Introduction

Using memory as a force for the radical transformation of South Africa is a historical imperative rooted in the particularity of conditions under which the nation-state has evolved into its current form. Of necessity, employing memory as a re-constructive act requires a plumbing of the philosophical depths within the historical framework of European colonial modernity, to identify the inherited ontological assumptions1 which shape South African society in ways that serve to re-entrench African alterity. In this chapter, the argument will be put forward that, short of dissecting the ontological assumptions underpinning colonial/apartheid domination and European colonial legacy broadly, we may not only misdiagnose the aetiology of the postapartheid existential dilemma, but also, in consequence, misapply the remedies.

Essentially, this study will argue that within the broad philosophical context of European domination, which hierarchised culture and religion—against the background of racialised economic inequality as the material underpinnings of this dual mode of existence—the postapartheid continuance of the privileging of European languages is inimical to African memory and, thereby, a clearer sense of African agency to bring about meaningful social change. In other words, the structural marginalisation of African languages and cultural discourses poses a mortal threat to African ways of knowing. The collision between indigenous cultures and the aggressive, capitalist-driven European modernity has seen the eruption of contradictions as the two discursive memories began to collide, fuelled by the latter's increasingly zealous drive for both political and commercial/economic domination. European colonial modernity came clad in several key ontological and epistemological assumptions. Whereas European epistemology hinges on Lockean empiricism and Cartesian rationalism, and places a premium on the social centrality of an individual, African ontological assumptions entail the antithetical notion that “motho ke motho ka batho” (“I am because you are”). Continuing to wilt under such desolate conditions, African languages grow increasingly less sensitive to intellectualisation and scientification when it comes to engaging scientific truth or expressing Africa-centric experiences, since no suitable outlet exists for wider social application.