Latest news with #decolonization
National Post
3 days ago
- General
- National Post
Letters: Trudeau sneaks around at the throne speech
Article content Few, if any, of those students would question what they were being told by professors and the administration. Their main concern would be graduating and then starting to teach. If they had to endure lectures on decolonization and other controversial issues, they would go along with whatever was required. Article content It takes an older student, and one with real-world experience, to challenge the doctrines being presented in today's universities. Without students like Margaret Munn at Western and Lindsay Shepherd — who became embroiled in a highly publicized academic freedom controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2017, and who was vindicated by an investigation and received an apology — the public would be unaware of how their taxpayer dollars are being used in post-secondary education. Article content Students are not going to rock the boat and demand change. Change will have to come from reductions in government funding going to institutions that are straying from their intended purpose. Article content We live in an 'entitled' world where the losing team seeks to off-load blame onto others. It's never about their own failures but something wrong with the rules, the judging, or the system itself. It now looks like that entitlement mentality, so prevalent among our youth, has crept into the halls of Parliament. Article content The Canadian public spoke loudly in last month's election, reducing the NDP to seven seats and sacking their leader, thereby withdrawing 'official party status' and all the perks that accrue. Surely it doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner to figure out how this happened. Propping up the minority Liberal government through the infamous 'Supply and Confidence Agreement' made the NDP indistinguishable from their already left-trending comrades in Parliament. Furthermore, with high-profile anti-Israel supporters among the membership, loyal NDPers were forced to question the party's moral principles. Article content Article content For interim leader Don Davies to argue that his party is a 'national' party is a bit rich. It has no federal representation east of Manitoba, save for one seat in Quebec. Instead of looking for special treatment from their former partners, in order to avoid the rules that govern 'official party status,' Davies and his party need to look inward and decide how they can become a legitimate, respectable choice for Canadians seeking a leftist alternative to the Liberal party. Article content Article content It is astounding how easily the Canadian electorate can be manipulated. Liberal strategists must be both cynical and self-satisfied to have developed and successfully promoted a false narrative to the public during the election campaign — that we were, in the words of Mark Carney, 'facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes' due to Donald Trump's tariffs and threats. While many Canadians did not fall for this narrative, I wonder if those who did now feel duped.
News24
5 days ago
- General
- News24
Five things you should know about Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, one of Africa's greatest writers
One of Africa's most celebrated authors, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, has died. The Kenyan academic was 87 years old. His first novel, Weep Not Child was published in 1964 and he pursued a rich and acclaimed career as a decolonial thinker. Kenyan academic and writer Peter Kimani sets out five things you should know about the legendary African writer. He understood the politics of his time Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is regarded as one of Africa's greatest writers of all time. He grew up in what became known as Kenya's White Highlands at the height of British colonialism. Unsurprisingly, his writing examines the legacy of colonialism and the intricate relationships between the locals seeking economic and cultural emancipation and the elites serving as agents of neo-colonisers. The great expectations for the new country, as captured in his seminal play, The Black Hermit, anticipated the disillusionment that followed. His fiction in the foundational trilogy of Weep Not, Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat, amplifies those expectations, before the optimism gives way in Petals of Blood and is replaced by disillusionment. He shaped a new African story African fiction is fairly young. Wa Thiong'o stands in the continent's pantheon of writers who started writing when Africa's decolonisation gained momentum. In a certain sense, the writers were involved in constructing new narratives that would define their people. But his recognition goes beyond his pioneering role at home: his writing resonates with many across Africa. One could also recognise his consistency in churning out high-quality stories about Africa's contemporary society. This he always did in a way that illustrates his commitment to equality and social justice. He has done much more, through scholarship. His treatise, Decolonising the Mind, now a foundational text in post-colonial studies, illustrates his versatility. His ability to spin yarns while commenting on the politics that go into the literary production of marginal literature is a very rare combination. Finally, one could talk about Wa Thiong'o's cultural and political activism. This precipitated his yearlong detention without trial in 1977. He attributed his detention to his rejection of English and embracing his Gikuyu language as his vehicle of expression. Critics are divided on his greatest works It's hard to pick a favourite from more than two dozen of his texts. But there is concurrence among critics that A Grain of Wheat, which was voted among Africa's best 100 novels at the turn of the last century, stands out for its stylistic experimentation and complexity of characters. Others consider the novel as the last signpost before his work became overly political. For other critics, it's Wizard of the Crow, published in 2004 after nearly two decades of waiting, that encapsulates his creative finesse. It utilises many literary tropes, including magical realism, and addresses the politics of African development and the shenanigans by the political elite to maintain the status quo. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages around the world. He stopped writing in English in 1977 Without a doubt, the continent would be poorer without the efforts of Wa Thiong'o and other pioneering writers to tell the African story. He was an important figure in post-colonial studies. His constant questioning of the privileging of the English language and culture in Kenya's national discourse saw him lead a movement that led to the scrapping of the department of English at the University of Nairobi. It was replaced by a department of literature that placed African literature and its diasporas at the centre of scholarship. He never stopped writing Wa Thiong'o remained an active writer even in old age. Among his later offerings was the third instalment of his memoir, Birth of a Dreamweaver which looks back on his years at Makerere University in Uganda. This is the period when he published his novels, Weep Not, Child and The River Between, while still an undergraduate. Also at this time, he wrote the play The Black Hermit, which was performed as part of Uganda's independence celebrations in 1962. In later years, he was busy restoring his early works into Gikuyu from English, which he bid farewell to in 1977, opting rather to write in his indigenous language. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o appeared on the list of favourites to win the Nobel prize for literature for several years. Since the workings of the Nobel award committee remain secret, the lists of the committee's deliberations are kept for 50 years, it will be decades before we know why he was overlooked when so many felt he richly deserved the prize.
Mail & Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- Mail & Guardian
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: A writer who refused to bow
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has died. But if ever there was a writer who prepared us for this moment, for the refusal of forgetting, for the insistence that the spirit of resistance cannot be imprisoned, it was him. Born in colonial Kenya in 1938, Ngũgĩ's life was shaped from the beginning by rupture and fire. He witnessed the brutal violence of British colonial rule, the fracturing of communities under settler capitalism and the psychic wounds left by forced conversions, Christianisation and land dispossession. He was also shaped, by the courageous resistance of the Mau Mau uprising, that great peasant revolt that has often been sanitised into nationalist myth. But Ngũgĩ did not trade in myth. He held the truth in his hands, raw, inconvenient, luminous. For many in the Global North, Ngũgĩ was first encountered through the deceptively simple novels of his early career: Weep Not, Child (1964), The River Between (1965) and A Grain of Wheat (1967). These were works written in English, in the mode of a young man taught to believe that the English language was the vehicle of modernity. But Ngũgĩ would later reject this lie so forcefully, so completely, that it would cost him his freedom. And in doing so, he would chart one of the most radical literary and political journeys of our time, from a colonial subject to a prisoner of conscience, to a living weapon of decolonisation. Like Frantz Fanon, Ngũgĩ took on the betrayal of predatory postcolonial elites with the same fury that he confronted colonialism. In 1977, after staging I Will Marry When I Want with villagers at Kamiriithu, a Gikuyu-language play that tore into the heart of post-independence corruption and neocolonial betrayal, Ngũgĩ was detained without trial. In prison, he wrote Devil on the Cross in Gikuyu, on toilet paper, using a smuggled pen. It was a defiant act not just of storytelling but of linguistic reclamation. From that point onward, he would write first and foremost in Gikuyu, translating his work into English only later. As he declared in Decolonising the Mind, 'African writers must choose to write in the languages of their people … the language of real life, of work, of struggle.' This was not the kind of superficial gesture common in performative forms of decolonial posturing. Ngũgĩ understood language as infrastructure, as the battleground where cultural memory, political power and selfhood are contested. To decolonise the mind, one must dismantle the internalised grammar of empire. And yet, it is his final towering novel, Wizard of the Crow (2006), that best captures the full scope of his vision. Written in Gikuyu and translated by Ngũgĩ himself into English, this nearly 800-page epic is a grotesquely comic, eerily prophetic tale of a fictional African dictatorship called Aburĩria, a mirror held up to the postcolonial state. Here, language shifts and warps like the body of the dictator himself. Time becomes absurd. Gender fluidities are hinted at and then crushed under patriarchal panic. The body politic is both spectacle and corpse. The ruler of Aburĩria, known only as 'The Ruler,' is an egotistical despot obsessed with being deified by the Global Bank. His ministers compete in a frenzy of sycophancy, constructing a Tower of Babel-style monstrosity called Marching to Heaven to honour him. In this theatre of grotesquerie, we meet Kamiti, an unemployed philosopher-turned-healer who assumes the identity of the 'Wizard of the Crow', and Nyawira, a feminist revolutionary and leader of the underground Movement for the Voice of the People. Their love, forged in resistance and trickery, is one of the most quietly radical elements of the novel. It is gendered solidarity, not romance, political tenderness, not bourgeois desire. Through magical realism, satire and parable, Ngũgĩ lays bare the mechanics of postcolonial authoritarianism, not as a betrayal of the nation but as its logical continuation under the rules of global finance. The Ruler's body literally inflates with the disease of power. The Global Bank operates like a god demanding tribute. In this world, development is disease, progress is punishment and the nation is a prison. The grotesque becomes the logic of governance. And this is not just an African story. In Wizard of the Crow, we already meet the future — a spectacle of power obsessed with worship, paranoid about dissent and surrounded by ministers so stupid and servile they parody themselves. This is not just an African story. In the United States The Ruler is reborn in orange skin, yelling on Fox News, flanked by cronies who echo his lies, drunk on performance and grievance. As Ngũgĩ made clear that the absurd is a structure, not an accident. But Wizard of the Crow is not merely critique. It is a manual of survival. It insists on the subversive power of storytelling, the plasticity of language and the insurgency of laughter. It gives us spells, not the supernatural kind but the magic of those who refuse to die quietly. What Ngũgĩ taught us, especially those of us working and writing from the Global South, is that liberation must be total. You cannot free a people without freeing their tongues, their bodies, their histories, their archives, their dreams. In a world where Euro-American liberalism continues to demand to be respected as a great moral authority while it continues its long blood lust, now most visible in the agonies of Palestine. Ngũgĩ's refusal to write in English was more radical than any slogan. It was a withdrawal of consent from the epistemology of empire. In a moment in which decolonial posturing is often insufferably bourgeois we must affirm Ngũgĩ's refusal of abstract theory. He was always concerned with the poor. With peasants. With workers. With women and men who labour and laugh and conspire and survive. Ngũgĩ was a Marxist, and his Marxism was never academic. It pulsed through his literature, in the rhythms of Gikuyu oral storytelling, in the community workshops of Kamiriithu, in the bodies of characters like Nyawira who refuse subordination to both domesticity and the state. Ngũgĩ wrote against the singular hero. Against the myth of the nationalist saviour. Against the idea that liberation is a flag or a parliament. For Ngũgĩ, the masses were the protagonists. The collectivity was the hero. Even in Wizard of the Crow, where Kamiti could have become a messianic figure, he retreats. He is shaped and saved by Nyawira, and together they dissolve into the revolutionary underground, not as symbols, but as catalysts. Ngũgĩ also took women seriously, even as he struggled, at times with fully unlearning the patriarchal codes embedded in tradition and revolution alike. His later work, including The Perfect Nine (2020), reclaims Gikuyu mythology to centre female protagonists, exploring disability, desire and divine power through poetic epic. It is a late-life meditation on gender and creation, a text that invites rereading and feminist critique. That critique will have to grapple with the shock that exploded through the literary world in March 2024 when Ngũgĩ's son, Mukoma, took to Twitter to claim that his father had abused his late mother, Nyambura. Mukoma's sister, Wanjiku, appeared to dispute the allegation. At the moment the facts do not appear to be clear. Al Jazeera took down the article it had published on the allegations saying: 'In light of fresh information, Al Jazeera English is unable to support some elements of this article, whose text we are withdrawing from the site.' To read Ngũgĩ today, especially from South Africa, is to confront our own betrayals. Our own post-liberation rulers drunk on vanity, greed and violence. Our subordination to the demands of capital. Our own crises of language, where English and a Europeanised form of Afrikaans dominate elite spaces, while isiXhosa, isiZulu, SeSotho, and others are treated as relics of the home, not instruments of thought. It is also to recognise the quiet brilliance of resistance, in shack settlements, in feminist groups and networks, in union struggles, in autonomous student reading groups, in WhatsApp forums of working-class learners. Like Kamiti and Nyawira, our people know how to conjure survival amid enduring oppression and its accumulation of pain and trauma. Ngũgĩ was never awarded the Nobel Prize, despite decades of speculation. But he didn't need it. The people who needed to read him found him. He gave us language as a weapon. He gave us stories as conspiracies. He gave us laughter that bites like acid. To lose Ngũgĩ now, in the midst of so much backsliding and betrayal, is to feel momentarily unmoored. It is to wonder: who will write us back into being? Who will remind us that our tongues are sacred? That the crow, the scorned, unwanted black bird, is a prophet? But Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o prepared us for this too. He taught us that the dead never die in vain. That the story never ends, it only passes hands. He also taught us that stories are complex and that liberators can also be oppressors. Vashna Jagarnath is a historian, political risk and DEI consultant, labour expert, pan-African and South Asian political analyst and curriculum specialist
Russia Today
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
UK returns Indian Ocean territory to former colony
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed an agreement on Thursday transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, the deal allows Washington and London to retain control of the joint military base on Diego Garcia Island for an initial period of 99 years. The Chagos archipelago, comprising more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean about 310 miles south of the Maldives archipelago, was separated from Mauritius by the UK in 1965, before Mauritius gained independence in 1968. Since then, Mauritius has sought to reclaim the territory. In 1966, the largest island, Diego Garcia, was leased to the US, and around 2,000 inhabitants were displaced. Keir Starmer emphasized the strategic importance of Diego Garcia, stating, 'the strategic location of this base is of the utmost significance to Britain, from deploying aircraft to defeat terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to anticipating threats in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific.' He added that the deal secures strong protections against 'malign influence.' Speaking from the UK's Northwood military headquarters, Starmer stated that US President Donald Trump also supports the deal, recognizing the strategic importance of the base. Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam hailed the agreement as a historic step, saying, 'with this agreement, we are completing the total process of decolonization.' However, critics of the accord, including Conservative Party foreign affairs spokeswoman Priti Patel, argued that it was costly and risked ceding strategic influence in the region to China. Patel called it 'Labour's Chagos Surrender Deal,' saying it is 'bad' for UK defense, for the country's taxpayers and for British Chagossians. According to Reuters, the total value of the agreement would be worth $3.9 billion (3 billion pounds) over 99 years. The deal includes an existing 24-mile buffer zone around Diego Garcia, where no construction can occur without UK approval. There is also an option to extend the lease for an additional 40 years, provided that both parties reach an agreement.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Mauritius PM boasts of 'great victory' on Chagos Islands after Keir Starmer agrees Brits will pay £30BILLION to keep military base after handing over the British territory
Keir Starmer is facing a storm over handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and paying £30billion for the privilege today. Ministers have insisted the deal to transfer sovereignty of the British territory is 'good value' - despite Sir Keir's counterpart describing it as a 'great victory'. The government is also being hammered for fiddling figures to claim the total cost of the deal will be £3.4billion - even though it appears to be 10 times that. Kemi Badenoch said that Donald Trump would be 'laughing' at how Sir Keir had been outmanoeuvred, with the US base on Diego Garcia now secured for the next 99 years. After armed forces minister Luke Pollard toured broadcast studios defending the terms, the Tory leader said America got a 'great deal at the expense of the UK'. There have also been signs of nerves among Labour MPs, with a Parliamentary vote expected to ratify the treaty terms. In a TV address last night, Mauritius PM Navin Ramgoolam hailed the 'great victory', saying: 'This is the culmination of a battle waged by the Mauritian authorities for more than 60 years, marking one of the last chapters in the process of decolonization of Mauritius, which began in 1968. 'It's total recognition of our sovereignty on the Chagos, including Diego Garcia.' The text of the pact states that it will 'complete the process of decolonisation of Mauritius'. The UK agreed to pay at least £120 million-a-year for 99 years for control of the vital Diego Garcia base, plus hand over £1.125billion for economic development over a 25-year period. Officials said the deal amounted to an average of £101million a year in 2025/26 prices with an overall cost of £3.4billion a year 'using a net present value methodology'. However, that relies on using a 'Social Time Preference' mechanism to discount the value of the payments - on top of adjusting for the effects of inflation. The true cost of the deal looks like being more than £30billion if expressed in real terms. Mr Pollard argued that the cost was 'comparable' to bases other allies lease in the region. 'So it's £3.4billion over 99 years – that represents good value,' he told Sky News. The French pay 85million euros a year to rent a base in Djibouti that is 'literally next door to the Chinese naval base that's leased there', he said. He argued that Diego Garcia is '15 times bigger than that French base' and the UK had secured an 'exclusion zone' around the base to protect UK and US operations. The Trump administration in Washington has supported the deal, which guarantees the future of the base which is used extensively by the US armed forces. Asked why the US is not contributing to the cost of leasing back the base, he said the partner country pays much more in operational costs. 'What we are bringing to the deal is the real estate, the UK will be leasing the base and the Americans pay for the operating costs of the base – now that is many multiples more than the leasing cost,' he told Times Radio. Mrs Badenoch said the US was benefiting at the UK's expense. 'Donald Trump is laughing at that Chagos deal,' the Conservative Party leader told BBC Breakfast. 'He's welcoming it because he's not going to have to pay very much, if anything at all. 'He's got a great deal at the expense of the UK. That's not right. It hasn't been done in our national interest. 'What I want to see is more nurses being paid well but we can't do that because we're taking a lot of terrible decisions under Keir Starmer that are weakening our country.' The total cash cost over the 99-year term of the deal will be at least £13 billion for the use of the base and the 25-year agreement to hand over money to support projects to promote the 'economic development and welfare of Mauritius'. The International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion in 2019, said the Chagos Archipelago should be handed over. Ministers argued that the deal needed to be done because the UK would have faced legal challenges 'within weeks' which could have jeopardised the operation of the Indian Ocean base which is used by US and British forces. The government's claims for the cost of the deal relies on using a 'Social Time Preference' mechanism to discount the value of the payments - on top of adjusting for the effects of inflation However, critics have dismissed the legal threat, questioning whether the US or France would have bowed to the edict of a foreign court. Labour MP Peter Lamb reportedly posted in a Labour WhatsApp group last night: 'Getting real tired of this 'the courts have settled it' line of argument being wheeled out by the PM. 'They interpret current law, MPs make the law. You can't hide behind a judgement and claim it gives you cover from questions over what is right or proper.' Supporters say the UK will retain full operational control of Diego Garcia, including the electromagnetic spectrum satellite used for communications which counters hostile interference. A 24-nautical mile buffer zone will be put in place around the island where nothing can be built or placed without UK consent.
