The struggle for epistemic sovereignty in the South

a tribute to Sam Moyo

Abstract

The present tribute to Sam Moyo brings to light his trajectory in the Pan-Africanist tradition of political economy and in the construction of a new autonomous intellectual dynamic between Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Born in Zimbabwe under the Rhodesian colonial regime, he began his studies in West Africa in the 1970s, where he obtained his enduring epistemological orientation based on national liberation. There an autochthonous thought of historical materialism was being consolidated at the time, and initiatives for tricontinental collaboration inspired by the Bandung movement were launched. In the following decades, in the neoliberal era, Sam became a world reference in agrarian and land issues, standing out in his defense of the African peasantry and land reform in Zimbabwe. Always faithful to the liberation of the peoples of the continent and the South, his approach integrated a wide range of issues related to development without disciplinary restrictions, making his mission nothing less than the transformation of the social sciences inherited from colonialism. He was the founder of several research initiatives and institutions in Zimbabwe, the continent and the South, being elected president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in 2008-2011 and having played a leading role in the construction of the Agrian South tricontinental network.