Reflections on Vusi Mavimbela’s book The Africa in Brazil

THE national dialogue has long started, not only with Lt Mkhanazi explosive and important revelations exclusively on South Africa, but much earlier in the year with Vusi Mavimbela revealing global genesis of the “whitening” project which sheds light on Trumpism. The wise will visit “The Africa in Brazil”.

- PALI LEHOHLA

In his book titled, The Africa in Brazil, the author Vusi Mavimbela, a former director general of South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency, has proved to be more than a national spook. Through his pen Mavimbela is not only physically ambidextrous, but he is also a cranially ambidextrous global intellectual and a deep thinker and contributor to how a better world is possible. In his earlier title, Time is not a measure, Mavimbela’s book explored South Africa’s contemporary post-apartheid rapture, which in the main characterised two presidents he served under, namely President Thabo Mbeki and President Jacob Zuma.

In this book “The Africa in Brazil” Mavimbela explodes on to the global stage. The title conceals the profoundness of how in a 150 or so pages of this book he unravels the paradoxes of the contemporary and continuing practice of Embraquencimento or 'whitening the population' as a deep rooted and relentless struggle to seek and maintain dominance through brute force that is not limited to but includes slavery, genocidal acts, colonialism, apartheid, distortion and extortion of not only history, but of knowledge and science through deception and continuing “whitening” not only of the population but of systems of thought in the pursuit to expand capital at the expense of indigenous populations.

This book the more fitting title of which according to me is buried in the filename of Mavimbela’s manuscript - Odyssey Across the Atlantic - is a further deep dive and paradoxical exploration of the meaning of why “Time is not a measure.” Thus, to appreciate The Africa in Brazil title as a total immersion by Mavimbela, you need to read his other book, Time is not a Measure. Mavimbela’s immersion into 250 million years of enquiry into the complex universe and successful compression of this discovery into a hundred and fifty-one pages of explosive yet accessible and comprehensible rendition is nothing short of extraordinary.