ANTONIOUS GVILIELMUS AMO AFER was a pioneering African intellectual who endured a questioned humanity and inevitably his scholarship picked up key existential and epistemological issues which formed a basis of decolonization as both an epistemological and political movement. These issues ranged from being human itself, injustices of enslavement, the question of being possessed and named by others, vexed identity questions, to the broader problems of Eurocentric human science with its Cartesian dualism at the centre. These issues which troubled the mind of Afer continue to animate struggles for decolonization and to inform the
tasks of decoloniality in the 21st century. Therefore, this lecture
situates Afer’s concerns within the genealogies of decolonization as it identifies him as one of the early African scholars who laid a foundation for decolonial thinking and indeed being a giant on hose
shoulders those pursuing decoloniality should stand. Through his intellectual and academic achievements, Afer directly challenged Eurocentric and racist notions of black people who were said to be less endowed intellectually and who were designated as naturally slaves. The life story and intellectual pedigree of Afer is used here as a departure point to highlight the genealogies of decolonization and to delineate the key tasks of decoloniality of the 21st century. This is necessary because the modern world is on the cusp of a resurgent and insurgent planetary decolonization ranged against racism, injustices (cognitive, political, cultural, economic and social) as well as hegemonic Eurocentric epistemology and knowledge.

SABELO J. NDLOVU-GATHSENI is Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis on Africa at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He previously worked as Research Professor and Director of Scholarship at the University of South Africa, and as Visiting Professor at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS). He is a leading decolonial theorist with over a hundred publications in the fields of African history, politics, development and in decolonial theory.