Pascah Mungwini

The Challenges of Revitalizing an Indigenous and Afrocentric Moral Theory in Postcolonial Education in Zimbabwe

This work contributes to the philosophical debate on the normative dimension of postcolonial education in Zimbabwe. The work is a reaction to revelations made by the Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training of 1999 and its concomitant recommendations. Among its many observations, the Commission noted that there was a worrisome development concerning the normative dimension of the countrys education, which needed to be addressed by the introduction and strengthening of an indigenous moral theory of unhu/ubuntu in the education system. The work examines this recommendation in the light of developments brought about by modernity and their effects on value theory in modern education. It cautions, though without being pessimistic, that while the desire for what is ones own is indeed understandable, the changes in social ontology brought about by modernity render a successful revitalization of the traditional African values difficult. This work argues that the moral problem facing Zimbabwe could have very little, if anything, to do with the purported lack of an indigenous value theory in the education system, but is simply a manifestation of the effects of the ideological weight of Western modernity on the African communalistic value system.

The question of recentring Africa: Thoughts and issues from the global South

In this essay, which reflects on the ‘unfinished historical and humanistic project’ of decolonisation, my focus is on the question of recentring Africa. I argue that while the issues and problems in postcolonial Africa are multifarious, the need to solve them is driven by an otherwise universally shared telos—the preservation and sustenance of human well-being. I examine the question of recentring Africa, and situate it within the broader framework of the argument on epistemologies from the global South. I appropriate the dictum of the Enlightenment to highlight the centrality of agency in the quest for epistemic justice. To situate the debate within the contemporary struggle in Africa, reference is made to the recent call for the decolonisation of knowledge and the academy in South Africa. My argument in this essay is informed by the position that decolonisation is a process, and recentring Africa as its corollary involves the search for a liberating perspective within which to understand ourselves as a people in relationship with the rest of the world.

Dialogue as the negation of hegemony : an African perspective

As an enterprise centred in human experiences, philosophy must acknowledge its history and find its way from that history to define the future of humanity. Inter-philosophical dialogue is an attempt to metaphorically dialogue with that history with a view to creating better understanding across cultures. In this essay, I seek to examine the nature and foundations of inter-philosophical dialogue from an African standpoint. Not only is dialogue the defining element of philosophy, but it is also integral to what it means to be human. I am convinced that inter-philosophical dialogue is critical to the future wellbeing of the world and that of humanity in particular. However, in celebrating its promise, we should not be oblivious to the fact that, being a talismanic concept, dialogue can be manipulated to mask and smooth over the hegemony that still defines the world. The world continues to face the dangers of an ethnocentric rationalism which seeks to measure the legitimacy all other traditions of life and thought in terms of standards set by one dominant tradition.

African modernities and the critical reappropriation of indigenous knowledges: Towards a polycentric global epistemology

Abstract The intellectual rehabilitation of African knowledge systems remains an important moral, political and epistemological project for postcolonial Africa. It entails challenging those disparaging discourses about Africa and its supposed ineptitude that served as the pretext for the questionable right of conquest. This work argues that the best way to deal with the colonial past and its painful reality is not to dwell on its ills, but to use it as a platform from which to rebuild forms of consciousness and epistemic possibilities that reaffirm African forms of knowing. This is where the critical reappropriation of indigenous epistemologies becomes important. Reappropriation, like renaissance, considers the return to the past as a return to initiative. The aim is to attain a polycentric global epistemology in which the imperium and tyranny of Western epistemology give way to the creation of a world into which many worlds can fit. The promise of a genuine African modernity is not found in a life of mimesis, but in the ability to reappropriate indigenous forms of knowledge capable of providing alternative interpretive and normative frameworks upon which the epistemic liberation of Africa can be grounded.

“African Know Thyself”: Epistemic Injustice and the Quest for Liberative Knowledge

ABSTRACT This article is framed against the historic myth of emptiness and its consequences on Africa, and takes a closer look at the project of modernity and the question of epistemic injustice in Africa. It deploys the phrase “African know thyself” to capture the need for Africans to grasp the distinctive particularity of their history as a people of equal ontological standing with the rest of humanity. This injunction affords special significance to history and its role in shaping the philosophical agenda in Africa by reminding us that philosophic discourse originates from, and is linked to the concrete conditions of existence, out of which it is formulated. To address the problem of epistemic injustice, Africans need to become more critically conscious of themselves and their situation in ways that inform their intellectual practice. This author submits that philosophy in Africa should assist in both “re-writing and re-righting” Africa’s position in the global knowledge landscape.

‘Surveillance and cultural Panopticism’: situating Foucault in African modernities

Abstract In philosophical terms, the African encounter with Western modernity defines the context within which much of what unfolds in postcolonial Africa can be understood, including even its ethical and social problems. This work utilizes Foucault’s theory of panopticism to reflect on the challenges of social control and harmony in contemporary African society. It establishes the link between panopticism and indigenous African cultures from the fact that indigenous societies deployed mechanisms of instituting social control and harmony similar to the phenomena of panoticism and the technologies of control that it symbolizes today. African metaphysical thought, its beliefs, and mythological paraphernalia played the important role of providing an overarching framework within which questions of social control, relations, ethics and even harmony with nature were defined and understood in the past. Modern institutions and technologies of surveillance, whilst crucial to social control, may need to be supported by re-strengthening indigenous interpretive and normative cultural frameworks that promoted elements of self-surveillance and responsible being in traditional communities.