ABSTRACT
Decolonization as a tool for Black liberation is mostly articulated as a political ideology removed from our personal politics. Decolonization as a tool for Black liberation is mostly articulated as a political ideology removed from our personal politics. On an intellectual level, Black activists understand that South Africa has not gone through the decolonization process. The way in which Black men in nationalist movements have dealt and continue to deal with incidences of rape and gender-based violence is an example of the 'selective freedom fighter' syndrome. The media and public spaces encourage us to aspire to whiteness through messaging that portrays white people as pure, beautiful and intelligent, while simultaneously denigrating Black people as evil, ugly, violent and unintelligent. In South Africa, Black people continue to exist as a product of colonial and apartheid white supremacist imaginations. The hypersexualization of cisgender Black men is an extension of the bestiality of Blackness.
