Towards A Decolonized Radical Southern African Geography

Abstract

Non-conventional approaches to southern African geography are a recent phenomenon forming a tiny portion of contemporary research (Beacon and Rogerson 1901; Smith 1982; Crush and Rogerson 1933) and the call for a 'decolonization of the existing colonial geographies concerning southern Africa' (Crush, Reitsma and Rogerson 1982, p. 197) deserves serious consideration by the region's geographers. Southern African geographers, like many other scholars in the region, have traditionally tended to be 'mere imitators and burglars of other people's methodologies and research techniques' (Avandele 1982, p. 172). In decolonizing southern African geography, a departure from this tradition is required for not even a mechanical transfer of radical geography as it has emerged in the West will do; a critical perspective which leaves room for independent reflection and avoiding the rigidity and theoreticism threatening radical geography as a whole is necessary; and ultimately the region's geographic lore has to be authored and acted in southern Africa,