Emerging Africa

I thought Ubuntu was a super cool operating system for my laptop and PC! All this time, and it had to do with Steve Biko??

Thanks for the post, Nic. It is going to require some thought on my behalf, but I will be posting such (perhaps not in touch enough) as soon as I have an idea...

www.ryanpeterwrites.com
"The Glory of God is man fully alive" - St Iraneaus

I'm still not sure what people mean by "postcolonial". I've got a slitely better idea of "postmodern", though it can mean a huge variety of things.

Thanks for opening the debate, Nic, but I think you make to much of the difference between postmodernism and postcolonialism and especially of 2 groups within emerging thinkers/doers that would identify themselves as one or the other.

I imagine most folks visiting emergingafrica have a fairly clear idea of what postmodernism is, or at least what it is reacting against, but I suspect the problem is defining postcolonialism, and it is a minority who have read or thought much about the latter.

Postcolonialism is a term that is most commonly used in literary studies and generally refers to writers like Achebe, Serote, Soyinke, Marechera, etc. (in the African context) whose writings are dominated by their reaction to the history of colonialism. The dominant theme is postcolonial identity: who are you when your cultural identity has been systematically denigrated and stripped from you? The role of missionaries and the form of Christianity they brought from the West has played a major role in many of these writers - especially as many were educated in mission schools.

More recently (1980s & 1990s) the term postcolonialism has been taken up by philosophers, cultural theorists and political scientiests as a broader category to describe an epistemology that dethrones Western rationalism and empericism as the 'objective' measure of truth and culture (as in being 'civilized'). The seminal work is Edward Said's 'Orientalism' (1978).

From the last paragraph you will see how close the overlap is with postmodernism, which is simply the same reaction against the Enlightenment project but coming from Western thinkers. The overlap is also close because most non-Westerners who think in postcolonial terms received their education in Western universities (another source of identity confusion), and therefore read the same books as their Western, postmodern counterparts. In fact, Derrida was born in Algeria, so his thinking was birthed out of a reaction to colonialism and Foucault's hermeneutic of suspicion towards power imbalances has been as influential in postcolonial discourses as in postmodern.

The differences are therefore related to context and what the most pressing issues are, rather than paradigmatic. And I think this is where some of the criticism has come in posts on this site. If this site really is emerging Africa, than surely the topics for discussion should reflect the African context (at least some of the time!).

It is true that in a globally connected world the issues of people living in urban centres will be pretty similar, but a real danger for white South Africans living in a postapartheid society (which also has unique features not shared by most other postcolonial societies) is that they retreat from public life and specifically use religion and spirituality as an escape from their responsibility to do something about continuing inequality, ignorance and prejudice.

This is about far more than soup kitchens and even housing foreigners in our church halls for a couple of weeks, because then it is still us and them, givers and receivers. And no matter how good they are (and relevant to us personally), if we are only reading American emergent authors and meeting in coffee shops with like-minded, white, emergent types, then we are not living out the gospel that Jesus lived and taught, i.e. breaking down all barriers, acting justly and being one.

As descendants of the colonizers and as carriers of the collective guilt of white South Africa we need to think and be postcolonial as much as the colonized (even if they don't always feel like 'our' issues) because we also lost our identity and aren't sure of who we are anymore. And at the same time when those binary oppositions (colonizer/colonized, black/white, bourgeoisie/proletariat) become gross simplifications we need to be postmodern and surf the criss-crossing waves of cultural and theological discourses (popomopoco?) and see what emerges...

After mulling it over for a couple of days, some observations.

Postcolonial is the African version of postmodern.

Colonialism brought modernity to Africa.

Colonialism took place when modernity had reached its peak in Europe, and so the meeting of Africans and Europeans in much of the continent was the meeting of modernity and premodernity. Many people speak of "African" and "European" ways of thinking, but what are described as characteristically "European" are in fact characteristically modern. There's nothing genetically "African" or "European" about it. Premodern society and thought in Europe would look remarkably "African" to people who confuse European thought with modernity.

One of the products of the introduction of modernity in Europe was the Great European Witch Hunt, which lasted about 200 years. Journalists often (mistakenly) like to describe it as "medieval". It wasn't. It took place in Early Modern Europe. And the rise of witch hunts in Africa may possibly be a product of the impact of modernity on premodern societies.

African Independent Churches, especially Zionist ones, were a re-adaptation of a modernised Christianity to a premodern society. That is why the Zionists have probably contributed more to the spread of Christianity in the subcontinent than any other group.

Now we are seeing the spread of a modernised Neopentecostal Christianity in much of Africa. Instead of cowhide drums they have electronic instruments and amplifiers. Instead of the white robes of the Zionists, meeting under trees, we have suits in TV-studio sanctuaries preaching from perspex lecterns. Actually, nowadays even the Zionists meeting under trees are rocking up in their BMWs and 4x4s -- check Melville Koppies and the banks of the Jukskei on a Sunday afternoon to see what I mean.

The trouble is that in many ways postcolonial still looks like modernity.

Things get a little messy when we start talking definitions...
I think, Steve Hayes, that what you describe in your comment is very much an off-shoot of modernity and not what I imagine post-colonialism to be. At the Amahoro conferences a very different kind of post-colonliasm (in the Church context) seemed to be emerging which had little to do with robes or amplifiers. It had much more to do with reengaging the Bible from deeply within an African context, shaking off progressively more of the cultural baggage preventing us from being authentic (this would include amplifiers and robes) and seeking ways to really transform communities with the gospel. What's happening in small pockets of Central and East Africa is something quite tremendous, quite uniquely African and quite different from the stuff described in your comment.

I recommend all the readers of this blog to go back to Marius's comment here and read and reread those last two paragraphs. That seems to me a fantastic starting point for rethinking the way forward for Emerging Africa.