Abstract
This chapter underscores how the crisis of ideas continues to make it difficult for African leaders to rethink and redefine postcolonial border regimes in such a way that they facilitate pan-Africanism. There is urgent need for a paradigm shift in understanding the purpose of borders, meaning of nation, notions of belonging and criteria of citizenship in postcolonial Africa. A crisis of ideas also informs the ironic situation of an Africa that is open to Europeans, Asians and North Americas whilst remaining closed to Africans. As tourists, investors and experts, Europeans and North Americans continue to be welcomed into Africa without visas whilst mobile black people are still perceived as aliens, undesirables, asylum seekers, refugees and carriers of pathologies such as crimes and disease subject to strict visa regimes. All this underscores the urgent necessity for a decolonial epistemological paradigm shift in African leaders’ thinking about borders, nation, state and belonging, which enables the emergence of Africanity as a transnational pan-African citizenship.
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Notes
- 1.
Laremont, Ricardo Rene. 2005. ‘Borders, States, and Nationalism’. In Ricardo Rene Laremont (ed.). Borders, Nationalism, and the African State. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, p. 7.
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In various recent interviews on the African future, Achille has emphasised the need to Africa to open up to itself and allow movement of people across Africa and into Africa in a context where Europe was ‘provincialising’ itself. In one of the interviews, Mbembe had this to say: ‘What strikes me is that Europe is also “provincializing.” She makes things easier for us. We don’t need to turn our back her, she turns her back on us herself. I have the impression that it is a profound movement that feeds on the myth of the community without foreigners. A desire for apartheid at a global scale. Europe is about to turn her back to the Kantian moment that will have founded her modernity and attractiveness. Africa mustn’t turn her back to no one. She must open herself, open her borders and become a land of migration. We need to reflect at this point on how to include Chinese migrants among us. We have to open Africa. Welcome all those that come, integrate them. Retake the role Europe has played. Those educated people who don’t find jobs in the United States or in Europe, those floating brains, they should come to Africa. Come to us.’
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Francis B. Nyamnjoh. 2006. Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar and London: CODESRIA Books and ZED Books, p. 16.
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Even some of those celebrated anti-colonialists like President Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe who ascended to the African Union Chairmanship in 2014 are strong advocates of safeguarding national sovereignty that corresponds to colonially crafted boundaries.
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Nyamnjoh, Insiders and Outsiders, p. 33.
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In 2014, the South African government revised its visa regimes making it more difficult to obtain them even for the skilled professionals.
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Neocosmos, From ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’, p. 66. He made reference to how the post-apartheid state criminalised migrant labour and preserved jobs for nationals.
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Achille Mbembe. 2013. ‘Africa and the Future: An Interview with Achille Mbembe’ in http://africaasacountry.com/africa-and-the-future-an-interview-with-achille-mbembe/ (accessed 10/03/2015).
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Achille Mbembe. ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 10.
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Achille Mbembe. ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 10.
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Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 10.
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Landau, Popular Politics in the South African History, p. xi.
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Mahmood Mamdani. 2013. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, pp. 2–3.
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Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 15.
- 54.
Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 15.
- 55.
Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 15.
- 56.
Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 15.
- 57.
Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 15.
- 58.
Prah, The African Nation, pp. 17–18.
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Prah, The African Nation, p. 21.
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Prah, The African Nation, p. 21.
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Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009. Re-Membering Africa. Nairobi/Kampala/Dar es Salaam: East African Educational Publishers Ltd.
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Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Re-Membering Africa, p. 4. See also Valentine Y. Mudimbe. 1994. The Idea of Africa. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, p. xii.
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Ngugi wa Thiongo, Re-Membering Africa, p. 22.
- 64.
Ngugi wa Thiongo, Re-Membering Africa, p. 23.
- 65.
Ngugi wa Thiongo, Re-Membering Africa, p. 25.
- 66.
Mudimbe rendered ‘the idea of Africa’ as a product of Europe’s system of self-representation through creation of otherness. I am using ‘the idea of Africa’ in the way Ngugi wa Thiong’o rendered it as ‘African representation’ cascading from the diaspora and travelling back into the continent. See Ngugi wa Thiongo, Re-Membering Africa, p. 54.
- 67.
Ngugi wa Thiongo, Re-Membering Africa, p. 57.
- 68.
Mbembe, ‘Africa and the Future’, p. 8.
- 69.
Ngugi wa Thiongo, Re-Membering Africa, p. 61.
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Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J. (2018). Decolonising Borders, Decriminalising Migration and Rethinking Citizenship. In: Magidimisha, H., Khalema, N., Chipungu, L., Chirimambowa, T., Chimedza, T. (eds) Crisis, Identity and Migration in Post-Colonial Southern Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59235-0_2
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