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Critical reflections on colonial legacies in the African Academy:

Critical Reflection on colonial legacies in the African Academy.  Challenges and prospects for the future:

We need to understand what colonization is and what it has brought with it that Afrikans are rejecting, what is its legacy in the Academic environment. Understanding the colonial institutionalising of the education system:
Definition: colonisation is an ongoing process of control by which a central system of power dominates the surrounding land and its components (people, animals etc.). – Wikipedia
Western Education was an important tool in making sure that  colonisation was effective and was needed to pacify the Afrikan. Education was used to restructure Afrikan communities and cultures, to make them more Eurocentric. The French used a policy called emulation that made Africans in their colonies aspire to be more like their French masters. Those who sounded and acting like the Frenchman, were given full citizenship.
The idea of being like the West is one that our institutions teach, the closer you are to the Western Culture, the higher your chances of making it in Afrika and the global community are.
Slave master model. – Curriculum
Our institutions still teach us on the Master and slave model and structure. You study how to work for Western, “Global” companies. The curriculum assist in understanding global markets and industry. Global excludes Afrikan (the Global South). When you are studying Bcom or Law, you are given dreams of working for the big five or the top firms, which are usually Western companies, or what we call “international companies”, they give out bursaries and have a big say in the curriculum you consume. The reason so many graduates don’t have jobs in South Africa,  is because the system has not taught them how to survive in Afrika and for the Afrikan environment.
Fields such as sociology and anthropology have been deliberately belittled in Africa. These BA fields are fields that are held in high esteem in the West, as they inform the West on their socialites. While Afrikans rely on the West to inform them on their own societies.  Africa is a Western concept.  Colonial education is a prison for the Afrikan mind and Afrikan soul. It is  chains system that cannot and do not want to let go.
Responding to the call
There is fear of an Afrikan awakening throughout the West. Institutions are responding to a call that was made about 60 years ago, when the first Afrikan country was liberated, the call was to free the African native from the chains of its colonial masters. In all systems and institutions.
Academic Institutions situated in Africa, have started responding. The question is what is the answer? We can all respond but the answer is the most important factor of the response.
While Afrikans may be called political captives in the current system. Education too falls under that same captivity. It is political and social prison for the Afrikan majority. While Africans may seem like they are consuming the same curriculum, the registration of it is different to African and white South Afrika. The Afrikans lived experience and known environment makes it difficult to relate to this curriculum.while a Eurocentric and westernised “global” South Africa, belonging to a minority, whom the institutional cultures and systems are in favour off, understand and relate to it.  Currently the Academia is not reflecting the reality of the Afrikan context.
There is lack of research into the Afrikan context in the Academia, this becomes problematic when Institutions of higher learning begin their journey of decolonising and deconstructing the colonial legacies in the institutions, how do they do so when they don’t have research of the true Afrika.
Inclusivity
Looking at the South African constitution, it highlights inclusion and fairness, “Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms.” Human rights include the right of being and being recognised. The current institutional system in our so called Afrikan universities, excludes the being of the Africans. In language and with language, not talking just about spoken language, which is a big factor, yes, but we speak about the language of the institutional cultures as well.
There must make a differentiation between and African university and a university housed in Africa, which currently, South Africa is housing many.
Way forward
Like Martin Luther king said “so where do we go from here, chaos or community?” I say we need the chaos to disturb the system, in order to rebuild the Afrikan community, which in this case is in the Afrikan Academia.


Rethink the concept of Afrikan University.
How do we begin to move to the direction of rediscovering Africaness or the rebirth of the Bantu?
Afrika is in a state of awakening and therefore, it needs to be given enough time to stretch and must not be disturbed. The problem is Afrika has been disturbed and that is why it is  faced with sanctions and civil wars. Afrika has been disturbed and the West is in fear, because when Africa awakens, Afrika has the opportunity to claim their riches and that is 70% of the world’s riches. There is a risk of loss and death in the Africanising and decolonising of  Afrika and all its systems.
Indigenous African scholarship, needs to be introduced and researched for the used of its students and academia.
The control of history
Africans cannot look at the future if the past is not addressed.
When talking about the past, they need to look beyond the past of the colonialism, and start focussing on the powerful, rich, educated, civilised past of Africa.
While I have heard of many questions, questioning the civilisation of Africa, and whether we could have been this advanced had it not been for the colonisation. Afrika as a land, has been the most advanced content in history and most educated. But its people do not know this, because just like their land, their minds are also controlled, the past is controlled and what they think they know, only goes as far as what the colonial master wants them to know.
If  they had African universities they would discover an  Afrika that is rich in history and scholarship, an Afrika that had the first university, an Africa that had some of the most advanced technologies, one that was civilized and who knew what man was. Where God has no colour, no gender and favourites.

Where from here
Afrikan scholarship needs to be funded, research on African societies (sociology and anthropology) needs to be done, history (not colonial history), but pre- colonial history, before both waves of African colonization,  needs to be done.


“We’ve got to give ourselves to the struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point” – Martin Luther King jr.

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