By: Fernando David Márquez Duarte

The plot

Netflix has ventured with several original projects of movies and series, one of them has been the African series Queen Sono. This has been the biggest original African Netflix series production. The series features Queen Sono, a spy that travels from mission to mission through several African countries, however based in South Africa. 

Queen Sono is a very relevant series that, in a popular frame, visualizes and exhibits several issues that hunt the African nations, such as colonialism (including neocolonialism, neoextractivism and internal colonialism), inequality, racism and corruption. On the other hand, is worth noting that the series has also been criticized by portraying Africa with an “exotic” lens, perpetuating to some extent the western vision of Africa, but this critique is not shared by most of the critics, and despite this critique, Queen Sono is a series worth watching and analyzing.

The fictional plot bases on Queen Sono and the Special Operations Group (SOG), a secret spying agency of the South African government. The scenes develop around the countries of South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya, where Queen’s missions develop. Along her missions, Queen unveils a massive transnational corruption and neocolonial scheme involving the South African president and his cabinet, the transnational company “Superior Solutions”, the “terrorist” group “WatuWema”, South African elites and other actors, while trying to discover who assassinated her mother, who was one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. 

Decolonial approach

The series, as mentioned before, addresses issues like colonialism, inequality, racism and corruption in South Africa, however with a Pan-African lens. Besides the topics addressed, the series by itself is a decolonial effort because it portrays an African story told and produced by Africans, using not only English but also African languages like Zulu and Swahili, to mention a few. 

A decolonial approach refers not only to an academic theoretical and methodological lens, but is also an epistemologic and even ontologic understanding of realities, that break from the western modernity and colonial oppression (characterized by capitalist, racist, neocolonial and neoextractive oppression) that has been imposed around the globe, and has especially affected the so-called “Global South” (Dussel, 1993; Fanon, 1963, pp. 32, 49; González Casanova, 2006; Mbembé, 2003; Rodney, 1972, pp. 88, 219; Sánchez Vásquez, 1996; Wa Thiong’o, 1987, p. 66).

The decolonial is portrayed in Queen Sono, not only because is an African series created by Africans and told by Africans, but also it recognizes and legitimizes the indigenous African cultures, languages and the African people struggle against colonialism, including the inequality, corruption, racism and cultural destruction and violence that has been caused by it (by western colonial modernity that encompasses a capitalist system and a western cultural imposition) (Dussel, 1973, p. 153; Sánchez-Antonio, 2020; Wa Thiong’o, 1987, pp. 2, 3).

In Queen Sono, the oppression caused by internal colonialism is also portrayed, where the local elites (in this case the South African president, his cabinet, and the local business elite portrayed by Nana, leader of one of the biggest South African companies) have preached that they have liberated their people from western colonialism by independence and by the anti-apartheid movement, however these local elites have allied with western transnational companies to keep stealing natural resources from the African nations, receiving thousands of millions of dollars in mega businesses with the African governments, reached by bribes and corruption and with these colonial schemes they have further perpetuated poverty, inequality, racism, corruption and oppression in general of the African people, which are central elements of internal colonialism (Fanon, 1963, pp. 55, 76; González Casanova, 2006; Martinez Andrade, 2019; Talamante Dominguez, 2014, p. 41; Wa Thiong’o, 1987, p. 21).

The issue of neocolonial violence is also portrayed in Queen Sono, especially with the relation of “Watu Wema” and the security company “Superior Solutions”, which create a “fake” security problem, by the attacks conducted by Watu Wema, which allow the security company to appear as savior and create collective hysteria in the people of the African nations where these “terrorist” attacks are conducted (which is a controversialterm by itself, because the attacks liberate people from being almost slaves in foreign illegal mining sites so it raises the question terrorist for whom and who decides who is terrorist, however the attack on the metro, I consider, it is indeed a terrorist attack targeting innocent civilians, as well as the attack planned on the soccer stadium); moreover inequality perpetuates violence and poverty, which leads people to survive however they can, including illegal activites, these issues of violence are also a cause of colonialism, because they are intersectional with capitalism and racism (Márquez Duarte, 2020; Mbembé, 2003; Sánchez-Antonio, 2020; Valencia & Sepúlveda, 2016).

Series like Queen Sono can be very useful to visualize critical social issues in a popular way, so that a large audience can be exposed to those and could lead them to foster critical consciousness and rethink their ontology, and indirectly fostering them to take action to liberate from their colonial oppression to achieve emancipation to some extent. Moreover Queen Sono is an empowering decolonial series that can revitalize and legitimate African indigenous cultures, languages and ways of life, so the African people see themselves and recognize themselves as the main actors of their realities, breaking with the western cultural imposition.

References

Dussel, E. (1973). Para una ética de la liberación latinoamericana. Siglo XXI,.

Dussel, E. (1993). Eurocentrism and modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures). BOUNDARY 2, 20, 65–76.

Fanon, F. (1963). Los condenados de la tierra (1st ed.). Fondo de Cultura Económica México.

González Casanova, P. (2006). Colonialismo interno (una redefinición). In La teoría marxista hoy. Problemas y perspectivas (pp. 409–434). CLACSO.

Márquez Duarte, F. D. (2020, June 7). La necropolítica de la violencia policiaca: Giovanni López y George Floyd. Medium. https://medium.com/@fernandodavidmrquezduarte/la-necropol%C3%ADtica-de-la-violencia-policiaca-giovanni-l%C3%B3pez-y-george-floyd-6d5a2f220a96

Martinez Andrade, L. (2019). MARXISMO E INDIGENISMO SEGÚN JOSÉ CARLOS MARIÁTEGUI. In Contra Sócrates (pp. 103–127). Fundação Fenix.

Mbembé, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40.

Rodney, W. (1972). How europe underdeveloped africa. Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.

Sánchez Vásquez, A. (1996). La utopía del fin de la utopía. In Marx Ahora (pp. 105–119).

Sánchez-Antonio, J. C. (2020). Tanato-política, esclavitud, capitalismo colonial y racismo epistémico en la invasión genocida de América. Tabula Rasa, 35, 157–180. https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n35.07

Talamante Dominguez, V. (2014). Cocopah Identity Survival: “We Are The River People” [M.A.]. University of California San Diego.

Valencia, S., & Sepúlveda, K. (2016). Del fascinante fascismo a la fascinante violencia: Psico/bio/necro/política y mercado gore. Mitologías Hoy, 14, 75–91.

Wa Thiong’o, N. (1987). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Zimbabwe Publishing House.