Nyanchama Okemwa: ‘We can no longer pretend that modernity is not based on colonialism’

Nyanchama Okemwa, 57, lives up to her name, which means charisma. Her drive and enthusiasm comes out when she talks about what she is most passionate about: defending the rights of the African diaspora in Europe. At the Green Social Summit, which was held in Madrid on September 29, Okemwa grabbed the attention of the attendees with her speeches.

Okemwa is an anthropologist, expert in decolonization, and pan-Africanist and anti-racism activist. She traveled from her native Kenya to Belgium 30 years ago, although her career as an activist began earlier in Kenya, where she was inspired by her compatriot Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize (2004). However, the kind of activism she carries out now is different to what she did in her home country. “My activism was against people excluded in the sense of being financially challenged, physically challenged, my anchor was humanity and our wellness it was not difference between people. But when I came to Belgium, I started to get confronted with racial exclusion. I started as an activist immediately,” she says.

In a country like Belgium, which has a disgraceful colonial past, Okemwa found herself in an identity limbo. “I was tolerated in Belgian society, but there were no prominent activists of my color.” Okemwa realized, she says, that she hadn’t been told the whole story. “I started to question the truth, the facts about our past, the false truth and fallacies. This is how my vision of decolonization began to take shape,” she recalls.

Okemwa currently works as an outreach and campaign advisor for the Belgium-based non-profit organization Hand in Hand against Racism, as well as leading the board of directors of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR). Since ENAR’s inception three decades ago, Okemwa points out that there have been notable advances in the participation of minorities in social movements. “People like me are having positions where we can actually sit at the table and talk and contribute as experts and peers in the conversation, we need to celebrate those changes,” she says.

Thanks to these changes, Okemwa says, it’s been possible to restore figures such as Patrice Lumumba, the anti-colonial leader and former prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was overthrown by a coup d’état and later assassinated in 1961 by Belgian forces. More than half a century later, in 2018, Brussels raised a monument in her honor in response to the demand of associations and activists. “It is incredible how Lumumba was recognized in hundreds of places in the world, but not in Belgium.”

Despite these advances, Okemwa criticizes the way in which the (white) European political class still controls the narrative on racism, which tends to approach it from individual experience and not admit that it is a structural problem. “As long as we continue with obsolete laws, the problem will persist,” she believes.

Okemwa has two master’s degrees in pedagogical studies and has also been involved in academic research and teaching. In fact, she believes that any change, including ending racism, starts in the education system. She argues, however, that education is still very Eurocentric and therefore myopic, claiming it doesn’t prepare young people for the real world of the 21st century. “This education could have worked 50 years ago, when Europe was largely dominated by a white population, but Europe is no longer white. Europe is now super diverse,” she explains. “This same reasoning goes for health, housing, migration,” she adds.

Okemwa suggests that, in addition to updating the school curriculum, it is important that all young people have role models to follow. The new generations of African descendants in Europe, she says, need cultural centers where they can learn about their spirituality, legends, languages, and gastronomy. “A child without roots is a child that is doomed to make wrong decisions when they are grown up. It’s a child that would go with the wind in any direction.”

Pan-Africanism is more important than ever, says Okemwa, who argues that it is broader than other anti-racism movements such as Black Lives Matter, which originated in the United States in response to a specific event: the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. “We are talking about the slavery that existed and continues to exist, we are talking about the colonial mentality that impacted us then and is still impacting us now. We are talking about destruction that existed then and exists now,” she explains.

The activist highlights the importance of looking at the past without becoming hostage to it, explaining the goal is to learn and find solutions. “The vision of improving the future is linked to our past, that is why we cannot continue to ignore it, we cannot continue to be immersed in a one-side history. It is no longer acceptable, so there is much to be done,” she says.

Okemwa is optimistic about the future of the Pan-Africanist struggle with. The African diaspora who were born and raised in the West, are becoming empowered, learning about their rights and retaining the roots of their parents’ country of origin, she says. These people are influencing ways of speaking, of thinking. They are managing, little by little, to challenge the fallacies with which they have grown up. “You can no longer pretend our green energies are not coming from extraction of cobalt in Congo,” she says as an example. “The more these facts are accepted, the more they are going to see the need for change. We can no longer pretend that modernity is not based on colonialism.”

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