Decolonisation And Afro Feminism – Sylvia Tamale

As Makau Mutua observed: “In societies, such as the African ones where religion is woven into virtually every aspect of life, its delegitimization can easily lead to the collapse of social norms and cultural identities. The result, as has been the case in most of Black Africa, is a culturally disconnected people, neither African nor European nor Arab.”

This phenomenon is put into bold relief when you contrast the legacies of colonization on African people with those on the Indian subcontinent where British Christianization was successfully resisted. Indeed, India’s strong resistance to proselytization, in part, fuelled the 1857 independence rebellion. What sparked off the war was the British policy to lubricate their rifle cartridges with fat from cows and pigs—a move that riled and offended the sacred beliefs of the Hindu and Muslims, respectively.

Apart from being used to de-culturalize, religion was also instrumentalized in the service of the colonial project to “divide and rule” Indigenous populations and to entrench power. In particular, the colonialists manipulated the differences in religious faiths, denominations and sects. By working one politico-religious group off against the other, the divide-and-rule policy ensured that Indigenous people did not unite against their common enemy—the colonizer. 152 Writing about the Nigerian experience, Ekpe Ayokhai et al.

argue: While the emirate was established as part of an empire-building effort and anchored on a religious ideology that promoted the emergence of a cosmopolitan political culture; colonial rule, on the other hand, through its policy of divide and rule, emphasized differences between and among the societies under the Muri Emirate and the larger Nigeria 150. Makau Mutua, “Limitations on Religious Rights,” Note 145, at p. 75. 151. See Vinayak D. Savarkar, The Indian War of Independence(Bombay: Phoenix Publications, 1947); Pooja Gupta and Shalini Vohra, “Socio-Political Milieu of the Devil’s Wind: The Revolt of 1857,” International Journal of Multifaceted and Multilingual Studies3(8) (2016): 1-17.

Among the Hindu, cows are considered a sacred symbol of life, while the pig is considered unclean among the Muslims. 152. See e.g., Michael Twaddle, Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda: 1868-1928(Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1993). In India, the “fat policy” worked to unite the Hindu and Muslim populations to fight against a common enemy. area on the basis of language, ethnicity and religion….

Praise for Decolonization and Afro-Feminism In this boldly argued and well-written book, the seasoned intellectual/teacher/activist Sylvia Tamale presents Africa as an urgent decolonial Pan-African project. Using an Afro-feminist lens, she gives us a roadmap as she deconstructs gender, sexuality, the law, family and even Pan-Africanism. Decolonization and Afro- Feminism makes a major epistemic contribution to charting Africa’s way forward. A comprehensive effort, it should have a broad appeal transcending disciplines and other colonial borders. Tamale alerts us to new forms of domination such as digital colonialism. This book will leave you thinking!

—Oyeronke Oyewumi, author of The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses Decolonization and Afro-Feminism is a book we all need! It brings an encyclopaedic rigour and a committed feminist analysis to the study of decolonization and what it offers as a liberatory praxis in contemporary Africa. Sylvia Tamale’s scholarship has always been rooted in solidarity with the lived struggles of African feminists, queer communities and African academics, and it shows in her exploration of the many challenges that have shaped contemporary struggles around gender, sexuality, race, justice and Africa’s freedom.

Essential Reading. —Jessica Horn, Feminist writer and co-founder, African Feminist Forum Working Group In this extraordinary and erudite book, Sylvia Tamale, the distinguished Ugandan scholar and public intellectual, brilliantly dissects and demolishes the dangerous tropes of coloniality that distort our understanding of African societies, cultures, bodies, institutions, experiences, social relations, and realities. She unsparingly and compellingly advances the analytical power and emancipatory possibilities of decolonial feminism. Using the concept of intersectionality she moves seamlessly and examines with a sense of fierce urgency the decolonial project over a wide range of spheres from ecofeminism to sports, the law, religion, human rights, Ubuntu, the academy, family relations, Pan- Africanism, and big data.

A must read for all those who value the decolonization of Eurocentric and androcentric knowledges and the recentering of African epistemologies and ontologies. It is a clarion call for the continent’s feminist epistemic liberation. — Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences and Vice Chancellor, United States International University-Africa, Nairobi, Kenya Intellectually orgasmic!

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: cbdad534ef72290e
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,963,738 bytes (4.734 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781988832494, 9781988832500
• Pages: 430
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 788.12 minutes
• Total Words: 157,623
• Total Characters: 1,067,431
• Average Words per Page: 366.57
• Average Characters per Page: 2482.4

Most Frequent Words

african (1267), see (814), women (800), africa (781), law (671), gender (580), rights (517), colonial (397), also (391), human (355), new (342), decolonization (331), social (331), feminist (311), justice (292), university (288), note (285), family (278), women’s (277), legal (258), sylvia (254), press (245), journal (244), political (243), tamale (240), power (229), afro-feminism (215), knowledge (210), customary (206), studies (205), world (204), continent (204), international (203), history (202), uganda (198), south (194), one (192), colonialism (187), western (186), equality (185), people (184), between (181), education (176), development (173), men (163), systems (162), accessed (159), example (158), system (157), many (153), state (150), decolonial (148), indigenous (147), available (142), ibid (142), female (142), marriage (142), relations (141), within (141), coloniality (139), york (138), race (134), male (132), research (130), culture (128), against (127), traditional (125), https (124), politics (124), cultural (123), global (122), economic (122), sex (120), eds (120), community (117), movement (114), based (114), public (113), even (109), black (109), nature (106), pan-african (105), ubuntu (105), ways (105), semenya (103), london (103), case (102), order (102), sexual (102), concept (100), intersectionality (100), sexuality (99), part (97), africa’s (96), process (96), society (96), first (96), feminism (95), like (95), review (95).

PDF Download