Durban — The second day of the UniZulu conference addressed ‘Indigenous Knowledge Systems ‘and ‘African Studies.’
Pennsylvania State University Professor Sinfree Makoni opened day two with his speech titled: “The Role of African Studies Forum in Shaping Scholarship Globally.”
One of the key concepts he raises is ‘Afrocentricity’.
“Afrocentricity focuses on exploring Africans looking at themselves as agents and not spectators. Africans should look at their own histories and explain their own history. Afrocentricity also seeks to challenge pre-historic history.”
By ‘pre-historic’, it is referring to the history of Africa before colonialism.
“Knowledge must remain after social struggles.”
He stresses that this mindset must be held when dealing with promoting these indigenous ideologies within the university setting. On the other hand, “knowledge must include social struggles.”
In response to this, the University of Zululand senior lecturer, Dr Akpome, spoke about language’s role in contributing to the discussion of African Studies.
“African epistemologies must not only critique but dismantle.”
He refers to the death of George Floyd, and uses it as a metaphor. Floyd was killed by a police officer after initially having the officer’s knee against his head. He could critique the knee but could not dismantle it - otherwise, he would be alive. He also proceeds to touch on language and how its usage needs to be altered.
“In Africa, we take prescribed words and use them. That is counter-intuitive because language comes from inside and is a way to express ourselves.”
He continues by using an example of an image.
“You do not take your image from a photograph. The photograph is a record of your image - a record of who you are. You are the original. The problem with our use of English is that we are trying to be like or imitate.”
He concludes: “We must tamper with the English grammar and the way it’s being used to serve our purposes. Hardly in this world will a non-European be accepted by the original owners of the language as masters of the language. So what’s the point of trying to imitate when you still end up as a replica?”
Professor John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji gave the 5th keynote address. The address is titled: “Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Challenge of Epistemicide and Ontological Suicide.”
Professor Bewaji’s speech was separated into two key concepts: ‘epistemicide’ and ‘ontological suicide.’
“Epistemicide is what Europe and the Arab world have done to Africa - that is, total destruction of African intellectual heritage; African language systems; African religions; African science. It also includes the demonisation of African heritage - calling them ‘pagan’, illiterate, barbaric, primitives - all kinds of names. In the process, we destroy everything our ancestors have ever created - our history, our knowledge systems. Systematically, they now put in place their own views of life. They substituted our mythologies with their own. They substituted their own social relations and put them in place of our own. Epistemicide is the destruction of knowledge systems.”
“Africa has an obligation to save humanity from imminent homicide. Africa is where everything started. Fortunately for Africa, most of those things are recorded. Chemistry started in Zimbabwe. It’s sophisticated, and engineering to produce paint was not easy. This was many millennia ago.”
He refers to how Africans thought of building the pyramids and also ideas like mummification (both in Egypt) - and the point here is that Africans were thinking and had thinking systems long before European intrusion/invasion. The usage of herbs for medicinal purposes was in African systems long before the usage of vaccines.
Daily News