User:Mark Barner/sandbox

Fallism

"This philosophy recognises the collective suffering of African people and attempts to assist them in reclaiming their dignity from Europeans. Fallism involves a commitment to the decolonial project and attempts to expel European imperialism from the African continent.  The calls for the expulsion of European history from the intellectual and ideological cultures at universities are an example of Fallism.  Fallism is a philosophy which caters to all Africans regardless of political affiliation.  It is a response to the continued domination of society by European ideals." -- Athabile Nonxuba[1]

History

Fallism was first used as the name for a philosophy or "independent religion" that advocated self-empowerment and free choice.[2]

In its most recent form, Fallism is an Afrocentrist paradigm that seeks to achieve the complete decolonization of African power, identity and knowledge systems. This is to be accomplished through a complete removal of white European and white Western influences from every aspect of native African society.

Student protests under the banner "Rhodes Must Fall"[7] advocated the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes and the "decolonization" of the University of Cape Town and peer institutions. Subsequent protests have demanded that "Fees Must Fall" at universities across the country. The emergence of what student activists now call "Fallism" demonstrates some striking continuities with student protest politics under apartheid: "Fallists" invoke 1960s-1970s Black Consciousness student thinkers like Steve Biko, and aim to make campuses "ungovernable" as protestors did in the 1980s. But Fallists also reject many heroes of their parents' generation, dismissing Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders as "sell-outs."[3]

"The legacy of Fallism will not be one of completed activisms, but Fallists can achieve a great deal of progress in moving forward the agenda for global decolonisation." -- Wandile Ngcaweni[6]

Fallism calls for:

• Revisiting and revising the Freedom Charter, with a special focus on realizing free education;[6]

• Reclaiming the indigenous knowledge systems of Africa;[6]

• Re-directing educating for the advancement of the African, not of the colonial empire[6], with a greater focus on having conversations with Africa and Africans, with and about themselves, before trying to be understood by the western world.

• Remembering that the African is a human with faculties that extend past maintained white narratives[6];

• The total destruction of economic and political legacies of colonial domination[6]. For example, education has been identified as one of the powerful sources of colonial imposition on Africans, thus the expulsion of European history from the intellectual and ideological cultures at African universities is necessary. Science as a whole is especially a product of western modernity; thus, science should be abolished and re-constructed from a purely Afro-centric perspective;[4]

• Calls for full redistribution of resources from the hands of the colonizer to the hands of the formerly colonized natives[6], and the establishment of a Socialist economy throughout Africa;

• Fallists observe a particular mandate in the struggle to emancipate black lives from "white suffocation", requiring the total transformation of thinking from the "parasite of whiteness" to transform the world to be free of anti-blackness, patriarchy, "queer-phobia", self-hating white systems[6];

• A total decolonization of systems of power, knowledge and being[6] - in other words, a complete removal of white European and white Western influences from every aspect of native African society.

Criticism

"For all its humour and pathos, the video[4] manages to convey in just over four minutes the sinister underbelly of Fallism. This is the movement’s tendency to pass off as intellectual engagement the empty rhetoric and sloganeering of racial identity politics; its dogmatism and authoritarianism; its enforcement of conformity and intolerance of dissent; its unwillingness to engage with interlocutors; and its privileging of feelings (offence, anger, outrage and 'pain') over reasoned debate." -- Michael Cardo[5]

In the video[4], Athabile Nonxuba is heard speaking in English (a Western European language), and not her native Xhoso (an East Cape / African Language), when she says that Western knowledge is very pathetic, that it must be done away with entirely, and that it must be started all over again.

Also in the video[4], the individual chairing the panel silences a person expressing a contrary opinion while simultaneously claiming that they were in a progressive space for people to say their opinions, and then demanding an apology from the dissenter.

References

[1] Excerpt from "Student Investor" interview (#660) with Athabile Nonxuba, a Public Policy and Administration student at on the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the founding chairperson of the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), on April 15, 2016. http://www.studentinvestor.co.za/athabile-nonxuba-feesmustfall-interview/

[2] "Fallism", posted 14:21 on Wednesday, September 20, 2006, by Kaytlynne, at http://wwwfallism.blogspot.com/

[3] "Fallism" and the Politics of Being a Student in South Africa, Past and Present, from the description of a session given by Meghan Healy-Clancy of Bridgewater State University at 11:25 on December 5, 2016 at the Center for Advancement of Research and Scholarship. http://vc.bridgew.edu/may_celebrations/2016/session1/31/

[4] "Science Must Fall", video recorded on October 12, 2016,, and featuring Athabile Nonxuba speaking on the topic of "Fallism". https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=C9SiRNibD14&app=desktop

[5] "Fallism: Into the intellectual abyss", posted October 16, 2016, by Michael Cardo on Politicsweb. http://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/fallism-into-the-intellectual-abyss

[6] "Revisiting the ABCs of the Decolonial Paradigm of Fallism", posted on September 30, 2016, on The Daily VOX. http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/wandile-ngcaweni-revisiting-abcs-decolonial-paradigm-fallism/

[7] "Rhodes Must Fall" protest movement. Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Must_Fall