... IN THE 'POSTCOLONIAL' : Impact of colonialism on indigenous knowledge systems

The past discussions generated some questions, which called for elaboration around colonial impacts on epistemological systems in ‘postcolonial’ environments as well as “State instrumentalisation” discourses.

To start with, and as said before, albeit in passing: colonialism impacted all aspects of life in the global south, including the epistemological systems. In colonial rule, there was an imposed need for the members of the colonies to acquire a new form of education in order to meet the needs of the colonial production structures.

As well, local population were subjected to learning new ways of thinking, hence transformation or absolute abandonment of local or native epistemological structures and traditions. Such structures aimed at ensuring absolute loyalty to the colonial powers and ensuring unfaltering support towards European imperialist economic needs and security.

In his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney (1981) gives the reader a sneak-peek into what really happened, especially in Tanzania, I hope this will give some of us a clearer picture: “…inside [colonial] Tanganyika, a map showing the major cotton or coffee areas virtually coincides with a map showing areas in which colonial education was available”. [This] means that those living in areas which could not be readily exploited by the colonists, were not offered even the crumbs of the colonising education.

This process was meticulously selective. In Afrika and elsewhere, was deliberately designed to equip and produce servants/agents for the colonial powers.

For those who have lived in ‘postcolonial’ environments know that the introduction of the new colonising epistemological structures had qualitative differences compared to that accorded to members of the colonist’s heritage.

One other responses from readers called the ‘invisible’ “presence and behaviour of the academics in the global south” into question. Plainly put, the reader was questioning the integrity of global south’s academics and intellectuals. This is an important yet misunderstood question and often given a simplistic response. That is: education, academic attainments and professional articulations among natives are but for survival purposes.

But is this all? I do not think so! When we hear questions about what is being done to improve social, political and economic structures in the ‘postcolonial’ environments by the educated natives, what is really being questioned is the proper definition of “global south” in a broader academic sense?

This means an inquiry into the politics of academia and the process of knowledge production within the bigger globalised academic and political perspectives: what is the role of the academic pursuits in the ‘postcolonial’ environments in the south? Who calls the shots on how the wheels of academia and academic intellectual properties turn, in the global south? Whose purposes does it serve?

The type of education available and ran after by many in the ‘postcolonial’ environments is not liberatory by nature. What this means is that, the kind of academic structures rampant in the ‘postcolonial’ environments, especially in Afrika, is but a continuation of the colonial rule. Freire (1984) calls this an “organised disorder”. Clearly, it is a systematic systemic ‘carrot and stick’ technique for keeping the oppressed happy in modernised oppressive structures.

The academics and intellectuals in the ‘postcolonial’ environments in Afrika are therefore, in the majority, a generation of a “dehumanised” group as much as those who live in the margins, impoverished and embattled by all the woes the world can give. An imposed dehumanisation!

While members of the society in the ‘postcolonial’ environments living in abject poverty and a state of constant need are dehumanised by way of their rights being taken away by the affluent in the society, the latter are dehumanised by their imposed sense and the desire to accumulate material goods. The desire of this seeming elite group is to ultimately be like the colonial masters, Fanon (1963).

However, it should be pointed out that, the tenets of colonial economic strategic trajectory were not fully understood then as it is ‘assumedly’ understood today. An example in point is that found in many Afrikan nation-states.

One of such countries is Tanzania where various development policy formulations targeting the mineral sector and other natural resources are still upheld. For example, in Tanzania, mineral regimes that were coined and institutionalised by the British colonial rule between 1919 and 1960s are still upheld, with little changes.

Colonial education therefore, brought in the demise of local epistemologies and Ubuntu in the ‘postcolonial’ environments, especially in Afrika. And as it was then at the beginning of the process of social, political, educational and economic assimilation, so it is today in the 21st century ‘postcolonial’ environments that foreign education became the ‘in-thing’.

Today, in the in most ‘postcolonial’ environments in Afrika, and what is known as the dot-com ‘postcolonial’ generation: this education is merely for ‘survival purposes’.