After earning a degree in Agriculture in Europe, Zakare
returned to his village in East Africa with gifts of pumpkin seeds for his mother, aunties, and grandmother. Excited, the mothers accepted and planted the seeds, harvested, and enjoyed the pumpkins. They kept some seeds for next season’s planting. The seeds did not germinate. The mothers asked Zakare why the seeds didn’t germinate yet they had yielded a good harvest. Zakare replied that the seeds do not regenerate themselves; he will go buy a new batch of seeds in the store. Disappointed in Zakare,
the grandmother decried, “obwengye bukye nendwara”/little knowledge is a disease. What does the grandmother’s assertion mean in relation to someone with a degreed expertise in agriculture? Systems of colonialism, slavery, and apartheid have operated and been theorized as systems of elimination—of knowledge (epistemicide), humanity, cultures, languages, and cosmologies. This conversation explores the channels of life that have made it possible for the people subjugated by systems of oppression such as colonialism, slavery, and apartheid to continue to pursue a good life and to still be here against systems of elimination.