Chronicle Editor
Cetshwayo Mabhena
In 1902, Sir Ronald Ross, a British medical doctor received the Nobel Prize for his breakthrough in discovering the origins and transmissions of malaria, a disease that was finishing off white settler colonialists and the natives in tropical Africa.
After receiving the Prize, Ross exclaimed that “the success of imperialism will depend on the microscope.” In that statement Sir Ross illustrated the way colonialism and imperialism instrumentalised science. Science, a great human gift, was used by conquerors and empire builders as weapon that enabled conquest and coloniality.
Prominent western scientists such as Charles Darwin, used their scientific research and knowledge to defend and justify racism, white supremacy and the enslavement of black people. Darwin used to ride on the ships of explorers and settler colonialists, profiling blacks as cousins of “gorillas” as he called them. Thomas Babington Macaulay, a prominent British politician, remarked prominently that Indians and Indian languages were incapable of science. Yet history proves that a lot of what are called British inventions and science, especially in Agricultural science were stolen and appropriated by British settlers from native Indians. Colonialism enabled colonisers to steal medicines, technologies and other scientific products of natives. Colonialists used their power and privilege to steal scientific knowledges and inventions of the colonised, and have the candour to call them their own inventions, discoveries and possessions.
Natives were used as guinea pigs in medical experiments, in other cases. Poisons and medicines were tasted on natives before they were patented and branded as such. Science, a good human attribute and possession was turned into a weapon of coloniality.
Conquerors used bomb and gun technology to effect colonialism and imperialism in the Global South. Here I am simply and possibly simplistically dropping anecdotes of how like religion science was made complicit in the projects of conquest, imperialism and colonialism that Empire builders conducted in the South and used to siphon natural resources and the free labour of natives.
Decolonising Science and Science Education
The first step, perhaps, in decolonising science and science education is to correct colonial and racist myths about science. The colonial narrative holds that like philosophy science originated in Greece, was perfected in Europe under the great Roman Empire, and then was eventually spread into Asia, Latin America and Africa by benevolent and God sent white men.
That is a monumental fallacy. Science originated everywhere and in different parts of the planet. Empire used force, fraud and opportunity to appropriate and claim science as its own.
Just like philosophy, science was stolen from different parts of the world and monopolised by the West as its unique gift to the rest of the world. Science, in truth, is the property of humanity that like other resources and properties, the West wants to claim as its unique possession.
The University of Cape Town student that is mentioned earlier squandered an opportunity to mention the healing sciences, agricultural knowledges, and other methods of negotiating and navigating nature and its elements that black Africans invented. Eloff pandered on the false and colonial fallacy about science as a uniquely western attribute. Nativism and colonialism conceal rather than reveal the history and philosophy of science in the world. The myth and fallacy that science uniquely and exclusively originated in the West creates the unfortunate impression that the white man is naturally and normally a scientist when he is largely a thief of science and many other human talents.
Colonial and racist myths about science need to be debunked and exploded for what they are, fallacies and falsehoods. Science, including the medical discipline, must be taught as a human attribute not a western invention and possession.
As my elder, Doctor Themba Dlodlo has legendary done for years, such sciences as physics and others can be effectively taught in indigenous languages and sensibilities.
The Asians such as the exemplary Singaporeans and the Chinese have taught modern science in their indigenous languages and still prospered as leading world economies and polities. Science exists for human beings and the planet, animals, water, air, plants and the atmosphere included. It is colonial to think and act as if humanity and nature exist for science. Human beings should be masters of science and not victims and objects of it. Science that heals, that creates infrastructures, improves work and productivity should be elevated ahead of science that produces weapons and poisons.
In other words, science should be taught and used to enhance life and happiness not war, suffering and death. Scienticism and scientific exceptionalism should be overturned in such a way that scientific thought and work is alive to the fact that the arts and the human sciences are also provinces and disciplines of knowledge that are essential to life and the future of humanity and nature.
Science should be allowed to have a conversation with other disciplines, in the arts and the humanities.
Away from nativism and coloniality, all human beings, black and white should pursue scientific excellence and achievement for the betterment of life and the world.
– Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of Free State, in Bloemfontein, South Africa: [email protected].
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