Kwesi Kwaa Prah
Centre for Advanced Studies in African Society
Cape Town
Paper
Presented to the Southern Africa Regional Institute for Policy
Studies (SARIPS) Annual Colloquium: Harare 24-28 September 2000.
In, Ibbo
Mandaza and Dani Nabudere (ed), Pan-Africanism and Integration
in Africa. SAPES Books, 2002.
Introduction
We live in difficult
and troubling times. War, pestilence, drought and famine, economic
stagnation, political confusion and AIDS have taken control
over our lives. The high hopes of greater things which
we all carried into the wake of the independence era have plummeted
to the ground. There is a new generation of Africans who
have never had any hope to see better things because they have
lived through only difficult and disheartening times. The
pathos of the situation is so grievous that some people have
allowed themselves to be bought into the idea of African recolonisation. For
many of us, this is not only unthinkable but sacrilegious. Mafeje
has taken Mazrui to task for allowing himself to go down the
road of recolonisation. While Mazrui has claimed to have
been misunderstood, the increasingly frequent recurrence of
the theme from diverse sources provokes many minds and forces
us to insistently register our censure. In an article written
by Matthew Parris in The Times (London), Friday August 22, 1997,
entitled Out of Africa’s horror; the author, in neo-colonial
vein and patronizing tones, shamelessly suggests that Africa’s
difficulties and failures at economic management and government
suggest to him that Africa needs more of Western tutelage.
If what African administrations lacked was information or know-how,
then it might be the case that experience (and Western assistance)
could provide it. But if what is missing are the habits of
diligence, probity, tolerance and trust in public administration,
then there is no more reason to suppose that if we wait long enough
these habits will grow, than to suppose that a generation abused
by its parents will treat its own children better. On the
contrary. Brutal, corrupt, slovenly government is self-reinforcing,
self-propagating. A certain minimum standard of ingrained
good order - a floor, if you like - must be achieved before adequate
administration becomes self-sustaining and the whole structure
will stand. I suggest that Europe left Africa before these
habits had become ingrained. We deceived ourselves into believing
that it was enough to create structures of administration, appoint
administrators, and leave written instructions. But the administrative
values that colonial powers had begun to inculcate were insufficiently
deep-rooted and have withered. There is no reason to believe
that they must revive of their own accord, or will be “learnt”
from experience of know-how aid. There is no reason to believe
that a continent, which has deteriorated in the past 40 years,
must improve in the next 50.
Already, a slow insidious process of recolonization is underway
under the aegis of the Bretton Woods institutions. In one country
after the next, these institutions are creating parallel administrations
under the noses and with the tacit agreements of the governments
concerned. These creeping neocolonial processes need to be exposed
and contested, if our hopes of unfettered African development
and emancipation are to be achieved. But to do this, African scholars
and intelligentsia would need to maintain a high degree of intellectual
vigilance and also a critical stance to concessionist positions
among African elites. These intellectually denationalised positions
need to be steadfastly interrogated, the way Zeleza and Mafeje
have challenged the demeaning crouching postures of Mbembe towards
metropolitan western scholarship, and Parisian salon post-modernism.
The current buzzword “globalisation”, which is supposed
to be a politically innocuous process applied to both intellectual
and non-intellectual activity is in fact a latter day term for
what we in earlier years described more appropriately as imperialism. The
emerging generation of African scholars will have to go back to
the perennial intellectual sources of African freedom, unity and
emancipation. It is this tradition which has brought us the limited
progress we have booked over the last century. On this continent,
most of the political and social movers and shakers, like Seme,
Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Sithole, Koinange and Jabavu, to mention a
few, intellectually and politically imbibed from these sources.
The roots of the idea
of African Unity are buried in the mid-nineteenth century. Together
and enmeshed with the related ideas of nationalism and pan-Africanism,
they emerged as the articulate response of people of African
descent in Africa and its Diaspora to the continuing experience
of western domination and exploitation. The observation
has been made that “you never see Africa whole until you’re
out of it”.(1) In more ways than one, this remark is spot
on,. It was from the vantage point of the diaspora that the
stirring of proto-African nationalism first emerged as a modern
response to western thraldom.
Three historical sources
can be identified as contributory to the emergence of these
ideological positions. The first and principal one was
the diasporal inspiration forged out of the alienation from
the continent, the detribalisation and homogenisation of Africans
taken across the Atlantic, and their longing and reference for
what is captured in spirit by Aimé Césaire’s
extended poem (1939) called Notes on a Return to the Native
Country. This inspiration included the wish to see a freer
condition for people of African descent. In a speech made by
Malcolm X in New York City on the 24th of January, 1965, less
than a month before his assassination he echoed this inspiration
linking it with the fact that black freedom in the US is inextricably
linked with freedom on the African continent.(2) Before
Malcolm X, no leader of black opinion stated the case as forcefully
as Marcus Aurelius Garvey who, for example, in a speech delivered
at Liberty Hall, New York City, during the Second International
Convention of Negroes, August 1921 argued that, “... the
new Negro desires a freedom that has no boundary, no limit. We
desire a freedom that will lift us to the common standard of
all men, whether they be white men of Europe or yellow men of
Asia, therefore, in our desire to lift ourselves to that standard
we shall stop at nothing until there is a free and redeemed
Africa.”
The second sociological
factor instrumental to the inception of African nationalism
was the emergence, on the continent, of a critical mass of western
educated elites, who rejecting the economic political and social
implications of colonialism used the language of the westerner,
both literally and metaphorically, to oppose and reject western
dominance, whilst acceding to the fact that the methodological
rationality of western institutions and techniques were necessary
acquisitions for the advancement of African society. A
considerable degree of ambivalence existed in the views represented
within this group. Noticeably, the continentally based thinkers
like Mensah Sarbah, Bandele Omoniyi, Casely Hayford and Kobina
Sekyi tended to be more forcefully nativist than Alexander Crummell
or Martin Delany. Thus while, for example, for Crummell, African
languages, have “definite marks of inferiority connected
with them all, which place them at the widest distance from
civilized languages”(3); for Casely Hayford they were languages
deserving to be taught at university level. It is however important
to make the point that, the nativist and culturally concessionist
dichotomy did not in all respects run parallel to diasporal
and continentally derived minds. On both sides of the Atlantic,
the two types were identifiable. We know that Edward Blyden
the returnee Afro-Caribbean, who Casely Hayford regarded as
his philosophical progenitor, writing to the British missionary
Mary Kingsley in 1900 noted with acerbity that,
Those who are instructed
in the English language, ... are taught by those from whom they
have received their training that all native institutions are,
in their character, darkness and depravity, and in their effects
only evil and evil continually. ... The Christianised Negro
looks away from his Native heath. He is under the curse
of an insatiable ambition for imitation of foreign ideas and
foreign custom.(4)
Africanus Horton’s
position was to the right, but only slightly to the right of
this. While accepting the view that Africans should be the architects
of their own freedom and development, and that Africans are
capable of development, the rider to his argument was that they
would “need Christianity and British example”.(5)
Horton underestimated the value of tradition. While accepting
the use of traditional rulers in the new colonial administrative
structures, in his estimation, as Davidson has aptly assessed,
Horton’s view was that whatever Africa may in the past
have achieved will not pass muster for purposes of development.
His words were that, “the base being rotten, the whole
fabric will, within a very short time, tumble to the ground.
Confusion, massacre, and bloodshed would be the inevitable result”.(6)
Horton’s dilemma, of what and how much of African culture
to keep, what to reject, what to import and adapt, and how much
to adapt was a constant and vexing feature in the thinking of
many of the early African nationalist and pan-African thinkers.
Reflecting on the educational priorities of Africa, and exhibiting
the dilemma of how much local and how much foreign should be
merged, Orishatuke Faduma had this to say;
What suits the Chinaman
may not suit the Englishman, what suits the Englishman may not
suit the African and so on, though there may be the same things
which may suit all. ......... The African should have the advantage
of all that is best in the educational methods of the twentieth
century. He should not slavishly imitate but should carefully
adopt and adapt what has been found good for the Englishman
so that in addition to being a native he may have the doggedness
and love of justice of the typical Englishman. To these
qualities he needs the ruggedness of character and the breadth
and depth of thought of the Scotchman, the practicalness and
many sidedness of the America, the concentration, organisation
and scientific precision of the German, the aesthetics, politeness
and good manners of the French. ......... The scaffolding work
of education must be laid by the foreigner and to be completed
by the Negro himself. The foreigner is needed, the Englishman
and others with a developed civilization the sum total of which
will produce the New African Negro, who must be neither English,
Scottish, German, French or American, but an African Negro with
a cosmopolitan spirit and a broadened mental horizon.(7)
It is interesting
to note that Faduma’s examples of virtues worth emulating
are all drawn from the West. The psychological overkill of the
West, the fixation on the Westerner as a reference category
in the mind of the African, may be possibly responsible for
this sort of preoccupation. I have often wondered and thought
about this issue. It is remarkable that of all the major
societies which encountered the west, and were subjugated by
the Westerner, that is, the African, the Arab, the Hindu, the
Chinese, it was in Africa that the psycho-social effects of
dominance was most ravaging and fundamental. It seems to
me that one of the key factors responsible for this is the fact
that African religious systems which lay at the core of the
socio-cultural confidence of the people were “heathenized”,
by label and consideration, in the effort of supplanting their
primacy in the religious life of Africans with christianity. The
leadership of African society which emerged out of the Western
encounter turned its back on its religion and languages. In
the estimation of the colonial authorities and missionaries,
only the bible was worthwhile translating into African languages.
Almost everything else was conducted and taught in the language
of the colonialist. We do well to remember the view of
Nicholas Ziadeh that “Language is a civilization and a
culture; and unity of language is unity of thought and it is
this which forms the nation in its intellectual and sentimental
life.”(8) When we argue for developmental reaffirmation
of our languages and cultures, we do well to remember Micere
Mugo’s caveat that, as we pursue “progressive, liberating
patterns and paradigms of indigenous cultural life ...... we
also do not want to be celebrants of fossilized culture”.(9)
The third concomitant factor that can be identified as contributory
to the emergence of African assertiveness and reaction against
western dominance was the restiveness and resistance of traditional
rulers and notables of African society who while accepting the
telling evidence of western supremacy in ideas and techniques,
particularly with regards to the means of warfare and destruction,
saw the need for African freedom and self-assertion as a price
for which they were prepared to lend their action and voices,
as the traditional representatives and leaders of the African
people. On the continent, by and large, during the early
decades of colonialism there tended to be a convergence of voices
and attitudes between the westernised African elites and the traditional
rulers. For example, this was as true for the Bamangwato under
Khama as it was for the Basotho under Moshoeshoe. Towards the
end of the colonial period contradictions increasingly, with time,
emerged between these two groups.
The inter-twinning of the ideas of African unity, freedom, Pan-Africanism
and African nationalism is so close and organic that it is not
possible to conceptually and historically disentangle them into
discrete concepts or areas. African Unity is an object of Pan-Africanism;
African nationalism - or Africanism - is an ideological tool for
the achievement of mass-based democratic solutions to the pan-African
challenge, in as far as diverse areas of social life like culture,
economy, religious life, education and politics are concerned.
Thus, these notions conceptually merge into one another and can
be best understood as dimensions of the same phenomenology. The
understanding of one directly influences our understanding of
the other. What is however remarkable is that in the modern history
of Africa, over the last 150 years, the historical implementation
and realisation of these ideas have varied in import, both in
space and time. Succeeding generations of Africans both on
the continent and in the diaspora have set different practical
goals around the same concepts, and the materialisation in practice
of these ideas have yielded different measurements of results.
The Idea of African Unity
As I have argued above,
the conception of the idea of African unity links up with the
broad areas of Pan Africanism and African nationalism. Another
strand in this bundle of ideas is the right, and in some quarters
wish, for repatriation by some sections of the Diaspora. For
one thing, the dogged preoccupation of the diaspora with the
cause of African emancipation , as borne out in the history
of the last century and a half, testifies to the fundamental
linkage between continental Africa and its diaspora. Secondly,
it must be remembered that Africans in the diaspora were forcibly
taken out of the continent. While only a minority may ever
want to exercise the right, the right of return is, or should
be, theirs. The Chinese authorities in Beijing operate
a similar policy towards overseas Chinese. The Germans
and British have similar arrangements for their historical “kith
and kin”. No full implementation of the ideal of African
Unity can afford to be silent on the right to citizenship and
repatriation for the Diaspora.
When Robert Campbell
and Martin Delany in the mid-nineteenth century got back to
the United States after a journey to the Niger area, in West
Africa, to explore the possibilities of repatriation and resettlement,
in his report, Campbell referred to Africa as “my motherland”.
A Pilgrimage to My Motherland: An Account of a Journey Among
the Egbas and Yorubas of Central Africa, in 1859-60. Delany
was described by a contemporary as “the intensest embodiment
of black nationality to be met with outside the valley of the
Niger”.(10) Bell has drawn attention to the fact that,
as early as 1770, some African-Americans had been considering
and training to go to Africa on missionary related projects.
One of the effects of the American War of Independence was to
produce a scattering of blacks in British Dependencies both
in the western hemisphere and into Africa.(11) Indeed, until
the late 19th century, the British used West Indians in some
of their colonial wars in Africa. Some never went back. During
the 1780s, other African-Americans, particularly a group based
in Boston had endeavoured to gain repatriation.(12) Particularly
prominent in this period was the efforts of Paul Cuffee, a merchant,
fisherman and whaler of Negro and Indian ancestory who apparently
tried to convince some African-Americans to join him in an emigration
and commercial scheme into Africa.(13) The 1816 project
for the establishment of Liberia did not enjoy great support
amongst African-Americans. Many saw this as “part
and parcel of a diabolical scheme of the American Colonization
Society to rid the country of free Negroes.(14) One of the most
eloquent articulations of this view point and the rationale
behind it was provided by “Augustine” a contributor
to The Colored American of May 3, 1838. His view was that
the opposition of the Black community to resettlement in Africa
was largely a reaction against the American Colonization Society’s
efforts to push out free Blacks.(15)
The debate between those who favoured repatriation/emigration
and those who opposed this continues in different circumstances,
language and different terms, to the present day.
The settlement of Liberia and Sierra Leone represented early
attempts to implement the repatriation idea. During the 1920s,
Marcus Garvey’s The Universal Negro Improvement Association
(UNIA) in further pursuit of the repatriation idea created the
unfortunate Black Star Line project. A Harlem jingle which
emerged in the Garvey period captured the spirit in which repatriation
was rejected.
Garvey, Garvey is a big man
To take his folks to monkey-land
If he does, I’m sure I can
Stay right here with
Uncle Sam(16)
It is interesting to recall that in the years when George Padmore
was an orthodox Soviet-line marxist and was working within the
framework of the Comintern, he was most scathing in his estimation
of the work of Garvey. In 1931 he wrote that :
Despite the bankruptcy
of the Garvey movement the ideology of Garveyism, which is the
most reactionary expression in Negro bourgeois nationalism,
still continues to exert some influence among certain sections
of the Negro masses. The black landlords and capitalists
who support Garveyism are merely trying to mobilise the Negro
workers and peasants to support them in establishing a Negro
Republic in Africa, where they would be able to set themselves
up as the rulers in order to continue the exploitation of the
toilers of their race, free from white imperialist competition. In
its class content Garveyism is alien to the interests of the
Negro toilers. Like Zionism and Gandhism, it is merely
out to utilise racial and national consciousness for the purpose
of promoting the class interests of the back bourgeoisie and
landlords. In order to further their own aims, the leaders
of Garveyism have attempted to utilise the same demagogic methods
of appeal used by the leaders of Zionism. For example,
they promise to “free” the black workers from all
forms of oppression in reward for supporting the utopian programme
of “Back to Africa”, behind which slogan Garvey attempts
to conceal the truly imperialist aims of the Negro bourgeoisie.(17)
The ideological tradition of repatriation has lived to the present
day in the philosophy of the Rastafarian movement. Its millenarian
and messianic aspects have often obscured the fundamental thrust
of repatriation represented by this movement. The right of the
diaspora to African citizenship would need to be addressed, if
African Unity is to make headway.
One of the features
of the history of the repatriation idea is the fact that closely
linked to this idea has been the notion that diasporal returnees
would be coming into Africa to civilize and create new nations
on the continent. This sentiment in its inherited and evolved
form continues to rile and provoke continental Africans who
regard it as a rearguard introverted version of western superiority,
in the sense that on the basis of the belief that exposure to
the west has civilized and improved Africans in the diaspora,
they return to lead, guide and develop Africa towards western
models of society. Examples of this sentiment are not difficult
to find. In the conclusion to Robert Campbell’s above mentioned
report of the visit to West Africa, he writes that, “The
native authorities, every where from Lagos to Ilorin, are willing
to receive civilized people among them as settlers. It is hardly
fair to say merely that they are willing; they hail the event
with joy”.(18) Edward Blyden in his The People of
Africa (1871) expressed the view that :
We pen these lines
with the most solemn feelings - grieved that so many strong,
intelligent , and energetic black men should be wasting time
and labor in a fruitless contest, which, expended in the primitive
land of their fathers - a land that so much needs them - would
produce in a comparatively short time results of incalculable
importance. But what can we do? Occupying this distant
standpoint - an area of Negro freedom and a scene for untrammelled
growth and development, but a wide and ever-expanding field
for benevolent effort; an outlying to surrounding wilderness
to be reclaimed; barbarism of ages to be brought over to Christian
life - we can only repeat with undiminished earnestness the
wish we have frequently expressed elsewhere, that the eyes of
the blacks may be opened to discern their true mission and destiny;
that, making their escape from the house of bondage, they may
betake themselves to their ancestral home, and assist in constructing
a Christian AFRICAN EMPIRE.(19)
In a letter written by Henry Sylvester Williams, the originator
of the Pan-African movement, in 1906, he offered these views :
I am aware, Mr Editor,
that Africa to many of my West Indian countrymen reflects nothing
else but a horrible place, the land of savages, wild animals
and hobgobblins, with dungeons and caves wherein the hoo-doos
of ages swell, etc. My experience is to the contrary. In
Africa where any vestige of civilisation has not intruded I
have enjoyed the best hospitality and kindness from the people,
and what may be said here for Basutoland under Chief Lerotholdi
in 1904, may with greater stress be said of Liberia where there
are 1,500,000 primitive natives waiting to be brought under
the hand of a more improved state of existence, and 80,000 civilised
souls who are ready to extend the hand of help and succour to
the worthy pioneer. Now the question I desire to put is,
allowing that it is highly desirable that these million and
a half primitive natives are to be educated along proper lines,
who can do the needful better than members of their own race
who have enjoyed the advantage of Western civilization and understood
(how) to cope with its demands? May I submit such will
be able to manipulate the soil so as to extract sufficient therefrom,
thus enabling them to win independence and respect from the
world. ‘I therefore plead for more attention and proper
immigrants for Liberia.(20)
In his The English Language in Liberia (1861), Crummell saw,
as part of the task of Americo-Liberians in Africa, that of “teaching
the heathen to speak” English.
It would be misleading to suggest that the idea of christianity,
“civilization” and westernism as the answers to African
backwardness was a view exclusive to the Diaspora. On the contrary,
it was a position shared also by most of the African elite on
the continent. It was a position shared by thinkers like Attoh
Ahuma and Faduma. It is an argument which to date is implicitly
assumed by the contemporary African elite. Among the principal
African nationalist thinkers of the 20th century, Sekyi appears
to be the outstanding figure who to a considerable degree contradicted
this position. His radical position on this issue deserves citation.
This perversion was
wrought by Europe, and cannot be continued and intensified by
persistence in following the lines laid by Europe in intellectual
and industrial development. The evil is European civilization,
which consistently with is disruptive character, extends by
denationalising peoples. Nationality is the backbone of
the social organism; it must collapse in the manner natural
to organisms - it must die and decay.(21)
The answer appears to be that the solution to the problems of
continental African society is one of advancing on the basis of
the languages, the cultures and the histories of the people. African
development cannot result from solutions conceived and worked
out from outside. There is need to grapple more thoroughly
with these issues in order to chart a more successful route forward.
The issue of African language usage is crucial for the successful
implementation of the African Unity project. All African languages
are trans-border institutions operating at the grassroots of society,
bearing the histories and cultures of the people, and representing
the sources of creativity for all Africans, especially in their
overwhelming majorities. Obviously, the development and usage
of African languages will directly enhance the unity and people
to people relations among Africans.
Perhaps most significant
amongst these intertwined running themes has been the movement
for colonial freedom. While Henry Sylvester Williams was the
creator of the Pan-African Movement in 1900, it was W.E.B. Du
Bois whose consistent activity kept it alive and developing
to the point where in 1945 it could become the launch-pad for
the African Independence Movement.(22) Between 1955 and
1994, from the Sudan to South Africa, colonial freedom was secured
by most of the African countries created under colonial tutelage.
What the experience of the half-century of colonial freedom
has however demonstrated is that colonial freedom has bequeathed
only partial political independence. Neocolonialism largely
replaced the colonial order, but progress has been made.
African unity which was a much vaunted project during the early
post-colonial period has been able only to achieve institutional
form in the Organization for African Unity (OAU). Founded in May
1963 by 30 states on the African continent, in chronology, it
followed the first conference of independent states which met
in Accra in 1958. This institution is more a geographical and
continental arrangement, than a historical and cultural recognition
of the wish of people of African historical and cultural descent
to unify their lot and historical efforts.
As a geographical order, the OAU has been an arrangement which
lumps together two of the principal nationalities based on the
continent, the Arab and African peoples. Although, these two groups
have lived as often socially interpenetrating neighbours, with
slavery of Africans as a bitter feature, for over a millennium,
the political yearnings and national aspirations of the two groups
differ. Whereas the Arab nationalities have an institutional framework
for the unity of the Arab nation, i.e. the Arab League, the African
nationalities lack a similar structure which recognizes their
collective nationhood. This is a challenge which will need to
be addressed in the context of the quest for African Unity.
have elsewhere argued
that the running themes in the confluence of ideas which underwrite
the idea of African development and unity are an assemblage
of inspirations all directed towards the emancipation of Africans
and people of African descent.(23) The logic of this focus
has implications not only for Africans but for the rest of humanity. With
Africa at the bottom of the social, cultural, economic and political
order of the world; with Africans featuring most prominently
among “the wretched of the earth”, it only stands
to reason that, obviously, our advancement and technological
takeoff, along democratic lines, will represent progress for
humanity as a whole. In other words, the advancement of
the most wretched will actualize the upliftment of all.
Another point which needs to be stressed, and repeated as often
as possible, is the fact that arguably, in the light of the post-colonial
record of developmental failures of African states, the need for
a unitary approach to African development based on a common nationhood
would offer the best solution towards African advancement. Africa’s
international trade bargaining capacity, terms of trade, global
political clout, and the articulation of African interests would
be placed more firmly on course, if African Unity is realized.
Increasingly it appears the idea of Pan-Africanism is eliciting
lively response and debate among younger African scholarship. This
is an exciting development which will bring into registry and
relief the record of ideas between the early post-colonial period
and the challenges of the present neo-colonial order in decomposition. As
matters stand now, we are experiencing an Africa, structurized
in the periphery of globalized capital in a unipolar, post-Cold
War world with an emergent Asia in the lead of technological development
and strategic growth. These factors are certainly going to
be of importance in the development of Africa and the world. Africa
has a lot to learn from East Asia.
Nkrumah’s contention,
voiced in 1958 that, “in the last century, ..... the Europeans
discovered Africa: in the next century the Africans will discover
Africa” is, by degrees, bearing out.(24) If the Uganda
and Kenya I knew in the late sixties had relatively few Africans
from West Africa today there are literally hundreds of West
Africans in East Africa and equally large numbers of East Africans
in Southern Africa. Southern Africans, as exiles and non-exiles,
have roamed the continent. In general, as Africans, in spite
of our spasmodic manifestations of xenophobia and chauvinism,
invariably directed more virulently against fellow Africans
than non-Africans, it is still possible to say that, Africans
know each other better than they have ever done, and this will,
in the long run, help to develop a better understanding and
conception of an African nationality. Recent explosions of xenophobia
in South Africa have attracted a great deal of attention, and
too many observers have been too quick to see it as a peculiarly
South African disease. The truth is that it is, both globally
and in Africa, more ubiquitous than meets the superficial eye.
In Africa, in my lifetime, I have seen Ghanaians throw out Nigerians
and other West Africans, under provisions of a so-called Aliens
Compliance Act during the Busia era, only for Ghanaians and
other West Africans in turn, at a later stage, to be kicked
out of Nigeria. Xenophobia against Somalis in Kenya has been
well within notice of my experience. In Botswana, since the
1970s anti-makwerekwere language has been common. Eritreans,
during the period of their war of independence were as refugees
despised in the Sudan. Basuto from what I know, from the years
I was there, sometimes treated other Africans, particularly
South Africans with contempt. For the Batswana, even Tswana-speaking
South Africans living in their midst were Ba tswa kwa (those
from there). Rwandans are not loved in the Congo. There was
a time, in the 1980s, when Zimbabweans became in wider Africa
circles infamous for their ill-regard for other Africans. In
Africa, too easily, crime is attributed to foreign Africans.
Xenophobic manifestations on this continent tend to be directed
most strongly against immediately neighbouring Africans. It
is also important to note that xenophobia against other Africans
is sometimes ethnically focussed, and not always an inter-state
phenomenon.
Early last century,
exhorting Africans to think nationally, Attoh Ahuma challenged
that “we do well to despair of the collective realization
of the ancient prophecy, ‘Ethiopia shall soon stretch out
her hands’. Africa shall rise, but only when we begin to
think continentally and nationally”.(25)
Looking back at the
history of African nationalism and Pan-Africanism since 1945
two traditions are discernible. There is firstly the idea
that it is to be realized through an aggregation, a unity of
the neo-colonial states as units, of a “United States of
Africa”. This argument is ultimately linked to continentalism;
the view that the object of African unity is a geographical
union of the African continent. This position flies in the face
of the fact that, in spite of the misleading political postures
of Colonel Gadafi on African Unity, a good part of North Africa
prefers the idea of Arab Unity, “A Unity of the Arab Nation”
(Wonton-el Arab). As Zaideh in the opening to his seminal paper
on Arabism argues; “The Arabs are a nation which has been
fashioned from three elements, namely race, habitat and history”.(26)
Further on in the same text he points out that, “ ....
the present Arab world, from the mountains of Persia to the
Atlas, is Arab. Arab in the sense that the original Arab race
has been able, by intermingling, intermarriage and propinquity,
to assimilate all other peoples in the area and to Arabize them.
These populations are therefore Arab either by origin or by
derivation - they are either Arab or Arabized”.(27) Democratic
principles and the notion of the right of peoples to self-determination
alone require that the aspiration for Arab Unity as a democratic
vision should be acknowledged and acceded. But in similar
fashion, African Unity should be freed from the corridors of
geography, silence and trepidation, and understood more culturally
and historically.
The issue of reparations
is older than often meets the eye. We know that, it goes back
at least, to the first Pan-African Congress organized by Henry
Sylvester Williams in 1900.(28) In a period, when more
than ever, people of African descent are calling for reparations
from the western world for the centuries-long rapacity of slavery,
we do well to direct some attention to the need to make similar
presentation to the Arab world, for Arab slavery and depredations
in Africa which is even older than western slavery, and in pockets
continues to the present time.
Also related to the issue of reparations, is the question of
who should be the beneficiaries of such reparations. There is
as much silence about this as there is noise about the need for
reparations. Most observers prefer to tiptoe around the subject,
but it needs to be confronted. In my view, reparations should
in the first instance go to the prime victims of slavery, the
Diaspora. There is no doubt that, while continental Africans societally
for centuries suffered from destabilisation and destruction brought
by wars fuelled by European and Arab slave trade interests, the
effects on the direct victims and their immediate descendants
is in most senses worse than the lot of Africans at home.
Another area of silence in discussions about Pan-Africanism and
diasporal connections, is the feeling and sentiment within the
diaspora that, continental Africans sold them out to western slavers.
In recent years, this sentiment has found a no lesser voice than
Henry Louis Gates who heads the Africa Studies Centre at Harvard
University. This is a theme which because of its profound sensitivities
and implications deserves full airing at a dedicated workshop
or symposium.
Without preempting opinion and verdict on the matter, one would
want to draw attention to the fact that stating the case as “you
sold us” grossly over-simplifies historical realities, but
also feeds into the nascent propaganda of those in the west and
elsewhere who would like to put the blame for the slave trade
on the victims and, in effect almost as a divide and rule tactic,
pit one set of the victims against the other. The Atlantic slave
trade was instituted by developing western capitalist society
for purposes of profit. It was fuelled by a steady supply of war
materiel sold to rival interests in Africa, pitted against each
other in a never-ending cycle of wars, in which the warring parties
were as much victims of the system as those who were sold as prisoners
arising out of these wars. All classes of men and women could
and did become prisoners, victims of the system. The real question
is, “who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the system”?
A different but related point is that, when we talk of the problems
of contemporary Africa and the lack of success in consolidating
and moving forward, we do well to remember that, Africa for centuries
and in some parts for over a millennium has been ravaged by slave-raiding
wars. There are indeed parts of the continent, particularly the
Sudan, where Arab slave-raiding and trade continues to the present
day. It is hardly imaginable that such circumstances could permit
the stable and steady development of any social formation. Indeed,
proper studies need to be undertaken to examine the social, political,
cultural and economic effects of the slave trade, by both Arabs
and westerners, on the development of African society.
The second tradition, possibly younger, suggests that Africans
deserve an organisation similar to the Arab League or the European
Union. The OAU like OAS (Organization of American States)
and ASEAN(Association of South East Asian Nations) are geographical/
regional organisations, not national institutions. An African
national institution will need to acknowledge the Diaspora, as
nationally more integral than areas where people neither describe
themselves as Africans nor wish to be so described. Continentalism,
by direct implication, ultimately negates the diaspora link.
Dilemmas of Regional Formations
The idea of regional
integration has historically not had much success in Africa. The
East African community united from the late colonial to early
post-colonial period, which brought together under common service
agreements of far-reaching implications Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania,
was dismantled by African elites sworn to the flags and anthems
of neocolonialism. Institutions like the West African Currency
Board, East African Airways, West African Airway Corporation,
the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland and The University
of East Africa were chopped up and devoured on the altar of
neocolonial nationalism. Currently, ECOWAS, the PTA group,
and the SADC, have demonstrated little will to go beyond rudimentary
protocols and move with conviction towards the implementation
of strong and growing unifying structures. Bound and fettered
by the very conditions of neocolonialism, they have been unable
to live down the divisive imperially sanctioned conditions of
their birth.
The problem of regional unitary attempts in Africa is that they
are all conceived with the neocolonial units of Africa as their
points of departure. The units of African states we have
today owe their rationality and origins to the Berlin Partition
of Africa in 1885. Although these units have been successively
revised, particularly after the 1st war and in the late 1950's
and 1960's, they have remained more or less determined by the
basic design of the Partition over a century ago. The difficulties
imposed on the Pan-Africanist by this legacy was expounded with
unmatched clarity by Nyerere. In a lecture (The Dilemma
of a Pan-Africanist) delivered by Nyerere at the University
of Zambia on the occasion of the inauguration of President Kaunda
as first Chancellor of the University of Zambia in 1966, President
Nyerere made the following observations :
The question we now
have to answer is whether Africa shall maintain this internal
separation as we defeat colonialism, or whether our earlier
proud boast - ‘I am an African’ - shall become a reality. It
is not a reality now. For the truth is that there are now
36 different nationalities in free Africa, one for each of the
36 independent states - to say nothing of the areas still under
colonial or alien domination. Each state is separate from
the others: each is a sovereign entity. And this means
that each state has a government which is responsible to the
people of its own area - and to them only; it must work for
their particular well-being or invite chaos within its territory. Can
the vision of Pan-Africanism survive these realities? Can
African unity be built on this foundation of existing and growing
nationalism? I do not believe the answer is easy. Indeed
I believe that a real dilemma faces the Pan-Africanist. On
the one hand is the fact that Pan-Africanism demands an African
consciousness and an African loyalty; on the other hand is the
fact that each Pan-Africanist must also concern himself with
the freedom and development of one of the nations of Africa. These
things can conflict. Let us be honest and admit that they
have already conflicted.(29)
Regional integration based on African states as they stand today
define little that is organic to African history and culture. The
so-called nations of Africa were arbitrarily drawn up in the late
19th century. These shapes had never existed before. Indeed,
the Europeans paid no attention to the historically existing formations
and in some cases drew boundaries in straight lines through long
existing social formations. Any examination of the map of
Africa reveals three prominent ways in which the colonial powers
demarcated boundaries. These boundaries either run along
rivers, the watershed between two rivers, or were simply straight
lines drawn solely on the basis of the outcomes of inter-imperialist
rivalries.
After the First World War, Germany lost her colonial possessions
and these were divided amongst the triumphant powers. Between
the first and second World Wars no serious revisions of African
borders were undertaken. Indeed, it was only during the period
of the struggle for independence in the post-second World War
era that some adjustments and revisions were made. These
were mainly revisions within existing borders.
The major revisions which took place from the late fifties into
the sixties were in French Africa. In 1958 General De Gaulle
after bitter experiences of the French in Indo-China and Algeria,
and in the face of mounting popular pressure in Africa for independence,
invited the French colonies of Africa to vote for either independence
or remaining within the French community. Only Guinea under
Sekou Toure opted for immediate independence. The French
left Guinea in a hurry and with bitterness, ripping out even telephone
and light fixtures. However within a few months, indeed by
1960, 11 more French colonies had become independent. In
the exercise of giving independence to French West Africa, an
area which had hitherto been governed as one monolithic unit was
suddenly chopped up into bits and pieces. Thus Africa in
the name of creating independent nation-states actually was bequeathed
with neo-colonial states vain-gloriously described as nations.
The post-colonial states in Africa are neither nation-states
nor nations. They are simply states, neo-colonial states
whose political, cultural and economic structures have from
birth been linked in imitation and subservience to the interests
of the former colonial and other metropolitan powers.
When the idea of regional integration based on these states is
mooted, it amounts to no more than an assumption that there is historical
viability for the neo-colonial state as a departure point for
African development, renaissance, or advancement. Such groupings
implicitly deny the realities of Africa outside the framework
of the western encounter and intrusion. This condition builds
into the geo-political realities of Africa’s latent sources
of conflict. By disavowing the cultural and historical heritage
of Africans, we become per historical definition creatures of
western design, trapped into the conditions of neo-colonialism,
and trying to build Africa with the brick work of the imperialist
legacy. This is why invariably our attempts at the construction
of larger regional groupings have failed.
Indeed, what has been noticeable is that, as African states have
become independent, barriers between them in economic, political,
social and cultural terms have increased. Southern Africa provides
a good example of this. Until, the early 1970s, the rand, albeit
then a instrument of South African hegemony, was common currency
throughout the region. Capital and labour moved fairly easily
throughout the region, in spite of the existence of the sociologically
pernicious migrant labour system. Capital and goods moved easily
within the customs union. Starting with Botswana, each of the
countries in the region has in subsequent years created their
own currencies, erected barriers which limit capital and labour
movement. Difficult visa requirements have been adopted in deference
to flag and anthem. In spite of the fact that there is continuous
talk of regional cooperation and integration within SADC, on the
ground, Southern Africans are more divided today than they have
ever been.
But can we deny or wish away the realities of the map of African
states today? Their fundamental weaknesses and unviability
have been proven beyond dispute, by the fact that, of the forty
five odd sub-Saharan states on the continent, not one single one
has been successful in maintaining a robust, industrializing and
growing economy during the post-colonial period. Almost all
have been racked with problems of ethnicism and localism, to different
degrees of intensity, at different points in their post-colonial
histories. The problems of ethnicism and localism are mainly
caused by the fact that contending elites have invariably resorted
to mobilizing localist and ethnic sentiments within mass society
in order to support their claims to resources, in states which
have been increasingly faced with diminishing state resources.
The realities of primordial
feelings and attachments towards historical and cultural belongings
run deep in African societies. Allegiance to these solidarities
in many cases, among the rural folk and the semi-urban populations
is fervent. Sometimes such attachments are even stronger,
and borne with more zealotry, than sentiments pertaining to
the supposedly overarching post-colonial state solidarities. Shrinking
resources and contestation about these, plus, the often truncated
character of ethnic and cultural groups, (because of the
arbitrary nature of state borders) help to heighten tensions
within African states. African leadership, in pursuit of the
ideal of totally unitary states often regard any expressions
of localism or ethno-cultural belongings of people as anathema
which need to be stamped underfoot. In the political language
of African elites these are all manifestations of “tribalism”. Azikiwe
cautioned against the tendency to easily dismiss the realities
of ethnic affiliation in an instructive lecture entitled Tribalism:
A Pragmatic Instrument for National Unity.(30) Archie Mafeje’s
work on this topic signalled the pitfalls of ethnicism.(31)
While the mobilization of narrow ethnic feelings, by elites,
for their limited economic and political interest often takes
chauvinistic tribalistic forms, it would appear that the way to
contain and counteract tribalistic tendencies is to open up African
countries to greater democratic expression, including allowing
cultural and ethnic sentiments structural space to be expressed
democratically, and not stamped underfoot. Sweeping such
sentiments under the carpet invariably succeeds in only postponing
their re-emergence in more strident and atavistic forms at later
stages.
Since most, or almost all, of African ethno-cultural groups straddle
or cross several borders, regional cooperation should be directed
towards creating democratic institutional forms which allow the
expression of interest across borders without negating the realities
of existing states. In other words we would need to allow
the development of Pan-African institutions and understandings
which allow the people of Africa to relate more freely and democratically
across existing borders without necessarily denying the realities
of the present map of Africa. As Pan-African institutions
strengthen, so also will the dominance of the existing states
gradually recede. In any case, at the practical level, African
integration, cooperation and unity in implementation must mean
the integration, cooperation and unity of people. That is the
bottom line.
Earlier on, I made
reference to the fact that currently, the neocolonial state
is in decomposition. None of the states in post-colonial Africa
is economically, socially, culturally and politically standing
steady, holding its own and making the sort of progress one
could describe seriously as developmental. Things are falling
apart, and the centres are not holding. As I have suggested
in an earlier paper, war has become a generalised condition
on the continent.(32) While a concert of extra-African powers
and local authorities are attempting variously to contain these
conflicts through “peace-keeping” operations, the
reality of the situation is that the warring parties and contending
interests are by the weeks and months increasing. The emerging
scenario suggests that, we may very well end up in a situation
where insurgents confront partnerships of local governments
and external powers supplying war materiel in an increasingly
festering condition of generalised war, devastation and carnage,
which will imperil even the limited existential stability we
find on the continent today. While Africans want peace, it is
unlikely that peace can be achieved through merely police and
military activity which attempts to forcibly put a lid on the
boiling conditions of war and societal breakdown that we are
seeing.
The roots of war in Africa are economic, political and cultural.
They are conditions which have histories rooted in the colonial
past, the checker-board of economically unviable states, arbitrarily
created by the departing colonial powers, with no respect for
Africa’s cultural, economic and political realities. If peace
is to be achieved in Africa, we would need to go back collectively,
as Africans, to the drawing-board and come up with a new order
which unites us all, and therefore creates a viable framework
for containing fissiparous tendencies. The dominant principle
which will enable such an arrangement is the democratic principle,
but applied in such a way that allows historical and cultural
realities to develop along democratic lines. It would seem that,
while the existence of the present states cannot be wished away,
it may be judicious to develop this new democratic and united
African order through the creation of inter-state institutions,
on a people to people basis. This is a view I share with Dani
Nabudere. Only a united Africa, can provide the basis for an economically
sustainable and viable, ethno-culturally co-existential, democratic
and peaceful Africa.
Conclusion
Given the history of
African nationalism, Pan Africanism and the aspiration to unity
as related ideas over the last 150 years, and the partial but
consistently incremental implementation and achievement of its
objectives, it is clear that ultimately the ideals of African
unity will be achieved. It is however important to remember
that the process toward the achievement of these goals is unlikely
to be a smooth sailing and altogether peaceful process.
The dismantling of the new colonial order is happening before
our eyes and this is triggering in its wake a plethora of wars
and conflicts across the continent. The vortex of these conflicts
is centred in Central Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo
and the lake regions of Eastern Africa. Two-thirds of Africa
has been directly or indirectly drawn into this cauldron of war. The
involvement of Africa therefore in this situation of generalised
war has become interlocking and inter-penetrating. Therefore
the solution and search for peace would also need to involve all
concerned parties. This scenario imposes a need for the search
for peace and democracy to involve a collective effort with collective
decisions which go to the roots of conflict and war in Africa. It
is likely that international interest will find allegiance with
different parties on the ground in Africa. This may exacerbate
the tensions and conflicts on the continent. There is therefore
the need for concerned Africans to think through the implications
of war, peace and democracy in Africa and provide guidance to
democratic interest and civil society to advance the process of
peace and unity in Africa.
Notes
1. Anthony Sampson. Common
Sense About Africa. Victor Gollancz. London. 1960. P.
73.
2. See, Leon E. Clark. Through African Eyes: Cultures in
Change. Praeger. New York. 1971. Pp.1260-132.
3. See, Alexander Crummell. The English Language in Liberia.
1861. Quoted here from J. Ayo Langley. Ideologies of Liberation
in Black Africa. Rex Collings. London. 1979. P.357.
4. Drawn from Hollis. R. Lynch (ed), Selected Letters of
Edward W. Blyden. Millwood N.Y. Kraus-Thomson Organisation. 1978. Pp
460- 461. Quoted here from, Basil Davidson. The
Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State. James
Currey. London. 1992. P.43.
5. Basil Davidson. Ibid. P.37.
6. Ibid. P.38.
7. Orishatuké Faduma. African Negro Education. Sierra
Leone Weekly News. 31 August, 1918. Quoted here from .
Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa. Rex Collings. London.
1979. P.191-192.
8. Nicholas Ziadeh. Arabism. In Al-‘uruba
fi mizan al-qawmiyya (Arabism in the Balance of Nationalism),
Beirut, 1950. Pp. 68-81. Quoted here from, Elie Kedourie. Nationalism
in Asia and Africa. Weidenfeld and Nicholson. London. 1971. P.
303.
9. Micere Githae Mugo. African Culture in Education for
Sustainable Development. In, W. M. Makgoba (ed). African Renaissance.
Mafube/Tafelberg. Cape Town. 1999. P.215.
10. See, Douglass Monthly, August, 1862, P.695. Quoted here
from Howard H. Bell’s, Introduction. M.R. Delany and Robert
Campbell. Search for a Place: Black Separatism and Africa, 1860.
University of Michigan Press. 1971. P.3.
11. H. H. Bell. Ibid. Pp. 3-4.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid. P4.
15. Ibid.
16. Quoted here from, E. David Cronin. Black Moses: The
Story of Marcus Garvey and The Universal Negro Improvement Association.
University of Wisconsin Press. Madison. 1955. 1974 edition. P.73.
17. George Padmore. The Life and Struggles of Negro
Toilers. R.I.L.U. Magazine for the International Trade Union Committee
of Negro Workers. London. 1931. P.126.
18. Ibid. P.242.
19. Edward Blyden. The People of Africa. New York. 1871. Quoted
here from Elie Kedourie. Op cit. P272.
20. J.R. Hooker. Henry Sylvester Williams. Imperial
Pan-Africanist. Rex Collings. London. 1975. P.99.
21. Kobina Sekyi. The Future of Subject Peoples. The
Africa Times and Orient Review. October - November 1917. Quoted
here from J. Ayo Langley. Ideologies of Liberation in Black
Africa 1856 - 1970. Rex Collings. London. 1979. P244.
22. Some observers have drawn attention to the fact that
although Henry Sylvester Williams was historically the father
of Pan-Africanism and not his Successor W.E.B. Du Bois, this fact
has often been omitted by many students of Pan-Africanism. See
for example, J.R. Hooker. Op cit. P.31. See also Locksley
Edmondson in Mawazo. Kampala. 1969.
23. See, K. K. Prah. African Renaissance or Warlordism?
In, W. M. Makgoba (ed). African Renaissance. Mafube/Tafelberg.
Cape Town. 1999. Pp.37-62
24. Anthony Sampson. Op cit. P.63.
25. S. R. B. Attoh Ahuma. The Gold Coast Nation and National
Consciousness. Liverpool. 1911. Quoted here from. J. Ayo Langley.
Op cit. P.167. Attoh Ahuma adds in flowery language that; "The
most difficult problem of our times is to thinks so that Africa
may regain her lost Paradise. How to think the thoughts that galvanize
and electrify into life souls that are asleep unconscious of their
destiny; How to think the thoughts that produce, multiply, divide
and circulate for the general good - the thoughts that make crooked
places straight, that pulverize gates of brass and cut in sunder
all bars of iron - the power that gives friends and foes alike
the treasuries of darkness and hidden riches of secret places
- the Art that brings National Evangels, binding up broken and
despairing hearts, proclaiming liberty and freedom to the captives,
and the opening of the Prison to them that are bound or have bound
themselves”. J. Ayo Langley. P.168.
26. See, N. Zaideh in E. Kedourie. Op cit. P.294.
27. Ibid. P.297
28. See, J.R. Hooker. Henry Sylvester Williams; Imperial
Pan-Africanist. Rex Collins. London. 1975. P.29.
29. Julius Nyerere. The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist. In,
Freedom and Socialism: Uhuru na Ujamaa. London. 1968. Quoted
here from J. Ayo. Langley. Ibid. P. 342. Elsewhere
Nyerere addressing the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU)
national conference on 16 October 1967, he said “While our
concern with world events is real and important, the events in
Africa are of even greater and more direct relevance to us. Total
African liberation and total African unity are basic objectives
of our Party and our Government.” Quoted here from
Colin Legum and Geoffrey Mmari. Ed. Mwalimu The Influence
of Nyerere. James Currey. London. Mkuki Na Nyota. Dar
es Salaam. Africa World Press. Trenton. 1995. P.164.
30. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Tribalism: A Pragmatic Instrument for
National Unity. Lecture, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. 15th May
1964. In, President Azikiwe: Selected Speeches 1960-64 pp.22-28.
Quoted here from Ayo Langley. Ibid. P.458.
31. Archie Mafeje. The Ideology of Tribalism. Journal of
Modern African Studies. 1970. Vol.9. No.2.
32. See, K. K. Prah. In, W. M. Magoba. Op cit.
