Fanon's perspective on intercultural communication in postcolonial South Africa

Abstract

This article develops a Fanonian perspective to understand intercultural communication in postcolonial South Africa. Apartheid’s demise is communicated as a moral victory over evil and South African whites are persuaded to confess their past immorality. This article argues that moral interpretation is inappropriate and the demise of apartheid must be evaluated as a political power game. Furthermore, it explicates Fanon’s rejection of moral evaluations and his conception of the violent dialectic of colonisation and decolonisation and applies this framework to analyse intercultural communication in the postcolony. Fanon’s Hegelian violent dialectic of master and slave constructs human identities and provides the prototype for intercultural communication. Fanon’s political realism also explains the mass African migration from the postcolonial necropolis to the promised good life in the land of their former European masters. African leaders promote the migration as a rightful revenge for colonisation and the migrants are represented as warriors on a crusade to conquer the lands of former colonisers inspired by communication of memories of their glorious past colonial wars: from Hannibal’s invasion of Rome to the Muslim’s conquest of Spain.