A vision of coexistence-centred African culture: when the synagogue becomes a court

ABSTRACT

This article explores the meaning of coexistence-centred African culture, a world in which racial colonial violence does not interrupt our sense of how we value other African people. Accountability for conquest and the return of everything and everybody that has been stolen through slavery, colonialism, imprisonment, forced labour, land theft, rape, torture, and cruelty begins with the recognition of our many African selves as one. The author first began exploring this idea in the early days of the end of apartheid as a distinguished scholar of genocide studies in South Africa. In this article, he discusses the restoration of the Paul Kruger Street Synagogue in Pretoria as offering the potential to house and collectively explore new visions of coexistence-centred African futures.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• African coexistence
• anti-apartheid movement
• South Africa
• synagogue
• religion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notice

All images have been granted permission for use. Up until 12 July, we went through a deeply ethical anti-colonial process of seeking permissions with archives and libraries across the planet, only to remember that most of these images were created by people who were freedom fighters trying to kill apartheid and free our people. The archives where these images exist are locked trunks and boxes in attics all around the globe, held with care and love by members of the global anti-apartheid movement. We only lament that the same rigour and evidence seeking had been required when our ancestors were dragged across the continents and locked up at Robben Island, the slave castles that pepper the coastlines of the Atlantic, and when the masterful Dogon doors and Benin bronzes were stolen away. We wish that European powers would seek permission before sending hundreds of thousands of African migrants back when they desperately cross into Europe even today. We who were taken without permission, however, have followed every rule.

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (Guest Editor)

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

12 July 2023

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abebe Zegeye

Abebe Zegeye holds the degree of DPhil from the University of Oxford (UK) and a BA in Economics, Philosophy and Sociology from Haverford College, Pennsylvania (USA). He has previously taught at Yale University (USA), the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA), the University of South Africa, and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research (CODESRIA) (Senegal). Since 2014 he has been based in Ethiopia, working as Vice President of Wollo University, and Director of the Global Engagement and Institutional Transformation programme at Woldia University. He is also the Director of Higher Education at the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Higher Education. At present, Abebe Zegeye is co-director of the Centre for Research and Development in Learning (Cadle) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is an adjunct Professor of Political Science at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. He has published extensive research on African and social identities.