The Decolonial Mandela

Abstract

This article provides a fresh decolonial reading of Nelson Mandela’s political life and legacy as an embodiment of critical decolonial ethics of liberation that is opposed to imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war and its logics of racial profiling, classification, and hierarchization of human beings. The paradigm of war is underpinned by the paradigm of difference and working in combination, they enabled the denial of the humanity of black people, their enslavement, conquest, colonization, dispossession, exploitation, and notions of impossibility of copresence of human races. Mandela emerges at the center of this imperial/colonial/apartheid milieu vehemently opposed to the paradigm of war, logic of racism, and coloniality. After enduring 27 years of incarceration at the notorious Robben Island, Mandela avoided bitterness and preached the gospel of racial harmony, reconciliation, and democracy. His leadership during the transition from apartheid to democracy inaugurated a paradigm shift from Nuremberg paradigm of justice to a new paradigm of political justice privileging political reform and social transformation. As the first black president of South Africa, Mandela practically and symbolically made important overtures to the erstwhile white racists aimed at hailing them back to a new, inclusive, nonracial, democratic, and pluriversal society known as the rainbow nation.