Decolonisation asUnlearning Christianity: Fallism and African Religiosity as Case Studies

The students whose protests have captured the public imagination of South Africans since 2015, seem to, by and large, have replaced Christianity with a new “religion,” namely decolonisation. On the other hand, many African Christians seem to remain oblivious to the #MustFall movement’s revolutionary manifesto. And yet I argue that unlearning Christianity by the fallists and learning it anew by African Initiated Churches, among others, are two sides of the same coin. This article interrogates a few chosen facets of the intricate and multifaceted relationship between the decolonial project and Christianity in South Africa today. After locating my own voice within the decolonial discourse, I seek to interpret fallism as an overt act of a decolonial resistance, and juxtapose it with a covert one, namely the praxis of African religiosity. With Vellem and others, I argue that this praxis offers a powerful resource for liberating Christianity from its colonial/imperial entanglement.