Decolonization and Afro-Feminism
By: Sylvia Tamale
Published by: Daraja Press (2020)
In her book Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, published in 2020 with Daraja Press, Sylvia Tamale illustrates how the theoretical strands of decolonisation and African feminist theory can be brought together and analysed in intersectional ways. The aim is to draw attention to the lingering dominance of Western-established theorisations and epistemologies in African contexts. Tamale contributes a pan-African perspective to the fields of decolonial, Afro-feminist and gender studies, while doing justice to Africa’s diverse and rich cultures across the continent. While the author provides in-depth explanations that showcase the interconnections between (de)-coloniality and feminist engagement in Africa, a background in social sciences could be helpful for readers in digesting the rich content. Sylvia Tamale is a Ugandan lawyer, academic, and activist.
The book begins with a descriptive introduction of counter-narratives to what she terms Western concepts – such as human rights, gender, and family – that are often presented as ahistorical, universal, or neutral. She situates these concepts in African pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial realities and suggests context-appropriate replacements where necessary. The importance of contextualising concepts weaves through the chapters. Tamale emphasises how Eurocentric interpretations of feminist concepts and methodologies frequently lack context-sensitivity in African settings and are instead applied in a universal manner. Tamale’s critique of “Western” feminism is deeply political. She relates gender oppression on the African continent with the historical and structural consequences of colonialism. Rather than arguing on the basis of a theoretical and philosophical critique of different strands of feminisms and decoloniality in an abstract sense, she uses actual, historicised examples of how power structures have been and continue to be maintained or challenged through (post)-colonial political and activist agendas.
Convincingly, she reveals the ongoing colonial remnants that live on in Africa’s nation-state systems, as well as in the minds of the people, distinguishing between politico-economic coloniality and psychological coloniality. Furthermore, she argues how coloniality is inherent to the system of knowledge production in African universities, which were transformed during colonial times to follow the coloniser’s tradition, even though many educational institutions predate colonialism. As a matter of course, she foregrounds the work of Afro-feminist and decolonial activists who have been active across the continent for decades and centuries, such as the women’s movement in Uganda.
Tamale places a specific analytical focus on women who have been, and continue to be, marginalised on the basis of gender across the world – also in Africa. She succeeds in linking intersecting marginalisations due to race, class, age, and disability with those based on coloniality and gender, by arguing that only a holistic understanding of how different (overlapping) factors lead to discrimination and othering can effectively deliver decolonial, feminist liberation and deconstruction. Furthermore, Tamale stresses how women’s struggles against oppression predate colonialism in Africa, describing the long history of women mobilising resistance.
Connected to this, she demonstrates in a later chapter the presence of coloniality in current gender and sexuality systems, in a discussion of the binary male/female understanding of gender in professional sports. Using the examples of Michael Phelps and Caster Semenya, she compares how the media and international sports committees have assessed two exceptional athletes, with diverging standards. Phelps, a white, cis-gender American swimmer, has received overwhelming praise for his exceptional sports performances even though his physique gives him a considerable advantage over other swimmers. Semenya falls into the category of a “typical male” despite having been assigned female gender at birth. After various tests and examinations of her body parts she was prohibited from competing in women’s competitions on the basis of heightened testosterone levels. Tamale thoroughly discusses how differently these two exemplifying cases were handled, showing how gender, race, class, and origin are socially constructed and intersectionally connected.
In addition, Tamale analyses the coloniality that persists in legal systems that were institutionalised during colonial times and remain intact and only slightly modified in many African countries until today. She focuses on what she calls “law-in-practice” and differentiates between “state customary law” and “living customary law”. While the latter is often neglected in analyses of legal systems, she notes that in Uganda 95% of dispute resolutions take place through community justice systems and only 5% are resolved through official state courts. Again, she criticises the Eurocentric dualities that position formalised and modern legal structures against customary and traditional ones. Tamale argues for a decolonisation of customary law by moving away from the othering and subordination of indigenous legal practices and reviving the relevance of indigenous justice systems, such as the wananchi.[1] This would include a revalorisation of indigenous justice systems by state and educational institutions, with the ultimate goal of reconceptualising justice through ubuntu,[2] the closest concept to “human rights” in African philosophy.
The book offers a detailed and well-argued account of how readers can approach resistance to gendered oppressive systems in a world that is still shaped by its imperialist past and present. Its insightful points of view enable especially Western-educated feminists (and non-feminists) to appreciate the interconnections of colonialism, racism, class, gender-oppression and the intersectional fight against oppression in an African context. By grounding her critique in the work of colleagues and in comprehensive examples, she delivers a convincing argument. In fact, she cautions scholars not to fall into the trap of universalising essentialisms and instead to apply concepts in a contextualised and historicised manner.
Tamale’s work aims to encompass the diverse and rich cultures of Africa’s 54 countries, which in and of itself is an ambitious task. Are the examples she uses to exemplify “African Academia” or “African conceptualisations of family relations” applicable across the continent? Probably not – but that might not be the goal of the book. Instead, she succeeds at connecting a wide array of themes influenced by coloniality until today, providing the tools needed to deconstruct them through Afro-feminist theory. Applying these tools to different conceptual contexts, and thereby challenging the remnants of the colonial system remains the task of the reader.
Tamale, S. (2020). Decolonization and Afro-Feminism. Daraja Press. https://darajapress.com/publication/decolonziation_and_afro-feminism/
Reviewed by: Sophia Stille PhD Candidate on the PolMig Project, Arnold-Bergstraesser Institute
Finanziert durch die Europäische Union (ERC, PolMig, 101161856). Die geäußerten Ansichten und Meinungen sind ausschließlich die der Autorin und spiegeln nicht unbedingt die der Europäischen Union oder des Europäischen Forschungsrats wider. Weder die Europäische Union noch die Förderstelle können dafür verantwortlich gemacht werden.
[1] Wananchi is a Swahili term and refers to ordinary people or the public. The term is used in East Africa to refer to people’s involvement with dispute resolution.
[2] The ubuntu philosophy conceptualises the individual as an inherently communal being, emphasising shared community values such as solidarity, inclusivity, and fairness.