Frantz Fanon and the Dialetic of Decolonisation

It has been more than five decades since the wave of decolonization swept across Africa. For people on the continent, the rise to power by the former liberation movements brought hope for a better future in the post-colonial state. However later developments showed that independence would, in fact, not change the material and social conditions of the ordinary people. Although the national liberation movement took over the government of the former colony, colonial institutions and structures of power, which were founded on the economic exploitation of the colony, remained unchanged. Thus in this thesis I set out to examine Frantz Fanon’s thought in order to provide a critique of post-independence failures in Africa. I will argue that whilst Fanon shared the same ideals as the anti-colonial movements in their objective to remove colonial regimes from power, that Fanon, in fact, had a critical attitude towards the anti-colonial movement. Whereas the latter conceived of freedom as independence, Fanon conceived of freedom as disalienation, premised on the complete recovery of the black self from the negative effects of colonialism. Thus the study sets out to examine the extent to which Fanon offered an alternative idea of freedom and liberation to the one which was being advanced by the national liberation movements.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

African Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Ndlovu, Siphiwe

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Nash, Andrew
• Garuba, Harry

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/3571

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/3571