Steve Biko and a critique of global governance as white liberalism

Abstract

This article asks what it might mean to use African anticolonial theory – and Steve Biko's critique of white liberalism in particular – to speak directly to contemporary debates about global governance. Biko argues that white South Africans who opposed apartheid yet still benefited from racial privilege could not be the engines of meaningful political change. The difficult task of creating a more just and equitable form of governance, instead, depended upon the political activities of those most marginalized under apartheid rule, namely, the majority black population. I apply this argument to the claim that global governance institutions and ‘global’ civil society are best positioned to address the many problems facing Africa. Looking specifically at Invisible Children's KONY 2012 campaign and the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, I argue that liberals who today advance global governance not only often ignore their own complicity within the existing ‘global’ order, but also are actually not well positioned to offer meaningful solutions to the problems of violence, poverty, and weak states.