Theorising non-western knowledge: the President, the Judge, and the Poet

David Johnson (The Open University, UK)

Frantz Fanon's sympathetic discussion of pre-colonial cultures in The Wretched of the Earth (1961) provides the point of departure for my reflections on how non-western knowledge has been theorised in post-apartheid South Africa. I survey the views in this regard of President Thabo Mbeki, Judge Makgoro, and the poet Lesego Rampolokeng, and argue that Fanon's influential ideas should be modified when extended to different postcolonial African contexts.

Last modified: 7 May 2001