Chisi Chako Masimba Mashoma/Kunzi Pakata Sandi Kunzi Ridza : Anthropological Musings on the Coloniality of Dispossession in Africa

Abstract

Africans need to be careful with discourses on coloniality that avoid dealing with central aberrations of colonialism. Focusing on coloniality of power, coloniality of being, coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of gender, contemporary discourses on coloniality sidestepped a central aspect of colonialism. Motivated not by quests to merely exercise power, as is assumed in coloniality of power; and motivated not merely by quests to dominate Africans using knowledge, as is assumed in coloniality of knowledge; and motivated not ultimately by the quest for gender domination, as is assumed in the coloniality of gender, colonialists dispossessed colonized people. Reviewing literature and using the Shona (a people of Zimbabwe) proverbs chisi chako masimba mashoma/kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza (one should not exercise power over what one does not own/possession is not synonymous with ownership), this paper postulates the notion of coloniality of dispossession. The paper concludes that power is merely a tool to dispossess colonized people, and so decolonial scholarship must focus not only on tools used to colonize other people but on the ultimate goals of using tools, such as power.

Keywords

coloniality dispossession Africa anthropological chisi chako

Introduction

The problem of possession of power is not uniquely human yet the problem of colonization is arguably uniquely human in the sense of some humans dispossessing and robbing other humans, in what the Shona people call kupamba (to colonize). While some contemporary scholars postulate symmetrical anthropology, which dispenses with binaries between humans and non-humans, and puts all entities, be they human or nonhuman, on the same ontological plane (Fijn & Kavesh, 2021; Harman, 2009; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010; Kubes & Reinhardt, 2022; Latour, 1993, 2005), the import of such symmetrical anthropology on discourses about coloniality and decoloniality has not been teased out. Of course, different entities whether human or nonhuman have got hierarchies, power, and dominance over others but then the question is whether such nonhuman hierarchies, power, and dominance should similarly be theorized as coloniality in the sense in which some decolonial scholars have tended to define coloniality in terms of hierarchies, domination, and power (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, 2016; Quijano, 2000; Restrepo, 2018).

Defining colonization and coloniality in terms of kupamba (to dispossess, loot, steal, rob, and plunder) rather than in terms of mere existence of hierarchies, structures, order, dominance, power, and binaries, the Shona people focus on the crimes of dispossessing, stealing, plundering, and looting, for which Africans are increasingly demanding reparations and restitution from colonialists (Chitonge, 2022; Dunham, 2017; Howard-Hassmann, 2004; Spitzer, 2021; Wittmann, 2016). From an African point of view, colonialists are known to have dispossessed Africans, stolen African land, minerals, livestock, and other properties including cultural artifacts which are yet to be restored back to the African owners (Benyera, 2018; Chitonge, 2019; Dawson, 2011; Dzidzienyo & Nkumbaan, 2020; Effiboley, 2020; Ehlers, 1992; King, 2017; Moyana, 1984; Moyo & Yeros, 2013; Mthembu-Salter, 2019; Palmer, 1977; The Patriot, 2017; Peires, 1976; Penn, 1995; The Sunday Mail, 2016; Sesanti, 2019; Viljoen, 1997; Werner, 1993). Building on insights from historical anthropology which, as Gurevich and Gurevich (1992) argue, aims to reconstruct the subjective reality which formed the consciousness of people of a given epoch and culture, this paper postulates what I call the coloniality of dispossession; which is sensitive to the Shona notion of kupamba.

The Shona notion of kupamba is different from conceptualizations of coloniality in terms of the mere existence of hierarchies, power, dominance, and binaries, as is assumed in some scholarship on coloniality. Also, whereas contemporary scholarship on symmetrical anthropology, postanthropocentrism, posthumanism, and transhumanism (Nhemachena & Mawere, 2022), assume that humans and nonhumans are ontologically on the same footing, the Shona notion of kupamba only applies to human beings who colonize other human beings via dispossession, looting, stealing, plunder, and robbery such as happened across Africa during European colonial rule. For the Shona people, if to colonize is merely to hierarchically rank above others, one wonders whether it would, broadly, make theoretical and empirical sense to say that everything, including the nonhuman, that is above the other is colonial; similarly, for the Shona people, if to colonize is to merely rank hierarchically above the other, including for nonhumans, one wonders whether it, broadly, would make theoretical and empirical sense to say nonhuman roofs of houses colonize the floors that lie under them; also, for the Shona people, if to colonize is to merely dominate, including among nonhumans, one wonders whether it would make theoretical and empirical sense to say that trees dominate the grass under them and therefore that the trees have colonized the grass. In the same vein, if to colonize is merely about dominance, one wonders whether it would, broadly, make theoretical and empirical sense to say that one’s head/brain dominates the body and therefore that the head/brain has colonized one’s body. Put differently, if to colonize is merely to have hierarchies, one wonders whether it would make sense to say that one’s head/brain occupies a higher position and therefore that one’s head/brain has colonized one’s body. Similarly, if to colonize is merely to be ahead of the others, one wonders whether it would make theoretical and empirical sense to say that one’s face is ahead of one’s back and therefore that one’s face is colonizing one’s back which is always kept behind. If to colonize is merely to be above the others, one wonders whether it would, broadly, make theoretical and empirical sense to say that birds fly above human beings and that therefore birds colonize human beings over whom they fly. Put differently, if to colonize is merely to occupy higher positions, one wonders whether it would make sense to say that the Heavens occupy higher positions and that therefore the Heavens are colonizing the earth/humans on earth. The point here is that, understood merely in terms of existence of hierarchies, power, binaries, and dominance, colonization and coloniality miss the sense of kupamba, as understood by the Shona people.

Arguing that colonialists did not necessarily introduce structuralism, hierarchy, order, and positions in Africa (Bouilly et al., 2016; Bryant, 2011; Gamlin, 2021; Lugones, 2008; Sudarkasa, 1986), this paper contends, in a broad postanthropocentric sense, that even birds that fly know about the existence of hierarchies and positions. Contending that colonialists did not necessarily introduce hierarchical positions in Africa, the paper observes, in a postanthropocentric sense, that even squirrels that take refuge in tall trees know about hierarchies and heights of positions; also, holding that precolonial Africans were not necessarily unaware of hierarchies, the paper argues that even little children know that there should be hierarchies between their feet and heads such that every morning they wake up in such ways that their heads assume higher positions over their feet. Similarly, contending that colonialists did not necessarily introduce order in Africa, this paper observes that order and structures existed in precolonial Africa where even houses and other precolonial architectural structures were built in orderly fashions. Furthermore, arguing that colonialism should not necessarily be defined in terms of exercising power (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Quijano, 2000; Restrepo, 2018), this paper contends that, in fact, decolonization requires power to enable those that are colonized to become free, demand reparations, restitution, and assume sovereignty and autonomy. The point is that power itself is not necessarily colonial (Quijano, 2000; Salgado et al., 2021), rather, power is dual-use in the sense of being usable as much in a colonial sense as in a decolonial sense; decolonial movements and decolonial scholars also need power to resist coloniality and colonization. Even the 21st century decolonial student movements in South Africa needed to mobilize power to fight coloniality and to ensure that Cecil John Rhodes’ statue fell in the #RhodesMustFall movement (Nyamnjoh, 2016).

In the light of the foregoing, theorizing coloniality as kupamba (theft, plunder, robbery, or dispossession) makes it possible to conceive the limitations of theories that define coloniality merely in terms of hierarchies, power, structure, order, and dominance. The fact that coloniality is theft was evident in Kenya where, as Westmaas (2012) states: “Colonel Grogan, a white settler in Kenya, bluntly said of the Kikuyu: ‘We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs. Compulsory labour is the corollary of our occupation of the country.”

While some thinkers may argue that precolonial African groups of people were already dispossessing each other, this cannot absolve the robbery, dispossession, and theft by colonialists. If one finds a group of people killing one another and then one also starts killing, this would not warrant absolution from the crime of killing or robbery. Besides, one major problem is that African history has been written by those that have robbed and dispossessed the Africans; naturally there have been crises in representation since the colonialists were not interested in accurately recording African lives, they misrepresented Africans as having hatred toward one another, as raiding and wantonly killing one another and so on (Palmer, 1977). In fact, Palmer (1977) notes that Frederic Selous was paid £2000 by Cecil John Rhodes to falsely write that the precolonial Shona and Ndebele groups of people in Zimbabwe had acrimonious relations, including raids.

Coloniality as Theft

Even as they were robbing Africans, dispossessing the Africans and stealing African land, minerals, livestock, artifacts, and so on, colonialists invented the doctrine of res nullius (unowned things) and terra nullius (unoccupied land) in order to legitimize their criminal practices in the continents of Africa, Australia, and America for example (Nhemachena et al., 2018). In this regard, the status quo ante, for Africans, does not mean the return to so-called primitivism, marked by the so-called res nullius or terra nullius, because such primitivism itself is a social construction of the colonialists who dispossessed Africans of their civilizations and precolonial forms of modernity, including ownership and control over their resources (Chirikure, 2010; Taiwo, 2010). If, as was the case, colonialists stole African history, in Goody’s (2006) sense of “theft of history,” including the African past, then it follows that the African status quo ante should not be about returning Africans to the past but returning of the past and history to Africans who do not necessarily have to go to the past in order to find that past. If the African past was stolen, the logical extension is that the African past is not necessarily in the past but it is in the present and it is with those in the present who have stolen it or inherited the stolen past of the Africans. In other words, when Africans ask colonialists to restore the African status quo ante, Africans must not be understood as asking to be conveyed to the past because the African status quo ante which Africans are asking for is in the present and being kept by those that stole the African past. I am hinting here at a paradox wherein colonialists have stolen African history and the African past yet the same colonialists do not want to be associated with the past even as they have stolen the African past. Put differently, those that have stolen the pasts of others would want to neutralize their own culpability by pleading that it is actually the past that is culpable for keeping the stolen past and that therefore to recover the stolen past, Africans should have to be conveyed back to the supposedly culpable past whose geographical location is ironically never disclosed by those who claim to be champions of mapping, including the art of cartography. Because the geographical location of the past is, as per the tropes, unknown, it has become very effective for colonialists and their descendants to terrify Africans by threatening to convey them to the past. It is seldom realized that, in fact, the African past is not in the past but is in the hands of European museums, European colonialists and institutions that refuse to return such past, including African artifacts, land, minerals, skulls, and so on, which they stole from Africans. Put in other words, colonialists often threaten to cast Africans to the past even as the same colonialists ironically refuse to return the African past which they stole over the centuries of enslavement and colonization.

The point is that in order to forestall claims for restitution and reparations for stealing the African artifacts, land, minerals, epistemologies, livestock, skulls, and so on, colonialists have created figments of geographies of the past such that Africans are taught that their past, which has actually been stolen by colonialists, is lying in and has been simply left in the past. If colonialists have stolen the African past, and they have stolen African time, more generally, it follows that the status quo ante, for Africans, includes the restoration of stolen time which does not necessarily lie in the past. Colonialists did not steal African resources in order to curate them in the past, which has become a colonial punchbag, but they did so in order to perpetually enjoy the stolen resources while, by sleights of hand, they taught African victims of the colonial theft that their stolen pasts are lying in the past of which physical geography is sadly not disclosed. By blaming the past for housing the stolen African past, colonialists and their descendants have managed to deflect their own human culpability—and because Africans have not been provided with geographical maps to the regions of the past where their stolen resources supposedly lie, they are effectively demobilized and bambozooled. On the other hand, those Africans that are discerning enough, to see that what has been stolen from them is in fact not lying in the past but in the present with the colonialists and their descendants, are readily threatened with conveyance to the “savage” past.

Whereas colonialists would want Africans to believe that their past was one of want, suffering and privation, it is imperative to note that the African past is in fact what the colonialists and their progeny are enjoying and have been enjoying for centuries, since the enslavement and colonial eras, in the form of stolen land, artifacts, livestock, minerals, epistemologies, intellectual property rights, and so on. The status quo ante, for Africans, should not be one that decenters hierarchies and order because even in precolonial Africa there were hierarchies and structural order which were not necessarily colonial in the African senses (Bhila, 1982; Gelfand, 1959; Mudenge, 1974; Posselt, 1935). In fact, precolonial African hierarchies and structural order were imperative in the decolonial wars that were fought to free Africans from colonialism. Also, the status quo ante for Africans is not necessarily one that is antithetical to the exercise of power because Africans needed to exercise power when they fought for liberation from colonialists. Put differently, while Western postmodernists and poststructuralists assume that decolonization should be achieved via the decentering of structures, hierarchies, and the attendant order (Nhemachena, 2021b), this paper argues that in fact decolonial wars required structures, hierarchies, and attendant order without which efficiency could not be possible. In other words, without structures, hierarchies, and order, Africans lose their spines—because a spine has to have order, structure, and hierarchy—and this loss of spines makes it impossible to fight for decolonization. To become spineless, in a poststructuralist and postmodernist sense, is to become susceptible to colonization again; yet some versions of decoloniality assume that decolonization is achieved through decentering African power, decentering African hierarchies, decentering African structures, and decentering African order in ways that ironically break African spines (Bryant, 2011; Gamlin, 2021; Lugones, 2008; Quijano, 2000; Salgado et al., 2021). Put in other words, for centuries, colonialists have stolen African structures, they have stolen African order and they have stolen African power by destroying African polities, family structures, and community structures (Posselt, 1935) because they knew that African hierarchies, order, power and structures could be used to resist and even depose colonialism.

The point in the foregoing is that colonization was about the theft of African power which has suffered colonial deconstruction for centuries; if colonization was about the theft of African power, it follows that decolonization cannot be achieved by further deconstructing African power (Nhemachena, 2021b). Similarly, if colonization was about the theft of African order and hierarchies which have been decentered and deconstructed since the enslavement and colonial eras, it follows that decolonization cannot be achieved through further deconstructing and decentering African hierarchies, structures, and order. Besides, as noted above, colonization was about the theft of African time and so it follows that decolonization cannot be achieved through destroying African institutions which should in fact be repositories of African time. The point here is that African families are repositories of African time in the form of African genealogies which have sadly been targeted, by colonialists, for deconstruction for centuries; also, African bodies are repositories of African time in so far as they embody genealogies that are indispensable for determining African heritages over time; in the same vein, African religions are repositories of African time in so far as they curate the ways and words of African ancestors (Fontein, 2006, 2009; Mushonga, 2006). If, as is the case, African religions are repositories of the words and voices of African ancestors, it follows that such African religions are repositories of African time which colonialists have targeted for theft. Having stolen African time, colonialists have consistently caricatured Africans as belonging to the past and to traditions when in fact the stolen African time is living in the present albeit in the colonial vortices. It is more like someone steals a child and then to the parents they say that the child is now lying in the past or in traditions—supposedly dead when in fact the child is stolen and still living and serving those that have stolen the child.

While colonialists who stole African land, livestock, artifacts, and so on often demand that Africans should compensate for improvements, of the land for example, in precolonial African justice delivery systems, those that stole property belonging to others were not only expected to return what they stole but they were also ordered to compensate the victims of theft for lost time or stolen time marking the duration of the theft. Thus, the Shona people say mhosva inoripwa (crimes have to be compensated for) to underline the fact that those that colonized, dispossessed, and exploited Africans can only absolve themselves by compensating for their crimes. The sad thing is that in contemporary Africa, in spite of celebrations of ubuntu, it is ironically the colonialists and their descendants who are demanding compensation for supposed improvements on the land which they stole from Africans (Nhemachena & Warikandwa, 2019). It is important to note here that in African ubuntu/chivanhu it is the African victims of colonial theft that are entitled to return of stolen property plus compensation from the colonialists who have profited for centuries from the stolen property. Put differently, theft of material property implies theft of time as well because the rightful owners, in this case Africans, will have been deprived of the opportunities to use, and profit from their property that was stolen. In other words, colonialists and their descendants should in fact not only be returning property which was stolen during the colonial era but they should also be compensating the African victims of colonial theft: in any case colonialists cannot claim compensation for supposedly improving the stolen property; after all they should be paying compensation to Africans for depriving the rightful owners of opportunities to develop their own property and resources in the way they wanted to.

Chisi chako masimba mashoma/kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza

The upshot of the foregoing is that in African societies, even thieves knew that they did not have power over that which they did not rightly own. In this regard the Shona people have proverbs kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza (possession is not synonymous with ownership) and chisi chako masimba mashoma (you should not exercise power over that which does not belong to you). Colonialists breached all these Shona principles when they stole African land, livestock, artifacts, and other resources—and instead of observing chisi chako masimba mashoma, colonialists even exploited and killed the Africans from whom they stole land, livestock, minerals, and other resources. In all these colonial aberrations, the central goal was to dispossess the colonized peoples. What I call the coloniality of dispossession is not reducible to the coloniality of power, the coloniality of being, the coloniality of knowledge, and the coloniality of gender. In what I call the coloniality of dispossession, the problem is not necessarily that people exercise power because even precolonial Africans exercised power; of course, precolonial Africans exercised power over what they owned or what belonged to them, however, the colonialists exercised power over what was owned by Africans and over what belonged to Africans. In other words, for the Shona people, not every exercise of power is colonial: the exercise of power becomes colonial when one is exercising power over what one does not own and over what belongs to other people. Similarly, the problem of colonialism is not understood in terms of dominance or hegemony but the problem of colonialism is understood by the Shona people in terms of breaches of African principles of chisi chako masimba mashoma and kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza. Indeed, there would be nothing colonial if one exercises dominance or hegemony over what belongs to one or over what one rightly owns.

What I call the coloniality of dispossession holds that coloniality is not only about the coloniality of power, coloniality of being, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of gender. It is cause for wonder why the coloniality of dispossession which has been central to the colonial projects, in Africa, for centuries is absent in contemporary discourses on coloniality. The coloniality of dispossession takes note of the fact that Africans and other people of the Global South have been dispossessed of their material and nonmaterial resources, tangible and intangible resources for centuries now. The coloniality of dispossession contends that colonialists did not necessarily come to Africa and the Global South, more generally, so as to merely exercise colonizing power but they, a fortiori, came to Africa, and the Global South, to dispossess the peoples of the regions. During the processes of colonial dispossession, colonialists destroyed African institutions and the African order that was underwritten by such African institutions. The coloniality of dispossession pays attention to the old and the new scramble for African resources, including the ongoing 21st century transnational grabbing of African land (Erickson, 2020; Fairhead et al., 2012) and it also pays attention to the continuous pillaging of African resources, be they tangible or intangible. Also, the coloniality of dispossession pays attention to the theft of African data in the contemporary era of Big Data and the Internet of Things which are designed to harvest Big Data from Africans (Couldry & Meijas, 2018; Nhemachena, Hlabangane & Kaundjua, 2020). The coloniality of dispossession takes note of the fact that having been dispossessed of their land, livestock, artifacts, and minerals, Africans are now set to be dispossessed of their personal data in the age of the Internet of Things and wearable devices that constantly emit data that are sent to the transnational corporations which own and control the devices and software used to collect the Big Data. The point here is that it is necessary to draw insights from the anthropology of science and technology studies to understand the ongoing processes by which Africans are being dispossessed of their Big Data using the new technologies (Nhemachena & Mawere, 2022). Thus, writing about how contemporary global capital dispossesses human beings of their personal data, Couldry and Meijas (2018, pp. 1–2) write:

Data colonialism combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing. Understanding Big Data from the Global South means understanding capitalism’s current dependence on this new type of appropriation that works at every point in space where people or things are attached to today’s infrastructures of connection . . . Just as historical colonialism over the long-run provided the essential preconditions for the emergence of industrial capitalism, so over time, we can expect that data colonialism will provide the preconditions for a new stage of capitalism that as yet we can barely imagine, but for which the appropriation of human life through data will be central.

The point in the foregoing is that contemporary global capitalists are dispossessing Africans of their data; the contemporary capitalists are grabbing, taking ownership and exercising power over data which belongs to Africans; this is part of what I call the coloniality of dispossession. In other words, the notion of coloniality of dispossession does not begin by assuming that colonialists brought civilization, knowledge, power, hierarchies, structural order, development, and modernization to Africa—rather it starts from the premise that colonialists robbed, and are still robbing, Africans. The coloniality of dispossession understands that colonialists need power to dispossess other people, but it argues that power is just a tool that is used to achieve the aim of dispossessing other people. In this sense, the coloniality of dispossession urges decolonial scholars not to overly focus on the tools that colonialists used but to take into serious consideration the ultimate aim of the colonialists—which was to dispossess the colonized people. The argument here is that a victim of robbery does not have to overly focus on analyzing the tool that was used by the criminal but on the crime of robbery itself; similarly, power was a tool used to dispossess or steal from the colonized people and as such colonized people do not have to overly focus on analyzing power but on the colonial crime of dispossession itself; which is what I call the coloniality of dispossession.

The coloniality of dispossession takes cognizance of the African proverbs and principles including chisi chako masimba mashoma and kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza. What is more, the coloniality of dispossession holds that real decolonization in Africa can only take place when chisi chako masimba mashoma is observed such that those that have dispossessed Africans begin not only to return the stolen resources but also to compensate for the time they used the stolen resources. Real decolonization cannot take place when some people continue to exercise power over that which they do not rightly own and over what does not belong to them. Put in other words, from the perspective of the coloniality of dispossession, decoloniality is less about mere delinking or deimperialization than it is about reparations and restitution to the victims of colonial dispossession.

The Shona proverbs chisi chako masimba mashoma and kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza belie Western depictions of African cultures, including ubuntu, as without notions of ownership. Western scholarship has tended to portray African cultures as replete with notions of communalism and collectivism to the point of absence of individual ownership. Ubuntu is simplistically depicted in terms of umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person through other people) (Chuwa, 2012; Mugumbate & Nyanguru, 2013; Ogude, 2019; Oppenheim, 2012). Whereas Western scholarship has portrayed African cultures as without notions of individual ownership, the Shona people’s proverb chisi chako masimba mashona points to the presence of individual ownership in African cultures. In other words, to decolonize Africa, it is necessary not only to foreground collectivism and communalism but also to foreground African proverbs and principles that underline ownership and possession of African resources that have to be reclaimed as part of the process of decolonization. An emphasis on collectivism and communalism alone will not result in decolonization of Africa because when colonialists robbed Africans of their land, livestock, minerals, and other resources, they similarly assumed that Africans were so communalistic and collectivistic that there were no notions of theft and robbery because the resources supposedly belonged communally to all humans, whether Africans or non-Africans. This is the reason why colonialists described the economies of those that they targeted for colonization as sharing economies (Price, 1975) rather than ownership economies—the colonialists were dispossessing the Africans and so they could not have described them as capable of or as actually owning the resources on the continent of Africa.

Depicting the economies of precolonial peoples as having logics of sharing economies (Price, 1975) implied that even the colonialists themselves could also legitimately take shares in the supposedly communalistic economies. The point here is that Western thinkers continue to celebrate African cultures as collectivistic or communalistic not necessarily out of good faith but the assumptions of collectivism and communalism serve to buttress colonial assumptions that Africa was common property that could as well be enjoyed by anyone and everyone, and particularly by colonialists who even had the guts to collectively and communally parcel Africa among themselves at the Berlin Conference. In other words, colonial assumptions of communalism or collectivism among Africans legitimized colonial dispossession because there were assumptions that Africa was free for all, including colonialists, once they deemed themselves to have become part of the collective and the communalism associated with it.

The point is that colonialists would have been stupid to admit the existence of notions and practices of ownership and possession among the people that they sought to colonize and dispossess. In order to open up Africa to the massive theft, dispossession and exploitation which have been taking place for centuries now, colonialists had to deny the existence of jurisprudence and law, including notions and practices of ownership and possession among the people that they targeted for colonization. Put differently, by depicting the people that they targeted for dispossession as lawless, as without jurisprudence and law, including notions and practices of ownership and possession, colonialists managed to legitimize their own lawlessness and thievery. If colonialists acknowledged the existence of notions of ownership and possession in precolonial African jurisprudence and law, it would not have been possible for them to easily dispossess Africans of their land, livestock, mines, forests, and other resources which continue to be siphoned out of the continent or usurped even in the 21st century. Arguing that the Whites, including missionaries who arrived in precolonial Africa, were granted possession of some land to use for their missionary activities (Lindgren, 2002; Mfune, 2002), this paper notes that the colonialists lacked the capacity to distinguish between ownership and possession. Using the Shona saying that kunzi pakata sandi kunzi ridza, I contend that colonization was about confounding the distinctions between possession and ownership. Because colonialists did not observe the Shona proverb chisi chako masimba mashoma, they did not only rape African women and children but they also robbed Africans of their land and livestock; for instance, driving hundreds of thousands of cattle away from their African owners (The Patriot, 2017).

Africans drew clear distinctions between ownership and possession such that they would not exercise power over property that did not belong to them. On the other hand, colonialists lacked binaries or distinctions between what belonged to them and what belonged to other people such that they did not have inhibitions against theft and robbery. In fact, the colonialists even lacked distinctions or binaries between their own wives and the wives of Africans such that they would wantonly rape African women and girls (Mushonga, 2013). Besides, the colonialists so much lacked binaries that they could not distinguish between African human beings and property. In other words, colonialism was made possible through the denial of binaries between African human beings and property, and through the denial of binaries between African human beings and animals or beasts of burden (Fanon, 1963). In other words, colonialists dispossessed Africans of their humanity by treating them as indistinct from animals. Colonialism was not necessarily premised on binaries or dichotomies as is often assumed by some contemporary Western scholars (Ferguson, 2006; Ochoa, 1996). In fact, it is the colonized Africans who maintained binaries between what belonged to them and what belonged to other people as is enjoined in chisi chako masimba mashoma. It is precolonial Africans who maintained binaries or dichotomies between possession and ownership—colonialists on the other hand elided the binaries between what belonged to them and what belonged to Africans such that the colonialists were disinhibited from robbing Africans of their property, including land and livestock—and of course the colonialists also even arrogated African wives to themselves because they could not distinguish between their own wives and the wives of those that they colonized. In this regard, the contemporary scholarly deconstruction and effacement of binaries pose risks of replication of colonial practices in which colonialists help themselves to other people’s spouses and properties, which would otherwise not be possible in the presence of binaries between what one owns and what one does not own, what belongs to oneself and what belongs to other people.

Beyond the Coloniality of Power: The Complexity of the Coloniality of Dispossession

What I call the coloniality of dispossession takes cognizance of the fact that, often, colonialists used scare tactics to frighten their targets such that they would give in to colonial projects (Keegan, 1997). Noting ways in which colonialists frightened African targets of colonialism by presenting stories to the effect that the Africans were about to be attacked by groups of other European colonialists and that they would need “Treaties of Friendship” which would supposedly protect them from the imminent attacks (Horst, 1980); this paper argues that coloniality of dispossession is often preceded by scare tactics from the colonizers. Also, noting Klein’s (2007) observation that global capitalism relies on shock doctrines and on disasters from which it then profits, this paper contends that the coloniality of dispossession is similarly achieved through shock doctrines and disaster capitalism. Drawing on ways in which colonized people were dispossessed of their ancestors via scare tactics wherein colonialists described African ancestors as demons from which Africans had to run, the coloniality of dispossession urges Africans to be wary of colonial scare tactics that enable dispossession. Also, noting ways in which colonialists dispossessed colonized peoples of their cultures using scare tactics that described the colonized peoples’ cultures as barbaric, backward, and dangerous (Nhemachena, 2021b), this paper postulates that the coloniality of dispossession relies on inducing fear among the colonized. Moreover, this paper takes note of ways in which colonialists dispossessed the colonized people of their marriage institutions via scare tactics wherein the marriages of the colonized people were depicted as savage, barbaric, fearsome, and dangerous. Similarly, noting ways in which the colonized peoples were dispossessed of their polities through scare tactics wherein indigenous leaders were depicted as dangerous, risky, insane, and barbaric, this paper argues that the coloniality of dispossession has for long been instrumental in deposing African leaders. In the same vein, to dispossess the colonized people of their religions, colonialists used scare tactics wherein the religions of the colonized peoples were depicted as dangerous and as demonic cults which would supposedly lead Africans to hell. Also, in order to dispossess parents of their children, colonialists also used scare tactics in which the children of colonized peoples across the world were informed that their parents were not only savage but dangerous to their children; whom the colonialists sought to assimilate (Firpo & Jacobs, 2018; Van Krieken, 1999).

The point in the foregoing is that colonialists were not inhibited by the logics of chisi chako masimba mashoma and so they dispossessed the colonized peoples in various ways: parents were dispossessed of their children, spouses were dispossessed of their partners, the colonized peoples were dispossessed of their religions, the colonized peoples were dispossessed of their culture, the colonized peoples were dispossessed of their ancestors; the colonized peoples were dispossessed of their land and livestock. In all these instances, the colonialists used scare tactics to frighten their colonial targets into the colonial snares or nets.

In the contemporary era, colonized peoples are set to be dispossessed of their minds or brains through technologies including brain scanning technologies wherein minds are scanned and then uploaded into technological substrates (Kurzweil, 2005; Nhemachena, 2021a, 2021b); the point is that colonized peoples are set to be dispossessed of their minds or brains through Brain/Computer Interfaces or Brain/Cloud Interfaces wherein minds are scanned and transferred from the biological brain to the computer substrates or to the cloud (Kurzweil, 2005). If contemporary technologies scan brains/minds from the biological brain and then migrate the brains/minds to some technological substrates or to the cloud, the effect is to dispossess some sections of humanity of their brains/minds. Put differently, if African minds are scanned and then transferred from the biological brains to the cloud, who will own (huridzi) and possess (kupakata) those minds that are so transferred to the cloud or into technological substrates? The question is, if African minds are scanned and transferred from the biological bodies to the technological substrates, who will own and possess those minds that are so transferred to the cloud or into technological substrates? Naturally, transnational corporations that own and control the technology will own and control the African minds that are transferred into these technologies.

Apart from using scare tactics to frighten those that are targeted for colonization, colonialists also used bait tactics wherein targets of the coloniality of dispossession were baited into colonial traps or snares. In this regard, scare tactics were used to dispossess colonized peoples of their marriages and now colonialists are using bait tactics to market artificially intelligent humanoid sex robots such that those among the colonized who abandoned their marriages can now marry or buy humanoid sex robots to replace their original human spouses (Nhemachena, 2021b). Global capital is now manufacturing humanoid sex robots to replace human spouses, companion sex robots are being created and sold across the world, and sex dolls are being produced to replace original human spouses (Adekanye, 2020; Aoki & Kimura, 2021; Arafat & Kar, 2021; Brandon et al., 2022). Humanoid sex robots and sex dolls are being marketed in Africa on the assumption that Africans do not possess human spouses or companions and that therefore they must buy humanoid sex robots or sex dolls. The humanoid sex robots are being marketed as compliant, docile, smart sexual partners, free from contagious and venereal diseases including HIV/AIDS, COVID-19—and they are being marketed as not as quarrelsome as liberated or feminist human wives. The point is that such humanoid sex robots are meant to dispossess Africans of their human spouses, who are thereby replaced with such humanoid sex robots. Brandon et al. (2022, p. 11) write thus:

Our results confirmed that men consistently report more positive reactions to sex with robots than women . . . Men expressed twice as much curiosity to have sex with a robot: they were twice as likely to imagine having romantic feelings for a robot; twice as likely to imagine engaging in certain sex acts with a robot partner versus a human partner . . . In all, twice as many men look forward to a time when sex robots are available.

The upshot of the foregoing is that global capital has, for several decades now, funded feminist projects ostensibly designed to liberate African women from patriarchy, from male domination, from cultural “aberrations” including those supposedly arising from African marriages (Nhemachena, Warikandwa & Mpofu, 2020). However, now global capital is manufacturing humanoid sex robots which are designed to replace the “liberated” women as spouses and partners in marriages and families. In other words, the same global capital that funded feminist projects in the world is now condemning “liberated” women and is now marketing artificially intelligent sex robots as not as quarrelsome as the “liberated” women. The point here is that global capital has always sought to socially distance human spouses so that it would be able to market humanoid sex robots designed to replace human spouses. In fact, with COVID-19 social distancing, sales of artificially intelligent humanoid sex robots have risen astronomically (Arafat & Kar, 2021) because the humanoid sex robots are marketed not only as safe from COVID-19 but also as more pacific and docile than the quarrelsome “liberated” women. Put differently, when global capital, through funding feminist ideologies and projects, exercised power over other people’s marriages, the intention was to dispossess colonized people of their marriages and then insert artificially intelligent humanoid sex robots as replacements of naturally human biological spouses.

The implications of the Shona proverb chisi chako masimba mashoma is that one should not exercise power over what one does not own; but the converse is that owners must exercise vigilance and power over what they own. In other words, owners are expected by the Shona people to remain on guard over that which they own so that nonowners will not opportunistically exercise power over what they do not own.

To illustrate the importance of keeping guard over what one owns, the Shona people tell a story thus:

Rimwe gore mvura yakaramba kunaya. Mhuka dzesango dzakashaya chokunwa. Dzakapangana kuchera tsime. Tsuro ngeunyope hwake kakashora. Dzimwe dzakaita basa kwemazuva matatu. Kamba wakati ndini ndegasu mudiki? Wana tsuro hawacheriwo su? Dzakapangana kunyima tsuro mvura. Wakapedza wakawamba kunwa. Tsuro kakanzwa ngembiri kuti tsime rakapera. Kakange kakwana nenyota. Kakafunga zano rekuuya naro patsime. Kakauya neuchi hwako mudende kakaona pakarindwa nadiro. Akati sekuru ndine zvinonaka. Asi zvinodyiwa nevakasungwa makumbo. Diro ngeku pusa kwaro rakati ndisunge.

Tsuro kakatora tambo kakarisunga. Ndizvo rakapiwa uchi. Rakadaidzira richiti, tsuro ndisunge! Tsuro kakanwa mvura. Kapedza kakashamba muviri wako. Mumashure kakachera mvura kakaenda. Zuva raakunyura mhukadzose dzakaona diro asungwa. Dzakaona mvura yabvundurwa natsuro. Dzakabvunza diro, asi haana kupindura. Mhuka dzose dzakavamba kuziva kupusa kwediro. Ndizvo rakasunungurwa rikatizira mugomo. (Foreign Service Institute, 1965, pp. 433–435)

One year in which there was drought, wild animals could not find water to drink. So, the wild animals agreed to dig a well. The hare, which was lazy, declined to participate in digging the well. Other animals worked for three days. The tortoise noticed that the hare was not among the animals that were digging the well. The animals agreed to debarred the hare from drinking the water. The hare heard that the other animals had succeeded in digging the well. The hare was very thirsty. So, the hare thought of a plan so that it could drink the water. The hare brought honey to the well and it saw that the baboon was guarding the well. The hare told the baboon that it had brought sweet honey which could only be eaten by those who were first tied up. The stupid baboon asked the hare to tie its legs up so that it could start enjoying the honey.

The hare tied up the legs of the baboon using a rope. Then the hare gave the baboon some honey. On tasting the honey, the baboon encouraged the hare to further tie up its legs again. The hare then drank the water from the well. When the hare finished drinking the water it took a bath and also it had filled up its containers with the water before leaving. In the evening, other wild animals returned to the well and to their surprise they saw that the baboon was tied up. They also saw that the water in the well was dirty. The other animals asked the baboon what had happened but the baboon did not respond. All the wild animals then knew that the baboon was stupid. They untied the baboon and it quietly ran away to stay in the mountain.

The story teaches Africans to be always vigilant so that they are not cheated and lose what they own and possess. The story also teaches Africans that those that seek to cheat others often bring lucrative donations which they use to ensnare their victims who always stand to lose more than they gain. The story also teaches Africans that those among them who, like the baboon, are not vigilant enough would let down the rest of the Africans in the same way the baboon let down all the other animals when it was caught off-guard and when it allowed the hare to tie it up as a precondition for being allowed to eat the sweet honey which hare had brought. The story also teaches Africans that they must not look down on themselves—this is why the smallest animal; the tortoise was the one which successfully dug the well. The lesson is also that small animals like the hare can trick larger animals such as the baboon to unwittingly give away that which they own and possess.

When Africans lose guard over ownership and possession of their land, livestock, and mines, they assume the stupidity of the baboon which allowed hare to tie it up on the basis of promises of sweet donations that could only be enjoyed by those that were first tied up. In the story above, the baboon was so stupid that it called upon hare to tie it because it found the donation of honey so sweet that it (the baboon) gave up on its duty to keep guard over the well as instructed by other animals. Put differently, the story teaches Africans that small sweet donations account for the dereliction of duty among some African leaders who cease to keep guard over African resources simply because they have been promised donations. In the same way, when Africans allow themselves to be tied up as preconditions to receive donations, they risk losing guard over their marriages, families, religions, cultures, values, and epistemologies. In other words, the story underscores the fact that, often, those that promise donations to Africans also announce preconditions which have the effect of tying Africans up, just as the baboon was tied up before the hare drank the water from the forbidden well and then left the water dirty.

The story also teaches Africans that those that lose guard will live in the real or metaphorical wilderness like the baboon. In this regard, Africans that lost their land during the colonial era were forced to live in tsetse infested areas (Alexander et al., 2000); similarly, Africans who lose their marriages and human spouses or companions live in metaphorical wildernesses of divorce and separation; Africans who lose their livestock live in metaphorical wildernesses of poverty and penury. Africans that lose guard over their spirituality risk losing companionship with their ancestors when they are tied up on the basis of promises of donations from abroad. In the same vein, Africans who lose guard over their brains/minds that are targeted for scanning and transference to technological substrates and to the cloud will live in metaphorical wildernesses where they become brainless and mindless. Above all, those that lose guard over what they own and possess will become slaves that are tied up in the same way the baboon was tied up by the hare.

Of course, when the baboon was being tied up by the hare, it mistakenly thought that it was being tied up so that it would get the freedom to eat the sweet honey which the hare had brought. This story further teaches Africans that bondage may come in the guise of freedom, democracy, development, civilization, and rights. Similarly, dispossession can come in the guise of sweet freedoms, rights, civilization, progress, modernization, and democracy; in the same vein, impoverishment may come in the guise of development, progress, modernization, and civilization; besides, disempowerment can come in the guise of empowerment; and of course, death can come in the guise of life-enhancement and progress. The story teaches people that donations with conditionalities cannot empower Africans, and of course the Shona proverb chisi chako masimba mashoma teaches Africans that they can only be empowered by assuming ownership over what belongs to them.

For Africans to rely on what does not belong to them cannot be empowering. The sad thing is that since independence, many Africans have been advised that they could be empowered through technology transfer, through financial aid and so on (Koch & Weingart, 2006; Little, 2013) yet from the Shona proverb chisi chako masimba mashoma, it is clear that one cannot be empowered except through ownership—because one can only have power over what one owns. If one is given possession of something that is owned by someone else, this for the Shona people is not empowering enough unless ownership is transferred to the one who is to be empowered. In this regard, relying on donations and aid in respect of COVID-19 vaccines cannot be empowering to Africans, in any case African states are being forced by global pharmaceutical corporations to use their sovereign assets as collateral security for the vaccines (Bedowska-Sojka & Kliber, 2021; Taylor, 2021). To put it succinctly, the story advises Africans to refuse donations that come with conditionalities—donations that can only be enjoyed by those that are tied up first. Knowing very well that chisi chako masimba mashoma, the hare decided to tie the owner, the baboon, before drinking the water and leaving the water dirty. The hare knew very well that the baboon, the owner of the water, had more power over the water and, so, that is why the hare designed a plan to first of all tie up the baboon before it could drink the water that it would not otherwise have enjoyed. What is also clear from the story is that although the well was communal for the wild animals, it was not necessarily open, and this is the reason why the wild animals took turns to guard that well.

Conclusion

Postulating the concept of the coloniality of dispossession, this paper contends that coloniality was and still is mainly about dispossessing peoples of the Global South—and it is less, if at all, about mere domination and setting up of hierarchies and structures of order. Thus, the coloniality of dispossession makes it clear that when Africans and other peoples of the Global South demand restitution and reparations, they are demanding such restitution and reparations not necessarily for having been colonially dominated, ordered, structured, or hierarchized but for having been dispossessed in various ways. The point is that defining colonialism merely in terms of domination, hegemonism, hierarchization, and so on hides more than it reveals because it does not say anything about colonial dispossession of peoples of the Global South, including Africans. Put succinctly, power does not always explain colonization because power is also imperative for decolonial struggles—and in this regard, one might in fact think in terms of the decoloniality of power rather than the coloniality of power; similarly, while power may be necessary to dominate others, it is not always essential for colonial theft/dispossession which can also be achieved through colonial sleights of hand and chicanery. This paper postulates a neologism, the coloniality of dispossession that takes cognizance of the complex ways in which colonized peoples are dispossessed.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Artwell Nhemachena

Author Biography

Artwell Nhemachena holds a PhD in Anthropology, MSc in Sociology and Social Anthropology; he is a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa, a visiting Associate Professor at Kobe University and he lectures at the University of Namibia. Email address: artwellnhemachena@ymail.com

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