UKZN Philosophy Seminar Series - Lungelo Mbatha

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Heidi Matisonn

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Nov 23, 2021, 3:38:22 AM11/23/21

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Hi everyone

The final seminar in this year’s UKZN Philosophy Seminar Series takes place on Wednesday 1 December at 14.00 (SAST) and will be presented by Lungelo Mbatha:

Has the State Failed in Africa?

If one of the main tasks of political philosophy is to study the state, how would one go about understanding the African state within the context of slavery, colonization, liberation struggles, and poverty? It is no lie that the success of colonization has led to many instruments which were generally responsible for the sustenance of the ordinary livelihoods of people within African communities, to be distorted and at certain places, destroyed. African economic systems were disrupted in production and consumption patterns, and at certain places, local markets were destroyed. Further, legal systems were ill-administered, disrupting the ordinary procedures of justice. And add to that, the political and social processes which were completely changed to continue suppressing the freedom and agency of African people (both at the international and local level) resulting in the maintaining of the unjust (post) colonial state even during the postcolonial era. If these are institutions which are thought to constitute the state, what do we make of their disruption with regards to how we understand the state in postcolonial relations? Are problems like poverty or human rights violations in contemporary times related to the failure of the African state itself as a unit, or are they to do only with one of the institutions of the state, like government? Or does the state have nothing to do with these problems? In the literature, the ever presence of undignified human conditions like disease, illiteracy, corruption, and poverty in African societies, has led to analysts using many disheartening epithets to describe the African state as a failed entity. From strong, overdeveloped, and authoritarian, to weak or soft, patrimonial, or downright failed, the African state has been theorized as anything but a success. From my own perspective, while the above analyses of the history and experience of state institutions in African societies may be true, I am of the view that understood in this way, most of these problems are of the institutions of the state as they are practiced. It is not clear that such analyses speak to what is problematic about the state qua state, or merely to the practical materialization of the state. In this presentation, I seek to go beyond these analyses and investigate the state as a whole entity to find out if there is anything conceptually wrong with the state in Africa. If the necessary conditions of a minimal conception of a state involve an institution in possession of the monopoly on the use of force within a given territory, and the protection of citizens, what can we understand of our experience of statehood in Africa?

Join Zoom Meeting
https://ukzn.zoom.us/j/93281927751

Meeting ID: 932 8192 7751

We look forward to your attendance at and participation in what promises to be an exciting discussion.

For any queries, please contact me on mati...@ukzn.ac.za.

Take care.

Heidi

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