Freedom of the Mind: The Sine Qua Non of Sovereignty in Africa

This article examines the phenomenon of first the racially based European colonisation of Africa and second the subsequent effort to decolonise as a continuing undertaking. Colonisation, slavery in situ, was poverty creation. It delegitimised and denied sovereignty to Africans, sought to destroy African identity and ability to think and reason, and commoditised everything African. This was done using three instruments of ensuring ‘effective’ occupation in creating colonial states, namely the military, the administrators, and the missionaries. Decolonisation was part of the African response to colonisation and came in phases as affected by levels of awareness, the times, and the place. Some people did not question, they simply succumbed, adjusted to, and accepted the new order as given. Others accepted the new order because they were defeated, but they continued to raise questions as to why they were defeated, as well as questions about the practice and the claims of the new order. Those who questioned became the anti-colonialists and were responsible for the different phases of decolonising the colonial states. They challenged the racial basis of colonialism but not necessarily the structures of the colonial states. In the midst of the Cold War, this led to efforts to nationalise other aspects of the colonial state, mainly through academic disciplines in order to inject something ‘African’ in each of them. It happened in literature, history, political science, philosophy, and theology, and they made people feel good, but the colonial structures remained, attention turned to challenging other varieties of colonialism. Subsequently, decolonisation became a post-colonial undertaking, a matter of the mind.