they exist? It has already set the standard of proof for you, empirical validation. So it sets itself as the standard on the basis of which every other truth is to be measured. That is the problem then with this notion of science. It is its dominant ethic. You know, it is its inability to coexist with, you know, uh with other forms of truth. Leotard, you know, a French scholar, you know, um, has a interesting article titled What is Postmodernity? And says that, you know, since the era of modernity, the scientist has also arrogated unto himself or herself the responsibility of being a judge as to what is just and what is not just. And he says that's not a scientific determination. We say today, you know, on the basis of that modern science, you know, what is just and what is not just. The problem is that this modern meaning totality is also a judge. It first says, come to justify it's the standard, but it's also the judge. So you can pass the test of having knowledge as extra-European people only on the basis of its own, you know, standard. Now, here's the part where I agree with you. It is that because of a lack of understanding, people then say we must do away with this modern Western, you know, meaning totality and postulate all sorts of things as being evidence of African forms of knowledge. There is African form of knowledge, there's African epistemology, but they haven't studied it, you know, closely. So they postulate all sorts of things. The result is that because they haven't studied this Western modern meaning totality and mastered it, because unlike Europeans, extra-European societies don't have the luxury of being ignorant of the modern meaning totality because it has generalized itself all over the world. For us to get to anything else, our path will have to go through the Western modern meaning totality. We would have to understand it in order to get out of it. That's why Marx studied liberal economies before he could postulate an alternative. We don't have the luxury to be ignorant of it. They have the luxury to be ignorant of us. Because their knowledge has been extended to the extra European world, we have to be aware of it. Now that's where the discourse on decoloniality falls. Short because there is a refusal that I think is coupled with laziness, you know, to fully understand this modern Western meaning totality. To study it doesn't mean then that you can out of it develop original thought. Bigo read Hegel. You know, Bigo read several other Sartre and several other Western scholars, but he gave us original thought, that is peculiarly South African. You know, uh people come from all over the world to come and study it. Originality does not mean refusing influences, you know, that have come from outside. So the point I'm making is that the search for the alternative has unfortunately moved from a wrong premise because of an inability to understand fully the affliction that we've gone through as a result of the modern Western meaning totality that has embedded in it an ethic of domination.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 45:05

I have several um nodal points of differences, but I do think let's um as long as we agree, as long as we agree that um to the extent to which the project must be pursued, it is it must always already be committed to knowledge. Like that is important for me because I think there's um when you are decolonial in in in a sense, you know, you you sound like uh you are winging, you are composing as you go, you are as an as a essence non-structural. Um and I I think that falls into into a form where for instance those who must govern for instance who who must do who must predict the floods and plan for the floods as a matter of uh governmental rationality, yeah. You get what I mean? And those who must say, for instance, there is a budget or planning uh to take uh children to school every day. Okay, so the the children a hundred, they're they are traveling over this type of a distance, it's going to need thousand rats over the next 365 days. That that money is there, we reinfense it, tax, and we give it to these chaps of transport. They sign that they are paid, they must transport kids 365 days. That's that's proper. We don't retreat because then you wake up in the morning, uh, 80,000 children are not going to school for two months.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Um I I have to interject.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 47:50

Where where do those terrains of uh uh because look at this the form or the state of the state? Yeah. The state of maybe when I say the state of the state, you think I'm speaking about a very universal concept. I'm just how uh public management is occurring in South Africa, in the local state, in the national state, with public institutions, with the rest of uh the continent. If I'm in this decolonization, which obviously you've dismissed as it has signs of laziness, of not understanding sometimes uh the that which it critiques. Yeah. The scholars, where are they? Like that's why, in my view, it's that disconnect. The the academic, professorial, uh, public intellectual will not be able to tell you what's wrong with those Africans who will not be able to get the kids a bridge to a school over a river, or who are not giving kids toilets uh in a school and all of that. Then you are having a situation where there is a complete disconnect. People are talking about decolonization everywhere, but they are not able to scientifically or whatever the case of the label of knowledge it is that uh comes as a residue after decolonization, explain to us the acts and the behaviors, the phenomena of the post-colonial state, the phenomena of uh Cat McCala, of uh you don't the the discourse sort of sorts falls short to explain ourselves to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

So you've you've raised quite a number of very, very, you know, agent points that that that are to be discussed. Maybe one is so when we when people go to the university to study science anywhere in the world today, because of this modern meaning totality, they are told that the purpose of science is to explain. To predict and to control. That's the purpose of science. You know, if you study science deeply, um, it has it has those three purposes. Because once you are able to explain, you are able to predict. If I can explain our behavior here, then you know I can predict. And if I can predict, I can control. You know? Um now that's the that's what is considered to be at the core of you know modern science. Now, if you look closely at these three dimensional elements, you know, of science, explain, predict, and control, they already exude power. They already exude a sense of power because he who can explain can you know predict and then of course can control, controlling who. Now it takes us back to the association of modern knowledge or what you call science with power. What do you call the state, you know, the government rationality, is one such instrument of the expression of that power. What decolonization, I think, is concerned about are more fundamental questions that sit behind that rationality, that government rationality. Who is considered human and who's not considered human such that the very people we are talking about who don't give black kids transport to school, if those were white kids, they would give them transport to school. So it's not a pragmatic question. It's a philosophical fundamental a priori question. Who's human and how did that category human was arrived at? And how was it determined what kind of treatment is fit for this category of human beings and is fit for this category whose humanity is debatable. Because if we run to the pragmatic of the state, we are actually going to wreck, you know, along a branch from precisely what we want to escape from. Let me ask you differently.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 52:40

Africans have a peculiar and nonetheless not unique position of uh colonization.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

Okay.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 52:51

Um there are peoples of the world that are not African that have had this experience. And then there's this transatlantic uh black hole of. I think that almost in the colonial global movement, what happened in the transatlantic attributed a specific sign, a mark to the body that is African, which maybe a Chinese, an Indian may not quite fully appreciate. But nonetheless, here is a people dispossessed of their humanity. Um, China, Vietnam, India, uh, the East Asian people, as it were. It seems to me that in this proposition you are making about, for instance, whose humanity, something must have happened or should happen here, in the production of scientists or of scholars. I prefer scholars, yeah. Of scholars, in the production of social science practitioners, lawyers, uh, accountants, engineers that are being produced to partake in the management of the life of the affairs in the terrain that you call the pragmatic. Yeah. A sense of commitment, of fidelity. That if for instance, a despot in Singapore, in Malaysia, would have that, okay, that's fine. There's this Malaysian question, which is colonization slavery, ultimate abandonment even on Asian values. Yeah. And then there's a commitment to restrict. This production of uh these individuals who, you know, will do that. I'm saying in the end, yeah. D decolonization as a, what do you call it? What would we call it as a movement? I'm for not dismissed it, but um not as a replacement of one species with another, but as a recreation of of human beings who got a fidelity. To themselves and to those who look like that. To the school kids. Yeah. To the uh to the hospital, to ten visa hospital. That somebody would have allowed two billion rands to be looted completely on the everyday basis uh through invoices that are just five, three fifty hundred and thousand, four hundred for every day for two years until it was over two billion to organized criminals. I'm saying that at some point, at some point, we need to produce people that are different. True. And I wonder you are able to say with the status of decolonial studies at the moment, such a production firstly can understand and diagnose the problems, but secondly will be able to produce this revolutionary intellect intellect public servant, intellectual person.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

So I think what you are doing is to burden the discourse of decolonization with a task that is partly its own. So the discourse of decolonization, cum a movement on decolonization here, has to be both a cause and an effect. It has to produce these academics, but it itself needs to be instigated by a state that is committed to decolonization.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 57:00

It could be a counter-cultural cause. It could be a it could be, for instance, uh a revolution, like um uh when Fidel and them constitute the July 26th movement, it is within a state that is already independent. And they are reading Batista, um, and they are rejecting injustice, uh, which is being enacted by a certain post-colonial potentate. Yeah. Um so he here is what As a counterculture, so to speak. You know, I mean uh to use those uh terms as well, that is like Yeah, but amazing uh Gramsci, the concept of counterculture, uh revolution as the the countercultural commitment to the propositions of oppression, at the center of which it's lies. It's a lie, this thing that um for instance blacks are inferior. I mean, it's just a lie that was uh and uh I was reading Diosoga's letter, a public article, 1836, that he wrote in reply to some white priests saying Africans are helpless, in about a century they won't exist. He says, but I see Africans existing every extinction, socially engineered by human beings. And he counts the events to your soul. Says, I think they'll still be here. He says, because in the main, all these extinctions, they've they carry a lie and an act of violence. Yeah. But that violence will not make that lie true. Yeah. Nonetheless, this these are human beings. And uh uh if Georgias Batay was in the room, he'll be like, haven't you seen the economic function of waste? But turning something into waste has never meant that it has then completely been deranged of use. Waste can still be used to value. I mean, this is this is revolutionary, so to speak, if you think in those terms. But for us and um Achille in particular, uh it's to to uh precisely rescue the fact that even the ultimate violence of of the Holocaust, even the ultimate violence of a genocide, so to speak, as Dio Soga says, couldn't extinguish Shakespeare, the Jews. It couldn't extinguish you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:58

No, so uh let us look at the trajectory of post-colonial African states so that we would be able to then explain exactly what we are asking us to where is, you know, or why haven't we produced, you know, this public servant, you know, yeah, this this revolution.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:00:18

Yeah, maybe we can do the Sahel at this moment. Let uh take me through the Sahel on the basis, on the back of this question. Let's leave these ones who are providing transports uh to children. Yeah. Let's do let's do West Africa. Uh maybe it's a bit better, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:39

Um, so if we abandon completely that question, I mean, um we don't abandon it.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:00:44

We carry it with us and say what has happened, what has happened to West Africa? It's older than us. Yeah. The decolonization has been in West Africa longer than it has been in South Africa from a point of view of Africans who are now running their affairs and all of that. They've been running there. I don't know whether they are running those affairs, but if you were to say the status of decolonization in West Africa with the recent coups, Mali Niger and and um Burkina Faso.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

So let me start here, um, which is that unfortunately we meet at this time when, as the continent, we are in a very desperate situation. Desperate in a sense that unlike the decades before, say 1990, unlike before, post-1990, as Africans, we've been confronted by political, social, and economic problems, not only at a practical level, but even the tools with which to make sense of those problems we do not have. Now, let me try and make obvious what I'm suggesting. Immediately after independence or in the era post-independence, African scholars, you know, were confronted with the first generation of African scholars, was confronted with the question as to what kind of social science, you know, are we going to enact as African scholars? And the answer was simple. African social scientific thought would have to be responsive and relevant. Now, what did that lead to? It is that if you watch closely the evolution of politics in Africa from the 1960s up until maybe mid-1990s, there is a parallel movement of political developments with scholarship that makes sense of those political developments. Now, again, to explicate this, let's work in reverse. By the 1990s, late 80s, 1990s, Africa was basically at the throes of structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. If you look at African social scientific thought, it was concerned with structural adjustment and proposed alternatives to structural adjustments. You know, there were all sorts of alternatives to structural adjustment. Move, you know, back from the late 80s to early 90s to, you know, the late 60s, early 70s. There's a dominance of coups, you know, in West Africa, which we'll get into in a moment. You know, if you look at Nigeria, for instance, you know, since independence in 1960, other than the first president post the Second World, I mean, post-the civil war in Nigeria, the next president is a military head of state, Yakubu Kawan, followed by Shagari, followed by Buhari, followed by, you know, Obasanjo, followed by Babangita, followed by Abacha. Only after Abacha, when Obasanjo returns. Now, as you have all military heads of state. All military heads of state. With coups. With coups. Coming into power via coups. You know, as that was happening in Nigeria, the same thing was happening in Ghana. You know, um, the longest serving of the Ghanian military heads of state is, you know, the flight lieutenant uh Gerald Rawlings. You know, um, if you look at African scholarship at that time, there is a parallel boosioning of scholarship on civil-military relations. You know, scholars like Ebo H. Fool, Ghananian scholar, Payo Adia Kanyeo, you know, a Nigerian scholar, these were the leading lines. So when we were, the point I'm driving at is that in as much as the continent we've been confronted with problems, political, economic, and you know, social problems, scholarship has not been too far off, you know, to offer the handles with which to make sense of the problems that we were confronted with. You know, African scholarship has always been relevant and responsive, you know, to the political problems that. And there were organizations that had been set up, you know, within the continent by African scholars precisely to ensure that our scholarly agenda as Africans was not externally determined. You know, Kodesia was one of them, and there were several other pairs in Zimbabwe, you know, and several others. What this enabled us as Africans was that we observed a problem in society, and then we threw scholarship or scholarly resources at it, let us. Study this phenomenon so that we may make sense of it. So if we were still in that era, the people we are talking about, we would have identified it at an intellectual level and said, how it is that people who struggled for hundred years to liberate, you know, black people suddenly turn into criminals and point the guns at the very people that they wanted to liberate. Now we would have thrown intellectual resources into it and made sense of it. But what has happened in Africa from the 19 late 90s onwards is that African scholarship has become an eclectic, basically. You know, um, it is now you follow whatever brings more money, you know, and or whatever takes you to professorship quicker. Quicker, you know, you you follow that route. So there is our scholarship has too much uh uh as well like uh a sense of uh escaping the world.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:07:04

People are talking about being um I don't know the word, but uh being free, like being free from everything, ultimately from responsibility. If the proposition has always been we want to be responsible for ourselves, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

No bafu no are um so that scholarship and go to the yeah uh to the cryptique. Yes. You see, that scholarship that was responsive and relevant and responsible. You've added the third element, which was actually the definition African scholars gave to African social scientific thought. There's been a disintegration of that collective, you know, identity of African scholars who are concerned with making sense from an African perspective, not patronizing the African perspective, from a real African perspective, the problems with which we So what would be what you're telling us is that the this uh Sahel moment of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso shouldn't be understood as new.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:08:18

You are very called. It is part of what often occurs in. So is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

What often occurs in West Africa? So if we understand, um let me get to this point in answering you via a different way. One of the tragedies we suffered as South Africa is that post-1994, we are basically the last country. No, 1994, we are the last country to gain independence. Or well, maybe now you can um, you know, uh what's that country that gained independence for Morocco? Western Sahara hasn't, yes. Yes, you know. But we are the last country to gain independence. So we had the benefit of we could basically look at the rest of the continent and see where it went wrong. Now, what we suffered was the continued domination of South African social scientific thought by white scholars who refused the comparison of South Africa with the rest of the continent. If you even look at the scholarship on democratization in South Africa in the 90s, it compared South Africa to Latin America, South Africa to Eastern Europe. So what happened in South Africa could not be compared to the rest of the continent in 1960 because the terms of the debate would have been this is the moment of independence. What is a sine quanon, you know, for independence? What do countries do when they become independent? So white scholars precluded the possibility of using the rest of the continent as the mirror with which to look at South Africa's reality in 1994.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:09:55

But this is where this is the same with the but doing recent decolonial studies. They are not taking us to the continent, are they? No, they are not, unfortunately. They will not uh they will not be able to traverse with us uh uh the different regions, the different phenomena, uh, but they will not impose this comparability, which Mamdani actually makes in citizen and subject, this sort of uh South African exceptionalism. Penalism. Uh the complaints better. Somehow something exceptional happens. Yeah, yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

Okay, uh proceed. But so the I'm going to West Africa. I'm saying that if we had benefited ourselves from that vantage point we were at and looked at the rest of the continent, you know, as the mirror, you know, with which to understand us, our analysis of not just South African problems, but of the rest of the continent would have been very rich. So one of the limitations of South African scholarship today is that it has refused to take the African experience seriously. Now, let's return to West Africa to explicate that, that refusal to take the African experience seriously. Today everyone talks about, you know, Mali, Niger, and and and uh, you know, Burkina Faso and the military coups that have happened in that era, as if, or let's put it this way, the explanations are very present. People are looking for explanations in the present. If you look at the history of West African politics post-independence, you would see that throughout West Africa, one of the distinguishing markers of politics in West Africa post-independence has been the prevalence of military couples in West Africa. Now, in scholarship, there were many explanations for this. In fact, some of the scholarship encouraged these couples, you know, in West Africa. We've exemplified with Nigeria and you know, uh we've exemplified with Ghana. Burkina Faso itself is not new to, you know, Sankara had come to power via, you know. So we we we have several experiences of military couples. And if you look at not just these countries, several other countries, they've had these coups. What was the scholarship? What was the historical explanation? Why was there a prevalence of military coup in West Africa? In early comparative politics, there was a number, there were a number of theories that were proposed by American scholars, especially. One of the theories was the theory of a praetorian state. Now, what was the what was the theory of a praetorian state? You know it. The soldier. Yeah, yes, you know. And not only maybe for the viewers, we must explain if you're not. Yes, yes, yes, please do. So basically, the theory of a praetorian state, which comes out of early comparative politics, particularly in America, says that African societies or newly independent societies have not established a strong enough, you know, political machinery to cope with the pressures of the demands and you know agitations that mostly to resist the immediate dependency.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:13:28

They don't have enough machinery to resist post-independence, the tendency to quickly look back to the master for tutelage. So if you're going to continue that independence in the development of society, you're gonna need the military. Yeah. Okay, please explain. I'm remembering now, yeah. But you explain it. Um, I think you have a very good unfolding of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

Yeah. So the theory of the proletarian state basically, as I've said, you know, there is a worry in the West to come closer to. There is a worry in the West, and then sometimes the worry is self-manufactured in the West, basically, which is that these societies are not strong enough, they would not be able to withstand the pressures of political agitation and you know, the demands that the citizens are going to make for rights and all of those things, and that might lead to collapse. In order to, you know, preclude the possibility of collapse, let us narrow the political space, you know, in these societies. And so a praetorian state is a very small but strong state, you know, that does not, you know, uh allow for all liberties, protest, and everything, but it is focused on developing societies. So the trade-off is that, you know, we give you development, quote and unquote, we deny you rights and other things, you know, crudely put. And the military is considered to be the best avenue, you know, to actualize this theory of a praetorian state. And so the support by the Western world of military coups and the tolerance, because the support was not always people say, but there was no, you know, direct support. It was the tolerance that the West showed to some of these military coups, you know, justifying them sometimes, you know, or post-decoup not saying anything and allowing those military coups. I mean, we now know from evidence emerging that actually Ivory Coast, you know, um had to approach France, you know, in order to support the coup against um um um um the Bukinabe, the um Thomas Sankara. So the West did not support it directly, but you know, sometimes it it you know gave window guidance. So that was the first theory that you know came out of comparative politics, early comparative politics. The second theory that came out of comparative politics was the theory of a modernizing soldier. Remember, modernization theory had said that, you know, Africa was at the throes of modernization. And the theory of a modernizing soldier basically said that if you want these societies to develop fast, it is best because the military, you know, is always, and when you say the military, all the facets, the Navy, the Air Force, you know, uh, and the military, um, because they depend on up-to-date technological advancements. The supposition was that if you have the military in power, this drive for being technologically advanced and being up to date will decimate, or rather, will, you know, flow down to society. And soldiers were assumed to be, or the military rule was assumed to be the best vertical for modernization. And so it helped. Both somehow depend on the military, both theories. Both theories depend on the military. Okay. Because we're trying to explain the predominance of military calls in West Africa, you know, uh, and and in that history of, you know, West African politics. And of course, Nigeria being the dominant power in West Africa since independence, what it meant is that, you know, even with the coming into existence of ECHOAS, you know, which is uh their equivalent of Sardet, with the coming into existence of ECHOAS, the idea of the military being out of power could not be at the center of West African, you know, regional agenda. Because the dominant power itself are soldiers. A soldier.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:55

So the politics of command, yes, you know, commanding of commanders, yeah.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:18:01

You know, um, everybody you tell left right and send it's just been collectors as a command. The the the person you are paying um taxes to is a command, is a command. Yeah, so and even vice-chancellors by the commanders, but um well as the traffic warden, the guy who's controlling as a military is a company.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:25

You know, he he commands the traffic with co-op, is a commander.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

Yeah, um, but there was a generalization of that culture when I went to Ibadan University in Nigeria prior to my arriving, Kenop, and there had been a time when um there were military, you know, vice-chancellors in Winnipeg.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:18:45

Why doesn't it work? I mean, this is I know I'm pushing you. Yeah. It's it's uh the ampheth attempt, traw re is the ampieth attempt. There's and it seems to me that there's always very justified conditions, like, or very justified reasons. France must get out. This chap is collaborating with France, or this delivery, that delivery. Sometimes uh they are wrong, they are not justified because they are taking out a progressive leader and who is against actually A Sangar, yeah, and all of that. But you seem to be saying the military has been busy in the Western region of the world, and we we we I want to then push you to theoretically, that's what the expectation is. Why hasn't the military despot uh the modernizing soldier gotten it right? I mean for us here were obsessed with elections. Yeah, I mean South Africans have been doing elections as a form of politics for the whole of the 20th century. Yeah. Where Africans were as a political form, they were always electing each other in the unions. Uh the the actually the Eastern Cape or the Cape was delayed to come to the Congress movement because they had hopes of the franchise. Yeah. Until it was taken away in the 30s. You know, they were less participating in the African National Congress and national politics. But in a sense, when you look at that, suddenly today there are people who think maybe that's the option. The military. A militar, yeah, a modernizing soldier.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:39

Yeah. So let's first start here. In order to have a military government, you need a political culture that is, let's not say receptive, that can reproduce military rule. I think this is where some people miss it when they, you know, think that it is every society that can have a military coup. No, leave South Africa. No, no, I'm not making that point.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:21:07

Yeah, I don't care at this stage. But you are noting 50 years or more. So there's a political culture that was not collaborating with these military establishments in West Africa?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:22

No, I'm saying because of this extended experience in West Africa of military rule, there has developed in West Africa a political culture. People know how to respond. I see. When a military regime mounts, you know, the stage and hits the president and makes the announcement, borders are closed, you know, and all of that. Nigerians know what to do at that point. But why hasn't it worked, this form to sort of do the upliftment of the things of society, yes. So um now the theory of a modernizing soldier was in part, unfortunately, mired in the Cold War. Comparative politics as it emerges in America, remember comparative politics starts in America, and the the intent is, or the driving intent is that America post the Second World War realizes that if it's going to compete with the Soviet Union for spheres of influence, you know, it needed to have a foothold in these places, these, you know, societies. But, you know, for Europe, it had had colonies. For the Soviet Union, it had supported liberation movement, so it had an entry point. America had no entry point into these societies. Now its entry point was comparative politics. So in 1953, the American Social Science Research Council establishes a committee for comparative politics headed by James Moot Coleman. And its purpose was basically to study African societies and other, this is what became area studies, you know, in order that America's extension of its influence would be based on knowledge or understanding of these societies. So this was not an honest theory. What I'm driving at is that these theories, either the theory of a modernizing soldier or the praetorian state, these were not honest theories, you know. They were part of the Cold War, you know, so that America, because it had studied these societies, its entry point was through knowledge of these societies and then began to develop models, you know, for these societies. In fact, if we were to move a bit away from these two theories, a good example of what comparative politics at that time was doing is a book by W.W. Rostow, Stages of Growth. Yes. A non-communist manifesto. That's the full title of the book. You know. So the intent was to develop via knowledge or to extend influence via knowledge into these societies. Many of the militaries in these societies were really nothing to write home about, remember? They were not fully developed. They were not fully developed missionaries. What would mean is that it would open them up to American support. You know, we can support you, we can develop your military. Since it is, you know, what is going to drive your development, let's have military packs, cooperation, development, you know, and we can train your military and whatnot. It had found an entry point, you know, into influencing the politics of these societies, which it didn't have because it didn't have colonies. And unlike the Soviet, it had not supported liberation movements. So the theories don't succeed in part because they were not honest. They were not, these were not burnent soldiers, you know. This was, these were not, you know, uh real soldiers committed to their countries. You know, these were politicians in military, in military uniform, basically, you know. Um, the only difference between them and the politicians, the comprador, you know, if we're to take Fanon, was simply that these ones were in military uniform, you know, uh, and enjoyed the support of the West. You know, they were in military uniform, but also enjoyed the support of the West and had an extra, you know, resource, which is coercive machinery in order to dominate society. So it was bound never to succeed. But I'm not sure. I don't participate in the theory of development. In order to be genuine, it has to be participatory. I mean, uh, other people would make that argument. I don't think that, you know, there is any causal relation between participation and development. We've seen societies that are less participatory, developing, you know.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:26:06

Um but I mean, in the end, uh the truth is I think that's a bastardization, as it were. Because the ontology of authority is nonetheless uh anybody who's gonna think that authority by its nature is going to survive without legitimacy, is that there are different forms of legitimization. Yeah. And even in Western societies, um they get very little particip because bureaucratization is another form. Look at the level of election, election, because that's the only real participation. Exactly. I mean, that's the point I'm making here that to even think that what the West calls democracy is by measures, if the measure is participation, yeah, it is it differs from the Chinese, for instance, where there are no open elections, yeah, um, is almost uh an argument against degrees not quite formal because of how bureaucratized. Hence Trump's cry about the deep state, the deep state, the deep state. What he's talking about is that America is not the democracy. What's wrong in your in your view with the African despot?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:32

Maybe I put it differently.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:27:37

When you look at Shore, yeah uh and the new benevolent soldier who has a man as well as uh his other soldiers, his programs up to this point. Uh what is the idea? This will be a different outcome from the upliftment of the living conditions of people.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:09

So the answer is yes and no.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:28:13

Um answer is literally a non-answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:18

No, no, you see, in a dialectic, the negative and the positive can coexist. No, uh, here is my point.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:28

I still think that at least from our ability to read human intention, as far as we can go in reading human intention, there's no doubt that there is good intent. Yes. We can't doubt the commitment. Hence we call them benevolence. We can't doubt the good intentions that good intentions and human actions have to occur within the objective material conditions. And I think that there is a structure. There is a structure that constitutes those objective material conditions that is going to make it very difficult to break out, which is not to say that the experiment must not then go on. No, no, no, not at all. There is a structure of the regional economy, of the African economy, the international economy, that is going to, at a certain point, you know, begin to squeeze these projects, you know. And not that they are naive, they don't know. I mean, they've they've demonstrated, you know, very well that they they understand this. I think that this movement, this movement cannot unfortunately be a movement of one or two African states. That's why I say the answer is yes and no. It is that in order for it to have sufficient armor and room to resist these structural pressures that are going to come in, closing on them, it requires, it needed to be at least a regional movement. If the whole of West Africa, for instance, was on board, you know, it would be able to resist. You know, all of the countries are landlocked. You know. You know, but there are several other limitations, you know, uh, they they all depend, you know, on importation of oil, you know. Uh so at a point, those things are going to begin to make themselves felt, you know, because you know, you don't have a sufficient armor, you know, to push back. It needed to be a regional or an African project. Now, I do not think they have to wait. I mean, we have seen how, at least at an ideological level, they have shamed the conservative Nigerian government, for instance, you know. Um, and that is part of the project of you know conscientization. You know, uh, and so they've done us a huge favor of saying that no, you know, actually, you have not been thinking about this. And this is reflective, by the way, of the death of ideologically and relevant African scholarship. Because suddenly, you know, you were not able to make sense like we did in the 1960s, make an analysis of the two groups, you know, towards the formation of the OAU, the Casa Black. Now, in this instance, you see the analysis between, you know, the conflict, or rather, the interaction between Burkina Faso, Somali and Nietzsche and Nigeria, it's void of ideological analysis.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:31:50

Yeah, but I thought there was decolonization studies. This is my point originally. My original point is uh after like all these huge ruptures in the continent happen at the back of at least a decade of people saying they are busy with decolonization studies. Suddenly, there is no help. I mean what are the scholars saying about Tanzania? There were bees and Business, they were being promoted. No, I think they rejected whatever, they rejected the discipline of science, you know, in a sense that when I think of great scholars, uh, for instance, uh great uh intellectuals in the continent, they don't have the discipline of Ali Mazui. They don't have the discipline of let's not even go as far back as Ali Mazrui. They don't have the discipline um uh of Mahmoud Mamdani. Uh what what what what what really happens most of the time is uh a festival of peripheralism.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:15

Look, I agree with you, but whether I disagree with you, I mean uh the rush to say that uh how do you put it? You say that there was a refusal of science or something.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:33:24

So so um you don't like the term science, but to do knowledge, was go Venezuelans say come and interact with us. Uh what do you do? Like a good uh you said student of society, uh uh you read what uh their institutions are about. Uh you listen to them, you listen to their debates, you get embroiled in their lived experience in order to come up with a perspective of some sort, which you then engage with and against them. You you you do what discourse must, what living in any way should be, you know. Uh but that discipline, that discipline to to study, to to study, to say, I actually, as I speak now, don't understand this phenomenon. In order to understand it, I must go and uh have it say what it is and look at its many parts and and so on and so forth. I mean a social science. Uh but ideologically, uh that's where we have to draw a propelling of the hard sciences, a propelling of the engineers, a propelling of the uh quantum physics and all those chaps that normally don't think about the ideological proposition. We have to, we're by now we could have already sourced decolonization uh, you know, in in quantum mechanics, uh in artificial intelligence and all of that. My point is at the point at which there's butjoying of decolonization studies, we are letting it. Army happens, uh Niger happens, Niger happens, Madagascar happens in the most recent years. Um there are huge protests in Kenya, in Tanzania, uh huge protests in Mozambique. Uh you know what I mean? And then the scholarship is nowhere to be found. Where is it? It's it's somewhere, but not there. Um it is somewhere. It is. I'd uh that was what I wanted to ask you. Where is it if not making knowledge about and for the continent? Which I'm saying is science, whatever uh the point there, my contestations are not uh at uh at odds per se. I'm looking for scholarly knowledge on these things about ourselves. Yeah. Now we agree, scholarly knowledge, not science. Somebody would have said Mali is gonna happen if scholarship about this continent existed. Somebody would have already said to us, um, you know, the chaps of the whites here in South Africa are already saying where we are going to be in 2050. But they are not politicians, scholars in different research departments as well as research outfits. They are busy that all the time to say 2029, a combination of what was the former liberation group, yeah, will score below 50% of the electorate. Therefore, the following. You know what I mean? They are the decolonization studies. What is it saying, for instance, about the Sudan?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:21

To start with, Mbuisene. I mean, if you want a very unfortunate answer, is that in South Africa today you can't get more than 10 black South Africans who would be able to speak intelligibly about the continent. When I say intelligibly, who would be able to tell you the history of Nigeria, the history of Kenya, the history. It is not their fault. It is the fault of the education system. How do we educate them? Now we lost. We said, I don't think we we now can hide the fact that the nationalist movement was outmaneuvered by, you know, the white settler colonizers in South Africa. We were completely outmaneuvered, you know, and they retained control over the institutions of socialization and institutions.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:38:09

The President Baby made uh this concession on this platform when it comes in the main to education, because it's very strange because they they were in the continent. Yes. Yes. And they were educated, some of them, yeah, by the by institutions in the continent in uh Lusaga, in Tanzania, and Harare, and Nigeria, uh they understood the continent. Very much so. They lived. And they knew the continent's implications on us and our South Africa's implications to the continent and all of that. I understand, but I thought this decolonization was this statement you're making, that the recognition of this problem and something having to be made about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:57

And I'm saying it's I think accept the fact that the people who trade on decolonization are self-centered, self-interested academic.

Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi 1:39:08

But it's only if they're not talking about education, if they're not talking about the continent.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:12

Give up and let's let's then we'd have a conversation. Give up on them, and we can have a conversation. There's nothing you're going to get out of those people. You know, they are interested. What's the next opportunity to get out and go somewhere, you know, using this ticket? You know, what when is the next round of promotions? You know, they're not interested in building institutions, in building research outfits, you know, uh, they're not interested in having PhD laboratories. You know, I always dreamt that, you know, if the movement had sent us out, you know, to study in the continent, they would around us, you know, constitute PhD laboratories where I can take students to Nigeria for six months and teach them West African politics from West Africa, take them to East Africa, teach them East African politics in West Africa, you know, because where then does your cohort of foreign affairs practitioners come from?

unknown 1:40:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:09

You know, this civil servant you were talking about has to be manufactured in those PhD laboratories, you know, that we ought to have had. We were completely outmaneuvered. You know, the movement itself considered us its enemies. You know, at a point, we were not wanted, you know, by the movement. Somehow, you know, we had some scavy or leprosy, you know, within the movement. And the result is that the institutions of mass culture and institutions of socializations, you know, perpetuate a certain kind of knowledge that is turned away from us as black people as and the continent. The result is that we aren't able to go back, for instance, to West Africa and make sense of the developments in West Africa such that, remember, you explain, you predict, you control. We couldn't predict because we hadn't even begun the task of understanding in order to explain. All right. You shaba.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:13

Thank you, my brother.