Stephen Phiri

Stephen Phiri is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His work engages questions of Pan-Africanism, postcolonial governance, religion, and emancipatory politics. With academic experience across several African universities, Phiri’s research and publications critically examine Africa’s political realities and intellectual traditions through decolonial and philosophical perspectives.

My two main research areas are 1) the predicament of the African post-colonial stateand2) Religious Institutions and Politics. At the moment my focus is on the former (the AfricanPost- colonial state’s predicament). My study explores how the predicament of the Africanpost- colonial states manifest itself in four different ways. Firstly, it manifests itself in the context of Afrophobia, which in my view a product of apartheidor colonialism deep-rooted systemic remnants that shaped discriminatory practices of class, demography and geographical distribution. This systemic inequalities were further maintainedby those who took power post-independence. What we perceive as Afrophobia canalsobeconceived as a class struggle among people of African descend from different African countriesbased on the scramble of limited resources. Hence, the formation of groups like OperationDudula in South Africa is a ferment of the inherent systemic failure of the African Post colonial state in general. As a result the proliferation of radical or vigilante related groups is nothingbutan epiphenomenon of a deeper problem. Secondly, it manifests through lack of global political decision making. Most African countriesdo not normally make a decisive action on global issues, they either remain neutral or decidenot to attend altogether in order to avoid taking responsibility of their decisions. Mystudylooked at the voting patterns of African countries during the United Nation General assembly(UNGA) on different resolutions, and discovered that the lack of decisiveness is constant. Myrecent article looked specifically at the Russian Invasion of Ukraine of UnitedNationsresolutions. The third manifestation is on the unceasing occurrence of African conflicts. Conflict inAfricaisthe product of a failed transition process, which resulted in artificial changes in the AfricanPost- colonial State that maintained the essential colonial logic of exclusion and discrimination. Hence, the structure of post-colonial states is inherently conflictual because it is a product of a colonial structure that is essentially volatile and unstable. This perspective based on oneof mypublished chapters draws from the insights of Mamdani’s book Citizens and Subjects. The fourth manifestation is on the vulnerability of African Post-colonial State toforeignintervention. Since independence, Africa has been essentially framed by a predicament of reliance on foreign intervention at the expense of its quest to be a sovereign continent. Apartfrom individual failures of African leaders to govern, Western influence has also playedacrucial role in stymying concepts that suggest African solutions to African problems. In all these investigations, I use Frantz Fanon’s iconic book Damned of the Earth as a frameworkspecifically chapters one and three. The next level of my enquiry will look at howdowegobeyond this predicament. This step will look at current and past efforts made to rethinktheAfrican post-colonial state. I will look at the efforts invested by individuals such as ThomasSankara and Ibrahim Traore, and the reestablishment of new regional blocs by countries suchasBurkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s conception of the post-colonial statewill beused as a theoretical framework.          

Link to my publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&hl=en&user=b6ktyMYAAA