Hakuna Mhou Inokumira Mhuru Isiri Yayo: Examining the Interface between the African Body and 21st Century Emergent Disruptive Technologies

Abstract

Colonially depicted as a region distinctive for fables and fabrications, Africa has ever since not been allowed to reclaim anything original. Dispossessed of their original wealth, Africans have been forced to live in fabled and fabricated houses, eating fabled, and fabricated food—closer to animals. Similarly, dispossessed of their original human identities, Africans have been forced to adopt fabricated identities. With the 21st century not promising any return to original African human identities, Africans are set to be further nanotechnologically (using tiny nanoparticles) fabricated into cyborgs that speak to ongoing posthumanist and transhumanist experiments with emergent disruptive technologies. Inhabiting not only fabricated houses but also increasingly inhabiting nanotechnologically fabled and fabricated bodies, Africans should learn to, in terms of the Shona (a people of Zimbabwe) proverb, hakuna mhou inokumira mhuru isiri yayo (no cow lows for a calf that is not its own), repossess original mastery over their own lives.

Academics with Clay Feet? Anthropological Perspectives on Academic Freedom in Twenty-First Century African Universities

“…Dereliction of duty is the description suitable for universities and academics who become slavish ritualists delighting in the fill and finish logics involving the uncritical application of theories and models from overseas. Underlying such dereliction of duty is the virus of mimicry that has infected some African academics (Nhemachena, 2021), who would naturally need sanitisers to restore the vitality of African institutions of higher learning. If African universities are infected by viruses of ritualistic mimicry, one wonders what community service such universities and academics offer, to African communities, other than infecting them with similar contagious viruses of mimicry.…”

Kukumirwa Semombe Dzamavhu: When Voices Begin to Erupt from Bottoms, African Anthropology Becomes Colonial

“…Thus, Africans are set to be digitally networked and connected in the global Internet of Things, Internet of Humans, Internet of Everything, Internet of Battlefield Things and Internet of Health from which global capital will thrive in terms of profits out of Big Data, so collected and subjected to analytics (Nhemachena et al, 2020a ; Nhemachena & Mawere, 2020 ). In fact, human minds are set to be nanotechnologically scanned from the biological brains and then transferred to the cloud or to some technological substrates—in effect individuals lose autonomy, sovereignty, ownership and control over their scanned and uploaded minds (Kurzweil, 2005 ; Nhemachena, 2021b ) and such deprivations are being mischievously justified via arguments that African ubuntu does not allow for autonomy, individualism, sovereignty, ownership and control.…”

“…When colonialists stole African land, they displaced Africans from the stolen land such that colonialists’ bodies settled on and occupied the land; similarly, after stealing African history, colonialists displaced the African history such that colonial history settled on and occupied the space that belonged to African history; in the same way, when colonialists stole African voices they displaced the African voices such that colonialists’ voices settled on and occupied the space that originally belonged to African voices. In this way, some Africans effectively became what are known today as chatbots of the colonialists (Nhemachena, 2021b ) when the ghostly voices of colonialists/imperialists started to speak from within the Africans. The original and authentic voices of Africans were lost with the rise of kukumirwa semombe dzamavhu .…”

“…What is often seldom realised by African academics who uncritically convert to bottom-up, top-down approaches is that colonisation was premised on the same bottom-up, top-down approaches. Colonialists who constituted the bottoms in Europe and America came to Africa, they dispossessed and exploited Africans such that the Africans who were on top in Africa became the bottoms in the world system, and the colonialists who constituted the bottoms in Europe became the top in Africa (Nhemachena, 2021b ). Similarly, African cultures which were central to Africans sank to the bottom during the colonial era; besides, African chiefs, kings and queens who constituted the top in Africa became the bottom with the advent of colonialism.…”

“…In fact, since the colonial era, African industries became the informal sector. African marriages which were central and at the top in precolonial Africa (Nhemachena, 2021b ) became the bottom with the advent of colonialism as colonialists made their own marriage systems central and on top. And of course, African ideas and epistemologies which were central in precolonial Africa became the bottom with the advent of colonialism.…”