Achille Mbembe profere palestra sobre tensões raciais na África do Sul

Achille Mbembe, cientista político e filósofo, autor de  Sortir de la grande nuit – Essai sur l'Afrique décolonisée e Critique de la raison nègre (publicada em Portugal como Crítica da Razão Negra) deu um conjunto de palestras públicas no Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), escritas num registo oralizante, como se esclarece num preâmbulo ao artigo que aqui partilhamos, que se debruça sobre as recentes tensões raciais na África do Sul.

Twenty one years after freedom, we have now fully entered what looks like a negative moment. This is a moment most African postcolonial societies have experienced. Like theirs in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, ours is gray and almost murky. It lacks clarity.

Today many want to finally bring white supremacy to its knees. But the same seem to go missing when it comes to publically condemning the extra-judicial executions of fellow Africans on the streets of our cities and in our townships.  As Fanon intimated, they see no contradiction between wanting to topple white supremacy and being anti-racist while succumbing to the sirens of isolationism and national-chauvinism. 

Many still consider whites as “settlers” who, once in a while, will attempt to masquerade as “natives.” And yet, with the advent of democracy and the new constitutional State, there are no longer settlers or natives. There are only citizens. If we repudiate democracy, what will we replace it with?

O artigo completo, aqui