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As the Rhodes statue is rightly under attack for being a symbol of racial domination and oppression in the name of economic and racial colonialism, and as I have just read Mhudi
Sol. T. Plaatje. Mhundi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago. Originally published in 1930 by Lovedale Press. Reprinted 1970 by Negro Universities Press A division of Greenwood Press, Inc. New York.
which I'll describe in the next post and which
describes the history and coming about of South Africa to what it is today, a tragic country of oppressed and oppressor, injustices and inequality. The roots were laid here at the time of the novel, the mid 19th century.
the following questions come to my mind
Aren't South Africa and Africa colonialist constructs per se? That is, those very concepts and constructs are colonialist and colonialism.
They did not exist before the Europeans left Europe and arrived in the parts of the world outside Europe where they artificially drew lines on maps, colonialist constructs, and brought ethnicities, tribes and clans together on nation states, a colonialist construct,
They were constructed as colonialism. So the statue is not colonialist. South Africa and the rest of the world outside Europe is colonialist and require re-organization and reconstruction to shift colonialism into something else.
Hence, a shift from colonialism require the shift of Africa, South Africa, Latin America, the Middle East to completely different constructs
Perhaps as little clans whose members work together on their wellbeing and good quality life as what they want to be
Africa is an artificial construct that was invented by the colonialist as a colonialist construct. So is South Africa as the novel Mhudi beautifully demonstrates.
Hence, do not just move a statue, end the artificial invention that is called South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon, Congo, etc etc and reconstruct something else -
Perhaps
establish small clans of equal members focusing on the wellbeing of its members according to their definition of wellbeing
The Arab spring had shown how the colonialist nation state is a trivial artificial construct that collapses when the restrain and terror on the inhabitants are lifted.
We can use it as a dialectical exercise
Should South Africa and Africa be reconstructed into something else, that is no more colonialist?
Should we finish this whole colonialist construct that is termed South Africa and construct a completely new, or old, political entity, construct and a place
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