Sylvia Tamale, author of Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, will be discussing her new book with Charmaine Pereira, writer and feminist scholar in Abuja, Nigeria.
Host: Firoze Manji, Publisher, Daraja Press – on YouTube
September 24, 2002
9:00 am Eastern Time (Ottawa)
2:00 pm Nigeria Time
4:00 pm East Africa Time
Why do so many Africans believe they cannot break the “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” cycle? Six decades after colonial flags were lowered and African countries gained formal independence, the continent struggles to free itself from the deep legacies of colonialism, imperialism and patriarchy. Many intellectuals, politicians, feminists and other activists, eager to contribute to Africa’s liberation, have frustratingly, felt like they took the wrong path. Analyzed through the eyes of Afro-feminism, this book revisits some of the fundamental preconditions needed for radical transformation.
The main focus of Decolonization and Afro-feminism is unlearning imperial power relations by relearning to “shake off” the colonial filters through which we view the world, including the instruments of law, education, religion, family and sexuality. It re-envisions Pan-Africanism as a more inclusive decolonizing/decolonial movement that embraces Afro-feminist politics. It also challenges the traditional human rights paradigm and its concomitant idea of “gender equality,” flagging instead, the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a serious alternative for reinvigorating African notions of social justice. If you are a student of Africa or in a space where you wish to recalibrate your compass and reboot your consciousness in the struggle for Africa’s liberation, this book is for you.
Decolonization and Afro-feminism makes a major epistemic contribution to charting Africa’s way forward, and alerts us to new forms of domination such as digital colonialism… This book will leave you thinking!
—Oyeronke Oyewumi, author of The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender DiscoursesSylvia Tamale brings an encyclopedic rigour to the study of decolonization and what it offers as an African liberatory praxis. Her scholarship is rooted in real-time solidarity with African feminists and queer activists… Essential reading.
—Jessica Horn, Feminist activist, writer and co-founder, African Feminist Forum Working GroupTamale brilliantly dissects and demolishes the dangerous tropes of coloniality that distort our understanding of African societies, cultures, bodies, institutions, experiences, social relations, and realities… The book is a clarion call for the continent’s feminist epistemic liberation.
—Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences and Vice Chancellor, United States International University-Africa, Nairobi, KenyaThis book is Intellectually orgasmic! It provides students with an Afro-feminist intellectual rebirth… The next generation of Afro-feminists have our struggle cut out for us.
—Anna Adeke, Feminist and student, Makerere University, Uganda
Dr. Sylvia Tamale, a Ugandan lawyer, sociologist, and Professor of Law at Makerere University, Kampala. She is a strong lawyer and human rights feminist activist. She was the first woman Dean at The Faculty of Law of her university (2004-2008). We met in the African Feminist Forum and other similar arenas. In 2003, Sylvia faced a hateful media campaign in Uganda for her outspoken support for the rights of sexual minorities and the gay and lesbian communities. This was courageous enough to be mentioned. Among her publications : When Hens Begin to Crow; Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda, in 1999; African Feminism: How Should We Change ?, in 2006. She edited African Sexualities: A Reader, in 2011.
Her last book, Decolonization, Race and Afro-feminism, was published by Daraja Press. Daraja Press is a publishing house led by Firoze Manji, who was the first editor in chief of Pambazuka News, a Pan-African online electronic newsletter, publishing weekly in English, 2004 to 2008. French and Portuguese. The book will be launched online, through a debate with Dr Charmaine Pereira, a feminist psychologist, and writer based in Abuja, Nigeria. Charmaine was the Coordinator of the Initiative for Women’s Studies in Nigeria (IWSN). She also is deeply involved in the publication of Feminist Africa, an online gender studies journal produced by the community of feminist scholars ; F. A. is a forum for “progressive, cutting-edge gender research and feminist dialogue focused on the continent”.