Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando
19. Knowledge Militarized in Africa: On Crushing Ubuhlanti to Advance Pseudo-democratic and Economic Imagination in the Context of Empire
Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando
Vuyani Vellem [+]
University of Pretoria
Description
In South Africa, during the state of emergency, South African townships where black people lived were turned into war zones. Apartheid had literally turned South Africa into a military state, using massive power and force against its own citizens; Legion “dwelling” among people. At a deeper level though, the Apartheid state had adopted a military strategy called Low Intensity Conflict to win the hearts and the minds of people. This was done to penetrate the psyche and spiritual dispensation of the oppressed masses. In post-1994 South Africa, universities became military zones during the Fees Must Fall and Afrikaans Must Fall campaigns. For a number of years, Zimbabwe, a South African neighbor, struggled to remove Robert Mugabe from power and only the military intervention in Zimbabwe was recently successful in doing so. The US has had closer cooperation with some African countries, including Botswana and Uganda. This is an example of the penetration of the military in the democratization of countries. With these selected examples, this chapter will examine what Low Intensity Strategy tactics continue to be in use in the vast project of democratization of the African continent. The underlying thesis of this chapter is that militarization of the African continent not only sustains the superiority of Eurocentric system of democratic knowledge, but also does so by all means including the destruction of Ubuhlanti.