ON RECORDS AND KEEPING OUR EYES ON THE BALL

ON RECORDS AND KEEPING OUR EYES ON THE BALL

Kwesi Kwaa Prah Responds

Cape Town

24.7.2011

Dear Issa,

 

In our brave new world, with the technology of our times, we are able, without face to face meetings, to successfully lock horns in debate in cyber-space. It is most convenient. Let‟s get on with it. I read your recent paper, The Struggle to Convert Nationalism to Pan-Africanism: Taking Stock of 50 years of African Independence¹ with riveting interest. It has given me reason to explain a few things here.

I found the first part easily agreeable and unproblematic, if factually hackneyed. But beyond a certain point the narrative becomes troubling, prickly and unsubstantiated by evidence. Your elastic use of the notion of territoriality and the analytical ambiguities of your commentary on the contributions of Garvey and Du Bois deserve fresh reflection. An important point one needs to note relates to the differences in the class character of their followings in the inter-war period.

 

Without an appreciation of their different socio-historical mainsprings the rationalities of their ideologically divergent significations will remain obscured and elusive. The contradictions between these two figures mirrored a lot of the historical and social realities of the African Diaspora during the early decades of the 20th century and in turn they influenced the development of political thought and practice on the continent.

 

We are informed that, after reading the Autobiography of Du Bois in Conakry, in exile, in 1968, Nkrumah reacted thus:

 

‘… My opinion of the book is very mixed. Here is an intellectual aristocrat born in 1868; and here is the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels published in 1848, and this man never became a communist –not even a socialist- until the last evenings of his life. His philosophy for the Talented Ten and his fight with Booker Washington, and later with Marcus Garvey, put me off him when I was a student in the United States …… There are a lot of things Du Bois did which have put a brake to the revolving machine of African Revolution. Dr Du Bois lived behind a “veil” which he was afraid to tear open. He was an intellectual but not a revolutionary. If Du Bois had supported Marcus Garvey, the course of Afro-American history might de different now. But 2 I loved him and respected him just the same.’²

 

That was Nkrumah. But these are not the issues I wish to raise here.

 

It is with regards to matters of witting or unwitting obfuscation that I want to react here. You write that:

 

‘Some of the old debates on racial and territorial nationalisms are re-appearing. Who is an African for the purposes of Pan-Africanism? And, therefore, who constitutes the nation for purposes of national liberation? For Kwesi Prah, Bankie Bankie, Chinweizu and others, “African” is defined by colour, culture and custom.’

 

I hold no brief for others, but in the face of your assertions and our earlier debates, I am surprised about the lack of familiarity with my work and position. For Kwesi Prah it is culture and history. Please learn that. Why have you studiously avoided the written evidence? I ask myself. I shall not attempt to put my finger on possible explanations for this here. But, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I shall start from the premise that you are poorly informed and do not know where I stand on these issues. I have long been on record, in 1989, (The Cause of Our Times: Pan-Africanism Revisited) ³ that:

 

‘The racial definition of an African is flawed. It is unscientific and hence untenable. No serious mind today would use the race concept in any way except as an instrument for poetic imagery. What l am saying is that no group of people has been „pure‟ from time immemorial. Notions of purity belong to the language of fascists and the rubbish-bin of science. But before my observations are misunderstood let me take the argument into another direction. Most Africans are black, but not all Africans are black, and not all blacks have African cultural and historical roots. Jews range from blond to black. Another example, Arabs also do. I am not denying the fact that this continent is the cradle of the African and as far as we know today the birthplace of homo sapiens. There are many groups in Africa today which are not African, do not describe themselves as African or wish to be so regarded, peoples whose cultures and histories are linked and derived from extra-African sources. Needless to say, they are full citizens and must always remain full and equal citizens in all respects to the Africans amongst whom they live, and l dare say apartheid and caste systems of any kind should not be tolerated, since we seek ultimately the freedom of all humanity, and the untrammelled social intercourse of all the peoples of this earth. The cultures of these minorities who live amongst us have helped in the enrichment and cosmopolitanization of social life and tastes in large areas of Africa. Some of these groups may in due course of time and history, come to regard themselves as African. All peoples have a right to their culture and its usage. But cultures are not stagnant or fixed entities. Cultural change is a permanent feature of all societies. No human group has from time immemorial been hermetically sealed, culturally or otherwise. Diffusion, interpenetration and mixing is the real substance of the historical process, but at every given historical conjuncture, people are formed by the existent culture they produce and reproduce. But cultures are created and also wither. When cultures die, the people whose culture declines and falls, do not necessarily physically die, they become other people. Often they are absorbed by more dominant cultures. Obviously, there is constantly a world culture in creation. This universal cultural fund is shared literally by all people. The phenomenology of a global village underscores this point. It is a cultural fund to which we all in principle contribute, but in practice, it is the dominant or hegemonic cultures of the world which determine active cultural development in this sphere. There are many, particularly among Westerners who too easily and rather ethnocentrically, equate universal culture with western culture. In a world of competing cultures, growth, prosperity and cultural advancement is a factor of economic and political power. This is why, for example in the case of South Africa, under Afrikaner National Party rule, the language of the Afrikaner, Afrikaans which had started as a patois was developed and rapidly elevated to a language of modern science and technology and forced on to the rest of the population. Culture, history, attachment to these and consciousness of identity and not skin colour primarily defines the African. The fact that most Africans or people of African historical and cultural descent are black is only one characteristic, a bonus which generalizes and typifies Africans. And indeed, l dare say, for us, in the absence of a strong unifying religion or single language, colour has become an easy and fortunate identifying attribute of most people who regard themselves as African. Thus while others have used our colour to distinguish us for oppression and denigration, it is at the same time one of the most fortunate coincidences which identifies a people whose cultures have over centuries been woefully shattered by their oppressors. While in recent centuries slavery by Europe and the Arab world has hung heavily on African history, Africans have existed long before these periods, and cannot be defined as a people mainly on the basis of this experience. Definitionally, being African is not simply or essentially a reaction to the history of oppression. It includes this, but also stands before and transcends this history.’ ⁴

 

In the preface to the same text; Beyond the Colour Line (the title was chosen to carry meaning), I wrote that:

 

‘If most obviously Africans are mainly black, to some extent for the present and increasingly in future, there will be more and more non-blacks whose cultures will claim, acquire and assume African sources and connections, to the point that they assert an African identity. It is in this sense that Africaness is ultimately colourless. It is beyond colour. It transcends colour. It is indeed more history, and/or culture, and not biology. I however think we are still very far from there.’⁵

 

In Pambazuka News of 2008-10-22 (Issue 403), the editor, for purposes of contextualization prefaced my paper; A Pan-Africanist Reflection: Point Counter-point, with this note:

 

‘In a response to Issa Shivji’s Our political guiding post: pan-Africanism’s new dawn. (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/51014) featured inPambazuka’s 400th issue English-language edition, Kwesi Kwaa Prah asks what can be achieved with pan-Africanism as a “category of intellectual thought”. Problematizing the extent to which pan-Africanism could ever represent a politically neutral philosophy, the author suggests that its proponents can be located across the political spectrum and argues that while colour may have provided a useful racially-based organizing tool, it should never override the essential inclusivity of the African identity.’⁶

 

The Editor, if imperfectly, clearly understood me better than you. I suppose by ‘politically neutral philosophy’ the editor was attempting to summarize the part of my argument which appears as follows in my paper:

 

‘Shivji asserts that the “new pan-Africanism is rooted in social (popular) democracy, [it] is African nationalism of the era of the so-called globalized phase of imperialism. African nationalism was born of pan-Africanism, not the other way round.” On the surface there is precious little to quibble about this assertion, but it masks a great deal of ambiguity and gross simplification which needs to be interrogated. If by “social (popular) democracy” we are to understand a political ideology defined as “democratic socialism”, that is a left and centre-left political position which acknowledges individual rights, transparent constitutionalism, the rejection of the Marxist-Leninist notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, support for universal adult suffrage, the inclusion of social and economic equality and rights to education, medical care, pensions, and employment, and some measure of social security support for the unemployed and underprivileged, I would say yes, these are for many people, without doubt, desirable ideals. They are universal ideals with practical and theoretical adherents throughout the world, in virtually every single country on this planet, but it is certainly not pan-Africanism. Some pan-Africanists are doubtlessly social democrats, but not all social democrats are pan-Africanists. Some pan-Africanists are right-wing conservatives while others are to the left of social democracy, indeed many have been, or are, Marxists (including Nkrumah in his final years). Indeed, pan-Africanists can be found within the whole spectrum of political colouring.’⁷

 

Of course, the universe of discourse on Pan-Africanism is marked by a wide spectrum of political hues. This is what I have noticed in a life time of Pan-Africanist involvement. For our purposes here, I want to refer to some of the points I made there in reaction to your paper. I had pointed out that:

‘A few years ago, at the opening of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute in Mbale, Uganda, I had in my keynote address explained that it was useful to indicate that physical attributes would be in no sense the key to understanding identities as objective factors in societies. Another way of saying the same thing is that it is not biology but culture that defines and identifies people; it is not nature but nurture that separates or unites the tastes, values, behaviour and customary usages of people. I have often remarked that the racial definition of African is wrong and misplaced. Most Africans, I assert, are black, but not all blacks are Africans and not all Africans are black. Indian Dravidians, Melanesians and Native Australians are black, but they are not Africans. What I mean is that colour is no basis for defining an African in much the same way as colour cannot define Arabs, who range from blonde to black, or Jews who range from blonde to black, or Hindus who range from near white to black. In fact, in the Sudan, for example, it is not possible to always differentiate between Arab and African on the basis of colour. The obsession with colour, particularly noticeable with Africans in the Diaspora arises on account of the age-long racism and oppression Africans in the western Diaspora have endured at the hands of white westerners. But when that has been said, I must add that the overwhelming majority of Africans are black and in the absence of unifying cultural attributes like a literacy-based religion or a common language, colour has been a fortunate reference point for people of African-descent both on the continent and in the Diaspora. We can literally invariably recognize each other from afar. …I need also to point out that there are certain attributes that culturally unite and define Africans. Firstly, our religious systems and rituals are fairly homogenous. These extend into the Diaspora as Candomblé, Santería, Voodoo, Obeah and other institutions in South America, in Brazil in particular, the West Indies and North America. The central character of these religious systems is ancestor veneration and a fairly common structure of religious symbolism. All these systems are underpinned by expressive visual art forms, dance and recognizable rhythms. Secondly, our systems of kinship and marriage are also fairly ubiquitous. These kinship systems in their specific and general character often cross state borders. Thirdly, the pre-colonial political systems that linger into present political order were and have been interlocking and largely similar. Fourthly, there is a sense in which the commonalities of our customs and history make our aspirations similar. Fifthly, and very importantly, our languages are broadly related and the degree of similarity among them is much greater than meets either the eye or the ear. Territorial contiguity characterizes the habitat of the majority of Africans. This is the African continent. The cultural attributes are not in all respects unique to Africa either individually or collectively, but the mix and history of these cultural affinities are sufficiently shared as typifying characteristics among Africans. If cultural attributes constitute the predominant feature in the definition of an African identity, it is language that lies at the heart and is the principal pillar carrying culture. It is in language that cultures are registered and transferred as legacies. Apart from these cultural convergences, Africans generally display a recognition and acknowledgement of other Africans as Africans. This extends invariably into the Diaspora. This recognition exists in spite of considerable localism and 6 the frequent promotion of ethnicism by dominant elites. It needs also to be said that being African is an inclusive notion. It is possible for people who are not African today to become African in due course of time. But this is not achieved by opportunistic claims based on expediency and formulae like „commitment to Africa.‟ I have elsewhere argued that Verwoerd, Henry Morton Stanley, or Ian Smith were all committed in their own ways to Africa, but can we say they were Africans? If I arrive tomorrow in China and declare my commitment to China, does that make me Chinese? Becoming African involves immersion into African society and requires a certain degree of acculturation into African society. At least it would require the adoption and sharing of the values of African society. It is possible therefore to creolize into Africa, but that involves also the blurring of the cultural boundaries between the creolizing community and the wider African community. It has nothing to do with colour, but all to do, to varying degrees, with cultural integration. In other words, it is not possible to be African while one rejects African culture and rejects the self-designation of being African. It is not possible to be African, whilst one looks down on Africans, maintains caste-like relations with Africans and refuses to mix with Africans. As another English aphorism declares, „you cannot have your cake and eat it.‟ Finally, indeed with regards to the African Diaspora, the interlocking character of the history and sentiments attached to this history and its subjective reference points have filtered into the social and political histories of Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora, particularly in the last hundred and fifty years. Africans on the continent feel profound fraternal bonds and intense sentiments of attachment to the Africans in the Diaspora. It is worthwhile restating that, indeed, it is not possible to understand pan-Africanism outside of the context of the Diaspora. Much of the theoretical foundations of pan-Africanism as political philosophy were created and actively shaped by the Diaspora.’⁸

 

In another paper you wrote in 2010⁹, you made the following points:

 

‘….. the notion of the African nation, even among Pan-Africanists, is a fiercely contested concept. It is, unfortunately in my view, formulated in a rather fruitless question: „Who is an African?‟ Are the Arabs in North Africa part of the African nation and therefore included in the Pan-Africanist project? Are the Indians in East and Southern Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa, the Boers and Malays in South Africa etc. Africans? For Kwesi Prah, Arabs are not Africans and therefore not part of the African nation ….’¹⁰

 

Yes, Arabs are not Africans. Nyerere’s late advice (1997) was that Africans should seek unity and cooperation on a sub-Saharan basis.11 Arabs aspire to Arab unity (el watan el arabi – the Arab 7 nation). They have a right to this unity. They have organizations which pursue this aspiration and which define this, including pre-eminently the Arab League, ALECSO etc. Are you unaware of what is described as the Arab world? Do you not know the history of Arabs and Africans on this continent? There is a history of Arabization in Africa; an assimilationist process which removes people away from their native cultures and acculturates them into Arabic culture. In the North Sudan most of the people who describe themselves today as Arabs are historically Arabized Nubians; Africans who have been Arabized. They have become Arabs. Some have been ready to go to war ^against Africans to promote Arabism.

 

You continued thus:

 

‘…. and therefore Pan-Africanism includes and covers only Black Africans in sub-Saharan Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. Prah defines the African subtly in terms of history and culture although he cannot always keep clear of the race and colour in his conceptualisation of “who is an African”. Having strongly denied that his conceptualisation is based on race or colour, he ends up with a throwaway: “But when that has been said, I must add that the overwhelming majority of Africans are black and the absence of unifying cultural attributes like a literacy-based religion or a common language, colour has been a fortunate reference point for people of African-descent both on the continent and in the Diaspora. We can literally invariably recognise each other from afar.”’¹²

I suppose you mean ‘give-away’ not ‘throw-away’. Of course Issa, do you want to deny that the overwhelming majority of Africans are black? Even school children all over the world know this! The point is that, the fact that the overwhelming majority of Africans are black does not make blackness the determining criterion of Africaness. Furthermore, you say:

 

‘… The question of colour, Prah’s reference point, often gets reduced to biological rather than historical and cultural. While, the issue of ‘who is an African’ remains contested, from the viewpoint of pan-Africanism, it seems to me, the better approach is political in terms of struggle against domination and exploitation. It is within this political context of struggle against oppression that Prah’s cultural diversities can be accommodated; otherwise, as Prah rightly points out, these diversities become divisions as oppressors, and their allies politicize race, ethnicity and colour for their own power game….’¹³

 

Yes, Africans should ‘struggle against domination and exploitation’. But, please this cannot define Africaness, ‘who is an African’ or Pan-Africanism. If Africans are simply those who ‘struggle against domination and exploitation’ practically the whole world would be African. Again, yes of course, colour is biology. It can be nothing but biology. Pigmentation is biology. History and culture are not biology. Maybe, I should add here that, while animals are pre-eminently ruled by instinct and biology, humans create and live culture. For social scientists, this 8 is the main difference between animals and humans. Colour is genetically handed down through nature; culture is historically crafted and nurtured by humans. They are quite separate entities. The point you are ascribing to me (‘The question of colour, Prah’s reference point, often gets reduced to biological rather than historical and cultural’) is in fact hopelessly contradictory and defies logic. I do not mix up biology and culture. You are procedurally in your argument conflating oppositional meanings. Biology and culture are like chalk and cheese. The difference between them is parallel to the distinction between changeableness and immutability. Issa, they are dialectically contrastive.

 

I have already elsewhere made the point that:

 

‘This advantage of colour and high visibility is such that in a crowd of humans it is invariably easy to pick out those that are Africans. When I make this point, I am not suggesting that colour is the most important feature of the African or contradicting myself as Shivji appears to suggest. Culture and history remain the prime points of definition of Africaness but there is factually no denying of the reality that Africans are overwhelmingly black.’¹⁴

 

On the basis of visible biological traits one can hardly confuse a Chinese for an Indian? Do we generally confuse a Chinese for a European? No. Of course these biological features are not as categories water-tight. Black and white are not necessarily polar opposites. In the real world, beyond binary abstraction, gradations either way are recognizable. In the Afro-Arab borderlands one cannot always make out an Arab and an African on the basis of colour. In much the same way, an Indian can hardly be physically/biologically differentiated from a Pakistani. Palestinians do not look different from Israelis. The differences are primarily cultural and historical, not biologically visible. As humans the most consequential sources of our identities are based on cultural and historical roots. Indeed, our struggle as Africans in the contemporary world is cultural, social, political and economic not biological. Full stop.

 

You asked; ‘Are the Indians in East and Southern Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa, the Boers and Malays in South Africa etc. Africans?’ The simple answer is that it all depends. If with time the boundaries of the cultures blend and interpenetrate with African cultures and practices, of course they will slowly become African; growing into Africaness, adopting local identities in the institutional life and social expression of their cultures. Cultural hybridity is historically a familiar and ubiquitous standard. But, they cannot live among Africans, maintain social distance, practice exogamous and caste-like relations with Africans and become Africans at the same time. You cannot go in opposite directions at the same time. I cannot be part of and not part of at the same time.

 

I must also indicate that I think cultural and universal rights must come equally to all of us; minorities in Africa should be free to choose how they societally evolve so long as the universal rights of others are not violated. They do not have to become Africans. To argue otherwise would be assimilationist, undemocratic and unhelpful. As citizens of African countries they should have equal rights as anybody else and should have the right to their cultures in an open, 9democratic, equalitarian and multicultural fashion. We should be able to celebrate our diversity in peace and harmony. I have recently written that; the logic of multiculturalism and composite cultures is a simple one. Given our rich and rampant diversity, the need to tolerate, value and respect otherness is the only rational way to collectively prosper and survive on this planet. There is also in my view, the inherent wisdom in preserving the rich variegation of social and cultural habits created and rooted deeply in the past, which dot the globe. Every case of cultural or linguistic extirpation means an irredeemable and permanent loss to humanity as a whole. Cultural freedom and equality offer the best approach to the management of our social diversity. Politically, the idea of democratic pluralism, rule of law and secularism captures this mood and need of our times. The pursuit of democratic pluralism bets on diversity, instead of regarding cultural heterogeneity as a source of social discord and disunity.¹⁵ I went on to say that:

 

‘In recent months and years, some important voices have tried to question or castigate the notion of multiculturalism. In Germany, the Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel has on occasion (16.10.2010) announced that the idea of multiculturalism in Germany “has utterly failed”¹⁶ and metaphorically is as good as dead. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, at a security conference in Munich (5.2.2011), in similar vein abandoned the doctrine of “state multiculturalism.’’¹⁷ Not to be outdone, French President Nicolas Sarkozy also announced that “multiculturalism had failed” (11.2.2011).18 Of course, this is all in specific reference to their own societies; they were basically referring to the fact that after decades of immigration from different parts of the world, some immigrant communities, particularly some Muslim groups, have not adopted enough of the local predominant European language and culture to indicate a conscientious wish to blend-in and demonstrate acceptance of the host culture. Extremist theocratic militantism has been an unfortunate trend in some immigrant circles. The question remains whether this experience; this lack of success for reasons yet to be fully identified, warrants a total 10 rejection of multiculturalism; whether the fact that British, French and German societies have not had much success with the idea of the melting-pot, or a palpable sense of “shared identity”, means that the idea of multiculturalism in its entirety needs to be jettisoned. Some of us disagree. Doubtlessly, immigrants should do enough to blend and integrate into host cultures, but one would also suggest that blending must not be expected to mean the total abandonment of one‟s inherited culture for the wholesale acceptance or immersion into another. We would argue that it is possible to blend-in and at the same time maintain a good measure of one‟s specific historical heritage. This has successfully happened historically in many societies; admittedly not always without problems and difficulties. The European political right cannot have the last word on the matter. We should be careful not to throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. Jewish people are scattered as historically rooted communities across the globe in as many countries as one would dare to count. Muslims are likewise spread everywhere, as Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Indians, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians, Senegalese, Nigerians, Americans etc, etc. Hindu communities are global. Historically, Chinese communities are dotted across South-East Asia and beyond. African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans all assert per definition the hybridity of their histories, cultures and heritage. In all these cases, and others, the success of multiculturalism depends on the extent to which they have culturally interfaced and interpenetrated their host or majority communities; blurring cultural and communal boundaries, avoiding caste-like separation and apartheid-type relations, and respecting in policy and practice the rights of all to cultures of their choice in conditions of equality of opportunity and infrastructural support.’¹⁹

 

Issa, my suggestion would be that you should pay more attention to sensitizing minorities like yours to the need to embrace Africans. This is what Pandit Nehru advised.²⁰ After more than a century among Africans you could possibly count on two hands the number of inter-community marriages. What does this indicate? Do not be silent about this. It will be strategically more useful for us all than telling Africans who they are or who they are not; or declaring all citizens of all countries on the African continent to be Africans. Do not undermine the right of the minorities to their cultures, and the celebration of their cultures in equality and diversity, so long as all cultural and social borders are permeable. It is also unhelpful to endorse the idea that ‘what 11belongs to me belongs to me, but what belongs to you belongs to all of us.’ I have said that; ‘if everybody is an African, then nobody is an African.’

 

Frankly, I find the obsessive preoccupation with colour and ‘race talk’ uncomfortable and oftentimes obnoxious except where we need to volubly confront and combat racism; where colour-based racism has become a societal pestilence and spoiling for a fight. The arbitrariness of the race concept is understood by most anthropologists. In the US, the late Marvin Harris (1970) exposed the scientific bankruptcy of the concept, ranging from; ‘one drop rule’ hypo descent notions of blackness in the US to Brazil’s numerous race-colour gradations and labels towards hyperdescent.²¹

 

What for Africans, in our numbers, is really at stake is not colour but rather our culture, which is under siege from the twin legacies of Arab and Western imperialism; especially, the Western cultural onslaught which is today sometimes sold euphemistically as globalization. Our elites have become complicit in this. The threat of slow but steady ethnocide is in my view a distinct and undesirable possibility. If we wish to roll back this danger, at this stage, a culturally driven renaissance is crucial. As an initial step, we must recenter our languages as instruments for cultural retrieval, memory recall, scientific and technological advancement; in short the empowerment of mass society. Our languages must be the vehicles for the journey into modernity; and without unity Africans cannot come into their own.

 

Finally, I need to reiterate that, being or becoming African is not an issue of ‘legality’; it is not a reality that is established simply by fiat or pompous declarations. It is a process. It must have history and involves cultural inclusion as a process. It is learnt, and continuously changes by degrees as it generationally is passed on. It implies sharing the cultural values and usages of African society. It is won through practice not formally conferred by proclamation.

 

  

NOTES

 

1. I. Shivji. The Struggle to Convert Nationalism to Pan-Africanism: Taking Stock of 50 years of African Independence. Keynote Address to the 4th European Conference on African Studies Uppsala June 15 To 18, 2011.

2. Letters to Reba Lewis, 12/05 and 03/06/1968. In, J. Milne. Kwame Nkrumah: The Conakry Years: His Life and Letters Pp. 234 and 238. Quoted here from; Elikia M‟Bokolo. George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Cyril L. James et l‟idéologie de la lutte panafricaine. Mimeo. Paris. 2009.

3. K. K. Prah. The Cause of Our Times: Pan-Africanism Revisited. In, Beyond the Colour Line. Vivlia. Jo‟burg. 1997 and Africa World Press. Trenton. N.J. Pp. 36-38. 1998.

4. K. K. Prah. The Cause of Our Times…. Ibid.

5. Ibid. Preface. P.5.

6. Editor’s note to; K. K. Prah. A Pan-Africanist Reflection: Point Counter-point.Pambazuka News. 2008-10-22 (Issue 403), http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/51383

7. K.K. Prah. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Issa G. Shivji. Kwame Nkrumah’s Thought in the Evolution of Pan-African Ideology. Nkrumah Centenary Celebrations. 22–25 May 2010, Mimeo. Accra. 2010.

10. Ibid

11. Julius K. Nyerere. Reflections. In, Haroub Othman (Ed). Reflections on Leadership in Africa – Forty Years After Independence. Free University of Brussels Press. 2000, Pp. 17-24.

12. Ibid

13. Ibid

14. K. K. Prah. Towards a Contemporary Pan-African Agenda: Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball (3). Keynote Address to the International Colloquium: Global Africans, Pan-Africanism, Decolonization and Integration of Africa – Past, Present and Future. Organized by CBAAC. 21st – 24th September 2010. Abuja, Nigeria.

15. K. K. Prah. Challenges of Democracy, Language, Multilingualism and Social Development in Africa. Paper presented to the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns Annual Symposium on Science in South Africa. Pochefstroom. 23rd and 24th June, 2011.

16 Matthew Weaver. Angela Merkel: German multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Guardian (UK), Sunday 17 October 2010. Weaver writes that; “The German chancellor Angela Merkel, has courted growing anti-immigrant opinion in Germany by claiming the country’s attempts to create a multicultural society have ‘utterly failed’. Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel said the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily ‘side by side’ did not work. She said the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society. „This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed, ‘Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, west of Berlin, yesterday. Her remarks will stir a debate about immigration in a country which is home to around 4 million Muslims.’

17. See, ‘State multiculturalism has failed, says David Cameron.’ BBC News, 5 February 2011. Laura Kuenssberg Chief political correspondent, BBC Newschannel (5th February 2011) wrote in reaction to the speech that; ‘David Cameron strode firmly into a debate where many politicians tread timidly. In his view, such caution is part of the problem. In frank language he made abundantly clear he believes multiculturalism has failed. Any organisation that does not stand up to extremism will be cut off from public funds, and he wants the country to develop a stronger sense of shared identity. It is the first time he has spoken so directly as prime minister, but there are echoes of what has gone before. Tony Blair edged away from multiculturalism in the years after the 7/7 bombings in London, and his ministers moved to stop funding any community organisation that did not challenge extremism. And what of Gordon Brown’s continual quest to strengthen ‘Britishness’? Behind the scenes, ministers are reviewing the ‘prevent’ strategy, the policies designed to try to deal with extremism. But the review, which had been planned for publication this month, is likely to be delayed. It is not clear yet how Mr Cameron will translate his strong words into action.’

18. Sarkozy ends multiculturalism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP2l_NnCLsk&feature=related

19. K. K. Prah. Challenges of Democracy …. Op cit.

20. J. Nehru. India’s Foreign Policy; Selected Speeches, September 1946 – April 1961. Publications Division Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Govt. of India. Delhi, 1961. ….. “In his address to the Lok Sabha, he said that India was interested in the destiny of its Diaspora, because they share a mutual history with India. But he clarified that Indians overseas had previously been given the option to either vote for the Indian or another citizenship. Once they opted for the latter, then „we have no concern with them, [… because] politically they cease to be Indians‟. ” (See, J. Nehru. Ibid. 1961, pp. 128-130. Citation on p. 130). “This is evidence that Nehru considered the issues of those Indians overseas, who had decided to naturalize to other countries, thus were no longer the concern of India. But what is with Indians who actually retained the Indian citizenship and were legal aliens abroad? Nehru expected from every Indian settler, no matter if Indian national or not, to adapt to the country they live in and respect the local environment there. So, he refused to assist them, regardless of the issue. He said: „If you cannot be, and if you are not, friendly to the people of that country, come back to India and not spoil the fair name of India‟. In other words, he kept the door open for expatriate Indians to come back to India but rejected to intervene in their concerns….” Quoted here from; Subin Nijhawan. Why has the Indian Diaspora been shunned by successive Indian governments? Mimeo. SOAS. London. 2003. http://www.subin.de/diaspora.pdf

21. Marvin Harris. Referential Ambiguity in the Calculus of Brazilian Racial Identity, 1970. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology. Spring 1970. Vol.26. No. 1. Pp. 1-14. See also, M. Harris. Patterns of Race in the Americas. Greenwood Publishing Group. Connecticut. 1964.

THE STRUGGLE TO CONVERT NATIONALISM TO PAN-AFRICANISM

THE STRUGGLE TO CONVERT NATIONALISM TO PAN-AFRICANISM

Taking Stock of 50 Years of African Independence

Issa G. Shivji Writes

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/75620

 

The post-Vasco da Gama epoch of some five centuries, as Pannikar calls it, is a story of the ‘West and the Rest’.[1] The West constructed its own story and the story of the Rest. It is a story of plunder, privation, invasion and destruction; it is a story of permanent wars and passing peace. It is a story of the annihilation of pre-European civilisations from the Incas of the Americas, so called after the European explorer Amerigo Vespucci, to the Swahili civilisation of the Eastern coast of Africa. The title of a book describing the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the near-extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines by the British, the white American dispossession of the Apache, and the German subjugation of the Herero and Nama of Namibia sums it all: ‘Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold’ (Cocker 1999).

 

The tale of treasures at one end and tragedies at the other cannot be understood, I suggest, without locating it in the trajectory of worldwide capitalist accumulation. No doubt it is a complex story of construction and destruction of cultures and customs; a story of the exercise of brutal power and subtle politics; a story of spinning of epic mythologies and grand ideologies. No doubt it cannot be reduced mechanically to the capitalist mode of production nor explained in a vulgar way by theories of conspiracy or processes of economics. I am suggesting none of these. Yet in this complexity and variability, in these major shifts and changing continuities – all of which we as scholars must study and have been studying – there is a pattern. There is a red thread running through it. That red thread is the process of capitalist accumulation seen in a longue durée. While we must, by all means, resist linear trajectories essentialising the march of progress of the so-called Western civilisation, including the stagiest periodisation of vulgar Marxists, we cannot surrender to agnosticism or eclecticism – that the world is not knowable and explainable, however approximately.

 

A HISTORY OF ACCUMULATION

 

It is in the context of the trajectory of capitalist accumulation that I want to locate the genesis of the grand narrative of nationalism and Pan-Africanism. To facilitate my presentation, I would resort to some periodisation of the process of accumulation. As we all know, all periodisation has its hazards – processes overlap and intermingle; the new is born in the garbs of the old and takes time before it is recognised as such, while the old persists beyond its usefulness. Keeping that in mind, I would categorise the first four centuries (roughly from the last quarter of the 15th century to the first quarter of the 19th century) of the African encounter with Europe as the period of primitive accumulation, or, to use the more recent and generic term, accumulation by appropriation. (It should become clear later why this term is preferable). Within this period we have two sub-periods – the period of looting of treasures, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, under the name of trade, based on unequal, rather than mutual exchange. This is the period of European powers pursuing their singular mission of destroying the pre-European long distance trade – the trans-Sahara trade on the West Coast and the Indian Ocean trade on the East Coast of Africa – in order to establish their mercantile and maritime hegemony. The pre-European trade systems, both on the West and the East Coasts, were governed by Islamic precepts. The gold trade passed through Timbuktu on the West and through Kilwa on the East, both of which became centres of great Islamic civilisation and learning. Timbuktu and Kilwa were brutally destroyed by Portuguese privateers. The expeditions had specific instructions to Christianise the ‘natives’ and eliminate Muslim traders.

 

As the Portuguese privateers were devastating the African coast in the last quarter of the 15th century, so Spanish conquerors were discovering the ‘New World’. Vasco da Gama laid the foundation of the European invasion of Africa. Christopher Columbus inaugurated the extermination of the indigenous populations of the Americas and the Caribbean – the first genocide and holocaust in the history of humankind. One led to the white hegemony, the other to white settlement. From then on, the fate of the three continents was inextricably linked and found its immediate expression in the triangular slave trade.

 

The second sub-period of some three centuries (from 16th to 19th centuries) witnesses the gruesome Atlantic slave trade, the so-called triangular trade. Half of the slaves were transported to the ‘new world’ in the 18th century. Millions – 50 million one estimate says (Zinn 2001:29) – of men, women and children torn from their continent worked the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and cotton plantations of the southern states of America to provide the raw material for Lancashire mills, the pioneer of the industrial revolution. The African continent was looted of its treasures in the first sub-period, which also ruined its established mercantile routes; in the second sub-period the continent was looted of its people, devastating its social fabric and robbing it of its most important resource. This was accumulation by appropriation par excellence – accumulating by appropriating wealth in the first instance and accumulating by appropriating people in the second.

 

Meanwhile, on the European stage, capitalism is bursting its containers (to use Prem Shaker Jha’s term, Jha 2006:17)) and re-constructing them. Jha argues that in its 700 years of development, capitalism has gone through three cycles of accumulation. At the beginning of each cycle it has expanded the size of its container – from the maritime city-states of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Milan, and Amsterdam, to nation states of England, Holland, and France. The quintessential of the second cycle was from the nation state to the colonising state [2] as European powers colonised much of the rest of the world. The third was from the Island territory of the small nation state, Britain, to the continental nation state of North America. Now, in the era of globalisation, on the eve of the fourth cycle, it is poised to burst the very system of hierarchically organised nation states. Whatever the merit of this thesis, for our purposes two points can be made – one, that the capitalist container was never self-contained. Arteries penetrating deep into the wealth and treasures of other continents fed the process of capital accumulation in the heart of Europe. Africa was the theatre of the most devastating kinds of appropriation.

 

Second, the ideologies, religions, cultures and customs constructed to rationalise, legitimise and explain the processes of accumulation were centrally premised on the construction of race, in which ‘the Self’ was White and ‘the Other’ Black, the two also being the referents for the in-betweens. Geography itself was constructed as such – Europe being the land of the White and Africa being the land of the Black. The racist construct found its typical expression in the Other, Slave – a soulless, depersonalised and dehumanised object. For planters and slavers, ‘The Negroes are unjust, cruel barbarous, half-human, treacherous, deceitful, thieves, drunkards, proud, lazy, unclean, shameless, jealous to fury, and cowards.’ (James 1938, 1989:) The Supreme Court of the civilised United States decided in 1857 that ‘Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property’ (Zinn op.cit. 187). Fathers, bishops, learned priests and men of conscience found no fault in trading in and owning of slaves. ‘… we … buy these slaves for our service without a scruple …’ , declared men of religion with conscience (ibid. 29-30). The bottom line was the enormous profits made from the slave trade and colossal surplus extracted from slave labour. James Madison, one of the ‘fathers’ of the American constitution, could boast to a British visitor that he could make 2,000 per cent profit from a single slave in a year (ibid. 33). Thus were constructed the universal ideologies, the grand narratives and the totalising outlooks of the Western civilisation, which we are living to this day.

 

Towards the end of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries, capitalism entered the throes of the industrial revolution (1780-1840 by Hobsbawm’s reckoning, Hobsbawm 1968). It was also the period of primitive accumulation within the container. Indeed the original meaning of primitive accumulation was confined to the process of appropriation of serfs and peasants from land to work in factories. Marx called it the ‘pre-historic stage of capital’ (1887: 668). He theorised the capitalist system as if it was self-contained. ‘Accumulate, accumulate! That is the Moses and the prophets!’ (ibid. 558), he argued, was the driving force of capitalism. By dissecting the appearances of the commodity society, Marx showed how surplus is appropriated from the working class and accumulated to make more surplus even when on the face of it, the exchange appears to be mutual and equivalent in which no one is cheated or short changed. (And if cheating does happen in practice it is only a deviation from the norm.) Accumulation based on equal exchange is what we call accumulation by capitalisation. The notion of equivalent exchange forms the bedrock of bourgeois legal ideology and philosophical outlook. The edifice of the Western legal system is constructed on atomised individuals bearing equal rights (Pashukanis 1924, 1978). Atomist individuals of bourgeois society as carriers of commodity relations are all equal. This is also the basis of citizenship where to be a citizen means to have equal claims and entitlements, as against each other and in relation to the state.

 

Later day Marxists beginning with Rosa Luxembourg questioned the theorisation of capitalist accumulation based on the assumption of a self-contained system. They argued that the so-called primitive accumulation was not simply the pre-history of capital but an inherent part of its history. The capitalist centre always requires a non-capitalist periphery to appropriate from, which translates into invasions of non-capitalist spaces. Capital not only comes into the world ‘dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt’ (Marx op.cit. 712) but also throughout its life continues to drain the blood of the ‘Other’ interspersed by auguries of bloodshed called wars. Capitalism by nature is predatory and militarist. Lenin from a different point of departure argued that in the last quarter of the 19th century, capitalism had become imperialist as monopoly finance capital sought new spaces of profitable investment (Lenin 1917). With the Berlin conference of 1885, rapacious capitalist powers carved up the African continent and appropriated them as their exclusive possessions thus heralding another 75 or so years of colonialism. The racist ideology of the White Self (master) and the Black Other (slave) came in handy in the creation of colonies. It was reinforced in religion and anthropology and literature as droves of missionaries preceded and anthropologists followed armed soldiers, to pacify the soulless, indolent ‘native’. The Self was now the White colonist and the Other was the ‘native’. The ‘colour line’ thus constructed had its own internal logic and drive – it determined the very life-conditions of the colonist/settler and the ‘native’. The settler’s town, as Fanon said, is a ‘strongly-built’, ‘brightly-lit’ ‘well-fed’ town. It is a town of ‘White people, the foreigners’. The native town is ‘a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute.’

 

They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other. The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, of meat, of shoes, of coal, of light. … It is a town of niggers, and dirty arabs.’ (Fanon 1963, 1967: 30)

 

The racist construct of the slave period, assisted by colonial intellectuals, was extended and reconstructed. Differences of custom and cultures among the ‘natives’ became immutable divisions called ‘tribes’ (Magubane). Tribes were conveniently divided and separated in their ghettoes, lest, as the colonial paternalism averred, they kill each other given their violent propensity. The separation was thus in the interest of the natives to maintain law and order, meaning to rule. (‘Divide et impera’ – divide and rule.) Institutions of indirect political rule and colonially constructed regimes of customary law were created. Colonial identities of race and tribe were formed, and to the extent that they were internalised, self-identification and perception followed suit.

 

The dual tendency of accumulation continued to operate – accumulation by capitalisation being dominant in the metropole and accumulation by appropriation being dominant and pervasive in the colony. To be sure, it manifested in new forms, through new political, economic, cultural and social institutions. Politics and cultures were reconstructed, so were customs and ideologies. A lot changed. Capitalism of 1942 was not the same as the capitalism of 1492 nor is that of 2000s the same as that of 1900s. Yet in these sea changes the heart of the system lay where it had always lain – in accumulation. New forms of primitive accumulation were devised. Minerals were mined with migrant labour; plantations cultivated by bachelor labour. Women were turned into peasant cultivators. Children’s hands were deployed to weed and harvest. None was paid the equivalent of his or her subsistence as the laws of commodity exchange prescribe. Bachelor wages were paid in cash and kind. The cash was just enough to pay the poll tax, buy cigarettes and the local brew. The other component was food ration. The colonial capitalist rationed every ounce of mealie meal and every grain of bean just to keep the body of the migrant labourer alive, but not his family. (That was the woman’s responsibility.) Rations were meticulously calculated on the basis of expert opinion on the needs of the native’s morphology. Prison and forced labour, with no wages, constructed the arteries of colonial infrastructure to transport raw materials and food – cotton, coffee, rubber, tea – to the coast and thence to the metropole to satisfy the voracious appetite of the master’s industries and the luxurious tastes of its aristocracy and the middle classes. More often than not prisoners were those who had failed to pay poll tax or wife tax. Flat rate tax was levied on every adult native above the apparent age of 18. He had to pay tax on each of his “apparent” wives. [3] In addition to flushing out the self-sufficient producer from land to work on plantations and mines to get cash for tax, taxation raised the revenue to run the colonial machinery of administration and repression.

 

Political economists of the West, who are wont to theorise for the Rest, argued interminably on theories of unequal exchange and uncaptured peasantry to explain colonially created poverty and underdevelopment. Few would see that cutting into the necessary consumption of the ‘native’ crippled the conditions of human existence and its reproduction, resulting in chronic undernourishment, high infant mortality, deprivation and disease. It was nothing short of primitive accumulation of the most primitive kind, which even Marx did not foresee. Instead he thought that the march of capitalism would bring the backward and tradition bound natives into the fold of civilisation by integrating them into capitalism. Thence, they would benefit from the proletarian revolution, which would usher humanity to the next stage of civilisation, socialism. His twentieth century followers even postulated imperialism as the pioneer of capitalism and therefore progress (Warren 1980).

 

To be sure, colonial capital by the very nature of capital did introduce commodity relations thus planting the seeds of accumulation by capitalisation. The post-independence development theorists, again of course of the West, considered these pockets of capitalist relations the driver of modernisation. It required a few and minority scholars of the Rest to theorise on the development of underdevelopment, the relationship between two tendencies of capitalist accumulation and its contradictions. The modern was neither modern, they said, nor the traditional backward; rather both were part of the capitalist whole in a symbiotic relation which ensured the drainage of wealth and surplus from the continent to be capitalised in the West. In short then, accumulation by appropriation dominated colonial capitalism under the hegemony of imperialism. If it produced indigenous capitalists, they were compradorial or semi-feudal in alliance with, and under the shadow of imperial bourgeoisies.

 

We don’t have to be told that wherever there is oppression there is bound to be resistance (Mao). As CLR James says, ‘one does not need education or encouragement to cherish a dream of freedom.’ (James op. cit. 18). As happens so often in history, ideologies of resistance are constructed from the elements borrowed from the ideologies of domination.

 

THE ROOTS OF PAN-AFRICANISM

 

Pan-Africanism was such an ideology of resistance born in the throes of imperialism. Just as the dominant racist construct went back centuries to the slave trade, so did the resistance. For two hundred years the slaves in Haiti, originally named Hispaniola by Columbus, sang their freedom song (James op. cit. 18):

‘Eh! Eh! Heu! Heu!
Canga, bafio té!
Canga, mouné de lé!
Canga, do ki la!
Canga, li!

‘We swear to destroy the whites,
and all that they possess;
let us die
rather than fail to keep our vow’.

 

This was the pre-history of one strand of Pan-Africanism, racial nationalism. The pre-history of the other strand, territorial nationalism, found expression in the Haitian revolution of 1791. None of it at the time, of course, was called by that name. If I may jump the gun, the Haitian revolution was in advance of its times. It was the forerunner of both the logical conclusion of territorial nationalism and citizenship, and their crisis under imperialism, all of which we see in post-independence African states.

 

The racial construct in the Haitian freedom song is palpable. It could not be otherwise. On the launching of his 1903 book ‘The Souls of the Black Folk’, W.E.B. Du Bois said that the ‘problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line’. Pan-Africanism was born at the turn of the century as a racial, anti-racist ideology. Its founders came from the West Indies, the confluence of the slave trade, from where slaves were transported to the Americas. It is in the so-called ‘New World’ of North America that the White supremacist ideology found expression in its most brutal and dehumanising forms. It is also here that the roots of Pan-Africanism are to be traced. Two names stand out, Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. Du Bois’ father and grandfather came from the West Indies. Garvey came from Jamaica. The two men stood in contrast, in their conception and methods. They represented – between them and within them – the two poles of nationalism within Pan-Africanism; one defined by race and culture, the other by geography. Garvey opposed accommodation within the White structures and spearheaded ‘back-to-Africa movement’. He thus stood for a territorial home. Du Bois demanded equal racial treatment within the US. He thus stood for equal treatment or citizenship. Needless to say, both positions were a political construct, even if they did not present themselves as such. Paradoxically, but understandably, the boundaries of both were set by the dominant political and social constructs – White supremacy in one case, colonially carved borders in the other.

 

In his 93 years, Du Bois lived through and embodied the 60 odd years of the evolution of Pan-Africanist ideology and movement. Between the wars, Du Bois’ Pan-Africanist congresses were essentially small gatherings of African-Americans and African-Caribbean with a sprinkling of Africans from French colonies. Demands centred on racial equality, equal treatment and accommodation in existing structures. To the extent that colonialism and imperialist oppression itself was ideologised in terms of White supremacy, the anti-racist, racial constructs and demands of pan-Africanists were anti-imperialist. It is important to keep this dimension of Pan-Africanism in mind – that in its genesis and evolution the ideology and movement was primarily political and essentially anti-imperialist. No doubt, it drew upon the victim’s cultural resources as the Negritude construct originally developed by the West Indian Aimé Césaire clearly demonstrates.

 

The turning point was the 1945 Fifth Congress at Manchester. The moving spirits behind that Congress were George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah. The demand was unambiguous – Africa for Africans, liberation from colonialism. It ushered in the national liberation movement. Pan-Africanism thus gave birth to nationalism. The main question was: Would this be territorial nationalism premised on separate colonially created borders or Pan-Africanist nationalism; which in turn gave rise to two sets of sub-questions. If territorial, what would be the boundaries of inclusion/exclusion, race or citizenship? And if Pan-Africanist: would it be global including the African Diaspora or continental excluding the Diaspora? Even if continental, would it be racial/cultural including only Black Africans while excluding Arabs? These became hot issues of debates and contentions a few years before and a few years after the independence of African countries. In one sense, the bifurcation between racial and territorial nationalism symbolised by Du Bois and Marcus Garvey between the wars seemed to re-appear. But the context had changed. There were two new factors, independence on the African continent and the Caribbean, and the civil rights movement in the US. One introduced state sovereignty in the territorial equation, the other citizenship in the global equation, both setting apparently ‘new’ boundaries of exclusion/inclusion, identity and belonging. In a nutshell, the triangular contestation between citizenship, racialism and territorial nationalism defined the parameters of the pan-Africanist discourse. But at this stage we must return to the trajectory of capitalist accumulation and explore it in the post-independence period in Africa, for that matter even globally.

 

CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION AND POST-INDEPENDENCE AFRICA

 

Independence of Ghana in 1957 was an earthshaking event. CLR James described Ghana’s independence as a revolution. For a people who had been humiliated for five centuries, independence was indeed a revolution. For Nkrumah, though, independence of Ghana was incomplete without the liberation of the whole continent and the liberation was incomplete without the unity of the continent. These two became his passion. With the advice and help of George Padmore, Nkrumah set in motion two sets of conferences – the conference of African independent states – eight in all at the time, and All Africa People’s Conferences, a meeting of national liberation movements, trade unions and other leaders. The resolutions of these two conferences are a forerunner of the ‘new’ bifurcation of the Pan-Africanist ideology – the statist Pan-Africanism and its concomitant state-based nationalism and people’s Pan-Africanism based on solidarity and African identity. Statist Pan-Africanism culminated in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (O.A.U.) underpinned by the discourse on the unity of African States while ‘All-Africa-People’s’ Pan-Africanism was increasingly eclipsed by territorial nationalism. Each one of these, in its own way, reproduced the triangular tension between racialism, nationalism and citizenship. The tension between the two was well described by a leading Pan-Africanist, Julius Nyerere, as the dilemma of the Pan-Africanist (Nyerere 1966, 1968). When Nyerere was writing in 1966, there were 36 independent African states. Each of these was involved in the consolidation and development of its nation state. ‘Can the vision of Pan-Africanism survive these realities? Can African unity be built on this foundation of existing and growing nationalism?’ Nyerere agonised. His answer was unambiguous:

 

‘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.’ (ibid. 208)

 

They more than conflicted. The vision of Pan-Africanism was buried in the statist discourse of African unity and regional integration/disintegration. More astute nationalists like Nyerere defined the two-fold task of the independent government as nation-building and development. In absence of a local bourgeois class worth the name, the agency to build the nation and bring about development would be the state. Meanwhile, imperialism continued to cast its long shadow and at times more than a shadow. Assassinations and coups engineered by one or other imperialist power became the order of the day. Patrice Lumumba was brutally murdered and Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by the machinations of the CIA. Survival became Nyerere’s pre-occupation.

 

NATIONALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM

 

Half a century of independent Africa neatly divides into two halves, the first twenty-five years of nationalism and the second of neoliberalism. Underlying the ideologies of development and nation building, of identities and politics, from Nyerere’s Socialism and Self-reliance to Senghor’s Negritude, lay the contention between accumulation by capitalization and accumulation by appropriation. Programmes and policies undertaken in the nationalist period, whether under the ideology of modernisation or socialism (essentially a variant of state capitalism), were meant to bolster the tendency for accumulation by capitalisation. But under the hegemony of imperialism, accumulation by appropriation continued to assert and reassert itself. Using local state or private merchant capital as the intermediary, and trade, aid and debt as the means, natural resources were rapaciously exploited and working people cajoled or coerced into yielding surpluses that inevitably found their way into the capital circuits of imperialist centres. Just as looting, plundering, and the triangular slave trade of the previous centuries, called primitive accumulation, had primed the wheels of the industrial revolution, so the appropriation of resources and surpluses of the working people of Africa fuelled the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945-1971). Nationalist attempts to construct a self-reliant economy and inaugurate what Samir Amin calls ‘autocentric development’ were sternly opposed or accommodated and absorbed in the imperialist system.

 

Nonetheless, imperialism during the nationalist period was morally and ideologically on the defensive. Educated in the theories of the master and borrowing from the cultures and history of the coloniser, African nationalists attempted to reconstruct their identities and polities in the idiom of nationalism, sovereignty, self-determination and citizenship, the philosophical underpinning of which, as we have seen, is the notion of the atomist individual with equal rights. It was a valiant struggle but it was ultimately defeated, as the onslaught of neo-liberalism amply proved. The nationalist, labelled ‘ethnic’ by the West, either failed or lacked the means and the historical time and opportunity to master the driving force of the construction of the ‘Self’ of the West – accumulation. Accumulation by capitalisation required a relatively autonomous economic space to operate and political self-determination to master.

 

In other words, paraphrasing Cabral, national liberation meant people reclaiming their right to make their own history whose objective was ‘to reclaim the right, usurped by imperialist domination’ of liberating ‘the process of development of national productive forces’. This called for nothing less than a structural reconstruction of the economy and reorganisation of the state. None could be successfully done under the Western capitalist domination of the economy and the political hegemony of imperialist ideologies and policies transmitted by local proto-bourgeoisies, so well caricatured by Fanon. The few who attempted were assassinated, overthrown or forcibly removed. The rest had to accommodate and compromise to survive.

 

The problem was that the ideology of resistance and anti-hegemony – and their institutions of operationalisation – was constructed drawing on the intellectual and cultural resources of the dominant and dominating West. African nationalists failed to construct alternative ideologies and institutions. In the course of the struggle, again, a few tried but they were nipped in the bud in the nick of time. Amilcar Cabral postulated that ‘there are only two possible paths for an independent nation: to return to imperialist domination (neo-colonialism, capitalism, state capitalism), or to take the way of socialism.’ (Cabral 1966, 1969: 87). He did not live to see either the independence of his country or practice his position. Agents of Portuguese colonialism assassinated him as his country was approaching independence.

 

Chris Hani who envisaged a new democratic and socialist South Africa was killed on the eve of the transfer of power. Steve Biko, who redefined Black as a positive identity of the oppressed beyond the colour line, was tortured to death by the henchmen of apartheid. John Garang who postulated a united New Sudan beyond colour, cultural and linguistic lines infuriated racial and secessionist elements both in the North and the South and their imperialist backers. We are told he was killed in a helicopter crash. The truth lies buried somewhere in the debris.

 

The nationalist project was thus defeated and its building blocks shattered. The neoliberal attack was foremost an ideological attack on radical nationalism. Imperialism went on the offensive – economically, culturally, politically and intellectually. Within a period of two decades, Africa has undergone three generations of structural adjustment programmes in an orgy of liberalisation, marketisation, privatisation, commodification and financialisation. Pockets of capitalist development based on accumulation by capitalisation have been destroyed as country after country in Africa has been deindustrialised.

 

The few achievements of social services in education, health, water, old age pensions and other public services are commodified under such policies as cost sharing and outsourcing. Fiscal instruments and institutions of policy making, like central banks, have been made autonomous and commercial banks privatised away from the public scrutiny of elected bodies. They make policies on the basis of prescriptions handed down by International Financial Institutions and donors. Policies are thrust down the throats of politicians and parliamentarians using the carrot of loans, aid and budget support whose withdrawal acts as the veritable stick.

 

Meanwhile, voracious imperialist capitals backed by their states and the so-called ‘donor-community’ are grabbing land, minerals, water, flora and fauna. I need not go into details because a few African scholars have amply documented these facts – I say few, because many have succumbed to consultancies in the service of ‘development partners’.

 

Let me sum up by saying that the tension of the nationalist period between accumulation by capitalisation and accumulation by appropriation has been resolved in favour of the neoliberal primitive accumulation. To be sure, there are new forms in which the process of expropriation is constituted and manifested but the essence remains. The projected identity of the ‘Self’ in the West is that of a benefactor, humanitarian, investor, advisor, entrepreneur and donor while the ‘Other’ is the poor and helpless victim of the corrupt, unaccountable ethnic ruler. No doubt, capitalism at the centre is not the same either.

 

Prem Shankar Jha argues that capitalism is on the verge of bursting its nation-state container and is going global in the process wreaking havoc and destruction on a global scale. One does not have to accept Jha’s thesis to agree with him that the destruction is real and palpable, whose implications are felt not only in Africa but also in the West. Yet Africa suffers the most. There have been more wars after the end of the so-called Cold War than during its existence. Most of these have been fought on the African continent. Within a period of two decades, four countries have been destroyed and the fifth about to be devastated. Two of these are on the African continent. The continent is being militarised as American imperialism spreads its tentacles through the AFRICOM and seeks more and more naval bases on the Indian Ocean rim.

 

THE FAILURE OF THE NATIONAL PROJECT

 

The continent is in crisis as is the capitalist-imperialist system constructed by the West over the last five centuries. Some have argued that the fall of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis following it, marks the beginning of the end of capitalism as we know it. Others are taking the position that the centre of gravity and hegemony is shifting from the West to the East; that capitalism is poised to reconstitute itself in new centres. The debate rages on. Most, at least most African scholars, agree that the national project in Africa has failed and national liberation has been aborted. Some locate the failure of the national project in the crisis of citizenship; others in the failure to liberate the continent from the clutches of imperialism. In my view, the two are connected. Underlying the crisis of citizenship is the failure to master the process of accumulation by capitalisation, which in turn is due to imperialist domination in alliance with local comprador classes.

 

Whatever be the case, African scholars, intellectuals and activists have been compelled to re-visit the Pan-Africanist project. Some of the old debates on racial and territorial nationalisms are re-appearing. Who is an African for the purposes of Pan-Africanism? And, therefore, who constitutes the nation for purposes of national liberation? For Kwesi Prah, Bankie Bankie, Chinweizu and others, ‘African’ is defined by colour, culture and custom. For Archie Mafeje, Steve Biko Walter Rodney, Tajudeen Abdel Rahman and others, African or Black is not a function of colour, race, biology or morphology but a social and political construct, which ought to be historicized.

 

Mafeje affirms, ‘…Africanity could not possibly mean the same thing to succeeding generations of African intellectuals’. And the fact that the first and second generation of Pan-Africanists may have borrowed from racial and cultural categories to deal with the problematique of white racism in a colonial setting ‘does not commit later generations of Pan-Africanists to the same conflation between race/colour and culture.’ In the view of many African scholars, intellectuals and activists, we need to revisit and re-construct the Pan-African project to address the unfinished task of national liberation from imperialism and take us beyond to the emancipation of the working people of Africa from the hegemony of capitalism. In doing so, we would of course borrow from the intellectual and cultural resources of humankind as well as the experiences of the struggles of the people of the continent. In constructing a ‘new Pan-Africanism’ which would go beyond colour and national lines, we need fundamental paradigmatic shifts. The African intellectual community is deeply involved in these debates and I need not go into details. Suffice it to say that the insurrection of Pan-Africanist ideas has begun, hesitatingly but definitely.

 

CONCLUSION

 

I have given the story of Pan-Africanism as a grand narrative of nationalism and national liberation. I have shown its internal contradictions and movements. I have tried to locate my narrative in the trajectory of capitalist accumulation and imperialist domination, without, hopefully, making it mechanist and deductive. And I have called for a reconstruction of a new Pan-Africanist grand narrative to face the unfinished tasks of national liberation and move forward to the tasks of social emancipation. Throughout the history of humankind, masses have been moved by the grand narrative of liberty, freedom, justice and emancipation to bring about change – sometimes revolutionary changes, at other times not so revolutionary. Humanity stands at cross-roads. It is crying out for fundamental change. We need an alternative utopia to live by and fight for if we are not to be consumed by the death and destruction wrought by the barbaric system of the last five centuries. The worst of that barbarism has been felt and continues to be endured in Africa. In a reconstructed Pan-Africanism, Africa is calling all ‘at the rendezvous of victory …’. With Aimé Césaire we can all sing:

‘(and) no race possesses the monopoly of beauty,

of intelligence, of force, and there

is a place for all at the rendezvous

of victory ….’

 

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

 

* Issa Shivji is Mwalimu Nyerere University Professor of Pan-African Studies at the University

of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

 

* This article formed Shivji’s keynote address to the 4th European Conference on African

Studies, Uppsala June 15 to 18, 2011.

 

* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

 

NOTES

 

[1] The sub-title of Niall Ferguson’s book, Civilization (2011). The book itself is an excellent example of how a right-wing Western historian tells the story of the “west and the rest’.

[2] Here I am slightly modifying Jha’s thesis.

[3] ‘Apparent’ because in different circumstances (for example, when applying the rule that a spouse is not a compellable witness against a fellow spouse) ‘native’ wives wedded under ‘native’ law were not recognised by colonial courts as wives while for the purposes of tax any one who appeared to be a ‘wife’ was so recognised.

RESOLUTION ON NEOCOLONIALISM ALL- AFRICAN PEOPLES’ CONFERENCE CAIRO, MARCH 23 – 31, 1961

RESOLUTION ON NEOCOLONIALISM

ALL- AFRICAN PEOPLES’ CONFERENCE

CAIRO, MARCH 23 – 31, 1961

 

The third All-African Peoples’ Conference meeting in Cairo from the 25^th to the 31^st of March, 1961, having carefully reviewed the current situation in Africa;

 

Considers Neo-colonialism, which is the survival of the colonial system in spite of formal recognition of political independence in emerging countries which become the victims of an indirect and subtle form of domination by political, economic, social, military or technical, is the greatest threat to African Countries that have newly won their independence or those approaching this status.

 

Emphasises the examples of the Congo, the French Community, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which indicate that the colonial system and international imperialism, realizing their failure in facing the development of revolutionary movements in Africa, make use of many means to safeguard the essential of their economic and military power.

 

When the recognition of national independence becomes inevitable, they try to deprive these countries of their essence of real independence. This is done by imposing unequal economic, military and technical, conventions; by creating puppet governments following false elections, or by inventing some so-called constitutional formulas of multinational co-existence intended only to hide the racial discrimination favouring settlers.

 

Whenever such machinations appear insufficient to hamper the combativity and determination of popular liberation movements, dying colonialism tries, under the order of Neo-Colonialism or through the guided intervention of the United Nations, the balkanization of newly-independent States or the systematic division of the political or syndical vivid forces, and in desperate cases, like the Congo, colonialism goes as far as plots, repressive measures by army and police, and murderous cold-blood.

 

Considering that Neo-Colonialism manifests itself through economic and political intervention, intimidation and blackmail in order to prevent African states from directing their political, social and economic programmes towards the exploitation of their natural wealth for the benefit of their peoples.

Considers that such countries as the United States, Federal Germany, Israel, Britain, Belgium, Holland, South Africa and France are the perpetrators of Neo-Colonialism.

 

Manifestations of Neo-Colonialism

 

The Conference denounces the following manifestations of Neo-Colonialism in Africa:

 

(a) Puppet governments represented by stooges and even fabricated elections, based on some chiefs, reactionary elements, anti-popular politicians, big bourgeois compradors or corrupt civil or military officials.

 

(b) Regrouping of states, before or after independence, by an imperial power in federation or communities linked to that imperial power.

 

(c) Balkanisation as a deliberate policy of fragmentation of states by creation of artificial entities such as Katanga, Mauritania, Buganda, etc.

 

(d) The economic entrenchment of the colonial power before independence and the continuity of economic dependence after formal recognition of national sovereignty.

 

(e) Integration into colonial economic blocks which maintain the under-developed character of African economy.

 

(f) Economic infiltration by a foreign power after independence, through capital investments, loans and monetary aid, or technical experts under unequal concessions, particularly those extending for long periods.

 

(g) Direct monetary dependence, as in those emergent independent states whose finances remain directly controlled by colonial powers.

 

Agents of Neo-Colonialism

 

The Third All-African Peoples’ Conference exposes the following agents of Neo-Colonialism:

 

(a) Colonial embassies and missions serving as nerve centres for espionage and pressure points on local African governments directly or through their civil or military technicians.

 

(b) So-called foreign and United Nations technical assistants who ill-advise and sabotage national political, economical, educational and social development.

 

(c) Military personnel in armed forces and police, as officers and advisers who serve above all, the colonial interests directly, or through local officers who remain loyal to their former masters.

 

(d) The representatives from imperialist and colonial countries, under the cover of religion, Moral Re-armament, cultural, Trade Union and Youth and Philanthropic organizations.

 

(e) The malicious propaganda by radio, press, literature controlled by imperial and colonial countries, as well as in some independent African Countries where press and radio are still owned by imperialist powers.

 

(f) Puppet Governments in Africa being used by imperialists in the furtherance of Neo-Colonialism, such as the use of their good offices by the neo-colonial powers to undermine the sovereignty and aspirations of other African States.

Means of Fighting Neo-Colonialism

 

The Third All-African Peoples’ Conference, whose very reason of existence is the mobilization of the African masses for the liberation of Africa, is firmly convinced that it is by intensifying this mobilization that Africa will find the most efficient way to fight Neo-Colonialism and to extract the last roots of imperialism.

 

It is the duty of popular, political, syndical, youth and women’s organizations, not only to inspire and wage the struggle against Neo-Colonialism, but also, and above all to be vigilant, to control the correct application of the general outline and to denounce all those who attempt to deviate it from its real objectives.

 

The Conference realizes that the struggle against Neo-Colonialism must be associated with the struggle against all forms of opportunism which is the mask of the accomplices of imperialism.

It is therefore by awakening of the conscience of the masses by the establishment of landmarks of real liberation, that the masses will be freed from the power of certain slogans and formulas that only serve as a camouflage for colonialism.

 

That is why, the Conference:

 

(a) Condemns the balkanization of emerging States, whether dependent or independent, as a way to perpetuate Neo-Colonialism in Africa (Congo, Mauritania, Northern Rhodesia, Buganda, etc.)

 

(b) Condemns the federations and communities created before independence under the patronage of colonial States.

 

(c) Invites all independent African States to give aid and assistance to liberate the African countries still under foreign domination.

 

(d) Urges all independent Africa States which still retain former military and para-military bases, to liquidate these bases as soon as possible.

 

(e) Conference reaffirms its determination to continue to mobilize popular mass opinion to denounce enemies of true independence and agents of Neo-Colonialism camouflaged in all possible forms.

 

(f) This Conference denounces aid with expressed or unexpressed strings attached.

 

(g) The Conference urges independent African States to intensify their efforts for the creation of an effective form of cooperation among African States in the Economic, Social and Cultural domains in order to frustrate Neo-Colonialism.

 

 

(h) This Conference deplores the attitude of some independent African States who, under the guise of neutrality, are passive even on matters affecting the whole of Africa, and who, by their passiveness in activities in fact promote the cause of Neo-Colonialism.

 

(i) The Conference calls for the immediate launching of the All-African Trade Union Federation as an effective means of counter-acting Neo-Colonialism.

IN SEARCH OF A NEW AFRICA

IN SEARCH OF A NEW AFRICA

By

Ikaweba Bunting

 

On the way to Sinya there is a hill that you keep on your right as you head east. I call it the ‘sacred hill of directions’. Past a small water-hole and an acacia tree and the hill shifts to your left until you reach a big Maasai boma (homestead). The route goes on from landmark to landmark until you finally reach the village. The open savannah is marked by cattle trails that disappear whenever a strong gust of wind stirs up the dust.

 

On this particular day a Tanzanian police officer who recognized me asked for a ride to the police post on the way. As we drove across the savannah we saw a herd of swalla (gazelles). My passenger asked me to turn the vehicle towards the animals so that he could hunt some. The police post is very remote and they often supplement their diet of maize and beans with game meat.

 

After driving around for some time with no success I decided that I must get on my way. It was then that I realized that I had forgotten to take note of any landmarks en route. I searched the horizon but could not see the hill I used for navigation. Being midday, it was also difficult to use the sun to figure out direction. I had a feeling that we were no longer in Tanzania but had crossed the border into Kenya. My companion, however, insisted that we were still in Tanzania.

 

As we drove zigzagging around, a young Maasai moran (warrior) appeared, striding across the plains with his spear over his shoulder. When we told him we were on our way to Sinya, he smiled and told us we had lost the way some distance. I asked him if we were in Kenya or Tanzania. He looked at me and then at my companion and asked: ‘Why? Are you Kenyans or Tanzanians?’ We replied: ‘Tanzanian’. The young man then said with a laugh and a sidelong glance at the police officer: ‘You are in Tanzania but you are lost!’

 

When we finally got back on track I located my sacred hill of directions. I was still convinced that we had been at least three kilometres inside Kenya. It eventually dawned on me that the young moran and the police officer had known all along where we were. But it made no difference to them which country we were in; whether we were on one side or the other of an imaginary line.

 

It is only by chance that we are called Tanzanians, Kenyans, Senegalese, Zimbabweans or Zambians.

This story illustrates the absurdities of the nation-state in Africa. Most of the time ordinary people simply ignore the borders. They cross them to go to market, to visit relatives and to work. Occasionally a family’s home is in one country and their farmland in another.

 

The borders between countries are lines that were drawn on a map by the Europeans in order to establish the boundaries of their various colonial possessions. Most borders divided families or communities that shared the same socio-cultural history, spoke the same language and were often socio-political entities until they became subjects of different European monarchies. It is only by chance, by the legacy of the Berlin Conference of 1884, that we are called Tanzanians, Kenyans, Senegalese, Zimbabweans or Zambians.

 

In 1963 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) established nation-states based on colonial boundaries in its founding charter. This locked the new Africa into the task of building nations and national identities on a colonial foundation that by its very nature was inherently divisive and contradictory.

 

Then came the anti-colonial nationalism of the African liberation struggles of the 1950s and 1960s which was concerned with human rights, dignity and self-determination. The nationalist leaders were given a mandate – either by vote or by support for armed struggle and civil disobedience – to secure a situation that would restore cultural, social and economic freedom.

 

On those glorious nights at the midnight hour the various imperial representatives from Europe hauled down the flags of Britain, France or wherever, and presided over the raising of the flags of new African states. On those evenings football stadiums and meeting-grounds were filled beyond capacity with all the people waiting to experience the collective catharsis of Uhuru (freedom).

 

During colonial rule the people and the leaders had struggled together as one. But once the ceremony was complete the leaders went with the colonial dignitaries to the Governor’s mansion to celebrate. They drank champagne and danced to European music. Meanwhile, the masses remained in the stadium, drank local brew, played drums, and sang the songs and rhythms that they and their ancestors had sung for centuries.

 

Those nights were an omen, an early warning of what the future would become. On the one hand there were those people and organizations that advocated remaining part of the colonial empire with an élite sharing the privileges of their colonial masters, and on the other were militant nationalists who advocated sentiments of separation, self-determination and independence.

 

This dichotomy was not just confined to Africa; in the United States there was a growing social movement which also had two strands – a conservative integrationist philosophy and a Black Nationalist movement which expressed solidarity with African liberation struggles and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world. Some black nationalists believed the solution to lie in a national homeland in the southern states of America; others proposed a return to Africa for part of the black population of America. Their objective was to build a pan-African movement which would be able to demand that the US and Europe respect the human and civil rights of black people.

 

The failure of the integrationists to become a successful part of mainstream America has spawned an adapted black nationalism which has sought to control local community economics, social services and politics without breaking from or revolting against capitalism and the dominant national power structure.

 

I used to describe myself as a ‘revolutionary pan-African Nationalist’. I thought that a strong socialist state was an absolute necessity for African freedom. Further, I believed that a union of those strong socialist states, a United States of Africa, was essential for the freedom and prosperity for all African peoples worldwide.

 

I no longer think the nation-state in Africa is viable – economically, politically or culturally.

My belief and hope that the post-colonial African nation could become a liberating institution for African people has been sobered by the reality of dependency. Today, finance and economic policy are controlled and managed directly by the World Bank and the IMF. Political parties, governments and leaders in Africa solicit Western support in order to secure a power-base.

 

The international creditors control all the assets. The workers and peasants toil and sweat to service debts owed to the international bankers and multilateral agencies. So-called national budgets in many countries are more than 50-per-cent dependent on external financing. Development budgets are at least 90-per-cent dependent on donor funding. In other words, the African state is in receivership and cannot operate unless it gets money to do so from Western donors and financiers.

 

In Africa today only the symbols of sovereignty exist. There are flags, seats on the UN General Assembly, heads of state (sometimes more than one), armies, national currencies, ambassadors and Mercedes Benzes.

 

The chain that imprisons African governments and consequently African people in this disempowering relationship is ‘developmentalism’. Developmentalism is the ideology that believes the state is responsible for organizing society in such a way as to accelerate its progress into a free-market industrial society. This includes a parliament, a stock exchange, shopping malls, highways, automobile factories, pollution and increased crime. The idea of development is married to the idea of the nation-state. It is no wonder that the nation-state in Africa, having failed to replicate the Western socio-economic saga, is crumbling.

 

After 30 years I think African leaders, politicians, and business people, together with the international community, have a moral obligation to come to terms with the fundamental mistake that was made. Millions of men, women and children have withstood repression, torture, deprivation, suffering and death in uprisings, civil wars, border disputes and coups all in the name of nation-building and developing African states in the image and likeness of the industrialized Northern nations. It is too high a price to pay.

 

That said, do the failure and collapse of the nation-state (in Somalia, Liberia, Zaire and Rwanda) and the general failure of national development plans throughout the continent also mean the end of Pan-African nationalism?

 

I think not. I think there can still be a Pan-African unity – but of peoples not of states. This unity already exists in its potential form in the customs and cultures of the people, though the institutions and rulers of those nation-states keep the people divided and exploitable. Just as they were in colonial times.

 

Pan-Africanism is undergoing a resurgence in Africa, America, Latin America and Europe. Young people are exposed to popular culture that synthesizes African, African-American and Caribbean experiences. Many young Africans are travelling and experiencing racism in Europe and America. Emerging from these shared experiences and global communications is a global consciousness of African political and cultural solidarity that transcends the concept of the nation-state.

 

Transnational Pan-African solidarity is what can liberate Africa from the scourge and burden of perpetual ‘Developing Nationhood’. The new Africa must be able to accommodate multiculturalism and the global reality of the twenty-first century. It must be able to create an environment that enables indigenous communities in villages and small towns to run their own affairs, control their own resources and benefit directly from the products of their own labour; and determine their own agenda for prosperity and peace.

 

Countries like Rwanda have a chance to lead the way, to do something different. That chance has been paid for in too much blood and suffering to be wasted in rebuilding the same structures that precipitated the implosion of the nation-state on its citizens in the first place.

 

So what will rise out of the ashes of the post-colonial nation-state in Africa? For an answer let us emulate the attitude and adaptability of the young Maasai who gave me directions to Sinya. If you need to go someplace it doesn’t matter what nation-state you claim as identity or which border there is to cross. The object of a journey is to get where you are going. The object of anti-imperialist nationalism and Pan-Africanism was not the nation-state but rather justice, equality, dignity, prosperity and freedom from domination.

 

We have lost the way and it is time to find our bearings, to relocate the ‘sacred hill of directions’ and get back on track. This would be the living tribute to those millions of African people who perished or are suffering in the name of nation-building and development.

 

Ikaweba Bunting lives in East Africa, is employed by Oxfam as a Regional Communications Officer and works for the empowerment of African people.

©Copyright: New Internationalist 1996

Motherhood In Childhood To Double In Sub-Saharan Africa

Motherhood In Childhood To Double In Sub-Saharan Africa

By Dana SanchezPublished: November 1, 2013, 09:00am

   

 

 

West and Central Africa have the world’s highest proportion of births for mothers under age 15, and in sub-Saharan Africa, child motherhood will likely double by 2030, the U.N. reports, according to AllAfrica.

In countries where child marriage is common – such as Chad, Guinea, Mali, Mozambique and Niger – one in 10 girls has a child before the age of 15.

In West and Central Africa, the world’s largest proportion of young women – 28 percent – say they became mothers before age 18. In East and Southern Africa the figure is 25 percent, while in South Asia it is 22 percent. These numbers came out in the latest annual report by the U.N. Population Fund, “Motherhood in Childhood.”

Adolescent pregnancies are also increasing in the African countries where they occur most. There are 15 countries in the world, the report says, where 30 percent or more of mothers are adolescents. In recent years, the rate of adolescent pregnancy dropped in eight of these countries but rose in six. All six are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Internationally, 95 percent of the world’s births to adolescents occur in developing countries. About 19 percent of young women in developing countries become pregnant before they are 18. Nine in 10 births happen within a marriage or a union.

One in nine girls in developing countries is forced into marriage before age 15, the report said. In Chad and Niger, more than one in three girls is married before her 15th birthday, while in Ethiopia the figure is one in six girls.

Too often, society blames only the girls for becoming pregnant, said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, in a statement accompanying the report.

“The reality,” he said, “is that adolescent pregnancy is most often not the result of a deliberate choice, but rather the absence of choices, and of circumstances beyond a girl’s control.

“It is a consequence of little or no access to school, employment, quality information and health care.”

The fund said it advocated a holistic approach to tackling the problem, aimed at changing attitudes in society rather than the behavior of girls.

“This includes: Keeping girls in school; stopping child marriage; changing attitudes about gender roles and gender equality; increasing adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health, including contraception; and providing better support to adolescent mothers,” the report said.
 

- See more at: http://afkinsider.com/27797/un-child-mothers-set-double-sub-saharan-africa/#sthash.qtrb95X6.dpuf

Indians will be hit if Nigerians are targeted: Diplomat

The writer has posted comments on this articleIANS | Nov 4, 2013, 08.49 PM IST

READ MORE Manohar Parrikar|Nigerian government|Nigerian consular|Nigerian community in Goa|Jacob Nwadadia

The Goa government has ordered a crackdown on all foreigners living in this tourism hub after a bitter clash between a mob of over 200 Nigerians on one side and police and locals on the other. (File Photo)

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PANAJI: A Nigerian consular official warned on Monday that thousands of Indians in his country will be "thrown out on the streets" if police doesn't stop evicting Nigerians from their rented homes in Goa.

Speaking to IANS after meeting members of the Nigerian community in Goa, bureaucrats and police officials over the last two days, consular attache Jacob Nwadadia said the Goa government had until 9 pm on Monday to stop the illegal eviction process.

"There are only 50,000 Nigerians living in India but there are over one million Indians living in Nigeria. Thousands of Indians living there will be thrown out on the streets if forcible eviction of Nigerians in Goa does not stop," Jacob said.

The official said Nigeria was five hours behind Indian Standard Time and that there would be time for the Nigerian government to order action against Indians living there.

The Goa government has ordered a crackdown on all foreigners living in this tourism hub after a bitter clash between a mob of over 200 Nigerians on one side and police and locals on the other.

The Nigerians, who were protesting the murder of one of their compatriots, had blocked National Highway 17 for several hours, demanding the presence of Nigerian consular officials for the autopsy proceedings.

During the clashes, the Nigerians not only smashed a police hearse van, but also dumped the corpse in the middle of the road, blocking all traffic. They later snatched lathis from the intimidated policemen who were mute spectators and began to threaten the locals as well as the policemen themselves for a couple of hours.

Over 50 Nigerians were arrested following the violence.

Chief minister Manohar Parrikar later claimed that the murder was a result of a war between two narcotics gangs, while the Nigerians said their fellow national was murdered by the local drug mafia which had the sympathies of a minister.

Jacob, who spoke to IANS on his way back to New Delhi after a two-day tour of Goa, also said that police had been going from home to home in places where Nigerians resided and were forcibly evicting them out.

"They are evicting Nigerians forcibly. There is no rule of law," the attache said.

One of those suffering the brunt of the forcible eviction is Chioma Ghansoli, a 24-year-old Nigerian living in Anjuna.

On Monday morning, Chioma Ghansoli's landlord asked her to move out of the rented house by the end of the day and she has nowhere to go for the night but the beach, where she plans to spend the night, in absence of a roof over her head.

"My landlord said all the 'blacks' had to be evicted on police instructions. I have nowhere to go in Goa. Me and my friends will spend the night at the beach tonight with our luggage," Chioma said.

She added that locals had begun to specifically target Africans racially chiding them for being of black persuasion.

Jacob also that said a resolution passed by a local panchayat headed by the wife of a BJP legislator, Michael Lobo, banning Nigerians from the village should be withdrawn.

"This kind of harassment has to stop without delay," Jacob said, threatening similar reciprocation in Nigeria.

Parrikar Monday said that most Nigerians living in Goa only had photocopies of their passports and visas as proof of their nationality.

"We have questioned a lot of Nigerians and were verifying their documents. Most of them have only photo copies of their passports and visas. We are going to ask the Nigerian embassy to verify these documents," Parrikar said.

The verification is part of a drive started by the Goa government for inspection of documents of all foreign nationals living in Goa. The drive was announced after the highway violence last Thursday.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indians-will-be-hit-if-Nigerians-are-targeted-Diplomat/articleshow/25224615.cms

Afrikan Deep Thought - Uzuri [Beauty]

Afrikan Deep Thought

 

Uzuri [Beauty]

1.   What is Uzuri in an Afrikan spiritual, social, historical, political and economic context?

2.   What is Uzuri to us when we are Afrikan creators of reality operating from Afrikan cultural paradigms?

3.   What is the Afrikan cultural basis for Afrikan agency?

4.   How does the lexicology utilized in speaking of Uzuri, impact Afrikan cultural reality?

5.   What relationship if any is there between an Afrikan conceptualization of Uzuri and the solving of Afrikan problems?

TWO NEW BOOKS TO BE RELEASED: JULY 21, 2013. AUTHOR: BROTHER AMBAKISYE-OKANG DUKUZUMURENYI

TWO NEW BOOKS TO BE RELEASED: JULY 21, 2013.

AUTHOR: BROTHER AMBAKISYE-OKANG DUKUZUMURENYI

1.

KUFIKIRI NI KUUMBA!
Afrocentric Critical Analysis, Creative Thinking & Creative Reconstruction: Reawakening Afrikan Deep Thought

Description - A Textbook [FOR HOMESCHOOLERS, INDEPENDENT AFRIKAN EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS & Afrocentric Educators] emphasizing Skill Development in Critical Thinking & Argumentation through excercises and learning activities utilizing source material from across the Afrikan Global Cultural Complex: From Antiquity to the Present.

2.

ARKHET NTI REKH: Books of Knowing Vol. I

Description: A Collection, Priestly Translation and Codification of the Spiritual Texts of the Afrikan Nile Valley Culture Complex.

Vol. I includes:

I. Dua NTR:  The Book of the NTR
II. KHEPERA: The Book of Creation & Knowing the Evolutions of RA
III. The Conversations of NUT: A Testament Affirming the Convenant Relationship Between NTR and Their Children.