African Thought in Comparative Perspective [1 ed.] 9781443858366, 9781443853934

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African Thought in Comparative Perspective

African Thought in Comparative Perspective

By

Ali A. Mazrui Edited By

Ramzi Badran, Seifudein Adem and Patrick Dikirr

African Thought in Comparative Perspective By Ali A. Mazrui This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Ali A. Mazrui All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5393-3, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5393-4

CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgements .............................................................. viii Editors’ Introduction ................................................................................. xi Section I: Comparative Africanity: Identity and Intellect Chapter One ................................................................................................ 2 The Idea of Africa in Political and Social Thought Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 14 Three Schools of African Philosophy: Cultural, Ideological and Critical Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 24 Political Values and Ideological Trends in Africa Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 51 Between Cultural Nostalgia and Cultural Amnesia Section II: Abrahamic Religions Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 58 Western Eurocentrism and Judeo-Christian Universalism Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 71 Islamic Civilization and Comparative Philosophy Chapter Seven........................................................................................... 89 Islam and Afrocentricity: The Triple Heritage Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 105 Negritude and the Talmudic Tradition Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 125 Christianity and Islam in African Politics

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Contents

Section III: Western Philosophy and Africa’s Experience Chapter Ten ............................................................................................ 144 Ancient Greece in African Thought Chapter Eleven ....................................................................................... 167 Edmund Burke and the Revolution in the Congo Chapter Twelve ...................................................................................... 180 Rousseau and Intellectualized African Nationalism Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................... 187 Alienable Sovereignty in Rousseau Chapter Fourteen .................................................................................... 206 Gandhi, Marx and the Warrior Tradition in Africa Chapter Fifteen ....................................................................................... 227 Black Liberation: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois Section IV: Human Culture and the Physical Habitat Chapter Sixteen ...................................................................................... 236 Africa’s Traditional Religions Chapter Seventeen .................................................................................. 241 Human Nakedness and the Origin of Ethics Chapter Eighteen .................................................................................... 250 Political Sex: From Plato and Marx to Racial Theories Chapter Nineten ...................................................................................... 261 The Floral Gap in African Culture Chapter Twenty ...................................................................................... 265 Periodizing Human Orientation: Nostalgia, Presentism and Anticipation Section V: Concluding Essays Chapter Twenty-One .............................................................................. 276 The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe and Beyond

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Chapter Twenty-Two.............................................................................. 291 Afrocentricity versus Multiculturalism Chapter Twenty-Three............................................................................ 305 Africa’s Troubled Take-Off: Delayed Modernity and Deferred Democracy Chapter Twenty-Four ............................................................................. 322 Mombasa: Three Stages towards Globalization Chapter Twenty-Five .............................................................................. 336 Kenya: Between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans Chapter Twenty-Six................................................................................ 342 Can Globalization be Contained? Index ....................................................................................................... 357

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is about the Golden Age of Ideology in modern Africa. The remarkable era began in the years between the two world wars. The earliest modern ideology was nationalism in multiple different varieties, both positive and negative. In the African Diaspora, Marcus Garvey led a Back-to-Africa movement, otherwise known as “Black Zionism.” Although Garvey was born in Jamaica in the British West Indies, his nationalist movement flowered among African Americans in the United States in the 1920s. Also in the Diaspora was Black Ethiopianism, which had triggered off the Rastafari cultural nationalism. There was a time when the Rasta followers virtually worshipped Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia as a demi-god. But the Emperor began to sniff the smell of postcolonial independence within the African continent itself. With remarkable foresight he offered his own capital of Addis Ababa to become the Headquarters and Secretariat of the newly conceived Organization of African Unity. Addis Ababa has remained to all intents and purposes the de facto political capital of postcolonial Africa. It is a monument to PanAfricanism. Within Africa, the anticolonial struggle was the most highly reported version of modern nationalism during the twentieth century. This particular struggle produced a disproportionate number of heroes in a relatively short span of history. Such heroes included Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkruma of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, Milton Obote of Uganda, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. The greatest nationalist of them all spent 27 years of his life in South African prisons. That martyr was Nelson Mandela— widely admired across the world. The least respected form of African nationalism in the twentieth century was sometimes referred to as sub-nationalism. This kind of nationalism sometimes triggered a secessionist movement either to return to precolonial boundaries (like Eritrea) or to experiment with a new sovereign state (like South Sudan). The Igbo of Nigeria tried to create a new state called Biafra. This ambition ignited the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970. Katanga in the former Belgian Congo also ignited prolonged conflict, but was also unsuccessful in seceding.

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It was after World War II that some African intellectuals and politicians began to experiment with different versions of socialism. Some proceeded directly to Marxism-Leninism. Former Portuguese Africa was especially fascinated by Marxism-Leninism in the last quarter of the twentieth century. These were indeed the Golden Years of Socialism in Africa. Africa’s most original form of socialism was Tanzania’s experiment of ujamaa. This African concept of kinship solidarity was transformed into a basis for African socialism. President Julius Nyerere used this concept not only to narrow the gap between rich and poor but also to discipline Tanzania’s leaders away from corruption and temptation. Nyerere also married the concept of socialism with the ambition of self-reliance in pursuit of development. His preferred system of governance was the oneparty state. French-speaking Africa led the way in cultural ideology. Particularly influential was Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal for nearly fifty years. He became famous for his adherence to a philosophy of negritude. This was a philosophy of nostalgia—idealizing the African past and using it as a guide to contemporary policy. With other Francophone thinkers Negritude was formulated as follows: Hooray for those who never invented anything! Hooray for those who never discovered anything . . . My Negritude is no tower and no cathedral It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.

Although this book is overwhelmingly written by Ali A. Mazrui, it has had multiple editors over the years. Different segments have been tidied up by different people. During Ali Mazrui’s years as a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, these essays were particularly indebted to the late Omari H. Kokole and to Molly Mazrui (now Molly Walker). They served as researchers, as well as editors—with Ali Mazrui’s gratitude. Since Mazrui moved to the State University of New York at Binghamton, the volume has been integrated, published, and updated by Patrick Dikirr, Ramzi Badran and Seifudein Adem. Mazrui is also grateful for the contributions of Thomas Uthup and A. Selase Adzima. They assisted in updating the articles and supplying references. A different kind of contribution at Binghamton came from Jennifer Winans, whose professional skills have included index preparation and

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finalizing this volume in readiness for publication. She has displayed great professionalism. The role of Ravenna Narizzano-Bronson has been in organization and coordination. She has provided a critically-essential administrative infrastructure for most dealings with publishers. Ali A. Mazrui accepts responsibility for any serious intellectual flaws in this book. He remains grateful for the professionalism of the editors and for their general support.

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION This volume is a collection of the writings of Ali A. Mazrui, one of the most prolific African writers of our time. These writings represent a broad spectrum of his most significant contributions to our understanding of the socio-philosophical foundations of African societies. The volume spans four decades of Mazrui’s scholarship on Africa’s political and social experience. The twenty six chapters in this volume offer a detailed analysis of the various paradigms of African ideology, old and new. They address the challenges to their propositions and assumptions, and examine the limitations and promises presented by these paradigms. The volume discusses thinkers who have systematized theories of African politics and society, such as Kwame Nkrumah and Léopold Sédar Senghor, as well as piecemeal thinkers and African politicians who approached politics pragmatically. It also deals with essential writings in African philosophy, such as the writings of John Mbiti and Valentine Mudimbe. Mazrui employs a globalist vision to address the intricacies of Africa’s political and social thought. This volume showcases how adept he was at using complex conceptual apparatuses to categorize and synthesize insights from different scholarly approaches, and offer an original interpretation of the knowledge accumulated over the years. Mazrui’s conceptualization and interpretation are aspects of his work that retain a high degree of relevance and importance for research on Africa today. This volume focuses on such key issues in African thought as the legacy of the African liberation movements, the convergence and divergence of African, Islamic and Western thought, nationalist ideologies in Africa, the role of religion in African politics, and the impact of ancient Greek philosophy on contemporary Africa. For Mazrui, African thought is socially and culturally grounded; it reflects transactional conditions, such as those between the colonizer and the colonized, the indigenous and the alien, the civilian and the military, or those in power and the opposition. He further places Africa’s social and political dilemmas in their intellectual-historical context, as well as in relation to subsequent developments in social and political thought. The chapters provide stimulating ideas, erudite insights, useful examples, and controversial views. Mazrui illuminates the complexities of social and political dilemmas in Africa’s domestic and international

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affairs, and reveals interpretations that often lead us to modify our thinking. He regularly applies an elegant art of analogy to a variety of African situations; Jefferson is contrasted with Lincoln, ancient Egypt is compared to ancient Greece, and the influence of India in Africa is stacked up against that of China. In addition, Mazrui repeatedly provokes his reader to leap beyond the well-worn path of judgment and to think critically of the paradoxes of African thought, such as the paradox of sociological diversity versus stability, and the paradoxical effect of Islam on repression and tolerance in Africa. Still, Mazrui leaves his reader with a prescription for change and options for the future. This volume presents the reader with a solid foundation for understanding African thought. It makes important contributions to key debates in African studies and positions African thought at the forefront of global intellectual debates and trends. The chapters of this volume demonstrate that Africa has a rich intellectual repertoire that not only would help Africans control their own path into the future, but contribute effectively toward the effort to overcome global challenges facing the world today. —Editors

SECTION I COMPARATIVE AFRICANITY: IDENTITY AND INTELLECT

CHAPTER ONE THE IDEA OF AFRICA IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THOUGHT The concept of “the Black” is much older, in the history of the written word, than the concept of “the African.” In the Bible the African merged into the concept of the Ethiopian. In Jeremiah 13:23, the rhetorical question is asked: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots... ” We explore, in this chapter, transitions from Blackness to Africanity. We also identify stages in the invention and redefinitions of Africa. We are particularly interested in how Africa has featured in the history of social and political thought. Aristotle and the Bible were particularly influential in theories about “natural-born slaves” and “natural-born masters.” Racial theorists subsequently traced the ancestry of Black people ostensibly to Ham. And Aristotle was invoked to legitimize Black Africans’ enslavement in the Americas. Also religious in origin were theories about “the Great Chain of Being,” which placed Africa at the bottom end of the chain. We also explore how Africa has featured in theories of cultural evolution and social Darwinism, and how these evolutionary theories subsequently influenced theories of modernization and development for “traditional societies” in Africa and elsewhere. But social Darwinism, and modernization theories, often assumed that cultures were separate, distinct, and internally homogeneous. In partial repudiation of such mono-cultural theories, we also explore how Africa has featured in multicultural theories—which have included the perception of Africa as a convergence of three civilizations: Africanity, Islam, and the impact of Euro-Western values and culture. Afrocentricity, as a cultural theory, begins by being almost as monocultural as theories of the Great Chain of Being. Negritude and Afrocentricity went into an alliance to stress the uniqueness of Africa. But these theories broke out of the parochialism of racial pride, and claimed primacy as a method of interpreting the history of humankind. Because Africa has been identified as the Eden of human ancestry, it is therefore

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interpreted, ipso facto, as the genesis of the human family—as the ancestry of human languages and the birthplace of religion, including monotheism. African thinkers have consistently been fighting back against not only the legacies of Biblical race theories, Aristotle and Social Darwinism, but also the more modern concepts of “the other.” Edward Said, the late Palestinian thinker, identified these European concepts of “the other” under the now famous name of “Orientalism”—which is a worldview that marginalizes much of the non-Western world. Valentine Y. Mudimbe, a Congolese philosopher, is a comrade-in-arms against the demeaning and manipulative forces of Orientalism. Let us, together, explore these themes in greater detail.

From Aristotle to Theories of Evolution The African presence in political theory is sometimes explicit, as when Friedrich Hegel or Hugh Trevor-Roper portrays Africans as a people without history. But even more often the African presence in political thought is implicit, as when Jean-Jacques Rousseau hypothesizes about the Noble Savage without mentioning Africa. A third form of African presence in political thought is comparative, when a theory exclusively intended for one part of the world is reinterpreted and applied to Africa. For example, when Edmund Burke’s reflections on the French revolution are used to interpret a failed state in post-colonial Africa.1 When Aristotle drew a distinction between natural slaves and natural masters he did not necessarily have different races in mind. Even the same family could include one sibling who is a natural slave, and another sibling who is born a natural master or leader. Centuries later, Aristotle’s distinction was more explicitly racialized. White Europeans were deemed to be natural masters. Black people were regarded by others as natural slaves. Even such a remarkable sixteenthcentury humanitarian as Bartolomé Las Casas (1474–1566), who passionately defended the Indians of the Americas against enslavement, was nevertheless prepared to regard the enslavement of Black Africans as more legitimate on Aristotelian grounds.2 John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), the American statesman and political theorist, was also among those who combined Aristotelian and Biblical arguments to rationalize and justify both the general institution of slavery and Africans’ eligibility for enslavement. The legacy of Aristotle was synthesized with the racialization of the Biblical Ham.3 After all, in the Bible, Noah, Ham’s father, cursed Ham and blessed his other son Shem:

4

Chapter One Cursed be Canaan! [Ham’s son] The lowest of slaves Shall he be to his brother. . . , Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! Let Canaan be his slave.3

The idea that some people are born natural slaves withered away with the successes of the abolitionist movement. The parallel idea that some people are born natural masters was, however, much more resilient, and lasted much longer. The whole imperial ideology of “the White Man’s Burden” was one version of the concept of a master race. Rudyard Kipling immortalized the doctrine in his poem “The White Man’s Burden,” first published in the Times of London on February 4, 1899. Take up the White Man’s burden — Send forth the best ye breed — Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild — Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. . . Take up the White Man’s burden — The savage wars of peace — Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease . . . The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Kipling’s twin images of “half-devil and half-child” often formed the basis of Western concepts of Africa. The image of Africa as “half-devil” was a process of heathenizing African societies. It helped to mobilize Christian missionary response to Africa. The idea of Africa as “halfchild,” on the other hand, stimulated both Western paternalism and a humanitarian response. Great humanitarians like Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) illustrated a form of racism which was, paradoxically, benevolent. After retraining himself as a medical doctor, Schweitzer gave up a comfortable alternative

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career in Western Europe in order to serve rural Africans in colonial Gabon. Schweitzer made so many sacrifices for Africa precisely because he did not regard Black Africans as equals. These “natives” aroused in Schweitzer the paternal protectiveness of an adult towards a child. When pressed, Schweitzer conceded that the African was his brother—“but younger brother.” Schweitzer’s form of racism resulted in benevolence and generosity, which was very different from the racism of hate and oppression (malevolent racism). Nevertheless, the concept of a Master Race was alive and well in Albert Schweitzer’s worldview. He viewed Black Africans neither as natural slaves, nor as half-devils. But, in relation to Europeans, he did view all Black Africans as children and fundamentally immature. While the legacy of Aristotle was dichotomous, natural masters and natural subjects, the legacy of Charles Darwin was evolutionary. Theories about the “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” had profound consequences. Not just in biology, but also in social and political theories for generations after Darwin.

From Social Darwinism to Theories of Modernization Charles Darwin’s book, entitled On Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was published in 1859. It was soon to have long-term repercussions for “the study of man,” in almost all its dimensions. Racists could now proceed to demonstrate, utilizing the theory of natural selection, that major differences in human capacity and human organization were to be traced to biological distinctions between races. Black Africans were almost always ranked lowest. But, to some extent, this theory was much older than Darwin. What Darwin added to it was the dynamism of converting mere classification of beings into a process. The static version of the theory was religious. It went back to the ancient idea that God had so organized the world that the universe and creation were arranged in a “Great Chain of Being,” that all creatures could be classified and fit into a hierarchy extending “from man down to the smallest reptile—whose existence can be discovered by the microscope.”5 “Tribal peoples” were deemed particularly close to the natural world. In other words, it was not just the lower species that were so classified. Even within the highest species created in the Almighty’s image, there were, in turn, other divisions. Theories of the Great Chain of Being assumed that the Almighty, in His wisdom, did not want a big gap between one type of creature and the next. And so there had to be

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intermediate categories between orangutans and the White man. As early as 1713, naturalists began looking for the “missing link” between men and apes. They even, apparently, speculated on the possibility that the San peoples in southern Africa and orangutans might be, side by side, in the “scale of life,” separated only by the fact that orangutans could not speak.6 What social Darwinism helped to refine into specific theoretical form was the element of motion in this process, the idea that the backward people might be on the move towards a higher phase, and those in front further still. Progress was activated at last. The link between racism and ethnocentrism is not difficult to see. Even for the earliest racist theories, there had been no difficulty about deciding where to place the white man in the chain of being. As Phillip D. Curtin puts it, discussing these early biological theorists: Since there is no strictly scientific or biological justification for stating that one race is “higher” than another, the criteria of ranking had to come from non-scientific assumptions. All of the biologists . . . began by putting the European variety at the top of the scale. This was natural enough, if only as an unthinking reflection of cultural chauvinism. It could be held to follow from their assessment of European achievements in art and science . . . It was taken for granted that historical achievement was intimately connected with physical form—in short, that race and culture were closely related.7

The dynamic element in ethnocentric theories of evolution inevitably led to assumptions about white leadership in the whole process of historical change. Progress was social selection, if not natural selection. And within the white races themselves, specific leadership was assumed to come from the “tougher” of the European stock. For example, in his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in December 1841, Thomas Arnold gave a new lease on life to the ancient idea of a moving center of civilization. Arnold argued that the history of civilization was the history of a series of creative races, each of which made its impact and then sank into oblivion, leaving the heritage of civilization to a greater successor. What the Greeks passed on to the Romans, the Romans bequeathed in turn to the Germanic race, and of that race, the greatest civilizing nation was England.8 In many cases, this was seen as part of God’s Grand Design. Empire-builders, like Cecil Rhodes in southern Africa, were inspired by such visions. Notions of leadership very often led to notions of the right to rule the less developed societies of Africa and much of Asia. Even John Stuart Mill, the prophet of liberalism, could still argue that despotism was “a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the

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end be their improvement. . . .”9 Mill included many Indians, and most Africans, among such “barbarians.” In Mill, also, there began to emerge the notion that Western democratic institutions constitute the ultimate destination of much of socio-political development. And the capacity to operate democratic institutions was already being regarded as an index of political maturity and institutional stability. Mill even seemed to share some of the reservations held by more recent modernization theorists about the possibility of operating liberal institutions in multi-ethnic situations. To use Mill’s own formulation, “Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities.”10 Mill attributed such democratic disabilities to the India of the British Raj, as well as to Africa. Here then is the essential assumption of some of the later theories of political integration, a process towards the fusion of nationalities within a single territory into a new entity capable of sustaining the stresses of a more liberal polity. Since the rise of AfroAsian nationalism, at least one major approach in theorizing about political modernization has rested on what Robert A. Packenham describes as “the idea that political development is primarily a function of a social system that facilitates popular participation in governmental and political processes at all levels, and the bridging of regional, religious, caste, linguistic, tribal, or other cleavages.”11 Packenham goes on to argue that one form which this particular approach has taken today is to assess the social correlates of democracy. Are these criteria relevant for post-colonial Africa? These correlates are supposed to include relatively high “scores” on such sociological variables as an open class system, literacy and/or education, high participation in voluntary organizations and civil society, urbanization and expanded communication system.12 Much of this side of analysis assumes that the highest of modern institutions must inevitably be those which have been devised in the West. The social Darwinian evolution toward modernity is evolution towards Western ways. Edward Shils seemed to be expressing as much his own view of the matter as of some members of the Afro-Asian elite when he said, “ ‘Modern’ means being Western without the onus of dependence on the West.”13 And much of the rest of Shils’ theorizing on the process of development did bear the stamp of Eurocentric preference for “a regime of representative institutions” of the Western kind.14 African studies since the 1950s have been replete with democratic assumptions which have been ultimately neo-Darwinian. There have been models of theorizing about development which have gone as far as to classify political regimes in the world in terms of, first, the Anglo-American type; secondly, the continental European types;

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thirdly, totalitarian types; and fourthly, the types found in Africa and Asia.15 The ancient Judaic concept of the Chosen People, of the Old Testament, has found a Western secular guise. Evidently, this is ethnocentrism, which has strong links with older theories of Anglo-Saxon leadership as a focus of a new wave of civilization. Again, theories of evolutionary change culminating in the preeminence of a single nation had major philosophers of the West among their disciples. Not least among these philosophers was Hegel, for whom the entire process of change in the universe had for its ultimate human culmination the emergence of the Prussian state and the Germanic genius. Hegel, too, was in a sense, a pre-Darwinian social Darwinist, both in his notion of a creative tension between thesis, antithesis and synthesis and in his notion of a powerful evolution towards the emergence of higher species. To Hegel, the Black people of Africa were pre-history. More recently, there have been historians who have seen human evolution in terms of a progressive rise to the pre-eminence of their own nation or group of nations. William H. McNeill, though by no means lacking in humility, had interpreted world history in such a way that he might easily belong to this tradition.16 McNeill challenges, in part, the Spenglerian pessimism of a Western decline and the whole conception of history as a collection of separate civilizations each pursuing an independent career. For McNeill, human cultures have had a basic interrelationship—and their history has been leading to a global preeminence of Western civilization. Again, Black Africa was placed far behind. In the field of sociology, Talcott Parsons has talked about “evolutionary universals” in terms which do indicate a belief that ultimately development happens in the direction of greater comparability with the political systems of the Western world. Parsons argues that the existence of a definitive link between popular participation and ultimate control of decision-making is so crucial for building and maintaining support for the political-legal systems as a whole and for its binding rules and decisions that, insofar as large-scale societies are concerned, the “democratic association” is an “evolutionary universal.” In defense of this proposition against anticipated criticism, Parsons prophetically declares: I realize that to take this position I must maintain that communist totalitarian organization will probably not fully match “democracy” in political and integrative capacity in the long run. I do indeed predict that it will prove to be unstable and will either make adjustments in a general direction of electoral democracy and a plural party system or “regress” into

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generally less advanced and politically less effective forms of organization, failing to advance as rapidly or as far as otherwise may be expected.17

Talcott Parsons was more prophetic than he himself realized. A similar prophetic ethnocentrism is evident in the approach of J. Roland Pennock to the study of political development. Pennock enumerates principles like, “justice according to law,” “the rule of law,” and “due process” as among the political goods which are delivered when a society attains a certain degree of political development. Pennock declares in a long footnote: It might be objected that modern totalitarian dictatorships may not subscribe to the standards of justice according to law outlined above. Are we then to call them less “developed” than modern constitutional regimes? . . . I would be quite happy to say that to this extent they are in fact less developed, less fitted to fulfill the needs of men and society.18

Of course, European communism had its imitators in Asia and (later) Africa. Post-colonial Africa was often warned that “going socialist” was a retrograde step. In the same article, Pennock refers to other tendencies in the discussion of political development which bear the ethnocentric theme that the history of human evolution is towards the type of institutions and ideals cherished in the Western world. Tribal societies like those of Africa were way behind. This is a new type of ethnocentric universalism. Pennock does not describe them as Western ideals. There is a tendency to refer to such things as “world culture.” But the inclination to discern an upward movement of human evolution towards Westernism is recurrent in social and political theory. In the words of the concluding sentence of Pennock’s article: It is common today to compare or rank states by the degree of party competition, or their adoption and use of the major devices of representative government, or their social mobilization. It is my suggestion that, to see a more nearly complete picture and to make more highly discriminating judgments, anyone who is concerned with political development in any way involving measurement or comparison should take full account of some of the measurable elements of the political goods of security, justice, liberty, and welfare.19

After briefly flirting with theories about the one-party state, even African thinkers like Julius K. Nyerere began to tilt back to pluralistic democratic thought. The West was, once again, the ultimate role-model. Of course, by the time of our more recent theories of modernization and Fukuyama’s “end of history,” the racist element in theories of human

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Chapter One

development had considerably declined, at least within the ranks of scholarship. The racial component was what had given social Darwinism a continuing biological feature borrowed from the Darwin of the Origin of Species. In fact, in the heyday of racial theories, it was by no means all that clear where biological Darwinism ended and social Darwinism began. Africans were perceived as culturally and genetically retarded. But in the modern theories of development and modernization, Darwinism has been substantially debiologized. It is no longer pure racial bigotry that is invoked to explain stages of political growth; what is now invoked is a kind of cultural Darwinism. Fukuyama is almost Hegelian. For Hegel, Prussia was the ultimate synthesis in the dialectic of history. For Fukuyama, the United States is the final stage of human history. Africa continues to be relegated to historical irrelevance. The shift from biological explanations of human backwardness to cultural explanations of that factor had important implications. Biological differences imply a slower rate of mutation of character. The African, thus, could not help lagging behind for many generations simply because he could not help the genetic traits he had inherited from his own sub-species. There is a quality almost of immutability, of being retarded, when a lack of development is attributed to hereditary characteristics within the race. But as ideas on social evolution took a turn more toward cultural determinism, the notion of a backward people catching up with more advanced people was at last brought within the bounds of feasibility. When all is said and done, cultural Darwinism offers some hope to Africa if it responds to cultural modernization.

Concluding Overview In the Bible, as we have indicated, the concept of “Africa,” as well as “the Black race,” is represented by the concept of “Ethiopia.” In the history of Islam, the Black diaspora is represented by the Abyssinian, Bilal son of Rabah, a close disciple of the Prophet Muhammad. But religious scripture has also been used to legitimize racism and Black degradation. Ham, the second son of Noah, has been used as the father of either the accursed or the less blessed race.20 The derived term of Hamitic was used by anthropologists to refer to North Africans until relatively recent times. In the history of the slave trade, Aristotle’s distinction between natural slaves and natural masters became a major source of moral arguments to justify the enslavement of Black people. It was, also, sometimes invoked to spare American Indians from enslavement and substitute Blacks instead.

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The experience of slavery in America even racialized the liberalism of such great thinkers as Thomas Jefferson. On the one hand, Jefferson believed that great pain and suffering were often the source of great poetry. But Jefferson claimed that there was one great exception to this link between the Muse and martyrdom: Black people. According to Jefferson, Blacks were incapable of great poetry in spite of their great pain. John Stuart Mill, another great liberal thinker, claimed that “barbarians” did not have a right to self-determination. Under the term “barbarian,” Mill included many societies of Asia and Africa. Karl Marx had a whole phase of historical materialism called “the Oriental, or Asiatic, phase,” a despotic and retarded phase. Friedrich Engels applauded French colonization of the “Bedouins,” of Algeria, in the 1830s. David Hume seemed convinced that among people of color were to be found “no ingenious manufactures . . . no arts, no sciences.”21 From such dichotomous distinctions as “barbarian” and “civilized,” “slave” and “master,” this chapter has also traced evolutionary theories such as social and cultural Darwinism within which Africa and Black people were deemed lowly and retarded. Repudiation of such theories by Africans and Black thinkers appearing later in this book have included ideas such as Afrocentricity, Negritude, and such Multicultural doctrines as Africa’s Triple Heritage—of the indigenous, the Islamic, and the influence of the West.

Notes 1

See Ali Mazrui, “Edmund Burke and Reflections on the Revolution in the Congo,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 2, (1963), pp. 121–133. 2 See Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959) & Margery Perham, The Colonial Reckoning, (London, 1961) Reith Lectures. 3 See Genesis, chapter 9, verses 25–26. 4 Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, (New York: Knopf, 1948). 5 See A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936). Consult also Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1, (1985), pp. 21–37. 6 Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, p. 233; A. O. Lovejoy, “Some Eighteenth Century Evolutionists,” Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXV, No. 4 (July 1904), pp. 238–251.

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Chapter One

See P. D. Curtin, The Image of Africa, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1965), pp. 38–39. I am indebted to Curtin’s book for bibliographical guidance and for some insights. 8 See T. Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1842), pp. 46 – 47, especially consult also Curtin, The Image of Africa, pp. 375–377. See also Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, (London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1845), esp. pp. 435 – 443. This notion of a moving center of civilization is also discussed in my Inaugural Lecture, Ancient Greece in African Political Thought, (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967). 9 J. S. Mill, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, R. B. McCallum (ed.), (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946). Consult also Joseph Ike Asike, “Culture, Development and Philosophy,” Africa and the World, Vol. I, No. 3, (April 1988), pp. 20–25. 10 Ibid. Carl G. Rosberg, Jr., for example, makes a similar point when he argues that “The dangers to stability presented by ethnic and other parochialism are magnified in most African states by a lack of that fundamental of common values and widely shared principles of political behavior generally termed ‘consensus.’ Typically, the terms of a consensus prescribe that the pursuit of group interests be conducted peaceably and within established institutions of the constitutional framework.” See Rosberg, “Democracy and the New African States” in Kenneth Kirkwood (ed.), St. Antony’s Papers on African Affairs, No. 2, (London: Chatto and Windus, 1963), p. 26. Comparable arguments abound in the literature on democracy in new states. 11 See Packenham, “Approaches to the Study of Political Development,” World Politics, Vol. XVII, No. 1, (Oct. 1964), pp. 108–120. For subsequent additional insights, I have benefited from conversations with Gwendolen Carter, the late William O. Brown and the late James S. Coleman. 12 Packenham, “Approaches to the Study of Political Development.” 13 See esp. Shils, Political Development in the New States, (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1965), pp. 10 ff. See also David Easton, “Political Science in the United States: Past and Present,” International Political Science Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, (1985), pp. 133–152. 14 Shils, Political Development in the New States. 15 Gabriel Almond has shared such a vision of political development, especially in his earlier work. A more cautious but related formulation is Eisenstadt’s who says: “Historically, modernization is the process of change towards those types of social, economic and political systems that have developed in Western Europe and North America from the Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth and have then spread to other European countries and in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries to the South American, Asian and African continents.” See Eisenstadt, Modernization: Protest and Change, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1966), p. 1. Consult also the series of books entitled “Studies in Political Development” sponsored by the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council of the United States. Of special interest as a study of value-systems in Lucian W. Pye and

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Sidney Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965). 16 See McNeill, The Rise of the West, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963). For a more ambivalent work, see J. M. Roberts, The Triumph of the West, (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985). 17 Parsons, “Evolutionary Universals in Society,” American Sociological Review, XXIX (June 1964), p. 356. See also in the same issue of the journal, S. N. Eisenstadt, “Social Change, Differentiation and Evolution.” 18 James Roland Pennock, “Political Development, Political Systems and Political Goods,” World Politics, Vol. XVIII, No. 3 (April 1966), p. 424. 19 Ibid. p. 434. Pennock cites an appendix in Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas, (Princeton, 1960) and Phillips Cutright, “National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (April 1963), pp. 253–264. Another discussion by Almond of some of these issues is in his article, “A Development Approach to Political Systems,” World Politics, Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Jan. 1965), pp. 183–214. 20 See Genesis, chapter 9 (especially verses 24 –26) and chapter 10 (especially verses 6–20).

CHAPTER TWO THREE SCHOOLS OF AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: CULTURAL, IDEOLOGICAL AND CRITICAL There are, at least, three identified distinct schools of philosophy in Africa: the cultural school, encompassing the oral tradition and its lessons; the ideological school, encompassing the ideas of political activists and leaders; and the critical school, encompassing academic philosophers— usually based at universities. Cultural philosophy is the philosophy of sages, usually the accumulated wisdom of ancestry. Ideological philosophy is the philosophy of advocates, rallying intellectual skills to the service of particular political or moral causes. Critical philosophy is the philosophy of academic rationalists—trained in method, as well as content, and sometimes putting method before content.1

The Cultural School The cultural school of African philosophy could be a part of philosophy without philosophers, a body of philosophical thought which has accumulated across generations. But in what sense is it philosophy without philosophers? Philosophy is, admittedly, a complex search for meaning in relations between ideas, values, and principles in relationships amongst and between human beings, and in relations between human beings and nature. Cultural philosophy is cumulative across generations, with no identifiable authors. Secondly, cultural philosophical thought is basically collective, rather than individual in origin. African Platos, Aristotles, Kants, and Descartes are part of a collective flow of intellectual history. Thirdly, African cultures had no concept of intellectual property or copyright. Brilliant ideas or brilliant poems, therefore, either became part of a shared heritage or receded into oblivion. And since there was no private intellectual property, plagiarism would have been a strange concept in Africa. Indeed, according to African beliefs, individuals always plagiarize from society. Individuals plagiarize

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language from society and the meaning of words. Individuals plagiarize values and the traffic indicators of morality from society. Individuals plagiarize concepts from society and seek to build normative models upon them. The primary plagiarism is what individual philosophers have hijacked from society: values, words, and concepts. The secondary plagiarism is what society received back from gifted individuals without acknowledgement. The stream of experience meanders on In the vast expanse of the valley of time The new is come and the old is gone The oral tradition in a changing clime

The cultural school of philosophy is rooted primarily in indigenous traditions. It is what is sometimes called “ethnophilosophy.” But we prefer the term “cultural” mainly because it is more accurate in this instance. The fact that much of indigenous philosophy is ethnic-specific (e.g., the philosophy of the Lugbara) is only one attribute of that body of thought. Cultural philosophy also tends, by and large, to be collectivist, and is transmitted mainly through the oral tradition. But the collectivism should not be exaggerated. There were individual innovators as well. This corpus of African thought is sociological— encompassing the way of life of a people, the rules governing it, and the cumulative wisdom of the ancestors across generations—but sometimes guided by exceptional individuals. If, in the West, philosophy begins with thought, and empirical science begins with touch, cultural philosophy in Africa makes no sharp distinction between thought and touch. The completed syllogism of one aspect of African cultural philosophy is as follows: We feel, Therefore we think, Therefore we are!

In time-scale, the cultural current of philosophy in Africa includes precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial phases. It is almost by definition the oldest and most durable of Africa’s philosophical traditions. But for our purposes, in this chapter, we distinguish between culture and ideology. Here, we use the narrow sense of ideology as a policyoriented body of ideas, mainly designed to govern political action and define political goals. Of course, culture does include ideology, and the

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cultural current of philosophy in our sense subsumes political goals and action. But culture is a whole way of life, and not merely the arena of political relations. The cultural school of African philosophy includes such concerns as relations between man and nature, between the living and the dead, between husband and wife, as well as between rulers and subjects in those African societies which did traditionally have distinct rulers. The ideological current of African thought is even more narrowly political. It tends to be mainly colonial and post-colonial, and ranges from Kwame Nkrumah’s Consciencism to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. There was very little of this kind of philosophizing in the precolonial period. Ideological thought is, therefore, in this particular sense, primarily a child of colonialism and its aftermath. It does include Kenya’s Oginga Odinga as a thinker. Cultural philosophy is, in the first instance, conceived in indigenous languages. Ideological philosophy in Black Africa is disproportionately in European languages. Cultural philosophy is, as we have indicated, mainly collectivist and cumulative. The tradition is not usually in terms of great individual thinkers. There are very few African Platos, African Lockes and Rousseaus, or African Hegels. The current of cultural philosophy is normally the flow of collective wisdom, cumulative across generations. Ideological philosophy in colonial and post-colonial Africa raises the individual afresh as the fountain of ideas. African philosophy begins to be studied in terms of the ideas of individuals like Amilcar Cabral and Gamal Abdel Nasser, rather than the philosophies of cultural units like the Kakwa or the Berbers. If cultural philosophy is ethnic-specific in the sense we mentioned, e.g., Yoruba philosophy, ideological philosophy tends to be Africaspecific, in the sense of generalizing about Africa as a whole or the Black experience worldwide. In other words, while the fountain of ideological philosophy is narrower than the fountain of cultural philosophy (the individual thinker instead of collective wisdom), the subject-matter of ideological philosophy is often wider (being concerned with Africa as a whole or Black people generally, rather than a particular ethnic group). A particular thinker like Agostinho Neto of Angola was a narrower fountain of ideas than the Ovambo people as a source of collective cultural wisdom. But Neto was concerned about the Black genius in international capitalist conditions. He knew more about Africa and the world than the Ovambo ancestors perhaps did. The ultimate value of cultural philosophy is probably identity. All the other elements reinforce the self-awareness and identity of, say, the Wolof as a people. On the other hand, the ultimate value of ideological

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philosophy has tended to be liberation. Some thinkers have linked liberation to Pan-Africanism, others to Black genius. Of course, other values also come into play. But because of the nature of the colonial impact in this particular period of African history, the political focus of so much of Africa’s ideological preoccupation has centered on liberation. Although we must not confuse it with populism, cultural philosophy is to some scholars basically a philosophy of the masses. It consists of ideas which are essentially often intelligible to ordinary people. The philosophy is expressed in languages, indigenous African languages, which are meaningful to the average citizen. Although there are exceptions, like the thought of Ogotonmeli of the Dogon, cultural philosophy is basically about a familiar way of life, intellectually accessible to almost every man or woman in the village. On the other hand, ideological philosophy in our sense is basically elitist, even when it seeks to identify with the masses. Amilcar Cabral identified with the most ordinary of Africans, and Fanon elevated even the lumpen-proletariat to a level of dignity and respectability unimagined by the more skeptical Karl Marx. And yet neither Marx nor Fanon, nor indeed Cabral, is intelligible to the ordinary villager in Burkina Faso or among the rural Karamojong of Uganda. The ideas of Marx and Fanon constitute a conversation among the urbanized and westernized African elite. A central problem with Africa’s ideological thought continues to be the language in which it is expressed. While empirical science elsewhere begins with the five senses—touch, sight, smell, hearing, and feeling— linguistic philosophy is often concerned with the five tenses: was, is, will be, ought and eternal. More important than the philosophy of language in Africa is the language of philosophy. Colonial and post-colonial ideologies are disproportionately in European languages. The formal study of philosophy at African universities is done in foreign imperial languages: English, French, Portuguese, etc. Most of the towering modern African thinkers, from Edward W. Blyden to Paulin J. Houtondji, have conducted their primary discourse in European languages. The main exceptions are in Arabic-speaking Africa. As for those African thinkers inspired by external ideologies, it is a socio-linguistic impossibility for an African to be a sophisticated Marxist without being substantially Westernized. This is because access to Marxist literature is still overwhelmingly in European languages. An African learns his or her first European language not simply as a skill but in a massive educational process of acculturation. By the time the African is

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competent enough in a European language to understand Marxist literature, that African is substantially Westernized. It is this bondage of language which had made so much of ideological philosophy in Africa hopelessly elitist, even when it is doctrinally opposed to elitism. Much of the philosophy of people like Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique was committed to liberation and morally concerned about ordinary African people. But most of such ideological philosophy had inadvertently erected for itself a linguistic barrier to keep the ordinary people out. It is not an iron curtain; it is a curtain of the impenetrable verb. The people cannot understand the language—not because it is a technical idiom, but because it is a foreign tongue. That is one of the most fundamental of the differences between the cultural current of African philosophy, transmitted orally in indigenous languages, and the ideological current, transmitted in writing using European languages. Arab Africa has been less dependent on European languages. Arabic has filled the gap. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s philosophy of the revolution was originally in Arabic. On the other hand, in Arab Africa, both cultural and ideological philosophies have often been inseparable from religion. Issues of mosque and magistrate, church and state, have come to the fore. The tension between secularism and religious thought was sometimes at its sharpest in Egypt. It was in 1928 that Hassan al-Banna established the Muslim Brotherhood, with considerable consequences for the entire subsequent period: In its sixty years, the Brotherhood has managed to politicize Islam as no other indigenous popular movement has ever done in Egypt, . . . In its most violent phase (1945–1965) the Brotherhood was implicated in assassinations of its political opponents in both royal and revolutionary Egypt.2

Gamal Abdel Nasser broke the power of the Brotherhood in Egypt for a while. Later on, internal divisions weakened the power of the Brotherhood in the concluding years of the twentieth century. But the Muslim Brotherhood has remained one of the most active schools of Islamic ideology throughout much of Arab Africa. Other streams of Islamic thought in Egypt have included Sufism and the established authority of the ulamaa of Al-Azhar University. Ideological philosophy in Morocco during this period included issues of whether or not there was a Muslim equivalent of the divine right of kings. Particularly dramatic was the famous fatwa, legal opinion, by Sheikh Al Islam Moulay Al Arbi Alaoui, given in December 1963. He ruled that the legitimacy of the monarch depended on whether he ascended

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to the throne through shura, consultation, and with the approval of the ummah (community of believers). The fatwa was a direct challenge to the principle of hereditary succession and the credentials of King Hassan II of Morocco. Debates about the nature of royal legitimacy have continued ever since.3 In Libya, the monarch was overthrown in September 1969. When Muammar Qaddafi launched his “cultural revolution” in 1973, he attempted to abolish the distinction between ideology and culture. He developed Libya’s philosophy of “The Third Universal Theory,” consisting of Arabo-Islamic unity, Arabo-Islamic socialism, and Libyan popular democracy. The Libyan opposition to Qaddafi’s Cultural Revolution included liberal and socialist Libyans, sections of the Sanusi Muslims, sections of Ikhwan (Muslim brotherhood) and, for a while, a dynamic and charismatic Tripoline preacher, Sheikh al-Bishti. The sheikh later disappeared under ominous and mysterious circumstances. Tunisia took the debate about modernity and tradition in North African thought to new levels. In a way, Tunisia was continuing a controversy which was unleashed on modern Islam in an earlier generation by the Egyptian, Muhammad Abduh, and his mentor, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. And yet, ironically, Tunisia’s Habib Bourguiba did not take his cue from Abduh and Afghani. Bourguiba took his inspiration from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Lamartine. Bourguiba’s ambition was to recreate Tunisia in the image of the French revolution. By seeking to reduce the role of Islam in Tunisian society, Bourguiba unleashed a considerable philosophical and literary upsurge on the competing claims of modernity and tradition, Westernism and Islam. Once again, cultural and ideological philosophy converged in an African society.4 The third school of African philosophy, after cultural and ideological, is the critical school. Like the ideological current, the critical school is also a colonial and post-colonial response. Both schools also use primarily European languages and have been profoundly influenced by Western intellectual traditions. But while the ideological school is self-consciously political, the critical school is more narrowly academic. While the ideological school is preoccupied with liberation, the critical school aspires to be morally agnostic or value-free. While the ideological school is often nationalistic, the critical school aspires to be strictly rationalistic. The critical school of African philosophy does have a concept of “liberation,” but what is to be liberated is philosophy itself—rather than Africa. A rescue operation is ostensibly needed to emancipate philosophy

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in Africa from both ethnology, as in our concept of cultural philosophy, and ideology, as we have defined it. The central thesis of the critical school is basically as follows: Philosophy only exists where there is a personal commitment by philosopher(s) to rational discourse, the only truth or value is that elaborated or revealed in the crucible of the debate between consciences and confrontation with the Real . . . (Philosophy must cease to be) the handmaiden of Religion or politics and become a faithful but demanding collaborator with them.5

To some extent, the critical school aspires to bring philosophy back to the fold of the scientific spirit. The “confrontation with the Real” is basically a beckoning to the measurements of rationalism. Paradoxically, critical philosophy is also an invitation to some degree of empiricism—the criteria of touch in a special sense of realism. African critical philosophers, in this sense, have included F. Crahay, B. F. Ebouassi, P. J. Hountondji, K. Anthony Appiah, M. Towa, Kwame Gyekye and S. Adotevi. Their ambition is, in a sense, to make African philosophy more scientific, more disciplined, and more rigorous. Most of them have declared war against what Houtondji, in alliance with the structuralists, calls the “unthought.” The three original general currents of African philosophy that we have discussed here—cultural, ideological, and critical—are not rigidly demarcated. African Islamic thought and African Christian thought have often cut across both culture and ideology in our sense. The legacies of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and his Egyptian disciple, Muhammad Abduh, have continued into the second half of the twentieth century—grappling with the cross-cultural tensions between modern science and ancient sacred truth. Secular cross-culturalism includes the impact of Marxism-Leninism on indigenous ideas of collectivism. African thinkers, like and Nyerere, insisted that African socialism owed nothing to class struggle. The question has often been raised whether the concept of “class” was African at all. Why did most African languages lack a word for “class?” The African versions of modernism in Islamic thought that we referred to earlier are also cross-cultural. These, too, have produced their heroes and martyrs. Among the most original of Africa’s Islamic thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century was the Sudanese theologian, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha. His concept of the Dual Message of Islam was more cross-temporal than cross-cultural. Taha engaged in an

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intellectual effort to reconcile the ethos of the twentieth century with the spirit of the ancient era of the Prophet Muhammad. Mahmoud Taha argued cross-temporally and with a new freshness, insisting that one message of the Prophet was intended only for his followers in his own day (the Arabs of the seventh century of the Christian era) and the second message of Islam was intended for all time. The secret of true piety, according to Taha, was not only to recognize this crosstemporal duality of the Islamic message but also to be able to distinguish between what was historically specific to the seventh century and what was truly eternal. Mahmoud Muhammad Taha paid the supreme price for his cross-temporal intellectual innovations. The regime of Ja’afar Nimeiry in the Sudan executed him for apostasy and heresy in 1985.6 A few months later Nimeiry himself was overthrown from power. Christian thinkers in Africa have done more than merely interpret their own Gospel. They have often taken the lead in cross-culturally reinterpreting the indigenous civilization of Africa as well. An impressive breakthrough in Christian interpretation of African indigenous thought came with Father Tempels’ seminal book, Bantu Philosophy. It was a look at traditional thought viewed from the outside. The perspective was sympathetic, but basically Euro-Christian. Tempels was followed by a whole school of Christian interpreters of the ancestral heritage of Africa.7 Afro-Christian interpreters of indigenous philosophy since Tempels’ seminal work have included J. Kinyongo of Zaire, Alexis Abe Kagame of Rwanda, W. E. Abraham of Ghana and John Mbiti of Kenya. Sometimes the basic Christianity of these writers has distorted their Africanity, and portrayed the indigenous heritage in Christo-centric terms. Some of these writers wanted their Western readers to believe that traditional African beliefs were almost Christian, as if the African ancestors anticipated Jesus Christ and the Sermon on the Mount. The late Ugandan anthropologist and poet, Okot p’Bitek, complained about this dual tendency among sympathetic Westernized writers to Christianize and Hellenize the indigenous heritage of Africa. Okot p’Bitek was blowing the whistle against this new cultural “Trojan Horse,” which was penetrating Africa’s traditional legacies.8 In spite of these dangers of Christo-centrism and Eurocentrism, there is little doubt that the efforts of Christianized Africans to interpret the legacy of the Black ancestors had made much of that cultural heritage more intellectually accessible to the rest of the world. Books like John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy have been translated into languages which have ranged from Japanese to Finnish. It is one of the ironies of history that John Mbiti has seldom been translated into African languages.

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We are back to the problem of the language of philosophy in Africa—so different from the British preoccupation with the philosophy of language. In cross-cultural terms, Julius Nyerere is the most enterprising of African political philosophers. He has philosophized extensively in both English and Kiswahili. He has tried to tear down the language barrier between ancestral cultural philosophy and the new ideological tendency of the post-colonial era. Nyerere is superbly eloquent in both English and Kiswahili. He has allowed the two languages to enrich each other as their ideas have passed through his intellect. His concept of ujamaa as a basis of African socialism was itself a brilliant cross-cultural transition. Ujamaa traditionally implied ethnic solidarity. But Nyerere transformed it from a dangerous principle of ethnic nepotism into more than a mere equivalent of the European word “socialism.” In practice, his socialist policies did not work, as much for global reasons as for domestic impediments. But, in intellectual terms, Nyerere is a more original thinker than Kwame Nkrumah, and linguistically much more innovative. Nkrumah tried to update Lenin— from Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism to Nkrumah’s Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nyerere translated Shakespeare into Kiswahili instead—both Julius Caesar, as Juliasi Kaizari, and The Merchant of Venice, as Mabepari wa Vanisi. Nkrumah’s exercise in Leninism was a less impressive cross-cultural achievement than Nyerere’s translation of Shakespeare into an African language. Yet both these African thinkers will remain among the towering figures of the twentieth century in politics and thought.9

Conclusion The three schools of African philosophy—cultural, ideological and critical—do indeed overlap. The most Afrocentric of the three schools tends to be the cultural, and sometimes the ideological. The closest to Eurocentrism may be the critical school. All three philosophical schools together stand a chance of reopening the philosophical agenda in the postCold War era when ideological advocates seem to be on the decline, and a new wave of ethno-cultural sages are on the ascendancy. Whither African thought?

Notes 1 The author first developed these three schools in his contribution to Chapter 21, “Philosophy and Science,” of the UNESCO General History of Africa, Africa

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Since 1935 (London: Heinemann Educational and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). This paper has borrowed considerably from the UNESCO chapter. 2 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Egypt’s Islamic Activism in the 1980s,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2, (April 1988), p. 640. See also Eric Davis, “Religion and the State: A Political Economy of Religious Radicalism in Egypt and Israel,” in Richard T. Antoun and Mary Elaine Hegland (eds.), Religious Resurgence: Contemporary Cases in Islam, Christianity and Judaism (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987), pp. 145–168. 3 Jamal Benomar, “The Monarchy, the Islamist Movement and Religious Discourse in Morocco,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2, (April 1988), pp. 550–551. See also Michael W. Suleiman, “Morocco in the Arab and Muslim World: Attitudes of Moroccan Youth,” The Maghreb Review, Vol. 14, Nos. 1–2, (1989), pp. 16–27. 4 For an early evaluation see Clement Henry Moore, Tunisia Since Independence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965). See also Marion Boulby, “The Islamic Challenge: Tunisia Since Independence,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 2, (April 1988), pp. 590–593. Consult also Muhsin Mahdi, “Orientalism and the Study of African Philosophy,” Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, (1990). 5 Elungu Pene Elungu, Eveil Philosophique Africain, (Paris: Harmattan, 1984), pp. 40 – 41. My work for UNESCO was indebted to Marcien Towa and Malu wa Kalenga for bibliographical guidance. 6 See Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, The Second Message of Islam, English translation. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1987). 7 R. P. Tempels, La Philosophie Bantoe, (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1949). African political philosophy is discussed in W. O. Oyugi and A. Gitonga (eds.), Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa, (London: Heinemann, 1987). 8 See Okot p’Bitek, African Religion in Western Scholarship, (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1969) approx.; consult also Abbe Kagame, La philosophie bantou-rwandaise de l’etre, (Brussels: Academie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, 1956); John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, (London and Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969); J. Kinyongo, “Philosophie en Afrique: une existence,” in African Philosophical Journal, No. 3– 4, (1974), pp. 205–211; and W. E. Abraham, The Mind of Africa. 9 Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, (London: Panaf Books, 1966; Heinemann Educational, 1968; Canton, Ohio: International Publishing, 1966; and New York: State Mutual Books, 1981); Julius K. Nyerere, Juliasi Kaizari, (Nairobi and London: Oxford University Press, 1963); and Julius K. Nyerere, Mabepari Wa Vanisi na William Shakespeare, (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1969).

CHAPTER THREE POLITICAL VALUES AND IDEOLOGICAL TRENDS IN AFRICA In this chapter, we investigate and interrogate five major traditions of political thought in Africa. The first is the conservative tradition, with its emphasis on continuity rather than change. Its relevant sub-traditions include the elder tradition, the warrior tradition, the sage tradition, and the monarchical tendency. The second is the nationalist tradition, stressing collective solidarity and opposition to foreign rule and external control. The third is the liberal capitalist tradition, with its emphasis on economic individualism, private initiative, as well as civil liberties. The fourth is the socialist tradition, which is sensitive to the morality of equality and opposed to class-based privileges. And the fifth tradition is the internationalist tradition, with its concern for the human race as the yardstick of global morality. Nonalignment is Africa’s approach to internationalism.

Principles of Conservatism The Conservative Tradition We begin with the conservative tradition in African political ideas. We first identify some of its main characteristics before we relate it more directly to Africa’s political experience. An important initial premise of African conservatism is the sacredness of one’s ancestry. The tendency to treat ancestry with deference and deep respect is a characteristic of the conservative turn of mind. Ancestry is taken so seriously by the conservative African partly because continuity is regarded as an important principle. Because continuity between the past and the present is important, continuity between the dead and the living is also important. Revering ancestors is a form of respect for the past. Kofi Busia’s scholarly studies on the Ashanti of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya (1938), a book

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dealing with the Kikuyu people of Kenya, were works which dignified ancestry.1 In that way, a conservative might prefer continuity to change. He or she would not be opposed to all kinds of change. Where change is necessary all that a conservative would insist upon is gradualism. A profound distrust of either sudden or fundamental change is part of the conservative tradition in any political culture. A related characteristic of African conservatism is a reliance on experience rather than history. This again is part of the logic of respecting the past. What has been tried out, and has seemingly withstood the test of time, is to be preferred to what is let out as a theoretical blueprint for social transformation. An understanding of history is regarded as a better guide to political action than is the knowledge of ideology. Also arising out of this empirical emphasis is the conservative preference for the specific, for the concrete, as against the general and abstract. Rights and duties are often viewed as belonging to specific societies, rather than in generalized terms such as human rights. Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish political philosopher of the conservative tradition, was sympathetic to the thirteen American colonies in their anti-colonial rebellion against George III. But Burke felt that while the Americans had a good case, they worded it wrongly. Burke regarded the American founding fathers primarily as Englishmen. When they demanded the right of representation before they would obey the duty of taxation, they were demanding the rights of Englishmen rather than “the rights of man.” This Burkean approach was typically conservative, stressing specific rights which had developed out of the history of a specific society, rather than focusing on an abstract universal morality. Burkean philosophy later influenced the culturally relative British policy of Indirect Rule in Africa. Partly related to this aspect of social specificity, and partly because of the sacredness of ancestry, the conservative tradition takes kinship loyalties seriously. It also idealizes family virtues. In Black Africa, conservatism may take the form of “tribal” solidarity, both black and white. Among the Afrikaners of South Africa “tribalism” may take the form of Afrikanerdom, the unity of the volk. Sometimes, kinship solidarity can be a metaphor for right-wing nationalism in Europe or Latin America. The sacredness of shared ancestry in Africa creates its own pull in favor of oneness on the basis of kith and kin. Alongside this pull of kinship in the conservative tradition is the pull of religion. The conservative tradition mistrusts “excessive” secularization and rationalization. Faith is often valued as a cardinal conservative virtue, emphasizing the links between the natural and the ultimate, between the

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secular and the sacred, between the mundane and the divine, between the temporal and the spiritual. Léopold Sédar Senghor has described atheism as fundamentally alien to African culture partly for this reason. Partly because of its link with the past, the conservative tradition in Africa is in many ways the most authentically indigenous of all the legacies of political thought. It concerns itself not just with the immediate colonial past but also with the pre-colonial antiquity. The sacredness of ancestry is taken seriously, sometimes literally to the mythical founding fathers of each particular “ethnic identity,” be it Kintu for the Baganda, Gikuyu and Mumbi for the Kikuyu, or Gboro and Leme for the Lugbara. The principle of continuity includes the doctrine of shared loyalties between the living, the dead, and the unborn. The dead, in turn, in many African societies, exist in two stages. The first stage is when they are still being remembered as specific individuals by those still alive. The second stage is when the dead really do recede into oblivion. The Kenyan philosopher and writer on African religions, John Mbiti, has termed the stage when the dead are still being remembered by the living—the Sasa (present) stage, and the stage of complete oblivion—the Zamani (past) stage. African interest in large families has sometimes been due to a desire to prolong the Sasa stage for parents. On the one hand, getting many children is an insurance against the losses of infant mortality. But, on the other hand, having many children who might remember their parents after they are dead, and pass on that memory to their own children, could be a passport to the immortality of the parents as they remain in the Sasa stage of death, maintaining contact with the living. The manifestation of the conservative tradition in African political culture is either through the oral tradition or through the political behavior of African societies, in spite of alien post-colonial constitutions. The preference for kinship solidarity, as against theoretical ideology, has manifested itself behaviorally in many African elections. In Nigeria, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was sometimes the most prominent voice of the Left in his country. He articulated socialist rhetoric, trying to reach the disadvantaged of Nigeria regardless of ethnic origins. But whenever an election took place, and the Chief looked to see who was following him, he discovered that his followers were almost invariably fellow Yoruba, regardless of social class, rather than the disadvantaged of Nigeria, regardless of ethnic origins. In East Africa, Oginga Odinga often articulated the rhetoric of the Left in Kenya. But apart from a few intellectuals and academics, those who responded to Odinga’s trumpet-call were not the disadvantaged of

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Kenya—regardless of ethnic group. They were, instead, Oginga Odinga’s ethnic compatriots, the Luo, regardless of social class. What this evidence reveals is the preference of the electorate in countries like Nigeria and Kenya for concrete kinship solidarity as against ideological theory, a preference for shared sacred ancestry as against commitment to radical change. The conservative tradition in Africa is, thus, manifested and expressed behaviorally, rather than in written texts. To that extent, in Africa, the conservative tradition tends to have invisible authors, a body of thought without attribution to specific individual thinkers. Conservatism tends to be a political culture, rather than a theoretical masterpiece from one individual mind. Conservatism is captured in the accumulation of specific attitudes across generations, rather than in a specific text from a particular pen. Because African conservatism is captured so cumulatively, it is almost by definition collectivist. It is a body of thought resting on a cumulative consensus, linking the past with the present. The behavioral resilience of conservatism has emerged in related subtraditions. One is the elder tradition in African politics, conceding deference to age on the assumption that the older are wiser.2 If experience is indeed the ultimate teacher, those who have lived longer have experienced more. The elder tradition is a pinnacle of this pyramid of analysis. Let us explore these cultural continuities more closely.

The Elder Tradition The elder tradition is a combination of patriarchal and gerontocratic elements. The patriarchal factor focuses attention on a single father figure commanding general allegiance and respect. Gerontocracy is a concession to age rather than to a single paternal symbol. Gerontocracy is, after all, an early form of government in many societies, and used to be at one time a system in which the old men of the community were the rulers because of their presumed wisdom, special powers, and prestige.3 The elder tradition in Africa did, indeed, include this reverence for age. While not all African societies were gerontocratic, the great majority of them did give special dispensation and status to age and to its presumed elderly wisdom. In post-colonial Africa, a particularly striking illustration of the elder tradition at work was the role of the late President Jomo Kenyatta after independence. His very affectionate national title Mzee Kenyatta meant “old gentleman Kenyatta” or “father-figure Kenyatta,” or “Kenyatta the Elder.” Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire and Hastings Banda of

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Malawi also qualify as elders in this special sense. Tunisia’s former President, Habib Bourguiba, played the elder for so long that he was forcefully retired when he became senile. The elder tradition can be either interventionist or permissive. When it is interventionist, the father figure demands almost constant scrutiny of the behavior and the performance of the other members of the society, and seeks also to be almost constantly involved in decision-making. But where the patriarch, like Kenyatta, is permissive, he may prefer to let the system make the most of what the patriarch regards as less fundamental decisions. He might withdraw behind a cloud of silent authority, commanding allegiance more by his presence than by utterance, compelling reverence more by what he is than by what he says. It is possible in some situations to distinguish the elder tradition from the patriarchal tradition. It is arguable that the elder tradition should, in fact, be oligarchic, rather than autocratic, involving a collectivity of aged wisdom rather than the authority of single person. And as the saying goes, “the elders sat under a tree and talked until they agreed.”4 But, in this chapter, we merge the patriarchal and the elder themes together for ease of analysis in their implications for post-colonial African politics. The elder tradition in places like Kenyatta’s Kenya, or Banda’s Malawi, does have characteristics which could make it difficult for a legislature to survive with vigor. The tradition puts a high premium on deference and reverence to the father guru. Politically, this often can translate itself into affirmations of loyalty. The elder tradition also puts a high premium on at least the appearance of consensus, “family unity,” or “national solidarity.”

The Warrior Tradition The warrior tradition, on the other hand, prefers discipline to consensus, enforced agreement rather than a quest for compromise. The warrior tradition also prefers obedience to reverence, the salute of a soldier to the filial salutation of a child towards his parents. Obedience is a response to orders and instructions. Reverence is a response to customary devotion and hallowed dignity and traditional respect. The warrior tradition also thinks of itself as action-oriented, seeking to achieve results by physical exertion or the threat of physical action. Partly because the warrior tradition is heavily action-oriented, it tends to have a pronounced distrust of word-mongers. These are orators, politicians and intellectuals. Word-mongers are the specialists in verbal gymnastics, putting a special

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premium on verbiage as against valor, speech as against spear, wit as against war. Clearly, defined in these terms, the warrior tradition has all the makings of hostility towards a Western-style legislature. For what is a Western-style legislative assembly if it is not at its best an arena for wordmongers, for speech and wit, for argument and analysis as against armed bravery? In Anglophone Africa a particularly intriguing but transient instance of the resurrection of the warrior tradition in African political cultures was the rise of Idi Amin in Uganda in the 1970s. Amin symbolized the rugged, rustic warrior from the culture of the countryside, empowered suddenly with a modern army and with a state which was already a member of modern international organizations and a modern diplomatic system. Those aspects of the warrior tradition which were action-oriented, disciplinarian, anti-intellectual, distrustful of verbal skills based on analysis and argument, and partial to the skills of force and violent assertion, played their part in sealing the fate of legislative and quasilegislative institutions in Amin’s Uganda. Other African states under military rule suffered a similar fate.

The Sage Tradition The sage tradition conceptualizes political leadership not in terms of child and father, nor in terms of soldier and military commander, but in terms of student and teacher. The sage tradition gives political leaders the role of mentor in terms of skills and comprehension of politics, instructors to the general population about political virtue and political vice, a guide to the nation through the intricacies of interpreting the present world and preparing for the national future. If the warrior tradition is, at least ostensibly, distrustful of wordmongers, the sage tradition, at its best, often encourages a good deal of discussion and analysis—provided these are within the terms of the lessons given by their national teacher. At its best, the sage tradition does not only avoid anti-intellectualism, it even attempts to promote general intellectual vigor. China, under Mao Tse-tung, was in part a case of the sage tradition. The debates which accompanied certain major modifications in the Chinese political orientation under the late Mao illustrated this partiality by the Sage for vigorous argument and discussion. In Francophone Africa, a particularly impressive sage was Léopold Sédar Senghor—who was a poet, a philosopher, and a statesman. In East Africa, an interesting example was Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, who

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was himself a great admirer of Mao Tse-tung. Nyerere continued to be affectionately referred to by his people, as the Mwalimu, teacher or mentor. His style as President had indeed included this inclination to transform the whole nation into a classroom. The texts which were used in this national classroom were provided by Nyerere himself, and sometimes in collaboration with his colleagues. In modern terms, the sage tradition has often gone in tandem with documentary radicalism, a desire on the part of political leaders to produce documents of reform or revolution. In Tanzania’s experience, such documentary radicalism has ranged from the Arusha Declaration to the Mwongozo, from the terms of reference which led to the setting up of a one-party state to Nyerere’s document, Education for Self-Reliance. Another great sage was Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, who was in power from 1952 until his death in 1970. In Nasser’s Egypt, what was the impact of the sage tradition on the legislature? To some extent, the legislature was indeed overshadowed by the great teacher of the nation. On the other hand, Egypt’s political party, the Socialist Union still enjoyed considerable rights of debate. The sage tradition was not entirely distrustful of word-mongers, but gave them new arenas of disputation and word-play. Modern forms of the sage tradition have recognized that the nation as a whole cannot conceivably be an alternative classroom without the necessary organizational structure to get the lessons across to the different parts of the country. As the modern version of the sage tradition gets radicalized, it finds it important to have a political party that can reach some of the remotest corners of the population. Penetration becomes a political imperative. A radicalized sage tradition seeks to strengthen the party structure, partly to ensure that the nation is indeed an attentive classroom that can respond to guidance and direction. Julius Nyerere tried to convert the old Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) into a viable party of national attentiveness and collective response. In 1976, TANU at last merged with the Afro-Shirazi Party of Zanzibar to make penetration across both parts of the United Republic of Tanzania easier through a single revolutionary party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM).

The Monarchical Tendency The monarchical tendency often characterizes all three traditions so far mentioned. The monarchical tendency in Africa need not be an independent tradition but could be a recurrent conditioning factor on the

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elder tradition, the warrior tradition, and the sage tradition. It is even arguable that the monarchical tendency is basically patriarchal, and should be married to an analysis of patriarchal tendencies. In this interpretation, one would therefore be inclined to remove patriarchy away from the umbrella of the elder tradition and define it instead as a variant of the monarchical principle. We define this monarchical tendency in terms of at least four elements of political styles. There is, first, the quest for aristocratic effect. In postcolonial Africa, this takes the form of social ostentation. More specifically, it means a partiality for splendid attire, for large expensive cars, for palatial accommodation, and for other forms of conspicuous consumption. Ministers and Members of Parliament in African countries have been particularly prone to this kind of ostentation. Another factor which goes towards making a monarchical style of politics is the personalization of authority. On its own, this factor could be just another type of personality cult. But when combined with the quest for aristocratic effect, or with other elements of style, it takes a turn towards monarchism. Sometimes the personalization goes to the extent of inventing a special title for the leader. And, occasionally, the title is almost literally royal. But it can sometimes be “sacred” in another sense. Nkrumah’s title, the Osagyefo (Redeemer) was one such title. Hastings Banda, first President of Malawi, also adopted a neo-regal title, the Ngwazi. Bokassa took the monarchical tradition to its literal extreme— complete with an extravagant neo-Napoleonic coronation in the Central African Empire. And Idi Amin had a string of titles before and after his name as part of his official identity.5 This linkage between royalty and sacredness brings us to the third element in the monarchical political style—the sacralization of authority. As we indicated, this is sometimes linked to the process of personalizing authority, but this need not be. The glorification of a leader could be in non-religious terms. On the other hand, what is being sacralized need not be a person; it could be an office, or an institution. The institutional form of sacred authority is, however, rare in new states precisely because those institutions are so recent and weak. Legitimacy for the office of the president, or for a Parliament, was in most cases rather feeble. The fountain of legitimacy had not yet begun to be politically sacralized. The fourth factor in the politics of monarchism, especially in Africa, is the quest for a royal, historical identity. This phenomenon arises out of a vague feeling that national dignity is incomplete without a splendid past. And the glory of the past is then conceived in terms of ancient, kingly achievement.6

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As for literal monarchical systems in post-colonial Africa, those which have collapsed since the 1950s include the Royal houses of Egypt, Rwanda, Burundi, Zanzibar, Buganda, and Ethiopia. The most resilient surviving monarchies include those of Morocco and Swaziland.

Nationalism: Ideology and Policy Another major ideological force in Africa, after conservatism, is nationalism. This too takes a variety of forms. But what is nationalism? It is, as we see it, a defensive or militant loyalty to one’s nation, country or culture. The term is similar to the idea of patriotism, except in degree of militancy. Nationalism is quite often a more militant form of patriotism. Nationalism can have a different focus depending upon circumstances. For example, it can focus on the issue of language. Among the peoples of Africa, the Somali are particularly nationalistic about their language. They feel a strong sense of loyalty and pride towards it. In Canada, the Frenchspeaking Canadians have developed a form of nationalism with a linguistic focus. This is partly because many believe that French-speaking Canadians are disadvantaged in a country with an English-speaking majority, which also borders the United States. But linguistic nationalism is not peculiar to former colonies like Somalia and Canada. It does appear, also, among former imperial powers. France especially is very proud of its language. It is often militantly nationalistic about its promotion in the world, or its defense in the homeland. French linguistic nationalism has profoundly affected Africa. In Great Britain, Welsh nationalism is partly focused on language—regarding the language as an endangered species and seeking not only to protect it but to revive it more widely. In Belgium, the Flemish-speakers have become more nationalistic in relation to their language, and are often pitched against French-speaking Belgians, the Walloons. The impact on Zaire on metropolitan divisions was more subtle. But nationalism in other places can also be focused on religion rather than language. Jewish nationalism and Zionism, for example, are primarily based on a cultural allegiance founded on religious ancestry. Loyalty to Judaism, either as a theology or as a fountain of culture, is an integral part of Jewish nationalism. In foreign policy, Israeli and Jewish nationalism have affected post-colonial Africa. In the Sudan, the Mahdist Revolt against foreign rule in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was partly inspired by a form of nationalism with an Islamic focus. The Sudanese religious and nationalist struggle

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continued until Britain re-established control under the doctrine of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium in 1899. Also, in 1899, a Mahdi (or Islamic reviver) was proclaimed among the Somali, who then organized raids on British and Italian Somaliland. From 1900 to 1904, there were four British expeditions against this new adversary, “the Mad Mullah.” Since then, Somali nationalism has continued to have a religious component as well as its traditional linguistic focus. Nationalistic Mahdist movements have also appeared in West Africa from time to time. But Islam is not the only religion in Africa which has influenced the history of nationalism. Indigenous African religions have also played their part. Sometimes indigenous religious beliefs have been mobilized almost as weapons against the colonial order. The original primary resistance of African peoples against the incoming Europeans often invoked the support of supernatural forces against the white conquerors, sometimes with disastrous consequences. This is particularly true of such nationalistic resistance movements as the Maji Maji rebellion, in Tanganyika, against the Germans, from 1905 to 1907. The African fighters believed in the protective power of suitably blessed water. Belief in specially sanctified water is by no means peculiar to indigenous African religions. In Islam, there is the Zam water of the well of Medina. In Christianity, there is the holy water of Lourdes and the legacy of Saint Bernadette in France. This is quite apart from the Christian doctrine of sanctified or baptismal water at christening. But in the case of the Maji Maji rebellion, the sanctity of water was put to the immediate test. Would it protect African warriors from German bullets? Alas, the water was not enough of a shield. The warriors fell in the thousands. Nevertheless, the Maji Maji rebellion is widely regarded in Tanzania as the fountainhead of modern nationalism in the country. In addition to language and religion, nationalism can sometimes be based on race as a foundation. This is particularly widespread in Africa since the Second World War. Racially conscious African nationalism is partly a response to the arrogance of white rulers, and white settlers in colonial Africa. Because the rulers were so concerned with issues of racial differences, the colonial subjects in time became equally concerned about racial dignity. Out of this political defensive consciousness emerged a whole movement of Pan-Africanism, especially that version which emphasized the solidarity of Black peoples. In the first half of the twentieth century, the leadership of the PanAfrican movement was held by people of African ancestry in the western hemisphere. Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, George Padmore of Trinidad, and

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W. E. B. Du Bois of the United States were among the founding fathers of Pan-Africanism. From 1900 forward, there were Pan-African meetings to emphasize racial solidarity and organize for the struggle against discrimination and in pursuit of racial dignity for Black peoples—both in Africa and in the Western world. It was not until 1945 that the leadership of the Pan-African movement passed from Blacks of the Americas to Blacks of Africa. This was at the fifth Pan-African Congress held in Manchester, England, in 1945. Two of those who participated later became founding fathers of the newly independent countries. They were Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. The Africans at the conference were still slightly overshadowed by some of the giants of Black Nationalism from the Americas. The year 1945 nevertheless signifies the re-Africanization of Pan-Africanism, the passing of the torch from Diaspora of African ancestry abroad to citizens of African countries. Twelve years later Kwame Nkrumah headed the first government of independent Ghana, the first Black African country to be liberated from European colonial rule. But, meanwhile, a slightly different focus from race had entered the universe of Pan-Africanism. This was the focus of territory, of reestablishing control of the sovereignty of African lands. In a sense, territory is a more prevalent focus for nationalism than language, religion, or race. In Africa, territorially based forms of nationalism in the last stages of colonial rule had at least two main levels: state-wide and continentwide. African nationalism was either concerned with liberating each African country in turn, or with the liberation of a whole region in Africa, or the African continent as a whole. In our sense, regionally inspired nationalism goes beyond the focus of a single country and may encompass all of West Africa, all of East Africa, or all of North Africa. When it encompasses the African continent as a whole, both north and south of the Sahara, it becomes Trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism. While the TransAtlantic variety of Pan-Africanism emphasizes the solidarity of people with a Black skin, the Trans-Saharan version of nationalism emphasizes the solidarity of the African countries, both Black and Arab. The Organization of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union (AU), established in May 1963, was primarily based on the principle of TransSaharan Pan-Africanism, urging a unity based on the mystique of the Black race. The fifth focus of nationalism—after language, religion, race, and territory—is ethnicity. In Africa, this takes the form of what used to be called “tribal” unity. There is a good deal of debate as to whether the Mau Mau Movement in Kenya, from 1952 to 1960, was a nationally inspired

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Kenyan nationalist movement or whether it was an ethnically inspired movement led by the Kikuyu. The movement was a struggle against land hunger among the peoples of central Kenya, and against European monopoly of the best agricultural land in the country. Mau Mau was also a struggle for political and cultural liberation. Religious symbolisms used by the African fighters in the war were borrowed primarily from the religious heritage of the Kikuyu and related ethnic groups. This heritage was used as a basis for oathing ceremonies, to sanctify commitment to the movement and discourage treachery and subversion within the movement. Mau Mau fighters were preponderantly drawn from Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu ethnic groups. What this means is that both the fighters and the religious symbols of the movement were ethnic. But were the political goals of the movement national, its ethnic composition notwithstanding? If the answer to the second question is yes, then the Mau Mau Movement was a war of liberation carried out by the Kikuyu and related small “ethnic groups” but on behalf of the wider African political community within Kenya. Similarly, Mugabe’s army in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) two decades later consisted mainly of Shona ethnic compatriots. But the goals of the movement made it a liberation struggle for Zimbabwe as a whole. In short, it is possible for the composition of a movement to be ethnic while its political goals are national or even transnational. At the initial point of colonization, the distinction between national and ethnic resistance did not in any case make much sense. The ethnic groups of Africa resisted, as autonomous societies, against encroaching European penetration. Until the Europeans drew the colonial boundaries and created new proto-nations, any fighting by the Shona and the Ndebele was in each case both national and ethnic. Similarly, the struggles of the Banyoro, in Uganda, or the Hausa-Fulani, or Yoruba, in Nigeria, involved political communities where ethnic boundaries substantially coincided with ancient national boundaries. It was the colonial map-maker who disrupted this congruence between “tribal” and “national” identities. The sixth focus of nationalism involves comparing differing civilizations and evaluating them. This sixth focus is concerned with more than just one cultural theme, like language or religion. It encompasses the broad view of civilization, and the whole range of its institutions. Unlike linguistic nationalism, this civilizational variety is cultural nationalism at its most comprehensive. Civilizational nationalism, in the African experience, was often a reaction against European contempt for things African. Many colonial

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policy makers started from the assumption that African cultures were primitive and decidedly inferior to European civilizations. In terms of cultural nationalism, Africa’s response to this European arrogance has taken two basic nationalistic forms. One school of Negritude does not deny that African culture, before European colonization, was indeed in some sense “simple,” but this school of African cultural nationalism takes pride in precisely those aspects of culture which the white man despised. This version of Negritude takes pride in the very basic nature of African traditional outlook, cultures and methods. It praises the face-toface society at the village level, with its basic human intimacy. It finds strength in the collective life of “tribal” society with its complicated patterns of kinship obligations, its elaborate rituals of allegiance and mutual concern. Those African societies without complex institutions of coercion and control are to be congratulated rather than despised. The stateless societies that relied more on consensus than compulsion, on custom rather than power, on communal persuasion rather than state police force were morally ahead on the global scale rather than behind. Comparatively, this school of African cultural nationalism lies in the same tradition as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Noble Savage. For Rousseau, civilization in the western technical sense was a corrosive and corrupting influence. It stripped man of his basic sociability, pushing him behind the bars of the technological prison-house. Both Rousseau’s ideas of the Noble Savage before civilization, which stripped man of his nobility, and the African ideas of Negritude, which turned pre-colonial Africa into a Garden of Eden, are in the tradition of romantic primitivism in the history of letters and in the struggle against industrial civilization. The other basic type of African nationalistic reaction against western arrogance is in a way exactly the opposite of romantic primitivism. Instead of affirming African primordial simplicity, this second strategy tries to emphasize the complexity of African empires. Instead of taking pride in simple stateless societies with a minimum control and maximum consensus, this second form of African cultural nationalism focuses on the elaborate African monarchical and imperial systems, with all their complicated structures of control. Instead of concentrating on village life, the second version of cultural nationalism focuses on the pyramids and the intellectual glories of the ancient African university of Timbuktu. The two forms of cultural nationalism emphasize different realities (simple and complex) of Africa—each equally true in its own way.

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Capitalism: Ideology and Policy But political ideas are not only linked to culture and history. They are also profoundly affected by economics. Production and values are inseparable. Most of the debates about African policy options fail to draw a simple distinction between restoring African economies to market forces and entrusting them to private ownership and private control. It is true that the liberal doctrine, at least since Adam Smith, has tended to assume that the market comes into relatively independent play when the pursuit of wealth is left to private initiative. What we now call privatization was deemed to be the only viable approach to the triumph of the market. Privatization was the means; marketization was the end. But in reality an economy could be in private hands, and not be subject to the free market. Or it could be under state-ownership, and still respond to market forces and to the laws of supply and demand. The imperatives of re-structuring African economies have all too often assumed that the only route to the free market is through privatization. Economic reformers concerned with Africa have, indeed, equated privatization with marketization. Is it time to take another look? The free market in Africa can be constrained or inhibited by a number of factors which have very little to do with the state per se. A notorious inhibition on the free market in Africa is the simple fact that the whole market can be cornered or monopolized by an ethnic group. Africa has not yet discovered ethnic Anti-Trust Laws to prevent or break-up “ethnic monopolies” in certain key industries. Nigeria underwent the trauma of a civil war partly because the Igbo had been perceived in the North as monopolizing certain economic areas of activity—and the nation had no “anti-Trust legislation” for dealing with ethnic specialization and monopoly. Unfortunately, neither ethnic specialization nor counter-ethnic resentment ended in 1970 when large-scale fratricide came to a close in Nigeria. The civil war was concluded, but the precise cultural differences between the ethnic groups did not end. By the 1980s, the Igbo were, once again, a little too visible in certain areas of trade and industry for their own safety in the North of the country. We use the Igbo in this analysis, as an illustration of ethnicity, purely as a constraint on the market. In the 1980s, in Nigeria, there was more recognition of the need for ethnic “anti-Trust legislation” to prevent or to break up “tribal monopolies.” Sometimes, the euphemism for this description in favor of the disadvantaged is called “the federal character of

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Nigeria.” This is Nigeria’s nearest equivalent of the principle of affirmative action, as conceived and practiced in the United States. But in both countries the restoration of ethnic balance is rather haphazard, and sometimes in conflict with other democratic values. Plateau State in Nigeria built what was reputed to be the largest marketing structure in Black Africa. The Head of State came to open it. Yet, for a long time, the building was left hauntingly empty in a desperate struggle to ensure that when it was indeed finally utilized, the majority of the stall owners and the merchants would be “indigenes” of Plateau State (not “immigrants” from other parts of Nigeria). The precautions to prevent a “Southern monopoly” of the market were successful at the beginning. But, as so often happens, the process of a Southern “take-over” through deepening penetration has since got under way. But is not Igbo success in certain economic activities, or Yoruba success in others, a case of the free market finding its own equilibrium of efficiency? This would partly depend upon whether Igbo or Yoruba preponderance is due to the unencumbered free play of relevant market factors. But, in reality, there is devout ethnic solidarity and nepotism at play. And these ensure the success of some Nigerian entrepreneurs, and severely handicap the efforts of others. The considerations of an Igbo monopoly in the trade of car parts and other spare parts are not all rational elements of Igbo efficiency. Igbo success includes as one of its pillars Igbo nepotism. The same is true of Kikuyu success in Kenya in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is part of the reality of African conservatism in allegiance. In addition to ethnic nepotism as a constraint on the market, in spite of privatization, there is also the all-pervasive constraint of the prestige motive in Africa’s economic behavior. Traditional Western liberal doctrine had often taken for granted the psychology of the profit motive (later identified as the maximization of returns). African economic behavior, on the other hand, is often inspired more by the pursuit of prestige than by the quest for profit. Precisely because African cultures are more collectivist, members of the society are more sensitive to the approval and disapproval of the collectivity. On the positive side, the prestige motive serves as a device of income distribution. Those who are financially successful often desire renown for generosity. Obligations towards wider and wider circles of kinsfolk are fulfilled. Word gets around to relatives far and wide: “Our son has killed an ‘elephant.’ There is more than enough meat for us all to chop.” Those who succeed share their rewards with many others. Here, too, is cultural continuity.

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On the negative side, the prestige motive in African economic behavior encourages ostentatious consumption and self-indulgent “aristocratic” and “monarchical” exhibitionism. The Mercedes Benz has become the symbol of Africa’s ostentatious indulgence. In some places, and especially in Nigeria, the expensive fleet of cars often goes with a palace or two, sometimes a private plane and a helicopter, and a loud way of life, all for a single family! While the profit motive in classical economic theory was supposed to lean towards greater production, the prestige motive in contemporary African economic behavior leans towards greater consumption. What is more, because they often have to be imported, the consumer products commanding the most prestige require foreign exchange. Privatization on its own does not make an African economy produce more. The prestige motive operates both privately and at the state level, eating away into the resources of the country ominously. When Westerners call upon African countries to privatize, they are expecting the profit motive to be given a free play. But, in fact, the problem in most of Africa is not simply how to liberate and activate the profit motive; it is also about how to control and restrain the prestige motive. Arguably, the latter crusade is even more urgent than the former. Indeed, the ultimate crusade may well turn out to be how to tap the prestige motive in such a way that it serves the goals of production—and not merely the appetites of consumption. Can we make creativity more prestigious than acquisition? Can we make production more prestigious than possession? Should we take a closer look at the problem of incentives in Africa? How can we be more precisely sensitized to the African equilibrium between prestige and profit? A third major private constraint on the market, after ethnic nepotism and the prestige motive, is the general problem of bribery and corruption prevalent in post-colonial Africa. Corruption can clog up procedures and substantially paralyze production and distribution. Again, corruption can be both in the public and in the private sectors. It also can be bureaucratic or omnipresent. Privatization of the economy may simply mean the privatization of corruption. And, sometimes, this is more contagious in the wider society than the corruption of officials and bureaucrats. Capitalism has come to Africa without the “Protestant ethic” of work and frugality. Economically, Protestantism was not against the acquisitive instinct; rather, it was distrustful of the instinct to consume especially indulgently. As a Puritan saying put it at the time of the Reformation: “You may labor to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin.” Wealth was regarded as unethical only insofar as it was a temptation to

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idleness and sinful indulgence. The acquisition of wealth was only dangerous if it eroded the twin disciplines of work and frugality in the name of God. Capitalism arrived in Africa with the imperative of acquisition, without the discipline of work and frugality. The white man himself, in Africa, set a dangerous example. He never washed his own clothes, or cooked his own food, or polished his own shoes, or made his own bed, or cleaned his own room, or washed his own dishes or even poured his own gin and tonic! The luxurious aristocratic life of the White settler, as he played master to the African servant, was detrimental to the spirit of the capitalism which the white man had himself arrived with. Africa’s own prestige motive, which had been sociable in its original indigenous versions, was now transformed by the aristocratic lifestyles imported by the White man. Africa’s prestige motive was given the colonial incarnation of expensive European consumer culture—complete with huge houses, domestic servants, and “garden boys.” If the ideology of entrepreneurship simply means acquisitiveness, this has now arrived in a big way in much of Africa. Indeed, those who do not take advantage of their opportunities to become wealthy, and to help their kinsfolk, are sometimes despised. The challenge is partly about the means used to acquire wealth. Is the wealth created, or simply obtained? Acquiring wealth from a prosperous farm is a creative process. Acquiring wealth as either a middle man, on behalf of external interests, or through corruption, may not be creative at all. Can we transform the acquisitive instinct in Africa into something more directly productive? But if the means of acquiring wealth need to be creative, the ends of acquiring wealth also need to be healthy. Ostentatious consumption is not usually among the healthier ends of economic success. In short, African ideology of entrepreneurship needs a fundamental reform of both the means and the end of the pursuit of wealth in society. Until that happens, the privatization of African economies—far from being the best way of achieving a healthy and free market—may itself be detrimental to the market-place. For those who are sufficiently attentive, the African experience demonstrates that privatization is not necessarily the best protection for the free market in all cultures. But modern capitalism in Africa has often been almost inseparable from socialist aspirations and sentiment. It is to the complexities of Africa’s socialist experience that we must now turn.

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Socialism: Ideology and Policy As a generalization, we might say that the intellectual climate for socialism in Africa has been quite good, but the sociological and material soil has not been fertile enough for socialism. Let us explore this twin proposition more fully. The reasons why the intellectual climate for socialism in Africa has been good include, once again, basic historical continuities and discontinuities. For one thing, many Africans (north and south of the Sahara) have conceptually associated capitalism with imperialism. In reality, you can have socialism accompanied by imperialism. Indeed, the Chinese used to protest against “social imperialism” and “Soviet hegemony.” It is also possible to be a capitalist country without being an imperialist country. Switzerland and Sweden might be considered, by some, as good illustrations of nonimperialist capitalism. But in Africa’s historical experience, it is indeed true that modern capitalism came with imperialism. Kwame Nkrumah was very sensitive to this linkage.7 The enemy of imperialism is nationalism; the enemy of capitalism is socialism. If there is indeed an alliance between capitalism and imperialism, why should there not be an alliance between African nationalism and socialism? Such a paradigm of intellectual and ideological convergence has been found attractive in many parts of Africa. Leaders like Sékou Touré, and movements like FRELIMO, Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, Mozambique Liberation Front, became socialist for nationalistic reasons. The second consideration which has contributed to the favorable intellectual climate for socialism in Africa concerns the whole accumulation of frustrations with efforts to develop Africa through Western patterns of economic growth. Many Africans sought alternative strategies of social and economic improvement out of a sheer sense of desperation at the inadequacies of the first decades of independence. In reality, socialist experiments in post-colonial Africa so far have not yielded any greater improvement for the masses than other experiments. On the contrary, sometimes the social costs of socialism in Africa have indeed been rather high. It is arguable that while there were relatively successful petty capitalist experiments in countries including Kenya, Malawi, Tunisia, and Côte d’Ivoire until the early 1980s, Africa as a whole has yet to produce a significant improvement in the material conditions for the masses. The nearest socialist success story until the 1980s was perhaps Algeria. But socialist Algeria needed to sell oil to the capitalist world to buttress socialism.

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In spite of these contradictions, however, many Africans are so disenchanted with the first two decades of capitalist independence that they would not mind experimenting with socialist approaches to social transformation. The third factor which predisposes many Africans in favor of socialism is the rampant corruption among the immediate post-colonial rulers of the continent, all the way from Egypt to Zimbabwe within a few years of independence. Again, corruption is by no means a peculiarity of capitalism, as many of those who have travelled in socialist countries will testify. But there is no doubt that social discipline can, at times, be more difficult to uphold in conditions of laissez faire economic behavior than in conditions of relatively centralized planning and supervision. On balance, it is indeed arguable that the socialist ethics in Robert Mugabe’s own personal socialism is, almost by definition, more opposed to “kick-backs, goodwill bribery,” and even profit itself than the ethic of acquisitive individualism in his own comrades. The fourth factor which has contributed to the favorable intellectual climate for socialism in Africa is the widespread belief that traditional African culture was basically collectivist and, therefore, socialist. There have been claims, from quite early, by some African leaders—including Senghor, Nyerere, and Mboya—that the morality of sharing in traditional Africa, the ethic of responsibility for the young, the old, and the disabled, the imperative of collective ethic, was akin to socialism. Because of this broadly favorable intellectual climate, most African governments, soon after independence, paid some kind of lip service to socialism. Even regimes like that of Jomo Kenyatta and Habib Bourguiba managed to adopt, in the initial years of independence, a partially socialist rhetoric. Regimes which opted for the one-party state route were particularly tantalized by socialist symbolism. After all, the presumed centralizing tendencies of socialism could help justify a one-party monopoly of power. Prospects for socialism in the first decade of African independence did seem to be congenial. Nasser, Nkrumah, Sékou Touré, Julius Nyerere, and Boumedienne were seen as architects of a new socialist Africa. From the 1970s, countries like Ethiopia, Angola, Congo, and Mozambique went all the way to Marxism-Leninism. But what went wrong? This brings us to the barrenness of the sociological soil for socialism, in spite of the favorableness of the intellectual climate. One obstinate sociological factor against socialism was simply the primacy of ethnicity in Africa, as against class consciousness. Most Africans are members of their ethnic group first, and

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members of a particular social class second. When the chips are down, Igbo peasants are more likely to identify with the Igbo bourgeoisie than with fellow peasants in Yorubaland. On balance, it can be legitimately argued that, whenever there has been a neat confrontation and competition between the forces of ethnicity on one side, and the forces of class consciousness on the other side, ethnicity has almost invariably triumphed in Africa. This is one primary factor behind the infertility of the sociological soil for an ideology like socialism. Ethnic conservatism is stronger than socialist theory. A related factor is the strength of cultural elites in Africa, as against economic classes as such. The new elites, especially, have emerged out of the womb of Western imperial acculturation. It has not been the possession of wealth necessarily which opened the doors to influence and power, but, initially, the possession of Western education and verbal skills. To be sure, the initial political establishment of post-colonial Africa was disproportionately comprised of a Westernized and semi-Westernized core. This galaxy of Westernized stars has included names like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Léopold Senghor, Kenneth Kaunda, Ferhat Abbas, Milton Obote, Félix HouphouëtBoigny, Boutros-Boutros Ghali, Nelson Mandela, Kamuzu Banda, Habib Bourguiba, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Sadiq el-Mahdi, Samora Machel, Agostinho Neto, and others. This created a basic sociological ambivalence on the African scene. On the one hand, it seemed that the most rhetorically opposed to imperialism, and the ones most likely to link it to capitalism, were precisely the elites produced by the West’s cultural imperialism in Africa. Even when these elements became truly revolutionary, there was a basic contradiction. After all, Karl Marx had expected the most revolutionary class to be the least advantaged class in the most advanced societies. This was deemed to be the proletariat in industrial Western society. But when you look at revolutionary leaders in Angola, Tanzania, Guinea, and Zimbabwe, and examine the Western credentials of the leaders, you may be inclined to conclude that the most revolutionary of all classes in those societies were the best advantaged. In other words, Westernized Third World bourgeois intellectuals were the most likely to produce the dream of socialist transformation. Therefore, it is not the least advantaged social class in the most advantaged society (the proletariat in the West) but the best advantaged social group in the least advanced societies (the Westernized bourgeois intelligentsia in Third World countries) who have been the true agents of revolution in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

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It is still a socio-linguistic impossibility for an African to become a sophisticated Marxist without being at the same time substantially Westernized. This is partly because the process of becoming a sophisticated Marxist requires considerable exposure to Marxist literature, both primary and secondary. Access to that literature for the time being is only minimally possible through indigenous African languages like Kiswahili, Yoruba, or Amharic. Even in Arabic, Marxist literature is relatively limited. An African who wants to read many of the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin has to have been substantially initiated into the literary culture of the West. Even Africans who go to communist China, or who went to the former Soviet Union, needed to have been previously Europeanized. Scholarships to study in China and/or in the former Soviet Union, were hardly offered to rural rustics untouched by Western schools or their equivalents. The nature of elite formation in Africa can, therefore, be counted as an aspect of the uncongenial sociological soil that socialism has to confront in African conditions. A third factor of this barrenness of the soil of socialism in Africa concerns Africa’s organizational capabilities in the present historical phase. Many hastily assume that a tradition of collectivism in a traditional setting is a relevant preparation for organized collective efforts in a modern setting. Unfortunately, much of the evidence points in the opposite direction. Collective effort based on custom and tradition, and kinship ties leaves Africa unprepared for the kind of organized collectivism which needs to be based on command rather than ritual. If socialism requires a rational and efficient command structure, which is not based on custom, ethnic empathy, or ritual, the present stage of social change in the African experience is still inhospitable to socialist transformation. A fourth aspect of the infertility of Africa’s sociological soil for the socialist plant would take us back to issues of historical continuity. Many African economies have already been deeply integrated into a world economy dominated by the West. African countries which go socialist domestically find that they are still integrated in the world capitalist system. The rules of that system are overwhelmingly derived from principles evolved in the history of capitalism. In international trade, countries seek to maximize their returns. The rules of business and exchange at the international level, the banking system which underpins those exchanges, the actual currencies used in money markets and in meeting balance-of-payments are all products of the capitalist experience. Countries like Vietnam, Angola, and even Cuba discover soon enough that their best economic salvation is to gain international legitimacy by

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Western standards. Vietnam and Cuba did, however, fail in gaining that legitimacy. But it is part of their ambition to continue accessing Western currency markets. What all this means, once again, is that Third World countries can make their internal domestic arrangements socialist while remaining deeply integrated in the international capitalist system. It is even arguable that a country like Tanzania is today more dependent on the world capitalist system than it was before it inaugurated its neo-socialist experiment under the Arusha Declaration in 1967. This then is the configuration of factors which, on one side, reveals that post-colonial Africa has been intellectually ready for socialism and, on the other side, warns us that the material conditions for genuine socialist experimentation in Africa are not yet at hand. The intellectual climate is promising; the sociological soil is forbidding. But socialism in Africa has not only been a question of domestic priorities; it has also profoundly affected Africa’s international relations. Especially relevant as a cornerstone of Africa’s foreign policies has been the doctrine of nonalignment. It is to this international dimension that we must now turn.

Nonalignment: Ideology and Policy No principle of foreign policy in the second half of the twentieth century has had a greater impact on relations between small countries, and big powers alike, than nonalignment. The concept has, however, since its inception in the 1950s, changed in meaning and operational implications. But, for a considerable period of time, it significantly affected the diplomatic orientation of a majority of states in the developing world. Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdel Nasser were among the African founding-fathers of nonalignment. Kenneth Kaunda hosted the third conference of the movement, in September 1970. Some observers accurately distinguish between nonalignment as a principle of foreign policy in individual countries and nonalignment as a collective movement in world politics. Many studies pay special attention to the latter aspect of nonalignment—a solidarity of the less powerful in global affairs. But what kind of movement was it? It is possible to identify in nonalignment solidarity of protest, a movement for moderation in the former East-West relations, and a commitment to global reform in NorthSouth relations? The solidarity of protest is a continuing theme. But, historically, there has been a shift in focus from a preoccupation with

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promoting moderation in the erstwhile East-West relations—in the days of Nasser and Nkrumah—towards a more pronounced emphasis on transforming the basis of North-South relations, especially since the mid1970s—in the days of Boumedienne and Bouteflika. An examination of the issues, which preoccupied the nonaligned states over the years, reveals anti-colonialism as a persistent theme of protest. In the days of Egypt’s Nasser, and Nehru of India, the movement was also anxious to moderate former Cold War tensions and to prevent too sharp a polarization of the world. But the 1970s especially witnessed in nonalignment a clearer focus on a basic restructuring of the global system in the direction of greater equity in North-South relations, especially following the Algiers Summit of September 1973. Some studies suggest that protest, moderation and reform were all present all along in the movement, but the change of focus from East-West to North-South is also discernible on closer analysis of aims, purposes and changing rhetoric. Nonalignment, in the 1960s, began to subsume some of the protest of Afro-Asian solidarity. Nonalignment, from the 1970s, subsumed some of the reformist zeal of the group of seventy-seven and the struggle for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). In 1986, Robert Mugabe became the Chairman of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM). Although NAM remained basically a movement of African and Asian states, two countries outside those two continents (Africa and Asia) obviously played a significant role in the history of NAM. The two countries were the old Yugoslavia and Cuba. Some studies focus especially on the former Yugoslavia, not least because Marshall Josip Tito was among the founding fathers of NAM. Tito’s friendship with Nehru and Nasser, coupled with the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah in Africa, all helped to lay the foundations of NAM. Some studies analyze some of the reasons which influenced specific leaders to declare themselves nonaligned in those early days. In the case of Tito, the reasons were connected with his break with Moscow in 1948 and his subsequent reluctance to embrace the West on the rebound. For Tito, nonalignment provided a third way—an opportunity to retain independence from both Moscow and the Western alliance. Tito’s precedent inspired other leaders, Gamal Abdel Nasser included, who were eager to avoid entanglement. It is partly from this point of view that Tito’s Yugoslavia can be compared with Castro’s Cuba. Just as Tito had rebelled against the hegemony of Moscow, so Castro came to rebel against the hegemony of Washington, DC. Just as Yugoslavia had for so long been in “splendid

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isolation” in Eastern Europe, in the shadow of regional ostracism, so too was Cuba. It was isolated for a while in the Americas, in the shadow of more elaborate hemisphere sanctions. Just as Tito subsequently found a sense of mission in greater participation in the politics of the Third World, so too did Castro find such a sense of mission in his own distinctively revolutionary way. Just as Tito had laid the foundations of what later came to be known as “Euro-communism,” and challenged the Moscow doctrine of “proletarian internationalism,” so had Castro innovated with a Marxist state in the Americas—and challenged Washington’s right to keep communism out of the Western hemisphere. African leaders and intellectuals followed these confrontations attentively. But there were differences, as well as similarities, between Tito’s Yugoslavia and Castro’s Cuba. Whereas the old Yugoslavia more clearly asserted its independence from the West and the East, Cuba, under Castro, was forced to be excessively dependent upon the former Soviet Union. And yet even this dependence was important for NAM in the crisis of 1962. China’s conflict with India in that year was indeed a major crisis for NAM. Could a country like India keep out of alliances, and still be safe? The West rallied to India’s support in 1962 morally, and to some extent materially. And yet the Western Press, at the same time, seemed to rejoice in Nehru’s discomfiture and embarrassment. Had Nehru underestimated the danger of “communist aggression?” In view of China’s humiliation of India, had NAM lost its validity? Kwame Nkrumah wrote to Britain’s Harold Macmillan to try to keep the Big Powers out of the Sino-Indian conflict.8 It was the other crisis of 1962, the Cuban missile crisis, which reasserted the validity of NAM for Africa as a doctrine of minimizing military entanglement with either bloc. Castro’s Cuba had permitted the establishment of a missile base on its soil by the former Soviet Union, aimed at the United States. NAM, in that period, was suspicious of military bases controlled by superpowers in small countries. Castro had, thus, violated a basic precept of NAM. The world was brought to the brink of nuclear war when Washington demanded the dismantling of the missile base. To make matters worse, Castro himself was humiliated when Moscow agreed to the dismantling of the missiles virtually without consulting Havana on the subject. The superpowers, having reached a tense confrontation (eye-ball to eye-ball) later reached an understanding between themselves in almost complete disregard of whether the government of Cuba agreed or not. There was a moral lesson for Africa. If Nehru’s humiliation at the hands of China had challenged the raison d’être of nonalignment, Cuba’s humiliation over the missile crisis re-

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established the NAM’s validity. If India had suffered partly because it was not part of a military alliance, Cuba had suffered by the reverse reason of drifting into a de facto alliance with the former Soviet Union. The two crises of 1962 canceled each other out from the point of view of nonalignment—and NAM staggered one more step forward. These were powerful lessons for Africans. The newly independent African states felt vindicated in their newly embraced nonaligned policy. Then, in 1979, the sixth summit meeting of nonaligned states took place in Havana. Yet the issue of whether Cuba as “truly nonaligned” in view of its close links with the former Soviet Union remained alive and controversial within the NAM. It was an issue which provoked much passion and acrimony at the Belgrade Ministerial Conference, in July 1978, not least because of Cuba’s military involvement in African conflicts. The setting was symbolic. Belgrade was listening to debates about the nonaligned credentials of Havana. Yet, from the point of view of nonalignment, those two capitals were the most important historically outside the heartland of Asia and Africa. The late Tito was a hero in terms of the tense East-West relations of his time. Castro was a hero in terms of North-South relations. Tito’s nonalignment had combined solidarity of protest with a commitment to moderation in East-West relations. Castro’s nonalignment had tended to define the protest in terms of opposition to imperialism in North-South relations. Taken together, these two friends of Africa had captured the changing focus of NAM from the old days of the Cold War to the current groping for a new global economic order. In reality, Castro’s Cuba became more directly involved in Africa than Tito’s Yugoslavia had ever been. Cuban troops helped Angola to confront South African soldiers for over fifteen years after Angola’s independence. And Cuba, for better or worse, helped Ethiopia maintain her territorial integrity in the face of separatist movements in the 1970s and 1980s. Cuban ideas probably contributed to socialist trends in Angola and Ethiopia. But the paradox of Cuba’s significance for Africa is that, at one and the same time, it brought the erstwhile Soviet presence closer to Africa and deepened the meaning of nonalignment in Africa’s political experience.

Conclusion Colonial rule enclosed together people who previously lived separately, and divided people who were once united. Ethnic tensions are conflicts of values. They have also become the greatest threat to both

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Africa’s stability and African democracy. The answer lies in purposeful national integration and a shared experience in ideas and values. Africa is in search of a creative ideology. When multiple cultures confront each other within the same national boundaries, their relationship can be at varying degrees of social depth. The lowest degree of relationship is that of co-existence, when two cultural communities barely know about each other. Each may have its own conservative paradigm of thought, grounded on ethnic exclusivity. Indigenous conservatism can reign supreme at this level. The second degree of relationship is that of contact, when two groups either begin to trade with each other, or participate jointly in the jobmarket, or become members of the same political party, or listen to each other’s music. Above all, the contact must include sharing ideas and evolving shared priorities. Traditions of the elder, the warrior, and the sage may interact between ethnic cultures. The third degree of inter-ethnic relationship is that of competition, when these contacts result in rivalry for resources, for power, or for social and economic opportunities. Debates about ideology and policy are part and parcel of this competitive stage of nation-building. Capitalism may conflict with socialism in the political arena. The fourth relationship between two ethnic cultures is that of conquest, when one of the ideologies or cultures begins to get the upper hand. One ideology, for example, may become more influential than other(s). Or the newly dominant system of values may successfully claim a disproportionate share of power, resources, or socio-economic opportunities. Nepotism could prevail even under socialism. The fifth stage of relationship between cultures is that of compromise. This is a stage when the competing ideologies, political values, and traditions find a modus vivendi, an acceptable formula of conflictresolution and a viable basis of social partnership. The sixth stage of relationship is that of coalescence, when the values and identities of the political groups begin to merge, and their boundaries become less and less distinct. The cultures, values and ideologies, and even language intermingle, and a larger sense of identity starts to emerge. That enlarged identity could be national consciousness. A national ideology may be evolving. In some African countries ideological divisions are also affected by international relations and by economic factors. But it should be borne in mind that diplomacy and economics are often integrative as well as divisive. The balance varies from society to society. Nonalignment had the potential of consolidating a sense of national identity at home.

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The struggle for national integration and state-building in Africa is still in its infancy. Ideological intercourse and cultural interaction are part and parcel of the evolution of nationhood and the consolidation of collective identity in the post-colonial era.

Notes 1

See, Kofi A. Busia, The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti: A Study of the Influence of Contemporary Social Changes on Ashanti Political Institutions, (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1968); and Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Kikuyu, (London: Vintage Books, 1938). Also see, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, “Mau Mau” Detain, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). 2 See, for example, Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture, (Cambridge, London, New York et al: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 8 & 24. 3 For this brief definition, we are indebted to the Dictionary of 453Anthropology, Charles Winick (ed.), (Totavia, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1966 edition), p. 230. 4 Gideon-Cyrus M. Mutiso and S. W. Rohio (eds.) attributed this formulation to Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia, in Readings in African Political Thought, (London: Heinemann, 1975), p. 476. 5 His Excellency, Al-Hajj, Dr. Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, and Conqueror of the British Empire. 6 For an earlier treatment of this royal theme, consult Ali A. Mazrui, “The Monarchical Tendency in African Political Culture,” The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, (Sept. 1967). Reprinted as chapter 10 in Mazrui, Violence and Thought: Essays on Social Tensions in Africa, (London and Harlow: Longmans, 1969), pp. 206–230. 7 See, Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, (London et al.: Heinemann, 1968). 8 See, Ali A. Mazrui, Towards A Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 150.

CHAPTER FOUR BETWEEN CULTURAL NOSTALGIA AND CULTURAL AMNESIA Ernest Renan, the French philosopher and historian, once observed that the secret of nation-building was to get one’s history wrong. He conceded that it was of the essence of a nation that all individuals should have much in common, but it was also imperative that “they should all have forgotten much.” Renan declared: “To forget and, I will venture to say, to get one’s history wrong are essential factors in the making of a nation.”1 But what is the process by which one does, indeed, get one’s history wrong in order to get one’s national identity right? This chapter carries the story further, analytically. It examines the role of the collective memory in its four functions: preservation, selection, elimination, and invention. Museums play a major part as physical documentation of memory. Here, we hope to examine more closely how positive preservation of memory can become a form of nostalgia—a temporal homesickness, idealizing the past as our ideal home. Negative selection by the memory can lead to elimination and amnesia, a partial suppression of an unwanted past. Both nostalgia and amnesia can be forms of “getting one’s history wrong.” We also hope to show how historical invention can be consolidated into a false memory, placing something in the past which was never there before. Somewhat surprisingly, Ernest Renan did not address this issue of the invention of history in relation to nationhood. Renan was more concerned with the selection and elimination of memories. And yet the invention of history is as old as the role of mythology in ancient societies. Did the Yoruba of Nigeria really originate in Mecca? Were the “Falasha” Jews of Ethiopia a lost tribe of Israel? Was the Royal House of Ethiopia descended from King Solomon? Where does history end and legend begin? Because of the oral tradition, African history is particularly prone to the forces of myth-making and legend-building. Tribal founders, like Kintu of the Baganda or Mumbi of the Kikuyu, are often elevated to the status of historical figures. Museums often have to preserve the physical

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documentation of cultural beliefs without taking sides between mythology and history.

African Archives and the Oral Tradition Museums are a special kind of physicalized archives. But how important are archives for Africa? Do we not have more serious problems of malnutrition, ignorance, disease, political instability, and general underdevelopment? Here, we are concerned with the historical importance of something equally negative: the comparative weakness of the archival tradition in Africa and its devastating consequences for the history of our people. Africa was silent about its history. The African archival dog did not bark at crucial moments. This had serious consequences for Africa’s place in international stratification. The archival tradition may be defined, quite simply, as a cultural preoccupation with keeping records and preserving monuments, a tradition of capturing the past through preserved documentation. This means much more than establishing national archives; it means a particular propensity for recording the dates of births and marriages, collecting maps, preserving love letters, and keeping household artifacts, as well as documenting treaties, contracts, and the like. Because the archival tradition is weak in Africa, the scientific tradition became weak; our languages atrophied and so did any philosophical tradition—with ghastly consequences for our peoples across the centuries. Why was the archival tradition weak in Africa? Because, first, most indigenous African cultures refuse to regard the past as a bygone or the present as transient: the ancestors are still with us, and we ourselves will be ancestors. If the present is not transient, why bother to record it? A related reason for the weakness of the archival tradition in African cultures is the weakness of the calendar tradition, including the discipline of the clock. Many of my fellow students in Mombasa, Kenya, in the 1940s, did not know when they were born. The first president of my country, President Jomo Kenyatta, did not know when he was born either. There is a Gregorian calendar, an Islamic calendar, an Indian calendar, a Chinese calendar, but no African calendar (apart from the revised Orthodox Christian calendar of Ethiopia). A third reason for the weakness of the archival tradition in Africa is the weakness of the written word. Many African societies have only come to know the written word during the last century.

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This is not to say that Africa is homogeneous. Quite apart from other differences, the continent as a whole operates within a triple heritage of culture, consisting of indigenous, Islamic, and Western traditions. Modern archives are mainly Western in conception, and they are also Islamic to some extent. But can they be indigenized? Or are they inevitably part of the imported sections of Africa’s triple heritage? To the extent that archives, until recently, have been viewed almost entirely as collections of written records, the indigenous aspects of the triple heritage have not been viewed as archival material. Muslim Africa has been better endowed with written records than non-Muslim indigenous Africa. Records in Islamic societies have sometimes been in the Arabic language. But they have also sometimes been in African languages using the Arabic script. But what is a document? Here, we are mainly concerned with the written word. But there are five categories of documentation in all: ¾ Material documentation, such as archaeological evidence, from pottery to Great Zimbabwe, from skeletons to coins. ¾ Written documentation—a mystical reverence for the symbols of literacy, which has conditioned our view of what constitutes archival reference itself. ¾ Pictorial documentation, including painting or carving on rocks. ¾ Sound documentation, which is in some ways the newest form of archival record. ¾ But the oldest form of documentation is the raw memory of the human being, a capacity to “recollect in tranquility.”

Two concepts are useful in approaching the question of archives in Africa: the concept of documentary deficit and the concept of primordial surplus. Documentary deficit concerns an apparent excess of silence in African historiography, a shortage of recognized documentation in the written and material fields. Primordial surplus can take a variety of forms. Here, we are particularly concerned with a surplus of allegiance to primordial identities, a commitment to ethnicity or religious sectarianism. The problem of documentation has affected Africa in two very complex ways. One is the crisis of documentary deficit in the material and written remains. The other is the crisis of primordial surplus in the area of raw human memory. The past is strongly with us. Materially, Africa has

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had relatively few stone monuments, few hard documents of the past. Great Zimbabwe is striking, partly because of its very uniqueness. But the crisis of the documentary deficit also extends to the area of written remains. Among the great cultures of the world, African civilizations have had less written records than average. For a long time, this literary deficit resulted in the assumption that Africa was a continent without history. Did this negative cultural image condemn Africans to centuries of marginality and servitude? Was the slave trade partly a case of crosscultural images? Was colonialism partly a product of cultural perceptions of racial hierarchy? Did Africa’s documentary deficit sentence the continent to the lowest stratum in the ranking order of global privilege? Why did Europeans pick on Africans to enslave? Why did they not enslave Arabs or south Asians? This was partially because the cultural distance between Europeans and Africans was deemed to be particularly wide. It was, in part, due to the relative absence of castles, cathedrals and written contracts in Africa, which made the civilizational gap appear so wide. Africa’s crisis of documentary deficit had a good deal to do with the origins of racism. Civilizations were often evaluated in terms of either concrete remains or written records. Most of Black Africa seemed to have neither. The crisis of documentary deficit had related implications for science and philosophy. The absence of the written word deprived much of Africa of the bounty of cumulative heresy. Africa’s oral tradition was a tradition which tended to transmit consensus rather than dissent, what was agreed upon rather than what was rejected by the establishment. Where were Africa’s Platos and Lockes, Rousseaus and Lenins? Most of them lie in the graveyard of consensus, in the cemetery of the oral tradition. Brilliant Africans failed to surface above village life; genius was too steeped in the oral non-literate legacy of rural Africa. Who would ever have heard of Karl Marx in the twentieth century if he had operated in a completely oral tradition in nineteenth century Europe? The written word was needed to preserve Karl Marx’s heresies in his own formulation. But while the oral tradition is an illustration of documentary deficit, in material and written remains, it may also illustrate the dynamism of raw human memory in Africa. The question which arises in the twentieth century is whether that raw human memory is a case of surplus primordial documentation. Is there too much raw documentation? Are ordinary Africans remembering too much

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of their origins and their past? Is the past too present among us? Is the present refusing to be transient and temporary? The most obstinate aspect of primordial surplus, since the second half of the twentieth century, has been the resilience of ethnic identity. The great majority of Africans refuse to forget their primordial origins—be they Baganda or Acholi, Luo or Kikuyu, Shona or Ndebele, Hausa, Yoruba, or Igbo. The resilience of ethnic identity is a reliance on documentation at the level of raw human memory, for better or for worse. Ethnicity is an archive stacked with documents of the annals of the “tribe,” the records of community, the memory of collective identity. This situation has had repercussions in the post-colonial period. Surplus ethnic identity has outweighed deficit class-consciousness in Africa. A Hausa peasant is a Hausa first, and a peasant second, when the political chips are down. Deficit class-consciousness in Africa was compounded by deficit literary documentation. Why is it that it is a socio-linguistic impossibility for an African to be a sophisticated Marxist without being at the same time highly Westernized? One cannot be a sophisticated Marxist without exposure to the words of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other ideological founding fathers. But these works are not available in African indigenous languages (“vernaculars”). Access to sophisticated Marxism must, therefore, be through a sophisticated command of a European language. A non-Westernized African Marxist is, for the time being, a contradiction in terms. In the origins of European socialism, history was used as evidence against the past. That is what Marx and Engels meant by viewing all events as an agony of class struggle. In contrast, some African socialists have tended to view history as evidence in favor of the past. Tradition has been seen as primordial collectivism, concern for the disadvantaged, and universal hospitality. European use of written archives resulted in a view of socialism as an interruption, sometimes as a drastic revolution, designed as a fundamental departure from the past. On the other hand, African socialism in some countries has emerged as a doctrine of continuity—a link with ancient lifestyles. While European socialism has proclaimed a negation of the European past, African socialism has often proclaimed a reaffirmation of African ancestors. While Karl Marx, at the British Museum, was using archives as allies in social revolution, African socialists later looked for archives to vindicate cultural revivalism.

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But it is not just ideology and philosophy which pose questions about continuity and change. Science also needs a built-in principle of instability, a readiness to be challenged by heresy. African science and technology were too stable. Major paradigm shifts were too rare. When it is too stable, science becomes stagnant. But was not African science unstable in another sense? Since it was taught through the oral tradition, was it not subject to variation from mouth to mouth? The answer is YES! Science passed through word of mouth is vulnerable, but this is the instability of imprecision rather than the instability of careful revision. Unwritten African languages were also unstable. They changed too fast. It is harder to understand a nineteenth-century African poem, even in Kiswahili, than to understand a nineteenth-century English poem. Many Africans are more eager to learn the imperial European languages than to protect indigenous languages. Linguistic patriotism is weak, partly because of the weakness of the archival tradition. What then is the new archival order for Africa? William Wordsworth, the English poet, in his Ode: Intimations of Immortality, talked about the child being father to the man. In Europe, the national archive was the child of the archival tradition. The national archive was a consequence of a preexistent cultural preoccupation with record keeping. In Africa, the national archive may have to father the archival tradition or at least help that tradition become strong. More than dusty documents are at stake. We must stop believing that the present is not temporary, that the past is still with us, even if we do nothing to preserve its records. We must learn to keep accounts: birth records, marriages and deaths, preserve artifacts, keep picture albums, and protect contracts. Perhaps, above all, we need to not only respect intellectual heresies but also to create a climate where they do not perish into unrecorded oblivion. A new archival order in Africa could help change the continent fundamentally. And a world with a fundamentally different Africa cannot but be a fundamentally different world.

Note 1

Ernest Renan [1823–1892], “What is a Nation?” Alfred Zimmern (ed. and trans.), Modern Political Doctrines, (New York, London and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 186–205.

SECTION II ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS AND AFRICA’S HISTORY

CHAPTER FIVE WESTERN EUROCENTRISM AND JUDEO-CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM “The sins of the powerful acquire some of the prestige of power.”1 In that simple proposition, John Plamenatz captures the importance of power in universalizing the culture of the powerful. Even the very vices of Western culture are acquiring worldwide prestige. Muslim societies, which once refrained from alcohol, are now manifesting increasing alcoholism. Chinese elites are capitulating to Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald hamburgers. Mahatma Gandhi’s country too has decided to go nuclear. However, while Western civilization is a pretender to the status of universal validity, there are three forces which contradict that claim. One force is within the West itself. This is the force of historical relativism. What was valid in the West at the beginning of the twentieth century is not necessarily valid in the West at the beginning of the twenty-first century. If validity is changeable in the West itself, from generation to generation, how can the claim to universalism be sustained? Another challenge to the West’s claim to universalism is not historical but cross-cultural. This latter challenge is the old nemesis of cultural relativism. We may even reverse the order of the challenge to Western universalism—the cross-cultural challenge first and the historical challenge second. Two organizing concepts of this chapter are, therefore, first, cultural relativism (differences in values between societies), and historical relativism (differences in values between historical epochs). One of our theses here is that the moral distance between the West and Islam, or between Africa and the West, is narrower than often assumed. Another of our theses is that what are regarded as medieval aspects of African culture, or Islamic culture, may have been shared by Western culture in relatively recent times. In other words, the historical distance between African and Islamic values, on one side, and Western values, on the other, may not be as great as many have assumed. But, in addition to historical and cultural relativism, there is relativism in practice, or comparative empirical performance. Is Western practice at

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variance with Western doctrine? Indeed, are Western standards better fulfilled by other societies than by the West? In some respects, is either Africa or Islam ahead of the West by Western standards themselves?

Empirical Relativism and Moral Performance Let us now return to the three forms of relativity with which we began: historical, cultural, and empirical. Hegemonic and homogenizing as Western culture has been, it has not been without its contradictions and serious shortfalls. Its claim to universalism has been up against the relativity of history (temporal), of culture (cross-cultural), and of implementation (the logic of consistency). Let us begin with this third area of relativity: the tests of empiricism and performance. Empirical relativism has two aspects. One aspect concerns whether in practice Western civilization lives up to its own standards. The other aspect concerns situations in which Western ethical standards are better implemented by other civilizations than by the West itself. When a famous Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence pronounces that “all men are created equal,” but then the founders build an economy in America based on slavery that is a case of Western culture failing by its own standards. On the other hand, if during the same historical period we study economies without either slavery or caste among the Kikuyu in East Africa or the Tiv in West Africa, we are observing societies which were more egalitarian than the liberal West. Westerners have repeatedly honored the Western Christian ethic of the minimization of violence more in the breach than the observance. In the last hundred years, Christians have killed countless more people than have followers of any other religion in any single century. Many of the millions of victims of Christian violence in the two world wars were themselves fellow Christians—though the Holocaust against the Jews and the Gypsies stands out as a special case of genocide perpetrated by Westerners in otherwise Christian nations. If minimization of violence is part of Christian ethics, it is a standard that has not only been violated by the West, it has also been better implemented by other cultures in history. In the first half of the twentieth century, India produced Mohandas Gandhi (who led one of the most remarkable non-violent anti-colonial movements ever witnessed). Westerners themselves saw Gandhi’s message as the nearest approximation of the Christian ethic of the first half of the twentieth century.

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Mahatma Gandhi’s India gave birth to new principles of passive resistance and satyagraha. Yet Gandhi himself said that through the Black people, the unadulterated message of soul force and passive resistance might be realized. If Gandhi were right, then this would be one more illustration of when the culture that gives birth to an ethic is not necessarily the culture that fulfills the ethic. The Nobel Committee for Peace in Oslo seems to have shared some of Gandhi’s optimism about the soul force of the Black people. Africans and people of African descent who have won the Nobel Prize for Peace since the middle of the twentieth century have been Ralph Bunche (1950), Albert Luthuli (1960), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964), Mohammed Anwar Al-Sadat (1978), Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1984), Nelson Mandela (1993), Kofi Annan (2001), Wangari Maathai (2004), Mohammed El-Baradei (2005), Barack Obama (2009), Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (2011), and Leymah Gbowee (2011). Neither Mahatma Gandhi himself nor any of his compatriots in India has ever won the Nobel Prize for Peace—until very recently, in 1979 to be precise, when the prize was awarded posthumously to Mother Teresa. Was Mahatma Gandhi vindicated that the so-called “Negro” was going to be the best exemplar of soul force? Was this a case of African culture being empirically more Gandhian than Indian culture? In reality, Black people have been at least as violent as anything ever perpetrated by Indians. What is distinctive about Africans is their short memory of hate. The British colonial authorities unjustly imprisoned Jomo Kenyatta over charges of founding the Mau Mau Movement. A British Governor also denounced him as “a leader into darkness and unto death.” And yet, when Jomo Kenyatta was released he not only forgave the White settlers, but turned the whole country towards a basic pro-Western orientation to which it has remained committed ever since. Kenyatta even published a book in 1968 entitled Suffering without Bitterness. Ian Smith, the White settler leader of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), unilaterally declared independence in 1965 and unleashed a civil war on Rhodesia. Thousands of mainly Black people died in the country as a result of the policies pursued by Ian Smith. Yet, in 1980, when the war ended, Ian Smith and his cohorts were not subjected to a Nuremberg-style trial. On the contrary, Ian Smith was himself a member of parliament in a Black-ruled Zimbabwe—busy criticizing the post-Smith Black leaders of Zimbabwe as incompetent and dishonest. Where else, but in Africa, could such tolerance occur? The Nigerian civil war (1967–1970) was the most highly publicized civil conflict in postcolonial African history. When the war was coming to

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an end, many people feared that there would be a bloodbath in the defeated eastern region. The Vatican was worried that cities like Enugu and Onitcha, strongholds of Catholicism, would be monuments of devastation and bloodletting. None of these expectations occurred. Nigerians—seldom among the most disciplined of Africans—discovered in 1970 some remarkable resources of self-restraint. There were no triumphant reprisals against the vanquished Biafrans. There were no vengeful trials of “traitors.” We have also witnessed the phenomenon of Nelson Mandela. He lost twenty-seven of the best years of his life in prison under the laws of the apartheid regime. Yet, when he was released, he not only emphasized the policy of reconciliation, he often went beyond the call of duty. On one occasion, before he became President, White men were fasting unto death after being convicted of terrorist offences by their own White government. Nelson Mandela went out of his way to beg them to eat and, thus, spare their own lives. When Mandela became President in 1994, it was surely enough that his government would leave the architects of apartheid unmolested. Yet Nelson Mandela went out of his way to pay a social call and have tea with the unrepentant widow of Hendrik F. Verwoed, the supreme architect of the worst forms of apartheid, who shaped the whole racist order from 1958 to 1966. Mandela was having tea with the family of Verwoed. Was Mahatma Gandhi correct, after all, that his torch of soul force (Satyagraha) might find its brightest manifestations among Black people? Empirical relativism was at work again. In the history of civilizations, there are occasions when the image in the mirror is more real than the object it reflects. Black Gandhians like Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu and, in a unique sense, Nelson Mandela have sometimes reflected Gandhian soul force more brightly than Gandhians in India. Part of the explanation lies in the soul of African culture itself with all its capacity for rapid forgiveness. It is a positive modification of “the Picture of Dorian Gray.” In Oscar Wilde’s novel, the picture of Dorian Gray is a truer reflection of the man’s decrepit body and lost soul than the man himself. The decomposition of Dorian’s body and soul is transferred from Dorian himself to his picture. The picture is more real than the man. In the case of Gandhism, it is not the decomposition of the soul but its elevation that is transferred from India to the Black experience. In the last one hundred years, both Indian culture and African culture have in any case been guilty of far less bloodletting than the West. Christian minimization of violence has been observed more by non-Christians than

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by ostensible followers of the Cross. Empirical relativism continues its contradictions. But Western claims to universalism are challenged not just by the forces of empirical contradictions. They are, as we have already indicated, also challenged by the relativism of history and the relativism of culture. Let us now elaborate on these two areas.

Between Cultural and Historical Relativism If, under cultural relativism, cultures differ across space (from society to society), under historical relativism, cultures differ across time (from epoch to epoch, or age to age). In Western society, pre-marital sex was strongly disapproved of until after World War II. In the nineteenth century, it was even punishable. Today, sex before marriage is widely practiced with parental consent. This is historical relativism. Are laws against gays and lesbians a violation of human rights? Today, half the Western world says “yes.” Yet homosexuality between males was a crime in Great Britain until the 1960s, though lesbianism was not outlawed. Now both male and female homosexuality between consenting adults is permitted in most of the Western World. This is historical relativism. On the other hand, in most of the rest of the world, homosexuality is still illegal in varying degrees. We are confronting a clash between historical relativism in the West and geo-cultural relativism in the Third World. Today, in Africa, we witness two divergent extremes on homosexuality in two neighboring countries: Zimbabwe and South Africa. Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, is a personal crusader against homosexuality. South Africa, on the other hand, has legalized it. Almost everywhere in the Western World, except the United States, capital punishment has been abolished. The United States is increasing the number of capital offenses for the time being. But it is almost certain that capital punishment, even in the United States, will one day be regarded as a violation of human rights. This would be historical relativism within the Western civilization. In Africa, South Africa has tried to lead the way against the death penalty. Has it outlived its rational utility? Sometimes, cultural relativism and historical relativism converge. This is especially true when Muslim and African countries want to revive legal systems which go back many centuries. Such countries attempt to re-enact the past in modern conditions. Sudan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are among the examples where cultural and historical relativism converge. Can you have polygyny or polygamy by consent? In the United States, the term “pro-choice” is reserved for the issue of whether a woman wants

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a baby or not. In the Muslim world, and in Africa, a woman’s right to choose may include her choice to marry a man who already has another wife. “I would rather share this man than not have him at all.” At least one of Moshood Abiola’s multiple wives in Nigeria had a Ph.D. from a university in the West, a measure of polygamy by consent. In the West, a woman may choose to become a mistress of a married man—but she is not allowed to marry the same man and have equal rights as a second wife. That is cultural relativism in sexual mores. Are human rights sometimes trapped between the sacredness of art versus the sacredness of religion? As the West has gotten more and more secular, it has looked for new abodes of sacredness. By the late twentieth century, the freedom of the artist was more sacred to Westerners than respect for religion. Hence, the clash that occurred from 1988 onwards between the Western world and the Muslim world in relation to Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. The book makes fun of the Holy Scripture of Muslims, the Qur’an, suggesting that, perhaps, the verses were a fake or inspired by the Devil. The novel strongly suggests that the prophet Muhammad was a fraud, and not a very intelligent one at that. The book puts women bearing the names of the Prophet Muhammad’s wives—prostitutes called Hafsa, Aisha, and Khadija—in a whorehouse. The names of the prophet’s wives were supposed to be aphrodisiac, for sexual excitement. The Islamic Republic of Iran issued a fatwa, a legal judgment, accusing Rushdie of a capital religious offense and sentenced him to death in absentia. Iran was the only one of some fifty Muslim countries to pass the death penalty on Rushdie. But there were popular Muslim demonstrations against Rushdie from Kaduna to Karachi. Rushdie had to spend most of his life, until fairly recently, in cautious hiding. Many airlines could not have him as a passenger because he was potentially a security risk. But, the good news, on the other hand, was that he became a millionaire several times over from the book and related products. He became wealthier, but less secure. Westerners argued that, as a novelist, Rushdie had a right to write anything he wanted. Muslims, from Lamu to Lahore, argued that he had no right to hold up for obscenity and ridicule some of the most sacred things in Islam. The sacredness of the artist was in collision with the sacredness of religion over Salman Rushdie’s novel. The West’s claim to universalism sometimes extends from Western values and Western custodial claim to the defense of those values. If Western values are universal, is Western practice—in the implementation of those values— also universal?

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One of the most remarkable coincidences of the year 2000 concerns how democracy collided with two people called Haider: one a Syrian and the other Austrian, one liberal and the other extreme right-wing, one a writer and the other an activist and politician. In Austria Dr. Jörg Haider was Deputy Governor of Carinthia and Chair of the neo-Nazi FPO party, which joined the government coalition in the year 2000. The coalition was the outcome of electoral democratic forces in Austria. And yet proDemocracy fellow members of the European Union have turned against the government of Austria and have tried to squeeze Haider’s party out of the democratically elected governing coalition. Was democracy fighting against democracy, in the European Union, over the Austrian question? Certainly, most members of the European Union have decided that there is a limit to freedom of political participation. The other Haider is Haidar Haidar, the Syrian, who published in Cyprus in 1983, a novel entitled A Banquet for Seaweed. Lebanon republished the novel in 1992 without any earth tremor. In November 1999, Egypt’s Ministry of Culture followed suit. It published the volume among the major works of modern Arabic literature. There was delayed reaction—until El-Shaab, a pro-Islamist newspaper, published extracts ostensibly insulting to the Prophet Muhammad and Islam. Was the Syrian Haidar as much of a threat to the fundamentals of his own Arab civilization as the Austrian Haider had been to his own European civilization? When individuals threaten the fabric of civilization, should democracy give way? If Arab and Islamic civilizations are threatened by a Syrian Haidar, should democracy be subordinated to higher values? If the Austrian Haider threatens Western civilization, should Austrian democracy be subordinated to European civilization? In reality, both Islam and the West have put limits to freedom of expression and indeed to democratic outcomes. Over Austria, the European Union has decided that the values of Western civilization are more important than the outcomes of Austrian democracy. Should the novel Banquet of Seaweed be judged by the standards of Islamic civilization, or by the criteria of democracy? The dilemma is crucial and unresolved.

Empirical Relativism and Comparative Censorship The third area of relativism is once again empirical. How do cultures behave in practice? Our discussion has already entered the arena of Western civil liberties. In what sense is the cultural distance between the West, Africa, and Islam narrower than often assumed? One compelling

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illustration concerns the issue of censorship and the implementation of values. Here we are again dealing with empirical relativism. A book may be censored because of the moral repugnance of its contents. Most Muslim countries, and some countries in Africa, have banned Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, because they viewed it as blasphemous and morally repugnant. Alternatively, a book may be censored or banned because of the moral “repugnance” of its author. In 1996, St. Martin’s Press wanted to publish a book entitled Goebbels, Mastermind of the Third Reich. Enormous international pressure was put on St. Martin’s Press to withdraw the book. Most of the pressure came from people who could not possibly have read the manuscript of that particular book. The moral objection was to the author of the book, David Irving, who was viewed as an anti-Semitic revisionist historian of the Holocaust. In the case of that particular book, Goebbels. . . , it was probably the singer (David Irving) rather than the song (Mastermind of the Third Reich) that finally made St. Martin’s Press to change its mind and withdrew the book. David Irving has since been legally condemned in Britain as anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denier. But a book may also be censored or banned out of fear of its consequences—the equivalent of “clear and present danger.” When India gave this kind of explanation for banning Rushdie’s Satanic Verses—that the book would inflame religious passions—the West was less than sympathetic. Rushdie’s publishers certainly paid no attention to prior warnings from India that the book was inflammatory before publication. The publication of the book, even in far-away London, resulted in loss of life and civil disturbances in Bombay and Karachi in 1989. In contrast, distinguished Western publishers have been known to care enough about the safety of their own staff to make that the reason for rejecting a manuscript. One prominent case is Cambridge University Press’s rejection of the book, Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood by Anastasia Karakasidou. The book was about ethnicity in the Greek province of Macedonia. Cambridge rejection was directly and frankly linked to its fear for the safety of its staff members in Greece.2 If Viking Penguin Inc., the publishers of The Satanic Verses, had cared as much about South Asian lives as Cambridge University Press had cared about its own staff in Greece, the cost in blood of The Satanic Verses would have been reduced. The issue here is still empirical relativism. Does Western practice meet Western standards? Let us now turn more closely to comparative methods of censorship as an aspect of empirical relativism. Censorship in Muslim countries is often crude, and is done by governments, by Mullahs and imams and, more

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recently, by militant Islamic movements. Censorship in the West, on the other hand, is more polished and more decentralized. It is done by advertisers for commercial television, by subscribers to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), by ethnic pressure groups and interest groups, by editors, by publishers, and by other controllers of means of communication. In Europe, governments sometimes also do it. The law in the United States protects opinion better than almost anywhere else in the world. In 1986, Kaiser Aluminum threatened my television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, with legal action because I had described the company’s terms for the construction of the Akosombo Dam in Ghana as exploitative. Both my own personal lawyer and the lawyers for PBS were unanimous in their opinion that Kaiser Aluminum did not stand a chance under American law. We called Kaiser’s bluff, showed the offending sequence, and Kaiser Aluminum did nothing. The threat to free speech in the United States does not come from the law and the Constitution but from non-governmental forces. The same PBS, which was invulnerable before the law on the issue of free speech, capitulated to other forces when I metaphorically described Karl Marx as “the last of the Great Jewish prophets.” The earlier British version of my television series had included that phrase. The American version unilaterally deleted it out of fear of offending Jewish Americans. I was never asked for permission to delete that phrase. Ironically, many viewers in Israel saw the British version complete with the controversial metaphor. What PBS had done was a case of decentralized censorship. The laws of the United States granted me freedom of speech and freedom of opinion—but editors, financial benefactors, and influential pressure groups perpetrate censorship in the country. It is a special kind of empirical relativism. On one issue of censorship, the relevant PBS producing station did consult me. WETA, the PBS station in Washington, DC, was unhappy that I had not injected enough negativism in my portrayal of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in a sequence of about three minutes. I was first asked if I would agree to change my commentary and talk more about “terrorism.” When I refused to change my commentary, WETA suggested that we changed the pictures instead—deleting one sequence, which appeared to humanize Qaddafi (the Libyan leader visiting a hospital) and substituting a picture of Rome airport after a terrorist attack (which would re-demonize the Libyan leader). After much debate, I managed to save the positive humanizing hospital scene, but surrendered to the addition of a negative scene of Rome airport after a terrorist attack. My agreement was on condition that neither the

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written caption nor I implied that Libya was responsible for the bomb. But, ideally, WETA would have preferred to delete the sequence about Libya altogether. Two years later, I was invited to Libya, after the Arabic version of my television series was shown there. It turned out that WETA had more in common with the censors in Libya than either realized. Although the Libyans seemed pleased with my television series as a whole, the threeminute sequence about Muammar Qaddafi had been deleted from the version shown in Tripoli. If WETA had regarded the sequences as too sympathetic to Qaddafi, perhaps the Libyans decided they were not sympathetic enough. And since the Libyans were not in a position to negotiate with me about whether to change the commentary or add to the pictures, they decided to delete the sequence altogether. In the United States, the sequence about Qaddafi had also offended Lynne Cheney, who was at the time chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The sequence was a major reason why she demanded the removal of the name of the Endowment from the television credits at the end of the series. Much later, after she stepped down as Chair, she demanded the abolition of the National Endowment for the Humanities itself altogether. She cited as one of her reasons precisely my own television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, using it as an example of the type of objectionable liberal projects which the Endowment had tended to friend. Another illustration of decentralized censorship and empirical relativism which has affected my own work, involved my book Cultural Forces in World Politics. Originally, it was to be published by Westview Press in Colorado. They were about to go to press when they declared that they wanted to delete three chapters. One chapter discussed The Satanic Verses as a case of cultural treason; another chapter compared the Palestinian intifadah with the Chinese students’ rebellion in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, in 1989; and the third objectionable chapter compared the apartheid doctrine of separate homelands for Blacks and Whites in South Africa with the Zionist doctrine of separate States for Jews and Arabs. Clearly, the Westview Press wanted to censor those three chapters because they were the most politically sensitive in the American context. I suspected that I would have similar problems with most other major United States publishers with regard to those three chapters. I, therefore, relied more exclusively on my British publishers in London, James Currey, and on the American offshoot of another British publisher,

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Heinemann Educational Books. My book was published by those two in 1990. This is the positive side of decentralized censorship in the West. At least with regard to books, what is under the threat of censorship by one publisher may be acceptable by another. Or what is almost unpublishable in the United States may be easily publishable in Britain, or in the Netherlands. With national television, the choices are more restricted, even in the West. Many points of view are condemned to national silence on the television screen. The West does not meet its own democratic standards. What conclusion do we draw from all this? The essential point being made is that on the issue of free speech, the cultural difference between Western culture and Islamic culture may not be as wide as often assumed. In both civilizations, only a few points of view have national access to the media and the publishing world. In both civilizations, there is marginalization by exclusion from the center. But there is one big difference: censorship in Muslim societies tends to be more centralized, often done by the state, though there are also restrictions on free speech imposed by Mullahs and imams and militant religious movements. In the United States, on the other hand, there is no centralized political censorship by governmental or judicial institutions. Censorship is far more decentralized. It is exercised by non-governmental social forces and institutions.

The Relativity of History Let us now return to the issue of historical relativism between the West and the world of Islam. Popular images of Islamic values in the West tend to regard those values as “medieval,” and hopelessly anachronistic. In reality, most Muslim societies are, at worst, decades, rather than centuries, behind the West. But, in some respects, Islamic culture is more humane than Western culture. The gender question in Muslim countries is still rather troubling. But, again, the historical distance between the West and Islam may be in terms of decades rather than centuries. In almost all Western countries, apart from New Zealand, women did not get the vote until the twentieth century. Great Britain extended the vote to women in two stages—1918 and 1928. The United States enfranchised women with a constitutional amendment in 1920. Switzerland did not give women the vote, at the national level, until 1971—long after Muslim women had been voting in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Indonesia.

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British wives earned the right to own independent property in 1870. Muslim wives had always done so. Indeed, Islam is probably the only major religion founded by a businessman who was in commercial partnership with his wife, Khadija. What we are dealing with here is the practical implementation of values. Even if Western values were universal, is Western practice compatible with the values? Is the West the best embodiment of its own values? Empirical relativism reveals glaring Western contradictions. The United States, the largest and most influential Western nation, has never had a female President or Head of Government. France has never had a woman President either. But Germany now has a woman Chancellor. On the other hand, both the second and third Muslim societies in population, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have had women Prime Ministers more than once each. Benazir Bhutto has been Prime Minister of Pakistan twice, and Bangladesh has had Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Rahman Wajed consecutively, in power. Indonesia also has had a female President: Megawati Sukarnoputri. Turkey, another Muslim country, has also had a woman Prime Minister—Tansu Çiller. Turkey, a predominantly Muslim society, which inaugurated a secular state as recently as the 1920s, has already produced a woman Chief Executive. The United States has been a secular state for two hundred years, and has still not produced a woman president.

Conclusion In this chapter, we started from the premise that “the sins of the powerful acquire some of the prestige of power.” The West has become powerful over the last five to six centuries. Western culture and civilization has become influential, attracting widespread imitation and emulation. Western hegemony has too precipitated widespread homogenization of values, styles and institutions. Much of the world is increasingly becoming Westernized. The West’s triumph, in the last two or three centuries, has led to the claim that Western civilization has universal validity. Such a claim, we have here argued, faces three challenges: the challenge of historical relativism—what was valid in the West a hundred years ago is not necessarily valid today; the challenge of cultural relativism—what is valid in the West may not be valid in other cultures and civilizations; and the challenge of empirical relativism—not only does the West fail to meet its own ethical standards, but those standards are sometimes better fulfilled by other cultures than by the West itself.

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In comparison with the West, this chapter has used mainly illustrations from Islam and Africa, two overlapping civilizations, with some important lessons from India’s Mahatma Gandhi. We can conclude that, in distribution, Western civilization is the most globalized in history. No other civilization in the annals of the human race has touched so many individual members of that race, or so many societies in the world. But global distribution is not the same thing as universal validity. After all, Marxism was once globally distributed to almost a third of the population of the world. That did not give Marxism “a third of universal validity.” Indeed, we now know that Marxism and communism have shrunk in distribution almost overnight. If there is a universal ethical standard in the world, we have not yet discovered it. It is, at least for now, certainly not the Western ethical standard—for if it were, the United States would not be wondering whether the death penalty is moral or not. Nor would racism still be prevalent in the Western world. This chapter continues to assume that human history is a search for the Universal. The Western world has not found it. But it has, certainly, taken us a step or two towards it. The West has also helped to create the conditions not only for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but also conditions for the pursuit of the Universal for generations to come.

Notes 1

John Plamenatz was a distinguished Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, who later became a professor of political theory at Oxford. He taught Ali Mazrui and one of the lessons he learned from the professor is captured in this proposition. 2 See Sarah Lyall, “Fearing Reprisal, Publisher Drops Book on Greece,” the New York Times, (February 17, 1996).

CHAPTER SIX ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION AND COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY1 We start from the premise that civilization is the pursuit of creative synthesis. The synthesis may be between ethics and knowledge, between religion and science, and between one culture and another. We also start from the premise that Islam was at its most creative when it was ready to forge a synthesis between ethics and knowledge, between religion and science, and between Islam and other cultures. Doctrinally, Islam itself became a synthesis of three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and the message of Muhammad. There is a lot about the Torah and the Old Testament in the Qur’an, and substantial recognition of the Jewish prophets. There is also a lot of the New Testament in the Qur’an—from the Virgin birth of Jesus to his sacred miracles as traffic indicators towards God. And then, there are the contributions of the era of the prophet Muhammad himself and his own times in Mecca and Medina. Islam, as a civilization, began with a religious synthesis. But between the ninth and thirteenth centuries Islamic civilization also demonstrated a high capacity for scientific and technological synthesis. Just as Islam had been receptive to Judaism and Christianity in the sphere of religious doctrine, so did it demonstrate receptivity to ancient Greece in the secular field. For example, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126–98 AD) was a confirmed Aristotelian and was an early Muslim convert to the conclusion that the world was round. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037 AD) wrote extensive commentaries on Greek philosophers. His own philosophy has been interpreted as neo-Platonic in form. He is credited with the single most important medical work of medieval times, The Canon of Medicine, which became the standard medical reference book at European universities until well into the seventeenth century. Islam was learning from ancient Greece and educating medieval Europe. Civilization, as a process of creative cultural synthesis, was indeed unfolding. Philobiblia, a love of books, and philoscience, a love of knowledge, have preserved more than 100 of Ibn Sina’s works across

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cultures. Islamic philobiblia and philoscience go back to the very first verses of the Qur’an (in 96: 1–5): Iqra bismi rabbikalla dhi khalaq. Khalaqal insana min alaq. Iqra wa rabbukal akram. Alladhi allama bil qalam. Allamal insana malam ya’lam, [Read in the name of your Lord who created, created humankind from a clot. Read, for your Lord is most Generous, Who teaches by means of the pen, teaches humankind what he does not know]. When those first verses were articulated, the Prophet Muhammad did not realize that these were the first words of what was destined to become the Qur’an, and destined to develop into the most widely read book in its original language in human history. Every day of the week, the Qur’an is read in its original Arabic by millions of worshippers across the world. The Bible, in contrast, became the most widely read book in translation. When those simple first verses were proclaimed fourteen centuries ago, the stage was being set for a culture of reading, a civilization of respect for knowledge. What were the origins of this Islamic philoscience and philobiblia? Muslims believe that God’s first words to the prophet Muhammad were indeed about knowledge and God’s first command to the prophet was the imperative of Iqra’ (Read). Those earliest Qur’anic verses linked the biological sciences with the sciences of the mind. Moreover, by proclaiming that all knowledge is ultimately from God, those verses warned against the arrogance of pseudo-omniscience among humans. Science was morally accountable: Yet man doth transgress all bounds In that he looketh upon himself Verily to the Lord is the final return2

God “taught by the pen.” In contemporary terms, “the pen” could be extended to include teaching by the computer and the Internet. God taught human beings “that which they knew not.” In the last century alone, this has included splitting the atom, landing a man on the moon, cloning a sheep, and exploring cyberspace. The distinctive aspect of early Islam as a civilization was precisely this readiness to synthesize what was best from other cultures. Those early Qur’anic verses stressed that all real knowledge came from God, regardless of which human being (insan) discovered it. The shahadah was bearing witness to Allah and to the prophet Muhammad as his Messenger.

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Islam and Science: The Premise of Universalism Islamic discourse on science has generally tended to reaffirm the universalistic position that Ibn Khaldun (1333–1406 AD), the Muslim historian, articulated in his canonical work, Muqaddimah. In Ibn Khaldun’s words: The intellectual sciences are natural to man, in as much as he is a thinking being. They are not restricted to any particular religious group. They are studied by the people of all religious groups who are equally qualified to learn them and to do research in them.3

Avoiding the trap of cultural determinism, therefore, religion and science are seen as two distinct and non-contradictory projects of the human experience that do not impede each other in the development of cognitive content. Yet science and religion could also be synthesized. Within the medical sciences, of course, there has been a tradition within Islam that is sometimes called Prophetic medicine and which derives its substance from a number of ahadith of Prophet Muhammad. Some of these expound on the virtues of natural remedies, certain dietary choices, and management of a wide range of simple ailments, from headache to conjunctivitis. Others are injunctions against contact with people suffering from contagious diseases. There is also the category of Spirit medicine deriving from verses of the Qur’an or prayers, whose recitation is deemed to be therapeutic and aid people with certain afflictions. Where does medical science end and medical shahadah begin? These and other forms of what is sometimes called folk medicine, however, have been seen by others to be distinct from “scientific medicine.” To quote Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah once again: The Bedouins, in their culture, have a kind of medicine which they base primarily on experience, restricted to a few patients only, and which they have inherited from their tribal leaders and old women. In some cases it is correct but it is not founded on natural laws, nor is it tested against [scientific accounts].4

Some later scholars, like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–1897) and Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905), essentially espoused Ibn Khaldun’s position on the universalistic parameters of science, and theirs constitutes the more established point of view within Muslim discourse on science and religion to this day.

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Freed from the confines of religious dogma, but not released from religious ethics, then, science under medieval Islam is said to have been “practiced on a scale unprecedented in earlier or contemporary human history.”5 Such considerable resources were devoted to its promotion that “until the rise of modern science, no other civilization engaged as many scientists, produced as many scientific books, or provided as varied and sustained support for scientific activity” as did the Islamic civilization.6 Some issues and problems posed by Islam were, of course, quite instrumental in determining the focus of Muslim scientific ventures. The emphasis on personal cleanliness in Islam, for example, triggered a special interest in preventive medicine. Practical problems of Islamic practice combined to inspire scientific research in astronomy, geography, and mathematics. Certain Islamic rituals helped stimulate research in geography and astronomy. These included the determination of the qiblah (the direction of Mecca where Muslims face in prayer), the movement of the sun in relation to the five daily prayers, travel routes to Mecca to perform the pilgrimage, the emergence of the new moon to mark the beginning and end of the fasting month of Ramadan, and several others. In some cases, these religious concerns led to the invention of specific scientific instruments. Islamic civilization was pursuing creative synthesis. There are also Qur’anic verses touching on themes which fired the imagination of the scientifically inclined. Natural phenomena are repeatedly invoked in the Qur’an as signs of the existence and unity of Allah: Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alteration of the night and the day; . . . in the rain which God sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth—Here indeed are signs for people that are wise.7

Understanding such phenomena in greater detail became part of the scientific challenge towards a greater understanding of the powers of the Creator. In East Africa, for example, a leading zoologist, Professor Muhammad Hyder, had a regular column on Sayansi Katika Kioo cha Qur’an (Science in the Mirror of the Qur’an) that appeared in the Swahili Islamic quarterly magazine, Sauti ya Haki (produced by Sheikh Muhammad Kasim Mazrui). Indeed, for many, their faith became reinforced by the results of these scientific ventures. And where there was a conflict between Islamic claims and scientific discoveries, the presumption was that the tools of scientific research were still not

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sophisticated enough to uncover some of the hidden truths of the miracle of the Qur’an. The search for a creative synthesis between science and religion continued.

The Language of Islam and the Culture of Science Underlying this phenomenal growth of science under the Islamic dispensation was the power of language—the rise of Arabic as a transethnic, trans-racial means of communication. The scientific “movement” itself inspired a good deal of linguistic engineering. Arabic became scientificated, especially through adaptations of and borrowings from, other already scientificated languages. On the other hand, the currency of a rapidly scientificating Arabic served as an important impetus to the growth of a scientific culture within the Muslim world. Within about a century of the birth of Islam, Arabic had established itself as the language of learning and scholarship virtually throughout the Dar-el-Islam, the abode of Islam. Today, we are wont to think of Arabic as a language that accompanies Islamization at the collective and individual levels—even though the situation in Southern Sudan clearly defies this paradigm: in Southern Sudan Arabic is spreading without Islam. But the reputation of Arabic as a language of science and learning led to its rapid acquisition beyond the Islamized populations. Many non-Arab and nonMuslim thinkers (perhaps located within the ambit or vicinity of Muslim lands) also adopted Arabic for purposes of scientific expression and communication. These: . . . were given the protection of dhimmis (non-Muslims living in a Muslim state) and encouraged to take an active part in scientific and cultural life. They all contributed to the development of sciences in Islam and wrote their works in Arabic which became acknowledged as the language of scientific communication.8

With the intellectual climate created by Islam, therefore, Muslims and non-Muslims, and Arabs and non-Arabs alike, entered a dialogue of civilizations and joined forces to contribute to scientific advancement. Many important works were produced directly in the Arabic language. But there also arose a conscientious effort to translate scientific works from languages like Persian, Hindu, and Greek—fostering new levels of scientific exchange between cultures and civilizations.9 Civilization continued its mission of creative synthesis. These translations contributed not only to the growth of scientific knowledge available in Arabic, but also to the formation of a scientific limb in the language—a terminological

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legacy which, of course, ultimately found its way into the languages of the West in the form of words like algebra, alchemy, alcohol, and zero. The language of poetic elegance and Qur’anic revelation had now become the medium of scientific discourse. Poetic inspiration was laying the foundation for scientific imagination. Against the above backdrop, then, it is not at all surprising that efforts in science went hand-in-hand with developmental efforts in language. Islamic philobiblia gathered momentum. As Dallal reminds us: In addition to religious works, the earliest scholarly contributions among Muslims were of a linguistic nature. Of particular relevance to the later development of science were the extensive compilation efforts by Arabic philologists and lexicographers. The specialized lexicons that were produced in the eighth and ninth centuries represent a large-scale attempt at classifying Arabic knowledge.10

In other words, next to religious conversion to Islam, the Arabic linguistic revolution was perhaps the single most important cultural transformation to have occurred within the Muslim world. And this communicative device, especially because it was not limited to the elite, became an important instrument in the stimulation of a scientific culture within the Muslim world of the time. Nor must we forget that Islam contributed the Arabic alphabet to other languages. By the first half of the twentieth century, the Arabic alphabet had become the second most influential alphabet after the Roman one. Persian, Urdu, Ottoman Turkish, some Malay languages, Hausa, and Kiswahili, were all using orthographies based on the Arabic alphabet. From the time of the Crusades to the post-Cold War era, however, the Islamic world has been a constant target of attack and demonization from the West. Through a process of translation of works in Arabic, Muslim contributions to science were systematically plagiarized. In the process: . . . Western religious and political leaders alike have wished to press below the conscious anything remotely positive about Islam. Generation after generation have been educated by omission and conditioned by media to believe that nothing comes from the world of Islam and the Arabs except guns, daggers, camels, harems, and fanaticism . . .11

The net effect of this relentless campaign of distortion and disinformation was to create a culture of exclusivism and defensiveness among Muslims, a psychology that was partly responsible for moving the Muslim ummah from the center to the periphery of scientific research, innovation, and scholarship. Muslims lost the genius of creative synthesis.

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The Philadelphia-based Institute of Scientific Information once carried out a survey of the top twenty-five nations of the world in terms of their contribution to scientific scholarship. The United States of America ranked highest. India and Israel were eighth and fifteenth respectively. But not a single Muslim country featured in the list.12 In Biblical terms, “how are the mighty fallen!”13 It is significant, nonetheless, that Muslim scientists in the United States and other advanced industrial nations have been relatively visible and credited with important scientific discoveries. Muslims were rediscovering creative synthesis by living in the West. In 1979, for example, Muhammad Abdul Salaam was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Physics. More recently, in 1999, Ahmad Zewail became the Nobel Laureate for his work in Chemistry. Could the future of Islamic revival in the sciences lie in the hands of such diaspora Muslims in the West?

The Soul of Confession and the Science of Communication More recent contributions to science and technology, then, have come primarily from the West and outside the lands of the Muslim ummah. This development, too, has inspired unprecedented linguistic enrichment—in this case of the English language—which has in turn been helping in the consolidation of a scientific culture on a more global scale. Equally important, however, has been the technological shift from print to the computer. Linguistic literacy and computer literacy now share an ambiguous relationship, competing in some domains and complementing each other in other domains. But there is little doubt that the computer and the Internet are increasingly dominating the global network of communication. If the internationalization of Arabic once aided Muslim contribution to science, what are some of the likely implications of this new science of computer and Internet communication, of cyberspace, for the Muslim ummah? The new computer technology and the Internet may be inaugurating new kinds of stratification and new types of reform. For quite a while now, distribution of real power in the world has been based not on “who owns what” but on “who knows what.” It has not been the power of property, but the power of skill, which has been the ultimate international arbiter. Oil-rich developing countries have not been able to exploit their own petroleum resources without the skills of Western companies and Western engineers. The latest area of skill concerns computer communication and the Internet. Is there uneven distribution of these skills in the world in a

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manner that is potentially divisive? One major university in the United States may have more computer literate people than the whole of an African country of 30 million people. This is the digital divide on the world scene—the divide between the computer-skilled and computerchallenged. Literacy as a source of empowerment has shifted from the print to the computer medium. There is the lingering danger that cyberspace will consolidate the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the forces of global apartheid between the West and the Rest. If Islamic philobiblia is under siege, can the ancient Islamic philoscience come to the rescue? One additional anxiety is whether the digital divide will coincide with the racial and class divide even within societies. This issue is beginning to rear its head in the United States. While access to the technology is tied to socio-economic background, there is evidence to suggest that even within the same income brackets, African Americans are being left behind in computer skills—at least temporarily. Part of the problem is attitudinal. Many young African-Americans, at school, regard proficiency in computers as a form of “imitation of White kids,” and therefore distasteful. Peer pressure continues to discourage many bright AfricanAmerican young men (more so than young women) that mathematical skills are a White man’s lifestyle and therefore to be shunned. It is partly such pressure that runs the risk of making the digital divide coincide with the race divide. It is already estimated that African-Americans constitute less than five percent of computer programmers in the United States. If African-Americans lag behind Whites in computer skills, are AsianAmericans ahead of Whites in such skills? Is culture an important variable in the cultivation of certain skills? There is evidence of considerable mathematical and computer prowess among South Asians and East Asians, especially Indians and Koreans. The number of Asians qualifying for immigration to the United States on the basis of skills has risen dramatically in recent years. The digital divide is affecting comparative migrations of people. But it is not just class, ethnicity, and race, both locally and globally, which are affected by the new technology of communication. The computer, the Internet, and the World Wide Web may also carry the seeds of moral and religious reform. Let us then turn to this religio-ethical dimension, with particular reference to Islam. Is there a new creative synthesis in the making?

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From Information to Reformation The impact of the first industrial revolution on Western Christianity probably included no less a momentous movement than the Christian Reformation itself and its survival and spread. Will the impact of the new revolution of information include a momentous movement of Islamic Reformation? In the twentieth century, Westerners have debated whether the Protestant Reformation was the mother of capitalism in Europe or whether the Christian Reformation was itself a child of earlier phases of the capitalist revolution. Max Weber’s book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, puts forward a powerful case for the Reformation as the mother of capitalism rather than a child of economic change. On the other hand, other thinkers have identified pre-Reformation technological inventions as part of the preparation for both Protestantism and capitalism. Francis Bacon identified the compass, the printing press, and gunpowder as three forces which have transformed “the appearance and state of the whole world.”14 In our own day, Francis Robinson, Professor of History at the University of London, has placed the printing press centrally in the Protestant movement and within the Catholic counter-offensive. Professor Robinson has argued: Print lay at the heart of that great challenge to religious authority, the Protestant Reformation; Lutheranism was the child of the printed book. Print lay at the heart of the Catholic counter-offensive, whether it meant harnessing the press for the work of Jesuits and the office of Propaganda, or controlling the press through the machinery of the Papal Index and the Papal Imprimatur.15

The question is, will the Internet, cyberspace, and the third Industrial Revolution do to Islam what printing and the first Industrial Revolution did to Christianity? The printing press shook the foundations of Christian tradition. Will the Internet and World Wide Web shake the foundations of Islamic tradition? Christianity, under the shock of earlier socio-technological changes, produced its own Protestant movement. Will Islam in the course of the twenty-first century give birth to its own Martin Luther and its own John Calvin, if not its own King Henry VIII? It is arguable that in Sunni Islam there has not been a major shake-up in theology since the death of Abu Abdallah Malik, the Muslim jurist and founder of the Maliki madhab, in 795 AD. Will the new technology of information re-open the doors of

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ijtihad wider? Will the technology of the World Wide Web allow for the emergence of new madhahab? Are the gates of Islamic creative synthesis being re-opened? Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University, recently founded an Internet website, Africana.com, which he hopes will unify Black people worldwide “in the way that the Catholic Church defined European culture in the Middle Ages”16 Will the Internet do for the Muslim ummah what Gates hopes it will do for the people of African descent? In some respects the Christian Reformation was a return to the basics of Christianity. Likewise, the information revolution may help Islam realize some of its earliest aims more effectively. The first casualty may be national sovereignty—the shrinkage of sovereignty in the wake of the Internet and cyberspace. The printed word may have been playing a major role in the construction of nationhood and in reinforcing national consciousness. Computer communication, on the other hand, is contributing to the breakdown of nationhood and may be playing a role in the construction of other trans-ethnic communities. While the first industrial revolution of capitalist production and the Christian reformation became allied to the new forces of nationalism in the new Western world, the third industrial revolution and any Islamic reformation will be increasingly hostile to the insularity of the nationalism of the state. The second revolution was in global trans-exploration and imperial trade. Islam and the information revolution will be allies in breaking down the barriers of competing national sovereignties. The new technology will give Islam a chance to realize its original aim of transnational universalism. The Internet and the World Wide Web could in part become the Islamic superhighway. Linked to the shrinkage of sovereignty is, indeed, the death of distance. In some ways, this also takes Islam back to its roots. Islam has tried to kill distance. This is a religion that has always wanted to celebrate both movement and direction. The Islamic era or calendar does not begin when the Prophet Muhammad was born in 570 AD. It does not begin when he became a prophet, 40 years later. It does not begin when the Prophet died in June 632 AD. The Islamic era or calendar begins when the Prophet Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD. The Hijrah is, therefore, in a sense, a celebration of purposeful movement. The Prophet not only changed and synthesized religious paradigms from pre-Islamic to Islamic; the Prophet also physically changed cities from Mecca to Medina. Islamic time began with physical movement.

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Islam is a religion that has three holy cities, each of which signifies different levels of the death of distance. We have already mentioned Medina as the destination of Muhammad’s momentous decision to turn nascent Islam initially into a tale of two cities: from intolerant Mecca to receptive Medina. Islam has also sought to kill distance through faith. Mecca signified other aspects of the primordial death of distance. Five times each day millions of Muslims turn to Mecca, communicating with God through a city thousands of miles away. Mecca is a constant point of religious convergence for those in communication with the Ultimate. Distance is threatened by faith. And, as intimated earlier, Islam did not hesitate to enlist scientific and technological know-how in this quest to overcome the barriers of distance. But Mecca is also the city of the annual pilgrimage, receiving millions every decade from diverse corners of the world. They come by jet, camel, boat, and on foot. Distance has been threatened by Internet. Will the pilgrims one day perform the umra by Internet? How far will the new creative synthesis go? The third most sacred city for Islam is, of course, Jerusalem, over which Israelis and Palestinians are today in a stalemate. Especially sacred to Muslims is al-Quds, focused on the Dome of the Rock. Muslims believe that on the night of Mi’raj distance truly died at three different levels—the Prophet Muhammad moved from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night, in the age of the camel; and he moved from earth to the Heavens during the same night, ascending from Jerusalem; and while in the Heavens the present age communicated with the ages of the past, for the Prophet was able to talk to Jesus, Moses, and all the way back to Adam during the same night. The Prophet was back in Mecca before morning—breaking at least three sound barriers of cosmic experience: killing distance between Mecca and Jerusalem; killing distance between the earth and the Heavens; and killing distance between the past and the present. And it is in this sense that Islam prepared believers for the age of the end of distance, and the age of globalized digital simultaneity. This was a prophecy of digital philoscience. Many Muslims have already risen to the challenges of the new information age with Islamic Resource Guides on the Internet, Cyber Muslim Guides, Islamic Information and News Network, and Web servers with Islamic material. What all this means is that in the area of shrinkage of sovereignty, and in the area of death of distance, Islam and the new information revolution are, on the whole, historical allies. And contrary to some assumptions that “modern communication would engender a new

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and generally Western-oriented cosmopolitanism, they are predominantly spreading the idea of freedom that is translated by the receivers as endogenous freedom—including freedom to rejoin one’s real kinship (whether larger or smaller), and to re-examine the validity of one’s own ancient social values”17 Civilization is pushing towards new frontiers of creative synthesis.

From Private Harem to Private Ballot But there may be two fundamental areas where Islam and the new information revolution need to find accommodation. These could also be at the heart of any Islamic Reformation movement if it occurs. One area of tension concerns the relations between men and women. Will the new technology of information fundamentally alter the gender playing field forever? If the first two issues were about shrinkage of sovereignty and the death of distance, this third issue is about privacy unveiled. On the gender question, the Muslim world has alternated between two doctrines. One doctrine has been to treat genders as separate but equal. The United States once attempted to implement the constitutional doctrine of treating Whites and Blacks as separate but equal. However, by 1954, the Supreme Court was ready to conclude that separation of the races resulted in—or perpetuated—inequality. In the momentous decision of Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954, the United States Supreme Court at last rejected the doctrine of “separate but equal” for the races. Racial segregation became unconstitutional. If “separate but equal” was untenable for races, why should the doctrine work for genders? Because genders live together in homes in a way in which races never used to do in the United States. Every man’s mother is a woman. So are men’s wives, daughters, granddaughters, aunts, and other female relatives. So separation of genders is inevitably moderated by family ties. This is a qualitative difference from the separation of races. The gender doctrine of separate but equal could survive the new information revolution. Under the new technology the computerized hijab is at hand: women can more easily stay at home and still be equal computer workers. The Internet, in other words, is gradually abolishing the distinction between home and the workplace. This is a whole new depth of creative synthesis. But many Muslim societies treat women as “separate and unequal.” Aspects of it are rooted in a view of the Shari’ah, which made women inherit half of what men inherited and made the testimony of women in court be worth less than that of men in certain circumstances. Such

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Muslim societies have assumed that there were two different doors of knowledge—one for men and one for women. Many Muslim societies had assumed that there were branches of knowledge that were not fit for women and children under sixteen. Partly for reasons of modesty, women were spared certain areas of know-how. Today, the Taliban in Afghanistan have carried this theory of two tiers of gender knowledge to the extreme. This is not synthesis, but segregation. The new information technology is going to blow that discrimination totally out of social existence. More and more information may refuse to be susceptible to gender differentiation. The digital divide may give way to digital democracy. What men know about sex, pornography, politics, and corruption may also be accessible to women through the World Wide Web, Internet, and the information superhighway. In time, the veil as the modesty of the face is bound to be destroyed by the new technology. Women may cover other aspects of their personality, but increasingly they will be totally available facially to the viewer through the Internet and the up-and-coming image telephone system. The new technology will pass a death sentence on the old tradition of the harem, which has been in existence since the Abbasid dynasty in many Muslim societies. The traditional forms of seclusion of women will no longer survive a technology in which women can declare their presence and in time assert their rights. Women will also be able to introduce themselves to others more easily than ever before. Our daughters visually telephoning their boyfriends could become the order of the day before very long. But, in moving society towards digital democracy across gender lines, will the Internet also overcome the boundaries of class? Or will it simply consolidate class differences, perhaps in a reconstituted manner, within the community of women? And to what extent will the spirit of an ummah forged by the Internet at the upper horizontal level be transmitted to the rest of Muslim society? These are challenges that are still being tested in the mill of time. If the new information technology helps in shrinking sovereignty, in collapsing distance, and in unveiling of privacy, what is the fourth arena for our concern in this analysis? If there is an Islamic Reformation, its fourth component is likely to be the prospect of democratizing theocracy. Democracy is a people-focused system. Theocracy is a God-focused system. Are the two totally mutually exclusive? Or is it conceivable that a God-focused system could become at the same time people-focused? Will the digital divide not only give way to digital democracy but move on to further humaneness? Civilization as the pursuit of creative synthesis is

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entering new frontiers of both hope and potential horror, of both promise and potential peril. Only concerned religion can save creative science from the perils of over extension.

Computer Languages: Between English and Arabic There is, as well, the additional problem of the hegemonic status of the English language. When the Internet first appeared on the scene its software was entirely based on American English. Today, it is more accessible to people using Roman-based alphabets, but fails to accommodate fully other writing systems—except in more recent versions of e-mail transmissions. The Internet software continues to be relatively unfriendly to scripts that are not Roman-based. And this Anglo-centricity in software naturally has other consequences in the areas of politics, economics, and society at large. The English language and its Roman-based script also dominate Internet posting and communication. A survey on Internet linguistic diversity conducted by Benjamin Ao of First Byte Corporation (a software company at the time) and posted on a listserve entitled the Linguist on 14 November 1995 concludes that: The linguistic diversity is greatly reduced on the Internet. All but two (Russian and Bulgarian) posting languages have writing systems based on the Roman alphabet. Speakers of languages that do not have Roman alphabet-based writing systems don’t bother with transliteration (with the exception of Russian and Bulgarian speakers). They simply adopt English. English is by far the most popular language on the Internet, even if the subject matter is highly culturally and ethnically oriented.18

It is possible, of course, that for countries like Japan and some others, intra-national communication is primarily in the national languages, and that the predominance of English is limited to international communication. But this and other surveys do confirm the threat to diversity that the Internet poses—even though they also demonstrate that the Net itself has the capacity to accommodate greater diversity. From the inception of Islam, the Arabic language has been central to Muslim identity. It is the language of Qur’anic and Islamic ritual and it has been central in the entire history of Islam. Is this Arabic marginalization in cyberspace, therefore, likely to undermine the potential of computer communication to recreate the transnational ummah? The challenge is not only to make Arabic more visible in computer postings, but also to inscribe it more permanently as a feature of Internet software.

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Marginalization of the legacy of Arabic is incompatible with the process of creative synthesis as the basis of civilization. The Qur’an is still humankind’s ultimate song of literary Iqra’! In the new millennium, in other words, Islamic renewal may partly depend on the potential convergence of the language of the Qur’an, which stimulated the growth of scientific culture under Islamic civilization and the new horizons provided by the Internet and computer communication for the reconstitution of the Muslim ummah.

Islam, Education, and Science The whole project of Islamizing scientific knowledge must include, of course, the kind of education that Muslims get, and how Muslim educational institutions are structured to meet this challenge. There are three methods for a religious school to go beyond being the purely religious, especially to include the world of science. One is through the strategy of secularization. This is the route that Harvard and Oxford took as the subject matter, the methods of study, and the qualifications for entry and graduation became more and more religion-neutral. The other is dualization, the strategy that Al-Azhar University in Egypt took as it evolved into a dual university—one part is still religious and distinguished as sacred, and the other part of Al-Azhar as secular and modern. Al-Azhar University is about one millennium old. The dual model of Al-Azhar approximates the distinction drawn by the Muslim philosopher, Imam al-Ghazali (1058–1111 AD) between fard’ayn (individual obligation) and fardkifaya (collective obligation). Fard’ayn would include religion, law, and ethics whose study is mandatory for individual Muslims. Fardkifaya, on the other hand, would define subjects like medicine and agriculture whose study and advancement may be undertaken by any individual: but are so undertaken for the overall welfare of the society at large that is deemed a collective responsibility. There is yet another strategy for the religious school to transcend the purely religious, even though it is so far limited to kindergarten and, perhaps, elementary education. This is the strategy of integration practiced, for example, by some madrasas in East Africa and elsewhere under the sponsorship of the Aga Khan Foundation. By all indications, integration—primarily a curriculum exercise—is an attempt to Islamize learning and science through the use of indigenous resources and to make “Western” science more organic with the local milieu. But how far up the educational hierarchy can this experimentation with synthesis and integration be taken? Will not integration, at some level,

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limit what is included in the curriculum? Will religion begin to influence the content of the science curriculum? And is the cause of Islamization of science at the higher levels of education better served by the dualization model or the integration alternative? In the final analysis, however, we must not forget that the history of Islamic civilization as a whole was indeed once a fusion of religious vision, creative cultural synthesis, and scientific advancement. Even those thinkers who believed in the separateness of religion and science must have acknowledged the inspirational role of Islamic civilization to the scientific quest. The beginnings of science may, in fact, be creative synthesis.

Conclusion: Civilization and Dialogue The possibility that the Internet may stimulate an Islamic Reformation is based on the assumption, of course, that Muslims are real actors in the information revolution and not merely objects; they are producers of knowledge, and not merely consumers of knowledge. The power of skill is still more vital than the power of income. Are Muslims making progress in narrowing the technological gap between Islam and the West? The religion of the Hijrah, the religion of the Hajj, and the religion of Mi’raj needs to be ready for its next Hijrah—the information superhighway. But what would be the implications of an Islamic Reformation for world peace? Will not a reinvigorated Muslim ummah lead to the predicted clash of civilizations? If history is anything to go by, then it can be argued that Islamic renewal will not only galvanize the Muslim ummah from within but also, by rekindling the spirit of ijtihad, it will reopen the doors of constructive engagement with other civilizations. Ancient Islamic philobiblia and philoscience could extend creative synthesis. It must be remembered that, at the height of its glory, Islam tried hard to protect religious minorities. Jews and Christians had special status as People of the Book—a fraternity of monotheists. Other religious minorities were later to be accorded the status of protected minorities (dhimmis). Under the system, Jewish scholars rose to high positions in Muslim Spain. During the Ottoman Empire, Christians sometimes attained high political office. Suleiman I (1520–1566) had Christian ministers in his government. So did Salim III (1789–1807). The Moghul Empire integrated Hindus and Muslims into a consolidated Indian state. Emperor Akbar (1556–1605) carried furthest the Moghul policy of bringing Hindus into the government.19 All this may be an indication that Islam is most inclusive and most open to dialogue precisely at its hour of greatest

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strength. And it is this historical precedent that is likely to experience resurgence under an Islamic Reformation. A self-confident and selfassured Islam is a better partner for peace than a threatened Islam. Part of the dialogic thrust of Islam across religious faith and human civilizations is, of course, rooted in the Qur’an itself. Calling on Jews and Christians to join hands with Muslims in pursuit of common goals, the Qur’an enjoins: Say O people of the Book! Come to common ground As between us and you.20

And even though, like other universalistic religions, Islam has been less ecumenical than the more indigenous religions of Africa and elsewhere in the world, Islam has tended to be far more accommodating of indigenous traditions than Christianity. Edward W. Blyden was among the first to capture this cultural dialectic of Islam in his monumental work Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. There are, therefore, both doctrinal premises and historical precedents that can inspire the Muslim ummah to play a leading role in fostering interfaith and intercivilizational dialogue and collaboration towards a more just and peaceful world order.

Notes 1

This chapter appeared in Majid Tehranian and David W. Chappell (eds.), Dialogue of Civilizations: A New Peace Agenda for a New Millenium, (London & New Millenium, London & New York: I. B.Tauris, 2002), pp. 139 –146. 2 See Surat Iqra’ verses 6 –8. 3 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Franz Rosenthal (trans.), (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), p. 67. 4 Ibid., p. 69. 5 Ahmad Dallal, “Science, Medicine, and Technology: The Making of a Scientific Culture,” in The Oxford History of Islam, John L. Esposito [editor-in-chief ] (ed.), (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 6 Ibid., p. 155. 7 See Surat al-Baqarah, 2: 164. 8 Nasim Butt, Science and Muslim Societies (London: Grey Seal, 1991), pp. 65–66. 9 Dallal, “Science, Medicine, and Technology,” p. 158. 10 Ibid. 11 Erskine Childers, “Amnesia and Antagonism,” in Terrorising the Truth: The Shaping of Contemporary Images of Islam and Muslims in Media, Politics and Culture, Harish Noor (ed.), (Penang: Just World Trust, 1997), p. 136 –137. 12 Seyd Amir M., “Scientific Research in Muslim Countries,” in Islamization of Attitudes and Practices in Science and Technology, M. A. K. Lohdi (ed.), (United

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States: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers, 1989), p. 15. 13 See 2 Samuel, chapter 1, verses 19 and 27. 14 Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning and Norum Organum, (New York: The Colonial Press, 1899), p. 366. 15 Francis Robinson, “Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, Special Issue on How Social, Political and Cultural Information is Collected, Defined, Used and Analyzed, (Feb. 1993), p. 222. 16 Daniel Golden, “Gates’ Goal for Worldwide Portal that Unites Blacks Faces Hurdles,” Wall Street Journal [Online, Feb. 17, 2000]. Available at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB950748839354782122.html. 17 Erskine Childers, “Amnesia and Antagonism,” p. 140 –141. 18 Benjamin Ao, “Linguistic Diversity on the Internet,” [Online, Nov. 14, 1995], The Linguist List: International Linguistics Community Online. Available at: http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-1629.html#2. 19 Ali Mazrui, “Islamic and Western Values,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 5, (September/October 1997), p. 126. 20 See Qur’an 3: 64.

CHAPTER SEVEN ISLAM AND AFROCENTRICITY: THE TRIPLE HERITAGE Is Afrocentricity incompatible with Islam? Or can both be part of a wider concept which might be called Africa’s triple heritage—a synthesis of Africanity, Islam, and the influence of the West in Africa? The answer to these questions lies not only in Africa, as a continent, but also in Global Africa, in Africa and its varied worldwide Diaspora. This chapter is also, in part, about the perception of these three civilizations—Africa, Islam, and the West—from three political writers: Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912), Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), and Ali A. Mazrui (1933–). Edward Blyden came to the triple heritage from a Christian point of entry. Blyden’s upbringing was indeed Protestant, but distant from both Africa and Islam. He was born in the West Indies, and was later ordained a Minister of the Presbyterian Church in Liberia. Kwame Nkrumah approached the triple heritage from a Christian upbringing and an African environment, having been born in 1909 in the colonial Gold Coast (in the country now called Ghana). He did consider training for the priesthood early in his career, but he later became a selfstyled “non-denominational Christian.” Edward W. Blyden was an unsuccessful candidate in the presidential election in Liberia in 1885. Kwame Nkrumah did become Ghana’s prime minister (1957–1958) and president (1958–1966). Both leaders developed ideas about an “African personality” which were responsive to Islam. Was this a marriage between Afrocentricity and Islamophilia? Ali A. Mazrui was the only one of the three authors who approached the triple heritage from an Islamic point of entry. Like Blyden and Nkrumah, Mazrui was originally intended to train for a religious vocation. But in Mazrui’s case the religion was Islam, rather than Christianity. His father was the Chief Kadhi, Chief Islamic Justice, of Kenya who had intended the young Ali to follow in the father’s footsteps as an Islamic jurist. The father’s premature death, when Ali was only fourteen years old, tilted the balance in Ali’s triple heritage. Ali Mazrui ended up at Oxford University for his D.Phil. rather than at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

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What is Islamophile Afrocentricity? In their own very different ways, each of these three thinkers combined Afrocentricity with a sympathetic response to Islam. Together, they are part of a school of Afrocentricity that accepts Islam as an ally of Africanity rather than a rival or a threat. Islamophile Afrocentricity, in the African Diaspora, has included people of African descent who have converted to Islam partly for reasons of racial dignity or Black Nationalism. In this century, in the United States of America, such people have included political leaders, such as Malcolm X (Al-Hajj Malik Al-Shabbazz) and Louis Farrakhan, and outstanding athletes like Muhammad Ali, formerly known as Cassius Clay. In South Africa, in the 1990s, Islam did in fact make inroads into the Black townships after centuries of being confined to the Malay, Indian, and “Colored” sectors of the country’s multi-ethnic population. The election of Bakili Muluzi, in Malawi, as the first Muslim president in Southern Africa, was taken by South African Muslims with considerable religious pride. In such sectors of the population, Islam is once again viewed as an ally of Afrocentricity rather than a rival or a threat. A nineteenth century Black pioneer in Islamophile Afrocentricity was indeed Edward Blyden, the Diaspora African who returned home to Africa and became a precursor of such doctrines as Negritude, Pan-Africanism, and Afrocentricity. Born in St. Thomas, the Danish Virgin Islands in August 1832, Edward Wilmot Blyden encountered his worst racial experiences in the United States when he went to seek education there in 1850. Because of his race, he suffered a number of humiliations, including rejection by the Presbyterian Theological College on racial grounds. It was in December 1850 that Blyden migrated to Liberia and to a life which was to deepen his Afrocentricity, on one side, and to arouse his interest in Islam, on the other. And yet, by a strange twist of destiny, his initial entry into Afrocentricity and Islam was through Christian missionary education. Just as later nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius K. Nyerere, and Robert Mugabe were products of missionary schools, so was Edward Blyden. In Liberia, he registered at Alexander High School, a newly established Presbyterian institution. The head of the school was Reverend D. A. Wilson, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary. The impact of the school upon Blyden was so profound and his own intellectual progress was so rapid that in 1858, at the age of only 26, Edward Blyden was ordained a Presbyterian minister and became the Principal of Alexander High School.

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Paradoxically, although Ali Mazrui as a Muslim believes that Islam is the right religion for himself, it was Edward Blyden who came closer to saying that Islam was the right religion for Africa. Blyden was far more forthright than Mazrui in praising Islam as compared with either African traditional religion or Christian practices: Islam in Africa counts in its ranks the most energetic and enterprising tribes. It claims as its adherents the only people who have any form of civil polity or bond of social organization. . . Its laws regulate the most powerful kingdoms—Futah, Masina, Hausa, Bornou, Waday, Darfur, Kordofan, Senaar . . . it commands respect among all Africans wherever it is known, even where the people have not submitted to the sway of the Koran.1

The Symbolism of Egypt: Pharaonic and Islamic Islamophilia and Afrocentricity are, at their most, ambivalent on the issue of Egypt. Much of Afrocentric literature at-large reveres ancient Egypt not only as the genesis of grand civilizations, but also as the ultimate triumph of Black creativity. Most Afrocentrists regard ancient Egypt as having been a Black civilization. Today’s Egypt is mainly Muslim, a product of the Arab conquest of the seventh century. Islamophobe Afrocentrists regard the arrival of Islam as a negation of its Africanity—although the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine conquests of Egypt had in fact preceded the Arab conquest. Islamophobe Afrocentrists view Arabized Egypt as a betrayal of the Afrocentric glory of pharaonic Egypt. What about Islamophile Afrocentrists like Edward Blyden? Blyden simply separated his sympathy for Islam from his fascination with ancient Egypt. Blyden quotes, with approval, an author of an Arabic and English Dictionary who, under the Arabic word kusur (palaces), noted the following: The ruins of Thebes, that ancient and celebrated town, deserve to be visited, as just those heaps of ruins, loved by the Nile, are all that remains of the opulent cities that gave luster to Ethiopia. It was there that a people, since forgotten, discovered the elements of science and art, at a time when all other men were barbarous, and when a race, now regarded as the refuse of society, explored among the phenomena of nature those civil and religious systems which have since held mankind in awe.2

While Edward Blyden discusses the Blackness of ancient Egypt and the multi-colored Islamicity of modern Egypt without attempting to reconcile the two, Ali Mazrui opts for the solution that ancient Egypt was

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“African but not necessarily Black.” Mazrui argues that it was a Eurocentric fallacy to insist that ancient Egyptians had to have been Black in order to have been African. After all, nobody insists that the people of Madras in India (black population) have to be the same color as the people of Hunan in China (yellow in color) for all of them to be Asians.3 While Blyden and Mazrui discussed ancient and modern Egypt as theoretical issues, Kwame Nkrumah brought them into his own home. Kwame Nkrumah married an Egyptian Coptic woman, Helen Ritz Fathia, probably a Coptic descendant of ancient Egyptians. Nkrumah’s marriage was widely interpreted as a matrimonial re-affirmation of his transSaharan Pan-Africanism.4 It was almost like a dynastic marriage between Africa north and south of the Sahara. Was this a case of Pan-Africanism without Afrocentricity? Pan-Africanism is, indeed, one more issue which binds Blyden, Nkrumah, and Mazrui into a shared vision, but with important differences. Mazrui identifies five distinct levels of Pan-Africanism: sub-Saharan, the unity of Black people south of the Sahara; trans-Saharan, the unity of the African continent as a whole, both north and south of the Sahara; transAtlantic, the unity of Africa and its own Diaspora across the Atlantic; West hemispheric, the unity of the people of African ancestry in the Western hemisphere; and global, the unity of all Africans and Black people world-wide.5 Blyden was born a Diaspora Black, but became a citizen of continental Africa. Mazrui was born in continental Africa, but became a resident of the Diaspora. Their lives prepared them for trans-Atlantic Pan-African commitment. Blyden went to the extent of preaching a “Back to Africa” imperative to Black Americans, in the literal sense of encouraging them to migrate to Liberia. Mazrui’s concept of “Back to Africa” was a cultural imperative—preaching the case for cultural re-Africanization in Africa and in the Diaspora.6 If Blyden was born in the Diaspora and became resident in Africa, and Mazrui was born in Africa and became resident in the Diaspora, Kwame Nkrumah was an intermediate category. He graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, with a B.A. in 1939 and a B.Th. in 1942, and obtained further graduate qualifications from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 and 1943. His years in the United States had a profound impact on his Pan-Africanism and the style of his Afrocentricity. In his autobiography, he identified Marcus Garvey as one of the two deepest intellectual influences on his ideological development. Garvey was, of course, the “Back to Africa” Black Nationalist from Jamaica, who galvanized African Americans into a race-conscious movement in the

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years between the two world wars. Both Nkrumah and Garvey were transAtlantic Pan-Africanists.7 Where does Islam fit into this Pan-African equation? How does it affect trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism?

Afrocentric Islam and Islamic Africanity In December 1992, Mazrui spent about seven hours in the company of the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, “the Greatest.” They were both in Philadelphia to help raise funds for Somalia. The sponsoring agency for the fundraising was an African-American Muslim Organization, Masjidullah. This was clearly a case of trans-Atlantic PanAfricanism. But although the main mission in Philadelphia was helping Somalia, Muhammad Ali in retirement days had one additional role on almost all public occasions. He was a devoted, if quiet missionary for the Islamic faith. Fans that approached him for autographs were handed brochures and leaflets introducing them to the tenets of Islam. The brochures and leaflets were indeed autographed by Muhammad Ali himself, and were sometimes accompanied by a signed photograph of the boxer in the ring. One important target for Muhammad Ali’s missionary activity was the penitentiary of the United States where many Black folk languished in either misery or rage—or both. Islam provided a potentially creative purposefulness to that rage. Islam is a civilization of utter sobriety (no alcohol, no drugs, and no cheap indulgence). It is a religion which is aghast at the corrupt laxity and indiscipline of the rich, and not merely censorious of the lapses of the poor. Malcolm X was an angry destitute man converted to Islam behind bars. Mike Tyson was, more recently, an angry boxing millionaire converted to Islam in quest for answers. Was Afrocentricity in alliance with Islam? By a poetic twist of destiny, Islam did first arrive in the Americas in chains nearly four centuries ago. It came with enslaved West African Muslims. Islam now provides the hope of liberation to some of the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Islam can become Afrocentric; Africanity becomes Islamic. Among Diaspora Africans of the Western hemisphere generally, there are, in fact, two spiritual routes towards re-Africanization. One route is through Pan-Islam—the transition chosen by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X (or Al-Hajj Malik Al-Shabbazz). The other is directly through Pan-Africanism—the transition chosen by Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari Movement (Ras [Prince] Tafari were the title and name of Haile

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Selassie I before his coronation as Emperor of Ethiopia). The Pan-Islamic route has been particularly striking in Black America, where conversions to the Muslim faith are still on the ascendant. The direct Pan-African route has often been led by Caribbean Africans, either in the West Indies themselves, or in North America. One question which arises is: Why has Islam made much more progress among North American Blacks than among Blacks in Blyden’s beloved West Indies? The second question is: Why does African traditional religion, or beliefs rooted in sacred Africanity, sometimes appear to be more visible in the new Caribbean after Blyden than among Africans of North America? One major variable was the tendency of African Americans to equate Brown with Black. No sharp distinction was made in the Black-American paradigm between brown Arabs and black Africans. Mazrui’s dual ancestry as Afro-Arab would feel at home in this paradigm. Indeed, until the second half of the twentieth century, almost all “Colored people” in North America—whether they came from Africa or Asia, or elsewhere— were treated with comparable contempt. When W. E. B. Du Bois (born American, but died Ghanaian) argued that it was not Blacks who were a “minority” but Whites, he had added up the teeming millions of Asia with the millions of Africans to give the colored races a massive majority in the global population. If the transition from brown Asian to black African was so smooth in the Black-American paradigm, the transition from Africanity to Arabness continues to be even easier. Indeed, of all the religions associated with Asia, the one that is the most Afro-Asian is indeed Islam. The oldest surviving Islamic academies are actually located on the African continent—including Al-Azhar University in Cairo and Fez in Morocco. The Muslim academy of Timbuktu, in what is today Mali, is remembered by many Pan-Africanists with pride. In Nigeria, there are more Muslims than there are Muslims in any Arab country—including the largest Arab country in population, Egypt. In 1981, Nigerian Muslims comprised the largest contingent worldwide making the pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca and Medina. On the other hand, there are more Arabs in Africa as a whole than in Asia. Indeed, demographically, twothirds of the Arab world lies in the African continent. Given then the tendency of the Black-American paradigm to draw no sharp distinction between being Black and being “colored,” Islam’s Africanness was not too diluted by its Arab origins. Again, this was congenial to Ali Mazrui in ancestral terms. Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan have sometimes equated Islamization with

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Africanization. North American Black Muslims have seen Mecca as a port-of-call on the way back to the African heritage, as well as a stage on the way back towards God. Islam in the post-Blyden Caribbean has had moments of great drama— perhaps the greatest was in Trinidad in 1990 when Muslim reformers held the whole Cabinet (including the Prime Minister) hostage for about a week. The siege gave Afro-Caribbean Islam global visibility. Islam in the Caribbean, on the other hand, has been handicapped by two factors. First, race consciousness in the Caribbean does not as readily equate black with brown as it has historically done in the United States. The Caribbean historical experience was based on a racial hierarchy, different shades of stratification, rather than racial dichotomy, a polarized divide between white and “colored.” Arabs in the Caribbean racial paradigm, therefore, belonged to a different pecking order from Africans. Indeed, Lebanese and Syrians were more likely to be counted as White rather than Black. Because of that, the Arab origins of Islam were sometimes seen as being in conflict with Islam’s African credentials. That would have confused Edward Blyden, despite his Caribbean origins. Moreover, the Caribbean has a highly visible East Indian population— a large proportion of whom are Muslims. When Mazrui gave a lecture in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1988, on the subject of “Islam in Africa,” the overwhelming majority of his audiences were not Afro-Guyanese (eager to learn more about Africa) but Indo-Guyanese (eager to learn more about Islam). In the black population in Guyana and Trinidad, there is a tendency to see Islam neither as African nor as Arab—but as Indian. The result is a much slower pace of Islamic conversions among Caribbean Africans than among African Americans. Most Caribbean Blacks are unlikely to see the Muslim holy city of Mecca as a spiritual port-of-call on the way back to the cultural womb of Africa. On the contrary, Mecca is more likely to be perceived by the majority as a stage of cultural re-fuelling on the way to the Indian sub-continent. In contrast, indigenous African religiosity has often prospered more in the post-Blyden Caribbean than in Black America. Why? One reason is that cultural nationalism in black America is rooted in romantic gloriana rather than romantic primitivism. Gloriana takes pride in the complex civilizations of ancient Africa; primitivism takes pride in the simplicity of rural African village life. Again, in the words of Aimé Césaire—the Caribbean romantic primitivist of Martinique who coined the word negritude: Hooray for those who have invented neither powder nor the compass, Those who have tamed neither gas nor electricity,

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While this idealization of simplicity can capture the Caribbean mind both before and after Blyden, it seldom inspires the imagination of the African American. The dominant North American culture is based on the premise of “bigger, better, and more beautiful.” African American rebellion against Anglo-racism, therefore, seeks to prove that Africa has produced civilizations in the past which were “as big and beautiful” as anything constructed by the White man. In this cultural atmosphere of gloriana, African indigenous religion appears capable of being mistaken for “primitivism.” Indigenous African rituals appear rural and village-derived. While Yoruba religion does have an impressive following in parts of the United States, and its rituals are often rigorously observed, the general predisposition of the AfricanAmerican paradigm of nationalism is afraid of appearing to be “primitive.” The Islamic option is regarded by African Americans as a worthier rival to the Christianity of the White man. Parts of the Qur’an seem to be an improvement upon the white man’s Old Testament. The Islamic civilization once exercised dominion and power over European populations. Historically, Islamic culture refined what we now call “Arabic numerals,” invented Algebra, developed the zero, pushed forward the frontiers of science, and designed and built legendary edifices from AlHambra in Spain to the Taj Mahal in India. Black America’s paradigm of romantic gloriana is more comfortable with such a record of achievement than with the more subtle dignity of Yoruba, Igbo, or Kikuyu traditional religion. There is a related difference to bear in mind. Cultural nationalism in Black America often looks, once again, to ancient Egypt for inspiration— perceiving pharaonic Egypt as a Black civilization. Caribbean Black nationalism has shown a tendency to look to Ethiopia. The Egyptian route to Black cultural validation again emphasizes complexity and gloriana. On the other hand, the Ethiopian route to Black cultural validation can be biblical and austere. Thinkers like Nkrumah and Mazrui are caught in between Egyptophilia and Ethiophilia. The Rastafari movement, with its Jamaican roots, has become the most influential Ethiopic movement in the African Diaspora. Named after Haile Selassie’s older titled designation, the Jamaican movement evolved a distinctive way of life, often austere. Curiously enough, the movement’s original deification of the Emperor of Ethiopia was more Egyptian than Abyssinian. The fusion of Emperor with Godhead was almost pharaonic.

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The ancient Kings of Egypt built the pyramids as alternative abodes. The divine monarchs did not really die when they ceased to breath; they had merely moved to a new address. In this sense, the original theology of the Rastafari movement was a fusion of Egyptianism and pre-biblical Ethiopianism. The resulting life-style of the Rastas, on the other hand, has been closer to romantic simplicity than to romantic gloriana. In North America, the Rasta style is still more likely to appeal to people of Caribbean origin than to long-standing African Americans—with their grander paradigm of cultural pride. Pan-Africanism and Pan-Islamism are still two alternative routes towards the African heritage. After all, as we have already indicated, Islam did first arrive in the Americas in chains: West African slaves brought it to the Western hemisphere. In reality, the family under slavery was better able to preserve its African pride than to protect its Islamic identity. Slavery damaged both the legacy of African culture and the legacy of Islam among the imported Black captives. But, for quite a while, Islam in the Diaspora was destroyed more completely than was Africanity. But now, Islamization and Africanization in North America are perceived as alternative spiritual routes to the cultural bosom of the ancestral continent. It remains to be seen whether the twenty-first century will see a similar equilibrium in Blyden’s Caribbean—as the search continues for more authentic cultural and spiritual paradigms to sustain the Global Africa of tomorrow.9

Between Arabism and Afrocentricity It was in his book, Consciencism, that Nkrumah most explicitly addressed the triple heritage of African culture, Islam and what he called “Euro-Christianity.” For Nkrumah the biggest challenge for African philosophy was how to synthesize these three very different traditions of thought. Nkrumah’s concept of consciencism was the nearest approximation to Mazrui’s concept of “the Triple heritage”—a search for an African synthesis of three distinct civilizations.10 Nkrumah groped for a principle of compassionate ecumenicalism. He said: With true independence regained . . . a new harmony needs to be forged, a harmony that will allow the combined presence of traditional Africa, Islamic Africa and Euro-Christian Africa, so that this presence is in tune with the original humanist principles underlying African society. Our society is not the old society, but a new society enlarged by Islamic and Euro-Christian influences.11

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Nkrumah urged a new synthesis of these legacies to produce what he called “Philosophical Consciencism”: The theoretical basis for an ideology whose aim shall be to contain the African experience of Islamic and Euro-Christian presence as well as the experience of traditional African society, and, by gestation, employ them for the harmonious growth and development of that society.12

There are Afrocentrists who are admirers of Nkrumah on one side, and critics of Mazrui’s concept of Africa’s triple heritage, on the other. Is Mazrui himself Afrocentric, Eurocentric or Islamocentric? Molefi Kete Asante is convinced that fundamentally Mazrui is “Eurocentric,” masquerading as something else: Mazrui’s epigrammatic style, while often engaging, conceals the essentially liberal European orientation. . . . He sees the continent always as acted-upon, victim, and powerless.13 The Ethiopian scholar Haile Habtu has also accused Mazrui’s concept of Africa’s triple heritage as being fundamentally Eurocentric. He has argued that instead of examining external influences like Islam and the West upon Africa, Mazrui should have addressed Africa’s contributions to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Greco-Roman legacy of the West.14 While these particular Afrocentrists have thus accused Mazrui of being basically Eurocentric, Nigeria’s Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has accused Mazrui of being Islamocentric. In lectures and speeches spread out over several years, Wole Soyinka described Mazrui’s television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986) as being the product of a “Muslim Fundamentalist.” Wole Soyinka’s accusations would presumably have continued had Ali Mazrui not challenged him to cite chapter and verse in an overheated Soyinka vs. Mazrui debate in Transition magazine (Oxford University Press) in 1993.15 Although Mazrui claims for Africa three civilizations (African, Islamic, and Western), his critics see him either primarily as a Western liberal (e.g., Molefi Asante), or primarily as a Muslim propagandist (e.g., Wole Soyinka). Mazrui sees himself as a living embodiment of the triple heritage, who has spent much of his life trying to promote African interests in Africa, the West and the Muslim world. Nkrumah embodied two of those civilizations (African and Western), but his closest African allies outside Ghana were often Muslims. When the Casablanca group of radical African leaders was formed in 1961, Kwame Nkrumah was the only non-Muslim among them. The others were the Heads of State of Egypt, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, and the Algerian Government-in-Exile at the time. The Casablanca group was only

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disbanded after the Organization of African Unity was formed in May 1963. When Nkrumah attempted to form a West African union, his partners were Guinea (Conakry) and Mali, both Muslim countries. None of Ghana’s Christian neighbors in West Africa were interested in Nkrumah’s Pan-African gestures. After Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup in February 1966, he turned for refuge to his old comrade-in-arms Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea. Sékou Touré’s regime was secular, but he lived to be a chairman of the worldwide Organization of the Islamic Conference. Nkrumah spent the last years of his life among Muslims in Guinea. As for the nature of his Pan-Africanism, it was not only trans-Atlantic but also trans-Saharan. Nkrumah regarded the Arabs of Africa as fellow Africans, and was outraged by French nuclear tests in the Algerian part of the Sahara in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He condemned the tests as an affront against the whole of Africa. If Ali Mazrui was the living embodiment of the triple heritage personally, Kwame Nkrumah practiced his “philosophical consciencism” in his foreign policy and in many other aspects of his life. Let us conclude with the role of Arabic in Global Africa, and how it has touched the lives of our three thinkers. Edward Blyden’s interest in Islam was aroused partly because he was concerned about religion and partly because Blyden was a linguist and philologist who became curious about the Arabic language. He spent three months in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria in 1866, partly in order to improve his command of Arabic. At that time, Blyden was already Professor of Classics at Liberia College, and wanted to introduce classical Arabic into his department there. By 1992, African-American Muslims were claiming Blyden for Islam. Did the Prophet Muhammad secretly convert Blyden to the divine message? Was Blyden’s Muslim name Abd-ul-Karim? Combined with his reputation as a kind of nineteenth century Bilal, Blyden’s Islamophilia had earned him not only the admiration of Blacks but also the admiration of Muslims in the Diaspora. In 1992, Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour, an African American Muslim, issued a special edition of Blyden’s book Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, which virtually claimed Blyden for Black Islam.16 If indeed Blyden was the nineteenth century Bilal, who then was the original Bilal in any case? Let us allow Blyden to tell us about Bilal: The eloquent Azan, or “Call to Prayer,” which to this day summons at the same hours millions of the human race to their devotions, was first uttered by a Negro, Bilal by name, whom Mohammed, in obedience to a dream,

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Bilal, probably of Ethiopian origin, was the eloquent voice of prayer to fellow Muslims during the Prophet Muhammad’s own lifetime. Blyden became a sympathetic eloquent voice in favor of Islam, addressing nonMuslims in the nineteenth century. Blyden did not call Muslim believers to prayer, but rather he called upon believers of all religions to the imperative of tolerance. Blyden was a different kind of Bilal. As for the Arabic language, all Muslims in global Africa have to learn at least parts of the Qur’an for prayer. To that extent, Edward Blyden was blazing a trail for Diaspora Africans—the impressive effort of self-taught Arabic. Elijah Muhammad, the co-founder of the Nation of Islam, did not put a special premium on the learning of Arabic, but his sons have invested heavily in the language.18 These are echoes of Edward Blyden’s Islamophile Afrocentricity, whether or not he was converted to the faith.19 As for Nkrumah and Mazrui, their relationship to the Arabic language is once again paradoxical. Mazrui is an African whose ancestry includes native speakers of Arabic. Nkrumah is an African whose descendants include native speakers of Arabic. Mazrui’s bloodline has Arabic in the past. Nkrumah’s bloodline has Arabic in the future. The Mazrui’s along the East African Coast go back several hundred years, including a period when the Mazrui family ruled the city-state of Mombasa from Fort Jesus. But the dynasty was a mixture of African and Omani blood. Although Ali Mazrui’s own mother tongue is Kiswahili, he was taught classical Arabic by his father from an early age. On the other hand, Kwame Nkrumah’s biological compact with the Arabic language was through his marriage. His children with the Egyptian wife grew up with Arabic as their mother tongue, especially after his fall from power in 1966. His children openly acknowledge that Arabic is their first language. In Africa as a whole, the Arabic language has stimulated either the birth or the enrichment of African languages. Languages like Swahili, Hausa, Somali, and Wolof would have been almost inconceivable without Arabo / Islamic stimulation. In the African diaspora, it is less languages than concepts and names which have been stimulated by Arabic and related languages. Concepts like ujamaa (familyhood), uhuru (freedom), imani (faith) are a few of the cardinal points of Global African solidarity stimulated by the Arabic language.

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Then, there are so many Muslim names in the United States which are regarded as Afrocentric. They include Karim Abdul Jabbar, Shahid, Jamal, Amina, and others, which are adopted by African Americans regardless of religion.

Conclusion Although Ali Mazrui coined the term “Africa’s triple heritage,” in reality, he was standing on the shoulders of giants. His precursors have included historical figures as diverse as Edward Blyden and Kwame Nkrumah. Believers in Africa’s triple heritage regard Islam as an ally of Africanity, rather than as a rival or a threat. They accept Islamophilia as being compatible with Afrocentricity. The Western legacy, on the other hand, tends to be underplayed and sometimes denounced as a threat to the other two. Although Nkrumah did speak of the need to synthesize the three legacies, he did describe Westernization in Africa as “the infiltration of the Christian tradition and the culture of Western Europe into Africa, using colonialism and neocolonialism as its primary vehicles.”20 Ancient Egypt continues to cast a nationalistic spell on all Afrocentrists. Islamophobic Afrocentrists, like Molefi Kete Asante, regard the Islamization and Arabization of Egypt as the final stage of the betrayal of its black legacy. Pro-Islamic Afrocentrists like Blyden, Nkrumah, and Mazrui can admire ancient Egypt without distrusting modern Egypt. Nkrumah married an Egyptian woman partly for reasons of trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism. Mazrui regards modern Egyptians as being mainly the descendants of ancient Egyptians, with a minority of Arab blood in them. Ancient Egyptians did not have to be Black in order to be African. Black Nationalism in the United States has sometimes given birth to new Islamic movements, of which the most famous is Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. But the majority of African-American Muslims in the United States are Sunni or Shia. Black Nationalism in the Caribbean has tended to lean more towards African indigenous symbols, ranging from the Rastafarianism to Yoruba traditional religion. But Islam has also featured as a radical movement in the Caribbean, including the spectacular events in Trinidad from July 27 to August 1, 1990 when Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson, seven of his Cabinet Ministers, and several other members of Parliament were held hostage by Afro-Trinidadian Muslims, Jamaat al Muslimeen, within

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Parliament buildings. It was a spectacular social protest against the inequalities and injustices of the wider political order.21 Is the triple heritage a fig-leaf to hide an otherwise Eurocentric perspective? “In effect, Mazrui becomes a truly Eurocentric Africanist of the genre that has been schooled in the discipline most advantageous to the advancement of a European intellectual particularism.”22 So claims Molefi Kete Asante. Is the triple heritage merely a fig-leaf to hide an otherwise fundamentalist Islamic perspective? “Let those who wish to retain or evaluate religion as a twenty-first century project feel free to do so, but let it not be done as a continuation of the denigration against the African spiritual heritage, as in the recent television series perpetrated by Islam’s born-again revisionist of history, Professor Ali Mazrui.” So claims Wole Soyinka.23 Curiously, none of these charges of hypocrisy have been leveled against the memory of either Edward Blyden or Kwame Nkrumah. On the contrary, Molefi Asante has saluted Blyden’s Afrocentricty.24 And Kwame Nkrumah is widely accepted as a major Pan-Africanist hero, in spite of his philosophy of “Consciencism” and cultural synthesis. Mazrui’s novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, creates a Hereafter that combines African ideas of ancestors, Islamic ideas of a sensuous paradise, and Christian ideas of heaven. The ancestors sit in judgment against the poet Christopher Okigbo. The Court addresses “the Curse of the Trinity” hanging over Africa. This is not the Christian trinity of “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Mazrui’s “Curse of the Trinity” in the 1971 novel is partly about what he later called “Africa’s triple heritage”: the convergence of Africanity, Islam, and Western civilization. When Mazrui called that convergence a “curse” in a novel, in 1971, was he being pessimistic about its effects on Africa? When he called it “the triple heritage” in a book and television series, in 1986, had he been converted to Blyden’s and Nkrumah’s more optimistic perspectives? The question has intrigued some reviewers.25 Under whatever name, is the theory of Africa’s triple heritage already a school of thought? It is certainly not restricted to the three thinkers addressed in this essay. Like-minded thinkers are scattered in different parts of Global Africa. Enthusiasts in this school include the Gambian scholar and thinker, Sulayman Nyang: In my view, the African encounter with the Abrahamic tradition has been very inspiring and spiritually elevating. The message of Abraham, as echoed and preached by the Old Testament prophets, Christ and Muhammad, is still reverberating in the African spiritual firmaments. The

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ringing of church bells and the booming voices of latter-day Bilals summoning fellow believers to prayer, made it crystal clear to all observers that Africa has finally joined the growing commonwealth of believers in the Abrahamic tradition.26

Sulayman Nyang is closer to Edward Blyden in those views than to either Kwame Nkrumah or Ali Mazrui. But all four of them are part of an energetic but controversial school of thought, which identifies a triad of cultural vibrations in the heartbeat of Africa.

Notes 1

Edward W. Blyden, “Islam and the Negro Race,” Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 67, (July–Dec. 1875), pp. 598–615, reprinted in E. W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the African [sic] Race, (San Francisco: African Arabian Press, 1992 edition), p. 26. 2 Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the African [sic] Race, p. 130. 3 Ali A. Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, (London: BBC Publications and Boston: Little Brown, 1986), pp. 23– 40. See also Mazrui’s Obituary of Cheikh Anta Diop, Africa Events, (London, 1986). 4 See, for example, W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957–1966; Diplomacy, Ideology and the New State, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 49. 5 See Mazrui, Africa’s International Relations, (London: Heinemann and Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1977). 6 In 1862 Blyden was actually mandated by the Government of Liberia to try and interest American Blacks to return to ancestral Africa. Mazrui’s call for a cultural return to Africa features in many of his works including The Africans: A Triple Heritage and Cultural Forces in World Politics, (London: James Currey and Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990). 7 See Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (New York: International Publishers). Nkrumah’s other great intellectual influence was V. I. Lenin. 8 Aimé Césaire, Return to My Native Land, (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1939). 9 Consult Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam After Malcom X, (New York and London: Doubleday, 1993). 10 Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage. 11 Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization, (London: Heinemann, 1964), p. 70. 12 Ibid. 13 Molefi Kete Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990), p. 116. 14 Haile Habtu, “The Fallacy of the ‘Triple Heritage’ Thesis: A Critique,” Issue, United States, Vol. XIII, (1984), p. 26.

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Wole Soyinka, “The Triple Tropes of Trickery,” Transition, No. 54, (1991), pp. 178–183; Ali A. Mazrui, “Wole Soyinka as Television Critic: A Parable of Deception,” Transition, No. 54, (1991), pp. 165–177. Ali A. Mazrui, “The Dual Memory: Factual and Genetic,” Transition, No. 57 (1992), pp. 134 –146; Wole Soyinka, “Footnote to a Satanic Trilogy,” Transition, No. 57, (1992), pp. 148–149. The television series was produced in 1986 by the British Braodcasting Corporation and the Public Broadcasting Service of the United States, in association with the Nigerian Television Authority. 16 See Edward D. Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the African [sic] Race with an introduction by Khalid A. T. Al-Mansour, (San Francisco: First African Arabian Press, 1992). 17 Edward D. Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the African [sic] Race, Khalid A. T. Al-Mansour edition, ibid., p. 37. 18 Indeed, Professor Akbar Muhammad, the historian at Binghamton University, New York, speaks Egyptian Arabic almost like a native. Like Nkrumah’s wife, Akbar’s spouse is Egyptian. In the case of Akbar’s family in Binghamton, Arabic is the language of the home. Warith Deen Mohammed, another one of Elijah Muhammad’s sons, has also invested heavily in the Arabic language, although his command is not quite as idiomatic as Akbar’s. They both represent the new role which the Arabic language is forging for itself in Global Africa under the banner of Islam. 19 Consult Barboza (ed.) American Jihad: Islam after Malcolm X and Molefi Kete Asante, Malcolm X as a Cultural Hero and Other Afrocentric Essays, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1993). 20 Nkrumah, Consciencism, pp. 68–69. 21 See Selwyn Ryan, The Muslimeen Grab for Power: Race, Religion and Revolution in Trinidad and Tobago, (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad: Imprint Caribbean, 1991). 22 Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, p. 115. 23 See Transition, Issue No. 54 (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 166. 24 Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, pp. 112–114. 25 See Chaly Sawere, The Multiple Mazrui: Scholar, Ideologue, Philosopher and Artist, (New York: The Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science, 1992). 26 The “Abrahamic religions” are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. See Sulayman Nyang, Islam, Christianity and African Identity, (Brattleboro, VT: Amana, 1984), p. 9.

CHAPTER EIGHT NEGRITUDE AND THE TALMUDIC TRADITION “Emotion is Black, reason is Greek!” This quotation from Léopold Senghor has become one of the central epigrams of negritude. Senghor has argued that the genius of Africa is not in the realm of intellectual abstraction; it is in the domain of emotive sensibility. As we shall indicate later, some of the assumptions of negritude underline the whole African American Studies movement in the United States. We shall pay special attention to African American Studies as an effort to intellectualize negritude. What about the genius of the Jews? If emotion is Black and reason is Greek, the secret of the Jewish miracle in history is the fusion of emotion with reason. The Talmudic tradition is at the heart of this miracle. To a certain extent, the Talmudic tradition is a fusion of religion, ethnicity, and intellectual pursuits. Through the Talmudic tradition, the national consciousness of the Jewish people was both intellectualized and sacralized. The African American Studies movement in the United States, weak and uncertain as it is, was also born out of the national consciousness of a people. Like the Talmudic tradition, the African American Studies movement also seeks to intellectualize the national consciousness of its people. But among the questions which remain is whether African American Studies is also an effort to sacralize Black identity. Is “blackness” in the United States evolving into a religious as well as a racial experience? In that regard, is blackness ever likely to become a neat equivalent of Jewishness—combining sacred and ethnic symbols of identification? For the time being, only members of the Nation of Islam and the Black Muslims of America have attempted to combine religious with ethnic modes of identification in a manner reminiscent of the Jews. But while Judaism has over the centuries emphasized the nearness of Jews to God, the Nation of Islam tended for a while to emphasize the distance of Whites from God.

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Judaism was autocentric, emphasizing the self in the face of a hostile environment. The Nation of Islam, for a while, emphasized the hostility of the (white) environment, even more than the self. The Nation of Islam was more preoccupied with denouncing the racial “gentiles,” the White people, than with praising the Black people. To the Nation of Islam, it was more fundamental that Whites be exposed as devils than Blacks be accepted as a chosen people. For a while, the dominant emotion among Black Muslims was anger against the enemy, rather than pride in one’s self. But the Nation of Islam has been changing. The challenge that came from Malcolm X, before he broke off from the movement, was a major stage in this evolution of the Black religion. After going on a pilgrimage to Mecca and discovering how multiracial Islam abroad was, Malcolm was no longer convinced that White people were irredeemably devils. He was shifting the emphasis away from hostility against Whites to pride in one’s self. Malcolm was shortly afterwards assassinated. The shift in the Nation of Islam from its rebellion against the (white) environment to auto-centrism (inspired by self-confidence) has continued until this day. To that extent, then, the similarity with at least early Judaism has become somewhat greater—including a number of rituals affecting diet and sexual behavior. What has been lacking in the Nation of Islam is a vigorous intellectual tradition, in spite of the relative success of some of their religious publications. On the one hand, America has witnessed the African American Studies movement as an effort to intellectualize blackness. On the other hand, the Nation of Islam has emerged as an effort to sacralize blackness. What is missing is a viable movement which combines both intellectual and religious strengths. If the Talmudic tradition is a fusion of religion, ethnicity and analytical power, there is as yet no Black equivalent. There is as yet no pooling of resources between the African American Studies movement as an intellectual effort, and the Nation of Islam as a religious endeavor in black America. Only a combination of the strengths of the two movements could produce a Black equivalent to a tradition which takes pride in the history of the Jews, seeks to understand and analyze the heritage of codified morality, studies the implications of covenant with sacred origins, finds solace and strength in the collective martyrdom of its members over the centuries, and constantly reexamines the historic role of its peoples in human affairs generally. How relevant has the Talmudic tradition been for Jewish specialization in intellectual pursuits? How do Jews compare with Blacks in such pursuits?

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Black Brain, Jewish Intellect Comparisons of intellectual performance between races and ethnocultural groups have been part of the history of racism itself. Yet there is little doubt that, in the modern period of his history, the Black man has been scientifically marginal, in the sense of being on the outer periphery of scientific and technological achievement. By contrast, the Jewish impact on the intellectual heritage of humankind has been immense. The great Jewish figures that have influenced the evolution of ideas and morals range from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx. The ethical component of modern civilization includes a disproportionate contribution from the ideas of Jewish thinkers and prophets. Even if we restricted ourselves to recent times, it is possible to argue that of the five people who have done the most to determine the shape of the modern mind, three are Jews. The five names are those of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. Of these five only Newton and Darwin were non-Jewish by descent, although Newton may have been converted secretly to Maimonides Judaism. This is, in fact, one of the most remarkable things about Jewish history: the Jewish propensity for producing intellectual geniuses. To the present day, a disproportionate number of the towering figures in the academic world in the United States are Jews. What explanation can be advanced for this remarkable intellectual phenomenon? Do the Jews bring into question the old debate about genetic differences in intelligence between one race and another? If we claim that all races are endowed with an equal distribution of intelligence, how then can we explain the Jewish miracle? If we use the number of towering minds as a measure of distribution of intelligence in a given race, and we conclude that the Jews are extra-endowed with intellectual gifts, would not the same reasoning force us to conclude that Blacks are deficient in such gifts? Is Jewish mental superiority the ultimate proof of Black inferiority? The debate is not as antiquated as it might at first sound. Arguments about genetic differences in relation to intelligence have re-entered academic discussions in the Western world. Consider, for instance, Barnett Potter’s book, The Fault, Black Man—a phrase adapted from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The central assertion of the book is “The fault, black man, is not in your stars, but in yourself, that you are an underling.” The argument is that the Black people have been ruled and dominated by others not because of bad luck, but because of something inherently within them.

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The book itself did not pretend to be scholarly, or even sophisticated, but the White man who had written it used the evidence of greater scholars than he could pretend to be. He used in part Arthur Jensen’s article, in the Harvard Educational Review, asserting that research among American school children had indicated that Blacks performed worse than Whites intellectually for reasons that were partly genetic. Jensen’s article had reactivated a long-standing debate concerning the question of whether races differed genetically in intellectual competence.1 Barnett Potter linked the findings of Jensen’s research to the tribute paid to the Jewish community by C. P. Snow, the British physicist and novelist. C. P. Snow had drawn attention to the remarkable achievements of the Jews in the sciences and the arts. A crude measure like examining the names of Nobel Prize winners would indicate that up to a quarter of those winners bore Jewish names. Why should a population of little more than 15 million Jewish people in the world produce one-quarter of the best scientific and scholarly performance in a world of approximately 6 billion people? In his defense, Snow asked: [I]s there something in the Jewish gene-pool which produces talent on quite a different scale from say, the Anglo-Saxon gene-pool? I am prepared to believe that that may be so. One would like to know more about the Jewish gene-pool. In various places—certainly in Eastern Europe—it must have stayed pretty undiluted or unaltered for hundreds of years.2

Lord Snow did not seem aware of the partial contradiction of his statement. The Jews who performed particularly impressively in recent times, and won Nobel Prizes, were not, in fact, primarily from Eastern Europe where Snow regarded the Jewish gene-pool to be particularly pure and “unaltered for hundreds of years.” On the contrary, the best Jewish intellectual achievements in recent times have been overwhelmingly from Western Jews, in many ways the least pure in “gene-pool” among all the Jews of the world. Whatever the partial contradiction in C. P. Snow’s analysis, there is indeed a phenomenon to be explained in the Jewish intellectual edge in Western history. Barnett Potter, a White gentile, used the Jewish intellectual edge as proof that Blacks were genetically inferior. But he too fell short of the logic of his own position. If Jewish intellects in the Western world itself have performed disproportionately in relation to White gentiles, are we also to conclude that White gentiles are genetically inferior intellectually to their Jewish neighbors? Certainly, Barnett Potter would regard that conclusion as too high a price to pay for the comfort of proving that the fate of the Black man was not in his stars, but in his genes.

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From the Talmud to Negritude What could be the explanation for the Jewish intellectual edge, and for the scientific marginality of Blacks? This is perhaps where the Talmudic tradition claims some degree of relevance. Over a period of time, a people governed by codified laws and a covenant began to put a special premium on analytical, judicial, and speculative skills. A structure of motivation evolved among Jews which conferred social rewards on intellectual performance. Processes and structures of socialization which exposed a significant proportion of children to analytical and abstract aspects of Jewish culture inevitably accompanied this. Among the Jews in the Diaspora, a reinforcing factor may have been some prior intellectual selection at the time of Jewish dispersal two millennia ago. Was the composition of the Jews who went into exile abroad disproportionately intellectual? C. D. Darlington has argued as follows, in connection with one important part of the dispersal: The Jews who moved into the Western parts of the Persian Empire were . . . a highly selected remnant. . . They were a group of skilled and partly intellectual classes differing from all other such classes in two vital respects. First, they were largely cut off from intermarriage with the other classes of the societies in which they lived. And, secondly, they were entirely liberated from the control of their own former military governing class. The Jewish intellectuals were thus free.3

Darlington suggests that a disproportionate number of intellectuals among those who fled from Palestine, combined with relatively strict endogamy, helped to maintain and accumulate a gene pool of intellectual excellence. This issue is also connected with the whole question of the relationship between professional specialization and the closed intellectual alternative avenues of professional life to Jews in Europe, encouraging thus the community to begin specializing in commerce, and later in the liberal professions. The cumulative effect of specialization provided not a Darwinian natural selection, but a specialized cultural selection. Succeeding generations of Jewish intellectuals produced, in turn, children who were intellectually oriented. Specialization could provide the opportunity for the discovery of brilliance. Also related, as a factor, is the whole tradition of Jewish prophets and of rules which are not only observed but also continually enunciated and often intellectualized. It might also be fortunate that Judaism does not demand celibacy of its rabbis. Had Jewish priests been expected to be celibate, as Catholic priests, the Jewish intellectual contribution to world

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civilization might well have been significantly reduced. It has been estimated that many of the most impressive Jewish scholars have been sons or grandsons of rabbis. The tradition of the prophets has again helped to consolidate prior intellectual specialization. With regard to Black scientific marginality, there have been a number of different responses to the phenomenon. Among some Black people, one response has been to deny that they have been scientifically marginal. Those who react in this way then proceed to mention a number of famous Black names in the intellectual history of the world. The names mentioned range from Aleksandr Pushkin, “the father of Russian literature,” to Alexandre Dumas, the French literary romantic. Both had the blood of Black people in their ancestry, and many Black men have taken pride in that. The tendency to deny that there has been a Black scientific marginality has been especially manifest among Black Americans. It might well be that the precise nature of their humiliation from the slave days has created a resolve among their cultural nationalists to affirm Black greatness in history.4 This kind of response is not unknown among Black Africans in the African continent either. In Ghana, during Kwame Nkrumah’s presidency, a number of postcards were issued with paintings depicting major achievements that had taken place in Africa. These included a painting with figures in the attire of ancient Egypt showing the first paper to have been manufactured. The caption was “Ancient African History: Paper was originated in Africa.” Then there is a painting of “Tyro,” African Secretary to Cicero, who originated shorthand writing in 63 BC. Then there are cards asserting that the science of chemistry originated in Africa, that Africans taught the Greeks mathematics and the alphabet. According to these postcards reproduced from the archive of Accra, in Ghana,5 many other scientific inventions also originated in Africa. The Ghanaian postcards under Nkrumah were in a way in the tradition of Black American cultural assertiveness, but transposed to the African continent.6 An alternative response to Black scientific marginality is not only to affirm it but also to take pride in it. Black countries ruled by France produced a whole movement called negritude which, as we have already noted, reveled in the virtues of a non-technical civilization. Again, in the words of the poet Aimé Césaire: Hooray for those who never invented anything Who never explored anything Who never discovered anything! Hooray for joy, hooray for love

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Hooray for the pain of incarnate tears. My negritude is no tower and no cathedral . . .7

Clearly this response to scientific marginality is fundamentally different from the tendency to trace a Black ancestry in the genealogy of Robert Browning, or of Pushkin, or Alexandre Dumas. Both forms of response to Black marginality have influenced the African American Studies movement in the United States. On the one hand, the movement asserts that too much distortion has taken place in the study of Black history as a result of the White man’s scholarship. Black contributions to world civilization have therefore been grossly underestimated. Only African American Studies movement, controlled by Blacks, can help to restore this balance. On the other hand, the African American Studies movement has also been influenced by negritude with its emphasis on Black cultural distinctiveness—rather than Black intellectual competitiveness. Let us now turn more fully to this linkage between the logic of negritude and the assumptions of the African American Studies movement.

Negritude and Negrology It is with French-speaking Africa, and with Martinique, that the word “negritude” is normally associated. And it is among French-speaking Blacks at-large that negritude, as a movement, has found its literary proponents. The term itself was, to all intents and purposes, virtually coined by Aimé Césaire, the poet of Martinique. As he affirmed: “My negritude is no tower and no cathedral . . . It dives into the red flesh of the soil.”8 Césaire’s poem was first published in a Parisian review in 1939. In Africa itself, the movement’s most distinguished literary proponent came to be Léopold Senghor, the poet-president of Senegal. Senghor helped to give shape and definition to negritude as a general philosophical outlook. In his own words, “Negritude is the whole complex of civilized values— cultural, economic, mythmaking, the gift of rhythm, such are the essential elements of negritude, which you will find indelibly stamped on all the works and activities of the Black man.”9 Senghor’s definition, as given here, though illuminating, is not in fact complete. Negritude is not merely a description of the norms of traditional Black Africa; it is also a capacity to be proud of those values even in the very process of abandoning them. Sometimes, it is a determination to prevent too rapid an erosion of the traditional structure.

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Whether we take Senghor’s own definition, or give it greater precision, it is clear that a believer in negritude need not be a French-speaking literary figure. “Negritude is the awareness, defense and development of African cultural values,” Senghor has said elsewhere.10 Such awareness, defense, and development need not, of course, take the form of a poem in French. To limit the notion of negritude to a literary movement is to miss what the literary outburst has in common with other forms of Black cultural revivalism. The word “negritude” might indeed owe its origin to a literary figure, but the phenomenon that it purports to describe has more diverse manifestations. The term negritude is in any case too useful to be allowed to die with a literary movement. Not that a romantic literary preoccupation with an idealized Africa is likely to come to an end all that soon. There will be Black poems of such a romantic bias for at least another generation. What need to be defined now, with a wider vision, are the boundaries of the phenomenon as a whole. If negritude is indeed “the awareness, defense and development of African values,” we could usefully divide it into two broad categories. We might designate one category as literary, and the other as anthropological. Literary negritude would include not only creative literature, but also certain approaches in African social and political spheres which characterize the Black peoples or, more precisely, the Black-African world. All these values are essentially informed by intuitive reason, the sense of communion, or the gift of historiography. An African historian who succumbs to methodological romanticism in his study of ancient African empires, like Songhai and Mali, is, in this sense, within the stream of literary negritude. Anthropological negritude is, on the whole, more directly related to concrete cultural behavior than literary negritude normally is. In its most literal form, anthropological negritude is a romanticized study of an African “tribal community” by an African ethnologist. The book, Facing Mount Kenya, by Jomo Kenyatta, even on its own, would have been enough to make young Kenyatta a proponent of anthropological negritude. But there is more to this side of negritude than a formal study of a “tribe.” There is a link between, shall we say, Elijah Masinde, the prophet of Dini ya Msambwa in East Africa, and Aimé Césaire, the poet of Martinique. At any rate, literary negritude and certain African messianic movements are different responses to one interrelated cultural phenomenon. Both the Greco-Roman aspect of European civilization and the Judeo-Christian side of it have sometimes forced the African into a position of cultural defensiveness. These two mystiques have come into

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Africa wrapped, to some extent, in Europe’s cultural arrogance. The Greco-Roman mystique contributed to the birth of literary negritude as a reaction. The Judeo-Christian sense of sacred superiority contributed to the birth of Ethiopianism and African syncretic churches at-large. The latter phenomena have intimate links with, or are themselves manifestations of, anthropological negritude.11 Sterling Stuckey has asserted persuasively that W. E. B. Du Bois, the Black American intellectual giant, was “easily the most sophisticated proponent of negritude until the advent of Césaire and Senghor.”12 Stuckey has also recommended a study of Du Bois’s cultural views which should, inter alia, seek to determine how the Du Bois variant of negritude differed from that projected by the Harlem Renaissance writers.13 It is right that the new wave of African American Studies in the United States should explore its links with the negritude movement, for those two waves of intellectualized Black assertiveness have a good deal in common. Léopold Senghor, the chief of negritude in Africa, has argued that there is a fundamental difference between the White man’s tools of intellectual analysis, on the one hand, and the Black man’s approach to intellectual perception, on the other. Senghor has said: “European reasoning is analytical, discursive by utilization; Negro-African reasoning is intuitive by participation.”14 Partly because of the complexity of his ideological position on culture, Senghor is not always consistent in his views on comparative epistemology—as between European and Black-African modes of thought. But it is arguable that the logical conclusion of Senghor’s position is that no European or White scholar can hope to understand fully the inner meaning of a Black person’s behavior. This is the meeting point between negritude, as the cultural essence of Black civilization, and Negrology, as the principles by which the Black man was to be studied. For both Léopold Senghor and the militant wing of the African American Studies movement in the United States, there are indeed certain socio-scientific principles of interpretation without which the Black man cannot be adequately understood. The question is whether a scholar who is not himself Black can master these principles. In his address to the Second International Congress of Africanists in Dakar, in December 1967, President Senghor intimated that others could master such principles of scholarly interpretation if those scholars are sufficiently sensitive to the peculiar characteristics of the culture they are studying. Some of the advocates of African American Studies in the United States are more skeptical. For them, only Black scholars can fully command the principles of Negrology.15

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But if Negrology is the science of studying the Black man, should it not be sufficiently neutral to be accessible to diverse minds? Senghor would say that such a definition of “science” is itself ethnocentric. He first quotes Jacques Monod, a Nobel Prize winner who, in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in 1967, asserted: The only aim, the supreme value, the “sovereign good” in the ethics of Knowledge is not, let us confess, the happiness of mankind, less so its temporal power, or its comfort, nor even the “know thyself ” of Socrates; it is the objective Knowledge of itself.16

Senghor, after quoting this passage, says he disagrees with it fundamentally. With all due respect to those who hold this “ultrarationalist” position, knowledge for its own sake is “alienated work.” For Senghor, as a child of African civilization, both art and science had a purpose: to serve man in his need for both creativity and love.17 African American Studies in the United States are, of course, also conceptualized in terms of purpose and social function. What about African studies in the United States? Should Americans study Africa for its own sake? Or should they study it in order to deepen the foundation of relations between Africa and the United States? Or should they study Africa in order to improve relations between White and Black peoples within the United States? The second and third motives need not be mutually exclusive, but it may be necessary to decide on priorities and emphases. There is a danger that if Africa is studied primarily in order to improve relations between Whites and Blacks within the United States, either the Blacks or the Whites in America might not even remotely understand Africa itself. There may be a temptation to concentrate on only those aspects of African studies, which are relevant to the domestic scene in America. African history might overshadow all other aspects of African studies. And with all due respect to Dr. Stuckey and to the importance of history, contemporary Africa cannot be understood simply by reference to its history. A preponderance of historians in African studies in the United States today would tend to distort American understanding of Africa as effectively as a preponderance of social anthropologists in African studies in Britain once distorted British understanding of the forces at work in Africa. Studying Africa for the sake of Black-White relations in America may also exaggerate the importance of White-Black relations within Africa. Southern Africa might engage a disproportionate share of the attention of Americans studying Africa. White-Black relations within Africa do indeed

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remain vitally important. But problems of Black ethnicity north of the Limpopo, of the growth of new institutions in new African states, and of economic development and changing cultural norms are at least as deserving of scholarly attention. To study Africa primarily as a branch of American Negrology may distort American understanding of Africa for generations to come. If, as Senghor asserts, all science must be purposeful, American academics should be sure which branches of science would serve which purposes. African American Studies should indeed be undertaken primarily to add rationality to relations between Blacks and Whites in the United States, and should therefore be accessible to both White and Black students. But African studies in the United States should be undertaken primarily to add rationality to American understanding of Africa. The relevance of African studies for the domestic American scene should be indirect. By helping all Americans to understand Africa better, African studies should by extension also understand each other better. The assumption of negritude and the principles of Negrology might be correct in assuming that complete understanding of history is impossible. The world of scholarship cannot afford to accept Alexander Pope’s poetic assertion: A little learning is a dang’rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain; And drinking largely sobers us again.18

Even a partial understanding of the Black man in both Africa and the New World must be, from the point of view of White education, preferable to the ignorant intolerance of yesteryear. A little learning may be a dangerous thing. But a lot of prejudice might be worse. More profound than any diplomatic disagreement about the place of African studies in relations between Africans and Americans is the continuing problem of comparative intellectual performance between Whites and Blacks. Among Whites, the Jewish component at once sharpens the contrast with Blacks and deepens the poignancy in their relations.

Black Power and Brain Power Among sections of Black Americans, there is a view that the Jews are the brains of the White race. They have been recognized as among the leading thinkers and writers, and they are suspected in such circles of

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being “shrewd enough to manipulate the rest of the Whites—to say nothing of the so-called Negroes.”19 It would also seem that the Jews are suspected among Black militants of having a stranglehold on public opinion in the United States through their control of mass media. Either through outright ownership of radio and television stations, or through their massive advertising capability and power to withdraw advertisements, the Jews helped to dictate the editorial policies of certain radio or television stations as well as magazines and newspapers. They hire Gentiles to “front” for them so as not to antagonize the public; but on crucial issues, such as the Suez Canal, they control the thinking of the people.20 Then in 1968, and early 1969, the issue of the control of schools in New York City exploded into another area of Afro-Jewish antagonism. The Black communities of New York City were agitating for the adoption of a system of education which would permit greater local controls of schools. The Black community wanted a greater say in who taught in Black schools and what was taught in them. In a sense, it was a clash between African American Studies and the Talmudic tradition. Ultimately, however, local control of hiring and firing became the issue. This resulted in a head-on collision between Black educational reformers and the teachers’ union in New York City. Leadership of the teachers’ union in Black schools was indeed Jewish. The idea of entrusting hiring and firing to local Black communities was, therefore, a direct challenge to the security of tenure of Jewish teachers. The teachers’ union won the first round of the tension, denying the local communities the demands they were making to control hiring and firing as well as in determining the curriculum. The issue brought to the forefront, once again, was the profound distrust by certain sections of Black opinion of Jewish control of the educational system in some parts of the country. Open anti-Jewish speeches began to be heard more often from Black militants. The so-called Jewish stranglehold on neighborhood schools was sometimes linked to the disproportionate Jewish presence in the top sector of the American university system. The two levels of Jewish participation created an impression of a disproportionate intellectual influence upon the minds of others. The Talmudic tradition, and its achievements in producing highlevel intellectual quality, was up against the African American Studies movement as a struggle to achieve educational and intellectual autonomy for Black people. John F. Hatchett, a Black member of staff at New York University, was dismissed from his job for “anti-Semitic” public statements. James Turner, then director-designate of the African American Studies Center at

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Cornell University, reportedly expressed a desire to have Hatchett on his staff. This, in turn, was taken on both sides of the Atlantic as further evidence of growing Black anti-Semitism. Matthew Hodgart, professor of English at the University of Sussex, visited Cornell and wrote a report for the Times of London drawing attention to, among other things, these antiSemitic tendencies. When challenged later in the correspondence columns of the Times, Hodgart emphasized afresh the signs of what he called “Black racism” in the United States. The Black Liberation Front (BLF) which does not represent the majority of Black students at Cornell, is racist: it practices a rigid segregation by refusing to allow its members to associate with White students. The Black militant movement, with which the BLF is in sympathy, is openly antiSemitic. James Turner, the Director-designate of the Cornell Afro-center, has reportedly expressed a desire to have on his staff John F. Hatchett, a Black teacher who was dismissed from New York University for antiSemitic public statements.21

Jewish synagogues were also included among the institutions from which Black militants were demanding reparations because of their part in the historical exploitation of Blacks. The idea of reparation emerged in Detroit, in April 1969, at the Black economic development conference. Mr. James Forman, director of international affairs for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was addressing the all-Black audience when he suddenly read an unscheduled “black manifesto” demanding 500 million dollars in reparations from White churches and synagogues. The manifesto called for a southern land bank, four major publishing and printing industries located in Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York, an audio-visual network based in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and Washington, DC, a research-skills centre on the problems of Black people, a labor strike and defense fund, a black university, and an international Black fund-raising effort.22 In the reparations issue, the Christian churches have been, at least, as involved as the Jewish synagogues. The picture is part of increasing Black pressure on certain aspects of Jewish life in the United States. By early 1969, it was already being suggested that Jewish migrations from Eastern Europe to Israel, when permitted, were due to official pressure from the authorities there. In the United States, Jewish migration to Israel was in part a response to Black militancy and Black pressures on the Jews. Speaking in March 1969 at a special conference on emigration to Israel, attended by 700 people at the Park Sheraton Hotel, Jacques Torczyner, who at that time was President of the Zionist Organization of America,

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said he knew of several instances in which Jewish merchants relinquished their businesses because of Black extremists’ pressure. Uzi Narkis, then Director-General of the Department of Immigration and Absorption of the Jewish Agency, reported at the meeting that 4,300 Jews from North America, including 500 Canadians, settled in Israel the previous year, the highest since the establishment of Israel as a nation in 1948. He added that 25,000 American Jews had settled in Israel since 1948 and predicted that 7,000 more would settle there by the end of 1969. There was clear feeling that one factor behind the renewed attraction of Israel for American Jews was the racial situation in the United States.23 Jews in New York were sensing this more immediately perhaps than Jews in many other centers, but then there were more Jews in New York than in the entire state of Israel. April 20th is Hitler’s birthday and so, in April 1969, a whole page of the New York Times was taken over by a massive photograph of Hitler. The advertisement was from “The Committee to Stop Hate,” an inter-denominational organization. The caption under the massive picture of Hitler says “April 20th is his birthday. Don’t make it a happy one. Adolf Hitler would love New York City’s latest crisis. Black against Jew, Jew against Black. Neighbor against neighbor.”24 Whether the crisis over New York schools was an aspect of Jewish intellectual dominance or something simpler, the fact remains that it became an important contributory factor to the rise of Afro-Jewish tensions in the United States. Affirmative action has also been a contributing factor in most major universities in the United States, especially since Jews are often thought to be over represented and Blacks to have less than their fair share of representation.

The Foetus of the Future From the 1840s onwards, a man of Jewish extraction wrote or coauthored a number of historic publications. These included The Manifesto of the Communist Party. The man’s name was Karl Marx. His Jewish father had converted to Christianity. A century later, Marx was to capture the imagination of many Black intellectuals struggling against the consequences of centuries of oppression. There was one vital difference between the heritage of Marx and the heritage of Black people. The majority of Black people were heirs to an oral tradition, a transmission of song and oral wisdom, ranging from Yoruba proverbs to Black American blues. But Marx was at once a European and an heir to the Talmudic tradition, in spite of his father’s

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opportunistic conversion to Christianity. Both the European and the Talmudic aspects of Marx put him within a vigorous stream of literary culture. The difference between Africa’s oral tradition and the EuroTalmudic literary tradition had immense relevance for the comparative performance of Blacks and Diaspora Jews in recent history. In the absence of the written word in most African cultures, many tentative innovations or experiments of a previous era were not transmitted to the next generation. The trouble with an oral tradition is that it transmits mainly what is accepted and respected. It does not normally transmit heresies of the previous age. A single African individual in the nineteenth century, who might have put across important new ideas among the Nuer of the Sudan, but whose ideas were rejected by the consensus of his own age, is unlikely to be remembered today. Oral tradition is a tradition of conformity, rather than heresy, a transmission of consensus rather than dissidence. Imagine what would have happened to the ideas of Karl Marx if, in the nineteenth century, Europe had been without the alphabet. If Karl Marx were simply propounding his ideas orally, from one platform to another, European oral tradition would have been a well-known figure in polite society in his own age. John Stuart Mill makes no reference to Marx in his own writings, betraying a total ignorance of Marx’s contribution to the political economy of the nineteenth century. Marx had many revolutionary followers, especially in continental Europe. He wrote interesting newspaper features for an American readership. Even that kind of effectiveness, however, presupposes the availability of an alphabet to get his ideas more widely publicized. In spite of that, his fame for much of his own life was relatively modest. His fame, by the second half of the twentieth century, was greater than that of any other single figure in the nineteenth century. The fame that Karl Marx now enjoys, and the influence he has exerted on political, sociological, and economic thought in the twentieth century, would have been impossible had his ideas not been conserved by the written word and translated to a more receptive generation than his own. The absence of the written word in large numbers of African societies was, therefore, bound to create a sense of isolation to some extent in a temporal sense, keeping one African century from another in terms of stimulation and interaction, suppressing innovative heresies, burying genius under the oblivion of the dominant consensus of a particular age. In addition to the absence of literacy was the absence of numeracy. It was not simply the lack of the written word that delayed scientific flowering in Africa; it was also the lack of the written numeral. Jack

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Goody has drawn attention to the relationship between writing and mathematics, and the implications of the absence of both in some African societies. Goody draws attention to the fact that the development of Babylonian mathematics depended upon the prior development of a graphic system, though not necessarily an alphabetic one. And Goody then refers to the short time he spent in 1970 revisiting the Lo-Dagaa of Northern Ghana, whose main contact with literacy began with the opening of a primary school in Birifu in 1949. Goody proceeded to investigate their mathematical operations. He discovered that while boys who had no special school background were efficient in counting a large number of cowries (shell money), and often did this faster and more accurately than Goody could, they were ineffective at multiplication. The concept of multiplication was not entirely lacking; they did think of four piles of five cowries as equaling twenty. But they had no readymade table in their minds (the table being essentially a written aid to oral arithmetic) by which they could calculate more complex sums. The contrast was even truer of subtraction and division; the former can be worked by oral means (though the literate would certainly take to pencil and paper for the more complex sums), the latter is basically a literate technique. The difference is not so much one of thought or mind as of the mechanics of communicative acts.25 The absence of mathematics at the more elaborate level was bound to considerably hamper the Black world’s scientific development. As for the more specific differences between Blacks and Jews in intellectual history, part of the explanation may lie in the distinction between selective and comprehensive discrimination. When a people permitted to excel, as the Jews were in the last 600 years of Western history, they may attain striking achievements in those pursuits that are open to them. Certainly, in the fields of money-lending and commerce—which were deemed vulgar in polite European society at one time—the Jews in Europe acquired skills quite early. Shakespeare’s Shylock was only a bizarre exaggeration of Jewish business acumen, caution, and economic activism. Selective discrimination against Jews had its ups and downs in Europe. Jews were allowed some professional avenues in some periods and lost them in other epochs. In general, selective discrimination against Jews in politics, for example, contributed to Jewish excellence in the permitted professions of commerce, scholarship, and the arts. The Napoleonic legal code in the nineteenth century, was among the milestones of fitful Jewish emancipation in modern Europe; once again, it released Jewish energies as discrimination was relaxed. In the words of Isaiah Berlin:

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The Jews had every reason to feel grateful to Napoleon . . . [for] his newly promulgated legal code, which claimed as the source of its authority the principles of reason and human equality. This act, by opening to the Jews the doors of trades and professions which had hitherto remained rigidly barred to them, had the effect of releasing a mass of imprisoned energy and ambition, and led to the enthusiastic—in some cases over-enthusiastic— acceptance of general European culture by a hitherto segregated community.26

But while fitful and selective discrimination against Jews released Jewish energies, comprehensive discrimination against Blacks crippled the victims and stultified their innovative functions. It goes back to the slave trade. A distinct factor worth bearing in mind when examining Black intellectual marginality is this particular impact of the slave trade and later of imperialism on the Black world’s capacity to innovate. The slave trade drained Africa of large numbers of its population. Those that reached the Americas and survived to be effective slaves were a fraction of those who were captured in the first instance for enslavement. The drastic depopulation of important parts of Africa was bound to have significant consequences on the continent’s capacity to achieve major successes in the different branches of knowledge. Later, when Africa fell more directly under alien domination, imperialism once again delayed (in at least some respects) the capacity of Africa to attain new levels of scientific and technological initiatives. Here, the picture gets a little more complicated. It is possible to argue that while slavery did harm Africa’s potential for scientific innovation, imperialism—later on—helped to create a new infrastructure for potential inventiveness. After all, while imperialism was indeed a form of humiliating political bondage, it nevertheless proceeded to reduce the spatial, cultural, and temporal isolation which had previously been part of Africa’s scientific marginality. European imperialism almost by definition ended (for some societies) that isolation in space and culture which had previously been an element of their very being. New values as well as new modes of travel and mobility created new intellectual possibilities. The arrival of the written word and of the numeral again began to establish a foundation for a new African entry into the mainstream of scientific civilization. Imperialism could be interpreted to be, in part, a mitigation of the consequences of the slave trade. Imperialism, by introducing new intellectual horizons, was inadvertently, and in spite of itself, laying the groundwork for a future intellectual liberation of the Black man.

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The final factor to be borne in mind in evaluating Black scientific marginality is an exercise in humility—that is to say, that we might not know enough of the causes of intellectual flowering and maturation among human beings generally. It was Levi-Strauss who reminded us how recent in absolute terms was the history of manifest human genius. The history of humankind is much older than the history of the revelation of major human intellects. Levi-Strauss argued: I see no reason why mankind should have waited until recent times to produce minds of the caliber of a Plato or an Einstein. Already over two or three hundred thousand years ago, there were probably men of a similar capacity, who were of course not applying their intelligence to the solution of the same problems as these more recent thinkers; instead they were probably more interested in kinship!27

Even if we reduce the life of humankind from Levi-Strauss’s 300,000 to 50,000 years, the question he raises is still significant. Why, out of the 50,000 years of the existence of the human race, do we have to look to the last 4,000 years for major indications of intellectual and scientific genius? The answer to that very question may have to await a future genius to unravel. It was within those 4,000 years that the Talmudic tradition was born. Out of that tradition emerged a small segment of humankind, the Jews, destined to exert an unparalleled influence on the thinking processes of other men. From Jesus Christ to Karl Marx, from the Talmudic tradition to Einstein’s theory of relativity, a Semitic heritage has manifested itself periodically in human genius. The question which confronts us is whether within the next 4,000 years, and perhaps much sooner than that, another segment of the human race with a heritage of suffering, the Blacks, will attain similar levels of intellectual performance and influence. For such a role, the Black people (of both Africa and the Black Diaspora) may have to shift from an oral tradition to a tradition of codified law, from a culture of consensus to a culture of prophecy, from a romanticization of a tribal past to an anticipation of a messianic future, from the chains of intellectual bondage to the ropes of intellectual mountaineering. A Black Talmudic tradition is needed, at once, different in content from its Jewish counterpart and comparable in functions. The African American Studies movement may be the genesis of that Black Talmudic tradition. In time, the African American Studies movement may change beyond all recognition. It may become not merely a tolerated appendage in prestigious universities, not merely a cynical concession to Black

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sensibilities in quality schools, not merely a forum of Black rhetoric, but the beginnings of Black intellectual independence which could spread from the ghetto. It could help to further broaden the socialization processes to which the next generation of Blacks would be exposed. The Black Muslim movement, as a sacralization of Black consciousness, and the African American Studies movement, as its intellectualization, may indeed find that elusive point of fusion. On such a day, a Black prophecy would indeed be fulfilled—and a still Newer Testament would yet reveal even further the genius of Jehovah working itself out in many.

Notes 1

Arthur R. Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Scholastic Achievement?,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 39, No. 1, (Winter 1969). See also the subsequent debate with J. S. Kagan, M. Hunt, J. F. Crow, Carl Beseiter, D. Elkind, Lee J. Cronback, W. R. Brazziel, Arthur Stinchcombe, and Martin Deutsch, Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 39, No. 2, (Spring 1969), and Vol. 39, No. 3, (Summer 1969). Similar debates have since occurred in the United States in response to the racist views of Nobel Prize winner W. Schockley of Stanford University in California. 2 JTA [The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Inc.], “Lord Snow Defends Remark on Jewish Success Against Criticism By Education Minister,” JTA Daily News Bulletin, Vol. 36, No. 70, (April 14, 1969), p. 4. Available online at: http://cdn.jta.org/archive_pdfs/ 1969/1969-04-14_070.pdf. Also see the New York Times’ reporting on this matter by Lawrence Van Gelder, “C. P. Snow Says Jews’ Success Could Be Genetic Superiority,” the New York Times, (April 1, 1969). 3 C. D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 188. 4 Consult, for example, J. A. Rogers, World’s Great Men of Color, Vols. 1 and 2, originally published in 1946. Reprinted in 1972 (New York: Collier Books, 1972). 5 These issues are discussed in a related context in Mazrui, World Culture and the Black Experience, (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1974). For information and illustration of the cards produced in Nkruman’s Ghana which emphasized African contributions to world civilization I am indebted to Mrs. Simon Ottenberg, who later entrusted to my care her only set of those cards. 6 Ibid. 7 This rendering is from Gerald Moore (ed.), Seven African Writers, (1962), p. viii. 8 Ibid. 9 Senghor, “Negritude and African Socialism,” in St. Anthony’s Papers on African Affairs, No. 2, Kenneth Kirkwood (ed.), (London: Chatto and Windus), p. 11. 10 Chants pour Naett (Senghor, 1950). This English rendering is from John Reed and Clive Wake (eds.), Senghor: Prose and Poetry, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 97.

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The connection between literary negritude and separatist religious movements is discussed in a related context in my professorial inaugural lecture, “Ancient Greece in African Political Thought,” delivered at Makerere University College, Kampala, on 25 August 1966. 12 Sterling Suckey, “The Neglected Realm of African and Afro-American Relationships: Research Possibilities for Historians,” Africa Today, Vol. 16, No. 2, (1969), p. 4. 13 Ibid. 14 Senghor, On African Socialism, (London: Pall Mall, 1964), p. 74. 15 See Senghor, “The Study of African Man,” Mawazo (Kampala), Vol. 1, No. 47, (1968), pp. 3–7. 16 Ibid., p. 7 (Senghor quoted from Jacques Monod’s “From Molecular Biology to the Ethics of Knowledge”). 17 Senghor, “The Study of African Man.” 18 Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, 1709. 19 Cited by Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), pp. 165–166. 20 Ibid., p. 166. 21 The Times (London); Check Matthew J. C. Hodgart (23, 26 and 29 May 1969). 22 See the Christian Science Monitor, (10 May 1969). 23 “Black Militants Seen as Factor in Migration to Israel,” the New York Times, (31 March 1962). 24 See the New York Times, (7 April 1969). 25 Jack Goody, “Evolution and Communication: The Domestication of the Savage Mind,” The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 24, No. 1, (March 1973), p. 7. 26 Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972 edition), p. 25. 27 C. Levi-Strauss, “The Concept of Primitiveness,” in R. B. Lee and I. DeVore (eds.), Man the Hunter (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), p. 351.

CHAPTER NINE CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM IN AFRICAN POLITICS Has the impact of religion in developing societies declined? Today, modernization theories and their postulates about the imminent demise of religion in developing regions are increasingly being discredited by empirical evidence of the surprising resilience of religion.1 Beliefs in the Hereafter and in God apparently are influential in terms of behavior here on Earth.2 Sometimes, these modes of behavior are paradoxical. Because Islam plays a major role in African affairs, this chapter will discuss some of the paradoxes of Islam’s relationship with Christianity in Africa’s experience. Our agenda will include the impact of colonialism on Christian-Muslim relations, the interplay between religion and civil-military relations, the influence of religious culture on levels of social violence, and the relevance of religious culture in the distribution of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Two points may be noted. First, I sometimes here use the term “Islam” metaphorically to mean followers of the religion rather than the pristine doctrines of the religion necessarily. Second, to facilitate our analysis, we may also draw on comparisons from non-Islamic and non-African states and societies. Our focus, however, will remain on the interplay between Islam and Christianity in the African experience.

Between Faith and Friction Relations between Islam and Christianity can be conflictual, as they currently seem to be in parts of the Nile Valley, or competitive, as they seem to be in East Africa, or ecumenical, as they have often been in countries like Tanzania. Christianity and Islam are in conflictual relations when hostilities are aroused, and the two great religions re-enact a shadow of the Crusades in Africa. Christianity and Islam are in competition when they are rivals in the free market of values and ideals, scrambling for converts without edging towards hostility. Christianity and Islam are in an

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ecumenical relationship when they appear to accept each other as divergent paths towards a convergent truth, different means towards a shared ultimate end. Minimally, the ecumenical spirit is a spirit of “Live and Let Live.” Maximally, the ecumenical spirit is a spirit of cooperation. Muslim-Christian dialogues tend to fall in-between. Whether Islam and Christianity are in conflict, competition, or ecumenicalism is itself determined by three forces: the import of doctrine, the sociological balance in a given society, and the legacy of history in that particular society. Doctrinal, sociological, and historical forces help to shape relations between Christians and Muslims in a given part of the world. In Africa, these two triads (conflict, competition, and cooperation, on one side, and doctrine, sociology, and history, on the other) operate within yet another triad—the triple heritage of twentieth century Africa: indigenous, Islamic, and Western civilizations. Africa, in the twentieth century, has been a confluence of these three civilizations. The Muslim parts of the populations of Nigeria, Egypt, and Ethiopia added together (about 193 million) account for slightly less than a quarter of the total population of the African continent as a whole (which now stands at about 1 billion). Nigeria has more Muslims than any Arab country, including Egypt. In 1994, the Republic of South Africa celebrated not only its first multi-racial democratic elections, but also the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Islam in the country—a minority religion which has nevertheless proven more historically resilient than anyone would have expected. The Republic of Malawi also elected its first Muslim president, Bakili Muluzi, in 1994. Africa’s triple heritage—of indigenous culture, Islam, and Western culture—is sometimes a source of cultural enrichment, and/or at other times a cause of social and political tensions. Within the context of this triple heritage, Christianity and Islam have sometimes been in conflict, sometimes in gracious competition, and have increasingly sought areas of ecumenical cooperation. The impact of the West came initially through colonization. And this impact had a direct bearing on the fortunes of Christianity, Islam and indigenous culture in Africa. Lord Lugard’s doctrine of Indirect Rule—a strategy of ruling subject people primarily through their own “native authorities and institutions” such as the Maharajahs in India, the Emirs in northern Nigeria, and the Kabaka (King) in Buganda—became the cornerstone of British colonial policy in Africa. In its application in Africa, Indirect Rule favored Islam in areas that were already Islamized before the British came, but favored Christianity in

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areas where traditional African religion still prevailed. Thus, Indirect Rule favored Islam in northern Nigeria (which owed its Islam to pre-colonial times), but favored Christianity in Buganda and southern Sudan where the prevailing mores and beliefs were indigenous. But in what ways did British indirect rule favor either Islam or Christianity? One extreme strategy was to keep Islam out of a particular area altogether. This was true of British policy for southern Sudan during the colonial period. Any Muslim missionary activity was kept out of the south. In northern Nigeria, the British rulers discouraged Christian missionary work in the most Islamized parts of the north, such as Sokoto and Zaria, but permitted Christianization in parts of the North that were not yet under the sway of Islam. In most other parts of their African empire, the British helped Christianity by facilitating and subsidizing Christian mission schools and Christian mission clinics. Even British language policy in the colonies favored Christianity more than Islam. The British helped to promote a number of African languages and create orthographies for them. Missionaries became allies in this enterprise. The Bible has been translated into many more African languages than the Qur’an. Have the consequences of British policies of Indirect Rule, after independence, promoted conflict, competition, or cooperation between Christianity and Islam? Some would argue that the most dramatic postcolonial consequences have been conflictual. In Sudan, the colonial policies of ethno-religious apartheid, separating north from south, were a major cause of the first Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972), and a contributory factor to the second Sudanese Civil War, which started in 1983. British policies of Indirect Rule in Nigeria might also have deepened the north-south divide in the country, and aggravated ethnic and sectarian tensions. British policies were more respectful of Islam and indigenous culture than the policies of any other European power in Africa. But British concessions to indigenous institutions did, nevertheless, carry a post-colonial cost within the artificial boundaries which colonialism had created. The French colonial authorities, on the other hand, had put great emphasis on a policy of assimilation. At its most ambitious, French colonialism sought to turn Africans into Black French men and French women. And since for most of their history the French people had not been Muslim, the assimilation policy was implicitly a rejection of Islam, a declaration of cultural war on indigenous traditions.

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However, outside North Africa, French assimilationist policy hurt indigenous cultures more deeply than it hurt Islam. Paradoxically, assimilationist policies weakened indigenous resistance to Islamization and therefore helped the spread of Islam in West Africa. French assimilationist policy made Africans ashamed of their own native cultures. But that did not necessarily make them French. Islam, therefore, continued to thrive even in such long established French colonies as Senegal, which the French regarded as their own cultural showpiece and part of which they had colonized for well over a century. Other Muslim countries in French West Africa included Western Sudan (now Mali), Niger, Guinea Conakry, parts of the Ivory Coast, and Mauritania in the northwest. In all of them, Islam survived French assimilationist policy and was sometimes even inadvertently helped by it. This configuration of doctrine, sociology, and history during the colonial period had consequences for the post-colonial era. Some of these consequences were dialectical, replete with contradictions and paradoxes. Especially significant are the consequences in post-colonial political experience. It is to this political experience that we must now turn, with all its paradoxes.

On Governance and Religious Culture Our first post-colonial paradox is at once stimulating and disturbing. It is also fascinating and disquieting. The paradox is as follows: Islam in military uniform, in post-colonial Africa, is more repressive than average; Islam in civilian robes, in Africa, is more tolerant than average. Militarized Islam in Africa is extra-dictatorial; civilian Islam in Africa is relatively tolerant. What are the facts of the case? What are the causes? What are the consequences? Nigeria’s experience of maximum open society has been under civilian Muslim administrations. Nigeria’s experience of maximum repressive society has been under military Muslim administrations. Nigeria’s Muslim civilian rulers have taken the country so far in openness and freedom that Nigeria was at times on the brink of anarchy. Nigeria’s Muslim military rulers have taken the country so far in repression that the country entered the gates of tyranny. Nigeria’s non-Muslim rulers have been Christian. Every time Nigeria has held free civilian elections, it has disproportionately produced a Muslim Chief Executive or Muslim President. The greatest period of the open society in Nigeria was under AlHaji Shehu Shagari.3 Under Shagari, political freedom was virtually

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unrestricted and economic freedom became license for plunder. The Shagari years, from 1979 to 1983, were perhaps the greatest years of freedom of expression in Nigeria in the twentieth century. All shades of opinion could say absolutely anything. The President of the Republic was subjected to the widest range of name-calling: from sheikh to Satan, from maallem to monster.4 Newspapers proliferated right and left, and breathed or died in response to the market rather than to the musket. Newspapers were more or less instruments of party politics; they were highly partisan. As Adigun Agbaje has pointed out, “. . . the newspaper press became an important part of the partisan struggles that wracked the Second Republic. . .”5 On the other hand, under Muslim military rulers, Nigeria experienced brutal repression. The most relatively benign military rulers of Nigeria were Christian—especially the remarkably humane General Yakubu Gowon, who was Head of State from 1967–1975, and General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was Head of State from 1976–1979 and then from 1999– 2006. Obasanjo was the only Nigerian leader to hand over power to a freely elected alternative government. Differences in freedom from regime to regime in Nigeria from 1972– 1994 are amply demonstrated by the Freedom House Rankings for Political Rights and Civil Rights. A one is the best possible score, while a seven is the worst possible score.6 During the Shagari years, Nigeria had the highest score on both Political Rights and Civil Rights. Under the Gowon and Obasanjo regimes, Nigeria was also better off than under the Babangida and Abacha regimes. Somalia, before it got militarized, was one of the most democratic countries not only in Africa, but also almost anywhere in the world. A kind of pastoral democracy emerged after the unification of Italian and British Somaliland and the establishment of independent Somalia in July 1960.7 This open society lasted for less than a decade. On October 21, 1969, a military regime was installed. For almost two decades, the country became a pawn in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States in the Horn of Africa—switching sides between the former and the latter. The soldier Siad Barre remained in power as a military dictator, getting more and more repressive, until he was forced to leave the country in January 1991.8 Somalia, after 1969, once again demonstrated that Muslim political authority in Africa, in uniform, was often more repressive than average; whereas, before 1969, Somalia illustrated the proposition that Muslim civilian authority in Africa was more tolerant than average. Sudan has been a more complex case. Southern Sudan has been in turmoil, on and off, since 1955. The south is largely, but not completely,

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non-Muslim. The majority part of the Sudan is the Islamized Northern Sudan. In the North, it has indeed been true that Muslim civilian authority has been exceptionally tolerant—except with regard to the civil war in the South9 and, more recently, the Darfur ethnic cleansing ostensibly ochestrated by General Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. Like several other African states, Sudan has had both military and civilian regimes.10 Under civilian rule in Sudan, political detainees were virtually unknown; the one-party state was unthinkable; political trials were never staged; political assassinations were not carried out. But Sudan’s military governments started by also being relatively soft. Lt. General Ibrahim Abboud captured power in November 1958. Sudan became the first military government in Africa to be dislodged by civilian demonstrations in October / November of 1964. The regime was so soft that it let itself be pushed out by angry civilians. Again, the succeeding multiparty civilian rule in the Sudan was exceptionally tolerant. But this relative calm was ended in May 1969 when Col. Jaafar Muhammad Nimeiry, then left wing, overthrew the civilians and established a so-called ten-man revolutionary council. Nimeiry had himself elected president in 1971. He later dissolved the Revolutionary Council and established the Sudanese Socialist Union as the only legitimate political party. Unlike the Ibrahim Abboud military regime of 1958–1964, Nimeiry’s military rule was not as soft. From a religious point of view, its most merciless action was the execution of an old man, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, on charges of heresy and apostasy. On the other hand, Nimeiry did negotiate and reach the Addis Ababa accords with Southern Sudan in 1972, which gave southern Sudan a decade of peace. And Nimeiry’s regime was also soft enough to allow itself to be chased out of office by popular demonstrations in the streets of Khartoum in 1985. After a short lived Transitional Military Council for one year, under General Siwar al-Dahab, from April 1985 to April 1986, Sudan once again returned to civilian rule under Sadiq el Mahdi as Prime Minister. It lived up to its reputation that Muslim civilian authority was above average in tolerance. Indeed, Sudan enjoyed the highest rankings on Political Rights during this period (1986–1988), with scores of four. However, the ranking of Civil Rights remained relatively unchanged from previous periods, although slightly better than Nimeiry’s earlier years. Unfortunately, this civilian phase did not last long either. On June 30, 1989, the government of Sadiq el Mahdi was overthrown by General Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. Bashir’s regime is the toughest of all the military regimes Sudan has had. It also happens to be the most self-

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consciously Islamic. In the 1972–1994 period, Sudan’s rankings of seven, (the worst possible ranking) on Political Rights and Civil Rights were in the 1989–1994 period. They were even worse than under Col. Nimeiry, under whose regime the worst score that Sudan got was a six. Sudan now completes both parts of our dual-interpretation, that Islamic authority in civilian robes is somewhat tolerant, and Islamic authority in military uniform is excessively repressive. Uganda has had a Muslim ruler in military uniform, but has had no Muslim ruler in civilian robes. The one half of our proposition does hold—the Muslim ruler in military uniform in Uganda was more repressive than were the Christian soldiers who ruled Uganda. Idi Amin (1971–1979) did more damage to Uganda than did any other ruler of Uganda (military or civilian).11 Some have argued that Milton Obote’s second administration was as bad, if not worse, as Idi Amin’s rule. It is possible that more people died under Obote’s second administration (1981–1986), but we must remember that they died as much from a civil war as from tyranny. Most of Amin’s slaughter, however, was due to tyranny or anarchy.12 In any case, Obote himself was not a military ruler.13 Ugandans’ freedoms were most severely circumscribed under Idi Amin, with scores on the Freedom House rankings ranging from seven to six on both Political Rights and Civil Rights. On the other hand, Ugandans’ under Obote and successive regimes were relatively better off, with scores ranging from six to four in the years following Amin’s overthrow. In Malawi, there has been one ostensibly devout Christian ruler (Hastings Banda) and a Muslim President (Bakili Muluzi, who was elected President of Malawi on May 17, 1994). Malawi had another Christain President (Bingu wa Mutharika, 2004–2012). Joyce Banda, also a Christian, was appointed to complete Bingu wa Mutharika’s term due to his untimely death. Hastings Banda was in power from 1964 to 1994, ruling for 30 years in an arbitrary fashion. He was one of Africa’s worst post-colonial tyrants. Banda belonged to the Church of Scotland and was an elder in the church. Under Banda, Malawi plunged into desperate economic conditions and political staleness—since he ruled the country with an iron hand and prevented meaningful opposition.14 In the period under Banda (1972–1993) surveyed by Freedom House, Malawi, for the most part, (with the exception of 1993) received scores of seven or six on the Political Rights and Civil Rights scale. On the other hand, with the ascension of Muluzi to power, it received a ranking of two on Political Rights and three on Civil Rights. Compared to Banda, Bakili Muluzi was

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arguably a relatively more democratic ruler.15 Malawi, therefore, authenticates the proposition that a Muslim ruler in civilian robes is above average in tolerance. Tanzania may be heading for a system in which the Presidency alternates between a Christian incumbent and a Muslim incumbent. The first Christian incumbent was, of course, Julius K. Nyerere, who was chief executive from 1961 until his resignation from the presidency in 1985. Nyerere was an exceptionally strong and creative chief executive. He was a Roman Catholic.16 Tanzania’s second President was Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who held office from 1985 to 1995. President Mwinyi was definitely less charismatic and less energetic and less influential than his predecessor, Julius Nyerere. But President Mwinyi was also gentler and more tolerant, than his great predecessor. President Mwinyi was a Muslim. The third President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa, was a Christian. Benjamin Mkapa, however, stepped into the presidential State House with many cries of “foul” from the opposition. That notwithstanding, Benjamin Mkapa was a gentle ruler—as gentle as his Muslim predecessor Ali Hassan Mwinyi. Senegal poses even more intriguing questions about politics and religious affiliation. In the 1988 census, 94 percent of the population was identified as Muslim.17 The population of Senegal has a higher proportion of Muslims than the population of Egypt. And yet this overwhelmingly Muslim country, Senegal, had a Roman Catholic president in its postcolonial history—not for five or ten years—but for twenty years. From 1960 to 1980, Léopold Sédar Senghor ruled one of the more free governments on the African continent.18 Senghor did bestride this narrow Muslim world like a colossus—not because everybody worshipped him— but because the Senegalese society was remarkably ecumenical. In Senegal, although a mostly Islamic society, Islam has emerged not as a competitor for state power, but as a locus for countervailing power in civil society that limits the reach of state action and thus acts as a check on state power. As Villalon has pointed out, “. . . the political importance of Islam in Senegal has been concentrated in the domain of state-society relations and not in the struggle for control of the state.”19 Since Senegal was a relatively open society, Senghor was called many abusive names: lackey of the French, Negritudist hypocrite, political prostitute. But he was almost never denounced as kaffir, or infidel. Consider how far ahead this situation was of any political-religious situation in the Western world. After two hundred years as a secular state, the United States strayed only once from the Protestant fraternity for the White House. We are not even sure John F. Kennedy was truly elected.

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We only know that he became President. There was some hanky-panky in Illinois, which might have robbed Nixon of victory.20 Kennedy’s victory was exceptionally narrow. No Jew has become President of the United States. Before Joe Lieberman’s failed presidential run, Jews were not even bidding for the office. And while there are now as many Muslims as Jews in the United States, if not more, 21 a Muslim President of the United States is still a mind-boggling concept. Yet there was, in a predominantly Muslim Senegal, a Roman Catholic President for 20 years without upheavals in the streets or any attempted assassinations. Imagine one of the Presidential candidates in the United States going on the television program “Larry King Live” and confessing: “Oh, incidentally, my wife is a Shiite Muslim.” The candidate had better pack up his bags, leave the campaign, and find a corner to lick his wounds. By almost all standards, the Muslims of Senegal have been remarkably ecumenical in the twentieth century. This has undoubtedly been a critical factor in the remarkable durability of Senegalese liberal democracy in a region of the world where there are too few of these regimes.22 Are there exceptions to this sweeping generalization, that civilian Islam in Africa is more tolerant than average? Is there an exception to the generalization that military Muslim authority in Africa is more repressive than on average? There are indeed exceptions! Guinea Conakry produced a heroic Muslim leader, Ahmed Sékou Touré. Touré became one of the longest serving heads of state in Africa. He was President from 1958 until he died in hospital, in the United States, in March 1984. Sékou Touré stood up against the French, and served for a while as Chairman of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He was, nevertheless, one of the worst civilian dictators that post-colonial Africa has had. A quarter of the population fled into exile. Despite several real or alleged attempts to overthrow Touré, he was unshakable from power until his death in 1984.23 Mali, another overwhelmingly Muslim country, has also produced bad rulers (both civilian and military). Mali is, therefore, another exception. It does not fit my thesis about the dual-tendency. Arab civilian regimes of North Africa basically do conform to my generalization. Under civilian rulers, Tunisia and Morocco have been, at least until recently, more tolerant than average—compared with most other African countries and with most other Arab countries. At least since 1992, we may conclude that the Algerian military regime has conformed to the other part of my generalization. A brief blossoming

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of political liberalization since 1989 was abruptly aborted in 1992, leading to a severe civil war. Algeria then became more repressive than average. Several countries, particularly France, were at the time concerned about the prospects of Algeria becoming another Iran.24 What about Egypt? How much of a military regime is Egypt’s government? To what extent has it been civilianized by durability from 1952 to 1995? Egypt is more difficult to classify, but its regime conforms to the generalization that Muslim civilian or civilianized regimes in Africa are more tolerant than average. Observers are divided about Muammar Gaddafy’s Libya. Gaddafy captured power in 1969. Has his regime become more repressive than average over the years? Or has it been a particularly generous military regime in material terms and a particularly egalitarian one in ideological terms? By the 1990s, the arbitrariness of the regime had probably tilted the balance on the side of repression. The expulsion of Palestinian and Sudanese workers in 1995 was symptomatic of a deepening repressiveness in the regime. Libya was also facing problems with Islamists.25

A Note on Culture and Violence It is not clear why the twin-tendency of my thesis seems to hold up in Africa: that Islam in military uniform is excessively repressive, and Islam in civilian robes is somewhat tolerant. But it may be related to another twin-tendency: that Muslim cities in Africa are routinely less violent than non-Muslim cities. But from time to time, Muslim cities are nevertheless more prone to politicized riots or demonstrations. Islam does not inspire mugging in the streets, but it often inspires fiery protest. Kano, in Nigeria, is much more of a Muslim city than Ibadan. On a day-to-day basis, Kano’s streets are much safer from muggers and robbers than the streets of Ibadan. But Kano is competitive, even with Lagos, when it comes to politicized riots. Mombasa, in Kenya, is more of a Muslim city than Nairobi. The streets of Mombasa are still (relatively speaking) safer than the streets of Nairobi. But Mombasa is beginning to be competitive with the capital city in politicized riots. As for the really protected small Muslim enclave of Lamu, in the Northeastern coastal town of Kenya, it was for centuries almost entirely devoid of crime in the Western sense. There may have been lots of secret vices, like adultery and extra mistresses, but there was no mugging or rape or murder. The prison in Lamu was often almost empty most of the time before the 1980s.

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Also we may compare Cairo, the biggest city in the north of the African continent, with Johannesburg, the biggest city in the south. Although Johannesburg is less than a sixth of the population of Cairo, it has more than three times the rate of reported violent crimes. Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam, is a culturally semi-Islamized city, and not just by its Arabic name. It has only a fraction of the crime rate of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Outside Africa, Tehran is about the size of New York City in population—with about 10 million people. And yet in Tehran in 1993, I witnessed women and children picnicking in public parks late at night. I witnessed comparable phenomena of fearlessness about the streets at night in three other Iranian cities. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that in terms of pacifying the streets from day-to-day violence, like mugging and the harassment from drug-dealers and drunks, Islam is a force for peace in the relevant African cities. But in terms of politicized riots, or demonstrations and potential civil disobedience, Islam can be a force of excitability. Whether or not these factors are related to our twin-tendency of Islam in uniform versus Islam in civilian robes is a matter yet to be explored.

Islam and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) In dealing with cities and lifestyles, we may now discuss the relationship between Islam and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Of course many individual Muslims have already died, and more no doubt will. None of us are safe from this deadly disease. Africa certainly has been most cruelly hit. Estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 31 December 1992, indicated that Africa had 71 percent of the world’s estimated 2.5 million cases of AIDS.26 But, for the time being, the distribution of the disaster has disproportionately hit non-Muslim Africa, especially the central belt of the African continent. A large part of the reason is purely a historical accident. That is where the deadly virus allegedly erupted.27 But a question persists whether cultural factors are also relevant to the spread of the disease. Do these cultural factors include religious affiliation and religious practices? For instance, even accounting for underreporting, WHO estimates that the number of people infected with HIV in North Africa and the Middle East is probably about 75,000 people—which is a small figure compared to the estimates of 8 million infected adults in subSaharan Africa. At least some AIDS workers believe that Islam may be

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playing a role in checking AIDS transmission because of “strong religious and cultural taboos about sex.”28 In some African countries where both Muslims and non-Muslims live near each other, studies have shown that Muslims tend to have less cases of HIV/AIDS infection. As one report stated, “In Côte d’Ivoire, studies have shown that approximately half as many Muslims as non-Muslims . . . are likely to be infected with HIV.”29 Relevant religio-cultural questions include the following: ¾ A non-Muslim African man may be legally monogamous, but often has more than one sex partner (sexual pluralism outside marriage). ¾ Muslim males are more likely to marry more than one woman (sexual pluralism within marriage).

Legalized polygamy is sexual pluralism with specific partners. African men married to only one woman may be practicing partner-random sexual pluralism outside the home. (At one extreme, unprotected sex during a one-night stand on a Saturday night, as in the West, may be rife and instrumental in spreading HIV/AIDS. Is old style polygyny or polygamy better protection against AIDS than monogamy in cultures where males insist on sexual pluralism? Are polygamous Muslims better protected than monogamous Christians? One analysis is at least ambivalent about the pros and cons of polygamy for controlling HIV transmission. “Continuing polygamy and surrogate forms of it in Africa thus present both advantages and disadvantages for controlling the HIV epidemic.”30 Secondly, Muslim societies have more discreet forms of sex outside marriage than one may find in cities with brothels and where open prostitution is tolerated outside hotels. One is more likely to find open temptations outside motels in Port Harcourt than in Kaduna, in Cape Town than in Cairo, in New Delhi than in Islamabad, and in London than in Riyadh. Is the danger of spreading HIV reduced where prostitution is less aggressive? The institution of levirate, or “inheriting” the widow of a brother, has died faster among Islamized Africans than among non-Islamized. The levirate institution is intact among many non-Muslims in Africa. Nkrumah’s widowed mother was “inherited” by his uncle. The widow of the assassinated Kenyan leader, Tom Mboya, was “inherited” by his younger brother (though a marriage ceremony was conducted). Today, an inherited widow may carry the HIV virus from her late husband.31 It becomes one additional cultural area of transmission where religion can

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make a difference. If Muslims have abandoned the institution of levirate sooner than non-Muslims, are Muslims thereby better protected from HIV? Then there is the stronger discouragement of drugs among practicing Muslims, sometimes reinforced by abstinence from alcohol. This can also reduce the spread of HIV acquired through shared contaminated drug needles. Islam can also reduce the temptations of promiscuity under conditions of inebriation. Are there Islamic practices which could promote the spread of HIV and AIDS? There is considerable cultural surgery in some practices. Male circumcision invokes cutting and spilling blood and potential contamination. This could result in HIV infections. Baganda Muslims circumcise; non-Muslim Bagandas do not. It must be noted that the jury is still out on the connection between circumcision and HIV infection. While the practice may lead to spilling of blood, at least in males, it has also been linked to the prevention of other sexually transmitted diseases that then act as a gateway to AIDS.32 Female circumcision is not really Islamic; but it is widely practiced in many Muslim societies. It is practiced in Egypt, but not in Algeria; in Yemen, but not in Saudi Arabia; in Somalia, but not in Zanzibar, and so on. Tradition and custom, rather than religion, dictates the prevalence of this practice.33 Consequences of female circumcision could cause lifelong bleeding in a woman during intercourse. Does it also increase the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS? Male homosexuality may be rarer in Africa than in other parts of the world, or it may be at least underreported. But to the extent that it exists, there may be a higher incidence in parts of Muslim Africa than in nonMuslim Africa—partly due to the sociological reasons of the purdah. Where the sexes are rigidly segregated, one potential outcome is a slight increase in both lesbianism and male homosexuality. There is also the phenomenon of foreign tourists, particularly in North Africa, patronizing male prostitutes.34 Does that also increase the danger of the spread of HIV? It just happens that the way in which HIV/AIDS is spread in Africa is, in any case, different from how it is spread in the United States.35 It may be less subject to the distinction between homosexual love and heterosexual love, but it is a risk worth taking into account.

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Conclusion What is the balance between conflict, competition, and cooperation between Islam and Christianity in the twenty-first century? In Africa, Christianity and Islam are divisive only if they reinforce pre-existing divisions of other kinds. Thus, in Nigeria, almost all Hausa are Muslims; almost all Igbo are Christians; and Yoruba are split between the two religions. Thus, Islam reinforces Hausa identity; Christianity reinforces Igbo identity, and the Yoruba people are caught in between. In Sudan, the degree of Islamization is not the only difference between the north and the south of the country. The two sub-regions vary in a whole range of other cultural and historical differentiations. But where Islam and Christianity do not reinforce prior divisions, as in Senegal, those two religions are not conflictual. It is in this way that sociology and history help to moderate the consequences of doctrine. Leveling the field of missionary work between Islam and Christianity also helps to diffuse conflict, and turn it into peaceful competition for the soul of Africa. The petro-wealth of the parts of the Muslim world has made available resources for tabligh, da’wa, and propagation unheard of for hundreds of years. Muslim missionary work is still less efficient, less organized, less imaginative, and not as well-endowed as Christian missionary work. But the gap has narrowed as a result of petro-da’wa. The sacred playing field is being slowly leveled. A third factor which helps in reducing conflict and even in promoting cooperation is an important change in the nature of the Christian mission in Africa. Many Christian groups have decided to concentrate on saving lives rather than saving souls, focusing more on service now, than salvation for the hereafter. Such Christian groups will go to help in devastated Muslim areas like Somalia, to save Somali lives rather than Somali souls. They would concentrate on easing pain, rather than spreading the Gospel. In Africa, such service-oriented activists have their Muslim counterparts. An association of Muslim doctors in South Africa spends a lot of medical hours and resources helping the poor in South Africa regardless of religious affiliation. They build clinics, or serve them, and give their time to the sick. Between these two universalistic religions, the three tendencies are still often there: the risk of conflict, the inherent competitive tendency, and the potential for ecumenical cooperation.

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In Africa, the worst days of religious conflict north of the Sahara may unfortunately not be over. But south of the Sahara, those worst days are probably receding into history. The days of rivalry between Christianity and Islam in Africa are alive and well—but the competition is getting more gracious and more considerate. The days of ecumenical cooperation between Christianity and Islam in Africa are now unfolding. Africa may indeed be the best setting in the world for such a Christo-Islamic ecumenicalism in the twenty-first century. In distribution, Christianity is an Afro-Western religion. Almost all Christian nations are either in the Western world, or in Africa. Asia, the largest continent in the world, has been far less receptive to Christianity. There are hardly any Christian nations in Asia, apart from the Philippines. In distribution, Islam is an Afro-Asian religion. Most Muslim nations are either in Asia, or in Africa. Apart from small Albania and Bosnia, there are no Muslim countries in the Western world. Turkey is divided between Asia and Europe. If Christianity is primarily Afro-Western, and Islam is primarily AfroAsian, what the two religions have in common geographically is mainly the “Afro” part. Africa is, therefore, the pre-eminent theatre for ecumenical cooperation between these two great religions—moderated, of course, by the traditional doctrines, the sociology, and the history of the African peoples themselves.

Notes 1 Consult Steve Bruce (ed.), Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis, (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 1992); Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Persistence of Faith: Religion, Morality & Society in a Secular Age, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991); and Edward Tiryakian, “From Modernization to Globalization,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 31, (September 1992), pp. 304 –310. 2 For example, on the religious connections to resurgent nationalism, see Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 3 Biographical portraits of Shagari may be found in David Williams, President and Power in Nigeria: The Life of Shehu Shagari, (London and Totowa, NJ: F. Cass, 1990); and A. Okion Ojigbo, Shehu Shagari: The Biography of Nigeria’s First Executive President, (Lagos, Nigeria: Tokion Co., 1982). 4 For an example of unbridled attacks on Shagari, see Adigun Agbaje, “Freedom of the Press and Party Politics in Nigeria: Precepts, Retrospect and Prospects,” African Affairs, Volume 89, (April 1990), p. 211.

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Agbaje, “Freedom of the Press and Party Politics in Nigeria,” p. 223. Freedom House, New York, compiles scores for Political Rights and Civil Rights (which we call Civil Liberties) for several countries which are then published in the “Survey of Freedom” in the periodical Freedom at Issue usually in the January/February issue for the preceding year. These scores are drawn from that source. While these scores are not perfect, they provide a useful basis for comparison since 1972. The best rank of (1) on Political Rights means that the population plays an active and critical part in choosing their political regime and also implies the existence of multiple parties and significant opposition, with power predominantly residing in those who are elected. Thus, political rights refer to the ability of a people to freely choose their leaders. The best rank of (1) on Civil Rights means that the population is free to express their opinions, the rule of law exists, freedom from political victimization (torture or imprisonment for political reasons), freedom of religion, voluntary organization and freedom of movement and occupation. These definitions are derived from Raymond Gastil, “The Comparative Survey of Freedom–VII,” Freedom at Issue, 39, (January / February 1977), pp. 5–8. 7 A useful guide to Somali history and politics since independence is I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, revised, updated, and expanded edition, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988). 8 Somalia’s repression is well-detailed in Jama M. Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship: The Somali Experience, (New York, NY: L. Barber, 1995); on the Cold War connections, see Gerry O’Sullivan, “Another Cold War Casualty,” The Humanist, Volume 53, (January / February 1993), pp. 36 –37. 9 This Civil War has resisted settlement both by force and through mediation; for one discussion of the war, see M. W. Daly and Ahmed A. Sikainga, (eds.), Civil War in the Sudan, (London and New York: British Academic Press, 1993); also consult Dunstan M. Wai, The African-Arab Conflict in the Sudan, (New York: Africana Pub. Co., 1981). 10 Consult, for an overview of the various regimes in Sudan, Muddathir Abd AlRahim et al. (eds.), Sudan since Independence: Studies in the Political Development since 1956, (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1986). 11 On Uganda’s experiences under Amin, a valuable tool for further reading is Martin Jamison, Idi Amin and Uganda: An Annotated Bibliography, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992). 12 For a portrait of the hideous struggles of Ugandans under Amin, consult M. S. M. Semakula Kiwanuka, Amin and the Tragedy of Uganda, (Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1979). 13 For a biography of this recurrent figure in Ugandan politics, consult Kenneth Ingham, Obote: A Political Biography, (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). 14 See T. David Williams, Malawi, The Politics of Despair, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978); and Andrew Meldrum, “Legacy of A Dictator,” Africa Report, Volume 40, (March/April 1995), pp. 56–59. 15 On the transition from Banda to Muluzi, see Mike Hall and Melinda Ham, “From Tyranny to Tolerance,” Africa Report, Volume 39, (November/December 1994), pp. 56–57. 6

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For an early biography of Nyerere, consult William E. Smith, Nyerere of Tanzania, (London: Gollancz, 1973); a more recent view may be found in Andrew Meldrum, “Julius Nyerere: Former President of Tanzania,” Africa Report, Volume 39, (September/October 1994), pp. 70–71. 17 Arthur S. Banks, (ed.), The Political Handbook of the World, 1994–1995, (Binghamton, NY: CSA Publications, 1995), p. 758. 18 For a close look at the various influences on Senghor, see Janet G. Vaillant, Black, French, and African: A Life of Léopold Sédar Senghor, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). 19 Leonardo A. Villalon, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciples and Citizens in Fatick, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 262. 20 One detailed account of the crucial but suspicious voting results in Chicago during the 1960 elections can be found in Edmund F. Kallina, Courthouse Over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Elections of 1960, (Orlando, FL: University Presses of Florida; University of Central Florida Press, 1988), pp. 96 – 114. 21 A figure of 5.944 million Jews in the United States is reported in Table 80 in the United States Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1991, 111th edition, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991), p. 58; on the other hand, a New York Times, (February 21, 1989), Section A, p. 1 report estimated the number of Muslims in the United States at 6 million. 22 For a discussion of the factors in Senegal’s exceptionally democratic record, see Robert Fatton, The Making of a Liberal Democracy: Senegal’s Passive Revolution, 1975–1985, (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner Publishers, 1987). 23 On Guinea under Touré, consult “Ladipo Adamolekun, Sékou Touré’s Guinea: An Experiment in Nation-Building, (London and New York: Methuen, Harper & Row, and Barnes & Noble, 1976). 24 See, for instance, Edward G. Shirley, “Is Iran’s Present Algeria’s Future?” Foreign Affairs Volume 74, (May / June 1995), pp. 28– 44. 25 Consult Dennis Sammutt, “Libya and the Islamic Challenge,” The World Today, Volume 50, (October 1994), pp. 198–200. 26 See United Nations Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, AIDS and the Demography of Africa, (New York: United Nations, 1994), p. 6. 27 For one figure depicting the different number of cases by country, see Figure 2.3 in Tony Barnett and Piers Blaikie, AIDS in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact, (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 1992), p. 24; and for detailed studies of various subregions, see chapters 29–33 in Max Essex, et al. (eds.), AIDS in Africa, (New York: Raven Press, 1994), pp. 603–712. 28 Consult Catherine Tastemain and Peter Coles, “Can a Culture Stop AIDS in its Tracks?” New Scientist, (September 11, 1993), p. 13; of course, their report is not conclusive. 29 Ibid. 30 Consult Manuel Carballo and Patrick I. Kenya, “Behavioral Issues and AIDS,” in Max Essex, et al. (eds.), AIDS in Africa, p. 501.

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This would of course increase the number of partners for the infected woman; see Carballo and Kenya, “Behavioral Issues and AIDS,” p. 501. 32 See the discussion in Seth F. Berkley, “Public Health Measures to Prevent HIV Spread in Africa,” in Max Essex et al. (eds.), AIDS in Africa, pp. 484 – 485. 33 Critical works on female circumcision include Efua Dorkenoo, Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation, the Practice and its Prevention, (London: Minority Rights Publication, 1994); and Fran P. Hosken, The Hosken Report: Genital and Sexual Mutilation of Females, 4th rev. edition, (Lexington, MA: Women’s International Network News, 1993). 34 See Tastemain and Coles, “Can a Culture Stop AIDS in its Tracks,” p. 14. 35 Relatedly, see Jon Cohen, “Differences in HIV Strain May Underlie Disease Patterns,” Science, Volume 270, (October 6, 1995), pp. 30–31. In Africa, most cases of HIV are caused due to heterosexual contacts.

SECTION III WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AND AFRICA’S EXPERIENCE

CHAPTER TEN ANCIENT GREECE IN AFRICAN THOUGHT1 The Greeks are credited with having started many things. In his first important publication in 1947, Kwame Nkrumah suggested that the very idea of “European” expansionism originated with the Greeks and their immediate successors. The phenomenon of “Europeans” conquering each other might have been older than the Greeks, but the phenomenon of a major “European” intrusion into another continent had its grand precedent in what Nkrumah called “the idea of Alexander the Great with his GrecoAsiatic empire.”2 If Nkrumah was exaggerating, his exaggeration was academically respectable, for it is a respectable academic tradition to be able to discover the Greek root of every important phenomenon of the modern world. It is almost always safe to say that “it all goes back to ancient Greece.” This is often a myth, but it is a myth with a capacity to fulfill itself. If a thinker starts suspecting that his thoughts have their roots in ancient Greece, he turns to the Greeks to find antecedents of his own thoughts and, before long, his thinking is indeed affected and stimulated by what he reads of Greek ideas. The ideas of African nationalists have at times been influenced by the tendency to refer themselves back to the Greeks. It is all bound up with the place of the Greeks in the total mythology of “European civilization” and the influence of this mythology on the course of African history. The ambition of this essay is three-fold. First, it aspires to throw some light on the nature of this classical mystique in Africa and the response of African nationalism to it. Second, we hope to define briefly the relation of Eastern Africa both to the mystique and to the African reaction. Third, we intend to pose the question whether ancient Greece was, in any meaningful sense, a European civilization. My own interest in these matters is not, of course, that of a historian. It is the interest of a student of social thought and political behavior. But social thought must often reflect on the findings of historians for new insights into man’s image of himself. What we are reflecting upon are matters that do indeed have a bearing on the crisis of identity facing African nationalists. What must not be forgotten is

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that there is also a crisis of identity confronting every modern African university and the mystique of ancient Greece is at the heart of it. Let us then first try to fathom the political meaning that this classical mystique has had in contemporary Africa. The first thing that needs to be noted is that, in an important sense, the mystique of ancient Greece contributed to the total cultural arrogance of Europe in relation to the rest of the world. At his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of History at Oxford in December 1841, Thomas Arnold gave a new lease of life to the ancient idea of a moving center of civilization. Arnold argued that the history of civilization was the history of a series of creative races, each of which made its impact and then sank into oblivion, leaving the heritage of civilization to a greater successor. What the Greeks passed on to the Romans, the Romans bequeathed in turn to the Germanic race. And of that race, the greatest civilizing nation was England.3 Lord Lugard also came to share the vision of Britain as a successor to Rome. In his book, The Dual Mandate, Lugard asserted that Roman imperialism helped to transform the inhabitants of the British Isles into a civilized nation. Those islands then became a civilizing nation in their own right. To use Lugard’s own words: As Roman imperialism . . . led the wild barbarians of these islands [of Britain] along the path of progress, so in Africa today we are repaying the debt, and bringing to the dark places of the earth . . . the torch of culture and progress.4

In more extremist hands than Lugard’s, the Greco-Roman heritage of the West was used for darker purposes. Biological explanations were sometimes advanced to show that it was right that the Whites should have produced a Greek intellectual miracle and that the Blacks should not. The ultimate proof of the higher biological intellectuality of the European stock was that they had to their credit the most intellectual of all ancient civilizations. It was inconceivable that Blacks could ever have produced an Aristotle. The Black stock could not even produce a language to compare with that evolved by the Greeks; nor was that the furthest that cultural arrogance could go. In his address to the Congress of Africanists in Accra in December 1962, Nkrumah cited the case of John C. Calhoun, “the most philosophical of all the slave-holders” of the Southern States of America.5 Calhoun had apparently once said that if he could find a Black man who could understand the Greek syntax, he would then consider their race human, and his attitude toward enslaving them would therefore change. Nkrumah agreed with the reaction of a Zulu student at Columbia

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University who, commenting on Calhoun’s criterion of what is human, said in an oration in 1906: What might have been the sensation kindled by the Greek syntax in the mind of the famous Southerner, I have so far been unable to discover but . . . I could show him among black men of pure African blood those who could repeat the Koran from memory, skilled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaic.6

It is evident that Calhoun’s charge against Blacks was more severe than the simpler accusation that they were incapable of producing a language to compare with ancient Greek. Calhoun was asserting that Blacks were not only incapable of inventing such a language; they were also incapable of understanding it when invented by someone else. Nkrumah was too modest to remind the International Congress of Africanists that when he himself obtained his Master of Science degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania many years before, he became a full instructor in philosophy and first year Greek. And Nkrumah was not even the best African specialist in either of these subjects. He had countrymen better versed in these subjects than he.7 In a book he published two years after the International Congress of Africanists, Nkrumah discussed the influence of the Greco-Roman mystique on the kind of education colonialism bequeathed to Africa. To Nkrumah the study of philosophy in Africa, and also of history, was distorted by that mystique. As he put it: The colonized African student, whose roots in his own society are systematically starved of sustenance, is introduced to Greek and Roman history, the cradle history of modern Europe, and he is encouraged to treat this portion of the story of man together with the subsequent history of Europe as the only worthwhile portion.8

It was partly because of such elements of European cultural pride that movements like that of Negritude came into being. Negritude is an idealization of the traditional culture of the Black man. In a profound sense, Negritude is therefore the Black man’s response to the GrecoRoman mystique. That mystique had psychological implications for Black people that were not shared by other colonized peoples in Asia. As Thomas Hodgkin once pointed out, no Western European seriously questioned the fact that there had been periods in the past when Arab and Indian civilizations, owing little to European stimulus, flowered. But, in the words of Hodgkin, “the case of the peoples of Africa is different.”9 For

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them it was not a simple case of recovering a dignity that every one concedes they once had. It may indeed be an attempt to recover their own respect for themselves, but it is also an endeavor to exact for the first time an adequate respect from others. As I have said elsewhere, self-respect and respect by others, difficult to separate as they usually are, are in the Africans’ case even more so. And in regard to Negritude, there prevails a deep conviction that there is dignity in cultural defiance itself. Jean-Paul Sartre was right when he described Negritude as “evangelical.”10 Perhaps there might even be a mystical link between, say, Elijah Masinde, the so-called prophet of Dini ya Misambwa in East Africa and Aimé Césaire, the sophisticated poet of Negritude in Martinique. At any rate, literary Negritude and certain African messianic and separatist movements are different responses to one inter-related cultural phenomenon. We should remind ourselves here that the sources of European civilization were not exclusively Greco-Roman. It would perhaps be more correct to regard the ultimate fountains of European culture as being Judea as well as Greece. The achievement of imperial Rome was to fuse the two traditions and bequeath to Europe a civilization that was both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian. But as these two traditions entered the lives of Blacks, they often came wrapped in Europe’s cultural arrogance. The Greco-Roman aspects of that arrogance contributed to the birth of Negritude; the Judeo-Christian sense of sacred superiority contributed to the birth of Ethiopianism and African syncretic churches at large. B. C. Sundkler, in his contemplation of the Black Christ movements of South Africa, is suddenly reminded of a few verses attributed to Xenophanes: The Ethiop’s Gods have dusky cheeks, Thick lips and woolly hair; The Grecian Gods are like the Greeks, As tall, bright-eyed, and fair.11

Sometimes that old intellectual arrogance of Europe that underestimates the Black mind has been extended to the religious sphere. Calhoun might have doubted if a Black could ever understand Greek syntax; others have sometimes doubted if a Black could ever comprehend the Trinity. Whenever the Black has turned away from European Christianity and embraced a separatist version, some of his judges have felt vindicated. In her book, New Nations, Lucy Mair refers to the theory held by some people that “the assimilation of Christian doctrine is an intellectual exercise too difficult for some primitive minds.”12 She points out that those who hold this theory use it to explain Ethiopianism and

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similar separatist movements. They argue that such “primitive minds” have not only misunderstood Christian doctrine and reproduced it in a garbled form, but in the effort have sometimes become mentally deranged and abandoned themselves to the new cults. Professor Mair herself rejects the theory but for our purposes here, what matters is that such a theory does exist and is obviously akin to Calhoun’s prejudices about the Greek syntax. That is what leads us to the conclusion that both the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian elements of European civilization have sometimes forced the African into a position of cultural defensiveness. Ethiopianism emerged as a form of poetic protest in action and Negritude became, in Sartre’s word, “evangelical.” One particularly sophisticated type of African response to the GrecoRoman mystique of the West is the response of Léopold Senghor, a leading proponent of Negritude. Senghor acknowledges that Greek civilization was pre-eminently an intellectual civilization. Did this make Greeks and Westerners at-large more intellectual as a group of human beings than Black people are? For Senghor the answer is yes. He has argued that the genius of Africa is not in the realm of intellectual abstraction; it is in the domain of emotive sensibility. As he once put it in his own inimitable way: “Emotion is Black . . . reason is Greek.”13 In short, Black-African epistemology starts from the premise “I feel, therefore I am.” Kwame Nkrumah, in his book, Consciencism, also discusses Descartes’ postulate. Nkrumah argues that the fact that “Monsieur Descartes” is thinking, is no proof that his body exists. It is certainly no proof that the totality of his person is in being. Nkrumah is out to deny that matter owes its existence either to thought or to perception. In a sense, he would disagree with both assertions “I think, therefore I am” and “I feel, therefore I am.” But to the extent that “feeling” is a more “physical” experience than thought, it is a greater concession to the autonomy of matter. The kind of philosophical idealism that puts our bodies in our minds instead of our minds in our bodies was, to Nkrumah, no more than an indulgence in “the ecstasy of intellectualism.”14 But Nkrumah would certainly not go to the extent of denying the African the gift of “analytical and discursive reason.” As he put it at the inauguration of the University of Ghana in November 1961: “We have never had any doubt about the intellectual capacity of the African.”15 Yet the measure of African capacity has sometimes been deemed to be the extent to which the African could grapple with Greek thought. Calhoun might have used the ability to understand the Greek syntax as a criterion of whether the African was human. But Africans themselves sometimes invoke the ability to grapple with Greek concepts as a criterion that the

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African was indeed an intellectual being. Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal, in trying to establish the academic caliber of the ancient African University in Timbuktu, found it pertinent to assert that: Aristotle was commented upon regularly, and the trivium and quadrivium were known as one does not go without the other. Almost all the scholars were completely experienced in the Aristotelian Dialectics and the commentaries of formal logic.16

Nkrumah talked proudly of Anthony William Amoo, the Ghanaian who, in the eighteenth century, taught philosophy at the University of Wittenberg in Germany and “wrote dissertations in Latin and Greek.”17 The most intellectual of all Nkrumah’s own works is Consciencism. To some extent, the book is a collaborative effort. Nkrumah himself acknowledges the assistance of his Philosophy Club, of which Professor William Abraham, the Ghanaian philosopher, was presumably a member. In spite of its many and serious imperfections, there is no doubt that the book is a work of the intellect. Diallo Telli, later Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity, took part in a ceremony to launch the book. He stated that the book deprived “the accumulated lies about the so-called congenital inability of the African man to raise himself to the highest levels on the plane of thought” of all validity.18 Telli was substantially right in seeing the book in those terms. Yet Consciencism is also the least Africa-oriented of all Nkrumah’s books. Descartes is by no means the only Western philosopher discussed in it. Much of the book is in the tradition of Greek “analytic and discursive reason.” The dilemma of African cultural nationalism is implicit in Diallo Telli’s evaluation. In order to establish her intellectual equality with the West, Africa has to master Western versions of intellectual skills. Africa has to establish that she can be as “Greek” as the next person. But sometimes African nationalists wanted to go further than this. They wanted to assert an African role in the growth of Greek culture itself. A crucial link in the chain of this reasoning is another mystique that we must now look at, the mystique of the Nile. And it is this mystique which brings in not only Northern Africa but also Eastern. A Ghanaian intellectual, Michael Dei-Anang, once wrote the following poem: Dark Africa? Who nursed the doubtful child Of civilization On the wand’ring banks Of life-giving Nile,

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Few would today seriously dispute that there was an Egyptian influence on at least the earlier phases of the Hellenic civilization. In the words of Henry Bamford Parkes, “The Euphrates and the Nile Valleys were the original sources of the civilization of Western man.”20 This consideration affects Eastern Africa in two ways. First, the precise nature of ancient Egypt’s links with countries south of her might be important in determining whether Egypt’s civilization was, in any meaningful sense, an “African” achievement. The second consideration which makes Eastern Africa relevant is at once simpler and of more permanent repercussions. If the Nile was a source of civilization, East Africa was the source of the Nile. The latter fact was not fully grasped until centuries later, but the mystery of the source of the Nile came to have important historical consequences for this part of the continent. To the Greeks, much of Europe was as dark a continent as much of Africa. But the question of where the Nile originated had compelling symbolism. It was at once a symbol of Greek ignorance about Eastern Africa and a symbol of Greek curiosity about it. It was a symbol of Greek ignorance because the Ancients did not as yet know for certain that the great river had its birth in these parts. But the mysterious floods of the Nile, as well as the river’s mysterious source, were more a part of Greek scientific interest than anything that ever happened in the most remote parts of Western Europe. The Greeks even looked at the birds disappearing into the African horizon and speculated about their destination. If Nkrumah is right, then “Eratosthenes and Aristotle knew that the cranes migrated as far as the lakes where the Nile had its source.”21 Even if it were true that this part of Africa was “as dark a continent” to the Greeks as much of Europe was, there was one difference. The darkness of Eastern Africa was one of scientific fascination. The darkness of parts of Western Europe was, to the Greeks, devoid of intellectual compensation. But it might not even be true that this part of Africa was as dark to the ancient Greeks as North-Western Europe was at that time. In a meaningful sense, East Africa was a subordinate sector of the classical world. It had this status partly through its connection with the Nile Valley as a whole, and partly through its links with the Middle East proper. It is, therefore, just conceivable that ancient East Africa might have been more a part of the classical world known by the Greeks than some parts of Europe could ever claim to be. Of course, since much more archaeological work has been done in Western Europe than in Africa, the volume of evidence is

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seriously uneven. But L. S. B. Leakey has hazarded the generalization that, because of isolation, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole was, for a while, “in a cultural state very similar to that of Britain at the time of the coining of the Romans.”22 Yet if the isolation of Africa south of the Sahara as a unit was comparable to that of Britain, the isolation of Eastern Africa on its own might have been less severe. There is evidence of trade down the Red Sea, as well as from the Persian Gulf, from very early times. As Gervase Mathew has pointed out, the list of imports into East Africa mentioned by the Periplus “suggests the existence of a fairly evolved culture.”23 One could go on to add that it also suggests a significant commercial intercourse much older than the Periplus itself.24 Sir Mortimer Wheeler has put East Africa alongside Mediterranean Africa as the two parts of the continent that, on present evidence, have had the longest intercourse with the outside world: . . . two regions of Africa . . . have long looked outwards to worlds across the seas. The first of these is the Mediterranean coastline which has always been inclined to share its ideas with Europe. The second is the East African coastline, the coastline of what we know as Somalia, Kenya and Tanganyika, which has long shared its life with Arabia and India and continues to do so today.25

Later on, the Middle East exerted a different kind of cultural influence on Eastern Africa, particularly with the coming of Islam through coastal settlements. Even late in the Christian era, there were areas of Europe that were no more closely integrated with the Middle East. In the nature of the relationship between these areas, Roland Oliver might be exaggerating when he says: “Certainly Islam’s African fringe can bear comparison with Christendom’s Northern European fringe at any time up to the late sixteenth century.”26 But the exaggeration lies in the dateline he chooses. Well before the sixteenth century, Europe had already become more closely integrated as part of Christendom than the East African coast was with the southern sector of the Middle East. But Oliver is at least right in asserting that the integration of Europe was completed well after Islam had come to East Africa.27 What we should not overlook is that the Islamization of the East African coast was only a new manifestation of an older phenomenon, the phenomenon of East Africa’s contacts with certain parts of the classical world. Later developments had their genesis in the general cultural interrelationship within the classical world as a whole. As Marshall G. S.

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Hodgson has pointed out in a stimulating article on “the inter-relations of societies in history”: The Mediterranean Basin formed a historical whole, not only under the Roman Empire but before and since . . . The core of the Middle East was the Fertile Crescent and the Iranian Plateau, to which lands North and South from Central Eurasia to Yemen and East Africa looked for leadership, as did increasingly even Egypt, despite its distinct roots in its own past.28

But, as we mentioned, East Africa’s links with this world were not merely through its historical intercourse with the Middle East proper. They were also through its primeval relationship with the Nile Valley as a distinct sub-section of the classical world. This relationship though as yet only vaguely understood, is giving rise to challenging hypotheses. Fifty years ago, a towering British scholar and archaeologist, Sir Ernest Wallis Budge, put forward a hypothesis that, by 1954, was getting incorporated into the movement of historical Negritude. In his book on Black civilizations, Dr. J. C. DeGraft-Johnson of Ghana cited the testimony of Sir Ernest Budge that ancient Egyptians might have been, in part, Ugandans. DeGraft-Johnson quotes the following passage from Budge: There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of the historic Egyptians, that is to say, of the workers on the land, that suggest that the original home of their prehistoric ancestors was a country in the neighborhood of Uganda and Punt.29

Elsewhere, Budge argues that Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt. But where was Punt? Budge answers in the following terms: Though our information about the boundaries of this land is of the vaguest character, it is quite certain that a very large proportion of it was in Central Africa, and it probably was near the country called in our times “Uganda.” 30

Our information about the boundaries of Punt is still vague and controversial. And Budge was sometimes rash. But whatever the accuracy of speculations such as his, there is enough evidence to indicate significant primeval contacts down the Nile Valley, and movements of peoples in both directions. “It is to the Nile Valley that we look for the original link between Egypt and all South of it” a historian once asserted.31 And two other historians traced back to Egypt an ancient ceremony in Western

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Uganda on the accession of an Omukama of Bunyoro.32 Perhaps less scientific was the conviction of a Bishop of Uganda earlier in the century, Bishop Alfred Tucker of the Church Missionary Society, that there were aspects of the Kiganda culture which “must” have been of Egyptian origin.33 The distribution of the Nilotes along the Nile Valley is another aspect of interest in trying to determine the degree of contact along the Valley. An essay on ancient Egypt in the 1953 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica claims that there was significant Nilotic element in the ethnic composition of early Egypt. The evidence for such claims is questionable but the speculations partly arise out of the apparent cultural diffusion along the Nile Valley as a whole, and among populations descended from or affected by the Nilotes and Nilo-Hamites. One line of interpretation is to see Egypt as a recipient of certain influences from the South of her. The other is to see Egypt as the ultimate source of certain cultural elements discerned in the lives of people elsewhere in the continent. “That certain ritual practices and beliefs found in Equatorial Africa are of Egyptian origin need not reasonably be doubted,”34 writes G. W. B. Huntingford, and he, too, turns to the Bunyoro of Uganda to illustrate his thesis. There is much in the history of the Nile Valley that we have yet to discover. And in any case some of the cultural influences were carried up or down the Valley long after the glories of classical times. But the evidence of primeval contacts down the Nile Valley, and of significant movements of populations is already persuasive enough. It is these contacts along the Nile, plus the intercourse through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, which converted at least some ancient East Africans into more meaningful members of the classical world than, say, ancient Britons could claim to be.35 What this whole question is related to is, of course, the general problem of how far ancient Egyptian civilization can, in a significant sense, be regarded as an African civilization. This latter problem is at the heart of African cultural nationalism at-large. And it is to this that we must now address ourselves more specifically. In the final analysis, there are at least two basic ways in which a culture might be alien to Africa. One is when the culture itself comes from outside Africa. The second is when the people who develop that culture within Africa are themselves of recent alien extraction. In the latter case, the new civilization would be one that the alien group did not bring with them from outside; they cultivated it as something new after arrival in Africa. So the culture in its new peculiarities is, in that sense, native-born. But partly because the particular group that develops such culture is itself of alien origin, the culture falls short of having full indigenous status. The

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nearest example in modern Africa is perhaps the Afrikaner ethos of South Africa. In an important sense the political thought of Afrikaner-nationalists is nearer to being native-born than the political thought of a Black African Marxist or a Western liberal. For better or for worse, the ideology of apartheid is an outgrowth of a particular sociological situation in Africa itself. It is a poisonous plant that has grown out of the soil of Africa. To that extent it is more native to Africa than Marxism. But apartheid is a poisonous growth that the rest of Africa would rather weed out. And the plant falls short of full indigenous status partly because those who are cultivating it with such care and affection are of recent alien-extraction as a group. Their alien nature would have become less pronounced if they had allowed themselves to mix more with the natives and to be influenced by them. But their exclusiveness preserves their alienness in Africa as well as their alienation from those they live with. The question that needs to be asked is whether Afrikaner culture is really a plant of the African soil. The calculated foreignness of the cultivator arouses the suspicion that although the plant might have grown in Africa, the seed might be as foreign as the cultivator. Apartheid as an ethos might therefore be deemed to be a product of Africa without being elevated to the status of being native to Africa. A similar kind of reasoning has tended to affect the status of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Even if that civilization flourished on African soil, its status as an African civilization would partly depend on whether the Egyptians themselves were African. Were the ancient Egyptians immigrants from Eurasia or were they really native to the African continent? Cultural nationalism in modern Africa has wanted to emphasize that ancient Egyptians were indeed African. But how can one establish this point? Logically, there is no reason why a people should not be considered to be native of Africa because it is not Black. The idea that all the people of each continent ought to be of one color is a dogma that has completely ignored the example of multi-colored Asia. The yellow peoples of Japan and China, the dark Tamils of Ceylon, the brown Gujarati in India are today all part of the Asian continent. The ancient Egyptians need not therefore have been Black in order to qualify as natives of Africa. And yet if they can be shown to have been Black, their links with sub-Saharan Africa would be easier to take for granted. There is evidence that at least a section of ancient Egyptians were Black (or Negroid). Basil Davidson, in his romanticism, sometimes over-argues the vision of a glorious African past. But he is probably well within the evidence available when he tells us the following:

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An analysis of some 800 skulls from pre-Dynastic Egypt—from the lower Valley of the Nile, that is, before 3000 BC—shows that at least a third of them were Negroes or ancestors of the Negroes whom we know; and this may well support the view, to which a study of language also brings some confirmation, that remote ancestors of the Africans today were an important and perhaps dominant element among populations which fathered the civilization of ancient Egypt.36

Whether the Black element among ancient Egyptians was a third, or more, or less, the fact that it was there has become part of African cultural nationalism in our own day. As one such nationalist, Cheikh Anta Diop, put it: It remains . . . true that the Egyptian experiment was essentially Black, and that all Africans can draw the same moral advantage from it that Westerners draw from Greco-Latin civilization.37

What makes Cheikh Anta Diop’s position extreme is not his Africanization of the Pharaohs. It is not even the simple claim that ancient Egypt influenced the Hellenic civilization, a claim which few scholars would dispute. Diop’s extremism is in the magnitude he assigns to that Egyptian influence. At his most reckless, he virtually credits ancient Egypt with all the major achievements of the Greeks. But even when he does not go quite as far, he at least claims that Egypt was to the Greeks what the Western impact has been to Africa in our own times. To use his words: From Thales to Pythagoras and Democritus, Plato and Eudoxus, it is almost evident that all those who created the Greek philosophical and scientific school and who pass for universal inventors of mathematics . . . were disciples educated at the school of the Egyptian priests.38

Diop goes on to assert that if Plato, Eudoxus, and Pythagoras had remained in Egypt for thirteen to twenty years, “it was not only to learn recipes.” He then draws the telling analogy in the following terms: The situation is similar to that of under-developed countries in relation to their ancient metropolises. It does not occur to a national of these countries, whatever his nationalism, to dispute the fact that modern technique has been spread from Europe to the whole world. The rooms of the African students at the cités universitaires in Paris, London, etc., are comparable from all points of view to those of Eudoxus and Plato at Heliopolis, and they may well be shown to African tourists in the year 2000.39

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But here again a dilemma faces Africa as she seeks to demonstrate that she has a past as glorious as that of other nations and peoples. She needs the testimony of those other nations for that purpose. Even in the attempt to establish that ancient Egyptians were at least partly Black, contemporary Black nationalists sometimes turn to the Greeks for evidence. Cheikh Anta Diop himself cites from Greco-Roman sources atlarge. And the late W. E. B. Du Bois, the distinguished African-American, used to cite the testimony of Herodotus that ancient Egyptians were “woolly haired” in the African sense.40 All this is understandable since Africans were often trying to combat Western disparaging assertions. It made sense that they should on occasion have to turn to authorities regarded as respectable by Westerners themselves. The appeal to the Greeks, to Aristotle and Herodotus, was inevitably one respectable source of authority. The question of whether or not ancient Egypt was African was only an acute form of a broader confrontation between African cultural nationalism, on the one hand, and certain assumptions of orthodox Western scholarship, on the other. There was one compound Western assumption in particular which could not but clash with African pride. This compound assumption took one of two main forms. One form was the belief that whatever was worthwhile in ancient and medieval Africa was of alien origin. Professor C. G. Seligman belonged substantially to this school. He regarded the Hamites as “the great civilizing force of Black Africa from a relatively early period” and he considered the Hamites to be “Asiatic” in origin, with ties of kinship with what he called “the European representatives of the Mediterranean race.” 41 Seligman might have overestimated the amount of Hamite blood in Africa, or the prevalence of alien influence behind old African civilizations. In any case, the conception of Hamites as related to what Seligman called “the Mediterranean race” could be one extra piece of evidence that Eastern Africa was part of the classical world in a sense in which much of ancient Europe was not. In short, Seligman was granting more to Africa than would be granted by some of his contemporaries in Europe. We referred, at the beginning of this essay, to the inaugural lecture of a Regius Professor of History at Oxford in December 1841. Professor Thomas Arnold had, as we indicated, talked about a moving center of civilization that had traveled from classical Greece to England. More than 120 years later, another Regius Professor of History at Oxford, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, put forward the other side of this particular coin of ethnocentrism. In 1963, Trevor-Roper went on record as saying: “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present

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there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness . . . and darkness is not a subject of history.” 42 Both the Seligman and the Trevor-Roper theses were manifestations of a somewhat arrogant historiography, but the Seligman version had compensating factors that were absent from the latter version. In any case, a revolution had already started in Western scholarship on Africa. In August 1966, Ethiopia expressed Africa’s appreciation of the work of Roland Oliver, Professor of African History at the University of London. Professor Oliver was awarded a prize by the Haile Selassie I Trust for what the citation described as a “very considerable contribution to the development of African historical studies.” The transformation of Africa’s response to the Greco-Roman mystique depends partly on the success of this revolution in Western scholarship. Negritude is, as we indicated, an essential part of that response. For too long, Africans had been too blatantly denied a creative capacity. They had been too often denied moments of civilization in their past. The Black man became the most deprived of all colonized peoples and his reactions became peculiarly his own. As Melville J. Herskovits once exclaimed, “but there isn’t the Indian equivalent of Negritude.” 43 The Indians had, after all, been allowed to keep their Ashokas in full regal splendor. As Africans begin to be given credit for some of their own civilizations, African cultural defensiveness will gradually wane. Not everyone need have the confidence of Léopold Senghor as he asserts that “Black blood circulated in the veins of the Egyptians.” 44 But it is time that it was more openly conceded not only that ancient Egypt made a contribution to the Greek miracle, but also that she in turn had been influenced by the Africa which was to the south of her. To grant all this is, in a sense, to universalize the Greek heritage. It is to break the European monopoly of identification with ancient Greece. And yet this is by no means the only way of breaking Europe’s monopoly. In order to cope with the cultural offensive of the GrecoRoman mystique, African cultural defenders have so far emphasized the Africanness of Egypt’s civilization. But a possible counter-offensive is to demonstrate that ancient Greece was not European. It is not often remembered how recent the concept of “Europe” is. As a matter of fact, it may be easier to prove that ancient Egypt was “African” than to prove that ancient Greece was “European.” In the words of Palmer and Colton: There was really no Europe in ancient times. In the Roman Empire we may see a Mediterranean world, or even a West and an East in the Latin- and Greek-speaking portions. But the West included parts of Africa as well as of Europe, and Europe as we know it was divided by the Rhine-Danube

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The two historians go on to say that the word “Europe,” since it meant little, was scarcely used by the Romans at all.46 Even as late as the seventeenth century, the notion that the land mass south of the Mediterranean was something distinct from the land mass north of it was something yet to be fully accepted. Melville Herskovits has pointed out how the Royal Geographer of France, writing in 1656, described Africa as “a peninsula so large that it comprises the third part, and this the most Southerly, of our continent.” 47 Nevertheless, it was perhaps the Romans who laid the foundation for the incorporation of Greece into Europe as we know it today. A crucial part of the process was the spread of culture. William H. McNeill reminded us that “under the Roman Empire, an increasingly cosmopolitan, though still basically Hellenic civilization, extended tentacles even to remotest Britain.” 48 And so North-Western and Northern Europe gradually became, in a sense, “Greek” in culture. And yet there was no logical necessity why Greece herself should in turn become “European” in physical context. The fact that the rest of Europe was Hellenized did not in itself make Greece “European” any more than the fact that Jamaicans who are Anglicized need today to convert England into a West Indian island. The logic of this point might be incontrovertible, but European mapmakers had other ideas. By the eighteenth century, they had made fairly sure that the seat of the most intellectual of all civilizations was placed firmly within the arbitrary boundaries that they increasingly called “the continent of Europe.” Greek Philosophers might have conquered the minds of Europeans; but European map-makers had their own back, when, in their projections, they quietly captured the territory of Greece on the battlefield of the atlas. In that article on “The Inter-relations of Societies in History,” Marshall Hodgson discussed some ethnocentric elements in the world-image of the West. He opens the substance of his analysis with the following assertion: . . . We must begin with the map. A concern with maps may seem trivial; but it offers a paradigm of more fundamental cases. For even in maps we have found ways of expressing our feelings.49

Hodgson goes on to ask why Europe was classified as one of the continents, while India was not. He asserts that it is not because of any geographical features, nor even because of any marked cultural breach of

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the limits chosen. “The two sides of the Aegean Sea have almost always had practically the same culture, and usually the same language or languages, and even the same government.”50 Why then did Europe become classified as a continent? In making it a continent, Hodgson points out, it was given a rank disproportionate to its natural size. Despite all of that, Hodgson asserts that “Europe is still ranked as one of the “continents” because our cultural ancestors lived there.” 51 And yet, for an Anglo-Saxon or a Frenchman to talk confidently of “our ancestors, the Greeks,” is no less absurd than a reference by a Senegalese schoolboy to “our ancestors, the Gauls.” Imperial ideologues had legitimized their expansion into Asia and Africa partly on their being heirs to the only valid civilization, the Greco-Roman one. But, in fact, the first act of cultural imperialism that Europe committed was that of incorporating Greece into the map of Europe. So successful has Europe been in this that today even the Greeks themselves would, if forced to choose, perhaps regard themselves as European first and Mediterranean only second. The only mitigating factor in this blatant act of cultural impersonation is that Europeans did become the great carriers of the Greco-Roman heritage in these later periods of world history. In an act of cultural piracy, Europe had stolen classical Greece. But later, in an act of territorial annexation, “Europe stole the world” and, in the colonies that she annexed, she passed on the message of Greece. In Eastern Africa, that old mystique of the Nile was to have a new relevance. The quest for the elusive source of the Nile helped to prepare the way for a new European penetration into the region. In the olden days, Eastern Africa might indeed have been more a part of the classical world than ancient Britain was. By the end of the nineteenth century, the brightest jewel of Britain’s African crown was perhaps Egypt itself. The British Foreign Office inherited from history the doctrine of the Unity of the Nile, and converted it into a new imperial postulate. Historians differ as to the practical significance of the doctrine in British policy but the balance of the evidence is probably on the side of those who regard it as an important conditioning factor on British attitudes. Robinson and Gallagher remind us that “the idea that the security of Egypt depended upon the defense of the Upper Nile was as old as the pyramids.”52 They point out its effect on Salisbury who in 1889–1890 decided that if Britain was to hold on to Egypt, she could not afford to let any other European power obtain a hold over any part of the Nile Valley. The two historians contend that, in so doing, Salisbury took what was perhaps the critical decision of the partition of Africa. “Henceforward almost everything in Africa north of the Zambesi River was to hinge upon

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it.”53 Under Salisbury’s successors, the doctrine of the Unity of the Nile Valley helped to seal the fate of Uganda. As Robinson and Gallagher put it, with reference to Rosebery’s vision, “the Cabinet quarrels over Uganda were really quarrels over Egypt.”54 And so the snowball of imperial annexation proceeded. Egypt was important for Britain’s whole Middle Eastern strategy and so Egypt had to remain occupied. But Egypt depended so much on the Nile, and the Nile passed throughout the Sudan. Thus, the loose Egyptian suzerainty over Sudan had to be converted into a strong British sovereignty. But the unity of the Nile Valley was not complete unless its very source was controlled by the same power. So Uganda had to be under British control. And again, the way to the Lakes from the important port of Mombasa was through what came to be known as Kenya, and hence Kenya had to be annexed too. The forceful torrent of British expansionism shared a valley with the Nile River and overflowed into other areas of the East African land surface. With that imperialism, Eastern Africa has also sensed a strong cultural impact. She has felt herself in communion with a civilization that is at once new and strangely reminiscent of ancient ties. The gift of Greece has come with a new bearer, acquiring a new luster on the way. Ancient Britons might have been less immediately connected with the Hellenic miracle than were the inhabitants of the Nile Valley but it is the modern Britons who have brought the spirit of Greece back to the banks of the river. But can we concede to Europe the role of bearer of Greek culture without conceding her the right to Greece itself? The answer is, indeed we can. The point is that Europe’s title to the Greek heritage is fundamentally no different from Europe’s title to Christianity. In these later phases of world history, Europe has been the most effective bearer of both the Christian message and the Greek heritage. But just as it would be a mistake to let Europe nationalize Christianity, it would be a mistake to let her confiscate the Hellenic inheritance. The Greeks must at last be allowed to emerge as what they really are: the fathers, not of a European civilization, but of a universal modernity. The distinction is a matter of importance to a modern university in Africa where medical graduates might take the Hippocratic Oath, where historians trace their origins to Herodotus, and where political scientists study The Politics of Aristotle. In his inaugural address, the first Principal of the University College of the Gold Coast, D. M. Balme, complained about the careless use of the term “European civilization” as the central preoccupation of a university. He said:

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It may be justifiable that the things which are studied at Universities . . . are themselves the instruments of civilization. If so, it then follows that there is only one modern civilization. It happens to have started in Greece . . . and it spread first through Europe. But it is high time we stopped calling it European.55

Traces of ethnocentrism are still very evident in the address of this European classicist. He seems to insist that the Greco-Roman heritage is the only profitable preoccupation for a modern university. But at least he no longer insists that the heritage is “European.” This is a step forward. In the meantime, the classics could increasingly be made to serve the purposes even of African nationalism itself without offending the ultimate postulates of that nationalism. One area of possible service is the area of language. It was Aristotle who once remarked: “Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech.”56 Many centuries later, Léopold Senghor proclaimed: “Language is a power in Negro-Africa. Spoken language, the word, is the supreme expression of vital force, of the being in his fulfillment.”57 Yet Aristotle’s own ancient language had by now a different kind of power within Africa itself, and was not even primarily a spoken language. On the eve of Ghana’s independence, Nkrumah lamented the following situation: At present such is the influence of Europe in our affairs that far more students in our University are studying Latin and Greek than are studying the languages of Africa.58

What Nkrumah might have overlooked was the potential value of Greek and Latin as allies of African languages in their war against modern European languages. In a paper on “Swahili in the Technical Age,” Dr. Mohamed Hyder, a former Lecturer in the Department of Zoology at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, posed the problem in stark terms. He asked whether it was possible to write a serious scientific paper in Swahili on the subject of “The Effect of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone on the Radioactive Iodine Uptake Beef Thyroid Tissue in vitro.”59 His answer was that if a serious attempt was made to develop a “technical limb” to Swahili, this was indeed possible. The title of the paper would, it is true, include terms like thairodi, hormoni, ayodini, redioaktivu na invitro. However, Dr. Hyder goes on to say that: There is no good reason why this development of a “technical limb” . . . of Swahili through the Swahilization of such terms should weigh heavily on our consciences. Examination of any technical or scientific journal,

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In a Présence Africaine lecture delivered in November 1961, Pierre Alexandre, the French linguist and Africanist, linked this issue more specifically to the scientific utility of the classics. He said: It would be wrong to say that African languages are a barrier to the teaching of science and technical subjects. The syntactical structure of those known to me would not provide any major obstacle to the pursuit of logical reasoning. The absence of technical terminology in the vocabulary is all the more easy to remedy since, in fact, the international technical terminology is based on an artificial assembly of Greek and Latin roots. The Parisian who speaks of a “telegram” rather than “far-off writing” is expressing himself in Greek, in the same way as a Duala who speaks of “telefun.” 61

In no other field is the international neutrality of the classical languages better illustrated than in the sciences. In their war against the deadly encroachment of English and French, the African languages must therefore seek the alliance of Latin and Greek. For some African languages such an alliance might indeed be a matter of life and death. Sometimes the classics are not only neutral as between modern European languages and modern African languages. The classical languages are sometimes called upon to be neutral between one African language and another. Margaret Macpherson reminds us how, late in the 1940s, Makerere decided that its motto should no longer be in Luganda and so representative of only a fraction of the academic population of the College. The motto became the Latin one of Pro Futuro aedificamus because, as Mrs. Macpherson explains: It may be protested that Latin represents no section of the community at all, but its use is hallowed by academic and heraldic custom and many may feel it is better to represent none than only some.62

In this case then, Latin is called upon to help the cause of PanAfricanism at Makerere and spare Luganda the envy of others. But when called upon to build up Swahili and Luganda to the level of scientific respectability, Greek and Latin would be serving the cause of linguistic Negritude as well. Perhaps that is the road towards the universalization of

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the Greco-Roman heritage. There is already evidence that even the most radical of African nationalists are beginning to assert a claim to that heritage without being culturally defensive at the same time. In June 1964, The People, the militant newspaper of the ruling party in Uganda, carried an article entitled “The Formative Years of Dr. Milton Obote.” According to the article, Dr. Obote’s headmaster at the college in Mwiri “made it a practice to read the Republic of Plato with the top form every Tuesday.”63 The article then asked: “Had this reading of Plato anything to do with the molding of Obote’s thoughts?” The question is left tantalizingly in the air.64 When Kwame Nkrumah returned to Achimota as a famous man twenty years after his student days there, he gave a talk on “The Political Philosophy of Plato.” After the talk, his old teacher, Lord Hemingford, went to congratulate him and added humorously that, although he had to admit that he had taught Nkrumah, he wanted to make it quite clear that he was in no way responsible for the political ideas he had just heard.65 But perhaps one of the most important speeches of Nkrumah’s career was the speech with which he moved what came to be known as “The Motion of Destiny,” a motion on fundamental constitutional reform prior to independence. It was in that speech that Nkrumah referred to Aristotle as “the master.” At that mature stage of African nationalism such an acknowledgement was not a submission but a conquest, not a retreat into subservience but a move to transcend. As Nkrumah said “Aristotle, the master,” the whole edifice of Europe’s monopoly of the Greco-Roman heritage began to shake because of only three words casually included in a speech. The speech was indeed on “A Motion of Destiny” but in a sense far deeper than the speaker realized. In simple terms, and with confidence, an African was claiming his share of the Hellenic heritage of man.66

Notes 1

This chapter is a revised version of an inaugural lecture delivered on August 25, 1966, at Makerere University College, Uganda, which originally appeared in Présence Africaine, Volume 61 (1967), No. 149/150, pp. 68–93, and which was also published as a pamphlet by The East African Publishing House (Nairobi, Kenya in 1967). 2 Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle against World Imperialism, (London: Heinneman, 1962 reprint), p. 1. 3 See T. Arnold, Introductory Lecture on Modern History, (New York, 1842), pp. 46 – 47. Consult also Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa, British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), pp. 375–377.

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See also Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, (London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1845), pp. 435– 438. 4 F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1926), p. 618. 5 Pixley Seme (1906) quoted in Nkrumah’s address opening the Congress; See Proceedings of the First International Congress of Africanists (11–18 December, 1962), Lalage Bown and Michael Crowder (eds.), (Longmans, 1964), p. 12. 6 Ibid. 7 See Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1960 reprint), p. 27. 8 Nkrumah, Consciencism, (London: Heinneman Educational Books, 1964), p. 5. 9 Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa, (London: Frederick Muller, 1956), p. 172. See also Ali A. Mazrui, “On the Concept of ‘We are all Africans,’ ” in The American Political Science Review, Vol. LVII, No. 1, (March 1963), p. 97— reproduced in the first volume of the Collected Essays of Ali A. Mazrui entitled Africanity Redefined as Chapter Four, pp. 43– 64. 10 See Sartre, Orphée Noir, Preface to Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache, L. S. Senghor (ed.), (1948). 11 Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, (London: Oxford University Press, 1961 edition), p. 279. Consult also F. B. Welbourn, East African Rebels: A Study of Some Independent Churches, (London: S.C.M. Press, 1961), and Sylvia L. Thrupp (ed.), Millennial Dreams in Action, (The Hague: Mouton et Cie, 1962). 12 Lucy Mair, New Nations, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1963), pp. 172– 173. 13 L. S. Senghor, Négritude et Humanisme, (Paris: Seuil, 1964), p. 24. 14 Consciencism, op. cit., pp. 16–19. 15 See “Ghana’s Cultural History,” extracts from Nkrumah’s speech at the inauguration, in Présence Africaine, Vol. 13, No. 41, (Second Quarter 1962). 16 Cited by Erica Simon, Présence Africaine, “Negritude and Cultural Problems of Contemporary Africa,” Vol. 18, No. 47, (Third Quarter 1963), p. 135. 17 Nkrumah, “Ghana’s Cultural History,” op. cit., p. 9. 18 See Ghana Today, Vol. 8, No. 4, (April 22, 1964). 19 From his poem, “Africa Speaks,” Immanuel Wallerstein uses these as opening lines for his book Africa: The Politics of Independence, (New York: Vintage, 1961). 20 Parkes, Gods and Men: The Origins of Western Culture, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), p. 52. 21 See his Address to the Congress of Africanists, (December 12, 1962), op. cit. For a short but comprehensive account of the Nile as a question of scientific speculation, see B. W. Langlands “Concepts of the Nile,” The Uganda Journal, Speke Centenary Number, Vol. 26, No. 1, (March 1962), pp. 1–22. 22 See Leakey, The Progress and Evolution of Man in Africa, (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 16. 23 See Mathew, “The East African Coast Until the Coming of the Portuguese,” in Roland Oliver and Gervase Mathew (eds.), History of East Africa, Vol. 1, (Oxford:

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Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 94–95; 97–99. See also the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, Hjalmar Frisk, (ed.), (Göteborg, Sweden, 1927). 24 Ibid. 25 See the chapter by Wheeler in the Dawn of African History, Roland Oliver (ed.), (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 2. 26 See Oliver’s concluding chapter, The Dawn of African History, ibid., p. 97. 27 See also Roland Oliver and J. D. Fage, A Short History of Africa, (Penguin, 1961), esp. chapter 8. 28 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, “The Inter-relations of Societies in History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 2, (January 1963), pp. 232–233. 29 DeGraft-Johnson, African Glory: The Story of Vanished Black Civilizations, (London: Watts and Company, 1954), p. 8. 30 A Short History of the Egyptian People, (London: J. M. Dent, 1914), p. 10. 31 A. J. Arkell, “The Valley of the Nile” in The Dawn of African History, op. cit., p.12. 32 The ceremony was that of “shooting the nations” by firing arrows to the four points of the compass. Roland Oliver and J. D. Fage link this with the concept of divine kingship: “Egypt’s eventual legacy to so much of the rest of Africa.” See their book A Short History of Africa, op. cit., p. 37. For a different interpretation of the concept of divine kingship in Uganda see Merrick Posnansky, “Kingship, Archeology and Historical Myth,” The Uganda Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, (1966), pp. 1–12. 33 Alfred R. Tucker, Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa, Vol. 1, (London: Edward Arnold, 1908), p. 86 ff. 34 See Huntingford, “The Peopling of the Interior of East Africa by its Modern Inhabitants,” History of East Africa, Vol. 1, op. cit., pp. 88–89. 35 The situation was, of course, changed when Rome expanded more significantly Westward in Europe. 36 Basil Davidson, Old Africa Rediscovered, (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961), p. 28. 37 For a brief version of his views on this, see Cheikh Anta Diop, “The Cultural Contributions and Prospects of Africa,” Proceedings of the First International Conference of Negro Writers and Artists, Presénce Africaine, Special Issue, (June– November 1956), pp. 347–354. 38 Cited by Erica Simon, “Negritude and Cultural Problems of Contemporary Africa,” Présence Africaine, Vol. 18, No. 47, (Third Quarter 1963), p. 140. 39 Ibid. 40 See, for example, Du Bois, The World and Africa, (New York: International Publishers, 1965 enlarged edition). 41 See, for example, his Races of Africa, (London: Oxford University Press, 1957 edition), pp. 10–87. 42 For this brief account of Trevor-Roper’s views see West Africa, No. 2433, (London, 18 January 1964), p. 58. See also Basil Davidson’s article on the following page of the same issue. 43 See Wellesley College, Symposium on Africa, (Wellesley, 1960), p. 37.

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See his “Negritude and the Concept of Universal Civilization,” Présence Africaine, Vol. 18, No. 46, (Second Quarter 1963), p. 12. 45 See R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World, Second edition, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p. 13. 46 Ibid. 47 See Wellesley College, Symposium on Africa, p. 16. 48 McNeill, The Rise of the West, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 250. 49 Hodgson, “The Inter-relations of Societies in History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume V, No. 2, (January 1963), pp. 227–228. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., p. 228 52 Roland Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), p. 283. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., p. 320. 55 D. M. Balme, “Inaugural Address to First Ordinary Convocation, 2nd December, 1950,” University College of the Gold Coast Notices, 1950–1951, No. 5. The emphasis is mine. 56 Aristotle’s Politics, Benjamin Jowett (trans.), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953 reprint), pp. 28–29. 57 “The Spirit of Civilization,” First International Conference of Negro Writers and Artists, op. cit., p. 58. 58 Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom, (London: Mercury Books, 1962 edition), p. 103. 59 Hyder, “Swahili in the Technical Age,” East Africa Journal, Vol. II, No. 9, (February 1966). 60 Ibid., p. 6. 61 Alexandre, “Linguistic Problems of Contemporary Africa,” Présence Africaine, Vol. 13, No. 41, (Second Quarter 1962), p. 21. 62 Macpherson, They Built for the Future: A Chronicle of Makerere University College, (Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. ix. 63 The People, (Kampala, June 13, 1964), p. 5. 64 Ibid. 65 Ghana, the Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1957), p. 16. 66 Ibid., p. 157.

CHAPTER ELEVEN EDMUND BURKE AND THE REVOLUTION IN THE CONGO1 The Congolese nationalists demanded self-government, and they got it. But then, they found out that the logical extreme of self-government meant too much “self ” and not enough “government.” If one cannot hear the voice of Hobbes saying: “I told you so,” one can at least hear the voice of Tom Stacey of the Sunday Times suggesting the withdrawal of Belgian rule that deprived the Congolese of “mental comfort of being dominated.”2 But what would have been Burke’s reaction? Burke admonished the French for choosing to “act as if [they] had never been molded into society and had everything to start anew.”3 He was reprimanding them for letting their behavior tell a lie. It was a lie that the French had not been molded into civil society. And the French told that lie not by a verbal declaration but, worse, by attempting to destroy the truth. But could Belgium have admonished the Congolese in the same vein? Were the Belgians telling a lie when they acted as if they had “never been molded into civil society, and had everything to start anew?” This is where it is important to remember that much of Burke’s philosophy presupposes a long-established nation. In popular usage today, it is normal to speak of “new nations” of Africa and Asia. To Burke a “new nation would be virtually a contradiction in terms” because a nation is “an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space.”4 A nation is a moral essence, not a geographical arrangement. Many who would find a “moral essence” unclear would at least agree that a nation is more than “a geographical arrangement.” Dankwart A. Rustow, for example, once defined a nation as “a population inhabiting a given territory and willing to subordinate all other purposes to the common aims.” 5 It has been suggested that under such a definition very few of those within the United Nations are, in effect, “nations” at all, let alone “united.” Their populations had yet to develop willingness to subordinate particular interests to some over-riding common aims. Among such populations, many would include the great majority of the African member-states of that world organization.

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But what then do we mean by Congolese nationalism or African nationalism? Has the definition of a “nation” become entirely irrelevant to the definition of “nationalism?” Has the term “nationalism,” in other words, won its independence from the term “nation?” Perhaps it has. What all that nationalism means is: “kick the foreign ruler out and let us rule ourselves.” But the question arises: What is a foreign ruler? If the ruler is something like “a ruler who belongs to a people rent from the people he rules,” then we have now shifted the problem from trying to determine what a “nation” is to attempting to grasp what a “people” is. On this, Burke maintains: In a state of rude nature there is no such thing as a people. A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial, and made, like all other fictions, by common agreement.6

For the populations that Burke was concerned with, this common agreement was supposed to be of long standing—each population thereby developing into an organized group, with similar prejudices and similar loyalties, and with a capacity to see themselves collectively as a cohesive, really personal “we.” In the case of the Congo, the population is yet to convert itself into “a people” by virtue of what Burke considered to be the crucial transforming element of “common agreement”—or what modern sociologists may call “consensus.” It thus made sense for Joseph Ileo, then Prime Minister under the Kasavubu regime, to observe in February 1961: “the Congo is not a people; it is a collection of large ethnic groups and each of them is a people.”7 And yet in the same month, though in another context, the same Joseph Ileo was telling representatives of these “peoples” of the Congo: “the Congo is a homogeneous entity. . .”8 Why did he imagine that this kind of language could in any sense be meaningful to an audience which collectively, on his own admission, did not constitute “a people?” This is where we come to one dilemma of present-day Africa. Burke’s insistence that a “people” is a people by “common agreement” has indeed been met, but in a manner that was certainly not the one he had in mind. In this sense, the Congolese were transformed into a people by a “common agreement” several decades ago, only that that agreement was not between Congolese, but between European powers out to settle their own rivalries in their scramble for the African continent. Are we then to say that a “common agreement” between Europeans sometime ago was really enough to convert any African population into a

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“people?” Is a native of Brazzaville, in former French Congo, really a foreigner in Kinshasa? In other words, is the man from across the border a foreigner—even though that border was drawn up by other foreigners when they scrambled for Africa several generations ago? What if the man from across the border belonged to the same ethnic group of the Bakongo as the man on this side of it? As for the foreign ruler, must he have come from across the seas in order to be really foreign? Must he be distinguishable by the color of his skin? Or is it enough that he comes from another ethnic group, even if that group is represented on some map or atlas as part of the share of King Leopold of the Belgians in a “common agreement” between Europeans three generations ago? What all this means is that in the Congo, as in so much of the rest of Africa, Burke’s notion that a people is a people by common agreement has posed the question: Agreement between whom? Africa is landed with the consequences of the common agreement of others. Does this settle the issue once and for all? Of course, all would be well if the consequences of that external agreement could have been reversed on the withdrawal of European rule. Unfortunately for the argument, that was—and still is—at least up to now, not so easy. And it has not been easy substantially because among the most ardent converts to European fictitious creations are none other than the African nationalists themselves. At least insofar as he sought to preserve the frontiers of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, for example, was a complete and devout convert to the European fiction of “one Congo.” In a sense, his tragic career was one hectic attempt to put some Congolese substance into this European fiction. If, in pursuit of that end, Tshombe of Katanga was not cooperative, then Tshombe had to be compelled. In other words, if at that stage the Congo could only become a people by the agreement of the Congolese themselves, and if such an agreement was not forthcoming voluntarily, then it had to be exacted by force—as Nkrumah had exacted it from the Ashanti. And if there were logical contradictions within the notion of “enforced common agreement,” then so much the worse for logic! And yet the Luba tribesman, for example, may well ask: Who was that King Leopold anyhow—the foreigner that he was—to determine for now, and for all time, which man I, a Luba, shall consider a foreigner like him and which other man I shall accept as my fellow countryman from among my own people? The so-called nationalists call me a tribalist and antiAfrican, if I refuse to bow to some line drawn up by a conference in Berlin by White foreigners many moons ago. They call me a stooge of the Whites because I refuse to recognize a map drawn up by the Whites, or to accept

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concepts imported by the Whites. Actually, the trouble with me is that I am anti-foreign-rule, be it White or Black, whether the foreigner be Leopold or Lumumba (or Tshombe, for that matter). As a Muluba tribesman I am all for self-government—“government of the Baluba, by the Baluba, for the Baluba.” This argument by the hypothetical Luba tribesman may sound artificial. But why would it be considered artificial if, at the same time, it is a rebellion against the artificiality of the frontiers drawn up by European colonial powers? “Government by the Baluba”: isn’t that the most meaningful expression of “government by the people,” if we accept Burke’s insistence on “common agreement” as a defining characteristic of a “people” and if we specify that it must be agreement from within? If we accept that, we may then proceed to ask whether the trouble with the European agreement from without was the fact that it was not accompanied by vigorous attempts to create the necessary condition for ultimate agreement from within. In the Congo, for example, the effect, if not necessarily the intention, of Belgian policy was the development of tribal governments based on district councils, with ethnic loyalties fostered.9 By no means was this the most effective way of creating consensus for the ultimate conversion of the Congolese into one people by a criterion over and above a settlement in Berlin. Indeed, when independence finally came, Belgian preference was, in fact, for a centralized unitary government—again, by no means the most logical culmination of the policy which they had pursued up to independence. As for the parliamentary system by which the Congolese could realize “government by the people,” it was something just added at the end of their rule, bearing little relationship to the Congolese ethnic realities that the Belgians themselves had helped to perpetuate. And so, there was Lumumba trying to uphold an unrealistic constitution passed to him by the departing Belgians. And, perhaps, there behind him was the voice of Burke lamenting: When I hear of the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade or totally negligent of their duty.10

Yet the trouble with the Belgians may well have been that they were too Burkean. With some intervals, they kept on reverting back to the policy of recognizing, if not really respecting, the traditions of individual groups in the Congo, with all the ethnic loyalties inherent in those traditions.

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This ambivalence in British “Indirect Rule” policy was even more clearly noticeable. On the one hand, there was a calculated neo-Burkean reluctance to radically suppress the ways and customs of their dependent peoples; and on the other, a calculated policy (at least in recent decades) to “prepare” those peoples for parliamentary government. How that preparation could exclude revision of major areas of such old traditions as, say, the powers of chiefs was something that does not seem to have been worked out. Perhaps there is a case for this policy that Britain pursued. Perhaps there is a case for the Belgian policy—at least to the extent that, consciously or unconsciously, the policy has left the ultimate reconciliation between old folkways, on the one hand, and new forms of government, on the other hand, to the domestic forces in those countries after independence. At least three ways for disentangling the contradictions of colonial policies were available to African reformers after independence. Unfortunately for Burke, each of these ways would have involved some kind of revolution. One way was to revise radically the form of government inherited from colonialism and try to make it more consistent with the realities of the traditions of the country. Another was to ruthlessly stamp out those traditional ways themselves that were (and still are, to some extent) inconsistent with the Western concepts and values implied in the new governmental system. A third was to combine the other two. Is Burke at all helpful in the attempt to see which of the three would have been the best way forward? Burke’s guiding principle was, “it is a presumption in favor of any settled scheme of government against any untried project that a nation has long existed and flourished under it.”11 In a situation like that of the Congo after independence, Burke’s choice between “a settled scheme of government” and an “untried project” is not available to him. What is available to him is a tried project (a unitary system), which has not proved “settled,” and an untried project (looser federal structure), which may or may not be more settled. Shifting the analysis to pre-independence of Congo, the time before independence was granted, the nature of the choice becomes more akin to what Burke had in mind. The question then arises as to how sympathetic he would have been to the demands for independence. Perhaps a clue may lie in his following observation: A brave people will certainly prefer a liberty accompanied with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and she is to be purchased at no other price. I shall

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The Congolese “liberty” which followed the withdrawal of the Belgians is of a type which Burke would most definitely regard as “equivocal,” for it is a liberty which does not seem to have had wisdom and justice for her companions and has certainly not led to prosperity and plenty in her train. In modern terminology, Burke would then have concluded that the Congolese were “unfit” to govern themselves. Certainly, in his thought, the capacity to be “wise” is one criterion of capacity to govern. He says so specifically in the observation that “there is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.”13 And to ensure that this qualification is met, he would insist that “the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy”l4—not easy enough, at any rate, for any postal clerk like Patrice Lumumba to take over. This snobbish argument may fit a situation where the choice is, in fact, between clerks and long-established princes. But what happens in a situation like that of pre-independence Congo when the choice was between governors from thousands of miles away and governors from within the territorial frontiers? Perhaps here it would be relevant to recall that one of the arguments actually used against Congolese independence was that it could lead to inter-tribal strife—that a tribe which would submit to White foreigners from far away would not find the humility to submit to a fellow Black man from the next ethnic group; that there were latent inter-ethnic passions which could only be restricted by a power from outside. In this respect, what Burke said of mankind at-large is better substantiated in the context of such rival factions of mankind as “tribes.” Among our needs as human beings, for Burke, is what he calls “a sufficient restraint upon the passions of men.”15 He argues that: “this can only be done by a power out of themselves and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to . . . those passions which it is its office to subdue.16 He emphasizes this notion of “a power out of themselves.” In the case of the French, at the time of the French Revolution, it was hard to portray the French nobility as a power out of the French nation. In the case of the ethnic diversity of the Congo, the Belgians were more manifestly distinct from those whose passions they were to restrain. It was all very well for the Congolese nationalists to demand “liberty.” But to Burke “the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their

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rights.”17 How relevant, however, was all this to whether Belgian rule was to continue or not? The Economist (London), in an article in December 1960, made the remark that in Rhodesia “fitness or unfitness to govern is ceasing to be relevant.”18 The line of argument involved was that the forces of nationalism in so many parts of Africa, coupled with the Cold War and its ideological competition, had reached a stage when it was no longer true to say of Africa: to be independent or not to be independent: that is the question. That was simply not the question any longer. One could almost say that the Economist would recognize the forces of nationalism in Africa as among those of which Burke might say that “they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence than the mere designs of men.”19 Given that, it was pointless to argue which was to be given priority: the Congolese right to their liberty, or the Congolese right to a restraint on their passions. This, in essence, was the Economist’s point about fitness or unfitness to govern becoming no longer relevant. And yet it is profitable to glance at the rejoinder to this. A White Kenya reader of The Economist had protested in a letter that “the lesson of the Congo” was “surely exactly the opposite.”20 And then he clinched this protest with the rhetorical question: “Is fitness or unfitness to enunciate no longer relevant on the London stage?”21 No lighthearted witticism about politicians generally was intended by this reader. Capacity for self-government to him was to be viewed from the same angle as talent for the stage: if it is lacking in one person then someone else must take the part. In order to relate this to Burke’s thought, it may be profitable first to examine this “must” in “someone else must take the part.” Very often the “must” is presented as if it was a species of the logical “must.” Thus, many arguments in favor of colonial rule seemed to take it for granted that all one had to do to prove that colonial rule was justified in a particular territory was to prove that the territory was incapable of governing itself. What was often overlooked is the fact that there was a logical jump from the premise that such a territory could not govern itself to the conclusion that others must “therefore” be governed by others. Nothing, of course, in the premise really entails the conclusion. If we assumed that “incapacity for self-government” was a factual and descriptive rather than a normative concept, then the whole argument becomes a simple case of the fallacy of deriving an ethical judgment, “ought to be ruled by others,” from a nonethical premise, “incapable of self-government.” If, however, even the premise itself is, at least indirectly, an ethical standpoint (as for those who would equate capacity for self-government with some particular norm of

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“legitimate” political institutions) then the conclusion could be logically derived—but at the expense of having the premise or premises now divorced from the sanction of logic. These become a moral standpoint, and leave the door open for a conflict with other standpoints without a common criterion to resolve the conflict. As Lord Milverton is reported to have put it: “… when we talk of the premature grant of self-government, the adjective presupposes a point of view which is not admitted by Africans.”22 There is room for not admitting it because the choice is not one of either you are capable of governing yourselves or you must be governed by others. There is at least one more possible alternative—expressed in the nationalist’s stand: we have a right to misgovern ourselves if need be. The right to self-government is here extended then to the right to selfmisgovernment.23 It is very difficult to see how Burke could accept this. If the Congolese had insisted that even self-misgovernment was free government, Burke could have indeed conceded them that. He may have even said to the Congolese as he said to the Sheriffs of Bristol: “if any man ask me what a free government is, I answer that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think; and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful and competent judges of matter.”24 But even after conceding that the Congolese were a people, and that their “self-misgovernment” was at least free government, Burke would still have said: “All the same, you should not have free government if it amounts to self-misgovernment.” Freedom to Burke was not an ultimate value and was not something for which any price may be paid with justification. Men have other rights apart from the right to be free, and they have no right to sacrifice too many of those rights for the sake of only one of them. But what if the demands for independence were let loose by the decrees of providence? Burke then would not have blamed the Belgians for giving in to them, though he still would have had a grievance against the Congolese “nationalists” for being the instruments of an unhappy providential decree. Now that the decree has had its way, what solutions could Burke still offer regarding what kind of constitution the Congolese should have? The constitution which Burke would choose is a constitution in which choice is, in fact, irrelevant—“a constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice; it is made by peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time.”25

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The Congo has not had the requisite space of time in which to disclose such a constitution. But, paradoxically, it would still be open to Burke to advise: “never entirely nor at once depart from antiquity.”26 The Congo, as one unit, may not have had an antiquity. But the Congolese, within their respective ethnic groups, have. It is with this antiquity—perhaps these antiquities—that compromises would have been made. And by this argument, the mistake that Lumumba made was in his total opposition to the localized traditional loyalties of individual regions and tribes. What Lumumba took for granted, perhaps as a representative African “nationalist,” was that tribalism (or regionalism) militated against the effort to build one nation. A love for one’s ethnic group and a love for one’s country were, it was implied, forces that were in opposition against each other. Indeed, it seems to be taken completely for granted by many today that ethnic loyalty and a love for the country are mutually exclusive. To this hypothesis Burke would retort that: To be attached to the sub-division; to love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind.27

Ethnic loyalty, by this argument, far from being destructive of love for the country, is the very basis on which patriotism should be built. In war, for example, by all means, ask the soldier to think of his country. But his patriotism is the greater if you ask him also to think of his family. His love for his own family is, in practice, not destroyed to make him more patriotic—it is used to give patriotism more meaning to his innermost emotional responses. And within the army itself, what Burke calls the attachment to the subdivision is cultivated not to keep sub-division from sub-division and lead the army to disintegration, but to strengthen the ties between sub-divisions and give meaning to the war effort as a whole. If this be the reasoning behind Burke’s observation, then it bears a striking similarity to some of Kasavubu’s assumptions, particularly in the days before Congo’s independence. In his speech to the General Assembly, in November 1960, when he spoke as President of an independent Congo, Kasavubu noted how, in taking oath as head of the state, he had undertaken to “safeguard the unity of the Congolese people.” After the Tananarive Conference in March 1961, it became tempting to conclude that his acceptance of the confederal demands of Tshombe, for example, amounted to betrayal of his oath on Congolese unity. And yet, in justice Kasavubu, it must be admitted that he always had reservations about the feasibility of keeping the Congo united on a basis other than

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federalism. At the time of the Brussels Conference on the Congo’s independence, he envisaged a possible “clash” in the future between the unionists and the federalists. And he remarked that should that clash come, “we would . . . have to start all over again trying to unite the country on a federal basis, beginning from the bottom.”28 He himself had, of course, a vested interest in autonomous Lower Congo, at least until he became the Head of the State as a whole. But whatever the motives behind his contention, that federalism was the only way unity could be achieved, events following independence have yet to invalidate it. On the contrary, it is as arguable as ever that the country can only be united by conceding institutional recognition to its de facto disunity; that the Congo can be either a unitary state, as it is, or a united people, as it is not, but not both together. It must, of course, be admitted that it is an open question about how much institutional recognition to the Congo’s diversity can, in effect, be conceded short of making the idea of a “Congolese people” even less tenable than it was then, nor was it certain in what way any dissent from the diehard unionists would affect the ensuing situation. There is evidence, however, for at least a suggestion that by that acceptance of the principle of a looser structure Kasavubu may have been fulfilling, rather than betraying, his oath of office on ensuring Congolese unity. In January 1961, he himself said the following in reference to the unitary system bequeathed by the Belgians: We have inherited a system of institutions which turned out to be ineffective to the situations to which it was intended to be applied. We must give fresh thought to the “Loi Fondamentale” and the institutions derived from it, with a view to adapting them to our ideas and the requirements of a country which is so large in the geographical sense and whose peoples are so diverse.29

And, in agreement, Burke would say (as he had said in a letter to Hercules Langrishe and as he put it in the Appeal to the Old Whigs), that . . . “the circumstances and habits of every country . . . are to decide upon the form of government.”30 It is fair to take this to mean not merely whether the government is republican or monarchical, as the choice was sometimes put in Burke’s time, but also, in more modern contexts, whether the government is centralized or devolutionary, unitary or federal. It is not enough to think of a unitary government in the abstract as something good. If it is intended for the Congo, look first at the Congo. What is good for the Congolese consists in their advantages “and these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises between good and evil and sometimes between evil and evi1.”31 Even then if a

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decentralized system is something to be regretted, so surely is civil strife, and a compromise may be needed between one evil and the other. What is to be remembered is that: “the science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it . . . is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori . . . Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that science.”32 And if it is something new you are constructing, be sure to base it on what there is of the experience of what is old: “For people will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”33 It is here, in fact, that Burke is at his most African, not the African who has just graduated from a university in far-away Manchester or faraway Princeton, but the African who is still steeped in ancestral ways; the Baluba tribesman if you like: . . . in a politically organized community a particular right, duty or sentiment exists only as an element in a whole body of common, reciprocal, and mutually balancing rights, duties and sentiments, the body of moral or legal norms. Upon that regularity and order with which this whole body of interwoven norms is maintained depends the stability and continuity of the structure of society.34

This quotation could have come from Burke, or from a Burkean at any rate. It is actually a description of native political systems in Africa by two eminent British anthropologists who go on to observe: “An African ruler is not to his people merely a person who can enforce his will on them . . . His credentials are mystical and are derived from antiquity.”35 With this, Burke would be in sympathy. And, in his turn, the African tribesman who reveres what he takes to be the will of his ancestors, who in his old age would expect to have his wisdom revered by those of the younger generation, and who believes that this is all part of a spiritual order of things, would listen with attentiveness and understanding as Burke expounds on: a partnership not only between those who are living, but those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born, [a partnership in which]. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in a great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and moral natures, each in their appointed place.36

The tribesman in the Congo, after giving his assent to this wisdom, may then turn to the younger constitution-makers in the country’s capital

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and say: “If you want me to cooperate in constructing the future you dream of, you must cooperate in respecting the past I know of. I have no intention of looking forward to your posterity if you do not have the humility to look backward to my ancestors.”

Notes 1

This chapter is a revised version of an article that was originally published under the same title, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 2, (The Hague, Netherlands, January 1963), pp. 121–133. 2 Stacey, “Communists Pin Their Hopes on Tribal Insecurity,” the Sunday Times, (February 5, 1961). As it stands, Stacey’s theory is nearer to Fromm than to Hobbes. With Hobbes the “mental comfort” would be derived from knowing that others are dominated along with you rather than from direct satisfaction with being dominated yourself. 3 Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790),” Works, Vol. IV, World’s Classics edition (London, 1907), p. 38. 4 Burke, “Reform of Representation in the House of Commons (1782),” Works, Vol. VI, Bohn’s edition (London, 1861), pp. 146 f. Italics are mine. 5 The definition was put forward as a basis of discussion in a class at Columbia University of which the author was a member. 6 Burke, “Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791),” Works, Vol. V, World’s Classics edition (London, 1907), p. 96 7 Reported in “News of the Week Review,” New York Times, (February 12, 1961), p. E9. 8 Ileo, Address delivered on February 16, 1961. Annex XV, Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for the Congo. UN Document No A/4711, (20 March, 1961), p. 91. 9 The Belgian policy was not consistent on this, but in general it bore out the observations made by Daniel Biebuyck and Mary Douglas that “the administration was based on tribal units, local notables were used as assessors in disputes tried by the district tribunals, and affairs were conducted in the appropriate native commercial language. The Belgians tried to rule through the traditional native chiefs, and where this did not make for efficient government, the latter were given honorific positions, and the administrative framework was built on ‘administrative’ chiefs, chosen from the most intelligent and co-operative people that could be found.” See Congo Tribes and Parties, (London: Royal Anthropological Institute, 1961), p. 15. 10 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (1790), op. cit., p. 67. 11 Burke, Reform of Representation in the House of Commons, (1782), op. cit., p. 146 f. 12 Burke, Reflections of the Revolution in France, (1790), op. cit., p. 147. 13 Ibid., p. 54. 14 Ibid., p. 55. 15 Ibid.

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Ibid., p. 65. Ibid. 18 E. B. Cunning, The Economist, (London, December 24, 1960), p. 13. 19 Burke, Reflections of the Revolution in France. 20 Cunning, The Economist. 21 Ibid. 22 Milverton quoted by Harold Cooper in his “Political Preparedness for SelfGovernment,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 306, (July 1956), p. 71. 23 Commenting on “politically sophisticated” African nationalist, Arch Parsons notes: “On the one hand he may argue that he was ‘ready’ (for independence) as soon as he felt it was necessary (he is inclined to recall that, two centuries ago, the United States did not waste much time on this point). On the other hand he is likely to say “Ready or not, here I come.’ ” New York Times Magazine, (October 2, 1960). 24 Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” Works, Vol. 111, Rohn’s edition (London, 1861), p. 183. 25 Burke, Reform of Representation in the House of Commons (1782), op. cit., pp. 147 f. 26 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (1790), op. cit., p. 10s. 27 Ibid., p. 50. 28 See Colin Legum, Congo Disaster, (A Penguin Special, 1961), pp. 87–88. 29 Kasavubu, Address delivered on January 25, 1961. Quoted in Report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for the Congo, UN Document No A/47n, (20 March, 1961), p. 27 30 Burke, “A Letter to Sir H. Langrishe” (3rd January, 1792), Works, Vol. V, World’s Classics edition (London, 1907). The quotation is from the Appeal in the same edition, Vol. IV, p. 44. 31 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (1790), op. cit., p. 67. 32 Ibid., p. 66. 33 Ibid., p. 36. 34 M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, “Introduction,” African Political Systems, (London, 1955), p. 20. The book was published for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press. 35 Ibid., p. 16. 36 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (1790), op. cit., p. 107. 17

CHAPTER TWELVE ROUSSEAU AND INTELLECTUALIZED AFRICAN NATIONALISM1 For analytical purposes, it is possible to argue that the myth of innocence is an exclusive feature of the nationalistic component of African thought, while the cult of ordinariness retains crucial relevance for problems of resource allocation and quest for a classless society after independence. All African political leaders are self-consciously engaged in the activity of nation-building. In broad terms, this activity expresses itself in the search for the appropriate institutional arrangements, the appropriate economic structure, and the appropriate emotional involvement by the masses. The cult of ordinariness now interacts with other aspects reminiscent of Rousseau. It interacts with an ethos of anti-pluralism and a desire for mass participation in national affairs. The supremacy of the General Will in Rousseau is a denial of the validity of pluralistic interests. The wills of competing interest groups can only encumber the discovery of the composite will. This thesis is one that, in various ways, has been embraced by a number of African leaders. Before independence, the idea of a General Will was translated into a concept of popular sovereignty to be embodied in a united movement against colonial rule. As Thomas Hodgkin pointed out once, a Congresstype political party in the colonies was apt to claim that it embodied the national will and represented “all the people.” According to Hodgkin, the party’s “dominant concept is ‘popular sovereignty,’ and its spiritual ancestor is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”2 After independence the idea of “popular sovereignty” has sometimes been even more insistently argued. Immanuel Wallerstein has argued that the political ideology of Sékou Touré’s political party, Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG), was a combination of Hobbes, Rousseau, and Lenin. Wallerstein himself tends to think that there was more of Hobbes than of Rousseau in the intellectualized ethos of the PDG. But he does concede that there was much in the tone of Guinean ideology that favored a community of sentiment and a reverence for citizenship similar to that found in Rousseau.3

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The anti-pluralistic implications of the General Will take the form of an opposition both to “tribalism” and to the formation of competing social classes. Here again the myth of a previous age of innocence is often invoked. Certain social characteristics of the past, notably communalism and cooperation, are mobilized to strengthen a new anti-pluralistic ethos. In using certain aspects of the past as building blocks for the future, African thinkers are perhaps departing radically from one aspect of Rousseau’s thought in the Social Contract. The new social order created by the contract was supposed to be an autonomous entity, rather than a stage in a process of evolution going back to the age of innocence. What Rousseau’s social contract created was a communal entity with no historical antecedents, but having instead an absolute validity of its own from the moment of its creation. In a sense, the achievement of the African version of anti-pluralism is to bridge the gulf between two otherwise contradictory aspects of Rousseau’s thought. The age of primitive innocence is, in some of its aspects, converted by Africans into a model for the new form of popular order. The new order should avoid conditions for class conflict. For its inspiration it should look to the essential “classlessness” of African traditional arrangements. Intellectualized African populism is, in this way, apt to go on denying the previous existence of classes in Africa. But if the existence of classes is ever admitted, then “historically” it is regarded to have no attribution of social distance and no accompanying feeling of social deprivation or social injustice. The African version of anti-pluralism drawn from the past to glorify community and cooperation does so at the expense of ignoring a clear lack of trans-tribal cooperation in the traditional model. Though wedded to the ideal of authenticity, African leaders are now obliged to invoke an artificial identification of interests in the hope of raising enthusiasm and transcending ethnic differences. Here again the cult of ordinariness comes into play. This cult now becomes a weapon against social pluralism. To glorify ordinariness is to assert a form of egalitarianism. And the latter in turn is a commitment against the growth of privileged groups in conflict with each other and with the underprivileged. In practice, the new political class in most African countries is itself creating a mode of living often marked by a certain amount of affluence, and probably out of sync with the national ideology that the leaders themselves are propagating. The leaders themselves are a living and agonizing example of the problem of reconciling personalism with patriotism, the will of the individual with the General Will. But the cult of ordinariness can sometimes ease the process of reconciliation by encouraging demonstrative identification. And so

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President Nyerere dug with the people. The leaders of Tanzania assert their ordinariness by the ritual of using a shovel or pushing a wheelbarrow. Indeed, the presidential shovel becomes one more symbol of a general ethos of anti-pluralism; Rousseau’s concept of popular sovereignty becomes wedded to the Marxist concept of proletarian solidarity. From this position, there is an easy transition to the ethic of mass involvement, which also has antecedents in Rousseau: no political system is legitimate unless it rests on the active participation of all its citizens. This in turn involves the suppression of selfish impulses and the emergence of the secular reign of the common good. Out of a personal maladjustment is therefore supposed to spring a moral activism, marked by a rejection of hedonism. And so the Arusha Declaration of the Tanzania African National Union demanded hard work and self-reliance from all citizens in a shared involvement in nation-building.4 To some extent, this was a departure from Rousseau. According to the ideologies of the PDG in Guinea, and of T.A.N.U. in Tanzania, sacrifice and hard work were the explicit route to personal and national regeneration. Yet under Rousseau’s scheme, there appears to be no incompatibility between moral activism and physical laziness.5 Nevertheless, Rousseau’s notion of individual participation in fulfilling the General Will does have logical connections with those African policies that put a premium on mass involvement in nation-building. Is this the path by which the masses become virtuous? To be virtuous in the eighteenth century sense did not require the accidental influence of climate or geography. The total involvement of the masses in an appropriate political structure provided both a path to virtue and an escape from a pre-moral society. But in contemporary Africa, mass involvement in “human investment” or in “self-help” schemes is regarded as a return to an older moral order. As Nyerere once put it: In traditional African society everybody was a worker [ . . . ] as opposed to “loiterer” or “idler” [ . . . ] it was taken for granted that every member of society—barring only the children and the infirm—contributed his fair share of effort towards the production of its wealth. [ . . . ] A society which fails to give its individuals the means to work, or, having given them the means to work, prevents them from getting a fair share of the products of their own sweat and toil, needs putting right. Similarly, an individual who can work—and is provided by society with the means to work—but does not do so, is equally wrong.6

Thus an intricate interplay between the cult of ordinariness, the ethos of anti-pluralism, and the ethic of mass involvement has in this case led to

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the emergence of ideological toil. For a country like Tanzania, this is one more step away from the colonial legacy. There had been something rather unfeeling about the “Law and Order” administrative ethos of the colonial period. The whole apparatus of this colonial legacy came to be something of an impediment to the emotional engagement of the people at-large. The political neutrality of the Civil Service—supposedly linked to the notion of a two-party or multiparty system—had all the coldness of bureaucratic rationality. Further, the political neutrality of the Civil Service was inconsistent both with the ethos of anti-pluralism and with the ethic of mass involvement. In the words of Nyerere again: Once you begin to think in terms of a single national movement instead of a number of rival factional parties, it becomes absurd to exclude a whole group of the most intelligent and able members of the community from participation in the discussion of policy simply because they happen to be civil servants. In a political movement which is identified with the nation, participation in political affairs must be recognized as the right of every citizen, in no matter what capacity he may have chosen to serve his country.7

And to this wisdom, Rousseau might perhaps give a nod of approval.

Populism and International Relations But it is not merely domestic policy that is affected by populist notions. Recent events would seem to indicate a growing impact on some ideological postulates of international relations as well. It is to this phenomenon that we must now turn. Early in 1965, Léopold Senghor had occasion to say: “For my part, I think Afro-Asianism has been superseded, for this form of solidarity should be extended to Latin America and to tiers monde in general.”8 A few months later, an unusual conference took place in Havana. Cuba was host to an Asian-African-Latin American conference of solidarity sponsored by the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization. The conference went on from January 5 to 15, 1966. The outcome was the creation of a Tri-Continental People’s Solidarity Organization, with an executive committee provisionally seated in Havana. The Havana conference was primarily of leftist radicals. It had been preceded, in the spring of 1964, by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development held in Geneva. At Geneva, Africa, Asia, and Latin America had confronted the developed countries of the world and demanded a transformation of the international trade system in the direction of better

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terms for producers of primary products and more concern for the needs of the underdeveloped world at-large.9 The whole concept of the Third World perhaps signifies the emergence of a new form of populism: global populism. Both the Havana conference of radical leftists and the Geneva conference of governmental representatives of all ideological persuasions were symptoms of a new emerging movement. It was perhaps the bare beginning of global protest of the indigent against the affluence of the developed world. For African intellectuals, the concept of the Third World is an attempt to transcend their old nationalistic bonds of color and emphasize instead the bonds of shared poverty. Perhaps that is what Senghor meant by “Afro-Asianism has been superseded, for this form of solidarity should be extended to Latin America and to tiers monde in general.” Global populism, as conceived in Africa, was particularly drawn towards using Marxian tools of analysis. Nyerere, for example, used them in the following way: Karl Marx felt there was an inevitable clash between the rich of one society and the poor of that society. In that, I believe, Karl Marx was right. But today it is the international scene which is going to have a greater impact on the lives of individuals. . . And when you look at the international scene, you must admit that the world is divided between the “Haves” and the “Have-nots” . . . And don’t forget the rich countries of the world today may be found on both sides of the division between “Capitalist” and “Socialist” countries.10

If we accept this analysis, the former Soviet Union would have itself been a bourgeois country, a member of the middle- and upper-classes of the global society. But within this global society, there is no global state that Africa, Asia, and Latin America could capture in their global proletarian revolution against the rich. Africans and Asians on their own may have captured the votes in the United Nations General Assembly, but that was (and still is) an instrument which is hardly strong enough to “oppress” the rich countries. Indeed, the United Nations would almost certainly collapse tomorrow if American support were withdrawn. The utopia of this international class system cannot therefore be the “withering away” of a global state already existing. At its most ambitious, it can only be the creation of a world state or world government. But, for the time being, there is no world state to “wither away” and perhaps a world government is not possible either. What is conceivable is, at best, an equitable global authority that would “administer things,” even if it would never “govern men.”

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Of this whole line of reasoning, however, Rousseau would be suspicious. The idea of a world government tends to be a brainchild of what Rousseau called “cosmopolitans.” And it is these people whom Rousseau accused of trying to “justify their love of their country by their love of the human race and make a boast of loving the entire world in order to enjoy the privilege of loving no one.”11 For Rousseau, the patrie or fatherland is the widest loyalty that the human heart can authentically be capable of. But now, a few African intellectuals were going beyond the bonds of nationality, or even of blackness. Indeed, the concept of the Third World signifies a shift of emphasis from pan-pigmentationalism, or the affinity of color, to pan-proletarianism, the affinity of being economically underprivileged. Mamadou Dia, a former Prime Minister of Senegal, called the first section of his book “The Revolt of the Proletarian Nations.” He quoted Gabriel Ardant’s powerful line that “the geography of hunger is also the geography of death.”12 Sékou Touré described Africa itself as a “continent of the proletarian peoples.”13 Touré’s was different from the view that saw Africa as a “classless continent.” A “proletarian Africa” is after all, a class in itself, one class within a global class system. African populism, then, in its global dimension, owes much more to Marx than to Rousseau. Yet the distinction might not perhaps be all that rigid. To save the ancient age of innocence, Rousseau had wished someone had cried out to his fellow men: “. . . you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”14 The movement of pan-proletarianism, as captured in the concept of “the Third World,” was perhaps a new version of that cry which, alas, was never uttered to save Rousseau’s age of innocence. Global populism was a new form of anti-pluralism. “It is one of the most important functions of government to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes,” Rousseau had asserted.15 The mitigation of inequalities is a mitigation of antagonistic pluralism. This is as true internationally as it is true intra-nationally. In the ultimate analysis then, populism at the international level is a dream that seeks to globalize the General Will and turn it from being the will of society to being the will of man.

Notes 1

This chapter is a revised version of an article co-written with G. F. Engholm that originally appeared in The Review of Politics, (Notre Dame, United States), Vol. 30, No. 1, (January 1968), pp. 19–32. 2 T. Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa, (London: Frederick Muller, 1956), p. 144.

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I. Wallerstein, “The Political Ideology of the P. D. G.,” Présence Africaine, Vol. 12, No. 40, (First Quarter 1962), pp. 38–39. 4 The Arusha Declaration and TANU’s Policy on Socialism and Self Reliance, (Dar es Salaam: Publicity Sections TANU, 1967). 5 In A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau satirizes the excessive preoccupation with “work” which civilized society tends to promote. He mentions that in the Northern temperate countries this work mania is aggravated by climate. 6 J. Nyerere, Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism (1962). Reprinted in the collection of Nyerere’s works entitled Freedom and Unity, (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 165–166. 7 “Democracy and the Party System” (1963). See Freedom and Unity, op. cit., p. 203. 8 Senghor is quoted in Africa Diary, (June 19–25, 1965). 9 See Ali A. Mazrui, “Africa and the Third World,” On Heroes and UhuruWorship: Essays on Independent Africa, (London, 1962), pp. 209–210. 10 Nyerere, “The Second Scramble” (1961). For a later version of the same theme, see Freedom and Unity, pp. 207–208. 11 J. J. Rousseau, Contrat Social (First Version). See C. E. Vaughan, The Political Writings of J. J. Rousseau (Cambridge, 1915), Vol. I, p. 453. 12 See M. Dia, The African Nations and World Solidarity, Mercer Cook (trans.), (London, 1962). Ardant is quoted on p. 19. See also Mazrui, “Africa and the Third World,” op. cit., p. 211. 13 See S. Touré, “Africa’s Destiny,” Africa Speaks, James Duffy and Robert A. Manners (eds.), (Princeton, 1961). 14 J. J. Rousseau, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 192. 15 Ibid., p. 250.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN ALIENABLE SOVEREIGNTY IN ROUSSEAU Rousseau attributes to sovereignty several characteristics. He says that it is unlimited, indivisible, and (the most difficult concept of all) “indestructible.”1 This chapter will pay attention to these attributes, but only in relation to one further claim of Rousseau’s: the claim that sovereignty is also inalienable. Our purpose here is primarily to investigate how far Rousseau’s general theory of society and the state allows him to subscribe to a dictum of inalienable popular sovereignty. The question of compatibility among the different attributes of sovereignty is one aspect of the problem. Can sovereignty be inalienable and unlimited at the same time? Can indivisibility be reconciled with inalienability? These questions will command our attention to start with. We will then broaden its objective. It will undertake a comparison between a doctrine of “inalienable” popular sovereignty, like that of Rousseau’s ambition, and a doctrine of “inalienable” individual rights, like that of Locke and, in a special sense, that of John Stuart Mill. This will lead to an examination as to whether power can be transferable, while sovereignty remains inalienable. And this, in turn, will involve us in the difficult doctrine of sovereign indestructibility.

Sovereign Limits and Alienation There is, first, an elusive distinction which ought to be examined. What exactly is the status of the General Will in Rousseau? Is the General Will “the sovereign?” Or is it sovereignty? If we regarded it as sovereignty, the next question would then presumably be: where does it reside? In other words, who is the sovereign? On the basis of this hypothesis, the General Will is that which makes something else (e.g., the people) “sovereign” by residing in them. But when Rousseau starts making distinctions between the General Will and the will of all, it becomes possible to hypothesize whether what Rousseau means by “the sovereign” is not, in some mystical sense, the General Will itself. Such a hypothesis alters the status of the people quite

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fundamentally. The General Will is now at once the sovereign and sovereignty itself, and the people become subject to the General Will in a decidedly subordinate sense. Here then is a doctrine of sovereignty at the highest level of abstraction. And it is at this level, when both the sovereign and sovereignty are abstractions, that the doctrine of unlimited sovereignty becomes tenable. Where the sovereign is something relatively concrete, like “the King” or even “the electorate,” sovereignty cannot but be limited by, shall we say, the human handicaps or physical draw-backs of its own embodiment. Abstract sovereignty is, in other words, limited in its exercise by the natural inadequacies of the concrete sovereign. It may be true that the king can do no wrong. But it is certainly not true that he has ever been able to do everything he liked. He has always been limited by such factors as the physical resources at his disposal, and has had the handicap of being human. But if the sovereign is an abstraction, like the General Will, sovereignty is, at the worst, handicapped only by the rigors of logic. And yet it is precisely such rigors which pose the question whether something which is inalienable can at the same time be unlimited. Is not the principle of inalienability itself a limitation on sovereignty? Surely a sovereign who cannot alienate his sovereignty has his freedom of action limited by that very fact?2 “The sovereign may commit the charge of the government to the whole people,” Rousseau says.3 Whoever is the sovereign in this sentence, it cannot be merely “the whole people” without qualification. If we continue to assume that it is the General Will, Rousseau is here ensuring that the sovereign retains the freedom to entrust at least the executive power to someone or something other than itself. But is the sovereign still limited by a prohibition not to transfer the legislative function to someone other than itself? On the one hand, Rousseau tells us that the Sovereign (i.e., the General Will) is the source of all law.4 On the other hand, he insists that it is to “the people” that the legislative power belongs.5 The question arises whether this is not a case of sovereignty being actually exercised by the people. What could be involved in this is, therefore, a situation in which the General Will as the Sovereign has virtually alienated its sovereignty to the people. And this can all too easily mean an alienation of sovereignty by the General Will to the will of all. The will of all here is not the mistaken will of the people, but the conscious actual will of the people—regardless of whether it is mistaken on this or that issue. Rousseau differentiated the will of all from the

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General Will, but he was not consistent in his discussion of their interrelation. The interpretation which has the best potential for consistency is one which defines the will of all not as the sum total of particular wills, which are necessarily mistaken, but as just the actual and conscious will of all. This latter definition allows for the possibility of the actual will coinciding with the General Will. The two levels of will are indeed different but they are not incompatible. A person might be willing the same thing at both levels on occasions. Once this is conceded it becomes possible for the General Will to alienate legislative sovereignty to the will of all. Compatibility with, or the realization of, the General Will is indeed the end of all legislation. But, in practice, the best means available for ensuring that the General Will is not violated is a system of government which allows the will of all to make the decisions—however fallible those means might be. In a sense, this echoes F. A. Hayek’s distinction between democracy as a means and freedom as an end. Hayek argued that it could not be said of democracy as Lord Acton said of liberty, that it “is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”6 For Hayek, democracy was “a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain.”7 We are then reminded that there had often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies—and “it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority, democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.”8 We are getting nearer here to a concept of popular dictatorship. “Rousseau’s sovereign is the externalized general will,” J. L. Talmon has argued.9 He goes on to suggest that, in marrying this concept with the principle of popular sovereignty, “Rousseau gave rise to totalitarian democracy.”10 This whole idea of totalitarian democracy introduces a special sense of “unlimited” sovereignty. It can even be argued that any democracy which really subscribes to a doctrine of unlimited sovereignty ipso facto converts itself into a totalitarian democracy. Whatever the theory of the British Constitution might be, neither the legal sovereignty of the British Parliament nor the political sovereignty of the British electorate is, in practice, even intended to be “unlimited.” Such a doctrine would be quite incompatible with other aspects of the general political ethic of the British people themselves. It would be even more incompatible if, as in Rousseau at times, the Sovereign is not only all powerful but also always right. There is a

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difference between having a right to do something and doing what is right. A sovereign may have a right to make decisions, but this does not mean that every decision he makes is the right one. What Rousseau tries to do is to make his sovereign General Will “unlimited” in both senses—in having a right to make any decision and in making every decision right.11 But, in practice, the General Will has to alienate its sovereignty to the people. And once this happens, the limitations of people as people begin to limit the sovereignty they are supposed to exercise. “How can a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation?”12 Rousseau goes on to say that the people of itself always aims at what is good; but, unaided, it does not always know what is good. Here then is an important natural limitation on those who are supposed to exercise unlimited sovereignty. In Rousseau—as later in Austin—a sovereign number in its collegiate and sovereign capacity might indeed be incapable of legal limitation.13 But when infallible sovereignty is forced to reside in a fallible people, the door is open for some kind of delegation. And this brings us to the complications inherent in the role of Rousseau’s legislator.

Divisibility and Alienation If we continue with the hypothesis that it is the General Will which is sovereign, rather than the people, our present position in the argument is that the demands of a practical exercise of sovereignty have forced the General Will to alienate sovereignty to the people. But the people are blind and ignorant. Are they in turn to alienate that sovereignty to the legislator? This was the interpretation of Rousseau to which some of the rulers of post-revolutionary France appeared to subscribe. In the words of Robert Michels, “the Bonapartist interpretation of popular sovereignty was a personal dictatorship conferred by the people in accordance with constitutional rules.”14 And yet the people’s participation in legislation is so important to Rousseau that it is hard to regard him as advocating a total abdication by the people in favor of the legislator. Perhaps what is involved is an alienation of sovereignty by the General Will to both the people and the legislator.15 Rousseau envisages legislation to be a process of constant referenda. That part of sovereignty which is concerned with deciding what issues are to be put before a referendum is, in effect, alienated to the legislator. But the decision which emerges from the referendum is a decision of the people themselves. In other words, sovereignty is now

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divided: It is divided as between the prerogative of deciding what questions to ask (exercised by the legislator) and the prerogative of deciding what answers to give (exercised by “the whole body of the citizens”). And what the legislator really asks of citizens is not whether they approve of a measure or disapprove of it but whether the measure is compatible with their ultimate common interest. But what can remain of the General Will as “the sovereign” if the General Will as sovereignty has now been alienated to the people and the legislator? The answer must surely be “Nothing.” If the General Will as sovereignty now inheres in someone else, the General Will as the sovereign has ceased to exist. Renunciation of the former identity must entail a dissolution of the latter. The people and the legislator together now become the repository of alienated sovereignty—and constitute the new sovereign. But perhaps this hypothesis of the General Will itself being “the Sovereign” has been a little too mystical all along, even by Rousseau’s standards. Let us, therefore, pose an alternative interpretation of Rousseau—the interpretation that the General Will does not have a double identity but is simply another word for sovereignty. It can have no existence independently of the people. It is the people who have been sovereign all the time—and not by virtue of any act of alienation by another entity. But if the people themselves are not beneficiaries of alienated sovereignty, are they benefactors? Do they confer their sovereignty on some other entity? There is, first, the possible argument that the people share their sovereignty with the legislator even if they do not renounce it completely. But there are also other levels of possible alienation of sovereignty by the people. And in order to discern these, we must go right back to the implications of the original social contract. Rousseau says: “There is but one law which, from its nature, requires unanimous consent. This is the social contract.”16 After this contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the others.17 What can be so easily overlooked is that this turns the social contract itself into an exercise in the alienation of sovereignty. We are told that sovereignty is intended to reside in “the whole people.” The people as a people are created when individuals enter into this contract. What happens simultaneously is that “the whole people” as sovereign alienate their newly created sovereignty to a mere majority of the people for all decisions subsequent to their original contract. The social contract was, in other words, an occasion when the people in unanimity willed that their

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will would thenceforth be at least “represented” by the will of the majority. If, then, we do have in the principle of majority rule an instance of alienated sovereignty, we also have involved in it the issue of divisible sovereignty. In a society of three people on some island, each person constitutes one-third of “the whole body of the citizens.” If the sovereign on that island is, in fact, that whole body of citizens, it is arguable that each person is a third of the sovereign. But a part can be what Rousseau calls an “indivisible part of the whole.”18 That is to say that the whole can still be indivisible even when we concede that it consists of parts—or of parts plus something else. In a citizenry consisting of three people, each of whom is a third of the sovereign, sovereignty would be indivisible if the three people acted in unanimity. But if they act according to the majority principle, sovereignty can be either inalienable or indivisible but not both. In order to remain undivided, the out-voted third of the sovereign citizenry should alienate its own third of sovereignty to the majority. Admittedly, this is a special sense of divisibility. Yet it does force Rousseau into a choice between uncompromising inalienability and absolute indivisibility, but not both together. Rousseau’s implicit preference is again to allow the minority of one to alienate its own third of sovereignty to the majority of two. We have already linked this alienation to the principle that the will of the majority should prevail. Yet here again we must relate it to the separate doctrine that the will of the majority is infallible. “In our corporate capacity we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole,” Rousseau tells us.19 And each member of society becomes, as we have noted, part of that sovereign body of people which seeks to ascertain the General Will by referendum. But then Rousseau suddenly introduces the additional doctrine that if I am out-voted in a referendum “this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken.20 This thesis of a necessarily erring minority is again another disguise for the alienation by a minority of its own fraction of sovereignty. It is another case of alienating a part of sovereignty in order to keep sovereignty whole. The minority surrenders its part so that the majority can then proceed to exercise sovereignty in its undivided totality.

Inalienable Rights and Inalienable Sovereignty Rousseau sometimes talks of a minority as a unified group and sometimes as a collection of individuals who just happen to have voted on the same side. But the parties to the original contract were individuals

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rather than groups, and the particular interests which were, in the first instance, to be surrendered to a General Will were individual interests rather than factional. It is this which brings us to the issue of individual rights and the extent to which they, in turn, are or are not alienable. The doctrine of inalienable rights and the doctrine of inalienable sovereignty have sometimes been regarded as interdependent. But the two doctrines can be mutually incompatible. In Locke, there are certain rights which an individual cannot alienate—not even to the community. But in Rousseau, sovereignty itself could not have been created but for “the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the whole community.”21 And yet there is a level at which Rousseau tries to reconcile a doctrine of inalienable rights with a doctrine of inalienable sovereignty. It is at such a level that he comes nearest to a genuine principle of sovereign inalienability. The level in question is Rousseau’s insistence on individual “participation in the sovereign authority.” He regards individuals as having a double identity: “When they are thought of as participating in the sovereign authority, they are called citizens; when they are thought of as submitting to the laws of the state, they are called subjects.”22 The individual’s inalienable right is the right to take part in this sovereign authority. One can almost say that here is Rousseau at his most individualistic; not the individualism which seeks to protect the citizen from the state, but an individualism which seeks to make every citizen a genuinely active unit or fraction of state sovereignty itself. What is discernible here in Rousseau is a distinction between government by consent, on the one hand, and self-government itself, on the other. And it is a distinction which can even serve to distinguish Rousseau himself from Locke. In Locke’s political philosophy, “consent” is almost the central concept. It is what makes representative government “representative,” and therefore legitimate. But, to Rousseau, consenting to representative government amounts to “contracting” out of selfgovernment. One’s representative is not one’s self, and citizenship is not representable. One cannot be a citizen by proxy and therefore one’s status as a unit of sovereignty must remain inalienable. Here we can take the comparative approach further still and examine the position of John Stuart Mill. It is arguable that Mill came to take a middle position between a Lockean notion of government by consent and Rousseau’s insistence on self-government. Mill divided the life of an individual into two areas: the self-regarding and the other-regarding. Within the self-regarding sphere of life, the individual was to be virtually “sovereign.”23 Admittedly, this was not the same thing as being a unit of

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sovereignty in Rousseau’s terms. But there is, certainly, a sense in which the self-regarding sphere in Mill is the sphere of literal self-management for each member of society. We can therefore say that what Mill would consider a free society is one in which each member is allowed selfgovernment on the self-regarding side, and government by consent or representative government in the other-regarding portion of his active life. This, in fact, is Mill’s final reformulation of laissez faire. He abandoned all dicta which sounded like “that government is best which interferes least in the self-regarding life of man.” Mill’s ultimate right was the right to privacy. And Mill defined that right in terms of the consequences of the actions of individuals. If an action does not directly harm others, then it should indeed belong to the sacred area of personal privacy. It is the individual’s right to such an area in any civilized community that Mill implicitly regarded as inalienable.24 Locke did not classify individual actions in terms of their effect on other people—though his distinction between liberty and license does anticipate Mill’s criterion of “harm to others.” Locke’s classification of rights was, at the basic level, between rights surrendered by the individual in the social contract and rights retained—and those which were surrendered were surrendered in order to safeguard more effectively those which were retained. We can, therefore, say that what were alienable in Locke’s contract were instrumental rights: those which had to be surrendered in order to create the kind of community which could protect the remaining individual rights. Pre-eminent among the rights which had to be surrendered for instrumental reasons was, of course, the right to be judge in one’s own cause.25 What was inalienable was the right to the protection bought in this way—above all, the social protection of the individual’s property. But how can the individual protect his right to that social protection? At the very minimum, he can only do so if the whole protective apparatus of government rests on the principle of individual consent. But how precise is the word “inalienable” if it can be applied to both rights and sovereignty, and if it can be invoked in regard to three separate thinkers? One approach toward answering the question is to break the word up into its basic parts. If we accept the prefix “in-” as just a straightforward negation, we can proceed to concentrate on the verb “alienate” and the suffix “-able.” If we start with the suffix, J. S. Mill once again readily comes to mind as an analogy. In his Utilitarianism, Mill slipped into saying that “The only proof capable of being given that any object is visible is that people actually see it . . . In like manner, I apprehend, the

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sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people actually desire it.”26 Mill’s notorious fallacy is no more than a particularly glaring example of something which happens all too often in moral and political philosophy: the jump from a language of description to a language of prescription. Pre-eminent among single words which lend themselves to such “jumps” is indeed the word “inalienable” itself. It is much too often used as if it were a straightforward analogue of “invisible” that is to say, as if “inalienable” meant that which is impossible to alienate. And yet a closer analogue of “inalienable” is more often “undesirable.” “Inalienable” is a moral injunction specifying that which ought not to be alienated. However, difficulties arise when a moral position is built into the definitional logic of a term like “rights” or “sovereignty.” Certainly the term “sovereignty” itself can be defined in such a way that it is as much impossible (logically) as it is undesirable (morally) for it to be alienated. As we have seen, that is the kind of definition which Rousseau attempted to give the term “sovereignty.” We in turn have attempted to show that other aspects of his thought do not neatly conform to such a definition of sovereignty. But was Rousseau postulating a special sense of “alienation” as he put forward a special definition of sovereignty? This is the hypothesis that must now be grappled with.

Delegated Power and Alienated Sovereignty “I say that sovereignty, being merely the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated. . . . Power certainly can be transferred; but not will.”27 Whether Rousseau admits it or not, he is once again involved in a possible division of sovereignty—the division into will and into the power to exercise that will. Power in Rousseau is certainly a constituent part of sovereignty. He says: “Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his parts, so the social contract gives an absolute power to the Body Politic over all of its parts. It is this power which, as I have said, is called ‘sovereignty’ when it is directed by the general will. . .”28 We had previously confronted Rousseau with the dilemma of keeping sovereignty either indivisible or inalienable but not both together. And so the minority of one in our three-men body of citizens alienated his share of sovereignty to the majority, and ensured that sovereignty as a whole remained undivided. But this new way of dividing sovereignty (into will and power) poses different issues. If power is, on one hand, transferable and, on the other, is a component part of sovereignty, Rousseau is here permitting a doctrine of “partial alienation” which undermines with one

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stroke both the principle of inalienability and that of indivisibility. In other words, this is not a case of giving up the principle of inalienability in order to protect that of indivisibility. This new doctrine divides in order to alienate part of sovereignty. It divides sovereignty into power and will, and proceeds to transfer power. Yet this line of reasoning would only hold if to “transfer” power was the same thing as to “alienate” it. Did Rousseau intend the terms to be interchangeable? Or did he indeed postulate a specialized meaning of “alienation?” In the passage on the distinction between will and power quoted above, Rousseau does not, in fact, differentiate the act of transfer from the act of alienation. He just insists that what can be transferred is power and not will. Yet in his discussion of the role of government, generally, he argues in the following vein: “The rulers, as simple officers of the sovereign, exercise in its name the power of which it has made them the depositories. It follows that the sovereign can limit, modify, or recover this power as it chooses, that its alienation is inconsistent with the nature of political society and contradicts the ends of association.”29 Barring an unconscious self-contradiction, the only conclusion which can be drawn from this is that Rousseau did not regard transferring power as being the same thing as alienating it. The reasoning behind the distinction might well be that power transferred can only become power alienated if will is transferred with it. But since will cannot but remain with the body politic, neither will nor power can, in fact, be alienated. To put it in another way, sovereignty as a whole is inalienable for the simple reason that the part of it which is will is inalienable. But what is left of Rousseau’s case against representative government when he concedes the transferability of power? In fact, Rousseau begins to sound misleading when he says “sovereignty cannot be represented for precisely the same reason that it cannot be alienated.”30 Need representative government entail either the alienation or the representation of sovereignty as Rousseau himself defines it? After all, it is Rousseau himself who, as we have seen, permits the transferability of power to an executive without conceding that this constituted the representation of sovereignty. The only condition he stipulates to ensure that sovereignty remains with the people is that the people should have the right “to limit, modify, or recover this power as it chooses.”31 Almost the same condition is stipulated by Locke. But what Locke permits is the transferability of the legislative as well as the executive power. As he himself put it, “The legislative being only a fiduciary Power to act for certain Ends, there remains still in the People a supreme Power

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to remove or alter the Legislative, when they find the Legislative act contrary to the Trust reposed in them.”32 It is Rousseau then, rather than Locke, who makes a distinction between executive power (which can be transferred) and legislative power (which cannot). Rousseau makes the distinction in spite of his complaint that “our political theorists, unable to divide sovereignty in principle, divide it according to its object: . . . into legislative power and into executive power.”33 Rousseau asserts that what the theorists take as parts of sovereignty are no more than emanations of it. But if legislative power is merely an emanation of sovereignty, why is it not as transferable as the executive function? An alternative interpretation is to the effect that only the executive function is an emanation of sovereignty. The legislative power, insofar as it is a process of trying to ascertain the General Will, is sovereignty itself. But this is to postulate that once the General Will has been ascertained, it is no function of sovereignty to assure its implementation. It may be true that making a law—unlike declaring war—is to Rousseau, “an act of sovereignty.” Yet sovereignty is surely more than its own acts, just as it is more than its emanations.34 A third possible interpretation is that, in spite of Rousseau’s own terminology, there is no such thing as legislative power. When Rousseau implicitly divided sovereignty into will and power, he intended legislation to be the will and execution of the “power.” What is admissible is, therefore, the semi-tautologous concept of “the legislative will,” rather than any concept of legislative “power.” It was because legislation involved will, rather than power that the legislative function was inalienable. But even this interpretation gives no clue as to why what is inalienable should also be unrepresentable. Rousseau took for granted this supposed link between inalienability and unrepresentability. Yet why should the will of the people be as unrepresentable as it was inalienable? And even if it was, how could it be “for precisely the same reason?” Rousseau’s position here is weak. It can only be strengthened if, instead of asserting that two things were impossible for the same reason, he asserted that they were not really two distinct things after all. This second assertion would amount to saying that representation was itself an attempt at alienation—or, at any rate, at a special form of it. Is this second position defensible? It must surely depend, at least in part, on what constitutes “representation.” And here Rousseau and Burke are in agreement. In representative government, as envisaged by Burke, the member of the

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legislature must, in fact, be a representative, and not a mere delegate or ambassador of his constituency.35 This famous Burkean distinction is an assertion of the right to independent judgment by him who is supposed to represent the people. In other words, the dignity of the title of “representative” is supposed to lie, not in answerability to the people’s will, but in the right to defy that will should the representative disagree with it on some issue which matters. Rousseau would have been more favorably disposed toward representative government if what it involved was real delegated legislation, not in the modern sense of delegation by the legislature to the executive, but delegation by the people to the legislature. “The deputies of the people are not and cannot be its representatives,” Rousseau says.36 But what Rousseau in effect means is that the deputies cannot but be “representatives” in the Burkean sense if given a chance; once elected, they would make virtue of acting contrary to the people’s will. The people were, therefore, to see to the legislation themselves—for any deputies they might elect could not really be trusted to remain delegates. Whatever they might have said in election manifestoes, the deputies soon acquire the presumptuous independence of a Burkean representative. The history of representative government has vindicated both Rousseau and Burke. As Henry Mayo has put it in his introductory survey, “the bound delegate doctrine has lingered long and died hard but it is very little heard today, the tenor of democratic thought having made it virtually obsolete.”37 Democratic thought has, on the whole, accepted Burke’s moral premise that a representative “betrays instead of serving” the people if he sacrifices his judgment to their opinion.38 If, then, this Burkean conception of the proper role of a “representative” has prevailed, its very success has vindicated Rousseau’s fears about the nature and tendencies of representative government at-large.

On Sovereign Indestructibility But does not the democrat have to settle for representative government in a sizable state? This introduces a new complication in Rousseau’s thought. In his discussion of the optimum size of the state, the issue becomes not whether sovereignty can be alienated by the people but whether it can be retained by them in a large state. At times, it sounds as if both will and power cannot but be alienated in a large state—and all Rousseau can do is to take the defiant moral position that, since will ought not to be alienated, the state ought to remain small.

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But if states in the world have got bigger anyhow (and the people can derive certain practical advantages from the size of their country) why should there remain a moral imperative not to alienate sovereignty even to someone of the people’s own choice? A possible answer is one which links the notion of alienability to a notion of destructibility. Here again it might be instructive to use “Bonapartism” as a foil to Rousseau’s thought. As a student of the former phenomenon, Robert Michels once put it, “Bonapartism recognized the validity of the popular will to such an extreme degree as to concede to that will the right of self-destruction; popular sovereignty could suppress itself.”39 It is perhaps significant that from the very next sentence Michels goes on to retort in the following vein: “Yet if we look at the matter from a purely human point of view, popular sovereignty is inalienable.”40 Michels here seems to take it for granted that what is inalienable cannot have a right of self-destruction either. But the point in Rousseau is perhaps not whether sovereignty has the right of self-destruction but whether it is capable of being destroyed at all. In his discussion of the degeneration of the states, we find that sovereign power can be usurped. A new variable is here introduced. Although sovereign power cannot be alienated, it can fundamentally change hands all the same, if the initiative comes from the new hands. This is different from the simple case of a transfer of executive’s power we had discussed earlier. In this new case of usurpation, it is no longer true that “the sovereign can limit, modify or recover this power as it chooses.” In the new situation, that which could not be alienated by the people is nevertheless no longer with the people even in terms of ultimate control. It is as if that which could not be given away has now been effectively stolen. It would still be true that it could not be given away, but it has ceased to be with the owner all the same. But here again, the question arises: What sense of “could not” is this? Rousseau says that “the moment the government usurps the Sovereignty, the social compact is broken and all the private citizens recover by right their natural liberty.”41 But since sovereignty itself was created when men gave up their original natural rights, what Rousseau is here saying is that sovereignty disintegrates and disappears when it is usurped. The very notion of usurping sovereignty borders on being a contradiction in terms. Yet, there is no getting away from the fact that power has changed hands in a very real sense. At the most, we can say that power has now become an illegitimate force. What should be remembered is that the force is not really being used against the people—for there is no such thing as “the people” when the social compact is neutralized. The usurper can only

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use his force against a multiplicity of natural men and these are compelled but “not bound to obey.” 42 This takes us back to the distinction between inalienable rights and inalienable sovereignty. And here again, a comparison between Locke and Rousseau should be illuminating. In Rousseau, as we have pointed out, sovereignty was created when natural men alienated their rights to civil society. This individual alienation was total. But to Locke, there were certain individual rights which were just not alienable, not even to civil society. It would, therefore, seem that Locke, by insisting on the inalienability of some individual rights at this basic level, prevented the very creation of sovereignty in the body politic. How could the body politic be sovereign in the “unlimited” sense of Rousseau and Austin when its area of activity was so drastically curtailed from the start? But this is to look at the two thinkers from the starting point of civil society. The picture looks a little different when viewed from the dying point of civil society, or at least from the vantage point of its moment of crisis. To Rousseau, when government usurps power, the right to that power does not remain with the people. The terms of the contract are such that on usurpation of power by some Bonaparte or by an assembly of “representatives,” the individual recovers his natural rights, and the community ceases to be. But to Locke, the community “perpetually retains a supreme Power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators.”43 Just as Rousseau wedded the concept of sovereignty to the concept of its legitimate exercise, Locke is here wedding the concept of “power” to its legitimate exercise. But while Rousseau allowed the community to dissolve into natural individuals at the whim of an effective usurper, Locke made his community a little tougher than that. In this context, it is again Locke rather than Rousseau who comes nearer to making something like the sovereignty of the community “indestructible.” 44 But so far, we have discussed the destructibility only of sovereignty. What has yet to be examined is the idea of the destructibility of the sovereign. Rousseau says: “The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries in itself the causes of its destruction.” 45 What Rousseau does not analyze are the implications of the fact that the body politic itself consists, at least in part, of human bodies. He does not grapple with the relationship between “the people” as a constant abstraction and the people as a mutable collection of growing, aging, and ultimately dying individuals. If sovereignty resides in the people in the latter sense, the question arises whether sovereignty is, as it

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were, hereditary. To Rousseau, the body politic is “composed of as many members as the assembly contains voters.” 46 If every voting individual is a unit of sovereignty, does a unit of sovereignty then die every time an individual dies? Does a refractioning of sovereignty take place when a new child comes of age? And what did Rousseau ultimately mean by sovereignty being “indestructible?” Is this constant refractioning of sovereignty—as flesh-and-blood individuals die—consistent with the doctrine of indestructibility? And yet, unlike Hobbes, Rousseau was less concerned about man’s physical death than he was about man’s moral birth. And the Social Contract is the birth certificate, attesting to the beginnings of man as a moral agent.47 .

Conclusions In an analysis of this kind, neat conclusions are difficult to formulate. But a summary of the arguments needs to be attempted nevertheless. Rousseau’s theory of inalienable sovereignty comes into conflict with the qualities of unlimitedness and indivisibility. Abstract sovereignty might be unlimited, but the concrete sovereign—the people—has handicaps of important consequences in Rousseau. Rousseau’s legislator becomes necessary because the infallible General Will is forced to reside in a fallible “blind” people. The role of the legislator itself becomes an instance of delegated sovereignty. We cannot be sure that sovereignty is indivisible unless we know what would constitute a division of sovereignty. Rousseau himself is not clear on this point. He denies that a distinction between the executive and the legislative constitutes a divided sovereign, claiming that these are emanations of sovereignty and not parts of it. Yet he makes the executive power transferable, and the legislative incapable of being transferred. The difference between them is, thus, sufficiently fundamental to raise the question of whether these are not distinct parts of sovereignty: the legislative being that part of sovereignty which is will itself, while the executive is that part which is power. Another possible division of sovereignty is between parts of that concrete sovereign, the people. If every member of this collective body needs to participate in legislation, there is a sense in which each individual might be described as a unit of sovereignty. If, on the one hand, the sovereign is the people as a whole, and, on the other, decisions are made by a mere majority of the people, this must be an instance of the people in unanimity alienating its sovereignty to that part of itself which is a

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majority. Alternatively, this is a case of the out-voted minority submitting to the majority, and alienating their own “units of sovereignty” to that majority. We cannot be sure that sovereignty is inalienable either unless we know what would constitute alienation. There are passages in Rousseau which seem to suggest that what is transferable is not necessarily alienable. Executive power can, as indicated, be transferred, but the fact that it is subject to control, modification, and recall back to the people saves the transference from becoming alienation. That which controls and modifies the executive power is the will of the sovereign. Because will cannot be alienated, power cannot be alienated and can only be transferred or delegated. Political representation is a form of attempted alienation of sovereignty. This is because the role of the representative in a parliamentary form of government is not that of a delegate. Had the representative been a delegate, Rousseau would have been more favorably disposed toward representative government. He rejected this system of government because he regarded as inevitable what Burke came to prescribe as desirable—a parliament which makes a virtue of exercising its own judgment instead of submitting to the people’s will. It is such considerations which convinced Rousseau that government by consent was a poor substitute for self-government. Locke was, as it were, the prophet of the former. John Stuart Mill tried to reconcile government by consent with self-government by intrusting only the other, regarding area of individual activity to the jurisdiction of representative government. The self-regarding area of the individual’s life was to be a matter for self-management. This links the whole notion of inalienable sovereignty to the notion of inalienable individual rights. For Rousseau, sovereignty could not have been created but for the alienation of individual rights. Should the social contract ever be broken, and a usurper take over the government, individual rights would return to their original natural men, and sovereignty itself would presumably cease to be, in spite of Rousseau’s insistence on “indestructibility.” The logic of inalienability dictates that sovereignty should not pass to a usurper. But if usurpation means that “the sovereign people” cease to exist and become a multiplicity of individuals with their original natural rights, sovereignty itself has surely been destroyed. In this instance, Rousseau has saved the principle of inalienability, but at the cost of making the usurper an effective destroyer of sovereignty.

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One is driven to the recurrent conclusion that Rousseau’s general doctrine of sovereignty is too rich in the insights it affords to be consistent in its implications.

Notes 1

These basic attributes of sovereignty are introduced in Chapter vii of Book I of The Social Contract and in the first few chapters of Book II, especially. Unless otherwise stated, the English translation of The Social Contract (hereinafter S.C.) used in this article is the edition of Everyman’s Library with an introduction by G. D. H. Cole (New York, 1955). I am grateful to my wife for assistance in referring certain key words back to the original French. 2 On this question, one article worth looking at is A. Ranney’s “Postlude to the Epilogue,” Journal of Politics, Vol. XXXIII, No. 3 (August, 1961). Ranney argues that a model of ideal democracy should perhaps have the power to destroy its own democratic character. The sovereign people must be able to abdicate their sovereignty. 3 S.C., III, chap. iii, p. 252. 4 Ibid., II, chap. vi, p. 30. The same position was later taken by J. Austin (The Province of Jurisprudence Defined, H. L. A. Hart (ed.), [New York, 1954], Lecture XXVIII). C. K. Allen briefly contrasts an aspect of this Austinian position with the position taken by Blackstone (C. K. Allen, Law in the Making [New York: Oxford University Press, 1961 edition], p. 3). A more recent article with some useful insights is Brian Tierney’s “The Prince is Not Bound by the Laws: Accursius and the Origins of the Modern State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, V, No. 4 (July, 1963), pp. 378– 400. 5 S.C., II, chap. vii, pp. 33–34. 6 Lord Edward Dalberg Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity.” An Address Delivered to the Members of the Bridgnorth Institute, Feb. 26, 1877. 7 Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (first published in 1944; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 52. 8 Ibid. 9 Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (first published in 1952; London: Heinemann Group Mercury Books, 1961 reprint), p. 43. 10 Ibid. 11 See, especially, S.C., II, chap. iii, pp. 22–24. 12 Ibid., II, chap. vi, p. 31. 13 This way of putting it is, in fact, Austin’s (see J. Austin, op. cit., Lecture VI, p. 254). 14 See Michels, Political Parties (first published in 1915; New York: Dover Publications, 1959 reprint), p. 215. 15 A different interpretation of some interest is T. Waldman’s “Rousseau on the General Will and the Legislator,” Political Studies, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (October, 1960). See also James I. McAdam, “Rousseau and the Friends of Despotism,” Ethics, Vol. LXXIV, No. 1 (October, 1963).

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S.C., IV, chap. ii, p. 87. Ibid., p. 88. 18 Ibid., I, chap. vi, p. 13. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., IV, chap. ii, p. 88. 21 Ibid., I, chap. vi, p. 12. 22 Ibid., p. 13. 23 “There is a circle around every individual human being which no government . . . ought to be permitted to overstep; there is a part of the life of every person who has come to years of discretion, within which the individuality of that person ought to reign uncontrolled either by any other individual or by the public collectivity” (see Mill, Principles of Political Economy [5th London ed.], p. 560). The distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding acts is, of course, discussed more explicitly in On Liberty. “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant . . . Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (taken from Everyman’s edition [Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government], pp. 95–96; 72–73). 24 Mill argues that a contract to restrict one’s freedom is morally invalid because freedom to make oneself unfree is not consistent with freedom (see On Liberty, pp. 157–158; see also J. C. Rees, Mill and His Early Critics, [New York: Humanities Press], p. 59). 25 Locke, Of Civil Government (Blackwell’s edition, 1956), chapter vii, pp. 43– 45, pars. 87–89. 26 Utilitarianism, chap. iv. 27 S.C., II, chapter i. See C. E. Vaughan, The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau II, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1915), p. 40. Although the following five quotations have been referred back to the original, the actual translation that I have preferred to retain is that of William T. Jones, Masters of Political Thought, Vol. II (London: George G. Harrap, 1960 reprint). In the case of these five quotations, Jones’s translation is perhaps to be preferred to that of Everyman’s. However, the page reference for Everyman’s edition as regards this particular quotation is p. 20. 28 Vaughan, op. cit., II, chapter iv, pp. 34 –35; Everyman’s edition, p. 24. 29 Vaughan, III, chap. i, pp. 64–65; Everyman’s edition, p. 47 (emphasis mine). 30 “It consists, as we have seen, in the general will, and will is not something which can be represented,” Vaughan, III, chapter xv, pp. 94–98; Everyman’s edition, pp. 77–80. 31 Vaughan, III, chap. I, pp. 64– 65; Everyman’s edition, pp. 46– 47. 32 Locke, Of Civil Government, J. W. Gough (ed.), (Blackwell edition, 1957), chapter xiii, pp. 75–76, par. 149 (italics added). The proviso of ultimate control by the people makes the transfer fall short of alienation. 33 S.C., II, chapter ii, p. 21. 34 “The [general] will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law . . . The acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of 17

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Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law” (S.C., II, chapter ii, p. 21). 35 Burke, Speech to Electors of Bristol, 1774 (Boston edition, 1865–1867), II, pp. 96–97. 36 S.C., III, chapter xv, p. 78. 37 Mayo, An Introduction to Democratic Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 88–89. In England, public debate on the role of an M.P. is recurrent. The most famous recent case is perhaps that of Nigel Nicolson who was virtually disowned by his constituency for his reservations about Eden’s Suez venture. The idea of “instructing” an M.P. was commoner before 1832—but the franchise was, of course, narrower. In 1793, a formula was adopted in the United States legitimizing the instruction of United States senators by the state legislatures which were then appointing them—senators are “hereby instructed, and the Representative requested.” The Electoral College in the United States system today is in effect instructed. In Canada, the instrument of controlling an M.P. through a signed resignation is illegal. The Weimar Constitution was among the most specific constitutions anywhere on this point. It said: “They [the representatives] are subject to their conscience only and not bound by instructions.” For Senator John F. Kennedy, “the true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people . . . faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses” (Profiles in Courage [New York: Cardinal Editions, 1960], p. 208). 38 Burke, op. cit. Few democrats today would subscribe to a theory of “government by public opinion polls.” 39 Michels, op. cit., p. 216. 40 Ibid. 41 S.C., III, chapter x, p. 71. 42 Ibid. 43 Locke, op. cit., p. 75. 44 It must, however, be remembered that Locke is not consistent on this. He does sometimes allow for the possibility of a government depriving the community of its rights. He also allows for the possibility of a government depriving individuals of their rights. What is least certain is whether he allows for the possibility of the community depriving individuals of those rights which were not alienated to the community. 45 S.C., III, chapter xi, p. 73. 46 Ibid., I, chapter vi, p. 13. 47 Ibid.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN GANDHI, MARX AND THE WARRIOR TRADITION IN AFRICA In the struggle for equality and liberation in this century, three forms of resistance have been particularly important in Eastern and Southern Africa. One form, rooted in indigenous culture, has sought comfort in African symbols and drawn inspiration from African heroes. This is the form of resistance associated with the warrior tradition. The second form of struggle has been partly inspired by the whole tradition of passive resistance, as dramatized by the techniques used by Mohandas Gandhi against White racism in South Africa and British imperialism in India. The third form of struggle has been inspired by the Marxist revolutionary tradition and has thus far found its most successful fulfillment in the former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique, GuineaBissau, and Angola. The warrior tradition was at play in some of the very earliest instances of resistance against the penetration of the White man in South Africa. These early struggles are now sometimes referred to as cases of “primary resistance.” Partly, as a result of the stimulation recently provided by the Dar es Salaam School of African History, increased attention is paid to this phrase of “primary resistance,” when Africa first had to confront Western intrusion. The argument of scholars like Terrence Ranger, for Eastern Africa, and Michael Crowder, for Western Africa, identifies those early armed challenges by Africans against colonial rule as the very origins of modern nationalism in the continent.1 By this argument, Tanzania’s ruling party and its function as a liberating force has for its ancestry both the Maji Maji and the pre-Maji Maji rebellions against German rule from the 1800s onwards. African struggles against colonial rule did not begin with modern political parties and Western trained intellectuals; it originated in those early “primary resisters” with their spears poised against Western military technology.

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I am, basically, in sympathy with the Dar es Salaam School of African Historiography, but with one important difference. While the Dar es Salaam historiography regards the Nkrumah’s and Nyerere’s of modern Africa as the true heirs of those primary resisters, I believe that it is much more the liberation fighters in Southern Africa that have really carried the mantle of the original primary resisters. But it is more the fighters in the field rather than the Westernized African leaders who have shown affinity with Africa’s ancestral combat culture. The rural recruits into liberation movements have often been steeped in traditional norms and perspectives. Their concepts of valor and honor, and their conceptions of solidarity and loyalty have all been partly conditioned by important aspects of African culture. That is one major reason why “tribalism” or ethnicity has been so resistant among liberation fighters in Southern Africa, especially in Angola and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). Historians have used the term “primary resistance” chronologically, applying it to the earliest times of confrontation between the indigenous fighter and the foreign intruder. But it is at least as defensible to use the term “primary resistance” in a cultural rather than a chronological sense. In this cultural meaning, primary resistance could be taking place today— provided it is a form of resistance which draws its “primary inspiration” from indigenous symbols and values. The Mau Mau insurrection was, therefore, partly a case of primary resistance in this cultural sense— although, chronologically, it took place almost on the eve of Kenya’s independence. Similarly, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was nearer to being an instance of primary resistance in its use of indigenous values and symbols than was the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). This was partly because UNITA was much more of a rural movement than MPLA. If we accept this cultural sense of “primary” we may then relate the warrior tradition to primary resistance, the Gandhian tradition to passive resistance, and the Marxist tradition to revolutionary resistance. In this chapter, we have to note that primary resistance is connected with masculinity, passive resistance with feminine techniques, and revolutionary resistance with both. The warrior tradition once again asserts its manliness, Mahatma Gandhi displays feminine virtues, and Karl Marx becomes a prophet of androgyny or sexual parity. Let us examine these three dimensions. We relate them to the African struggle for social justice in its wider implications.

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Masculine Warriorhood and Primary Resistance In the rebellion against British rule, and white settler occupation of African land, in Kenya, the Mau Mau Movement constituted the first major resurrection of the warrior tradition in recent East African history. The Kikuyu mobilized themselves into armed rebellion against European settlerdom. The Kikuyu fighters in the forests and hills of the Aberdares became for a while true heirs of that heritage of primary resistance. The Kikuyu went back to reactivate primeval symbolism and resurrect important elements of traditional Kikuyu virtues as a basis for establishing a military solidarity against the colonial presence in Kenya. The connection between martial symbolism and sexual symbolism remains a major aspect of the oath of allegiance demanded from the Mau Mau warriors. We have details of Batuni oath. The new warrior initiate was first stripped naked and seated facing the oath administrator. Then a long strip of goat’s meat was placed around the new initiate’s neck. One end of that strip lay across the chest of the naked man. The others dropped down his back around his waist several times, and then between his legs. The new initiate was ordered to hold this end of the goat’s meat up against his penis. On the floor were the two eyes of an uncastrated he-goat, called a “Kihei.” The word itself meant “uncircumcised youth,” but paradoxically it was used during the Mau Mau insurrection to refer to a man who had the Batuni oath. The oath itself did not demand total sexual abstinence, but forbade the use of prostitutes and the seduction of “other men’s women.” These particular prohibitions were to discourage the dangers of betrayal by temporary sexual companions, such as prostitutes. They were also designed to discourage the warriors from fighting with each other over women. But once the Mau Mau fighters were in the forests, total sexual abstinence was demanded among some groups. And in some of the detention camps, where the possibility of having intercourse with women detainees was possible, special codes were self-imposed by the detainees against sexual relations while they were all behind bars.2 The Mau Mau did use aspects of that old discipline which Shaka had demanded of his own warriors, but the movement did not push the particular discipline to total extremes. There were other instances in the Mau Mau Movement linking sexual with martial symbolism, including the use of menstrual blood for certain oath-taking ceremonies in at least some sections of the movement. What was happening was an attempt to provide a sense of sacred awe to counter-balance belief in the invincibility of the White man, which the colonial experience had so far consolidated. Let us

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remind ourselves that the warrior tradition earlier in the century had been badly damaged by two terrors that had come with the White man: the terror of gunfire and the terror of hellfire. The terror of gunfire was what the new military technology of the White man was all about. Those early primary resisters against the European intrusion discovered before long the overwhelming superiority of the cannon versus the spear, the gun versus the bow and arrow. In the words of the English writer Hilaire Belloc, in his poem “The Modern Traveller”: Whatever happens we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not . . .3

European technology soon overrode and demoralized the resisters. The new terror of gunfire initiated the decline in the warrior tradition. The decline was reinforced by the terror of hellfire, which came with Christianity. Death for millions of Africans was now given a new meaning. The missionaries of the new religious order cut down African ancestors to size, denouncing them as insignificant. A new god was proclaimed. A new fear of damnation was, in tandem, propounded. Some African Christians, like many other Christians before them, accepted the concept of hellfire at its face value. Others equated it simply with the threat of damnation after death. Whatever interpretation, literal or symbolic, the new religion had come with a new system of punishment and rewards. The power of all indigenous beliefs began to decline; the authority of the village medicine man was struggling against the challenges of local missionary schools. The old order was partially disintegrating, and so too was the warrior tradition. Movements like that of Mau Mau had to invent new forms of ritualized damnation in order to outweigh the combined demasculating effect of the fear of the White man’s gunfire and the Christian priest’s hellfire. Christianity had, in addition, damaged the warrior tradition in Africa by proclaiming the ethic of turning the other cheek.4 Meekness was regarded as a virtue, even for otherwise virile and valiant men. A version of Christianity which had hardly even been truly implemented in Europe, and which had in part become anachronistic on its home ground, was now bequeathed to African school children and peasants. The god of love was mobilized behind the task of “imperial pacification.” The message of Christianity discouraged Africans not only from fighting each other, but also from resisting the colonial presence. Again, a movement like Mau Mau had to help Kikuyu Christians transcend the condition of turning the other cheek as well as overcome the terror of external Christian damnation. The oaths of Mau Mau that

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combined sexual symbolism with militant commitment were part of the process of countering the demasculating consequences of the colonial experience. The British militarily defeated the Mau Mau Movement, but it was clearly a victory of the vanquished. The political triumph went to the African people, even though the colonial people retained the military successes. The stranglehold of the White settlers on Kenya was at last broken and before long Kenya was preparing for independence. The Mau Mau Movement was also the first great African liberation movement of the modern period. All the efforts made in Southern Africa to consolidate resistance, to organize sabotage and seek to dispel White power and privilege had for their heroic ancestry that band of fighters in the Aberdare forest of Kenya. The warrior tradition was at least temporarily revived at a critical moment in Kenya’s history. The revival of primordial symbolism which was so striking in the history of Mau Mau has also been discerned in more subtle forms in the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe, especially after Ian Smith unilaterally declared its “independence” in 1965. In Zimbabwe, as in the case of Mau Mau, a return to cultural ancestry also included a return to aspects of indigenous religion. Furthermore, hostility to Christianity reared its hand among the liberation fighters. In the rural areas, internecine fighting among the rival nationalist parties included the burning of churches, and many young men had re-established contact with the experience of spirit possession.5 Basil Davidson has also drawn our attention to the fact that an oath taken by guerrillas in the names of the great spirits of Chaminuka and Nehanda forms part of a “truly impressive” continuity.6 Nathan Shamuyarira, the Zimbabwean nationalist, has also observed the efforts that were often made to give meaning to the Zimbabwean struggle through the utilization of the African heritage itself. In rural areas, meetings become political gatherings and more . . . the past heritage was revived through prayers and traditional singing, ancestral spirits were evoked to guide and lead the new nation. Christianity and civilization took a back seat and new forms of worship and new attitudes were thrust forward dramatically . . . the spirit pervading the meetings was African and the desire was to put the twentieth century in the African context.7

A grandson of a rebel leader killed in 1897 invoked the memory of Chaminuka, the great prophet who provided the focus of Shona solidarity in the nineteenth century. A survivor of the 1896–1899 rebellion met

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Joshua Nkomo, former fierce rival of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe at the airport, on arrival back home from abroad in 1962. He presented him with a spirit axe to symbolize the martial succession, and the transmission of the warrior torch.8 In their campaign in northern parts of Zimbabwe, the liberation fighters were reportedly respectful of traditional beliefs and customs, and this helped the movement to build a more effective infrastructure of popular support. Some of the campaign zones were at times named after senior spirit mediums. Indeed, some of those mediums were known to operate from guerilla camps. The link between the warrior and the prophet was often permitted to persist in these movements. Manliness, valor, and some degree of devoutness went hand in hand with the spirit of modern liberation.

Feminized Warriorhood and Passive Resistance Almost inevitably, the strong connection between masculinity and warfare has resulted in a similar connection between kindliness and femininity. The example of Gandhi, which we mentioned earlier, is certainly a case in point. The great prophet of nonviolence found himself torn between serving as a father figure, and acting as a mother symbol. At a more personal level, Gandhi had played this second role for a young orphan girl named Manu. Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, had previously adopted the girl. On her deathbed, Kasturba had asked her husband to take her place as a mother to Manu. Gandhi took his role so seriously that he assumed the task of teaching the girl about womanhood, and watching her physical development and, later, actually sharing a bed with her as if Gandhi was another woman. The young woman’s memoirs captured his strong maternalism in Gandhi’s relationship with her when she entitled her book, Bapu, My Mother.9 Erikson points to a “persistent importance in Gandhi’s life on the theme of motherhood, both in the sense of a need to be a perfect and pure mother, and in the sense of a much less acknowledged need to be held and reassured, especially at the time of his infinite loneliness.”10 But to the extent that the loneliness might have been aggravated by a long period of sexual renunciation, we have in the story of Gandhi an illustration of the tense relationship between celibacy and masculinity, nonviolence and manliness. The same problem arises with regard to Christianity. Is Christianity, in the ultimate analysis, a feminine religion? Does the centrality of forgiveness make the Christian God less manly than the Jewish Jehovah?

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Is the transition from Old Testament to the New Testament a process of the de-masculation of God? Does the centrality of love as a divine attribute make the Christian God less manly than Islam’s Allah? Before he was assassinated and became a Black martyr, Martin Luther King was sometimes denounced by some of his more militant Black critics as “Martin Luther Queen.”11 What we have, in these questions, is the prior question of whether certain symbols are counter-phallic. Are there aspects of Christian imagery which go almost purposefully against phallic symbols without being sexually neutral? It may have started with the whole concept of a virgin birth. Intercourse was not necessary to produce Mary’s baby boy. And yet the very insistence that the conception of the baby was “immaculate,” the very consciousness of virginity as the basis of this supreme miracle is indeed counter-phallic. God did not really have to send His son as His own price for forgiving the human race. And even if he did send His son, the son did not have to be born at all. And if He had to be born, and have a human mother, why not also have a human father? The two natures of Jesus Christ on earth could still have been maintained without the notion of a virgin birth, but the basic counter-phallicism of Christian mythology starts precisely with the virgin birth. Later on, the emphasis on celibacy for the priests of the church, prior to the reformation, was a continuation of the counter-phallic tradition. The coming of the Christian religion in Africa has included these counterphallic themes. To a certain extent, Christianity has softened African masculinity. Some might even argue that it initiated a process of demasculation. The movement of “pacification,” which imperialist powers helped to initiate, reduced tribal confrontations. The idea of loving thy neighbor, though still painfully unfulfilled in Africa, denuded warfare of some of its previous mystique. Turn the other cheek! This was indeed the most feminine imperative of them all. Only a woman turned the other cheek upon being punished by her man. And even a woman attempted at times to shield herself with her arms. But the principle of turning the other check was part of the feminine baggage that came with Christianity. Then there was celibacy for those who entered holy orders, and monogamy for everybody else. Sexual richness which had been part of Africa before the onslaught of neo-Victorian prudery was now to be drastically circumscribed. The missionary schools were the great champions of a new prudish civilization. Suitably “modest” uniforms were devised for girl students. Suitably “smart” uniforms came into being for the boy as well. The boys and girls were usually placed in separate

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schools. Visits across the sexual divide were strictly discouraged, and/or rigidly controlled. Most African forms of dances were abolished altogether, for their movements were interpreted as “sinful.” Phallic dances retreated before the accusing finger of the new self-righteous creed. Behind it all was the virgin birth of the Son of God, when the male was dispensable. Behind it all was also the celibate life of Jesus, when female sexual companionship was dispensable. The counter-phallic stream of Christianity had begun to erode the banks of Africa’s masculinity. And yet Gandhism was clearly the exercise of turning the other cheek. It was not even a case of non-violence—broadly defined. Gandhism was a philosophy of non-violent resistance. The idea was not to accept injustice meekly, but to fight it non-violently. It was between 1906 and 1908 that a civil disobedience campaign was launched in South Africa under the leadership of Gandhi, directed against laws in the Transvaal that required Indians to carry registration certificates. The movement did have an impact on African opinion in South Africa. Leo Kuper has reminded us of a series of Gandhian protest experiments in South Africa in those early years. African women in Bloemfontein used the technique of civil disobedience in 1913 in their protests against the extension of Pass Laws to them by municipalities in the Orange Free State. The women’s movement spread to other towns, and continued for a few years. In 1919, the African National Congress started experimenting with these techniques in Johannesburg. In 1930, the Communist Party in Durban also went “Gandhian.” In 1946, the Indians in South Africa resisted in a similar way in protest against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representative Act. Meanwhile the struggle in India itself was helping to give Gandhian tactics global visibility, and capturing the imagination of politically conscious Blacks in South Africa—as well as elsewhere. The South African campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws (which was passed in 1952) used Gandhian techniques of civil disobedience. But in the very wake of such tactics, the system in South Africa was closing up and getting more intolerant. The Gandhian resistance in South Africa, in the early 1950s, was an alliance between Blacks and Indians in the Union. It was in July 1951 that African and Indian Congresses and the Franchise Action Council of the Coloreds appointed a Joint Planning Council. The aim was to coordinate the effects of Africans, Indians, and colored peoples in a mass campaign for the repeal of the Pass Laws, the Group Areas Act on racial segregation, the Separate Representation of Voters Act which was moving in the direction of further curtailment of the political rights of Coloreds, and the Bantu Authorities Act seeking to ensure a re-tribalization of Africans. The

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campaign was successful in terms of the degree of involvement of the three groups, but it was a failure in terms of its aims. The failure was even more significant as an indicator of the limits of Gandhism and the implications of this for specific socialization in Africa at-large. Meanwhile strategies of resistance to racial domination in South Africa were regionalist, rather than purely national. In September 1958, further north, there had come into being a movement called the Pan African Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA). The aim of the organization was to coordinate nationalistic movements mainly in British East and Central Africa and ensure periodic consultations on strategy and methods of agitation for self-government. At that time, nationalism in British Africa was still significantly under the influence of Gandhism. Yet today, Southern Africa especially presents a mixture of domestic and international violence related to the wider international environment. Violence in Southern Africa has been inter-racial, White against Black, and intra-racial, Black against Black. Angola, especially after April 1974, witnessed a particularly acute case of Black intra-racial violence. The Angolan tragedy illustrates the fragility of the sense of nationhood in the country. It indeed illustrated how easily violence against colonialism could then lead to an acute primary struggle for power among Black nationalists themselves. Zimbabwe has too witnessed inter-racial violence, Black against White, as well as periodic eruptions of internecine Black violence. The contemporary political morality in Black Africa is supportive of anti-colonial violence and, to a large extent, of violence directed against domestic White minority rule. But this supportive African attitude towards inter-racial violence in the name of national liberation is a relatively recent development. The earlier phases of African nationalism showed a strong African distrust of violence as a strategy of liberation. In this regard, the ideological history of the first President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, is particularly telling. Fergus Macpherson, Kaunda’s biographer, reminds us that Kaunda’s early nationalistic ideas were greatly influenced by Mohandas Gandhi. Kaunda saw that violence was indeed a tempting strategy for those who were denied alternative means of correcting injustices. But Kaunda insisted on the need for passive resistance, Satyagraha: “I could not lend myself to take part in any (violent) campaigns. I reject absolutely violence in any of its forms as a solution to our problem.”12 Although Kaunda was not basically a philosopher, he did place his attachment to nonviolence in the context of a broader philosophical view of the world. Curiously enough, Kaunda seemed to believe that there was

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something unnatural in being non-violent. He did not share the romanticism which saw man as being essentially peaceful. On the contrary, Kaunda felt that “Man, just like any other animal, is violent.”13 Like the late Martin Luther King, Jr., of the United States, Kaunda virtually saw Gandhi as playing Lenin to Jesus’s Marx. Just as Lenin had operationalized the teachings of Marx in a concrete political situation, so had Gandhi operationalized the teachings of Jesus and converted them into a political strategy. The theme of Gandhism as a politicalization of the love-ethic of Jesus recurs in Kaunda’s intellectual growth. This is related to the conversion of Kenneth Kaunda—“Gandhi and Jesus had a special magnetism for the twenty-four-year-old Kaunda. He saw them as realists with a vision, and rejected the popular notion that this was a contradiction in terms.”14 Alice Lenshina’s Lumpa Church posed the most serious domestic challenge to Kaunda’s “non-violence” soon after the attainment of selfgovernment while liberation movements in “Portuguese Africa,” and the implication of Ian Smith’s U.D.I., later exposed external challenge to Kaunda’s legacy of Gandhism. Alice was one woman who served as prophetess to new religious warriors in Zambia.15 Macpherson discusses the struggle against the Lumpa Church, Kaunda’s initial demand for Alice Lenshina “dead or alive,” and his more conciliatory attitude later on. But Kaunda’s biographer does not fully understand this Lenshina shock to Kaunda’s universe of values. He does not even directly relate it to Kaunda’s concept of the state which is part Weberian, part Marxist, part Christian, and part Gandhian. In Kaunda’s words, cited by Macpherson: Gandhi tried to organize things in such a way that the state must eventually wither away—for the whole state machinery has in it the seeds of violence—when man would do to others what he would like them to do to him.16

In this short quotation from Kaunda, we have the Marxist concept of the state as an instrument of class oppression; we have Weber’s idea that the state exercises a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force; we have Gandhi’s distrust of the state in favor of village industry and general decentralization; we have the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state and its replacement with a classless society; and we have Jesus’s Golden Rule as something which can only be adequately realized when Marx’s dream of a classless society is finally brought to fruition.

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As Head of State, Kaunda was inevitably in charge of something that had the seeds of violence. Alice Lenshina shocked Kaunda into experiencing what state-management was all about. By 1975, Kenneth Kaunda seemed to be in a diplomatic alliance with Prime Minister Vorster of South Africa in pursuit of a constitutional resettlement of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The President of Zambia was even prepared to meet and have discussions with the prime minister of the most racist regime in Africa’s history. The word détente had entered the political vocabulary of Southern Africa, affirming the need for White and Black to live together in relative peace. Prime Minister Vorster was the chief architect of the principle of détente, and Kenneth Kaunda was perhaps his most sensational convert. Was Kaunda returning to Gandhism? Had he rediscovered Satyagraha, or “Soul Force,” which Mohandas Gandhi had espoused as an alternative to violent resistance? If Kaunda had rediscovered Mahatma Gandhi through John Vorster, history had once again indulged its own mischievous sense of humor. It was, after-all, in South Africa, as we have noted, that Gandhi had first experimented with Satyagraha much earlier in the twentieth century. We know that within South Africa, the Gandhian experiment failed. Kenneth Kaunda later became one of Mahatma’s most enthusiastic Black converts. Kaunda retreated from Satyagraha partly in the face of domestic violence in Zambia after independence, and partly in response to hardening attitudes in Southern Africa as a whole. The question arising in the 1970s was whether a new Gandhian mood was in the air in the region, signifying a readiness to try alternative pressures on the remaining racist regimes in Southern Africa, and to let “soul force” destroy apartheid in the fullness of time. In reality, the chances of a peaceful transition to social justice in South Africa without additional violence were remote. The region needed Gandhians, Warriors and Radical Guerrillas before racial equality could finally prevail. But of even longer-term consequences than inter-racial violence were the cleavages of Black against Black. These were (and still are) the most obstinate. They have surely taxed the ingenuity of Africa to find both preventive and curative measures. Curbing violence, as a form of political pathology, will need more than traditional witchdoctors or modern psychiatrists. It will need a long but vital process of creating self-discipline and establishing self-policing techniques to govern Africa’s relations with itself.

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In this quest for new approaches to problems of violence, Kenneth Kaunda’s name looms large. More a strategist than a theoretician, more a statesman than a philosopher, Kenneth Kaunda gropes for answers about some of the most basic questions of man’s relations with man. Kaunda is a nationalist, who is ready to give the oppressor the benefit of the doubt; he is a humanist, capable of supporting armed and violent insurrection; he is a world figure, who is capable of being concerned about a village; he is a political warrior, who is capable of bursting into tears. Yet in those very tears, we are back to feminine symbolism in culture. The convert to Gandhism has retained the supremely feminine prerogative of unabashed capitulation to tears on relatively casual emotional stimulus. The sublimated maternalism of Gandhi has found its African counterpart in Kenneth Kaunda.

Androgynous Warriorhood and Revolutionary Resistance It is with the intrusion of modern revolutionary ideas in Southern Africa that androgynous warrior-hood became at last a serious aspiration for some of the liberation movements. We define androgynous warriorhood as a principle which seeks to end masculine monopoly of the skills of war. Historically, before total European control was established, Angola had indeed known strong women with warrior skills, from a warrior queen to peasant fighters. But, on balance, the principle of masculine monopoly of the war-machine was the order of the day in Angola (as elsewhere). Perhaps more fascinating was the Dahomean experience with women fighters, especially in the nineteenth century. It started earlier when the Kings of Dahomey had, at times, conscripted some of their wives as armed palace guards, especially in times of emergency. In the nineteenth century, the practice became institutionalized. After a dynastic coup in 1818, the royal pretender, King Gezo, selected (from among non-Dahomean captive girls) a corps of fighters to defend him in case of further trouble. These women had certain privileges as his soldiers and his wives, and their loyalty to the king was on the whole strengthened by their vested interest in his survival. King Gezo died in 1858. In the years that followed, recruitment into the Amazon’s Corps was no longer restricted to captive girls; it was extended to Dahomean women, some of whom came from high-ranking families. Another significant change took place. The Amazons, in time, became not merely the monarch’s civil guard, but important units in the Dahomean army as well. From about the 1840s onwards, they started getting involved

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in foreign wars, and soon earned a reputation as particularly ferocious and often cruel fighters. Psychological explanations of their ferocity have included the sexual frustrations that emanated from their being all the wives of a single man, the king. These Female soldiers had all the privileges of important royal wives; they lived in the royal palaces, they had their food prepared for them; anyone who met them on the roads had to make way for them. They had also to obey the regulations, which governed the lives of the King’s wives. The most onerous of these was that, although they could only enjoy the favors of their royal spouse infrequently, they were forbidden any relations with other men. Any deviation from this rule was punishable by death. No doubt this enforced state of chastity goes a good deal towards explaining their ferocity.17

For much of the nineteenth century, the “standing army” of Dahomey had regular male and female units. At its peak, in an emergency, the size of the army rose-up to twelve thousand warriors, nearly half of whom were women. The Amazons of Dahomey were, however, destroyed as a frightening force by the French colonizers in 1892, and so too were the male units of the Dahomean army. One of the most dramatic experiments in androgynous warrior-hood anywhere in the world came abruptly to an end. And yet the Dahomean experiment was not an ideal instance of androgynous warrior-hood. First of all, the fighting units of men and women were kept separate. But even more fundamental was that the primacy of the male in the political system as a whole was not in question. The Amazons were, after all, the king’s wives. While the monarch could have more than four thousand wives at one time, a wife could enjoy the favors of another man only on pain of death. Androgyny as a negation of sexism cannot, therefore, be credited to the Dahomean experiment. As an ideological ideal, androgyny is a child of both Western liberalism and Western socialism. After all, both John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx championed the liberation of women in the nineteenth century. In much of colonial Africa, it was Western liberalism that began to influence events in the direction of greater equality for women. Girls were encouraged to go to school, polygamy was sometimes taxed by the colonial master, and female circumcision (where it was practiced) fell under the shadow of Christian and imperial disapproval. There is little

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doubt that in much of Africa, important new areas of feminist freedom were opened up by the imperial order itself. Yet warrior-hood, even under Western liberalism, continued to remain a preserve for the male. Could this military monopoly by men be reconciled with a genuine liberation of women? It is among the leftist regimes of Africa, especially those in former Portuguese colonies, that the principles of androgynous warrior-hood were seriously entertained. By the late 1960s, FRELIMO, in Mozambique, was using women in the struggle against the Portuguese. The radical nationalist thrust in Guinea-Bissau, under Amilcar Cabral, had too initiated similar experimentation. MPLA in Angola, as an initially urban movement, equally began to tap sophisticated urbanized female talent in ways which were less dramatic but still comparable to those which had once been used by the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Algeria in their war against the French. In the vivid words of Frantz Fanon, who shared the experience of fighting for Algerian resistance: Three meters ahead of you the police challenge a veiled woman who does not look particularly suspect. From the anguished expression of the unit leader you have guessed that she is carrying a bomb or a sack of grenades, bound to her body by a whole system of strings and straps. For the hands must be free, exhibited bare, humbly and abjectly presented to the soldiers so that they will look no further.18

But with the conversion of the veil into military camouflage, the enemy gradually became extra alerted. In the streets, one witnessed what became a commonplace spectacle of Algerian women glued to the wall, over whose bodies the famous magnetic detectors, the “frying pans” would be passed. Every veiled woman, every Algerian woman, became suspect. There was no discrimination. This was the period during which men, women, and children, the whole Algerian people, experienced at one and the same time their national vocation: the recasting of the new Algerian society.19 While Fanon may have been exaggerating, he certainly captured the androgynizing tendency of revolutionary resistance. Women gradually become radicalized. And if the revolutionary resistance had lasted long enough, the androgyny may have become a conscious morality and not merely a side effect of sustained struggle. Yet Marx and Engels, the patron saints of modern socialist revolutions, had drastically underestimated the relevance of military factors for the status of women in society. The two thinkers were such consistent

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economic determinists that they saw relations between men and women in primarily economic terms. They argued that because men controlled the means of production, women had as a result, become servants and serfs. In the words of Engels: Today, in the great majority of classes, the man has to be the earner, the breadwinner of the family, at least among the propertied classes, and this gives him a dominating position, which requires no special privileges. In the family, he is the bourgeois; the wife represents the proletariat.20

Engels assumed too readily that where women were effective economic producers, they attained high status. He thought “savages” and “barbarians” with economically active women, respected their women more than Western men respected Western women: That woman was the slave of man from the commencement of society is one of the most absurd notions that have come down to us from the period of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Woman occupied not only a free but also a highly respected position among all savages and all barbarians of the lower and middle stages and partly even of the upper stage . . . people whose women have to work much harder than we would consider proper often have far more real respect for women than our Europeans have for theirs. The social status of the lady of civilization, surrounded by sham homage and estranged from real work, is socially infinitely lower than that of the hard-working woman of barbarism. . .19

What Engels did not seem to realize is that it is possible for women to work hard and be economically productive and still enjoy low status in society. Kikuyu women work much harder than Western women. They are economically more productive in relation to their society than Western women in relation to their own. But it is far from self-evident that Kikuyu women enjoy higher social status than do their Western counterparts. Engels did see the coming of the patriarchal family as a major disaster for women. But how did men manage to control the means of production in the first place? Did they not first have to control the means of destruction, the instrument of violence? Was it not masculine superiority in the skills of physical coercion that titled the balance in the first place? I have more fully argued, elsewhere, in the essay on “Armed Kinsmen and the Origins of the State,” that it was military factors, rather than economic ones, which initially gave men control over the political system. Primacy in the means of destruction, rather than the ownership of the means of production, is the ultimate factor in the origins of sexism. This may not be neatly compatible with economic determinism, but it explains

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a wider range of societies. The economic role of women varies enormously in different societies, while the military role of woman is rather constant. Low status for women is almost universal. So is their limited military involvement. The subjection of women correlates much more neatly with the degree of their demilitarization than with the degree of their involvement in economic production. Twentieth century Marxists are perhaps a little more sensitized to the importance of controlling the means of destruction than Marx and Engels seem to have been, in spite of the Paris Commune of 1871. In the course of the First World War (WWI), Lenin hoped that if the fighting in Europe continued long enough the bourgeois regimes might have started to enlist women. Such enlistment could have helped to bring the revolution closer. Today the imperialist bourgeoisie militarizes not only the adults, but also the youth. Tomorrow it may proceed to militarize the women. To this we must say: All the better! Go ahead faster! The faster it goes, the nearer shall we be to the armed uprising against capitalism.22

Lenin then remembers a “certain bourgeois observer” of the Paris Commune who, writing to an English newspaper in May 1871, said: “If the French nation consisted entirely of women, what a terrible nation it would be.” Lenin himself went on to observe: Women, and children of thirteen and upwards, fought in the Paris Commune side by side with the men. Nor can it be different in the forthcoming battles for the bourgeoisie. The proletarian women will not look on passively while the well-armed bourgeoisie shoot down the poorly armed or unarmed workers. They will take arms as they did in 1871. . .”23

This is the revolutionary fervor which androgynous warrior-hood is made of. Leninist ideas had once penetrated such countries as Mozambique, Guinea, Angola, and Guinea Bissau. A major sexual revolution in African conditions may soon be under way if such ideas were to take root. And yet even in Lenin’s own country true androgyny as a refutation of sexism is far from a reality as yet. Russia has discovered that the liberation of the proletariat is easier than the liberation of Russian women. And Mozambique and Angola might also have discovered that national emancipation is an easier target than equality between the sexes, least of all on the battlefield.

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Conclusion We have sought to demonstrate that three forms of resistance—passive resistance, as championed by Mohandas Gandhi, primary resistance, as manifested in the warrior tradition, and revolutionary resistance, as embodied in the Marxist tradition—have been particularly important in Africa in the twentieth century. Mahatma Gandhi’s influence in Africa lasted mainly from the 1930s to 1940s. In the 1930s, the Indian Nationalist Movement was already being followed with close interest in other parts of the British Empire. Politically conscious young Africans, especially in West Africa, were already drawing inspiration from the struggle in the Indian sub-continent. By the 1940s, the African struggle itself was gathering momentum. Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) was toying with Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence campaigns and dreaming about translating them into what Nkrumah called “positive action” in his own fight against British rule. Nkrumah was aware that Gandhi had first used his technique in South Africa. Nkrumah was, therefore, somewhat convinced that what had worked against White racism in South Africa might also work against British colonialism elsewhere. Gandhian ideas, of course, helped influence Nkrumah’s approach to the struggle. In 1958, when Nkrumah hosted the all Africa Peoples conference in the newly independent Ghana, neo-Gandhism was still relatively popular in much of Africa. The Algerian National Liberation Front, then engaged in an armed insurrection against the French, had a hard time persuading the Accra conference to give their armed struggle legitimacy and support. In Southern Africa, the most distinguished and most explicit disciple of Gandhi was Kenneth Kaunda of what was then northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Kaunda has since then become reconciled to violence under certain circumstances. Nevertheless, his flirtation with the idea of détente with White-dominated South Africa was probably partly due to a residual neo-Gandhian faith that Kaunda had retained. The late Albert Luthuli’s belief in non-violence struggle against apartheid in South Africa was more a heritage of Christianity and the strategy of turning the other check than a product of conscious conversion to the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. Yet who was to say where Christianity ended and Gandhism began in a politically conscious African in the second half of the twentieth century? Since the 1960s, Gandhism has drastically declined in prestige and importance in much of Africa. In Angola and Guinea Bissau, the anticolonial struggle was gradually radicalized—and the revolutionary

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resistance came into being. In Angola, the triumph of the MPLA (with Russian and Cuban support) also signified the victory of revolutionary forms of struggle. These radical forms of resistance have been substantially influenced by Marxist tradition. It is true that Marx himself was more concerned with proletarian revolutions in industrialized countries. It was Lenin, early in the twentieth century, who came to address himself to the nature of imperialism. And it was Mao Tse-tung, Ché Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Frantz Fanon, and Amilcar Cabral who took the analysis further into the nature of struggling against imperialism. Karl Marx and his ideas concerning class struggle and the necessity for revolution influenced all these philosopher-soldiers in varying degrees. But affecting both passive and revolutionary resistance in Africa has been the resilience of primary resistance. We use the term here in the sense of struggle deeply imbued with aspects of indigenous military culture and African tradition generally. The colonial experience may have destroyed a large number of things in Africa, but many aspects of African culture have survived through it all. Colonialism was more successful in destroying organized African institutions than African values. It is true that the Westernized Africans have, by definition, lost a substantial part of their culture. But these are only a small minority in their societies. Among the masses, many traditional values and perspectives persist—including special definitions of such militarily relevant concepts as adulthood, fear, courage, discipline, honor, loyalty and enemy. When these norms are in a certain relationship with each other, and are sanctified by cultural ancestry and usage, they add up to at least part of the warrior tradition itself. But combat and resistance reveal more than the attributes of the two sides in a fight. They tell us more than the nature of the fight itself. Combat and resistance reveal an additional piece of information which touches upon something as old as the origins of the human species. More important perhaps than the tension between the nationalist and the imperialist, between the socialist and the capitalist, is the relationship between men and women. How wars are fought is partly a lesson on how men and women relate to each other on issues of power. Because of that the analysis in this essay has linked forms of resistance to forms of sexual arrangements and division of labor in society. The warrior tradition in Africa, in spite of such exceptions as the Amazons of Dahomey, is a self-consciously masculine tradition, preserving warriorhood for relatively youthful males and emphasizing such hard virtues of manliness as valor and physical endurance. Primary resistance, in this sense, is therefore, an undertaking overwhelmingly for men.

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Passive resistance may be undertaken by either men or women but its values are culturally defined as feminine. They include the softer virtues of non-violence, love, and on occasion, turning the other check. Passive resistance is in part a politicization of “sublimated maternalism.” Mohandas Gandhi has a “motherly” side to his personality, as we indicated. So perhaps does Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. It is with revolutionary resistance that androgyny as a refutation of sexist differentiation becomes at last a conscious aspiration. The term itself belongs more to women’s liberation than to socialist thought. But the desire to liberate women was probably as strong in the philosophy of Marx and Engels as it is among radical feminists today. The ideal towards which I believe we should move is best described by the term “androgyny.” This Ancient Greek word—from andro (male) and gyn (female)—defines a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes, and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned. Androgyny seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate.24

Has female participation in the skills of violence been excessively regarded as “inappropriate?” Has the role of men in war been too “rigidly assigned?” The militarization of women in Southern Africa has at best only just started. The legacy of the Amazons of Dahomey will perhaps be radicalized in the southern parts of the continent in the years ahead. If the warrior tradition in Southern Africa does get androgynized, a new dimension would be added to liberation itself. As colonies have gotten their independence, races their dignity, and classes their rights, the women have so far been passively awaiting their turn. But now it is time for change. In the words of a famous American musical “Annie, Get your Gun!”—for that is where power resides,25 or so old Chairman Mao once told us.

Notes 1 Consult especially T. O. Ranger, “Connexions between ‘Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa,” Part I and II, Journal of African History, Vol. IX, Nos. 3 & 4, (1968), pp. 437– 453; and pp. 631– 641. 2 Consult Karigo Munch, The Hard Core, (Richmond, BC, Canada: LSM Information Center, 1973), pp. 19, 22, 43; Don Barnett and Karari Njama, Mau Mau from Within, (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1966), and J. N. Kariuki, “Mau Mau” Detainee, (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).

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Hilaire Belloc, “The Modern Traveller,” 1898. Stavrianos links Belloc’s cynical observation and the literature of self-righteous power to Social Darwinism as an ideological movement. See L. S. Stavrianos, Man’s Past and Present: A Global History, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), pp. 270–273. 4 See Matthew, chapter 5 verses 38–39. 5 Reverend S. Madziyere “Heathen Practices in the Urban and Rural Parts of Marandellaz Area,” Themes in the Christian History of Central Africa, T. O. Ranger and John Weller (eds.), (London, 1975), pp. 76–82. I am greatly indebted to Professor Ranger for stimulation and for bibliographical guidance. 6 Basil Davidson, The Africans: An Entry to Cultural History, (London, 1969), p. 255. 7 N. S. Shamuyarira, Crisis in Rhodesia, (London, 1965), pp. 68–69. 8 Ibid. See also Ranger, “Connextions between ‘Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa,” Part II, op. cit., pp. 635–636. 9 Manubehn Gandhi, Bapu, My Mother, (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1949). 10 Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, op. cit., pp. 403– 404. 11 For Gandhi’s influence on King, consult, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1958), pp. 76–77. 12 Kenneth Kaunda and Colin Morris, Black Government, (Lusaka: United Society for Christian Literature, 1960). The emphasis is original. 13 See the journal, New Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1, (January 1963), p. 4. 14 Fergus Macpherson, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia: The Times and the Man, (Lusaka and London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 105. 15 Consult Andrew D. Roberts, “The Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina,” in Robert I. Rothberg and Ali A. Mazrui (eds.), Protest and Power in Black Africa, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 513–570. 16 See Macpherson, ibid., pp. 105–106. 17 David Ross, “Dahomey” in West African Resistance: The Military Response to Colonial Occupation, Michael Crowder (ed.), (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1971), p. 149. 18 Frantz Fanon, Studies in a Dying Colonialism, translated from the French by Haakon Chevalier, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1965), pp. 61– 62. 19 Ibid. 20 Frederick Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” (1884), Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 510. 21 Ibid., pp. 489– 490. 22 V. I. Lenin, “War Programme of Proletarian Revolution” (1916), Selected Works, Vol. I, (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960), pp. 820– 821. 23 Ibid. 24 Carolyn G. Heilburn, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1974), p. x. Consult also Linda Jenness (ed.), Feminism and Socialism, (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972) and Alfred G. Meyer, Marxism and

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the Women’s Movement, (Mimeo), Department of Political Science, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 25 In the Musical “Annie, Get Your Gun” the woman could not be both a good shot and attractive to the man she loved. So she deliberately disguised her firing skills in order to win his love. In real life, Annie should retain her fire power—if she wants liberation.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN BLACK LIBERATION: THOMAS JEFFERSON, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND W. E. B. DU BOIS Contradictory aspects of American political and constitutional experience, particularly its early leaders, have inspired Africans. Let us compare the African impact of Jefferson and Lincoln. An important part which Jefferson has always symbolized in African political thought is a belief in national self-determination, partly because of his role in the American Declaration of Independence. Lincoln, on the other hand, has symbolized national unity when he fought to prevent secession limits to self-determination. It is as if Jefferson proclaimed in favor of national selfdetermination and Lincoln against separatist self-determination. While Jefferson spoke for independence of the country, Lincoln aborted the southern bid for a separate identity. Both of these lessons were embraced by Africa. Not all African admirers of Abraham Lincoln realized how much of the baggage of racism he still carried.1 Not all African admirers of Thomas Jefferson realized how much of a slave owner he was.2 Africa witnessed a militant struggle for independence from colonial rule along with an uncompromising hostility to regional or ethnic separatists. So both the Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s “In Defense of the Union” have become part of African political predispositions since independence. In Nigeria, for example, Azikiwe, who was American-educated, quite often literally used Jeffersonian rhetoric and the language of Jeffersonian ideas.3 Then, after independence, Yakubu Gowon came to play the role of an anti-secessionist Lincoln in Nigeria. He presided over the Nigerian Civil War from 1967 to 1970, just as Lincoln had presided over the American Civil War some 100 years earlier. In fact, Gowon had some of the same moral qualities that Americans, especially Americans in the North, often associate with Lincoln. Gowon made a transition, though not from the log cabin to the White House, but to the contrary, from the State House to the log cabin. He was not assassinated, but he was overthrown in a military

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coup in 1975. He then became the only head-of-state who fell from supreme power of a country as large as Nigeria to become a freshman undergraduate at a provincial British university. Literally a couple of years after he was being honored by Cambridge University in England as Nigeria’s Head of State, he was standing in line in a college cafeteria at Warwick University as a freshman. He struggled for his Bachelor’s degree and later worked his way to a well-earned Ph.D.4 If Gowon was not Nigeria’s Lincoln, then perhaps, Lincoln was America’s Gowon a hundred years in advance. Both saved their unions successfully, and the United States experience helped to legitimize Africa’s implacable opposition to secessionism. We can always point out that Americans had to do it at a high cost in human lives. Likewise, we Africans have had a series of civil wars to abort secessionism in Africa at a similarly high cost in human lives, but there is always the American precedent to lend Western legitimacy to what we are doing. Applause for national independence and opposition to regional selfdetermination continue to be at the center of Africa’s political ethos. The precedent was set by Jefferson, a symbol of independence, and by Lincoln, a symbol of national integrity. This, in turn, is part of a wider dialectic in the American experience which is relevant to us; the dialectic between a tendency for outer expansion and inner differentiation. To take up this first tendency, America has had a love affair with scale, which is part of its expansionist tendency, going back in its political manifestation to the manifest destiny of the nineteenth century and even earlier. If Jefferson and Lincoln are two White Americans whose impact had helped us understand the ideological romance between the Eden of Lost Innocence (Africa) and the Eden of Power (America), Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois were two African-Americans whose stories should help us understand the dilemmas between Blackness and Africanity in the experience of the Diaspora. It is to these two African-American personalities that we must now turn.

The Diaspora from Douglass to Du Bois5 One way of looking at the history of race-relations in the United States in the last two centuries is to examine two exceptionally gifted African Americans—Frederick Douglass, the Black intellectual giant of the nineteenth century, and W. E. B. Du Bois, the Black intellectual giant of the twentieth century. Both encapsulated many of the grand themes of race and society in the American experience across two centuries. What

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follows is a table that briefly presents similarities and differences of Douglas and Du Bois. The table also reflects the changing history of United States race relations. Table 15-1 FREDERIK DOUGLASS (1817–1895) The most famous African-American intellectual of the nineteenth century.

W. E. B. DU BOIS6 (1868–1963) Born three years after Douglass’s death. The most famous AfricanAmerican intellectual of the twentieth century.

Almost White in personal appearance but deeply committed to the mission of Blackness.

Almost White in personal appearance but deeply committed to the mission of Blackness.

Born into slavery but struggled for emancipation and achieved national fame.

In class terms, he was born relatively privileged, but in racial terms he felt deeply humiliated.

Primarily self-taught and selfeducated.

Went to some of the best schools of America—Fisk University in Nashville for his bachelor’s in 1888, and Harvard for his Ph.D. in 1895.

Became a towering figure in the abolitionist movement.

Became a towering figure in National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Niagara Movement, etc.

His slave birthday was uncertain. Most slaves did not know their birthdays. He wrote, in 1845, that this notion of childhood without a birthday had haunted him. “The White children could tell their age. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege.”7

Du Bois identified with an African where birthdays were uncertain. But Du Bois’s own birthday was a matter of full historical record.

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Product of the American descending miscegenation. His father probably the White owner of his Black mother. He argued that the “penalty of having a white father” was heavy. “A man who will enslave his own blood may not be safely relied on for magnanimity.” The mulatto child was “a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child.”8

Du Bois was also a product of descending miscegenation, but not under a system of slavery. Slaves had, after all, been emancipated in America in 1865.

Editor of the North Star (later Frederick Douglass’ paper) and other publications and several autobiographies.

Editor of Crisis and author of such influential books as The Souls of the Black Folk and The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study.

Frederick Douglass was ahead of his time as a male feminist. Just as Martin Luther had ignited the Protestant Reformation, Frederick Douglass believed that the world needed a gender reformation. In his words, “a revolution, the most strange, radical, and stupendous that the world has ever witnessed. It would equal and surpass the great struggle under Martin Luther for religious liberty.”9

Du Bois was much more conscious of class injustices than of gender injustices.

Douglass was Nilocentric rather than Pan-Africanist.

While Douglass moved closer to feminism, Du Bois moved closer to socialism.

Douglass was attracted to the romance of the Nile Valley as the African claim to civilization. But Douglass was not impressed by

Du Bois was increasingly PanAfricanist. A true founding father of PanAfrican Congress.

While Douglass saw similarities between racial oppression and gender oppression, Du Bois saw similarity between racial oppression and class oppres-sion.

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the rest of Africa as a basis of fraternity.

Douglass did not want AfricanAmericans to migrate to Africa.

Douglass was among the first African-American to hold government positions—Recorder of Deeds (1881–1886) and United States Minister and Consul General to Haiti (1889–1891).

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Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism— Blyden Trans-Saharan Pan-African Douglass and the Nile Valley—link with Egypt Trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism Du Bois and the Congress West Hemispheric (Trans-American) Global Pan-Africanism Du Bois did just that—He became a Ghanaian citizen in 1961, and is now buried in Ghana. Embraced Communist Party; passport cancelled; United States citizenship renounced.

“Forget you are African, remember you are Black.” Douglass was proud of his Blackness—but not of his Africanity. His condescension towards Africa was partly because he was opposed to the repatriation of AfricanAmericans back to Africa. At best, he believed in the blood of Africa rather than the soil of Africa. In 1858, he asked African-American would-be returnees to Africa: Why go to Africa when “we have an African nation in our bodies?” The blood of Africa flowed in his body—but he did not need to return to the soil of Africa. On December 19, 1872, he repeated his opposition to Black Zionism, to the return of African-Americans to Africa. In an editorial in his New National Era he wrote: “There is nothing in reason why anyone should leave this land of progress and enlightenment [the United States] and seek a home amid the death-dealing malaria of a barbarous continent.” And when comparing Africa with Europe he had argued in 1849: “That Africa is behind Europe in the pathway of improvement, it is madness, if nothing worse, to pretend to doubt.”10 Frederick Douglass often appeared as paradoxically both anti-African and pro-Black. In 1893, natives of Dahomey in West Africa were invited to the world’s Columbus Exposition in Chicago. Douglass was outraged that so-called “ignorant” Dahomeyans had been invited instead of the more sophisticated and cultivated AfricanAmericans. He thought that a “repulsive savage” had been invited to

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Chicago in order to “shame the Negro” and to “increase America’s contempt for the Negro intellect.”11 There was a part of Africa which Douglass often wanted to continue to claim for the Black race. In that sense, he was a precursor of Nilocentric Afrocentrists—like Ivan van Sertima and Molefi Kete Asante. Ancient Egypt was regarded as the fountain-head of African civilization in the same way in which Europeans have regarded ancient Greece as the fountain-head of Western Civilization. Douglass had sought to prevent African-Americans going back to Africa. Douglass had wanted to discourage the creation of Liberia. His assumptions that America was a more comfortable place to live in for African-Americans than most of Africa was probably less true in the nineteenth century than it became later in the twentieth century. Far from African Americans trekking back to Africa, in the twentieth century, there were more and more Africans from the African continent, sailing west to America. Frederick Douglass did not realize that Eve originated in Africa—that Africa, as the Garden of Eden, is where the human species began. If he had thought of Africa as mother, if he had conceptualized Africa as woman, his entire attitude towards the continent might have changed. For Douglass, the liberation of women was the noblest form of liberation. At the first Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, Douglass seconded and eloquently supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s controversial resolution demanding women’s suffrage. Was Stanton going too fast? Douglass argued “the power to choose rulers and make laws was the right by which all others could be secured.”12 He recalled 40 years later that the act of his support of the vote for women was one of the most noble of his entire life. “When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated abolition and emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.”13 Even on the day of his death, in the morning, he attended a profemale suffrage meeting of the National Council of Women. If only Frederick Douglass had realized that the very first of all women was an African, his feminism might have been the womb of his Pan-Africanism, his feminism would have reconciled him to Africa. Douglass and Du Bois would then have found one more sentiment in common, one more bond in a celebrated shared destiny.

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Notes 1

An overview of Lincoln’s views on race may be found in Hans L. Trefousse, “Lincoln and Race Relations,” in Charles M. Hubbard (ed.), Lincoln and His Contemporaries, (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), pp. 87–99. 2 For a discussion of Jefferson’s relationship to slavery and his views on race, consult Paul Finkelman, “Jefferson and Slavery,” in Peter S. Onuf (ed.), Jeffersonian Legacies, (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993), pp. 181–221. 3 On this Nigerian’s life and philosophy, consult, Agbafor Igwe, Zik: The Philosopher of Our Time, (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Pub. Co. Ltd., 1992). 4 See John P. Clarke, Yakubu Gowon: Faith in a United Nigeria, (London: Frank Cass, 1987), p. 45. 5 For many African-Americans, the connection and closeness to Black Africans is significant; one study with empirical evidence on this is Michael C. Thornton and Robert J. Taylor, “Black American Perceptions of Black Africans,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 11, 2 (April 1988), pp. 139–150. 6 On this towering figure, see Manning Marable, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, (Boston: Twayne, 1986). 7 Quoted in Waldo E. Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass, (Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 3. 8 Ibid., p. 4. 9 Ibid., p. 162. 10 Ibid., p. 208. 11 Ibid., p. 210. 12 Ibid., p. 147. 13 Ibid., p.148.

SECTION IV HUMAN CULTURE AND THE PHYSICAL HABITAT

CHAPTER SIXTEEN AFRICA’S TRADITIONAL RELIGIONS Let us begin with the main characteristics of African traditional religions. Almost every African indigenous religion is ethnic-specific. It may be the religion of the Dinka, or the Lugbara, or the Bakongo, or the Igbo. These particular sacred cultures are non-expansionist. The Bakongo do not seek to convert the Lugbara to the Kongolese religion, nor do the Igbo cross the continent from West to East to evangelize among the Dinka. Thirdly, African traditional religions are not Universalist—in the sense of aspiring to convert the human race. African religions are much more like Judaism, as the faith of a limited community, than like Christianity and Islam, with missionary ambitions of intercontinental scale. The Yoruba religion is a partial exception. There are Yoruba sacred beliefs which have survived from the early years of trans-Atlantic enslavement in such Latin American and Caribbean countries as Brazil and Cuba. In North America, there have also been more recent conversions to Yoruba religion among cultural Pan-Africanists in the African-American population. The Rastafari movement in Jamaica and Britain is a subculture of the African Diaspora, rather than an indigenous African religion—in spite of the fact that many Rastas have deified Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia into an African god. However, there are Rastas who have incorporated some African indigenous elements into their sub-culture. A fourth characteristic of a traditional African religion is that, in almost every case, it is a religion without a Holy Scripture. The majority of African ethnic cultures were unwritten before the arrival of Islam and Christianity. Until the coming of the Bible and the Qur’an, sub-Saharan Africa’s systems of worship and prayer were almost totally in the oral tradition. There were traditional verbal rituals which were memorized, but hardly any were available in writing. A related fifth characteristic of an African traditional religion is that each relies, almost entirely, on an indigenous African language. Islam in Africa (and the rest of the world) has an official language. Arabic is the language of the five compulsory prayers of Islam every day, the language

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of the Hajj ceremonies in Mecca, and the language of many other Muslim rituals. In much of the twentieth century, Christianity in Africa (and in much of the rest of the world) was a religion in translation. In spite of that fact, the Bible has been translated into only a few of the two thousand indigenous languages of the continent. However, African traditional religions have remained linguistically authentic in their hymns and invocations—relying entirely on the mother tongues of their worshippers. A sixth characteristic of an African indigenous religion is that it is not an either-or faith. A follower of the Luo religion can also proclaim to be a Christian. An adherent of the religion of the Basoga can also declare herself a Muslim. In contrast, an African Christian cannot also be a Muslim. These two Abrahamic religions are mutually exclusive. African traditional religions fell short of being called “religions” at all before the twentieth century. Followers of those religions did not separate spiritual and sacred matters from the rest of their cultures. In most cases, they did not have a separate word for “religion” distinguishing the sacred from the secular. Ethnic groups which had a long association with Islam had borrowed the Arabic word dini for religion generally. Westerners and Westernized Africans described African sacred beliefs as “nativistic” or “animist.” The most condescending of non-African observers used terms like “superstition” or “witchcraft” to refer to specific aspects of African traditional religions. Just as Westerners before the twentieth century regarded sub-Saharan Africans as a people without history and without philosophy, the same cultural condescension regarded Black Africans as a people without religion. As African cultures began to be better understood, and racial intolerance declined, concepts like “oral history,” “oral literature,” and “ethno-philosophy” were developed. It became more and more common to refer to African sacred beliefs among “traditional religions.” In the course of the second half of the twentieth century, African Christian priests and reverends started interpreting African indigenous beliefs with growing respect. The most successful was Cambridge-educated John Mbiti of Kenya whose book African Religions and Philosophy, first published in 1970, became a best-seller and was translated into several European and Asian languages. Professor Mbiti was a Protestant Minister in East Africa who later migrated to Switzerland and played various pastoral religious roles in that European country.

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Between Piety and Practice An early area of speculation and debate was whether African traditional religions had one God with different manifestations, or whether the indigenous religions were fundamentally polytheistic. A comparative analogy of one God with several manifestations is the Christian Trinity of God Himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, without making the religion polytheistic. In African traditional religions, the manifestations of the one God may include the deity of fertility, the deity of thunder, the deity of rain, the deity of the sun disk, and the deity of war. Polytheistic interpretations of African traditional religions often postulate a High God as supreme, but with lesser deities controlling other forces in the cosmology. With the coming of Christianity and Islam in Africa, monotheism as a belief system became increasingly prestigious. There was a risk that apologists of African traditional religions would be tempted to present African beliefs as being as close to monotheism as possible. The late Okot p’Bitek of Uganda eloquently criticized this tendency as an effort to “Christianize” African belief systems in pursuit of greater respectability. An indigenous concept like Jok, originally conceived as a High God among the Luo people living near Lake Victoria, was reinterpreted as “the Supreme Being” in almost monotheistic terms. Fortunately, African traditional religions were often resilient enough to resist large-scale “Abrahamization.” They managed to withstand revisions in pursuit of “religious correctness” by the standards of monotheistic Abrahamic religions. Particularly distant from Abrahamic conceptions is indigenous African readiness to bestow literal sacredness on a mountain like Kilimanjaro, or on the baobab tree, or on specific animals. In indigenous religions, there is no sharp distinction between the Creator and the created. God resides not just in Heaven, or the skies, but also in rivers, and lakes, in birds nesting on branches, and in the waves of the sea. What the English poet Alexander Pope saw in natives of the Americas, the so-called “Indians,” others have identified in the religions of the Maasai in Tanzania or the religions of pre-Christian Congolese: Lo, the poor native, whose untutor’d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul, proud science never taught to stray; Far as the solar walk, or milky way;

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Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n, Behind the cloud-topped hill, and humbler heav’n.1

Some African indigenous religions, like that of the Yoruba, may be much more sophisticated than Pope’s term “untutored mind” implies. But even among the Yoruba, God is often conceived as the soul of nature. Once again Alexander Pope has captured this pantheism best in the English language: All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul.2

Almost all African traditional religions also have myths of human origins (African versions of Genesis). Some ethnic cultures emphasize only the first human male (the founding father) such as Kintu, the ancestral father of the Baganda. Other groups revere the first human female (founding mother) such as Mumbi, the ancestral mother of the Kikuyu in today’s Kenya. Just as indigenous religions draw no sharp distinction between God and nature, they also do not sharply differentiate between the living and the dead. Professor John Mbiti has identified two stages of death: the stage of the living-dead, the sasa phase, and the stage of the terminally dead, the zamani phase. No one is completely dead for as long as he or she is actually remembered by human minds, or for as long as his or her blood still flows in the veins of the living. This second qualification empowers those who still have descendants among the living. It is widely believed that African interest in having many children is partly motivated by a desire to have descendants for as long as possible. This would ensure a form of immortality, which allows the parents to remain among the living-dead indefinitely. The living-dead become the terminally dead when they have no more descendants among the living, or are no longer remembered by human memories.3 Among the living in this world, African men on average die younger than African women. The males are physiologically less resistant to many diseases than are African females. Men are also more likely to get killed in armed conflicts, in violent crimes, or in mining accidents. On the other hand, the African male is biologically able to father many more children than the African female can give birth to. With multiple female partners, the African male can literally father several dozen children. On the other hand, even with multiple partners, the African female can mother only up to about a dozen babies.

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If the blood of an African father flows in many more descendants than the blood of an African mother, the African male has a much stronger chance of surviving among the living-dead than does the African female. Such is the balancing process of nature. In the first phase of life after birth, women live longer than men. In the second phase of life, among the living-dead, men have better prospects of being remembered in the genes of their descendants than do women. These considerations are linked to indigenous beliefs about ancestors. Many rituals have evolved to propitiate African ancestors or seek their help in facing worldly misfortunes. To make sure that ancestors remain near the living family and do not feel rejected, some African rural families bury their dead in their own backyards or even beneath their own bedrooms. Thus one keeps one’s old address even after death. African traditional religions do not consistently believe in reincarnation, but there are occasions when a descendant is so reminiscent of a deceased ancestor that a family believes that the ancestor has returned in a renewed body. An animal may, on such occasions, be sacrificed to acknowledge this “return of the prodigal ancestor.” Nature remembers loved ones through blood in the veins, genes in the body, and the nearness of the remains. Once again, the English language best captures this through English poetry. In the words of William Wordsworth: O joy! That in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!4

Notes 1

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man: Epistle I, 1732. Ibid. 3 See John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1970; 2nd edition 1992 Heinemann Educational Books). 4 William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, 1804 [published May 1807]. 2

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN HUMAN NAKEDNESS AND THE ORIGIN OF ETHICS This chapter will outline a solar theory of history. Considering how important the sun has always been to human survival, it is even more remarkable that we have underestimated its role in the evolution of such diverse social phenomena as European racism and the miracle of Japan’s industrialization after the Meiji restoration. This chapter, however, stands no chance of doing justice to any of those issues. We are simply putting the sun back on the agenda of social and political theory. On the evidence of recorded history available so far, it would seem that Egypt was the birthplace of monotheism. It is the place where humans first focused on believing in a single, exclusive God. The impact of the sun on religion resulted in the evolution of monotheism along the Nile Valley. Pharaoh Akhenaton, who reigned between 1379 to 1362 BC, was the first thorough-going monotheist. His wife, Neffertiti, co-founded the religion of Aton, the new God. It was a belief in one God; but the God was not, of course, the personalized King of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Aton was represented by the sun-disk. Over time, religion evolved from Akhenaton to Moses. Was Moses an Egyptian in rebellion against his own pharaoh? The Semitic version of monotheism became more and more anthropomorphic (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity). Man was made in the image of God, according to the Semitic vision. Or was God conceived in the image of man? The sun-disk was no longer God, but Semitic worshippers still looked upwards towards the Heavens as the location of God. Christianity has a concept of ascension. Did Jesus ascend to heaven? Islam has the legend of the Miraj: Muhammad’s ascent to Heaven from alAksaa in Jerusalem. This is what has made Jerusalem one of the three sacred cities of Islam. Seven Heavens characterized the Islamic concept of the abode of angels and Allah. In Africa south of the Sahara, the focus for Godliness moved towards the universe in a different way. It is not just man who is created in the image of God, it is the entire universe. Indeed, the evolution of the

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universe is the autobiography of God: star by star, planet by planet, tree by tree, from birth to death. The process of Creation is God telling His own story, but sometimes there are residues of the centrality of the sun in our conceptions of the ultimate in Africa. The Swahili word for “the sun” and the Swahili word for “to know” are the same. The word is jua. Is the sun the fountain of all knowledge? Some of the ethnic cultures of Tanzania also link the sun to divinity, at least linguistically. Implicit in their worldview is a basic solar theory of God, which has now been overtaken by alternative interpretations of divinity. According to David Westerlund: In general, the Bantu-speaking peoples in mainland Tanzania believed in the High God as creator, the ultimate origin of life. One of the most important symbols applied to him was that of the sun. For instance, the God of the Meru people in northern Tanzania—who had many different names—was sometimes referred to as the sun. Lyuba, one of the names of God among the Sukuma, means both “God” and “Sun.” Likewise among the Nyamwezi.1

Winter and the Genesis of Racism There is also the question as to whether the retreat of the sun during winter in Europe was a contributing factor to the birth of European racism. Winter, in the northern hemisphere, helped to develop the culture of privacy. Privacy, in turn, helped to develop collective insularity. Winter, as a cold season, created the need for walls of shelter. Keeping the ecological elements out created walled enclosures. It was not just the cold weather which was kept out; it was also neighbors. Social insularity was struggling to be born. Winter, as a season, also created the need for elaborate clothing for warmth. What began as clothed protection against freezing weather became protection against natural sexuality. Any form of natural nudity was equated with sexual nakedness. A concept of “private parts” came into being, accompanied by new sexual complexes and inhibitions. The culture of elaborate clothing in the Northern hemisphere helped to re-define the concept of “privacy.” This narrower definition of privacy was evolving alongside the walls of insularity. A combination of privacy for the body and insularity for the family helped promote acute ethnocentrism. The stage was being set for racism. The advent of winter as a freezing experience in the Northern hemisphere also contributed to a culture of not only basic walls, but also elaborate architecture over time. Sophistication in complex constructions

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gradually resulted in monumentalist criteria of what constitutes “civilization.” The civilized people were supposed to be those who built castles, palaces, and fortresses. But the Black primitivists confessed with pride: My Negritude is no tower and no cathedral, It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.2

Winter, in Europe, enriched architecture and construction. This enriched monumentalist civilization in turn became an additional basis of European arrogance. Much of Black Africa was perceived as a culture of “mud-huts,” since equatorial human beings did not need elaborate protection against freezing winds. It is partly to these multiple considerations of personal privacy, walled insularity, and criteria of monumentalism that we must trace the origins of European racism. From this point of view, it is worth distinguishing between Germanic Whites, further north with a colder winter, on one side, and Latin Whites, originally Mediterranean, on the other. Germanic cultures encompass not only the Germans, but also the Anglo-Saxons (British and mainstream United States) and the Dutch. Latin cultures embrace not only Italians, but also the traditions of Spain, Portugal, and France. On balance, Germanic cultures have been more obsessed with the separation of the races than have Latin cultures. It may not be an accident that the most elaborate cases of segregation and most fanatical forms of racism in the twentieth century have been perpetrated by Germans (Nazism), Afrikaners (apartheid), Americans (the lynchings of Jim Crow culture), and the British (with a segregated empire). All these racist traditions are culturally Germanic. Of course, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Italians, and the French have had their own versions of racism. However, their brand of ethnocentrism has been less segregationist, less obsessed with the social and sexual separation of the races. Latin Whites have inter-married more readily with non-Whites, and have mixed socially with other races with greater ease than have the Germanic Whites. The question which arises is whether the greater physical insularity of Germanic cultures was originally a consequence of the colder climate north of the Mediterranean. Were the walls of winter part of the genesis of social separatism and Germanic myths of keeping the blood “pure?” Is such an ideology the mother of racial segregation? The evolution of racism has, of course, included other causes apart from climate. The basic question which is being posed here is whether

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walled cultures are more prone to social insularity and physical separatism than are cultures of more open habitat. Nor does winter always produce a walled civilization. It did not do so in the Americas north of Mexico before European colonization. But, partly because of that, the Native Americans were less racist and less segregationist than were the European invaders who were soon to decimate the native populations. One of the ironies of the Americas is that the winter zone of North America produced cultures of open habitat, while pre-colonial Mexico in the tropics produced a walled civilization. What all this means is that a walled civilization is not always produced by climate. In Europe it was; in Mexico it was not. Secondly, a cold climate does not always produce a walled civilization. In Europe it did; in pre-colonial North America it did not. But where a cold climate does produce a walled civilization, it sets the stage for social insularity—and over time it prepares the way for a culture of ethno-racial segregation. Of course, the Japanese still link the sun to the Emperor and God. The implicit Japanese vision of the universe was that the sun was king of the universe, the Emperor was the king of Japan, and God was the King of Kings. On earth, the three did in fact fuse in the Emperor. Did the sun have an impact on Christian conceptions of God as well? Christian conceptions of God are still royal, but are no longer solar. The Christian God is still viewed as King of Kings, with a conception of a divine throne. The Semitic God expects to be worshipped, flattered with hymns and humans prostrating themselves in tribute to their maker. According to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan rebelled against this royalist subservience. In the words of Milton’s Lucifer, it is: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.3

The industrial revolution in the West shifted Europe from indirect sunworship to indirect time-worship. Time in Western civilization became the new king, exercising sovereign control. Time theory of value was the order of the day. Work was measured by time. Wages were computed by the hour. The discipline of the clock made minutes valuable: workers “clocked in” and “clocked out.” Punctuality became a new moral precept. The human race was warned: “Time and tide wait for no man!” The Japanese, after the 1868 Meiji restoration, evolved the miracle of fusing sun-worship with time-worship. Perhaps that is the explanation for the industrial success of Japan. The discipline of their solar religion has now been linked up to the discipline of the temporal creed, which they

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borrowed from the industrialized West. Sun-worship and time-worship have merged in modern Japan. In Africa, on the other hand, while sun-worship has declined, timeworship has yet to be consolidated. Indeed, time-worship in Africa is still at a stage when it is culturally disruptive—rather than socially disciplined. Time-worship is already having an adverse effect on the role of women.

The Solar System and Sexual Division of Labor In Africa, God made woman custodian of fire, water, and earth. God himself took charge of the fourth element: the omnipresent air. Fire, originally the fury of the sun, is captured on earth in energy. In the rural countryside, the source of fire is wood. Women carry heavy burdens of firewood across long distances. Fire is a symbol of light and warmth, and the African woman is the trustee. Water, originally the bounty of the sun, is represented on earth in rivers and lakes. African women traverse distances to fetch water. Water is a symbol of survival and cleanliness and, again, the African woman is the trustee. Earth, originally offspring of the sun, is now the soil for cultivation. The woman is entrusted with dual fertility: the fertility of the womb, woman as mother, and the fertility of the soil, woman as cultivator. The African woman was centrally functional in matters of energy, water, and cultivation. And then, the West came with time-worship. The African experience has included new mechanization from the West. Mechanization is marginalizing the African woman, but it is also “saving time.” Timeworship and the imperative of efficiency are “propelling” Africa from hoecultivation, which is woman dominated, to tractor-cultivation, which is male dominated. The transition from handwriting to the word processor saves a lot of time. But the woman typist has undergone marginalization— if she was once custodian of fire, water, and earth. The discipline of the clock did give new meaning to efficiency. And since technology produces more in a shorter period, economies of scale also acquired increasing legitimacy. When the African woman works for wages, and is rewarded by the hour, the discipline of the clock has helped her. But when she moves from energy, water, and cultivation to the typewriter, from eight to five o’clock, she has become freer, but less central to society.

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Marginalization of the Ancestors Western-style time-worship marginalizes ancestors. Past, present, and future are re-organized in scale of importance. Present, future, and past becomes the order of priorities. Indeed, fanatical time-worship finally becomes obsessed with the present—at the expense of both the future and the past. Is the past truly dead? Cultures obsessed with the present evolve institutions which betray this bias. Western law certainly betrays insensitivity to the reputations of the dead. In the United States, only the living can sue for libel damages. A biography of Errol Flynn by Charles Higham, hit the headlines in 1981. Higham alleged that Errol Flynn was a German spy. Flynn’s daughters sued for damages and invasion of privacy. The Court of Appeal in California, wrote as follows: “. . . defamation of a deceased person does not give rise to a civil right of action at common law in favor of the surviving spouse, family or relatives who are not themselves defamed.”4 The obsession with the present was making the reputations of the dead an easy prey to unscrupulous sensationalizers. The sun often sets on the reputations of the dead. In 1988, in the Tawana Brawley case, a dead policeman was accused of rape. He had, in fact, committed suicide, but his reputation suffered more because of the allegation of rape. The charge went before a grand jury who found it totally without foundation. But the grand jury was nevertheless worried that malicious and unfounded allegations could be damaging, even if a grand jury found there was no case to answer. The grand jury “recommended a law to enable relatives to sue if the dead person was ‘knowingly and falsely accused of committing a felony.’ ”5 In vain! The obsession with the present left the dead unprotected. In the State Legislature of New York at Albany, a bill about libeling the dead did pass the Senate. Then somebody did a calculation about some of those who would benefit. They included Mafia big shots and crooks in state politics. This killed the bill in the House. Again, a preoccupation with short-term issues affecting the present-day left the reputations of the dead still vulnerable. William Safire, a columnist for the New York Times, opposed to censorship, admitted, in April 1989, that it was easy under the law for authors in the United States to make outrageous fabrications about dead celebrities and make a lot of money out of those sensationalist fabrications. Safire cited the case of a book entitled Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart, by Charles Higham (again) and Roy Moseley. The libel was

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not against Cary Grant, but against Gary Cooper, the famous star of High Noon and other film classics. A passing shot in the book said: “Nor was Cary unaware of the political leanings of Gary Cooper who, in 1938, would go to Berlin and be entertained by Hitler.”6 Subsequently, on an ABC “Good Morning America,” one of the authors, according to Safire, went further and accused Cooper of having been “a very strong Nazi sympathizer and, in fact, was received by Hitler in Berlin in great secrecy in 1938.”7 Was this libelous? If so, could the late Gary Cooper have legal recourse? Was there any foundation to the alleged Nazi-sympathies? William Safire reached Mr. Higham, one of the authors of the book, and asked him for his source. Higham referred him to a California writer, Anthony Slide. When Slide was contacted, he told Safire that the first time he heard about Gary Cooper’s Nazi sympathies was from Higham. Real circular documentation was at work. Cooper’s daughter, Maria Cooper Janis, and Cooper’s widow, 75-yearold Veronica Cooper, were outraged—but had no recourse. The Nazi rumors were based on a trip the Coopers made to Berlin in 1939. They met a Goring, but not the Goring of Nazi power. And yet the United States’ legal system was still obsessed with the here-and-now. The dead had no protection.8 The sun truly sets on their legal rights. In writing the controversial novel The Satanic Verses, was Salman Rushdie playing Charles Higham to the Muslim world’s “super-stars?” Sexual innuendos about the Prophet Muhammad’s wives in The Satanic Verses, or more subtle alcoholic innuendos about the Prophet of Islam himself, could be even more sensational than Nazi innuendos about Gary Cooper or Errol Flynn. Like Charles Higham, was Rushdie muck-raking or outright fabricating? Is The Satanic Verses cheap sensationalism? However, women who died fourteen centuries ago could hardly get protection under Western liberal time-worship. Those women were sent beyond the twilight zone. John Stuart Mill’s distinction between self-regarding and otherregarding acts is another case in point. Mill argued that freedom should be restricted only if it directly harms others. Did Mill’s concept of “other” include the dead? Could the dead be hurt? Should freedom ever be restricted to protect the dead? Western time-scale after the industrial revolution left the dead unprotected. In any case, is the distinction between hurting the dead and hurting the living itself artificial? After all, when we accuse a man of being an illegitimate child, is that an accusation against him or against his dead mother? As the late Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire

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(now the Democratic Republic of Congo) affirmed: “There are no illegitimate children; there are only illegitimate parents.”9

Conclusion: Between Eden and Egypt The first humans in the history of the universe were what we would now call Africans. Were it possible, it would be worth exploring when our earliest ancestors began to let the sun influence their social and religious institutions. East Africa was the Eden, or cradle of the human species. The cradle lies across the equator and the tropics. Was this close proximity of the sun a precondition for the evolution of the human species? The genesis of the earliest institutions generally lies in the tropics: the invention of the family; the development of language; the taming of fire in what is today Kenya; the First Supper, when eating moved from being a purely biological necessity to being a social occasion. Was the tropical context a necessary precondition for these cultural miracles? Ancient Egypt, in turn, was the birthplace of the first grand civilization. That civilization was characterized by the following attributes: ¾ No great distinction between the past, the present, and the future. ¾ No great distinction between the Kingdom of God, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom—the crocodile could be a God. ¾ No sharp divide between the living and the dead; the Pyramids were new residences of the pharaohs; Fineries in the tombs were to be enjoyed by the dead; to die was to change one’s address.

Although the Nile itself started in the tropics—Ethiopia and Uganda— its fulfillment was further away from the equator. But Akhenaton still recognized the majesty of the sun, and a solar approach to religion gave birth to monotheism. The sun as the source of life on earth has been recognized since the earliest days of human culture. But the sun as a source of ideas, in the human mind, has perhaps been underestimated. It is not “too late” yet—or is it? “Stand still, you ever moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, And midnight never come!”10 So prayed Faustus But midnight came—and he left.

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But now eternal time a nap has taken And all the clocks don’t know; They think their arms with lives are laden But all is empty show. Tick they tick, move they move, The minute-arm does rise It is a cruel jest; it’s a vile trick Which gives the day no size. In her tracks, Old Future brakes A leg suspended, petrified She dares not move, no step she takes; By silent time mollified. Yes, the sun is asleep— But Faustus is dead.

Notes 1

See David Westerlund, Ujamaa na Dini: A Study of Some Aspects of Society and Religion in Tanzania, 1961–1977, (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1980), pp. 36–37. 2 Aimé Césaire, Return to My Native Land, (1939). 3 John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book I, 1667/1674 [Line 263]. 4 See California Appeals Court decision on Flynn v. Higham (1983) 149 Cal. App. 3d 677, 197 Cal. Rptr. 145. Also see William Safire, “Libeling the Dead,” the New York Times, (April 13, 1989). 5 William Safire, “Libeling the Dead,” the New York Times, (April 13, 1989). 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Note that this statement is also attributed to so many other people including California Judge Leon Yankwich (1928), Bernadette McAliskey (1971), John Witte, Jr. (2009), etc. 10 Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, Scene XIV, 1604.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN POLITICAL SEX: FROM PLATO AND MARX TO RACIAL THEORIES The primary question asked and examined in this chapter is: to what extent does the sex-life of the individual, and his or her ideas about sex, intrude into the politics of his or her society? We seek here, in a nutshell, to draw attention to a possible correlation between the ethic of monogamy and the politics of racialism. The extreme antithesis of monogamy is sexual communism. After all, monogamy is an ethic of sexual monopoly—and communism, in this sphere, would seek to ensure that no one man monopolizes or is monopolized by any one woman. Before we come to grips with the racial and political consequences of sexual monopoly, let us first digress to view its ultimate antithesis as discussed within two major schools of communism.

Plato, Marx and Sex Modern Western civilization has essentially two fountains from which it flows: the fountain of pagan Greece, and the fountain of Christianity. Christianity emphasizes the principle of monogamy, and neither Marx nor the Soviet Russians ever managed to escape the consequences of being post-Christian.1 They never quite managed to repudiate the principle of monopoly as the ethical base of sex, but pre-Christian Plato has fewer inhibitions in his revolutionary fervor. Plato has bequeathed to Western thought a particular concept of love, the concept of “Platonic love.” The idea of Platonic love encompassed a number of attributes, but what concerns us here is a negative attribute: Platonic love is love without sex. But there is such a thing as “Platonic sex” as well—sex without love. For this latter concept, one looks not to the Phaedrus of Plato but to the Republic. The love which comes with sex is an enemy to justice; it has a tendency to impair one’s capacity for

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impartiality. Sexual possessiveness militates against objectivity. And so the rulers of the Republic are to have wives in common. One point which arises here is whether in a situation where no woman belongs to a single man, and no man to a single woman, the language of “wife” and “husband” is applicable at all. Societies which are not monogamous are normally upholders of either polygyny, several wives to a husband, or polyandry, several husbands to a wife. But a society like Plato’s, which combines both, poses the question: is the term “marriage” a meaningful concept at all? Double polygamy is perhaps not “games” at all. Be that as it may, the idea of sexual communism as prescribed by Plato remains the most daring philosophical attempt ever made to come to grips with some of the political implications of sex.2 Many centuries later, Karl Marx and his followers were to be accused of having embraced the principle of sexual communism and including it in their ideology. The Communist Manifesto’s denial of this charge is met with equivocation. The Manifesto says that the whole bourgeois in chorus screams, “But you communists would introduce community of women!”3 In reply, the Manifesto sarcastically says that “the bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.”4 He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common. He can, therefore, come to no other conclusion than that women were to be exploited in common. The Manifesto declares: . . . the communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed from time immemorial. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common. Thus, at the most, the Communists might possibly be reproached because they desire to introduce in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women.5

Here, we think we are back in a Platonic communism of sex. But the Marxist Manifesto goes on to say: “. . . it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system—i.e., prostitution—both public and private.”6 Plato has envisaged sexual communism as a way of ensuring that the rulers were just. But Marx sees a kind of sexual communism in bourgeois society itself, and takes it simply for one more symptom that the rulers are depraved and unjust. The Russian Revolution was later to see itself as the agent not only of an economic transformation but also of a revolution in sexual life. A very intelligent Russian post-graduate student that I knew in Oxford was sincerely convinced that communism had wiped out prostitution in his country. But a prominent Soviet physician, Dr. T. S.

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Atarov, has apparently pointed out elsewhere that it would be a mistake to imagine that the transformation of the sexual ethics of the Soviet Union had, as yet, been completed. The Russian doctor is quoted, saying: There are still in our present society plenty of old ideological survivals. Many of our men still think nothing of being unfaithful to their wives . . . Worse still, among our young people, there are some who tend to reduce their relations with the opposite sex to a mere satisfaction of their physical urge without any spiritual or moral connection with the person concerned.7

Dr. Atarov’s book then refers to a “peculiar” philosophy which was discernible in some quarters. This is the claim that promiscuity is an inevitable substitute for the prostitution which communism had abolished. Monogamy, according to this school of Russian sexual thought, is an artificial restraint on man’s natural impulses. Dr. Atarov’s rejoinder is that this school is wholly contrary to Lenin’s view that “free love is not among the freedoms of a socialist society.”8 As for sexual perversions, a Soviet textbook on Psychiatry is quoted as saying: “phenomena like homosexuality (which are acquired and not innate) have nothing in our environment to encourage them.”9 The book goes on to say that, in pre-war Berlin, there were three newspapers for homosexuals, and 120 widely advertised clubs, besides numerous cafes where people sharing this tendency met. “The healthy atmosphere in which Soviet youth is brought up provides no conditions which would encourage the development of such perversions,” the Soviet book asserts.10 The proletarian revolution has apparently reasserted Russian manhood all over, and neither Socrates nor Plato is permitted to compromise the heterosexuality of the toiling youth.

Monogamy and Racialism It is not merely with sexual communism and homosexual love that Plato’s name is associated. It is also linked with ideas about the division of humanity into natural rulers and natural subjects—and the application of rational principles of breeding to human reproduction. “God . . . has put gold into those who are capable of ruling, silver into auxiliaries, and iron and copper into the peasants and other producing classes.”11 In essence, Plato’s division is a class division, but because he links it to biological characteristics, a theory of class prejudice expands into a theory of racial prejudice. A warning against miscegenation is formulated. “The first and chief injunction laid by heaven upon the Rulers is that, among all

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the things of which they must show themselves good guardians, there is none that needs to be so carefully watched as the mixture of metals in the souls of the children.”12 Starting from these Platonic notions, one sometimes discerns a curious relationship between the horror of miscegenation and the ethic of monogamy. The horror of miscegenation can sometimes destroy the ethic of monogamy, or be indifferent to its demands. This is certainly the case when appeal is made to eugenics in order to avert miscegenation. Hitler’s Germany and Plato’s Republic share a common adventure in the application of the principles of animal breeding to experimental human reproduction. Such an application cannot be consistent with the implicit precepts of Christian monogamy. But there are times when Christian monogamy itself can be a breeding ground of racialism in relations between the sexes. This has a lot to do with the spiritualization of sex in Christianity. Extra-marital sexual relations are regarded as sin. This is not unusual—it is common to a good many other religions and codes of conduct as well. But he who regards extra-marital relations as sinful does not have to go to the extent of regarding marital sexual relations as sacred. Yet the Christian in history has tended to do precisely this, though not always consistently. In general, the Christian has not been satisfied with saying that marriage is a device for avoiding sin. He has gone further and invested the institution with sacredness. The sexual act within marriage is sometimes too closely identified with the fulfillment of God’s will. And what is God to the Christian? God is a good many things, one of which is love. And an unconscious equation emerges within the universe of the Christian mind: “Sex is Sacred; God is Love; Sex is Love.” For Christianity itself, the sex that is sacred is, of course, sex within marriage. But although the hold of Christianity has been loosening in the Western world, its influence on Western ways of thought and modes of behavior is stronger than might appear from statistics about church attendance in Europe. The influence of Christianity is not always manifested in ways which Christianity itself would approve. The equation between sex and love gets extended, in the West, beyond the sacred boundaries of Christian marriage. So intimate becomes the logical relationship between the idea of sex and the idea of love in the Western mind that the sexual act itself becomes characterized as an act of “making love.” Why should sex and love be wedded together in this way? If you ran into a couple in a sexual embrace, and your mind was using Western concepts, the conclusion you are likely to reach is that these two strangers are two “lovers” enjoying themselves. It would certainly be odd if you

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started off with the hypothesis that the two beings engaged in a sexual act were not “lovers” but mutual “haters.” To a certain extent, all this is not peculiar to a Western frame of reasoning. Whatever the frame of reasoning, love and lust are both emotions of attraction—serving to draw people together in the typical course of their inherent tendencies. Hate, on the other hand, is usually an emotion of repulsion—serving to keep people apart. We, therefore, do not consider it normal that two people who are repelled by mutual hate should at the same time be brought together by mutual sexual desire. Normal human behavior does not make us think of “hate” when we stumble onto a couple in a sexual embrace. But if it is true of any human society that sex and hate would normally make very strange bed-fellows, why then did we single out the EuroChristian frame of reference? The reason is that the Euro-Christian frame of reference not only dissociates hate from sex but goes a step further and associates spiritualized love with sex. The idea of sex as an act of love is by no means universal. There are societies which regard the sexual act essentially as an act of masculine assertion, or as Nature’s way of saying that the male of the species is superior and ought normally to be “on top.” Or a society might just regard sex as Nature’s insurance against perpetual boredom—one additional method of breaking the monotony and having a bit of fun. None of these attitudes to sex equate it with love, and none of them would be readily acceptable to the typical Westerner. But what has all this specifically to do with Christian monogamy as such? The answer lies in the fact that Euro-Christian culture has tried to spiritualize “physical love” by dualizing it. God can love all His creatures; a mother can love all her children—but “a man can really love only one woman.” Love between a man and woman, in their capacities as such, must be dual if it is to be “love” at all. Duality as part of the definition of “love” encourages more than ever love’s equation with sex within the Western frame of reference. Such an equation would be untenable within a polygamous society. Love and sexual desire can indeed coincide in a relationship between two people— but the two feelings do not entail each other. A person from a polygamous society might, therefore, say to a Westerner: “you surely must know from concrete experience that you can desire a woman and not love her; love her and not desire her; both love and desire her, or be completely indifferent towards her. Surely, even in your own Western society, if you were to stumble onto two people in a sexual embrace, the statistical chances would be that they are not in love. All that the act would tell you is that at least one of the two beings before you was engaged in a quest for

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sexual satisfaction. If your experience confirms this, why does your theory insist on maintaining a logical intimacy between the concept of love and the idea of sex?” If love is dual, and sex is plural or promiscuous in a polygamous society, then sex does not even logically imply love in such a society. A polygamous society might therefore be said to recognize in logic what even a Western society knows in practice: that only in a minority of cases is the sexual act an expression of love. But does it matter what the different words imply in different languages? The answer must be that it does because the multiple associations of words are an important factor in the way people’s attitudes are conditioned. People’s attitudes to sex or marriage might have important implications in wider social and political terms. By definition, a polygamous attitude to marriage is significantly different from a monogamous one. What are apt to be overlooked are indeed those wider social and political consequences of this simple difference. One area of life which can all too easily be affected by this difference is the area of race relations. It is probably a fact that polygamy is more conducive to toleration of mixed marriages than monogamy is. The classic case of a polygamous “race” which is at the same time culturally homogeneous is perhaps the Arab race. The Arabs also “happen to be” the most mongrel race on earth. In skin-color the range is from the White Arabs of Syria and the Lebanon, the Brown Arabs of the Hadhramout and the Yemen, to the Black Arabs of parts of Saudi Arabia, Oman and, of course, the Sudan. If the father is Arab, the offspring is Arab without qualification. The idea of a half-caste is virtually alien to the relational universe of this mongrel race. We see those Arabs scattered across both sides of the Red Sea—neither completely African nor completely Asian— and certainly impossible to classify neatly in pigmentation. Historically, they were sexually promiscuous. Out of promiscuity grew relative toleration of mixed marriages and a complete absence of horror at the idea of miscegenation. What, after all, is the Arab race but Miscegenation Incarnate? But does this really mean that Arabs are less racialistic than others? Not necessarily. It might merely mean that their particular brand of racialism does not express itself in attitudes to intermarriage. It might indeed be true that Arabs are more tolerant of mixed marriages than Europeans have tended to be. And yet this might not be because the Arabs think more highly of other races. The real reason might be that they think less highly of the institution of marriage. The Arabs made marriage less of a sacred mission and more of a simple social convention; and they made

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sex within marriage less divine and more human. By thus reducing the spirituality of marriage, they made inter-marriage less of an issue. “My second wife is Turkish. She is a good wife. For how long are we Arabs going to tolerate the arrogant tyranny of those Turkish dogs?”—so has an Arab in history been known to say. His domestic contentment was untouched by the racial prejudices of his politics. He had married across the race-boundary—not because he thought highly of the Turks, but because he thought differently of marriage. And yet there is an element of oversimplification in all this. To remove intermarriage from the sphere of racial prejudice is, in a sense, to reduce the area of prejudice itself. Sex can be the most sensitive issue in race relations. To reduce the scope of sexual prejudice is perhaps a major mitigation of racial tension in its own right. After all, it might even be true that polygamous attitudes to marriage tend to promote greater racial intercourse and greater tolerance at-large. By examining the nature of polygamy, we should have derived some insights into the tendencies of monogamy. The Germanic Europeans are among the most monogamous of the Westerners. In the more literal meaning of the word, all Westerners are (of course) equally monogamous. The laws of their countries do not permit more than one wife. But when we talk of monogamous attitudes, we are referring to inclinations even outside marriage. In general, the Germanic-speaking Europeans are more monogamous in their sexual moralism than the Latin-speakers are known to be. The French, the Italians, and the Latin Americans are, in other words, less moralistic in their attitude to promiscuity than are the AngloSaxons. The case of the Iberian Peninsula is complicated by the direct massive influence of the Church. Were the Church as weak in the Peninsula as it was in Latin America, France and Italy (and it is probable that Spain and Portugal) would also have shared the sexual broadmindedness of their fellow Latins. Given then that the Germanic peoples are more monogamous in their attitudes, is it merely a coincidence that they also happen to be more racialistic in their attitudes to intermarriage? Perhaps no Latin country could have produced a racist maniac like Hitler dedicated to “the purity of the blood.” Perhaps only the Germans-proper could have worked themselves up into such frenzy about miscegenation. But theirs was an extreme case of something shared by other Germanic peoples. As Margery Perham put it in her Reith Lecture “The Germanic speaking Europeans— the British, the Germans, the Americans, the Dutch—share a deep bias against inter-marriage with the Negro race. . . . This conscious, or sometimes subconscious, fear of race mixture accounts both for the White

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man’s innermost ring of defense and also for all his outer ring of political, social, and economic ramparts.”13 Miss Perham does not go on to say it, but it is not entirely a coincidence that Hitler and Verwoerd belong to the same Germanic stock. The experience of the two Americans offers tempting conclusions in this respect. If the White citizens of the United States had, in fact, been Arab, most of the colored citizens would have become Arab too. It has been estimated that over seventy percent of the African-American population has some “white” blood. And the “white” blood was much more often than not derived from a White father. Now, given the Arab principle—that, if the father is Arab the child is Arab—most AfricanAmericans would have been Arab had the White people of American been Arab too. But the White Americans are Caucasians. And the dominant culture is Germanic, so, if either of the parents is non-Germanic, the offspring cannot be Germanic either. In fact, the law of White-dominated Florida defines a Negro as a person with “one-eighth or more of African or Negro blood.” The laws of Florida, like the laws of eighteen other states in the American Union, specifically prohibit(ed) “miscegenation.”14 To complicate the situation further, the old Western equation of love and sex becomes all mixed up with such prejudices in the United States, and the phrase “Nigger-Lover” becomes an expression of racial hatred.

The Aesthetics of Sex The United States is part of a whole hemispheric melting pot of race. It has been estimated that one-sixth of the population of the new world consists of “half-castes”—different “mixtures” of White, Indian and Black. In Paraguay, up to 97 percent of the population is mixed.15 The population of Blacks in Brazil is about the size, if not more, of the population of Uganda as a whole. They constitute eleven percent of the population of Brazil. The brown sector of Brazil is 27 percent, and the White “or of white descent” is 62 percent.16 But is there no form of racial prejudice in Latin America? That would be an absurd claim. There is indeed a good deal of prejudice—but the Germanic horror of “mixing blood” is nowhere as acute. Here we must, in fact, distinguish between race prejudice and color prejudice. Very often the two coincide, but they need not. Even where they coincide, a difference in emphasis can sometimes be discerned. One might even distinguish between a race prejudice, which is essentially based on color, and a race prejudice, which is obsessed with the myth of blood. Among North American Whites, the emphasis is on purity of blood. A person

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might have a skin which is indisputably white, but if the Legal Calculators of Florida were to discover that one-eighth of this White man’s blood was “African blood,” the white-skinned man becomes classified as Black. The prejudice of Latin America, however, seems to be based ultimately on color. Class stratification in Brazil follows faithfully the shades of skincolor. The fairer your child is, the better their chances of social success in the future. If we go back north and look at canons of social evaluation among the African American themselves, we might again discern differences in social status according to shade of skin-color. That is to say, African Americans are between themselves more like Latin Americans—they sometimes classify each other socially on a basis of varying pigmentation. Until fairly recently, it was a case of rising in respectability, the paler you became. But now, there is a distinct school of African-American aesthetic thought which would award you more credit points if you managed to get any darker. Sociologically, all this is essentially an example of color prejudice without race prejudice—assuming that you accept the thesis that African Americans constitute a single race. One thing ought to be emphasized— that color prejudice within the African-American community itself is of limited significance. On the one hand, it is an effect of White racism in the country. On the other hand, it is now being squeezed out of existence by that very racism of the white sector of America, as African Americans acquire a greater sense of common purpose, a greater consciousness of a shared predicament. A more significant case of color prejudice without race prejudice is to be found in India. Between Indians themselves, this can be a straightforward problem of the aesthetics of sex, whereby fairness of skin is deemed more attractive than darkness of skin. The color-criterion of beauty is, I understand, an important factor in the sociology of marital selectivity in India. But this is not entirely unrelated to the multifarious implications of the caste-system itself. Independently of the Christian tradition, India is a monogamous sub-continent. But Indian monogamy is certainly no more tolerant of mixed marriages than is the extreme Germanic expression of Euro-Christian sexual monopoly. The caste-boundary, and sometimes even the linguistic one, is India’s equivalent of the race-barrier in marriage.

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Conclusion There is something about monogamy that encourages endogamy—that is the persistent intimation we get from looking at these different groups. This endogamous tendency does not always prevail; it might be diluted by other considerations, or even be completely neutralized. But, as a generalization, we can say that an attitude which permits a person to acquire a number of wives is at the same time an attitude which permits him to look beyond his own group for some of those wives. This permissive attitude towards polygamous inter-marriages is then extended to the phenomenon of intermarriage generally. Only a small minority of Arabs in the world do, in fact, have more than one wife. When we refer to them as “polygamous,” we are referring to their toleration of polygamy rather than their practice of it. It is the attitude which is crucial in this analysis. The attitude which is tolerant of polygamy has a tendency to tolerate exogamous adventures as well. But the relationship of this marital toleration to racial tolerance at-large is by no means a neat one. A complete acceptance of intermarriage does not necessarily denote a complete absence of racial prejudice. The Arabs are not without racial dislikes, in spite of their exogamous broadmindedness.17 And the Latin Americans are not without color prejudice, in spite of their assimilationist achievements and promiscuous liberalism. Untidy as the correlation might be between intermarriage and racial tolerance at-large, there can be no doubt that a connection exists. For sex—in or out of wedlock—is a major area of possible inter-group tension, and inter-group relations are bound to be less emotionally charged where this area of tension is narrowed. The politics of sexual inhibitions and sexual rivalry bedevil many a plural society, openly or at the level of the subconscious. The very idea of sex becomes not only divorced from love but actually tied to the keg of communal hate. Need we ask for whom those wedding bells toll?

Notes 1

Marx himself was, of course, Jewish by racial extraction. He was born a Jew by religion as well, but his parents were converted to Christianity while Karl was still a child. Karl himself was later to take a Hegelian route to atheism, but some JudeoChristian inhibitions remained with him. 2 For a critical analysis of the implications of Plato’s position see K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962 edition), especially chapters 4 and 8.

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“Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848).” The edition consulted is the one in Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, L. S. Feuer (ed.), (New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 24 –26. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 T. S. Atarov, “Problems of Sexual Education, Moscow, 1959.” Cited in Russia under Khrushchev, by Alexander Werth, (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1962), p. 147. The official title of Dr. T. S. Atarov was Physician of Merit of the RSFSR, coupled with the high academic degree of Candidate of Medical Sciences. 8 Ibid., pp. 147–148. 9 Uchebnik Psychiatrivi, by O. V. Kerbikov et al. (Moscow 1958), p. 313. 10 Cited in Alexander Werth, Russia under Khrushchev, p. 162. 11 Republic, 415 a. 12 Republic, 546 a. Also related is 434 c. 13 The Colonial Reckoning, Collins Fontana Library, (1963), pp. 64 – 65. 14 The United States Supreme Court had avoided a direct ruling on the constitutionality of laws which forbade mixed marriage. For a useful background article see Arthur Krock, “Miscegenation Debate,” the New York Times, (Review of the Week), (September 8, 1963). See also the article by Charlotte G. Moulton published in The Nationalist, (Dar es Salaam, November 11, 1964). 15 These estimates were given by Charles Winick in his Dictionary of Anthropology, (London: Peter Owen Ltd., 1957), p. 356. The percentages have, of course, changed significantly. 16 See Florence Elliott and Michael Summerskill, A Dictionary of Politics, (Penguin, 1959 issue), p. 43. 17 Arab acceptance of intermarriage is far from “complete.” There are hardly any reservations about Arab males marrying into other races, but there are definite inhibitions about Arab girls becoming wives of non-Arabs. From the point of view of the thesis of this article, this difference is not surprising. Arab polygamy is, in fact, only polygyny and never polyandry. The male is permitted more than one wife—therefore, the male is also permitted to cross the racial frontier. But the woman is not permitted to have more than one husband—therefore, she is not easily permitted to cross the racial frontier either.

CHAPTER NINETEN THE FLORAL GAP IN AFRICAN CULTURE Modes of communication between cultures differ not only in terms of verbal language but also symbolically. The use of flowers is one mode of communication in civilizations which range from Japan to Iran, from the gardens of the Palace of Versailles in France to Hindu weddings in Jairpur. Western civilization as a whole also uses flowers for occasions ranging from bereavement to Valentine’s Day. Flowers, in the West, articulate grief at a funeral and celebrate romance in courtship. But how universal is the use of flowers as a mode of expression? Do Africans use flowers as language to any significant degree, or is there a floral gap in African culture? Let us look at this issue more closely.

The Floral Gap: Aesthetics of the Environment The Green movements of recent decades have partly been inspired by the aesthetics for conservation. The concept of “endangered species,” itself indicative of deference for biodiversity, is rooted in the belief that a world with fewer species of animals and a smaller range of plants would be a less beautiful world. On this issue of natural beauty one question which has arisen is whether the love of flowers is culturally relative. Jack Goody, the distinguished Cambridge anthropologist, has strongly argued that although Africa is rich in plants, African culture is not fascinated by flowers. He has noted that: . . . the peoples of Africa did not grow domestic flowers, nor yet did they make use of wild ones to any significant extent in worship, in gift giving or in the decoration of the body. . . But what is perhaps more surprising is that flowers, neither domesticated nor wild, play so little part in the domain of design or the creative arts.1

Jack Goody goes on to observe that African sculpture provides no striking floral designs. Even in African poetry, songs and proverbs,

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flowers are relatively absent unless there is a prior stimulus of Islam or some other external aesthetic. George Bernard Shaw was once visited by a flower-loving aristocratic fan. The lady visitor observed that there were no flowers inside Shaw’s home. “Mr. Shaw, I am surprised to see no flowers in your beautiful home. Don’t you love flowers, Mr. Shaw?” Bernard Shaw responded: “Indeed I do love flowers, dear lady. I also love children. But I do not go around chopping off their heads for display in my living room!” Shaw was asserting that a genuine love of flowers required our leaving them to prosper as plants in the soil. African attitudes toward flowers are organic in the same sense. Yet this does not explain the more limited use of the imagery of flowers in either African plastic art or African verbal arts. Where are the African poetic equivalents of William Wordsworth and his fascination with daffodils, or his sense of wonder about a violet?: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star when only one Is shining in the sky2

Shakespeare urges us not to attempt to beautify what is already naturally beautiful—least of all a flower near perfection: To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow . . . Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.3

An English pastor, in the eighteenth century, was challenged to prove the existence of God. He responded, “Behold the rose, the lily, the violet! Behold the peacock!”4 He invoked natural beauty as proof of the existence of God. In African poetry and song, is there an equivalent use of flowers as metaphors “to point a moral or adorn a tale?” If it is true that African culture underutilizes flowers for either art or ritual, what are the underlying social and aesthetic reasons? One possible explanation would take us back to Bertrand Russell’s assertion that “civilization was born out of the pursuit of luxury.” It is possible to see civilization as a relentless quest for beauty. It is a sense of “civilization” which produced the Taj Mahal, the sunken churches of Lalibela, the

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Palace of Versailles, and the spectacular temples of Abu Simbel at Aswan built by Ramses II. Such splendor illustrates what Bertrand Russell regarded as “the pursuit of luxury.” Before European colonization, were the cultures of equatorial Africa inadequately motivated to pursue luxury? Was that why there were so few indigenous palaces and monuments outside the Nile Valley? Was the psychology of not constructing beautiful structures related to the psychology of inadequate attention to flowers? Another possible explanation for the “deflowering of African cultures” is that so many flowers on the equator were potential fruit in the process of formation. A planted seed begins to germinate into a plant; the plant produces a bud; the bud blossoms into a flower, and the flower culminates into a fruit. Africa celebrates the end product, the fruit, rather than the intermediate stage, the flower. Africa may be poor in names for flowers. In most indigenous cultures, there is no tropical equivalent of such range of names as, the lily, the violet, the tulip, the orchid, the daffodil. But African languages are fully competitive in names of fruit: chungwa, chenzi, embe, bungo, kitoria, nazi, kanju, ndizi, kunazi, fenesi, buyu, and many others. More recently, African loan words for fruit, usually borrowed from Arabic, include nanasi (pineapple) and tufaha (apple). In the history of Islam, the garden and ecological beauty were initially assigned to paradise in the Hereafter where rivers, lakes, flowers, and beautiful women awaited the faithful. However, in the history of Islam on Planet Earth, the heritage of flowers initially came more from Persia than from the Arabian Peninsula. The heritage then spread to North Africa. What came to be regarded as distinctively Islamic gardens developed in Tunisia in the ninth century of the Christian era. Jack Goody refers to the evidence of a Flemish traveler in about the year 1470, who seemed to have counted four thousand individually owned, irrigated gardens around the city of Tunis—“full of fruit and with flowers perfuming the air.”5 A cost-benefit analysis needs to be done as to whether Islam’s encouragement of gardens, and discouragement of organic representation, is compatible with the ecological pillar of the Global Ethic. Similarly, is Africa’s coolness towards flowers and Africa’s warmth towards fruit ecologically friendly? Such aspects of Islamic and African cultures need to be studied and evaluated from the perspective of the Fifth Pillar of Wisdom (Ecological). African cultures which have been stimulated by other civilizations into floral appreciation may build upon what they have borrowed from others. Swahili culture, in East Africa, was initially a creative synthesis of elements from African civilization and from Islam. Swahili use of jasmine

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on wedding nights has been intended as an aphrodisiac for the successful consummating of marriage. Rose petals may also be spread on the bridal bed on the wedding night. But the Swahili words for jasmine and the rose are clearly borrowed from Arabic—yasmini and waridi. In Coast Swahili, the name for a flower which is in perfume only at night carries the direct Arabic name rahatu el-layl, bliss of the night. In the English language, a version of the same flower is called Queen of the Night. After Swahili culture was initiated into floral appreciation, it developed its own words for other flowers in the wider Swahili environment. The new floral names in the aesthetically enriched Swahili culture have included the following: Mlangi-langi, kiluwa, asmini-boko, mhanuni, mkadi, msama-piti and rehani. The vocabulary of most other African languages has a floral deficit, a shortage of names for specific flowers. There are two kinds of appreciation of flowers—aesthetic and instrumental. Aesthetic floral appreciation is purely artistic, enjoying the flowers either for their visual beauty or for their scent and smell. Instrumental floral appreciation values flowers for such purposes as healing and herbal medicine. On the aesthetic side, Africans are more likely to enjoy flowers for their smell than for their appearance. Instrumental floral appreciation is more widespread in Africa. Aspects of herbal medicine in Africa include the healing properties of some flowers. For example, a flower called mranaha is widely used in East Africa by those who suffer from asthma. Mranaha may be smoked like a cigarette or smoked in a pipe, or served on hot charcoal as incense. Some African languages have poetic descriptions of particular flowers rather than specific names for each. In the English language, such a descriptive name for a flower is best illustrated by sunflower, “a flower which imitates the sun in appearance.” If African cultures are to be floralized in the future, poets and songwriters will have to bear the initial burden. Literature and music may have to respond more evocatively to the imagery of Africa’s own floral heritage.

Notes 1

Jack Goody, The Culture of Flowers, (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 12–13. 2 William Wordsworth, “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways,” (1798). 3 King John, Act IV, Scene I. 4 John Fisher, The Way to Perfect Religion, (1535). 5 Jack Goody, The Culture of Flowers, p. 105.

CHAPTER TWENTY PERIODIZING HUMAN ORIENTATION: NOSTALGIA, PRESENTISM AND ANTICIPATION This chapter is based on a perspective grounded on not only a cultural, but also a temporal orientation: the balance between the idealized continuities of history, nostalgia; the compelling pressures of the moment, presentism; and a capacity to plan for the future, anticipation. We might call this a theory of triple temporality. Indeed, we here argue that cultures differ partly in terms of whether they are primarily nostalgic, or primarily presentist, or primarily anticipatory. Cultures of nostalgia develop distinctive features which set them apart from cultures of presentism. And these, in turn, have a different emphasis from cultures of anticipation. Let us examine each in turn.

Between Nostalgia and Presentism Cultures of nostalgia have a high sensitivity to tradition and custom, and their built-forms show strong continuities of style, a persistent conservatism. Such cultures also lean towards ancestor-reverence and a special interpretation of the meaning of immortality. Nobody is completely dead for as long as his or her blood flows in the veins of the living, the veins of the descendants. In modern terms, nobody is completely dead for as long as their genes still survive among the living progeny. O joy! That in our embers Is something that doth live; That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive.1

In some African cultures, the dead are at times buried beneath the homes of their living relatives, or in close proximity. The built-form accommodates not only the living, but also the living-dead, those with descendants, and the terminally dead, those without direct descendants.

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The extended family extends beyond the grave, but often within the same built-form. Cultures of nostalgia also have a strong elder tradition. They confer respect and authority on the elderly and presume wisdom from the accumulation of experience. Whether elders have larger rooms is one cultural variable. In Africa and parts of the Arab world, family relations sometimes also encompass polygamous relationships. Polygamous architecture seeks to accommodate a plurality of wives within a single built-form, and its compound. Monogamous architecture may co-exist with polygamous designs within the same traditionalist way of life. Architecture may itself be nostalgic even if the wider culture is beginning to “modernize.” The original public buildings of Washington, DC, reflect a nostalgia for the classical styles of Greece and Rome. Also influenced by nostalgia for the Euro-classics are many of the memorials to the American founding fathers—the Jefferson memorial, the Washington monument, and the Lincoln memorial being cases in point. Revivalist architecture is fundamentally nostalgic. That applies to the public buildings in the District of Columbia. The names of many American cities are also nostalgic for the Greco-Roman classics— including Athens, Syracuse, Ithaca, and others in the United States. Cross-cultural nostalgia can be neo-colonial—such as the Basilica in the Ivory Coast, the tallest of its kind in the world. A few years earlier, Emperor Bokassa of what was then the Central African Empire dreamt of building an African Versailles. The country is now the Central African Republic—renamed after Bokassa was overthrown by French troops before he could build his Versailles. Let us now turn to cultures of presentism. These are driven by values of the here-and-now. Such cultures are “modern” in some of the worst senses of the term, often characterized by a reckless disregard of long-term environmental damage in exchange for short-term economic gain. Western versions of cultures of presentism have an abiding faith in market forces. They also have a deep distrust of long-term planning. In reality, Western presentism has drifted towards consumerism, including environmentally costly built-forms. Among the Westernized elites of formerly colonized countries, the culture of presentism has also manifested ostentatious consumption, including extravagantly constructed homes. A reckless indifference to the depletion of both national and natural resources has been all too evident. Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, argued that civilization was born out of the pursuit of luxury—hence the silk-trade and the golden road

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to Samarkand. Adam Smith argued that the wealth of nations was created out of the pursuit of profit—hence the triumph of the British in the Industrial Revolution. Karl Marx argued that the engine of history was the pursuit of surplus—hence the rise of newer and newer classes in the dialectic of history. Outside North Africa and the Nile Valley, pre-colonial Africans were driven neither by the pursuit of luxury (a la Russell), nor the pursuit of profit (a la Adam Smith) nor the pursuit of surplus (a la Karl Marx). Precolonial Africans suffered from an underdeveloped greed-structure. This deficit greed had consequences for the built-form in pre-colonial Africa. The dwellings were simple and often minimalist. Outside North Africa and the Nile Valley, Africa had no monumental culture of the kind which produced the Taj Mahal in India, or the Palace of Versailles in France, or the Temples of Cambodia. As a Black poet once put it: My negritude is no tower and no cathedral, It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.2

Between Anticipation and Cultural Resilience The third category concerns cultures of anticipation. The anticipation can be sacred or secular. Cultures of secular anticipation can plan cities that are sensitive to the needs of the next generation, and the one after that. New towns or new cities are also built in anticipation of new city-dwellers. A deserted city is one from which the inhabitants have already left. Yamoussoukro in the Ivory Coast looks deserted, but in reality its inhabitants have not yet arrived! It was built by the founder-president of the country, around the village where he was born. Was Yamoussoukro built in anticipation of a future capital, or in response to the vanity of a president? Perhaps both factors were at play. Cultures of sacred anticipation invest in future salvation rather than future materiality. The Pharaohs of Egypt had some anticipatory themes when they built pyramids and internal comforts in anticipation of the Hereafter. Sometimes they built to imitate God at His most flamboyant— grand temples, grand pyramids. Later on, there were more grand anticipations of the Hereafter in the form of cathedrals, mosques, temples, and basilicas. Socialism in the twentieth century has also attempted to be a culture of anticipation. At its best, it has attempted to reduce inequalities in anticipation of a classless utopia in the distant future. In Tanzania, Julius

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K. Nyerere experimented with Ujamaa from 1967 until 1985, promoting socialism and self-reliance while combating corruption. Unlike the Kenyan elite, the Tanzanian elite were more modest in their built-form aspirations during those years of discipline for self-reliance. The Tanzanian government under Nyerere reached the expensive decision of building a new capital in Dodoma. Once again, socialism had its glaring contradictions: economizing in its leadership code, yet somewhat extravagant in its macro-aspirations of a new capital. The built-form was affected in both directions. In Côte d’Ivoire, Ivory Coast, the city of Yamoussoukro poses questions about the culture of anticipation—building a city before there are people to inhabit it. Is that city based on too much anticipation? Planning is an aspect of the culture of anticipation. The city now includes not only five-star hotels without many residents, but also the largest church in Africa—but without many worshipers. Although our chapter does not include a photograph of this Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, it is worth noting that it was built at the cost of nearly $300 million. The dome is 380 feet (116 metres) high, and the whole building reaches 525 feet above the ground, supported by 60 columns. It has thirty-six massive stained glass windows. It has a capacity to seat 7,000 people, with an additional 10,000 standing. But where are the worshipers? Where are the Catholics in the country? Is this anticipation gone mad?3 In Africa, there is a need to distinguish between cultures of almost indestructible built-forms, on one side, and cultures of perishable structures, on the other. North Africa is where built-forms have long survived the cultures which produced them. The pyramids have long outlasted the culture of the pharaohs. Sub-Saharan Africa is where cultures long outlast the buildings they erect. This is indeed a qualitative difference in durability. North Africa has the paradox of resilient built-forms and perishable cultures. In Egypt (Kemet), Greek, Roman, and Ottoman cultures have come and gone, leaving behind their stone monuments. Sub-Saharan Africa has the reverse paradox of resilient cultures and perishable built-forms—simple buildings which last only a couple of generations and cultures which, until the twentieth century, seemed to have withstood the test of time. An intermediate case-study in sub-Saharan Africa is that of ancient Zimbabwe. Ancestors of the present Shona people of Zimbabwe once had a civilization of stone built-forms. They then appeared to have changed their minds and returned to the use of more perishable building material.

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The culture of ancient Zimbabwe seemed to have died out, but their stonewalls have endured. On the other hand, more recent Shona culture endured much longer than the buildings they constructed. However, ancient Zimbabwe has left behind more than its stone-walls; it has given a name to the modern nation of Zimbabwe, which once carried the imperial name of Rhodesia. The word “Zimbabwe” itself means “building with stones,” a kind of stone civilization. But even when the building materials are solid, the structures may not be durable if they are in glaring inconsistency with the prevailing culture of the society. This is what brings us to the concepts of architectural colonialism and imperialism. Thus, many new skyscrapers in present day Africa are turning out to be more perishable than the brooding majesty of ancient Zimbabwe. The rust and erosion have set in as African skyscrapers battle not only with the challenge of the climate, but also with local cultural resistance to architectural colonialism and imperialism. What is architectural colonialism? It is the sort of architecture which seeks to mold people in the image of buildings, rather than make buildings reflect the image of the people. Architectural colonialism is a form of foreign penetration, which colonizes the skyline and sometimes annexes the horizon with alien shapes. Sometimes the buildings perform functions which result in fundamental culture-change for the residents. At other times, architectural colonialism can also take the form of either excessive waste of local building materials for alien structures or extravagant importation of foreign building materials for local structures. At its worst, architectural colonialism is not only insensitive to the cultural environment; it is also inadequately attentive to the physical environment. Sometimes it is an aesthetic violation of both the cultural and physical environment—a building which violates the historical ambiance of a neighborhood, for example. Such violations become imperialist if they are hegemonic and cross-cultural. At times, there may be just too much construction going on—as on the Coast of Kenya, destroying the skyline and the green fields, or too much construction in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. There is too much investment in the built-form, a bonanza for both construction companies and architects. Architecture becomes imperialist if it is an alliance between local elites and exploitative alien forces. What starts off as imperialist architecture can over time become indigenized when the rest of the culture changes. In some parts of the world (including Egypt), Islamic architecture began as imperialistic.

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Before the Arab conquest in the seventh century AD, Egypt was neither Muslim nor Arab. Over time, Islamic architecture in Egypt became indigenized as Egyptians themselves became not only Islamized in religion but Arabized in language and identity. Imperialist architecture can be decolonized in one of two ways—when the architecture itself is changed in the short run to conform to the local culture, or when the local culture is changed in the long run to conform to the architecture.

Leisure Culture: Nostalgic, Presentist, and Anticipatory Once again, we need to address not just culture as a factor in builtforms, but a cultural perspective on construction. I use “culture” not only in its aesthetic sense, but also in its wider sociological sense. How does leisure relate to all these issues? Leisure is one of the great neglected issues in the sociology of built-forms. But we must distinguish between elite leisure and popular leisure. We know that elite leisure has been a great force in the history of the arts—aristocratic patronage of architectural and ornamental creativity. Great cathedrals like St. Paul’s in London and St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and great palaces like Versailles, and great memorials like the Taj Mahal are at the top of this genre. It can be nostalgic, presentist or anticipatory. What about the Sun-City as a playground in South Africa? Upper middle-class love for the opera, ballet, and theater has also produced class-specific built-forms like the Sidney Opera House in Australia. Also, class-specific is the patronage of classical composers and playwrights. But much of that privileged leisure has been acquired on the backs of workers, serfs, peasants, and sometimes slaves. The built-forms of high culture emanate from the toil and sweat of low culture. However, in the industrialized world in the twentieth century, there has begun a process of the universalization of leisure—a vision of leisure for every man and woman which is different from just popular culture. In world order terms, the most striking beneficiaries so far are often the Ecology and Women. Protectiveness of the ecology is partly an outcome of universalization of leisure. Suddenly, Northerners have time to enjoy the environment: the hills and valleys, the forests, the animals, and the birds. But this requires restraint in construction, sometimes a retreat to the smaller scale of yesteryears. The need increases to use replenishable materials like wood instead of stone.

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Of course, the battle to protect the environment is still uneven—but the most powerful friend which the environment has in the Northern hemisphere is leisure-time, for the enjoyment of beauty. The culture of planning to save beauty has only just begun. After all, we struggle hard to save the seal, the whale, and the elephant. We are not yet struggling to save the exotic snake or the lizard. Perhaps the culture of anticipation should be sensitive to those creatures too, as part of the wider ecological equilibrium. Women are great beneficiaries of the leisure revolution. Women in less privileged societies are less frequently reduced to mere objects of masculine pastimes. Male possessiveness declines with diversification of leisure options or even of sex options. The rules begin to relax. The women are no longer too oppressed to fight. Consider India’s experiment with the mobile cinema in quest of diversification of pastimes. The best contraceptive is an alternative to sex. One reason why the most liberated women in the world are in the West may well be the leisure revolution and its attendant relaxation of gender tensions and of sexual monopoly. The leisure revolution also blurs the distinction between the breadwinner and the homemaker. Fast food reduces kitchen chores. The breadwinner is not too tired to help. The home can become an arena of domestic partnership. Like other oppressed people, women have been fighting back not when they have been at their most repressed, but when the system is opening up. Fighting for one’s rights is no longer a luxury that a hard-pressed woman can ill afford. In the West, homes which have two studies—one for the husband and the other for the wife—are less and less unusual. How does the leisure revolution relate to peace? In the long run, a lot depends upon whether the liberation of women will go to the extent of androgynizing the war machine. One enemy to both buildings and the environment is war—although its biggest cost is human lives. In cultures which are otherwise vastly different from each other, war has been pre-eminently a masculine game. So has violent crime. Making women joint decision-makers on matters of war and peace could make a major difference. Would there be fewer wars if women were joint decision-makers? Would an adrogynized war machine save lives, buildings, and much of the environment? Should a culture of anticipation seek to avert war? The skeptic can point to situations where women have been in charge of the state and proven to be as war-like as men. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Mier, and Indira Gandhi spring to mind.

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But Margaret Thatcher was a macho woman in a male-dominated system. So were Golda Mier and Indira Gandhi. If the culture of anticipation was to seek out a better gender balance in all instruments of power, it could affect the quality of decisions and policies that are pursued. Some say war is politics militarized. But war is also play, militarized: masculine play. Gang warfare among male teenagers is an intermediate step between individual boys fighting with fists primordially, and a nuclear eye-to-eye in the Cuban missile crisis. Skills of destroying life, homes, and the environment are learnt in the violent presentism of street gangs. The question which arises is whether expanding leisure will, in time, demilitarize play once again. Play used to be culturally age-specific. Was play an activity of the young, with the elders mainly as spectators—at best? Play in the Northern hemisphere has now become increasingly ageneutral. Almost no one is too old to play. And the range of games has widely accommodated the less agile. Gymnasiums, tennis and basketball courts, football arenas, casinos, and public swimming pools are only a few of the leisure built-forms of the North. This universalization of play raises questions about the future legitimacy of war. Will play in the next century become less inflammable and thus less likely to lead to war? On its own, this cultural shift will not be enough—but when reinforced by the liberation of women and the androgynization of the war machine, the warrior factor in the human condition may at long last be tamed, perhaps even civilized. Nostalgia may at last be restrained by anticipation. There are occasions when leisure culture is not environmentally friendly. Hunting and fishing, as sports, can be ecologically depleting. These are some of the issues in the unexplored agenda of built-forms and architecture. The skill differential in other spheres has been grossly underestimated as a destabilizing force in world arrangements. The stratification of the world into nuclear-haves and nuclear have-nots poses its own deep and divisive dilemmas for those concerned with the culture of anticipation and of human survival. The leisure revolution unfolds deceptively, almost unnoticed—a silver lining to ecological clouds, a glimpse of hope to women in distress, and a shimmering promise at the end of the tunnel for a war-weary world. But just as there is need for a more equitable distribution of skills between North and South, there is need for a more equitable distribution of leisure. However universalized, leisure itself needs built accommodation, sometimes huge stadiums. A cost-benefit analysis is needed.

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Third World kids do not have enough time to play—let alone Third World workers. Pre-productive years are too few in the Third World because kids start work at an early age. Post-productive years are also few because too many adults die younger than adults do in the North. Economic justice needs an equation which includes leisure opportunities for both Southerners and Northerners. Peace is praying for the day when the legacy of leisure is a pacifying force in world affairs, a conserving force environmentally, an equalizing principle between genders—without abandoning an occasional stadium for the Olympic Games. Once again the built-form will reflect the heartbeat of social change and human sensibility.

Notes 1

William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, (17). 2 Aimé Césaire, Return to My Native Land, (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1939). 3 Patricia K. Kummer, Enchantment of the World: Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), (New York: Children’s Press, Grolier Publishing, 1996), pp. 105–106.

SECTION V CONCLUDING ESSAYS

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE RE-INVENTION OF AFRICA: EDWARD SAID, V. Y. MUDIMBE AND BEYOND Edward W. Said is thought to be, and rightly so, one of the founders of post-colonial studies. But the claim that Said is a post-colonial innovator should not be interpreted to mean that his work does not examine European colonialism in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. On the contrary, much of the focus in both Orientalism (1979) and in Culture and Imperialism (1993) is on the classical era of European imperialism, and about literary interpretations of the colonized peoples, going back to Joseph Conrad and long before him. V. Y. Mudimbe is, in certain aspects, a thinker in the same tradition as Edward Said. Both of them illustrate that the best time for interpreting colonialism is in the post-colonial era. After all, one can best evaluate the preceding day, after the sun has set. Post-colonial studies include such an assessment of the preceding era of colonialism. Another characteristic which Edward Said and V. Y. Mudimbe share is that they are both whistle-blowers against ideologies of Otherness, which Mudimbe sometimes calls “alterity” and Said made famous as “Orientalism.” Both writers address the phenomenon of “the other” in Western consciousness and Western empire. The Orient, in this sense, is perceived as exotic, intellectually retarded, emotionally sensual, governmentally despotic, culturally passive, and politically penetrable. Male chauvinists have sometimes regarded Asian and African societies as “feminine” in their conquerability, docility, malleability, and fundamental inferiority. Sexism, as well as racism, has often informed the Orientalist mind. Both Said and Mudimbe are exceptionally steeped in Western thought and Western literature, in both English and French. Their work on “Otherness” seems calculated to expose “an unholy alliance between the Enlightenment and colonialism.”1 Critics have drawn attention to the apparent self-contradiction of “deploying a humanistic discourse to attack the high cultural traditions of Western humanism.”2

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It is possible to accuse both Said and Mudimbe of reverse Otherness, of stereotyping the West. And just as Negritude has been defended as “anti-racist racism,” Said and Mudimbe can be defended as examples of “anti-alterity Otherness” or “anti-Other Otherness.” Edward Said’s central thesis in Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism is about the invention of the Orient. V. Y. Mudimbe’s central thesis in The Invention of Africa and The Idea of Africa is about the invention of Africa. While Said insists that the Orient does not exist and has never existed outside the imagination of the West, Mudimbe is prepared to accept that the invention of Africa is a prophecy in the process of self-fulfillment.

Paradigms of Africanity How Africa is defined has been a product of its interaction with other civilizations. It began with the very name Africa. Some have traced the name to Berber origins. Others have traced it to a Greco-Roman ancestry. The ancient Romans referred to their colonial province in present-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria as “Africa,” possibly because the name came from a Latin or Greek word for that region or its people, or perhaps because it came from one of the local languages of that region—either Berber or Phoenician. Here are the origins of the invention of Africa. Did the Romans call the continent after the Latin word Aprica (meaning “sunny”)? Or were the Romans and the Greeks using the Greek word Aphrike (meaning “without cold”)? Or did the name come from the Semites (Phoenicians) referring to the productivity of what is today Tunisia—a term which means “Ears of Corn?” Later, the Arab immigrants Arabized the name into Ifriqiya. If the name Africa comes from a Berber language, it is completely indigenous in origin, for the Berbers are indigenous to the continent. If the name “Africa” comes from Greek-Roman lexicons, like the name “Egypt,” then it is part of a historic dialogue between the continent and its European neighbors. If the name comes from the Semites, first Phoenicians and later the Arabs, the name is a product of an even more complex interaction between the peoples of the continent and the cultures of the Semitic peoples. One of the paradoxes of history is that it took Africa’s contact with the Arab world to make the Black people of Africa realize that they were black in description, but not necessarily in status. The term “Sudan,” meaning “the Black ones,” carries no pejorative implications. That is why

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Africa’s largest country in territory, with its capital in Khartoum, still proudly calls itself “Sudan.” In a European language, one cannot imagine an African country calling itself today “Black Land,” let alone “Negrostan,” as the name of a modern state. On the other hand, it took European conceptualization and cartography to turn Africa into a continent. To Europeans, “black” was not merely descriptive; it was also judgmental. Arabs alerted the people of sub-Saharan Africa that they were black. Europe tried to convince Black people that they were inferior. But, on the positive side, it was Europe which continentalized the African identity. Mudimbe starts with Frobenius’s expression, “African genesis” (1937). Ali Mazrui proposes five different steps in the invention and re-invention of Africa. Ali Mazrui notes that the history of the external conceptualization of Africa has had five phases. The first phase regarded North Africa as an extension of Europe and the rest of Africa as an empire of barbarism and darkness. As rumor has it, when European map-makers were at a loss to identify African towns or cities, they (as rumor has it) drew pictures of elephants or lions. This was an era when the boundaries of continents were yet to be demarcated. The phase was particularly fertile for the Orientalist imagination. The second phase of the historic conceptualization of Africa concerned the interaction with the Semitic peoples and with classical Greece and Rome. In North Africa, this encompassed the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. In the Horn of Africa, this included Black Semites, like the Amhara and the Tigre peoples of Ethiopia and Eritrea. There still remain such debates as to whether the Queen of Sheba was Ethiopian or from South Arabia, or whether Cleopatra was ethnically Egyptian or Greek (Macedonian). Christianity as a Semitic religion spread across North Africa for a while, from the first century of the Christian era. Christianity also spread into Ethiopia from the fourth century. The third phase of the historic conceptualization of Africa involved the birth of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula and its expansion on the African continent. The earliest Muslims, persecuted in Mecca, fled for asylum across the Red Sea into Ethiopia. These earliest Muslim religio-political refugees included Uthman bin Affan, who later became the third Caliph of Islam (644–656 AD). Although Said is himself a Christian, his work is often a protest against subsequent Western distortions of Islam. This third phase of the historical conceptualization of Africa initiated the continentalization of Africa, an expansion which was later consolidated by the impact of Europe. This Islamic phase of identity-

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formation was, in reality, the Sudanization of sub-Saharan Africa— awakening the people to Black consciousness. The fact that Islamization in Africa awakened Black consciousness without promoting Black inferiority can best be illustrated by the fortunes of classical Timbuktu, which was recognized as Black and still saluted as a civilized achievement. We shall return to Timbuktu shortly. Mudimbe draws our attention to Edward Blyden’s enthusiasm for the role of Islam, historically, in West Africa. The fourth historic phase of the conceptualization of Africa is the recognition that Africa is a product of a dialogue of three civilizations: Africanity, Islam, and the impact of the West. This historic phase has been given different triadic and synthesizing names. Kwame Nkrumah called this phase “Consciencism.” Others, Ali Mazrui in particular, have called the convergence of Africanity, Islam, and Western values as “the triple heritage.” Edward Blyden did call his book Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1888). The fifth phase of the historic conceptualization of Africa is the realization that the continent is the ancestry of the human species. Africa, thus, becomes the Garden of Eden and a major stream in world civilization. A transition occurs from Africa’s triple heritage to the paradigm of Afrocentricity, and from the Dark Continent to the Garden of Eden. This final paradigm globalizes Africa itself.

Timbuktu and Africa’s Dual Legacy For several centuries before European colonization, much of West Africa was a product of two civilizations: indigenous African culture, and the impact of Islam. This duality included the great Mali Empire which flourished, at its height, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It is an aspect of Orientalism to call Islam “Mohammedanism.” Mudimbe does not protect himself enough from this kind of lapse. The dual legacy of Africanity and Islam also included the Songhai Empire, which flourished from 1325 until the Moroccan invasion of 1588–1591. Geographically, Songhai once extended from today’s Republic of Mali to today’s Nigeria. Songhai’s history overlapped with the history of the Mali Empire. The Sudanization of West Africa linked Islam and Blackness. The most historically significant city produced by these two empires was the city of Timbuktu, which over the centuries has commanded more fascination among historians than almost any other intellectual center in the history of Black Africa. Timbuktu became the best positive celebration in the Black world of that old triumvirate of “God, gold, and glory.” This

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triumvirate was, in subsequent centuries, usurped by European imperial colonization. From the fourteenth century to the 1590s, “God, gold, and cultural glory” converged onto the destiny of Timbuktu. The foundations of the culture were the dual legacy of Blackness and Islam. The exotic name of the city entered the core of Orientalism. Yet Africa was being reinvented. We define the classical period of Timbuktu as the era when Timbuktu flourished under the aegis of the Songhai Empire (1325–1591) and the Mali Empire (1100–1700)—two overlapping imperial periods. The legacy of scholarship in Timbuktu continued in subsequent centuries as well. This was a fusion of Blackness and Islamicity. The interaction between Africanity and Islam was greatly facilitated by the continuing links between West African Empires and the Maghreb in North Africa, especially with Morocco. The links were often intellectually precious. The links also included such moments of hostility and greed as the Moroccan invasion of 1588–1591. Let us now put Timbuktu in a wider setting of interaction between Islamic scholarship and Black intellectual foundations. The three most famous classical centers of Islamic learning in Africa were: Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the collective scholarly academy in Timbuktu, and (the oldest) Qarawiyin University in Fez (Morocco). Al-Azhar University and the Qarawiyin mosque and University were older than Timbuktu. They were also older than any Western university in existence. Today, AlAzhar is more than a thousand years old—which makes it older than almost any existing Western center of learning. Edward Said went to secondary school in the shadow of Al-Azhar University. His father wanted him to have a British and American education subsequently. The triumvirate cities of Islamic learning (Cairo, Timbuktu, and Fez) were interdependent in medieval times. There were scholars from Timbuktu who taught at Al-Azhar and in Fez, and vice-versa. New forms of scholarly interdependence were emerging in these academic exchanges of the ancient world. These were the years when Blackness was recognized as compatible with excellence. There were centuries when Timbuktu was indeed a celebration of “God, gold, and glory.” God was represented by two religious traditions: Indigenous African and Islamic. The gold featured in the trans-Saharan trade, which was Timbuktu’s first exposure to international trade. The glory was, for centuries, partly scholarly. As a French author once observed: The scholars of Timbuktu yielded nothing to the sojourns [and academics] in the foreign universities of Fez, Tunis, and Cairo. The Blacks astounded

The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe and Beyond 281 the learned men of Islam in their erudition. That these Negroes [Blacks] were on a level with the Arabian savants [scholars] is proved by the fact that they were installed as professors in Morocco and Egypt. In contrast to this we find that Arabs were not always equal to the requirements of Sankore [in Timbuktu].3

Timbuktu became part of the Mali Empire. The Mail Empire produced one pilgrimage which was itself a symbol of “God, gold, and glory.” Mali Emperor, Mansa Musa, decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca in a huge caravan of “God, gold, and glory.” The trip to Mecca was overland through Cairo. Mansa Musa is reported to have arrived in Cairo with an entourage of 60,000 people and 80 camels carrying over two tons of gold for distribution to the poor and the pious. Mansa Musa was so lavish in his generosity in Egypt that the price for gold almost collapsed on the Egyptian gold market. When in our own times the second millennium was coming to an end, in the year 1999, Life magazine included Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca in the fourteenth century among the great events of the whole millennium—a remarkable celebration indeed of “God, gold, and glory.” Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage was a matter of recorded history. But there is an element about the Mali Empire which is a matter more of historical speculation than of historical confirmation. Did Abubakari II of Mali (Emperor Bakari II) launch a fleet to cross the Atlantic generations before Christopher Columbus traversed the blue ocean in 1492? Did the Empire which produced the glories of Timbuktu also produce the glories of a Black trans-Atlantic crossing long before Christopher Columbus? This latter claim is more hotly debated than Mansa Musa’s trans-Saharan odyssey. However, both have entered the grand legends of the Black Experience, and the recurrent re-inventions of Africa. There is a third huge topic which touches upon the historical interaction between the people of the southern margins of the Sahara, like Mali and Niger, and those of northern Sahara, like Moroccans, Tunisians, and Egyptians. Are we to trace the origins of the name “Africa” to the historic interaction between so-called Berber people of northern Sahara and the trans-Saharan Tuareg all the way to Mali? What is clear is that the name “Africa” was first applied only to North Africa, and the term “Blacklands” (Arabic “Sudan”) was first applied to Mali. Timbuktu’s interaction with Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt might have gradually helped to create the name of our continent, “Africa.” Mali was part of Western Sudan. Another major connection we need to associate with Timbuktu is the link between religion and science. In the African context, the scholars of

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ancient Timbuktu were among the first to synthesize the twin studies of religion and science. A similar trend was occurring in the West at the same time. Timbuktu gave the image of Africa a place in the history of science. It was a partial protection from the marginalizing aspects of Orientalism. There are two methods for a religious school to go beyond being purely religious. One is through a strategy of secularization. The other is through a strategy of dualization. Secularization is the route that Harvard and Oxford took as the subject-matter, the methods of study, and the qualifications for entry and graduation became more and more religionneutral. Dualization is the strategy which Timbuktu and Al-Azhar University took as each evolved into a dual university. One part is still religious and basically sacred. The other part of Timbuktu and Al-Azhar is secular and modern. Have African universities also experienced the dialectic of sacred science? In Arab Africa, universities go further back not only than universities in the United States, but in Europe as well. Al-Azhar University in Cairo is, as we earlier indicated, over a thousand years old. It is indeed older than any existing university in the Western world. Morocco can boast a comparable ancient institution of higher learning still in existence today in Fez (Qarawiyin). The history of Islamic civilization as a whole was indeed once a fusion of religious vision and scientific advancement. Timbuktu was part of this vanguard. We must not forget that words like “algebra,” “zero,” and “tariff ” are of Arabic derivation. The numerals we use are still called Arabic numerals, though they are also partly Indian. Religion and science were also once linked in the academy in Timbuktu in ancient times. Timbuktu was using the Arabic numerals long before the Northern hemisphere knew how to write down the numerals 1492 or 1776. The scholarly foundations of classical Timbuktu continued to be the dual legacy of Africanity and Islam. We have mentioned Timbuktu’s relationship with North Africa. One of Africa’s greatest travelers was Ibn Battuta (1304–1368), who testified to the scholarship of Timbuktu. North Africa had earlier contributed to Christian thought through St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Augustine was one of the most brilliant theologians in the history of Christianity. These were the days when the images of North Africa and of Islam were not yet drastically “Orientalized.” North Africa has also contributed to global scholarship through the works of, for example, Ibn Khaldun, the Tunisian, after whom a number of Chairs in the United States have been named. Ibn Khaldun was stimulated

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by Timbuktu. American University in Washington, DC currently has an Ibn Khaldun Chair. Ibn Khaldun, a North African name of compelling intellectual relevance, was born in Tunis in 1332. In 1375, he spent four years writing Al Muqaddimah, his philosophy of history. Arnold Toynbee, the distinguished Western macro-historian described Ibn Khaldun’s work as “a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.”4 Robert Flint, another historian of thought, described Ibn Khaldun: “As a theorist of history he had no equal in any age or country until Vico appeared, more than three hundred years later. Plato, Aristotle and Augustine were not his peers… ”5 A partial translation of the AlMuqaddimah was translated into Turkish in the eighteenth century. But it was not until a complete French translation of Al-Muqaddimah appeared in the 1860s that Ibn Khaldun would claim world audience and recognition for his remarkable genius, but it took a while longer before he was recognized as an African. The interaction between North Africa and Western Sudan stimulated not just awareness of God and the pursuit of gold; it also stimulated the glories of the mind. These were not just moments in history; they were also advances for all time. Timbuktu is part of this grand panorama of human achievement. The dual legacy of Africanity and Islam turned classical Timbuktu into a remarkable triumph of cultural synthesis, a meeting point of civilizations. It entered the lore of Orientalism, but in a positive way at that stage.

Comparative Visions of Africa It was the poet diplomat of Sierra Leone, Davidson Nicol, who once wrote: You are not a country, Africa, You are a concept Fashioned in our minds, each to each, To hide our separate fears, To dream our separate dreams.6

Davidson Nicol is alluding to Africa’s own self-invention. Africa is at once more than a country and less than one. More than fifty territorial entities with artificial boundaries call themselves “nations.” All of them joined an international body called the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which later became the African Union (AU). Africa is a concept pregnant with the dreams of millions of people.

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It is one of the great ironies of modern African history that it took European colonialism to inform Africans that they were Africans. This is the positive version of “the Invention of Africa.” Europe’s greatest service to the people of Africa was not Western civilization which is under siege, or even Christianity, which is on the defensive. Europe’s supreme gift was the gift of African identity, bequeathed without grace or design—but a reality all the same. Islam and the Arabs awakened Africa’s Black consciousness, but a continental identity was still dormant. The pioneer American Africanist, Melville Herskovits, used to argue that Africa was a geographical fiction. “It is thought of as a separate entity and regarded as a unit to the degree that the map is invested with an authority imposed on it by the mapmakers.”7 In part, the argument here is that climatically the range in Africa is from arid deserts to tropical rain forest; ethnically from the Khoisan to the Semites; linguistically from Yoruba to Kidigo. Herskovits referred to that old description of Africa by the Geographer Royal of France in 1656—that Africa was “a peninsula so large that it comprises the third part, and this the most southerly, of our [European] continent.”8 A case can certainly be made for the thesis that North Africa is not only a Western extension of the Arabian Peninsula and a northern extension of sub-Saharan Africa; North Africa is also a southern extension of Europe. If the Arabs could “Sudanize” (make black) sub-Saharan people, how did Europe Africanize Africa? In what way is the sense of identity that Africans have as Africans an outgrowth of their historic interaction with Europeans? In fact, a number of inter-related processes were at work. First and foremost was the triumph of European cartography and mapmaking in the scientific and intellectual history of the world. If Africa invented humankind in places like Olduvai Gorge, and the Semites invented God in Jerusalem, Mt. Sinai and Mecca, Europe invented the world at the Greenwich Meridian. Europeans, as we have indicated, also named all the great continents of the world, all the great oceans, many of the great rivers and lakes, and most of the countries. Europe positioned the world so much so that we now think of Europe as being above Africa, rather than below, in the cosmos. Europe timed the world so that the Greenwich meridian chimed the universal hour. Mudimbe quotes Ricoeur about “the fruit of Occidental science itself.” What is more, it was Europeans who decided where one continent ended and another began. For Africa, Europeans decided that our continent ended at the Red Sea rather than on the Persian /Arabian Gulf. Europeans may not have invented the name “Africa,” but they did play a decisive role

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in applying it to the continental landmass that we recognize today. V. Y. Mudimbe should have included this in his chapter on “The Geography of Discourse” (1988). The second process that Anglo-Saxons used to Africanize Africa was the process of racism in history. This was particularly marked in the treatment of the Black populations of the continent. The humiliation and degradation of Black Africans across the centuries contributed to their mutual recognition of each other as “fellow Africans.” Andrew Young, when he was United States Ambassador to the United Nations, once accused the British of having invented racism. Edward Said would have regarded the statement as at once “stimulating and hyperbolic.” The Anglo-Saxons played a major role in capturing Africans and converting them into commodities for sale on the world market. The maritime and nautical revolution in Europe and the “discovery” of the “New World,” did irreparable damage to Black Africa—since it coincided with a new wave of racism. Today, one out of every five people of African ancestry lives in the Americas—mostly descended from ex-slaves. In Africa itself, European racism convinced at least sub-Saharan Africans that one of the most relevant criteria of their Africanity was their skin color. Until the coming of the Arabs and the Europeans into the subSaharan region, Blackness was taken relatively for granted. Fairer skinned Arabs sometimes penetrated the interior of Black Africa, but the Arabs were less segregationist than Europeans and were ready to intermarry with local populations. The primary differentiation between Arab and non-Arab was not skin color, but language and culture. It was Europeans who raised the barrier of pigmentation higher in Africa. A new version of Orientalism gathered momentum. Related to racism were imperialism and colonization. These generated a sufficient sense of shared African identity for the movement of PanAfricanism to be born. In the words of Julius K. Nyerere, of Tanzania, “Africans all over the continent, without a word being spoken either from one individual to another or from one African country to another, looked at the Europeans, looked at one another, and knew that in relation to the Europeans they were one.”9 Black consciousness, south of the Sahara, is an aspect of the African identity. It was itself first born as a response to Arab differentiation and, later, to European racial arrogance. If blackness is such an important aspect of Africanity, how real is the Africanness of the Arabs north of the Sahara? In what sense, if any, is Africa truly one continent? It is worth remembering that the cultural links between North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara did not begin with the Arab conquest of

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North Africa in the seventh century of the Christian era. For example, Semitic languages in Africa are not limited to Arabic and Hebrew. Amharic, the dominant language of Ethiopia, is Semitic. The language is a custodian of one of Africa’s oldest civilizations. Hausa, the most widespread language in West Africa, is also Semitic—related structurally as well as being a borrower of a large vocabulary from Arabic. Swahili (or Kiswahili), the most widespread language in Eastern Africa, is not Semitic. It has borrowed as much from Arabic as the English language has from Latin and Norman French. Then there is, of course, the role of Arabic not only as the dominant tongue of Northern Africa but also as the central language of Islamic worship—both north and south of the Sahara. On the other hand, Edward Said—an Arab Christian—would argue that Arabic was the language of Arab Christians and Arab Jews long before it was a language of most Muslims. At the global level, the most successful Semitic language is indeed Arabic. But the most important Semitic religion in the world is Christianity, and the most successful Semitic people worldwide are the Jews. The success of Arabic is measured by its spread; the success of Christianity is gauged by the size of its population; the success of the Jews is tested against Jewish performance in skills and global impact. Within Africa, on the other hand, the most successful Semitic people continentally are the Arabs—and their tongue is the most successful Semitic language. What remains to be seen is whether the most successful Semitic religion in Africa will be Islam rather than Christianity. In the battle for the soul of North Africa, Islam has already won. In the seventh century AD, Egypt was conquered from Christendom by the Arabs. Apart from the Coptic church, Christianity has almost disappeared from North Africa today. In the continent as a whole, Africa already has a plurality of Muslims. Is Africa about to tip the scale and have a Muslim majority? Will Africa be the first continent to have a preponderance of Muslims? South of the Sahara the rivalry between Christianity and Islam has gathered momentum. There are already more Muslims in Nigeria than there are Muslims in any Arab country—including Egypt. In all, the Black Muslim population of Africa is over 300 million. This is quite apart from Arab Africa, which is overwhelmingly Muslim. But the forces of Westernization are still powerful and expansionist. If Timbuktu at its height was part of a dual legacy in Africa (Africanity and Islam), the twentieth century witnessed a full flowering of Africa’s triple heritage (Africanity, Islam and Westernization). This has developed into a major new paradigm for interpreting Africa—for viewing the continent as

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a convergence of three civilizations. Leading African thinkers who have belonged to this paradigm include Edward Wilmot Blyden of Sierra Leone and Liberia (1832–1912), who wrote in the nineteenth century the influential book Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race. Later in the twentieth century, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana (1909–1972) published his book Consciencism, which envisioned Africa as a gradual synthesis of African values, Islam, and what he called “Euro-Christianity.” By the 1980s, Ali A. Mazrui (1933–) had turned Africa’s three civilizations into a nine-hour television documentary entitled The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC and PBS, 1986). A rival paradigm of interpreting Africa has come to be known as Afrocentricity. This focuses on the authenticity of what is indigenous to Africa. The school profoundly distrusts such “alien forces” as Islam and Westernization. Champions of Afrocentricity are often among the most Westernized themselves. Especially influential is the African American Pan-Africanist Molefi Kete Asante who has written extensively on the subject, including Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (1990). A Muslim thinker who does not use the term “Afrocentricity,” but is widely revered by Afrocentrists is the late Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal. He was more of a Nilocentrist (romanticizing the Nile Valley) rather than an Afrocentrist (idealizing the whole of Africa). But most cultural Afrocentrists make no distinction between Nilocentrism and Afrocentrism. European imperialism in Africa played havoc with the African memory—initiating new forms of amnesia, nostalgia, and false memories. Defending themselves against European arrogance, one school of African thought emphasized that Africa before Europeans’ arrival had its own complex civilizations of the kind that Europeans regarded as valid and important—civilizations that produced great kings, impressive empires, and elaborate technological skills.

Conclusion Although Edward W. Said was more of a political activist than V. Y. Mudimbe has been, they were both engaged in combating what Said called “Orientalism” and what Mudimbe called “Otherness.” What is more, both scholars reached out in solidarity to those who were similarly in quest of authenticity. When Ali Mazrui’s television series was first shown in the United States more than twenty-five years ago, the New York Times ran a number of articles attacking The Africans: A Triple Heritage (PBS and BBC, 1986). Edward Said regarded this as another attempt by Orientalists to

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monopolize the discourse on non-Western societies and perpetuate their own paradigms of “the Other.” Sometimes Said talked about this almost as if it was a legal case—“The New York Times versus Ali Mazrui” or “Orientalism versus The Triple Heritage.” Said subsequently included this passion in his book Culture and Imperialism. Referring to Mazrui’s television series, Said said: . . . for the first time in a history dominated by Western representations of Africa . . . an African was representing himself and Africa before a Western audience, precisely that audience whose societies for several hundred years had pillaged, colonized, enslaved Africa . . . Here at last was an African on prime-time television, in the West, daring to accuse the West of what it had done, thus reopening a file considered closed.10

Said regarded Mazrui’s television series as a kind of antidote to Orientalism, as an antidote which needed to be repeated time and again. In a similar quest for authenticity, V. Y. Mudimbe addresses Mazrui’s written work rather than his television series. Mudimbe was intrigued by Mazrui’s concept of “re-traditionalization.” Mudimbe quotes the following from Ali Mazrui and Michael Tidy’s book: Another obstacle to cultural liberation has been the confusion of the concept of modernization with Westernization. In fact, retraditionalization of African culture can take modernizing forms, especially if it becomes an aspect of decolonization. Retraditionalization does not mean returning Africa to what it was before Europeans came . . . But a move towards renewed respect for indigenous ways and the conquest of cultural selfcontempt may be the minimal conditions for cultural decolonization.11

These two quotations illustrate that Edward Said and V. Y. Mudimbe were not only warriors themselves against the forces of Otherness and Orientalism, they also helped to promote alternative paradigms, which were similarly in quest of authenticity. With regard to Africa itself, “retraditionalization” would be one more version of Africa re-inventing itself. Partly stimulated by Edward Said and V. Y. Mudimbe, and partly educated by the march of Africa’s own history, this chapter has already indentified five major phases of conceptualizing Africa. The first was before the boundaries of the different continents had been demarcated and finalized by mapmakers. So little was known about Africa in the West, and this in turn made the Orientalist imagination go wild. In this phase, the concept of Mediterranean civilizations was more real than the concept of either Europe or Africa as geographical units. As we mentioned earlier, North Africa was once conceived as an extension of

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Southern Europe. Mudimbe’s concept of alterity was still fluid in those centuries. The second phase of conceptualization developed as African peoples interacted more deeply with the Semites and with classical Greece and Rome. This includes the impact of Phoenicians in North Africa and the subsequent spread of Semitic Christianity across North Africa—up the Nile Valley into Ethiopia. The third phase of the conceptualization of Africa was the arrival of Islam and its expansion in North, East, and Western Africa. Islam helped to inaugurate the era of the dual legacy in empires like that of Songhai and Mali. The mutual stimulation between Africanity and Islam produced such miracles of medieval civilization such as Timbuktu as a center of learning. Paradoxically, Islam and the Arabs stimulated color consciousness without necessarily stimulating racism. The concept of “Sudan” signified the land of the Blacks without implying inferiority of status. Timbuktu was saluted as a center of civilization by the Arabs, while they recognized its location in what came to be known as “Western Sudan.” It is in that sense that the Arabs “Sudanized” the whole of sub-Saharan Africa without creating the elaborate racist structures of Western imperialism. The arrival of European colonization tilted the balance from a dual legacy (Africanity and Islam) to a triple heritage (Africanity, Islam, and Westernization). Sulayman Nyang of the Gambia, as well as Nkrumah of Ghana, and Edward Blyden of Sierra Leone and Liberia, addressed in their books the convergence of African values, Islam, and Western culture. But each paradigmatic thesis provoked its own antithesis. Both Eurocentrism and the concept of a triple heritage provoked the counter-thesis of Afrocentricity. Scholars like Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal and Molefi Asante of the United States became eloquent voices of Africa’s romantic gloriana. On the other hand, Léopold Senghor of Senegal and Aimé Césaire of Martinique responded with the rhythms of romantic primitivism. The fifth phase of the conceptualization of Africa has been the globalization of Africa. The continent has been identified as the Garden of Eden which produced the human species. Africa is now celebrated as one of the central fountains of the whole of human civilization. This globalist re-invention of Africa is the ultimate repudiation of Orientalism. It is partly in that sense that the history of Africa does not end on Africa’s shores. Even when dealing with the slave trade, one has to raise the question as to when the captives ceased to be African. Was it when they left Cape Coast in Ghana? Was it midway across the Atlantic? Did they cease to be Africans on arrival in the Western hemisphere or as enslaved

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workers on plantations? When was the cut-off point of their Africanity? Edward Said and V. Y. Mudimbe would approve if we concluded by Africanizing a stanza from English poetry: Winds of the world give answer, They are whimpering to and fro; Who would know of Africa, Who only Africa know?12

Notes 1

See Malise Ruthven, “Edward Said: Controversial Literary Critic and Bold Advocate of Palestinian Cause in America.” The Guardian (London, September 26, 2003). 2 Ibid. 3 Felix Du Bois, Timbuktu the Mysterious, Diane White (trans.), (London: Heinemann, 1897). 4 Arnold Toynbee, A Story of History, Vol. 3, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934). 5 Robert Flint, Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium and Switzerland, (New York: Scribner’s, 1894). 6 Nicol, “The Meaning of Africa,” in A Book of African Verse, John Reed and Clive Wake, (eds.), (London: Heinemann, 1964), pp. 43– 44. Also quoted in Melville Herskovits, The Human Factor in Changing Africa, (New York: Knopf, 1962), p. v. 7 Melville Herskovits, ”Does Africa Exist?” in Symposium on Africa, Melville Herskovits (ed.), (Wellesley: Wellesley College, 1960), p. 15. 8 Ibid. 9 Julius Nyerere, “Africa’s Place in the World,” in Symposium on Africa, Melville Herskovits (ed.), (Wellesley: Wellesley College, 1960). 10 Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1913). 11 See Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 169. Mudimbe was quoting from Ali A. Mazrui and Michael Tidy, Nationalism and New States in Africa, (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1984, 1986, 1987). 12 Rudyard Kipling, “The English Flag,” in Rudyard Kipling’s Verse (Inclusive Edition) 1885–1918, (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1921), p. 252.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO AFROCENTRICITY VERSUS MULTICULTURALISM Afrocentricity and multiculturalism have become hot concepts in the last three decades or so. Among those who have pursued the Afrocentric perspective, Maulana Karenga and Molefi Kete Asante stand out.1 Multiculturalism, by its very nature, has had many proponents, especially in the academic arena.2 There are those who regard Afrocentricity as an aspect of multiculturalism, and there are those who regard them as parallel themes, separate but equal. It is conceivable to regard them as antithetical paradigms, paradigms which pull in different ways. Let us first identify elements important to the definition of the Afrocentric perspective. What are the elements which go towards the Afrocentric perspective? First is Africa as subject rather than object. Second, and related to this, is Africa as active rather than passive. Third is Africa as cause rather than as effect. Fourth is Africa as center rather than periphery. And last, but not least, is Africa as maker of history rather than an incident in history. But what is the Africa we talk about in Afrocentricity? Sometimes the term used is Africana, meaning the Black world as a whole.3 I often prefer the term Global Africa as the sum total of the following: continental Africa; the diaspora of enslavement, which was created by the dispersal caused by the horrors of enslavement; and the diaspora of colonialism, the dispersal caused by the destabilization and long-term consequences and disruptions of the colonial era. It is possible to regard Jesse Jackson as part of the diaspora of enslavement and Ali Mazrui and his children as part of the diaspora of colonialism. Jamaicans in Britain are both part of the consequences of enslavement and part of the consequences of colonization. Global Africa becomes the sum total of that massive African presence on a world scale.

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Defining Afrocentricity and Multiculturalism Yet Afrocentricity goes beyond that. It is not enough simply to look at global Africa from a global perspective; Afrocentricity looks at the world from an African perspective. Afrocentricity is the study of the human condition from an African perspective. We shall return to that theme. What are the defining elements in the multicultural perspective? A basic assumption is the parity of esteem of all cultures. It is almost as if there was a founding father, a kind of multicultural Jefferson, who has pronounced that all cultures are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them cultural life, cultural liberty, and the pursuit of cultural happiness. Of course, not all cultures are factually equal, any more than all human beings are factually equal, but they are morally equal just as all human beings are morally equal. Moral equality cannot be equated with factual equality because people are not equal if they are tested against a yardstick of empiricism. Similarly, cultures are not equal if they are tested against the yardstick of pragmatism. However, just as one starts from the moral position that all people are created equal, then the issue of whether this person is more intelligent than that one, this man is taller than that, this woman is more clever than that, ceases to be relevant. At some moral level, all people become equal. Similarly, the multicultural perspective assumes that all cultures deserve parity of esteem. They are morally equal regardless of whether they are empirically equal. They contribute to each other, and a synthesis emerges of “cultural holism.”4 In 1990–1991, I served on the New York Syllabus Review Committee of the State of New York for High Schools. We spent about a year determining whether what children were exposed to in the high schools of New York was excessively Eurocentric. The majority of us on the committee concluded after our deliberations that education in the State of New York was excessively Eurocentric. Our Syllabus Review report was called One Nation, Many Peoples: A Declaration of Cultural Interdependence, published of course by the State of New York’s Education Department.5 It was as if the whole system assumed that the pyramids were built by the Pharaohs instead of by the Egyptian people or the Egyptian peasants. This pyramid called the United States of America was not built just by the founding fathers, the pharaohs. It was also built by a lot of women, Black people, other minorities within the system, a lot of workers and peasants, a variety of people who have little recognition in the history books of the United States. The pyramid was not built just by Anglo-Americans. It was also built by varieties of nationalities with scant

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salute in the annals of this particular society. There is, then, the pyramid called human civilization, which was not built by European pharaohs only, but included a lot of other people in its construction. Our Syllabus Review report was inevitably controversial. No less controversial was my appendix to the report, which was called “Multiculturalism and Comparative Holocaust.”6 American children needed to learn that genocide did not begin with the Nazis, but was perpetrated in the Americas by White men against Native Americans.7 Enslavement of Africans was also an experience of Holocaust proportions. But what are the analytical differences between Afrocentricity and Multiculturalism—apart from the aforementioned elements? By definition, Afrocentricity is uni-polar, a world centered in Africa. Multiculturalism is multi-polar, a universe of many centers. The question persists: Where should Ali Mazrui belong? Where should Edmond Keller belong? Where should Maulana Karenga belong? Where should all those of us who are in Africana studies belong?

A Cost-Benefit Analysis There is a case to be made for Africana Studies to go in either direction—either to commit itself to unrelenting Afrocentricity, or to dedicate itself to uncompromising multiculturalism. First, we examine the case for Afrocentricity. Africana Studies has been neglected for so long that only a thoroughgoing Afrocentric approach stands a chance of narrowing the gap. This is part of the reason why those of us who are in Africana Studies should go the Afrocentric way. This field has been neglected for so long that only an Afrocentric crusade stands a chance of producing results.8 Secondly, there is so much prejudice against people of African descent that only an Afrocentric approach could change their image before the world. We are confronted with a massive wall of prejudice, and therefore a thoroughgoing Afrocentric approach becomes part of the necessary wherewithal for confronting that wall. Thirdly, African contributions to world civilization have been so underestimated, or even denied, that only an Afrocentric crusade can hope to restore the balance.9 Fourthly, the African peoples may indeed be the Chosen People of history; a people of the day before yesterday and a people of the day after tomorrow. Afrocentrism is a paradigm shift which looks at human affairs as a response to the African condition. Afrocentricity becomes a perspective which moves Africa and people of African ancestry to the center stage of world history.

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There are two types of Afrocentricity. Gloriana Afrocentricity emphasizes the great and proud accomplishments of people of African ancestry—Africa at its most complex, Africa on a grand scale. This would include the castle builders, those who built the walls of Zimbabwe, or the castles of Gondar, or the sunken churches of Lalibela, and indeed, some would argue, those who built the pyramids of Egypt.10 This is Gloriana Afrocentricity. There is also Proletariana Afrocentricity. This emphasizes the sweat of Africa’s brow, the captured African as a co-builder of modern civilization, the enslaved as creator and innovator. There is a volume of work documenting the role of slave labor in helping to build the Industrial Revolution in the Western world. Slave labor, for better or for worse, helped to fuel the capitalist transformation in the northern hemisphere.11 A corollary factor in the development of the industrialized modern world was colonialism and the colonized peoples, both as victims, and as builders. The resources of Africa including the minerals of Africa, extracted from beneath our feet, have been used for factories which have transformed the nature of the twentieth century. Without those resources, this century would have been vastly different.12 Proletariana Afrocentricity is a story of victim as Creator. In a way, even Negritude is a kind of Proletariana Afrocentricity, at least when it indulges in romantic primitivism—as Aimé Césaire did. “Hooray for those who never invented anything. Hooray for those who never explored anything. My Negritude is no tower and no cathedral. It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.”13 The primitivist version of Negritude celebrates Africa’s simplicity rather than Africa’s complexity. It salutes the African cattle herder, not the African castle builder. To that extent it is part of Proletariana Afrocentricity. As for the case for multiculturalism, the argument would go this way: the problem is not merely the demeaning of African culture. It is the threatening hegemonic power of Western culture, particularly European culture. Western cultural hegemony, or Eurocentrism in the world, cannot be challenged by Africana Studies alone. Eurocentrism has a long history, deep roots, and powerful allies all over the global system to be threatened seriously by Africana Studies.14 It must be tackled by an alliance of all other cultures threatened by Western hegemony, sometimes even by an alliance which includes dissident elements within Western culture itself. The present world culture is Eurocentric, but the next world culture is unlikely to be Afrocentric—even if that was desirable. The best solution is, therefore, a more culturally balanced world civilization. That is the burden of the next generation, to attempt to enlist the participation of other

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civilizations—not to provide an alternative hegemony, but to provide a new balance. Africana Studies should do joint projects with groups like Latin American Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, or studies of other parts of the Third World. Part of the mission is to reduce the global Eurocentric presence in scholarship, in research, and in education. The problem is not simply that African culture has been demeaned. African culture will continue to be demeaned as long as Western culture is hegemonic and triumphant in the very citadels of Africa—for Western culture has deep roots.15 Only an alliance with other groups can even approximate a dent on this ever expansionist European giant and its extensions. If Africana is to go multicultural, it must internally go comparative. African studies should include the study of global Africa. Even within Africana Studies we need to broaden our scope. The history of Africa does not end on Africa’s shores. In fact, African children in African schools in continental Africa are wrongly taught that “African history” is assumed to be the history of that piece of land which is bounded by those particular oceans. One must ask: When did those Africans exported as slaves cease to be part of African history? Was it when they left Cape Coast in Ghana? Or when they were midway across the Atlantic? Or when they got to the Western Hemisphere?—in the first hundred years, or in the first two hundred years? What was the African cutoff point of those captives? When did they cease to be African? When did they walk out of African history? Those are questions which children in Africa itself ought to be encouraged to ask themselves, but this is not yet happening. On the contrary, current researchers are underplaying the slave trade in Africa itself. They are underplaying some of the links which could constitute the bridge with the externalized Black world. This shrinkage of the African consciousness needs to be arrested as a matter of urgency.

The World is Africa Writ Large We now return, as promised, to Afrocentricity as a perspective on world studies. Afrocentricity is not just a method of looking at the history of Africa; it is also a method of looking at the history of the world. Afrocentricity moves the African experience to the middle stage. There is, first, the concern with the evolutionary genesis, the origins of our species. Because on present evidence our human species begins in the African continent, the entire human race becomes a massive global African diaspora.16 Every human being becomes a descendant of Africa. It is in

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that evolutionary sense that the rest of the world is a massive African diaspora. Then there is the cultural genesis. If from present evidence our species began in Africa, then our basic institutions also began in Africa, for example, human language and human family. In the BBC/PBS television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, the Kenyan narrator, Ali Mazrui, makes a startling claim: “We invented the family.” By that Mazrui precisely meant that if the species began in Africa, then Africans must have begun the kinship institutions which crystallized into the human family. Third, there is the civilizational genesis, which is not exactly the same as the cultural genesis. Civilizationally, much of Africana Studies are focused especially on the role of ancient Egypt—as a grand civilization which shaped not only other parts of Africa, but which also had a considerable impact on civilizations in the rest of the Mediterranean. Most recent discussion has emphasized Egypt’s impact on ancient Greece. Martin Bernal’s book, Black Athena, has generated a new examination of that debate.17 Bernal’s approach to the subject is telling us that these distortions were not made by ancient Greeks. It was not the Greeks who did not acknowledge their debt to ancient Egyptians. It has been modern Europeans who have changed classical history. This massive macro-plagiarism of lifting a whole civilization without footnotes was done not by the ancients, but (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) by revisionist European historians of the classics. Bernal’s thesis is that modern Europeans, entering a new era of racism and anti-Semitism, could not make themselves bear the thought that what they regarded as the pristine origins of their civilization should have had much to do with either Africans or such Semitic peoples as the Phoenicians. Modern Europeans, therefore, promptly under-stressed, if not “obliterated,” Egypt’s contribution to Athens.18 Martin Bernal is, of course, not a Pan-African Black nationalist. He is a White Irish Jew, a very different phenomenon from Edmond Keller, Maulana Karenga and Ali Mazrui who have their own Pan-African axe to grind. Bernal has since issued the second volume of Black Athena, a very detailed work with a lot of linguistic as well as archival evidence. Fourth, there is the geographical centrality of Africa. It is almost as if the Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, had cut Africa into two equal parts. Africa is certainly the only continent that is thus cut almost in half by the equator. Africa is also the only continent that is traversed by both the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. In many ways, therefore,

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Africa is also the most tropical of all continents by its centrality. The geographical centrality of Africa is, therefore, clear. It is true that Europeans played games with the size of Africa in its representation on the map, but there were certain things even European map-makers could not tamper with. Once they started drawing lines called latitudes, and identified the equator, there was nothing they could do but reveal Africa as geographically the most central of all continents. Fifth, there is the monotheistic genesis, the debate as to whether monotheism began in Africa. There is disagreement among Africana scholars whether the Pharaoh Ikhenaten was in fact the first thoroughgoing monotheist in history or not. His reign was from 1379–1362 BC.19 There is the related debate as to whether the Semites, who helped universalize monotheism, were originally African or not, because their distribution has since been on both sides of what is now the Red Sea. After all, the Red Sea itself was created by one massive earthquake, which also created the Rift Valley. Indeed, was Moses an African? Was he an Egyptian? If he was indeed an Egyptian, did that therefore make him an African? All this is part of the monotheistic debate concerning the origins of Africa in that regard. It is in this sense that Afrocentricity has to be considered in many fundamental ways as a perspective on world history. The forces of world history often have their origins in Africa. Great debates of Africa’s global impact include the questions: Was ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs an African civilization? Was it a Black civilization? Cheik Anta Diop of Senegal led the way, long before Martin Bernal?20 In fact, Martin Bernal’s first volume refers to Cheik Anta Diop only on one page.21 And yet this Senegalese man had been working on that theme for several decades before Martin Bernal. Ancient Egypt’s Africanity is, therefore, one of the great Afrocentric themes. There has also been the debate about the Columbus Phenomenon. This has had two areas. One is the chronological debate, as to whether Christopher Columbus was really the first to cross the Atlantic. Had there been others who did it before? And did those others include Africans? There are huge discoveries in Mexico of sculptured faces that bear socalled Negroid features. The stone heads weigh tons. Nobody disputes that they are about 2,000 years old. They are pre-Christ, let alone preColumbus. There is no scientific disagreement about their age. The question is: Why do they look so African? People are arguing about the likeliest explanation as to why they look so African, but the most straightforward explanation would be that they look African because Mexico had been exposed to Africans before Christ, when those facial features were carved out.22

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There is also the moral debate about Columbus, distinct from the chronological debate. Was Christopher Columbus a noble man who brought civilization and allowed for the development of a “savage” society where the “natives” had not exploited their resources ruthlessly? Or was Christopher Columbus the ultimate Black Man’s Burden? Did he really inaugurate an era which devastated much of the African world, quite apart from the more devastating impact on Native Americans? Indeed, in some ways the Native American tragedy is also more irreversible. Civilizations were destroyed and genocide perpetrated.23 For Native Americans and the Black world, calamity came after Columbus!

Africa between Cause and Effect Let us now return to contemporary Africa, and be sure we are looking at it from an African perspective—Africa as cause, rather than as effect. The same events in the twentieth century can be seen as cause or effect, depending upon the perspective. One of my favorite examples is looking at France and Algeria. A Eurocentric point of view would see the story mainly in the following terms. The French first claimed Algeria as part of France in 1832, and kept the North African country under its control until 1962. When Charles de Gaulle was returned to power in 1958, he was soon convinced that it was an anachronistic crusade to try and keep Algeria as part of France. Then De Gaulle, the grand master of strategy, succeeded in handing over power to the Algerians in 1962. That version of the story recurs in many history books. De Gaulle is the hero of reconciliation. The version is taught to many Africans, and certainly to many Africans in Francophone Africa. It is Eurocentric in its emphasis on de Gaulle as the causal factor.24 The real story is that Algerians fought for their freedom, and by doing so, changed not only their history, but the history of France. France was fundamentally re-orientated. Nor was the price paid by Algeria in this trans-Mediterranean equation negligible. The total numbers of lives killed in all Africa’s anti-colonial wars were about three million. A third of those killed between 1954 and 1962 were Algerians. Algeria was the single costliest anti-colonialist war in Africa’s history. The French were utterly ruthless in wanting to keep Algeria French.25 As Algerians fought for their freedom, they shook the foundations of the Fourth Republic of France much more fundamentally than the Vietnam War shook the foundations of the American system. After all, the Vietnam War shook the foundations of American politics, but not those of the American constitution.

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The Algerian War undermined the foundations of the French constitutional order itself. The French Fourth Republic finally quivered as it approached collapse. Indeed the French people hovered over a civil war. It turned out that only one man could save them, they thought. Charles de Gaulle came to the rescue. But who had created the situation where the old system was failing? It was Algerians fighting for their freedom. Charles de Gaulle insisted on a new Fifth Republic for France. “The Republic is dead; long live the Republic.”26 France becomes a little more stable then under the Fifth Republic. The European Community had a more effective leader in France, and it also consolidated its leadership in important areas of Europe. France, under de Gaulle, created its own nuclear program called “force de frappe.” France opted out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military command while retaining political links with it. France gave formal independence to Algeria in 1962 after giving formal independence to the bulk of its empire in 1960.27 All these events happened because Algerians were fighting for their freedom in the deserts and streets of Algeria, and releasing historic forces far from home. While a Eurocentric point of view would glorify the role of de Gaulle in handing over independence, an Afrocentric view would say: The history of France was changed by Africans fighting for their freedom, and not the other way around. Then there is the history of Portugal too, and its own anti-colonial wars. Did Portugal just hand over independence to its colonies in the 1970s? We know how stubborn and lethargic Portugal had been for centuries. Portugal had resisted the Renaissance, it had ignored the Enlightenment in Europe, it had defied the Reformation, it had turned its back on the American and French revolutions, and it had let the Industrial Revolution bypass it. Then the same Portugal which had been so resistant to every progressive movement in the history of Europe, the same Portugal at last felt the pressure of Africans fighting for their freedom—in Guinea Bissau, in Angola, and in Mozambique.28 The same Portugal that had stood up against major historical forces in its own historical continent in Europe suddenly could no longer sustain its lethargy any longer. In April 1974, the whole superstructure of lethargy, fascism, and conservatism collapsed. It was not a case of the Portuguese graciously handing over freedom to Angolans and the Mozambicans. It was a case of Mozambicans, Angolans, and Guineans pushing Portugal into the twentieth century. They were helping to democratize Portugal precisely by forcing it to decolonize and compelling it towards new arenas of self-

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transformation. To be sure, there was internal opposition to the Salazar regime; but the external pressures were probably as important.29 An Afrocentric approach to modern history, therefore, requires that we pause and say, “That’s an African event.” Be sure you do not overlook the impact of Africa upon Europe while you are busy being mesmerized by the influence of Europe upon Africa. In any case, so much knowledge has already been captured by the Eurocentric perspective. Europe named the world. It named the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Nigeria is on the same longitude time as Britain. Nobody talks about Maiduguri Mean Time. We are guided by Greenwich Mean Time. Europe timed the world. Europe named the continents as well as the oceans. Europe chose its own name “Europe,” and then chose the Americas, Australia, Antarctica, and even Asia and Africa. The name “Africa,” originating from North Africa as a name for a sub-region, was applied to Africa as a whole by European map-makers and cartographers. Although the name “Africa” and the name “Asia” were not themselves of European origins, their application to their respective continents as we know them today was part of European cultural supremacy. Then Europe proceeded to name the universe—Mars, Venus, Saturn, Pluto—and named the tropics: Cancer and Capricorn. Europe positioned the world as we have viewed it. We look at the map and Europe is at the top, while Africa is below it. We do not know which observer in the cosmos decided that the world looked that way, placing Africa below Europe. There is no cosmological necessity for that way of looking at the world. It could have been the other way around, with Africa positioned above. Such geographical perspectives are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. We are unlikely to change the names of the planets, or the names of the oceans and continents, indeed even the name of Africa. Some names of African countries have changed, but not many. If the name was outrageously colonial (like the two Rhodesias), we have changed them. But Nigeria, probably named by Lady Lugard if the legend is correct, is unlikely to change its name. Kenya was named after one of its mountains: Mount Kenya. The pronunciation of Kenya was modified by English people. Kenyans, in turn, modified the British pronunciation— from Keenya to Kenya. After independence, we have exercised our selfdetermination, and changed the pronunciation to Kenya. On balance, this is a world which was designed and shaped in most of its boundaries, many of its names, many of its directions, by outsiders. The naming of the universe has similarly been Eurocentric. In the face of this

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massive Western hegemony, it becomes important for us to ask ourselves, can we fight Eurocentrism simply with Afrocentricity? Or should we join up with others? Indeed, should we join up even with some Europeans, since not all Europeans are Eurocentric? In the United States, the danger is narrower—it is Anglo-centrism rather than Eurocentrism. Let us then enlist even Italian-Americans against Anglo-centrism. It takes more than one culture to indeed create an Africa of today. It takes more than one civilization to give meaning to human reality. Every woman has two cultures Her own and her neighbor’s. Every man has two races His own and the human race. Winds of the world give answer They are whimpering to and fro’ And who should know of Africa Who only Africa know?

Notes 1

Works by Asante include Malcolm X as Cultural Hero: and Other Afrocentric Essays, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1993); Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1992, 1990); Afrocentricity, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988); and Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, (Buffalo, NY: Amulefi Pub. Co., 1980). Works by Karenga include The African American Holiday of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture, (Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press, 1988) and Introduction to Black Studies, (Inglewood, CA: Kawaida Publications, 1982). 2 On multiculturalism, consult the following recent compilations: Lawrence Foster and Patricia Herzog, (eds.) Defending Diversity: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives on Pluralism and Multiculturalism, (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), and David T. Goldberg, Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, (Boston: Blackwell Publishers, 1994). The New York State Library has a bibliographical guide called Multiculturalism Bibliography: Selected Sources from the Collection of the New York State Library, (Albany, NY: SUNY, State Education Dept., 1994). 3 For instance, see Clenora Hudson-Weems, Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, (Troy, MI: Bedford Publishers, 1993). 4 Consult, for example, Betty Jean Craige, Laying the Ladder Down: The Emergence of Cultural Holism, (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992). 5 See One Nation, Many Peoples: A Declaration of Cultural Interdependence, The Report of the New York State Social Studies Review and Development Committee, (Albany, NY: New York State Education Dept., 1991).

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Ali A. Mazrui, “Multiculturalism and Comparative Holocaust: Educational and Moral Implications,” in One Nation, Many Peoples, pp. 41– 44. 7 See, for instance, David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 8 Of course, the seeds for this have to be sown among young minds in college; consult, for example, Jerome H. Schiele, “Afrocentricity: Implications for Higher Education,” Journal of Black Studies 25, (December 1994), pp. 150–169. 9 An exception is renowned scholar Martin Bernal’s Black Athena; see Martin Bernal Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, 2 vols. (London & New Brunswick, NJ: Free Association Books & Rutgers University Press, 1987). 10 Some examples include Ivan Van Sertima, (ed.), Egypt: Child of Africa, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), and Asa G. Hilliard, “The Meaning of KMT, Ancient Egyptian History for Contemporary African American Experience,” Phylon 49, (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 12–22. 11 See, for example, Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, (London: Andre Deutsch, 1987, 1944); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); and Joseph E. Inikori, “Slavery and the Development of Industrial Capitalism in England,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 17, (Spring 1987), pp. 771–793. 12 Consult, for example, Alan K. Smith, Creating a World Economy: Merchant Capital, Colonialism, and World Trade, 1400–1825, (Boulder: Westview, 1991); Heinz Dietrich, “Five Centuries of the New World Order,” Latin American Perspectives, (Summer 1992), pp. 48–52; J. M. Blaut, “Colonialism and the Rise of Capitalism,” Science and Society 53, (Fall 1989), pp. 260–296; and comments by Samir Amin in Vol. 54, (Spring 1990), pp. 67–72 and Albert Prago, Vol. 55, (Winter 1991), pp. 469– 470 in the same journal. 13 This is a summary version of the lines quoted in Ali A. Mazrui, et al., “The Development of Modern Literature since 1935,” in Ali A. Mazrui (ed.), UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. VIII: Africa Since 1935, (Paris, London, Berkeley: UNESCO, Heinemann, and University of California Press), p. 556. Those lines were from S. W. Allen’s translation of J. P. Sartre, “Introduction to African Poetry,” in Black Orpheus, (Paris: Presence Africaine), pp. 41– 43. 14 For a social history analysis, consult Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989); for a literary view, see Vasilis Lambropoulos, The Rise of Eurocentrism: Anatomy of Interpretation, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 15 See, for instance, George K. Kieh, “The Roots of Western Influence in Africa: An Analysis of the Conditioning Process,” The Social Science Journal 29, 1, (1992), pp. 7–19, for one account of how Western ways and patterns are imprinted among Africans. 16 There is some controversy over whether humans first emerged “out-of-Africa” only or were co-terminus with other areas such as Asia; for one view, leaning to the former, see Leslie C. Aiello, “The Fossil Evidence for Modern Human Origins in Africa: A Revised View,” American Anthropologist 95, 1, (March 1993), pp.

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73–96; contrary arguments can be found in Alan R. Templeton, “The “Eve” Hypothesis: A Genetic Critique and Reanalysis,” American Anthropologist 95, 1, (March 1993), pp. 51–57. 17 See Bernal, Black Athena. 18 For some of the more notable reviews of Bernal’s work, see, for example, Leonard Lesko’s review of volume 2 in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24, (Winter 1994), pp. 518–21; Bruce G. Trigger, Current Anthropology 33, (February, 1992), pp. 121–123; John Coleman, Archaeology 45, (September/October 1992), pp. 48–52; David Gress, “The Case Against Martin Bernal,” The New Criterion 8, (December 1989), pp. 36– 43; G. W. Bowersock, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31, (Summer 1989), pp. 317–322. 19 On this king, consult Peter A. Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp. 120–126; for a book-length treatment, see Donald B. Redford, Akhenaten: The Heretic King, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 20 See, for example, Cheik Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, (New York: L. Hill, 1974). 21 See Bernal, Black Athena, p. 436. 22 Some works in this genre include Ivan Van Sertima (ed.), African Presence in Early America, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992); Patrick Huyge, Columbus Was Last, (New York: Hyperion, 1992); and R. A. Jairazbhoy, Ancient Egyptian Survivals in the Pacific, (London: Karnak, 1990). 23 Consult Stannard, American Holocaust. 24 For one version of the De Gaulle-Algeria interaction, see Michael Kettle, De Gaulle and Algeria, 1940–1960, (London: Quartet, 1993); and for a journalistic account, consult C. L. Sulzberger, The Test: De Gaulle and Algeria, (London: R. Hart-Davis, 1962). 25 Algeria was extremely important to the French; consult, for example, Tony Smith, The French Stake in Algeria, 1954–1962, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978); an account of the savage war may be found in John E. Talbott, The War Without a Name: France in Algeria, 1954 –1962, (New York: Knopf, 1980). 26 The transition from the French Fourth Republic to the Fifth Republic—and details on the latter’s institutions, laws, and personalities—is well-covered in Philip M. Williams and Martin Harrison, De Gaulle’s Republic, (London: Longman, 1960). 27 On French foreign policy in the European-American theater, see A. W. DePorte, “The Fifth Republic in Europe,” in William G. Andrews and Stanley Hoffman (eds.), The Impact of the Fifth Republic on France, (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1981), pp. 247–260. 28 For an account of the Portuguese in Africa, see, for instance, M. D. D. Newitt, Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Years, (London: Hurst, 1981); and, for a bibliographic guide, see Susan J. Gowan, Portuguese-Speaking Africa: A Select Bibliography, (Braamfontein, South Africa: South African Institute of International Affairs, 1982). 29 On internal resistance to the Salazar regime, consult, for instance, David L. Raby, Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberals and Military

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Dissidents in the Opposition to Salazar, 1941–1974, (Manchester, UK and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press, 1988).

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE AFRICA’S TROUBLED TAKE-OFF: DELAYED MODERNITY AND DEFERRED DEMOCRACY In a seminal article entitled “Political Development and Political Decay” published in World Politics (Princeton, NJ), in April 1965, the late Samuel Huntington argued that premature political modernization caused political decay rather than political development. Premature modernization included efforts to mobilize the population at election time when the political institutions were still not strong enough to sustain the disproportionate political participation. Networking under the discipline of the clock has not always been efficient. Modern political institutions are intended to maximize the accountability of the rulers and to optimize the political involvement of the ruled. Postcolonial enthusiasm and charismatic mobilization put undue stress on weak institutions. Hence Huntington’s conclusion that this kind of modernizing the political process resulted in decay rather than development. Huntington was referring to underdeveloped countries which were essentially pre-modern. Development, in their case, was definable as capacity-building to sustain a democratic order. Modernization, in their case, entailed a quest for greater rationality, greater technical efficiency, and a more knowledge-intensive political process. In the context of Huntington’s model, a premature quest for greater rationality, greater efficiency, or knowledge-intensity could make it more difficult to sustain the pursuit of a stable democracy. Political decay in developing societies occurs when the process of democratization is stalled, interrupted, or even reversed. What Huntington did not address in that seminal article was whether a society which had already been democratic for generations, if not centuries, could still be liable to political decay. Was democracy in advanced countries reversible or subject to a serious relapse?

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In this chapter, we examine the possibility of advanced countries becoming not only post-modern, but also post-democratic. Negative postdemocracy is when an advanced political system does indeed relapse normatively, or decay institutionally. Positive post democracy arrives when there are signs of innovative governance, which is superior in ethics and performance to liberal democracy as we have known it so far. It could also be a new moral stride superior to social democracy, as we have known it so far. In his own influential article entitled “The End of History,” published in the 1980s, Francis Fukuyama argued that the capitalist and democratic standards that the human race had already achieved were, to all intents and purposes, the final stage of the whole history of political economy. Those of us who rejected Fukuyama’s notion of the end of history were, in fact, insisting that humanity’s capacity to innovate, and even reinvent itself, should not be presumed to have dried up. Winston Churchill had argued that democracy was “the worst form of government—except for all the others.” But Winston Churchill did not know yet what “all the others” were. Nor are we as yet knowledgeable as to what new and superior method of human governance may be around the corner in the march of global history. What we do know already is that fully mature and well established democracies are subject to relapses and potential reversals. Even if positive post-democracy (entailing an improved social order) has not yet arrived, we know that negative post-democracy (a declining ability to maintain modern democratic standards) is already at hand. Political decay in developing countries is usually caused by factors in the wider civil society—such as disproportionate networking and political activism. But political decay in advanced countries is more often caused by excesses of those in power—civilian or military—rather than by civil society as a whole. Is Africa truly modernizable and, if so, at what pace? Is governance in Africa democratizable and, if so, by what date?

But What is Modernization? The Clock of Modernization Africa needs a shift from a space theory of value, especially land, to a time theory of value, the discipline of the clock. John Locke gave us a liberal version of the labor theory of value—the river belongs to all of us, but the water in the bucket is mine. Karl Marx gave us a socialist version

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of the labor theory of value—what gives value to a product is the labor which produced it. We Africans do need a time theory of value which goes beyond the monetization of units of time. In many parts of Africa, a year was not divided in precise units. There have been African Heads of State whose birthdays were often unknown before the colonial period—e.g., Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Banda, etc. This author remembers the arbitrary allocation of birthdays to students at a Mombasa school in 1946 for the sake of a Cambridge School Certificate. Has Islam been a modernizing force? Islam came to Africa with the discipline of the clock; it is a sin to keep God waiting, so the five prayers a day were time-specific. Religious holidays in colonial and post-colonial Africa have all been designated for the Christian and Muslim God, but not for indigenous Gods. There have been the Gregorian calendar and Islamic calendar, but no indigenous calendar, except in Ethiopia which is also partly Orthodox Christian. Absence of a real winter season has, in Black Africa, produced a weak culture of planning. African cultures are slow in “making hay while the sun shines.” Did the absence of an icy season stifle Africa’s innovative and inventive potential? The winter-gap in Africa has resulted in: ¾ A weak culture of shelter. ¾ Underdeveloped textiles. ¾ Inadequate exploitation of fire. ¾ Abundance is the mother of inertia.” Is equatorial Africa too fertile to challenge the inventive imagination? ¾ Weak culture of anticipation has stifled planning.

How do we achieve temporal socialization in Africa? How do we develop a culture fully subject to the discipline of the clock? African schools are regimented by the clock, but the African work place is not fully monitored by the clock.

Modernization and the Manual of Literacy There is less literacy in indigenous languages in Francophone and Lusophone Africa than there are in English-speaking African countries. The problem of literacy has to be examined in relation to language. There

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is also a compelling need for the scientification of select African languages. Why has Africa been more linguistically dependent on European tongues than Asia?

Modernization and Secularization Africa has a triple heritage, one of indigenous, Islamic, and Christian religious traditions. Theories of the primacy of culture in the rise of Western capitalism are exemplified by Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. What did the Reformation produce? ¾ Individual accountability, instead of priestly intercession. ¾ Legitimation of acquisitiveness, but not necessarily of consumption. ¾ Accumulation and reinvestment. ¾ Work ethic as a form of prayer. ¾ World capitalism has been led by Protestants for more than three hundred years. France did not have a Protestant Reformation; it instead had a comparable liberal secular revolution in 1789.

In Nigeria, the most capitalistic of the three major ethnic groups is also the most Catholic: the Igbo of the East. What happened to the Protestant ethic? The relevant religious factors in Africa may lie more in residual indigenous culture. For example, Shintoism of Japan rather than Protestantism may be more pertinent for Japanese capitalism. The Igbo are enterprising not because of any “Protestant ethic,” but because of some Igbo ethos. There is also a Kikuyu ethos more relevant than the imported religions from Europe and the Middle East. The relevant comparison once again may be Shintoism rather than Protestantism. Secularization in Africa is easier in those countries which are either religiously homogeneous, or where religious differences do not aggravate regional or ethnic tensions. If we examine Nigeria, as an example, we find that almost all Igbo are Christian, almost all Hausa are Muslim, and the Yoruba are half-and-half. In Nigeria, religious differences aggravate prior ethnic and regional tensions and rivalries. One can more easily risk the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in Senegal, which is 90 percent Muslim, than in Nigeria,

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which is 50 percent Muslim. Religious homogeneity in Senegal has indeed created greater tolerance towards risk-free religious minorities. Senegal’s two stage transition towards the secular society is as follows: First, the ecumenical society; later, the secular society. Senegal has, without a doubt, demonstrated that Africa can accommodate a Catholic President for 20 years in a predominately Muslim country. When Senegal went violent in 1989, it was Muslim against Muslim. Because Senegal is more religiously homogeneous than Nigeria, Senegal will probably become secularized faster than Nigeria. Is secularization the only aspect of modernization which may be accomplished sooner in Africa than in Asia? The same reasons which made Christianity spread so spectacularly in Africa, in a single century, will probably facilitate its exit. Some degree of secularism is probably inevitable for modernity. Africa is more receptive to new religions than Asia. But Africa may also turn out to be more receptive to secularism. What was Christianized fast may be dis-Christianized fast as well. Secular aspects of modernity are increasingly manifest. Africa’s spiritual dilemma is how to strike a balance between secular modernity and sacred morality.

Ends and Means in Democracy Let us now examine the basics of modern democracy. Are the basics universal or culturally relative? It would make sense for Africa to distinguish between fundamental rights and instrumental rights.1 The right to vote, for example, is an instrumental right, designed to help us achieve the fundamental right of government by consent. The right to a free press is an instrumental right, designed to help us achieve the open society and freedom of information. By the same token, we can distinguish, in modern terms, between democracy as means and democracy as goals. The most fundamental of the goals of democracy are probably four in number. The first is to make rulers accountable and answerable for their actions and policies. The second is to make citizens effective participants in choosing those who would rule them, and in regulating their actions. The third is to make society as open, and the economy as transparent as possible. The fourth is to make the social order fundamentally just and equitable to the greatest number possible.2 This is not the democracy of ancient Greece, but is an approximation of democracy married to modernity. Accountable rulers, actively participating citizens, open society, and social justice—those are the four fundamental ends of democracy.

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How to achieve these goals has elicited different means. In making the rulers more accountable, some democracies (like the United States) have chosen separation of powers and checks and balances. Other democracies, like the United Kingdom, have chosen the more concentrated notion of sovereignty of Parliament. These are different means towards making the executive branch more accountable and answerable in its use of power. Is this democratic picture still valid? Is it alive and well? The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had, in May 2010, been doing a series of radio programs about whether democracy was outdated. Was democracy a system of values and institutions which had been overtaken by events? The BBC involved me in the project. I reflected on the fact that the 1970s witnessed an eruption of publications on post-modernism. The spectacular rise of Barack Obama raised the question of whether we had entered a post-racial age. The BBC and I wondered whether we had now entered the post-democratic age. Current democratic problems include the massive partisan polarization in the United States, often paralyzing Congress; the excesses of the Tea Party intolerance, and their denunciation of Barack Obama as Hitler and Stalin rolled into one; Greece as the mother of democracy now reduced to the mother of political extravagance and corruption, the biggest of all threats to the Euro; England as the mother of Parliaments now reduced to a coalition of opposites, liberal Democrats and the Tories; Islamophobia as a child of Western democratic populism; Switzerland banning minarets, in a country which so far has a total of barely six minarets; France’s considerations of outlawing the Muslim veil and the hijab because such measures are nationally popular; the United States coming closer to tolerating torture than at any time in the last one hundred years; the United States becoming more comfortable with imprisoning suspects for years at Guantanamo Bay without access to their own lawyers, and often without hope of early release. Are all these factors part and parcel of a postdemocratic Western world? Indeed, the Supreme Court of the United States is in danger of becoming a post-democracy institution. The Supreme Court’s decision in the year 2000, favoring George Bush, and against Al Gore, could have been made by a cynical Third World Court. No wonder the Supreme Court was embarrassed enough to declare its decision as not constituting a legal precedent. The Supreme Court’s decision, in 2010, allowing unlimited use of money by companies in elections, is also post-democratic. But while the Western world may be drifting towards a postdemocracy era, most of Africa is still in a pre-democracy stage. Many African elections are notoriously rigged. African losers in national

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elections are seldom gracious. Kenya’s parliamentary election in 2007 was almost certainly free and fair, but Kenya’s presidential elections of the same week were disastrous. However, be that as it may be, the majority of African countries (though still pre-democratic) stand a good chance of getting democratized. Ghana led Africa in the attainment of independence from colonial rule in 1957. More recently, Ghana has led Africa in successful democratization. The real test is when an incumbent president, or an incumbent political party, allows itself to be voted out of office—not once, but at least twice. Ghana has satisfied that condition.

Democracy Resistant Countries But there are African countries which are unlikely to be democratized before the second half of this twenty-first century, at the earliest, and more likely in the twenty-second century. Particularly vulnerable are dual societies—countries where two rival ethnic groups account for the majority of the population. Such vulnerable countries include Burundi, with its Hutu /Tutsi rivalry, and Rwanda, with a similar dual configuration, in spite of the current optimism. Another vulnerable category, which may find democracy elusive, is a country which has a long history of nomadic lifestyle, and one which in pre-colonial times was a case of ordered anarchy. Ordered anarchy is a form of governance which relies more on consensus than on state coercion, and on rules rather than rulers. The best illustration of a precolonial ordered anarchy is, of course, Somalia. A combination of precolonial, colonial, and post-colonial factors has made Somalia the worst case of a failed state. Another undemocratic category of countries is almost the opposite of ordered anarchy. These are countries which were already states in precolonial times, and were often cases of ordered tyranny rather than ordered anarchy. African countries of today which are mentioned by the same name in the Old Testament are Ethiopia, Egypt, and Libya—countries with a history of indigenous dictatorship before European colonial rule. In the post-colonial era, it is almost certain that the pharaonic legacy of Egypt, and the dynastic legacy of Ethiopia, will slow down the democratization of these Old Testament states. As for the relations between Christianity and Islam in today’s Africa, both religions are expanding in numbers and growing in influence. But can they co-exist democratically and peacefully? Nigeria has the largest concentration of Muslims in Africa. Nigeria has more Muslims than

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Egypt. Is this a threat to Nigeria’s democratization? In reality, Christianity and Islam are divisive in Africa if they reinforce prior linguistic and ethnic divisions. In Nigeria, as we have already indicated, almost all Hausa are Muslims, almost all Igbo are Christians, and the Yoruba are split in the middle. Thus, Islam reinforces Hausa identity; Christianity reinforces Igbo identity; and Yoruba nationalism unites the Yoruba regardless of religion. Islam and Christianity divide Northern and Southern Sudan mainly because the two regions were already divided by even deeper cultural differences. The two regions belonged to two different indigenous civilizations even before they were either Islamized or Christianized. On the other hand, soon after independence, Muslims in Senegal repeatedly voted for a Christian president. For twenty years, Léopold Sédar Senghor, a Roman Catholic, was President of a country which was over ninety percent Muslim. Léopold Senghor was succeeded, for another twenty years, by a Muslim President of Senegal, Abdou Diouf, who had a Roman Catholic First Lady. This degree of ecumenical democracy has not been achieved in the Western world. No major Western democracy has ever elected either a Jew or Muslim for President. Joseph Lieberman, a distinguished Jewish Senator in the United States, trailed far behind in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2003–2004 primaries. As for the distinguished nineteenth century British Tory, Benjamin Disraeli, there is general consensus that he would never have become Prime Minister of Great Britain in the nineteenth century had his Dad, Isaac D’Israeli, not quarreled with his Synagogue of Bevis Marks, and then decided to have his children baptized as Christians.3 After all, until 1858, because of their religion, Jews were not allowed even to run for parliamentary elections in Britain, let alone become ministers. On the other hand, Tanzania has had a de facto religiously rotating presidency. Julius K. Nyerere, a Catholic, was succeeded by Ali Hassan Mwinyi, a Muslim, who in turn was followed by Benjamin Mkapa, a Christian. The current President of Tanzania is a Muslim, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete. The question arises: Will the next Tanzanian president be another Christian? Would the de facto religious rotation be interrupted or indeed continue? The answer is currently unknown. The religious rotation is upheld de facto; it is not constitutional requirement. Nigeria has not yet developed a religiously rotating presidency. But there are some party advocates of a regionally rotating Nigerian presidency, alternating between the north and the south. Such regional

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alternation in the Nigerian presidency could, de facto, be a religious alternation. Africa had no religious wars before the arrival of Islam and Christianity. But now that Africa has embraced its own Islam and Christianity, some Africans are developing ecumenical attitudes to religion which are far ahead of the rest of the world. The ecumenical spirit of Africa is a plus for democratization. Africa did not have ideological wars either until the Cold War. The Cold War favored African states whose foreign policy was either proSoviet or pro-Western. The Cold War was bad news for democracy. Now the United States fosters a war against terrorism. On the whole, this “war on terror” is also bad news for democracy.

Between Ethnic and Regional Dualism Let us now return to the dialectic between dual and plural societies. In the new sociology of underdevelopment, the real contrast to the plural society as a threat to the state is the dual society. The plural society endangers the state by having more sociological diversity than the political process can accommodate. Paradoxically, the dual society endangers the state by having less sociological differentiation than is needed for the politics of compromise. Development is caught in-between. It is to this under-studied, and even unrecognized, category of the dual society that we must now turn. As we grapple with new levels of identity disputes and ideological conflicts in Africa, from Kigali to Kismayu, from Maputo to Monrovia, we ought to at least try and identify which socio-political situations are particularly conflict-prone. Quite a good deal of work has been done on the plural society in Africa—the type of society like Congo, Kenya, or Tanzania, which has a multiplicity of ethnic groups and plurality of political allegiances. What has yet to be explored adequately is the phenomenon of the dual society—a country whose fundamental divide is between two groups or two geographical areas. The state in a dual society is vulnerable in a different way from the state in a plural society. In a dual society, two ethnic groups may account for more than three quarters of the population. Rwanda is a dual society. So is the Sudan. But they are dual societies in very different senses. Rwanda is an ethnically dual society whose fatal cleavage is between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi. Burundi is similarly bifurcated between majority Hutu and minority Tutsi. Algeria could potentially be torn between majority Arabs and minority Berbers.

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However, Sudan is a regionally dual society, divided between a more Arabized Northern Sudan and a Christian-led Southern Sudan. Although the Sudan is regionally dual, it is ethnically plural. Both Northern and Southern Sudan are culturally diverse within themselves. Indeed, Darfur is a miniature Dual Society within the north. Outside Africa, Cyprus is both regionally and ethnically dual between Greeks and Turks. There is a stalemate hovering between partition and confederation, with the United Nations still trying to mediate. Czechoslovakia was also both ethnically and regionally dual between Czechs and Slovaks. In the post-communist era, the country has indeed partitioned itself into separate Czech and Slovak Republics. In effect, the state of the old Czechoslovakia has collapsed; it split into two. The most risky situations are not those involving a convergence of ethnic duality and regional (territorial) duality, as in Cyprus or Czechoslovakia. It is true that when the two ethnic groups are concentrated in separate regions, it increases the risk of territorial or political separatism and secession. But, in human terms, that may not be the worst scenario. The most risky form of duality is that of pure ethnic differentiation without territorial differentiation. These would be two groups physically intermingled. It means that there is no prospect of resolving the Cyprus stalemate, of keeping the ethnic groups separate but peaceful. It also means that there is no prospect of Czechoslovakia’s “gracious parting of the ways,” creating separate countries. Rather, the two groups are so intermingled in neighborhoods, at times so intermarried, that a soured ethnic relationship is an explosive relationship. Underdevelopment can be more than a condition: it can be an agony. Can such a country be democratized? Rwanda and Burundi fall into that category: ethnic duality without regional duality. The two groups are intermingled from village to village, certainly from street to street. Rwanda also happens to be the most densely populated country on the African continent (with an estimated number of 210 persons per square kilometer, about 540 persons per square mile, before the genocide in 1994). Can Rwanda ever be truly democratized? Ethnic duality without regional separation can be a prescription for hate at close quarters. Algeria combines Arab intermingling with some territorial Berber areas. Rwanda’s and Burundi’s tragedies are a combination of ethnic duality, population density, geographic intermingling, and the legacies of colonial and pre-colonial relationships. Northern Ireland is also a case of ethnic duality, Protestant and Catholic, with considerable intermingling within the north. There is no question of partitioning the north itself into a Catholic sector, to be united

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with the Irish Republic, and a Protestant section, loyal to the United Kingdom. A second Irish partition is not in the cards, not least because the population of the north is too geographically intermingled for another partition. Inter-communal hate is therefore immediate and at close range, in spite of hundreds of years of Irish liberalism. Is Sri Lanka also a dual society, with the two biggest groups being the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils? The population is intermingled, to a substantial extent—but the Tamil Tigers rebel group waged a long war for a separate Tamil homeland in predominantly Tamil areas. Militarily the country faced a stalemate until 2009. Ethnically dual societies are vulnerable to the risk of polarization. This includes Nilotic and Great Lakes countries. The absence of potential mediating coalitions, through other groups, makes the Rwandas and Burundis of this world more vulnerable than ever to periodic ethnic convulsions. Cultural frontiers without territorial frontiers make for a dual identity within a single country, a society at war with itself! Democratisation becomes more elusive than ever. Sudan is also a country at war with itself, but its duality is regional rather than ethnic. As we indicated, both northern and southern Sudan are multi-ethnic. The south is distinctive by being culturally more indigenous, less Islamized, and led in the main by Christianised Sudanese. There was a civil war between the two regions, between 1955 and 1972, ending with the Addis Ababa accords of the latter year. In 1983 a second Sudanese civil war broke out and raged for almost two more decades. Both civil wars created hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons. Underdevelopment was more deeply aggravated in terror and tears. More recently, there has been the more localized civil war in Darfur. There is also the wider paradox: while the South is more Christianized than the North, the North is more modernized than the South, if only infrastructually! The first Sudanese civil war (1955–1972) was more clearly secessionist. The Southern rebels wanted to pull out of Sudan and form a separate country, like the Czechoslovakia solution of later years. The second Sudanese civil war had been more ambivalent about secession. Indeed, late Colonel John Garang, a Southern military leader, had emphasized that he stood for a democratization of the whole of Sudan rather than for southern secession. The South had the to secede in 2011 in a referendum. There may continue to be some nation-wide intermingling between southerners and northerners, but on a modest scale. The speed of killing in Rwanda in April and May of 1994 was much faster than almost anything witnessed in the Sudanese civil wars. Some

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two hundred thousand people were killed in Rwanda within barely a twoweek period. “There are no devils left in Hell,” declared the cover title of one of the May 1994 issues of the American news magazine, Time; “They are all in Rwanda.”4 More people were killed later. A third of the population of the country was subsequently displaced, or dislocated. Of course, the state has not collapsed in Khartoum—though at times it has had no control over parts of the south. Secondly, unlike the Rwandan national army, the Khartoum national army had not been seeking out helpless civilians for slaughter, from refugee camps to hospitals. However, over the long run, both civil wars have indeed been very costly in human lives and human suffering. The Sudan may just have found a solution to its violent dualism. Its split cultural personality, between north and south, had been more divisive than its split ethic personality, among diverse “tribes” and clans. The dual society continues to cast its shadow over plural Africa: from Zimbabwe (Shona versus Ndebele) to Algeria (Arab versus Berber); from Nigeria (north versus south) to the tensions of Kigali and Khartoum. The sociology of underdevelopment continues to express itself in a split personality. While Czechoslovakia was a case of both ethnic and territorial dualism (Czech versus Slovak) and Burundi as well as Rwanda are cases of ethnic dualism (Tutsi versus Hutu) without territorial dualism, Yemen has been a case of territorial dualism (north versus south) without significant ethnic dualism. Is the distinction between the self-styled Republic of Somaliland and the rest of Somalia a case of territorial dualism without ethnic dualism (as in the case of Yemen)? Or is there sub-ethnic dualism between the two parts of Somalia which make it more like the case of Cyprus (GreekCypriot versus Turkish-Cypriot), which are both ethnically distinct and territorially differentiated? Alternatively, the two parts of Somalia may be an intermediate category of dualism, equally prone to internecine conflict. The question continues to persist: are such dual societies truly democratizable.

Gender: Between Africanity and Islam Let us now turn to gender between indigenous African culture and Islam. Indigenous cultures, in Africa, gave more roles to women than Islam did. Islam, on the other hand, gave more rights to women than indigenous culture had. Gender issues are inevitably linked to the process of democratization.

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On the whole, the gender discipline of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa had been negative. Under Islamic influence, the roles of women in subSaharan Africa have become more restricted as compared with indigenous cultures. But the rights of women in inheritance have improved more under Islam than under indigenous traditions. Women own more under Islam than under native customary law. But what about the role of women in the wider Islamic experience? Africans and Muslims should pay attention to trends in the wider world.5 There are paradoxes in the Muslim world. In Muslim countries, women are not more liberated than in the United States, but, in some Muslim countries, women have been more empowered than women have been in the United States. In general, African Islam has been slower in empowering women than Asian Islam. Africa had no national woman chief executive until the year 2005 when Liberians elected President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She was elected by both Muslim and non-Muslim Liberian citizens. It was a high point in Liberia’s democratization. In Eastern Africa, Uganda has led the way in the political empowerment of women. The controversial and dictatorial President of Uganda, Field Marshall Idi Amin, appointed the first woman Foreign Minister in Eastern Africa. This was two decades before Bill Clinton appointed the first woman Secretary of State in American history, Madeleine Korbel Albright. Although appointed by a Muslim Head of State, Foreign Minister Elizabeth Bagaya of Uganda was not herself a Muslim. President Yoweri Museveni has since carried female empowerment in Uganda even further. Uganda, under Museveni, has had a woman Vice-President long before the United States has had one. In Africa as a whole, the political empowerment of women still has a long way to go, though military regimes have sometimes opened more doors to women than civilian governments have.6 In the experience of both Muslim and non-Muslim Africans the gender question is still problematical. But there are plusses, as well as minuses, in what these two civilizations can demonstrate to a human race still struggling to achieve gender equity.

Conclusion We began this chapter with an observation as to whether the West is slipping away into a post-democratic era. Ethical standards are dictating when democracy provides an excuse for torture, for detention without trial, for outlawing forms of dress, and for outlawing the building of minarets.

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Even the meritocracy of Obama’s White House is a slip into postdemocratic tendencies. The President is a former Professor of law at the University of Chicago. One of his economic advisers, Larry Summers, is a former President of Harvard University. Is such meritocracy a dilution of democracy? We started this chapter also by distinguishing democracy as ends from democracy as means. The same ends of democracy can be realized by different means. Africa should embrace the same ends (or goals) of democracy as the West: accountable rulers, freely participating citizens, the open society, and the pursuit of justice. But, in pursuing those goals, Africa should explore what democratic means would best work for Africa. It is also worth remembering that premature political modernization can result in institutional decay rather than development. Given that African political behavior is strongly susceptible to ethnic forces, Africa’s democratic means should take that paramount factor into account. And yet postcolonial African constitutions have tended to be in denial about ethnicity, often pretending that African states were readymade nation-states qualified to be fully fledged unitary states. In reality, ethnic rivalries have often posed a major challenge to democratization. Since ethnicity will remain with us in Africa for at least another hundred years, political detribalization is not an option. We need ethnic checks and balances of a creative and constructive kind. The Constitution of Ethiopia after Mengistu has attempted to establish a federation of cultures and a theoretical system of ethnic balance. But in reality, while the Oromo, for example, may be empowered at the regional level, they are not really empowered at the national level. Ethiopia is, of course, an Old Testament country. But today, the Ethiopian Constitution has made progress in giving autonomy to the regions—but not enough progress in sharing power at the center. An equitable ethnic partnership needs to do both—give more autonomy to the provinces, and provide some genuine power-sharing at the center. Democratization and political modernization are both challenged in Ethiopia; the war with Eritrea has not helped the constitutional experiment. Military mobilization tends to trample regional claims to autonomy underfoot. In this chapter, we have also posed the question: If African politics are ethnic prone, can African constitutions be ethnic-proof? Surely, not many in Kenya needed much persuasion that in 2007–2008 African politics are indeed ethnic prone. Ethnic loyalty in Africa may be a pre-modern phenomenon. And yet accommodating ethnic loyalties is probably a precondition for democratization. Tribality may be pre-modern, but giving

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it political recognition may be a democratic imperative. Let us hope Ethiopians and Eritreans will rebuild their countries and find peace and greater cooperation. Countries like Uganda should shed the superstition that in order to foster national consciousness there must be a unitary state. Both the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States are nationally conscious societies with great propensity for patriotism and deep love of their country. Yet neither Germany nor the United States are unitary states. They are indeed federations. Local loyalties are perfectly compatible with national patriotism, provided the whole system is inclusive and accommodates difference, without marginalizing smaller groups. As a wise voice from Kisii has reminded fellow Kenyans: It is important to accept at this stage that the aspect of ethnicity is so entrenched in the country’s politics that it is impossible to put the country together without a system of inclusive government. The first step towards this is to find a way of dealing with ethnicity from a positive perspective, and rehabilitate the national consciousness as a process of restructuring the country’s political economy.7

But in Africa no ethnic checks and balances can endure unless women are also involved in a meaningful way. Gender equity is both part of democracy and part of modernity. That is why Africa also needs gender checks and balances. British colonialists may never forget Nana Yaa Asantewa, the warrior Queen Mother of Ashanti. Nor will Yoweri Museveni forget Alice Lakwena, the woman who led the Acholi to battle against Museveni. We Africans need to know more about the role of women in tribal political systems and see what we can learn from these ancestral cultures. If pre-colonial “tribal” societies empowered women more than post-colonial African countries have, “tribal” norms were paradoxically more “modern” than the gender norms of post-coloniality. But we know enough already about men and women to insist that the next post-colonial constitution should more systematically defend, protect, and promote the participation of women in the political destiny of Africa. We Africans must go to the extent of reserving seats for women until such a time as an African legislature is at least one-third female through normal competitive politics. The Great Gold Coast philosopher Aggrey once said: “You can play a tune of a sort on the black keys of a piano. And you can play another tune of a sort on the white keys. But for real harmony you need both the black and the white keys.” The Ghanaian philosopher was emphasizing not only

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racial inclusion and harmony, but also an ethnic, gender, class, and religious symphony which goes beyond the single piano. Against all odds, the majority of African countries are bound to make substantial progress in democratization in the course of this century. But, unfortunately, there will be a handful of African countries that may not make it. Legacies of centuries of Royal arbitrariness, pharonic incumbency, pre-colonial legacies of nomadism and ordered anarchy, biblical heritage going back to the Old Testament, and religious rivalry may sentence a few countries in Africa to a continuing pre-democratic status at a time when some Western countries are drifting towards a postdemocratic Guantanamo Gulag. But the handful of residual pre-democratic states may yet surprise us. Against even greater odds, they may reveal layers of democratic resilience which would begin to unfold perhaps long before the twenty-second century. At least let us hope so.

Notes 1

For a recent discussion on fundamental rights, see Milton R. Konvitz, Fundamental Rights: History of a Constitutional Doctrine, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers / Rutgers University, 2001). 2 For a historical overview of democracy, consult Roland N. Stromberg, Democracy: A Short, Analytical History, (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996). And for a contemporary view, see Anthony H. Birch, Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, 2nd ed., (London and New York: Routledge, 2001 Edition). For more specific comments on African democracy, consult Obioma M. Iheduru (ed.), Contending Issues in African Development: Advances, Challenges and the Future, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), and Teodros Kiros, with a preface by K. Anthony Appiah, Explorations in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics, (New York: Routledge, 2001), and for a cultural approach, see Daniel T. Osabu-Kle, Compatible Cultural Democracy: The Key to Development in Africa, (Peterborough, Ont. and Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2000), a chapter on Kenya may be found on pp. 149–162. 3 See Todd M. Endelmann, “Benjamin Disraeli and the Myth of Sephardic Superiority,” in Todd M. Endelman and Tony Kushner (eds.), Disraeli’s Jewishness, (London; Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2002), p. 34, and Bernard Glassman, Benjamin Disraeli: The Fabricated Jew in Myth and Memory, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America), pp. 35–36. 4 This was a quote from a Christian missionary who witnessed the carnage in the Central African country which Time decided to use over a picture of a Rwandese mother holding her baby at a refugee camp near Ngara, Tanzania. See Time, Vol. 143, No. 20, (May 16, 1994), cover page and pp. 56–63. See also “Rwanda Civilian Slaughter” Africa Confidential, Vol. 35, No. 9, (6 May 1994), pp. 5–6, and “Rwanda: A Double Agenda” Africa Confidential, Vol. 35, No. 10, (20 May

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1994), p. 8, and “Rwanda: From Coup to Carnage,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 35, No. 8, (15 April 1994), p. 8, and “Streets of Slaughter” Time, Vol. 143, No.17, (April 25, 1994), pp. 45– 46, and “Rwanda: All the Hatred in the World,” Time, Vol. 143, No. 24, (June 13, 1994), pp. 36–37. 5 For instance, women in Iraq were well-educated and capable of being leaders in the move towards a new regime, although the United States-sponsored Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council have not made full use of this resource; see the op-ed piece by two members of the Iraqi Governing Council, Raja Habib Khuzai and Songul Chapouk, “Iraq’s Hidden Treasure,” the New York Times, (December 3, 2003), p. 31. 6 Even in Iraq, for all of Saddam Hussein’s abuses, his regime was relatively progressive on legislation relating to women. Women were not allowed to marry prior to the age of 18, and there was no favoritism toward men in inheritance, divorce and child custody. See The Washington Post, (February 3, 3004), p. 2. 7 Simeon Nyachae (Kisii), “An Inclusive and Accommodative Way Forward: The case for a Government of National Unity in Kenya,” paper published in Nairobi, May 2001.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR MOMBASA: THREE STAGES TOWARDS GLOBALIZATION Africa, as a whole, is culturally intermediate between Europe and Asia. There are parts of Africa which are more “occidental” than is any part of Asia. Then there are parts of North Africa and parts of South Africa which are more Europeanized than you will find anywhere on the Asian continent. Within the African continent, you may find bits of Europe which are not reproduced anywhere in Asia. On the other hand, there are parts of Africa which have more in common with Asia than have any parts of Europe. Islam, for example, is older in parts of Africa than it is in most of Asia, and Christianity is older in Ethiopia than it is in most of Western Europe. This essential intermediate position which Africa enjoys between the occident and the orient is captured in the story of Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city, East Africa’s largest seaport, and the oldest urban center in Eastern Africa. This is part of the story of this African city on the Indian Ocean. There are, as we have already indicated, three distinct phases in the history of Mombasa as a city. The Afro-Oriental phase was the period when Mombasa was a small cultural arena, where traditions from West Asia and South Asia interacted with African traditions in search of new cultural configurations. This period covered several hundred years, during most of which Mombasa was known as Mvita. The second historical period was the Afro-Occidental phase when Mombasa was at last “discovered” by Europeans. First, the Portuguese and later the British initiated the process of re-orienting Mombasa away from its traditional links with Asia and more towards a new relationship with Europeans and with Western culture. The third phase of Mombasa’s history is currently in progress, the Afro-global phase—when the city feels the pull of both east and west. The old transition from being a city-state to being the main port of a nationstate has now greater global repercussions for Mombasa and its people. Let us take each of these phases in turn.

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The Afro-Oriental Phase Three inter-related factors conditioned the origins of the Afro-Oriental phase. One factor was that Mombasa lay in the path of the monsoon winds, and was therefore reachable by trading sailing ships from parts of Asia using those winds.1 Secondly, Mombasa itself had a natural harbor which could accommodate those ships as well as activate a nautical and ship-building tradition of its own. And thirdly, Mombasa was relatively near the Arabian Peninsula and was soon to interact culturally, as well as commercially, with the land which gave birth to the Muslim religion. Mombasa became one of Islam’s entry points into Eastern Africa. As a result of this configuration of factors, the multiculturalization of Mombasa began quite early. Consumption patterns felt the cultural influences which came with the trading traffic of the monsoons. From Arabia and other ports of Asia came expensive porcelain and plates, brass decorated wooden chests, silks, and finery.2 In East Africa, these were sometimes paid for in ivory, copra, and animal skins. There was also a limited trade in slaves. At the more popular level of consumption culture, the Afro-Oriental phase of Mombasa’s history produced the increasing use of seasoning and spices in the local cuisine. New spices were imported into Mombasa from Asia and innovative, syncretic and eclectic cuisine developed among the Coastal people generally, combining elements of African, Indian, and Arab food cultures. It was during the Afro-Oriental phase that rice became the staple diet of the people of Mombasa and the surrounding coastline. While the vocabulary of ordinary rice dishes remained completely African (mpunga for unhusked rice, mchele for uncooked rice and wali for cooked rice), dishes for special occasions had such borrowed words as biriyani and pilau from South Asia. One the other hand, the names of the individual spices used in preparing these quasi-Indian dishes were more likely to be words borrowed from Arabic rather than from any Indian language (bizari for curry powder and thumu for garlic, for example). The Afro-Oriental phase also witnessed changes in the musical culture of Mombasa and into the coastal areas. In addition to the traditional African drums, the small Indian drum (tabla) found its way into the coastal range of musical instruments. In time, the Arabian string instrument, the Ud, also entered Swahili culture. So did the dancing drums with small bells attached known as matari. Indeed, in some Islamic denominations at the Coast, the matari were even used in the mosque in accompaniment to certain lively praise songs in honor of the Prophet

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Muhammad. (More traditionalist Muslim theologians strongly disapproved of the use of drums in the mosque or for any religious purpose).3 The flute in Coastal music was a child of all three traditions—African, Arab, and Indian—reinforcing each other. But the “Orientalization” of Mombasa music was still increasing.4 Over time, even the tunes of Swahili songs became strongly influenced by Arab music (especially Egyptian), on one side, and Indian music, on the other. At its worst, some so-called Swahili composers simply plagiarized the music of some Indian songs and just substituted Swahili lyrics. Fortunately, there always remained a hardcore Swahili tradition which tried to remain authentic against all comers from the Orient!5 The most profound changes which came from Asia into Mombasa concerned, first, religion, and, second, language. Islam arrived in Eastern Africa while the Prophet Muhammad was still alive. Islam’s first African landing-space was not Mombasa but a part of Ethiopia. Persecuted Muslims from Arabia arrived in Abyssinia in quest of asylum during the Prophet of Islam’s own lifetime. It is because of that factor that some have argued that the Hijra from Arabia to Africa was almost as early, and in a few respects almost as symbolic, as the Prophet’s own Hijra from Mecca to Medina. With the African Hijra (migration for asylum), a seed was being planted which, by the end of the twentieth century, had turned Africa into the first continent to have an absolute Muslim majority. Not long after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam got to the part of eastern Africa which is now Mombasa. Mosques were being built in this part of East Africa before they were constructed in parts of what is now the Middle East. Islam in Mombasa is older than Islam in Istanbul and the rest of Turkey. It may be older than Islam in Islamabad and the rest of Pakistan. Is it older than Islam in parts of what is now the Arab world itself? Certainly parts of the Maghreb in North Africa (such as Morocco) were probably penetrated by Islam later than Mombasa, though much of this is in the arena of historical calculation rather than confirmation. Before long, the arrival of Islam in Mombasa and surrounding areas affected diverse areas of the cultural experience of the people.6 Marriage and kinship relations were changed profoundly, as were the rules of inheritance and succession. African indigenous norms were often in competition with the Islamic rules. In some cases, syncretism was the result. In some cases, the indigenous norms still had an edge. But the AfroOriental phase of Mombasa’s history increasingly witnessed the gradual triumph in pre-colonial Mombasa of the Islamic rules of marriage, kinship, inheritance, and succession.

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The arrival of Islam in Mombasa also had a profound impact on dress culture. The concept of nakedness was completely redefined for both men and women, with practical consequences for forms of attire for each gender. The kanzu, the long outer garment, entered the scene for men, which subsequently became religion-neutral in Uganda—where both Christians and Muslims accepted it as a kind of national dress. In Kenya, the kanzu was still associated with Muslims. In Mombasa, the womenfolk developed the black buibui for outdoor use, intended not only to veil their faces but also to deny shape to their bodies. The buibui was worn by Muslim women of Mombasa only out-ofdoors when they visited relatives or went grocery shopping. The shapelessness of the garment was part of Islam’s quest for female modesty in public places. “In public do not emphasize the curves! Conscience begins with avoidance of temptation!” This is a strong Islamic premise. It profoundly affected dress culture in Mombasa during the Afro-Oriental phase. The arrival of Islam in Mombasa also affected architecture, initially with the minaret and the architectural culture of the mosque. The homes of the people of Mombasa increasingly felt the influence of Islamic conceptions of gender segregation, the court yard, the use of tiles and clay in construction, and the place of prayer for women with the ablution washroom attached to it. Then the winds of the Western world were at last felt in Mombasa. East was East and West was West, but the two were indeed about to meet in the African city of Mombasa.

The Afro-Occidental Phase In the process of the Westernization or Occidentalization of Mombasa, there was always one Western power which was the epicenter. Again three phases are identifiable. There is the phase when Portugal was the virtually unchallenged Western epicenter. There was also the more comprehensive phase of European colonialism when Britain was the epicenter of the Western presence in Kenya as a whole and in Mombasa. And thirdly, there is now the post-colonial phase when the epicenter of the Western world as a whole is the United States of America, and Mombasa has inevitably felt that shift in power and influence. Vasco da Gama was virtually the first European to disembark in Mombasa. That was in April 1498. The sailors of Mombasa and the rest of this African coast helped him in his efforts to find his way to Calcutta in India. Although the people of Mombasa did not realize it at the time,

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Vasco da Gama was also preparing the ground for the Portuguese imperial incursion into Eastern Africa. The Portuguese later came with warships and sought to build coastal African colonies to service their trading fleets in the Orient. In Mombasa, they subsequently built Fort Jesus, a fortress to defend and monopolize the old harbor, and from which they sought to rule Mombasa and its environment. How was Mombasa “Westernized” in this Portuguese phase? For one thing, architecture was partly influenced by the Portuguese, as they built some of their own homes, which were emulated by the locals. The Portuguese language also had an impact on local languages. To the present day the Swahili words for slippers (sapatu), female undergarment (shimizi), and a certain water kettle (kindirinya) are originally derived from the Portuguese language. The old Mombasa dialect even used the metaphor mreno (Portuguese person) to mean any kind of aristocrat. Perhaps the most enduring cultural impact of the Portuguese was on the food culture of Mombasa, and, subsequently, of East Africa as a whole. Because of Portugal’s links with the so-called New World of the Americas, the Portuguese in East Africa eventually brought maize and potatoes which assumed increasing importance in the diet of the local people. In time, many of the indigenous people of the Coast (such as the Giriama) adopted ugali or maize-meal (powdered dry maize) as their staple food, a trend which subsequently spread to the hinterland of Kenya. The Waswahili of Mombasa continued to use rice as the staple, but they increased the use of potatoes as supportive diet and for minor meals of the day. Maize on the cob and ugali were also used for variation. The Portuguese impact on the cuisine of Mombasa did not endure, except perhaps in the case of some desserts and puddings, an influence which was later reinforced by the British.7 Westernization under the Portuguese also meant the Westernization of warfare for the first time in Mombasa. The use of gunpowder, cannons, and guns entered a new phase in the city’s history. Later on this became a case of “nemesis” for the Portuguese—the use of Western-style weapons to drive them out of Mombasa. This included the role of the Mazrui family in combating the Portuguese and finally driving them out of their fortress, Fort Jesus. Indeed, the Mazrui family occupied the fort and ruled the Mombasa citystate from it for about a hundred years—from about the time of the French Revolution in Europe.8

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But clearly, the most far-reaching period of the Westernization of Mombasa was under British rule, from the late nineteenth century until December 1963. British colonial policy in Kenya, for Mombasa, was far more comprehensive than Portuguese. British policy included the building of primary and secondary schools for local children, the establishment of a legal system for the society as a whole, the demarcation of Kenya as a future nation-state and an elaborate system of accountability within a global British Empire. Within every twenty-four hours the children of Mombasa crossed civilizations several times. They might speak Swahili (or Kiswahili) at home, take Arabic or Islamic lessons at the mosque, watch Indian films some weekends, and be forced to speak English all the time at school. Of these several civilizations under the British Raj, there was no doubt which was on the ascendancy in Mombasa. Western civilization exerted increasing influence at school, at the Kilindini harbor, in the new films at local cinemas, and as a direct result of the influence of British power. The English language was implanted to a degree that the Portuguese language never was during Portugal’s occupation of Mombasa. A school syllabus for British-style education was established, linked to an empirewide system based on examinations set by the University of Cambridge in England. School teachers in Mombasa included increasing numbers of men and women from the United Kingdom sent out to serve the British Empire. Of course the White missionaries were also active, seeking to spread the Christian gospel through missionary schools, church services, and medical clinics bearing the cross. The British helped to spread literacy not only in the English language but also in select indigenous languages in what became Kenya. In Mombasa, the relevant indigenous language was Swahili (or Kiswahili). In the first half of the twentieth century, newspapers began to appear in both languages in Mombasa. The Mombasa Times, published daily in English, was the most influential newspaper in the city. It was edited and run by Europeans. But other racial groups in Mombasa (African, Arab, and Indian) developed weekly or monthly publications of their own in diverse languages. The languages were diverse, but the tradition of newspapers and weekly periodicals in any language reflected a process of Westernization. Under British rule, Kenya became a white-settler colony. The colonial power encouraged large-scale white immigration to farm in the very fertile soils of what were overtly called “the White Highlands.” Although these highlands were several hundred miles away from Mombasa, there is no

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doubt that the transformation of Kenya into a white-settler colony had profound implications for Mombasa. Although Mombasa was an ancient city, it was bypassed in order to build the capital of Kenya closer to the White Highlands. Nairobi was rapidly developed from a minor train-stop on the Uganda railway into a growing African metropolis. By the second half of the twentieth century, Nairobi had outstripped Mombasa in size. What saved Mombasa from shrinking into insignificance was its continuing strategic value as the most important port in East Africa, regardless of where the Kenya capital was. Mombasa and other parts of Kenya got westernized in more basic ways as well. Dress culture among the younger generation borrowed more and more from the West. Manners, etiquette, and even forms of boasting became influenced by Western norms. As John Plamenatz, the late Oxford philosopher, once put it: “The vices of the strong acquire some of the prestige of strength.”9 Above all, the colonial mentality looked towards the imperial metropole for a general standard of life and culture. Caliban sought the guidance of Prospero. The British way of life was, for a while, the ultimate standard of civilization to the colonized. Mombasa was in the shadow of this mental dependency. The emulation of British ways included British standards of democratic life. Colonial rule was undemocratic; the imperial power was hoist with its own petard. Nationalists in Mombasa and other parts of Kenya started demanding “One Man, One Vote.” British standards of democracy by the second half of the twentieth century meant universal adult suffrage, leading on to full independence. By mid-December 1963, Mombasa was the proud port of independent Kenya. The old style colonialism was over. It was during this post-colonial period that the epicenter of Westernization in Mombasa shifted from a British focus to an American focus. The shift was neither sharp nor total. After all, Britain and the United States were themselves close allies and were both English-speaking powers. Nevertheless, in the post-colonial world in Kenya, capitalism mattered more than colonial ties, and the leader of the capitalist world was obviously the United States. American influence in determining the prices of Kenya’s agricultural products (especially coffee and tea), American influence with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and American influence among the community of aid-donors generally contributed to this shift from Britannic Westernization to Americo-centric Westernization. This is

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quite apart from the expanding trade, aid, and investment relations between the United States and Kenya more directly. Further American influences came through the increasing impact of American music, television programs, cinema shows, and magazines, which were making major cultural inroads into Mombasa and Nairobi. Young people also responded to American dress culture, with special reference to jeans and T-shirts. The American genius in fast food also affected parts of Mombasa streets and restaurant culture. The hamburger had arrived on the African side of the Indian Ocean; so had Kentucky Fried Chicken or its equivalent. Competing with African, Arab, and Indian snacks of old, there were now these new fast mini-meals from the food culture of the United States. Popular cuisine among the young in Mombasa was partly getting Americanized. The United States was clearly the new epicenter of this new burst of postcolonial Westernization. From this westernizing phase of Mombasa’s historical experience (the Afro-Occidental phase) is an easy transition to the Afro-globalist phase. It is to this even more wide-ranging stage of Mombasa’s historical evolution that we must now turn.

The Afro-Global Phase Three forces contributed to the globalization of Mombasa: war, tourism, and international politics. The wars ranged from World War II to the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya. Tourism went back to the days of Theodore Roosevelt. International politics included the repercussions of the Cold War. There were earlier stages in the globalization of Mombasa. Of course, the first two phases in the history of Mombasa (oriental and occidental) were themselves stages towards a global scale. But there were other trends in the process. Mombasa, as a major seaport, acquired additional significance during World War II. It became important both in the defeat of Italy in the earlier phases of the war and in transporting African troops to Burma in the war against Japan. Mombasa was also important simply in relation to the flow of goods between Africa and Europe during that critical war-time period. It is ironic that the ancient name of Mombasa was Mvita, meaning Isle of War, since it was fought over so often because of its strategic significance. In the twentieth century, Mombasa once again became Mvita, the Isle of War, but in a vastly different sense.

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It has been estimated that about five hundred thousand (half a million) African soldiers from British colonies alone served in World War II. They fought not only in the Horn of Africa and North Africa, but also in Italy and Axis-occupied ports of the fertile crescent. Africa’s heaviest casualties were in the war in Burma against the Japanese. A large proportion of those African soldiers sailed from Mombasa. Almost none of those African soldiers who fought in World War II were ever allowed to rise above the rank of sergeant. They almost always had higher superior White officers. And while the contributions of Australians, New Zealanders, and other Commonwealth combatants have repeatedly been celebrated (including during the 1994 D-Day extravaganza), very little tribute has ever been paid to the African heroes and martyrs of World War II. Mombasa was, to many of those African soldiers, what Portsmouth was to the soldiers who invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944—a point of departure on a momentous military mission. When Italy’s Eastern African Empire of Ethiopia and Eritrea was overrun by the British, Mombasa was used to accommodate many Italian prisoners of war, both men and women. Some of the earliest interracial dating experienced by the local African population in Mombasa was the dating between Mombasa men and the Italian women detained in Mombasa during World War II. That interracial dating itself must be counted as a stage in the globalization of Mombasa. Before World War II, sex between Blacks and Whites was a crime in Kenya. Later on, Mombasa acquired a new value in relation to the Suez Canal. After World War II, Egyptian nationalists were putting increasing pressure on the British to vacate their military base near the Suez Canal. After the Egyptian revolution of 1952, these nationalist pressures against the British military presence in Egypt became irresistible. Mombasa (in combination with Aden in Yemen) acquired additional significance in British strategic calculations. The two ports constituted the fall-back position after the loss of the Egyptian military prize. Mombasa was getting absorbed into wider and wider strategic politics of the world. Unfortunately, for British planners, the year of the Egyptian revolution was also the year of the outbreak of the Mau Mau war in Kenya. Both events unleashed forces which evicted the British from both countries. The British were subjected to the same militant fate in Aden. The Mau Mau war in Kenya was itself a globalizing experience. It gave the colonial politics of Kenya much more publicity than they had ever had before. The name “Jomo Kenyatta” became a household name in distant ports of the world. Although the war was fought mainly in central Kenya rather than at the Coast, it did of course affect Mombasa and must

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be seen as part of the wider forces of globalization at work. Of course, the British authorities also used Mombasa to bring in British troops, planes, and ammunition for the war against the Mau Mau nationalists. In the end, it was a victory of the vanquished. The Mau Mau were defeated militarily but their political cause of Black rule in Kenya prevailed. Kenya became independent in December 1963. After Jimmy Carter was elected president of the United States in 1976, Mombasa acquired military significance to the United States for a while. The American concept of a Rapid Deployment Force in defence of the oil routes and the oil resources included a cluster of seaports which could be used by United States ships either for refuelling or for “morale-boosting” holidays for the servicemen and women who were guarding the approaches to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Before long, the beginnings of an American military base began to be established in Mombasa. American naval ships stopped periodically during the 1980s and American servicemen disembarked. The shops, nightclubs, hawkers, and whorehouses learnt the skills of catering for visiting American servicemen. Mombasa was absorbed into the more militarized side of the Cold War. Tourism as a globalizing experience in Kenya is, in a sense, older than war. In the first half of the century, Mombasa was the main point of entry for all overseas tourists, but the Coast of Kenya was only a minor part of the attraction of the country at that stage. The big attraction for European and North American tourists in the first half of the century was the great safari—travelling into the bush tracking wild animals either to photograph them or to kill them. These were the days of animals as trophies, the most ambitious being leopard skins, elephant tusks, or the head of a lion. The White hunters came through Mombasa and left with their trophies through Mombasa. It was of course an age before the tourist airbus. One of the earliest tourists in Kenya in the twentieth century was Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) of American presidential fame (26th president of the United States, 1901–1909). He came and left through Mombasa. In the second half of the twentieth century, Mombasa became more than simply a point of entry for tourists. The port and the Kenya Coast as a whole became a major part of the attraction of the country. Some of the major beach hotels were built in Mombasa, as were expensive beach chalets for longer-term rent. The safari and the wild beasts were still a major part of Kenya’s tourist package, but the beaches and Mombasa’s own very distinctive cultural mixture had become independent additional attractions for visitors.

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By the 1980s, hunting in Kenya was outlawed, but the old style safari hunters had become only a tiny percentage of the tourists in any case. With the coming of the jet age, Mombasa’s importance as a point of entry for tourists had drastically declined, but Mombasa’s significance as itself a major tourist attraction had risen dramatically. The globalization of Mombasa has continued unabated. The question arises whether the tourist globalization of Mombasa neutralized the previous Afro-orientalization of the city. It is true that the Westernization had itself inevitably been partly at the expense of both African and Oriental ways. The new globalization is an ally of Westernization, and both have continued to corrode both African and Oriental legacies in Mombasa. As the city has learnt to cater for Western tourists and for American service personnel, the pleasures of the evening have become increasingly westernized. More nightclubs, dance halls, bars, and Western-style restaurants have opened. The old rhythms of African drums, the Arab ud and the Indian tabla and sitar have been giving way to the aggressive guitars and drums of the Western world. Indeed, African music itself has got substantially westernized in the last twenty years. One cruel irony is whether what would otherwise have been the relentless Westernization of Mombasa, even in the process of globalization, is now being slowed down by the fears generated by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Certainly sexual liberation as an aspect of Westernization has become more circumspect in Mombasa in the 1990s. And the tourists who used to come from Western Europe in search of “white beaches, the Blue Ocean, and Black sex” have become much more careful about this third component. So have their former Black partners, who regard White folks as the original carriers of AIDS into Africa. It is one of the ironies of history that cultural Westernization in Mombasa is being slowed down partly because of the fear of AIDS. The African and Oriental cultures of Mombasa may be the accidental beneficiaries of a terrible disease. The Bible used historical floods and famines to tell a moral story. One day historians may use AIDS to draw definitive cultural conclusions. When did international politics begin the globalization of Mombasa? Again this is a process which inevitably includes some of the previous phases of Mombasa’s historical experience. Certainly the anti-colonial struggle in Kenya became an experience in international politics. The name of Tom Mboya, the most prominent Kenyan politician after Jomo Kenyatta in the 1950s, became widely known in many circles in the

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United States as well as Great Britain. He lectured widely in both countries in defense of the Black Nationalist cause in Kenya. Mboya was definitely an eloquent illustration of how internationalism contributed to globalization. Even his assassination in 1969 in Nairobi was itself a form of internationalization, although his assassins were local. He was an important African friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. who had himself been assassinated. In the early 1960s, I had met Dr. King in New York City. I already knew Tom Mboya personally at the time. Ironically, my only conversation with Martin Luther King had in fact been, in part, about Tom Mboya. Before the end of the decade, both Mboya and King had fallen victim to an assassin’s bullet. In the 1950s, Mombasa was important in Mboya’s rise to national prominence in Kenya. He was a trade union leader who got involved in the vital dock strike in Mombasa of the 1950s. His combined skills of aggression and negotiation propelled him to national visibility. It was from within the ranks of trade unionism that he then entered wider anti-colonial politics. After independence, the Cold War also became a major factor in the globalization of Mombasa. Although Jomo Kenyatta had been denounced by the British as “leader into darkness and death,” and had suffered as a “Mau Mau” detainee, he emerged from prison ready to forgive and forget. He became one of Kenya’s leading Anglophiles, and took the country firmly into the capitalist camp in the Cold War. However, Mombasa as a port was serving more than just Kenya. Uganda under Milton Obote attempted a “Move to the Left” ideologically and had tense relations with Kenya. Uganda needed Mombasa for its own goods exported and the goods it was importing from outside. Its relations with Kenya sometimes tempted Uganda to explore alternative points of access to the sea. Unfortunately for Uganda, Mombasa was still by far the best outlet to the sea. Uganda under Idi Amin was, in domestic policy, capitalist. But its foreign policy got increasingly anti-Western and pro-Soviet. There were also problems with the Kenya government, which sometimes included Kenyan threats to withhold the port-services of Mombasa for Uganda. Here a paradox emerged. Mombasa’s role as a service for East Africa as a whole was sometimes compromised by the wider regional and global politics. The Cold War cast its shadow on Mombasa directly and through inter-state rivalries in East Africa. Globalization of Mombasa was also through the United Nations and its agencies. Certainly the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

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needed Mombasa for some of the problems of refugees from Somalia, including refugee camps in Mombasa. The United Nations’ Environmental Programmes’ (UNEP’s) global headquarters is in Nairobi. UNEP’s concerns included oceanic ones in Mombasa and elsewhere at the Kenya Coast. The location of UNEP in Nairobi as the first UN agency to have its headquarters in Africa inevitably increased UNEP’s consciousness of its own immediate environment, including the debate about pollution in the Indian Ocean from Kenya. How culpable is Mombasa in relation to the pollution of the sea? Africa’s internationalization has also meant Africa’s interAfricanization. During World War II Mombasa experienced what were perhaps its first visitors from West Africa—the soldiers from the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Mombasa also experienced White South Africans during World War II in uniform, on their way to battle areas elsewhere. The inter-Africanization of East Africa has reached new levels since the 1940s. Since Kenya has become one of the leading diplomatic and conference centers of Africa, Mombasa has inevitably been a Pan-African beneficiary. But no city exists independently of the state and nation to which it belongs. The state to which Mombasa now belongs is of course Kenya. While the City has gone through its three stages towards globalization, Kenya as a state has had a somewhat different transition. Those dilemmas have had a somewhat different transition. The national and state dilemmas have had implications for Mombasa. It is to this wider context of Kenya and its orientation that we must now turn to in the next chapter.

Notes 1

See N. Chittick and R. I. Rotberg (eds.), East Africa and the Orient, (New York: Africana Press, 1975). Also see B. A. Datoo, “Influence of Monsoons on Movements of Dhows along the East African Coast,” East African Geographical Review, Vol. 12 (1974), pp. 23–33. 2 See, for example, C. Sassoon, Chinese Porcelain in Fort Jesus, (Mombasa: National Meseum of Kenya, 1975). 3 See R. Skene, “Arab and Swahili Dances and Ceremonies,” Journal of the Royal Anthropologcal Institute (London), Vol. 47 (1917), pp. 413– 434. 4 See T. O. Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa, 1890–1970: The Beni Ngoma, (London: Heinemann, 1975). 5 See, for example, J. de V. Allen, “Ngoma: Music and Dance,” in The Customs of the Swahili People: The Desturi za Waswahili, Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakara and J. W. T. Allen (eds.), (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 233–246.

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See, for example, R. L. Pouwels, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900, (Cambridge University Press, 1987). 7 See J. Strandes, The Portuguese Period in East Africa, (Nairobi: East Africa Literature Bureau, 1961). 8 Also see G. A. Akinola, “The Mazrui of Mombasa,” Tarikh, Vol. 2, No. 2, (1968), pp. 26– 40; and C. R. Boxer and C. de Azevedo, Fort Jesus and the Portuguese in Mombasa, 1593–1929, (London: Hallis and Carter, 1960). 9 J. Plamenatz, On Alien Rule and Self-Government, (London: Longmans, 1960), p. 111.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE KENYA: BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC AND THE INDIAN OCEANS Kenya is an Indian Ocean power (through Mombasa) which has been behaving as if it were an Atlantic power (through Nairobi). Perhaps of all African countries, Kenya evolved the most wide-ranging relationships with the leading countries of Western Europe and North America. For a while, Kenya was the darling of the West, not only because of its tourist attractions, but also because of its strategic importance. Ironically, Kenya’s strategic value to the West was precisely because Kenya was an Indian Ocean power. It was located along one of the great sea routes of the world, and was also in close proximity to the oil reserves of the Middle East. It was a potential staging place for the rapid deployment of Western forces in a critical area of the globe. It was vital that Kenya remained proWestern. A paradox emerged. While the West flirted with Kenya because of its location on the Indian Ocean, Western flirtations turned Kenya’s eyes away from the Indian Ocean. This country became excessively Westernoriented, and inadequately attentive to its Asian neighbours. The West embraced Kenya partly because the West valued the Indian Ocean; Kenya embraced the West and turned its back on the Indian Ocean. Mombasa was part and parcel of the paradox. But now the honeymoon is over. Kenya’s intimate embrace of the Western world at the expense of all other relationships has, at last, to be reviewed. Kenya is a country which in the past was lukewarm about PanAfricanism, hostile to the People’s Republic of China, profoundly distrustful of the Arabs, indifferent towards India, and cool towards the Soviet Union (or Russia). For the bulk of the first twenty-five years of KANU rule, Kenya’s most intimate friends were the Western powers (and Israel). Kenya was often amply rewarded by these particular friends. Now that the Cold War is over, the West has itself reviewed its own relationship with Kenya. Many Western countries have decided that they

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no longer have to humour the present KANU government simply because it is anti-communist. Western governments have at long last become friends of the cause of democracy in Kenya. Their pressures helped to force President Daniel arap Moi to accept the principle of multipartyism, though we must not underestimate the prior impact of domestic democratic pressures on President Moi’s change of mind. Whether KANU or some other party comes to power after the multiparty election, it is time that Kenya too embarked on a fundamental review of its wider global options. Just as Kenya has been of lesser strategic value to the West since the end of the cold war, so should the West become less fundamental to Kenya’s global design in the wake of those wider developments. On the ocean front in Mombasa, Kenya faces the Asian world rather than the European. Until the 1990s, Kenya was far more sensitive to the imperatives of history (the history of being an ex-colony of Britain) than to the imperatives of geography (proximity to Asia and the Middle East). It is time to redress this imbalance between post-colonial historical continuities and the older dictates of geographic proximity. Firstly, Kenya has to recognize the fact that it is indeed an Indian Ocean power. In the past, Kenya has tended to regard its own South Asian population at home as a historic liability (Indian immigrants in colonial Kenya go back beyond the building of the railway line to Uganda at the beginning of the century). Kenya should now learn to recognize its Asian population not as a politico-historical liability, but as an economico-geographical asset. In population, India is the second largest country in the world after China, and therefore destined to become a superpower in the future. Pakistan is one of the leading Muslim and Third World powers on the world stage. Can Kenya work out a special relationship with both India and Pakistan? Kenya’s Asian population can help forge economic, technological, and educational ties. The Kenya Coast is so culturally Indianized that the food culture of the Waswahili uses a lot of Indian spices, the music of the Coast Province shows evidence of South Asian impact, and Indian films are heavily patronized on the Kenyan Coast. This cultural influence of South Asia in Kenya could be converted into diplomatic currency in Kenya’s economic relations with India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Trade between Kenya and those countries could also be enhanced if careful thought was given to the nature of economic exchange for the future. We could learn a lot about intermediate technologies from our South Asian neighbors.

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Kenya and the Arabs The KANU government’s history of anti-Arabism has been even more costly to the country. Kenya’s pro-Zionist orientation was often excessive and unnecessarily extreme. Arab travellers were often subjected to humiliating visa and customs policies. And yet, arguably, Kenya could have been the most attractive country for Arab investment in the whole of Black Africa. It is geographically close to the Arab world; it shares borders with two members of the Arab league (Sudan and Somalia); Kenya is itself the most stable country in Eastern Africa; it has a culturally Arabized population among its citizens (the Waswahili, the Somali and the other Muslims of Kenya); it has been economically prosperous since independence; it has exported both skilled and semi-skilled human power to the Arab world since its independence (including a former Kenyan Ambassador to Zaire—Farid Hinai alias Hinawy—who later became the Ambassador of the Sultanate of Oman to the People’s Republic of China). Kenya could easily have become a major magnet of Arab money had the KANU government not been so disproportionately pro-Zionist. Fences have been partly mended since the mid-1980s, but Kenya-Arab relations could do with a lot of improvement. Kenya’s pro-Zionism was once so extreme that Kenya became the only Black African country which was a target for so-called “Arab terrorism.” The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi was bombed by an outraged Arab. Kenya was perceived as an ally of Israel militarily. Future Kenya governments will have to review their relations with the Arab world as a whole. In population, the bulk of the Arab world is within Africa. The largest Arab country in population is Egypt, a fellow member of the African Union (AU), formerly the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The largest country in Africa in square miles is Arabized Sudan, with which Kenya shares a border. Kenya’s armed struggle for independence under Mau Mau overlapped in time with Algeria’s armed struggle for independence under the National Liberation Front. And Algeria is an important member of both the AU and the League of Arab States. Just as the concept of Eurafrica makes sense in Europe’s special relationship with African states, so should the concept of Afrabia make sense in the context of the history and geography of African-Arab relations. Kenya has been a key country in the partnership of Eurafrica. Kenya could also be a key country in the solidarity of Afrabia. Kenya’s goods, Arab oil, and petro-dollars could do business with each other under more enlightened leadership from Nairobi.

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Kenya, China and Japan China probably invented tea. The Swahili word chai is, in all likelihood, Chinese in its ancestry. Will we be selling more Kenya tea to China in the years ahead? It sounds like taking coal to Newcastle, or palmdates to Muscat, Oman. But the issue simply dramatizes the immense potentialities of the Chinese market for Kenyan products. The Chinese have begun to diversify their tastes and consumption patterns, even to the extent of experimenting with new varieties of tea (Indian tea as well as Chinese). Some meat products and canned tropical fruit may also have a significant potential market in the People’s Republic of China. On a visit to Beijing in the 1980s, I was astonished by the number of businessmen and advertisers I met. For at least two decades, the KANU government treated the People’s Republic of China with greater suspicion than was shown by the majority of Western states towards China. The Kenya government was often more anti-communist than Western countries were. Kenyan courts still tend to regard works by Mao Tse-tung as “subversive literature.” In a backstreet of Nairobi, I once saw an exceptionally beautiful and elegantly bound edition of Mao’s works in a dustbin. As a scholar, I was strongly tempted to rescue that edition from the trashbin and take it to a library where it really belonged. But as a citizen, I was reluctant to break the law, although I regarded the law as both unjust and absurd. In the end, the citizen in me triumphed over the scholar on that particular occasion. With great reluctance, I let Mao’s works rot among the garbage in the backstreets of Nairobi, and walked away in painful ambivalence. Even in China, only a minority may still believe in Maoism, although many more continue to admire the man’s contribution to the history of China and the world. A future Kenya government has to recognize that one need not ban a book simply because one disagrees with it. A future Kenya government may also have to be more diplomatic and considerate in its treatment of the People’s Republic of China. Kenyan businessmen are already eager to do business with Japan if at all possible. The next Kenya government should go further than that. It should encourage some Kenyans to study Japan as a model of modernization and development. Here is one non-Western country which has taken on the West at its own technological game and given the West a run for its money. What is there in Japanese culture which permitted custom and tradition to be major engines of modernization? The next Kenya government should encourage research into ‘the culture of modernization and development.’ If the Japanese could creatively and

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selectively learn from the Western world, can Africa selectively and creatively learn from the Japanese? The Koreans have learnt from the Japanese. Is Kenya likely to become Africa’s South Korea?

Between Globalism and Pan-Africanism As for Kenya’s relation with the rest of Africa, this has had a particularly strange dialectic. In many matters, Kenya has been more globalist than Pan-African. It has hosted such major global assemblies as that of women in 1985 and major international developmental conferences of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But Nairobi has not been in the forefront as a host to the African Union. Nairobi is the global capital of the United Nations Environmental Programme. It is also the African capital of the World Council of Churches through its affiliate, the All-Africa Conference of Churches. But Nairobi has hesitated about being the African capital of purely African organizations or activities. The headquarters of the African Union are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; those of the African Development Bank are in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; the headquarters of the Association of African Universities are in Accra, Ghana; and the headquarters of the Africa Leadership Forum are in Ota, Nigeria. Nairobi is the most accessible capital in Black Africa, but it has not tried very hard to be the headquarters of major Pan-African activities. In the first twenty-nine years of its post-colonial life, Kenya has at times tried to be globalist; but it has not tried hard enough to be Pan-African. Kenya’s virtue of globalism has been flawed by its excessive preoccupation with the Western world. Kenya’s neglect of Pan-Africanism has been ameliorated by the respect in which Kenya’s two presidents have been held as elder statesmen in a continent which is culturally sensitive to the elder tradition, heshima ya uzee. Both the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and President Daniel arap Moi have a record of earnest mediation in interAfrican disputes: Zaire in the 1960s, Angola in the 1970s, Uganda in the 1980s, and Mozambique and Somalia in 1990s. The efforts by Mzee Kenyatta and President Moi to reconcile warring Africans have seldom been successful, but it is to the credit of the two Presidents that they have been prepared to try. Kenya’s Pan-African balance-sheet may be in the red, but our two presidents’ roles as mediators are on the credit side of Kenya’s Pan-African account. As for the sad disintegration of the East African Community, there is enough blame to go around among the three old members: Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. Charles Njonjo is widely regarded as the person who was responsible for the final act of destruction, the coup de grace. It is true

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that Mr. Njonjo was no friend of the concept of an East African Community, but by the mid-1970s, the Community had been greatly undermined and damaged by the policies of Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya. The region as a whole remains guilty of having destroyed what stood a chance of becoming the most successful case of regional integration in the entire world.

Conclusion As Kenya tries to restore balance in its Pan-African policies, and attempts to re-establish its credentials as an Indian Ocean power through Mombasa, what is to happen to its special relationship with the North Atlantic? Kenya still has many friends in the Western world. The number of supporters it may have lost by becoming less strategically valuable to the West may be compensated by the new friends Kenya will make as it becomes truly democratic. In December 1991, I was privileged to meet the Prime Minister of Norway, Ms. Gro Harlem Brundtland. Although diplomatic relations between Norway and Kenya were indeed broken, she emphasized to me that it was Nairobi which had decided on the diplomatic break. “Norway believes in a democratic Kenya, not in isolating Kenya.” President Daniel arap Moi later capitulated to international and domestic pressures and accepted the principle of multiparty politics. While Kenya may lose strategically-conscious Westerners among its old partners, it may gain democratically-conscious Westerners among its new friends. Kenya is capable of consolidating its role as an Indian Ocean power through Mombasa without losing all the Western gains it made when it behaved like an Atlantic power through Nairobi. The new equilibrium can indeed be accomplished. But it will need a new political will, a greater sense of history and a deeper sensibility to geography. Mombasa as a city is much older than Kenya as a country, of course. Kenya is a twentieth century political entity; Mombasa is a phenomenon of at least a millennium. Just as Mombasa is an ancient city while Kenya is a young nation, Mombasa is a global city while Kenya is still grappling with its basic dilemma between the geographical contiguities of the Indian Ocean and the historical continuities of the Atlantic legacy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CAN GLOBALIZATION BE CONTAINED? Africa is, in this twenty-first century, likely to be one of the final battlegrounds of the forces of globalization, for better or for worse. This phenomenon called globalization has its winners and losers. In the initial phases, Africa has been among the losers, as it has been increasingly marginalized. There are universities in the United States which have more computers than the computers available in an African country of twenty million people. This has been the great digital divide. The distinction between the Haves and Have-nots has now coincided with the distinction between digitized and the “digi-prived.” Let us begin with the challenge of a definition. What is globalization? Globalization consists of processes that lead toward global interdependence and the increasing rapidity of exchange across vast distances. The word globalization is itself quite new, but the actual processes toward global interdependence and exchange started centuries ago. Four forces have been major engines of globalization across time: religion, technology, economy, and empire. These forces have not necessarily acted separately. They have often reinforced each other. The globalization of Christianity, for example, started with the conversion of Emperor Constantine I of Rome in 313 BC. That religious conversion of an emperor started the process under which Christianity became the dominant religion not only of Europe but also of many other societies later ruled or settled by Europeans. The globalization of Islam began not with converting a ready-made empire, but with building an empire almost from scratch. The Umayyads and Abbasids put together bits of other people’s empires—e.g., former Byzantine Egypt and former Zoroastrian Persia— and created a whole new civilization. The forces of Christianity and Islam sometimes clashed. In Africa, the two religions have competed for the soul of a continent. One of the ironies of globalization is that while it does consolidate the pre-eminence of the Northern hemisphere in the global power equation, globalization has also begun to open doors of reciprocal penetrations

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between the North and the South. Voyages of exploration were another major stage in the process of globalization. Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus opened up a whole new chapter in the history of globalization, wherein economy and empire were the major motives. Then followed the migration of people. The Portugese helped to build Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya. The migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to America was in part a response to religious and economic imperatives in Europe. Demographic globalization reached its height in the Americas with the influx of millions of people from other hemispheres. In time, the population of the United States became a microcosm of the population of the world, precisely because it contained immigrants from almost every society on earth. The making of America was itself the making of a globalized society or universal nation. Similarly, South Africa had Dutch settlers three centuries ago—a potential universal nation on the African continent was initiated. The Industrial Revolution in Europe represents another major chapter in the history of globalization. This marriage between technology and economics resulted in previously unknown levels of productivity. Europe’s prosperity whetted its appetite for new worlds to conquer. The Atlantic slave trade was accelerated, moving millions of Africans from one part of the world to another. Europe’s appetite also went imperial on a global scale, and one European people, the British, built the largest and most far-flung colonial empire in human experience, most of which lasted until after the end of World War II. The two world wars were themselves manifestations of globalization. The twentieth century is the only one to witness globalized warfare— during 1914–1918 and again during 1939–1945. The Cold War (1948– 1989) was yet another manifestation of globalization, for it was a global power rivalry between two alliances: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact. While the two world wars were militarily the most destructive, empirically the Cold War was potentially the most dangerous; it carried the seeds of planetary annihilation via nuclear warfare. At that time, Africa was being courted by the Soviet bloc, by China, and by the West. But China was a minor player. However, China and India are now emerging as newer global players. The final historical stage of globalization came when the Industrial Revolution was joined with the new Information Revolution. Interdependence and exchange became dramatically dependent upon the computer. The most powerful country at this time was the United States. Pax Americana mobilized three of globalization’s four engines: technology, economy, and empire. Although in the second half of the

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twentieth century this Pax Americana apparently did not seek to promote a particular religion, it did help to promote secularism and the ideology of the separation of church and state. On balance, the impact of Americanization probably has been harmful to religious values worldwide—whether intended or not. Americanized Hindu youth, Americanized Buddhist teenagers, or indeed Americanized Muslim youngsters in Kenya or Nigeria are far less likely to be devout adherents of their faiths than their non-Americanized counterparts. The United States has been a secularizing force in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. In the new millennium, the forces of globalization are likely to continue against the background of the meaning of the twentieth century in world history. As the twentieth century came to a close, scholars interpreted globalization in three distinct ways. These three prisms still classify globalization in the following terms: ¾ Forces which are transforming the global market and creating new economic interdependency across vast distances. Africa is affected, but not centrally. ¾ Forces which are exploding into the information superhighway— expanding access to data and mobilizing the computer and the Internet into global service. This tendency is marginalizing Africa. ¾ All forces which are turning the world into a global village—which are compressing distance, homogenizing culture, accelerating mobility, and reducing the relevance of political borders. Under this comprehensive definition, globalization is the gradual villagization of the world. These forces have been at work in Africa long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

As we have indicated, the twentieth century was the only century in which two world wars occurred—in 1914–1918, and in 1939–1945. This was the only century in which world diplomatic institutions—the League of Nations and the United Nations—were created. This was also the only century in which a World Bank—the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) with the International Development Association—came into being. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued in the the twentieth century as well, and adopted by the United Nations in 1948. This was the only century in which a global university was established—the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan. This was the only century in which a world health institution was established—the World Health Organization (WHO). The twentieth century also saw the creation of global mechanisms to moderate

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trade relations—the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Seattle meeting of WTO at the end of the last millennium illustrated the depth of feelings about the organization. This was the only century in which a parttime global policeman emerged—the United States of America. This was the only century in which a genuine world economy was developed—or at least a close approximation to it. All these were indicators of globalization. Some of these institutions have affected Africa more deeply than others. China was marginal for much of the second half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, these well-intentioned organizations were not always helpful to Africa.

Towards Taming Globalization But is a globalized Planet Earth really a global village? The world may be globalized, but what would make it villagized? There is something missing—the compassion of the village has yet to be globalized. It is the cruelties of globalization which create a need for arresting or containing the process. What strategies are available for post-colonial Africa and Asia to arrest, tame, or contain globalization? It is to these strategies that we must now turn. The Southern hemisphere especially has to strike a careful balance if it is not to be marginalized by globalization. In spite of all the foreign forces at work, and perhaps because of that foreign intensity, the South (or Third World) must pay special attention to the strategy of indigenization. This should include protecting major areas of indigenous culture, retooling indigenous skills for use in modern contexts, and making sure that indigenous human and natural resources are utilized in the optimum interest of the local people. Another approach that the South needs, in order to save itself from the negative consequences of globalization, is the strategy of domestication. This may involve making imported foreign institutions or imported technologies more relevant to the needs of local populations and societies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, indentured Indian laborers were used by the British Raj to build the railway line from Mombasa in Kenya on the Indian Ocean to the great Lake Victoria in otherwise landlocked Uganda. Both the Indian labor and the railway line were being exploited in the interest of the British Empire. The Indians had helped to build a key part of East Africa’s infrastructure—the railway system. But it took a while before the rail system was “domesticated,” in the sense of making it serve the interests of local populations rather than primarily serving the interests of the British Empire. It was like “domesticating” a wild elephant

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in India to make it a beast of burden relevant to serving the interests of Indians. Much later, the British built a university college in Kampala, Uganda (Makerere College). In concept, syllabus, purpose, and design, Makerere was for a long time a foreign institution. It took decades to Africanize the syllabus, localize the orientation, and “domesticate” the college. The third strategy of containing the consequences of globalization is the strategy of diversification. The purpose is, partly, to ensure that globalization is not just another name for, or another face of, Westernization. Africa must ensure that it learns not just from Western culture, but also from the Indians, the Japanese, from Muslim history, and from Chinese economic and social experiments. In other words, Africa must try to “go global” in its diversified impact. But Africa has needed to diversify not merely its sources of foreign cultural influences, but also its trading partners, its foreign-aid benefactors, the commodities it produces, and the very foundations of its economies. In addition, Africa has to learn how to make the best use of the diversity it already possesses, including the ethnic diversity of its indigenous populations, and the racial diversity of its immigrant communities. Africa needs to see its “tribal” and racial diversities not as problems to be resolved but, instead, as resources for Africa’s enrichment and challenges for Africa’s creative response. The fourth strategy for taming globalization is the strategy of horizontal interpenetration. This should involve cultivating partnerships with countries at approximately the same level of development as that already attained by one’s own society. For Africa, the first stage of horizontal interpenetration is the cultivation of greater cooperation with other African countries. The ambition is for better trade relations, joint projects in developing such shared infrastructures as roads, railways and hydroelectric dams, and greater Pan-African readiness to invest in each other’s economies. Regional integration among African states could develop into not only enlargement of economic unions, but subsequently monetary unions and eventually federal unification of African countries. But horizontal interpenetration for Africa should go beyond relations among African countries themselves, and encompass relations with partners in Asia and Latin America. The post-colonial phase of Afro-Asian solidarity goes back at least to the Bandung Conference, in 1955, which brought together a number of African and Asian countries to consolidate an alliance against imperialism, colonialism, racism, and the dangers of an unfolding rivalry between the big powers. The Cold War between the communist world and the forces of capitalism had already led to the

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Korean War, in the early 1950s, just a few years before the Bandung conference.

Comparative Soft-Power: India and China But relations between Africa and Asia were, of course, centuries older than they were during the Cold War of the second half of the twentieth century. Particularly interesting were the contacts and influences between India and Africa across the ages, as compared with relations between China and Africa historically. India has, over time, become a soft power in Africa, influencing important areas of African cultures and lifestyles. India is more of a cultural force in Africa than China is. India’s civilization has exerted a soft impact beyond its shores, creating a wider global cultural constituency. An obvious leverage emerges out of India as a power for global entertainment. The Indian film industry rivals Hollywood in production and in number of people who view the movies. Hollywood has a larger overseas constituency than India does. However, India has a much larger domestic constituency than Hollywood does. There is no Chinese equivalent of “Bollywood”—a movie-producing force from India, whose products are seen by people of vastly different cultures—from central Asia to Northern Nigeria, from Eastern Africa to the West Indies. Then there is the related influence of Indian popular music. This amounts to more than the popularity of Indian film songs. There is also the impact of Indian musical styles and rhythms on the music of other cultures and countries. Sometimes it is difficult to identify where the Indianization of African music ends and the Africanization of Indian music begins. A particularly striking example is the Mombasa singer called Juma Bhalo. This vocalist turns to Indian films extensively, sometimes blatantly plagiarizing, and sometimes rendering honest translations. There are occasions when Juma Bhalo attempts to capture the theme of an Indian movie, or the mood of an Indian song. There are also examples of musical influence, rather than direct musical borrowings. As for direct translations of Hindi songs into Kiswahili, these include the following very loose renderings: A: Hindi: Ye Mere Dilme Pyar Lagtahe. Kiswahili: Muhibu pulika utuze mtima. English: Listen beloved: A stormy heart seeks a calm shore.

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While the verses of songs may be very loosely translated, not all India’s linguistic influence in Africa comes from the world of entertainment. The word for “vehicle” in Kiswahili is gari which seems to be a borrowing either directly from Hindi or indirectly through Gujerati. There are also words which both Indian and African languages have independently borrowed from Persian (Farsi) or Arabic. The name Taj Mahal is borrowed from Persian. The word Taj means crown in Hindustani and Urdu. The word for crown in Kiswahili is also taji. One of the words for “love” in Kiswahili is mahaba. It is borrowed from Arabic. Words like mahabat for “love” also occur in a number of South Asian languages. In the world, there may be more Chinese restaurants than Indian restaurants—though this may not be true of the United Kingdom. However, even if we could absolutely prove there were more Chinese restaurants than Indian, it would still be true that Indian cuisine is more influential on other cuisines than Chinese is. It is certainly true that a variety of Indian dishes have had a greater impact on African cuisines than anything from China. Samosas, as a snack, are on the verge of getting universalized. The chapati has become part of the African cuisines in Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa—though what Africans call chapati may be more like the Indian paratha. Weddings in Eastern Africa often have banquets of biriani or pilau. The term shish-kabob is disaggregated in African cuisines. Kababu is one dish made of minced meat, and mshakiki is an entirely separate snack made of larger slices of roasted pierced meat. Even in those African cuisines which have been greatly influenced by the spiced styles of India, there are a lot of other dishes which may be either indigenous or influenced by the Arabs. But in the context of our current comparison between India and China, the Indian impact on African food culture has been much more extensive than China’s. With regard to comparative diasporization, the Chinese Diaspora on the Asian continent may be larger than the Indian Diaspora. But on the

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African continent, Indians have settled in much larger numbers than Chinese, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa. In coastal Tanzania, Indians have sometimes been assimilated to such an extent that some Indian families speak Kiswahili at home among themselves. In Southern Africa, large numbers of Indians have been so Anglicized that they have interacted well with the Anglicized African elites. In post-apartheid South Africa, many Indians occupied high positions in government because they had once been prominent in the struggle against apartheid. The first Speaker of South Africa’s Parliament, in Cape Town, after political apartheid ended in 1994, was an Indian woman, Dr. Fran Ginwalla. Indian settlers were less assimilated or integrated in either Kenya or Uganda. In Idi Amin’s Uganda, the Indians paid a high price. They were arbitrarily expelled by President Idi Amin in 1972, though some have started returning to Uganda under the more hospitable policies of President Yoweri Museveni. India’s diasporization in the Black world, outside Africa, has also been much more extensive than the Diaspora of China. In both Guyana in South America, and Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies, the total populations are almost half and half between people of Indian descent and people of African ancestry. Indian music and even Indian languages have survived better in the Caribbean than have either African musical styles or African languages. Since the Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean was more recent than the African, and since Indian workers were imported as indentured labor rather than outright captives of enslavement like the Africans, Indo-Guyanese and Indo-Trinidadians have saved much more of their ancestaral culture than have their African compatriots. Indeed, aspects of the Indian cuisine like roti and rice curry have become staple foods for both Indians and Africans in the Caribbean. Movies from India, and film songs from South Asia are very popular in the West Indies. Indian cultural soft power must, therefore, be regarded as a fascinating aspect of horizontal interpenetration within the Third World. Indian influence helps to prevent globalization from being excessively Eurocentric or Americo-centric. Indian influence does not, of course, reverse globalization; but it helps to diversify globalization. More directly, political influences from India, in recent history, came when India became the vanguard of anti-colonialism within the British Empire in the twentieth century. Some of the ideas of Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi became quite influential in the Black world. In South Africa, Nobel Laureates for Peace, Albert Luthuli and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, combined Christian ideas and Gandhian principles in their political

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worldviews. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia were professed Gandhian disciples during the struggle for independence. They later became Presidents of their respective countries after independence. In the United States, the most famous Gandhian in the civil rights movement was the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s Gandhism was publicly professed and implemented as a strategy of passive resistance and nonviolence. Ironically, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated almost exactly twenty years after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Both leaders have left behind great moral legacies. Gandhi’s impact on Africa does qualify as horizonal interpenetration (South-South). However, Gandhi’s impact on the Civil Rights Movement in the United States was more a case of vertical counter-penetration (from South to North) to which we will shortly turn for further examination. Horizontal interpenetration also includes the whole diplomatic stance of nonalignment to which post-colonial India was a major contributor. In the middle of the Cold War, from the end of World War II to the late 1980s, almost all independent African countries claimed to be nonaligned as between the Western bloc led by the United States and the Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union. India’s first Prime Minister after independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of the top leaders of the nonaligned movement until his death in 1964. The Cold War itself was one of the political forces which fostered globalization, but nonalignment in Third World countries helped those states to maintain a semblance of diplomatic independence. Nonalignment was mainly a South-South movement encompassing post-colonial Asia, Africa, and parts of Latin America. The few European members of the nonaligned movement were led by Yugoslavia, under Marshall Josip Broz Tito. The nonaligned movement helped to tame competitive ideological globalization fostered by the Cold War. The People’s Republic of China did regard itself as part of the Third World for much of the second half of the twentieth century, and sometimes even professed to be nonaligned on grounds that it was not a member of the Warsaw Pact. Mao’s China even had ideological influence on some African nationalists and intellectuals. But while Gandhi’s influence in Africa was disproportionate in the struggle for independence, Mao Tse-tung’s influence in Africa was disproportionately post-colonial. While Gandhi’s influence was a convergence of ethics and politics, Mao’s influence was a convergence of revolutionary ideas and politics. Gandhi’s worldview was more clearly rooted in Indian culture; Mao drew his inspiration not from Confucius, but from Marx and Lenin.

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Gandhi’s ideas were never banned, even in British colonial Africa, whereas Mao’s books were actually outlawed under such regimes as Jomo Kenyatta’s government in post-colonial Kenya. In the struggle against White minority rule in Southern Africa, the People’s Republic of China could lend the hard power of weapons and not merely the soft-power of ideology. While India’s most distinctive contribution to Africa’s struggles were passive resistance and nonviolence, the contribution of Mao’s China to nationalists in Southern Africa were in weapons of war and military training. In terms of horizontal interpenetration, China’s relationship with some of the nationalists in Southern Africa at times came close to a military alliance. The enemies were Portuguese colonialism and White minority rule. China’s most expensive foreign aid project was the building of the Railway Line between Tanzania and Zambia (popularly known as Tazara or Tanzania Zambia Railway). The rail system was designed to give Zambia, a landlocked country, an alternative route to the sea, avoiding both apartheid South Africa and Portuguese-ruled Mozambique and Angola. China also contributed to health projects even in less hospitable Kenya, and expanded trade with countries like Tanzania and Sudan. India’s trade with Africa fluctuated, but remained significant. Both India and China have also made efforts to contribute towards Africa’s higher education. The awarding of scholarships to African students to study in India and China started before Africa’s independence. Scholarships for India were not banned by the colonial powers, but Chinese scholarships did not flourish until after independence. More recently, India has moved towards helping Africa close the digital divide. India is not only giving priority to African students seeking to study science and technology, but has also begun a scheme to help computerize Africa’s own educational institutions at home. On the one hand, these technological trends are themselves a contribution to globalization. On the other hand, they reduce the marginalizing consequences of more Eurocentric versions of globalization in African societies. The struggle to tame, or to contain globalization has its paradoxes and contradictions. China and India contribute towards a further globalized Africa, but they also help to stem the tide of Westernization and Eurocentrism in African societies.

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Towards Vertical Counter-Penetration The fifth strategy for taming globalization is the strategy of counterpenetrating the citadels of power. Since the days of European colonization of Africa and Asia, Western power and values have penetrated nonWestern societies. The strategy of counter-penetration reverses the direction of leverage and influence. Africa and Asia have been seeking to penetrate Western institutions and attempt to exert counterinfluence. Oil producing Third World countries were among the first to acquire counter-power among their oil consuming Western customers. The Arab oil boycott of the United States and the Netherlands in 1973 was a particularly dramatic illustration of how the oil producing South could punish the oil consuming North if the occasion required it. China has used more diverse forms of trade to counter-penetrate the Western world. Chinese textiles, toys, pet foods, calculating machines, and video players have penetrated American supermarkets in their millions. The terms of trade between the United States and China are heavily tilted in China’s favor. As the United States has gone deeper and deeper into debt, one of its principal creditors has been the People’s Republic of China. Many nationalistic and protectionist Americans have become more and more resentful of China’s counter-penetration into the American economy. Here is another contradiction of globalization. Reciprocal economic dependence between China and America is both an example of globalization and a trend towards reducing the link between globalization and Westernization. India’s counter-penetration of the Western world is more complex, partly because the population of India includes a huge English-speaking elite. Technically, highly qualified Indians have found relatively easy access to the job markets of the Western world. Indian names and faces have become more and more regular on American television, with expertise which ranges from surgery to the world economy. South Asian Americans like Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Fareed Zakaria have hosted television programs of their own every week. This is quite apart from widespread South Asian researchers, professors, engineers, doctors, and entrepreneurs. Per head, the Indians may be the most prosperous immigrant minority in the United States. A more unusual form of counter-penetration by Indians is the contribution of their skills without physically migrating their people. These are Indian skills used by American corporations by remote control. A customer may pick up the phone in Chicago to place an order on an American firm. The customer in Chicago may be speaking to a salesclerk

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in Mumbai, India. Are American jobs being exported to South Asia? At election time, this is often a bone of contention between protectionist Americans and those who have reconciled themselves to the globalization of labor. India has counter-penetrated the United States both through the migration of its qualified personnel and through the hiring of skills in India to serve Westerners by remote control. Demographic counter-penetration by Africa into the United States can be traced back to the Atlantic slave-trade. The Diaspora of postenslavement in the United States consists of African Americans like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Jesse Jackson, all of them descended from the enslaved. On the other hand, the Diaspora of post-coloniality consists of Africans who have moved abroad as a result of the disruptions and dislocations of the colonial experience in Africa. Many African engineers and professors currently working in the United States constitute a postcolonial form of demographic counter-penetration. Barack Obama is a particularly spectacular manifestation of demographic counter-penetration. The son of a Kenyan father who studied in the United States long enough to produce a son, Barack Obama is definitely not part of the Diaspora of post-enslavement. He is not descended from the survivors of the Middle Passage (the trans-Atlantic slave route). But is Obama a product of the Diaspora of post-coloniality instead? Since his mother was a White American from Kansas, and his father returned to Kenya and died there, Barack Obama is not fully a product of the Diaspora of post-coloniality either. It is perhaps the very ambiguity of his identity which helped him to attract such large numbers of White, Black, Hispanic, and indeed many South Asian Americans to rally behind his presidential candidacy. Obama’s multicultural and ambivalent racial backgrounds turned out to be an electoral asset. He was born in multicultural Hawaii, had a Luo father from Kenya, an American mother from Kansas, a step-father from Indonesia, a brief education in South East Asia, a Muslim middle name, and a spectacular academic career at Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Barack Obama is more than a case of Africa’s counter-penetration into America’s citadel of power. Obama is also the only United States President who has ever been close to being globalization incarnate. The struggle continues.

Conclusion We have tried to demonstrate that both Africa and Asia were caught up historically in a process of globalization which extended over centuries,

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and which acquired a name only recently. We described the four engines of globalization as religion, empire, economy, and technology. In the twentieth century, the two World Wars and the Cold War became derivative engines of globalization, affecting not only the main antagonists in Europe, but also the colonized peoples of European empires in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. The literature of globalization in the second half of the twentieth century focused on economic globalization (enlargement of economic interdependencies across vast distances), informational globalization (inclusive of the internet, the computer revolution, and the information superhighway) and comprehensive globalization (all forms of integration and interdependency which have been converting the world into a global village. In this third sense, globalization becomes the villagization of the world.) Are the forces of globalization either reversible or irresistible? Or can globalization be tamed or even contained? In this chapter, we have identified five strategies of globalization. The strategy of indigenization maximizes utilization of native skills, talents, and the pursuit of the welfare of indigenous peoples. The strategy of domestication converts contributions from foreign sources into greater relevance for local needs. Gandhian techniques of resistance were “domesticated,” or Africanized, to serve African anti-colonial struggles. Colonial universities established in Africa have gradually been “Africanized” in syllabus, orientation, and purpose, to become more relevant for Africa. The strategy of diversification seeks to diversify not only trading partners and crops cultivated, but also diversifying the cultures from which Africa should be prepared to learn. African societies should be more responsive to relevant models of development from India, China, Japan, and the Muslim world. The strategy of horizontal interpenetration would encourage not only partnerships among African countries themselves (Pan-Africanism), but also Africa’s economic and diplomatic alliances with India, China, and the Arab world (including the nonaligned movement and Afro-Asian solidarity). We have also drawn attention to India’s historic soft-power in Africa, manifested in comparative music, cuisine, political ideas, and the impact of Indian films on the world of entertainment in Africa. In the twentieth century, there was also the impact of Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi on anticolonialism in Africa, and on the civil rights movement in the United States. Jawaharlal Nehru’s India was also a vanguard of the nonaligned movement when the big powers were divided between the North Atlantic

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Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. Former African and Asian colonies tried to avoid entanglement. China’s influence in Africa was less soft and less cultural than India’s, and more economic, more revolutionary, and more military than the impact of Nehru’s India. Mao’s China helped to provide weapons for Africa’s armed struggle, as well as Maoist ideas of Leninist struggle. Indian laborers at the beginning of the twentieth century helped build a railway line between Kenya and Uganda under the auspices of the British Raj. Mao’s China in the second half of the twentieth century helped to build a railway line between post-colonial Tanzania and post-colonial Zambia. Both India and China have cultivated trade with Africa. In more recent years, China has been particularly energetic in pursuing African’s natural resources, especially petroleum in countries like Sudan. On the other hand, China has been reluctant to put pressure on Sudan about the conflict in Darfur, or otherwise to interfere on issues of human rights and civil liberties in countries with which China has trade relations. As for the strategy of vertical counter-penetration, this involves the reverse flow of influence and leverage from the Southern to the Northern powers. China’s counter-penetration of the United States has tilted the balance in trade, and made China a creditor to the United States. India has counter-penetrated America more with skills, partly aided by a shared English language. Indians are becoming more and more visible as part of the educational elite of the United States. And even from Mumbai, Indians sell their skills to American corporations by remote control. As for Africa, its demographic counter-penetration goes back to the Atlantic slave trade. There are now more people of African descent in the United States than there are Jews in the whole world added together. Africans who have migrated more recently to the United States have produced the Diaspora of post-coloniality, as contrasted by the Diaspora of post-enslavement as symbolized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Colin Powell. As for Barack Obama, he is the most spectacular case of counterpenetration by Africa into America’s citadel of power. But Obama is more than Africa’s presence in the Oval office. His multicultural background of Hawaii, Africa, Indonesia, Kansas, Muslim father and grandfather, and Christian upbringing have made him perhaps the only Head-of-State worldwide who can be described as globalization incarnate—hopefully in the spirit of optimism and human solidarity.

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Note 1

I am grateful for these very loose translations to one of Bhalo’s closest disciples, called Jugnuu, who was interviewed on my behalf in Mombasa by my Research Assistant, Huda Mazrui, in November 2008.

INDEX

A Banquet for Seaweed, 36 Abbasid dynasty, 47 Abboud, Ibrahim, 71 Abboud, Lt. General Ibrahim, 71 Abduh, Muhammad, 9, 10, 42 Aberdares, 112 Abiola, Moshood, 35 Abraham, William, 81 Abubakari II, 157 Abyssinia, 182 Accra, 61, 79, 119, 193 Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), 74 Acton, Lord, 102 Addis Ababa, 71, 176, 193 Aden, 185 Adotevi, S., 10 Affan, Uthman bin, 156 African American Studies Movement, 67 African and Indian Congresses, 114 African Diaspora, 51, 55, 127 African National Congress, 114 African Religions and Philosophy, 10, 127 African Union (AU), 18, 192 African-American Muslim Organization, 53 Africanity, 1, 10, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 121, 123, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 166, 177 Africanization, 18, 53, 54, 55, 84, 186, 187, 196 Afrikaner, 83, 84 Afrocentricity, 1, 5, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 156, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167 Afro-Shirazi Party, 16

Aga Khan Foundation, 48 Agbaje, Adigun, 71 Aggrey, J. E. Kwegyir, 178 ahadith, 42 AIDS, 69, 74, 75, 186 Akosombo Dam, 37 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 9, 10, 42 Al-Azhar University, 9, 48, 51, 54, 157, 158 Albania, 76 al-Banna, Hassan, 9 al-Bashir, General Umar Hassan Ahmad, 71 Albright, Madeleine Korbel, 177 al-Dahab, General Siwar, 71 Alexander High School, 52 Alexander the Great, 56, 79 Alexandre, Pierre, 87 Algeria, 5, 21, 38, 73, 75, 117, 155, 166, 167, 175, 176, 192 al-Ghazali, Imam, 48 Al-Hambra, 55 Allah, 41, 42, 113, 131 Al-Mansour, Khalid Abdullah Tariq, 56 al-Quds, 46 Al-Sadat, Mohammed Anwar, 34 Amazons of Dahomey, 119, 120 American Civil War, 121 Amin, Idi, 15, 16, 72, 177, 186, 197 Amoo, Anthony William, 81 androgyny, 111, 117, 118, 119 Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, 17 Anglophone, 15 Anglo-Saxons, 132, 140, 159 Angola, 8, 22, 23, 25, 111, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 167, 193, 198 Annan, Kofi, 34

358 anti-Semitic, 36, 64, 65 Anti-Trust Laws, 19 Ao, Benjamin, 47 apartheid, 34, 38, 44, 70, 84, 116, 119, 132, 197, 198 apostasy, 10, 71 Appiah, K. Anthony, 10 Arabian Peninsula, 144, 156, 159, 181 Arabic, 8, 9, 22, 28, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 47, 52, 55, 56, 57, 74, 80, 127, 144, 157, 158, 160, 181, 183, 197 Arabo , 9, 57 Aristotle, 1, 2, 5, 79, 81, 82, 85, 87, 88, 158 Armed Kinsmen and the Origins of the State, 118 Arnold, Thomas, 3, 79, 85 Arusha Declaration, 16, 23, 98 Asante, Molefi Kete, 56, 57, 58, 123, 160, 161, 163 Asantewa, Nana Yaa, 178 Asia, 3, 4, 5, 24, 53, 54, 56, 76, 80, 84, 86, 91, 98, 99, 155, 167, 172, 173, 181, 182, 189, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representative Act, 114 Atarov, T. S., 137 Aton, 131 Awolowo, Chief Obafemi, 14 Azan, 56 Bacon, Francis, 45 Baganda, 14, 27, 28, 75, 128 Bagaya, Elizabeth, 177 Bakongo, 92, 127 Balme, D. M., 87 Banda, Hastings, 15, 16, 72, 172 Banda, Joyce, 72 Banda, Kamuzu, 22 Bandung Conference, 196 Bangladesh, 38, 189 Bantu Authorities Act, 114 Bantu Philosophy, 10 Barre, Siad, 71

Index Batuni, 112 Bedouins, 5, 42 Beijing, 38, 192 Belgium, 17, 91 Belgrade Ministerial Conference, 24 Belloc, Hilaire, 112 Berlin, 92, 134, 138 Berlin, Isaiah, 66 Bernal, Martin, 165, 166 Bhalo, Juma, 196 Bhutto, Benazir, 38 Biafrans, 34 Bilal, 5, 56, 57 Black Liberation Front (BLF), 65 Bloemfontein, 114 Blyden, Edward, 8, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 156, 160, 161 Bombay, 37 Bornou, 52 Bosnia, 76 Boumedienne, Houari, 22, 23 bourgeoisie, 22, 118 Bourguiba, Habib, 9, 15, 22 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz, 23 Brawley, Tawana, 133 Brazzaville, 91 Britain, 17, 24, 36, 38, 63, 79, 82, 86, 92, 127, 163, 167, 174, 182, 184, 189 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 160, 161, 165, 173 British Empire, 118, 183, 195, 197 British Isles, 79 British Parliament, 102 Brown versus the Board of Education, 46 Browning, Robert, 62 Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 193 Brussels Conference, 95 Budge, Sir Ernest Wallis, 83 Buganda, 17, 69, 70 Bunche, Ralph, 34 Bunyoro, 83 Burke, Edmund, 1, 13, 91 Burkina Faso, 8 Burundi, 17, 174, 175, 176

African Thought in Comparative Perspective Bush, George, 174 Busia, Kofi, 13 Byzantine, 52, 194 Cabral, Amilcar, 8, 117, 119 Cairo, 51, 54, 73, 74, 157, 158 Calhoun, John C., 1, 79 Caliph of Islam, 156 Cambodia, 148 Cambridge University, 37, 109, 121 Canada, 17, 109 Cape Town, 74, 197 Capitalism, 11, 19, 20, 25, 45 Caribbean, 53, 54, 55, 57, 127, 197 Carinthia, 36 Carter, Jimmy, 185 Casablanca, 56 Cassius Clay, 51 Castro, Fidel, 24, 25 Catholicism, 34 Césaire, Aimé, 54, 61, 62, 80, 135, 161, 164 Chaldaic, 80 Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), 16 Chaminuka, 113 Cheney, Lynne, 37 China, 15, 22, 24, 38, 52, 84, 189, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 Christ, 58, 80, 166 Christian Reformation, 44, 45 Christian trinity, 58 Christianity, 10, 17, 41, 44, 45, 49, 51, 55, 56, 65, 69, 70, 75, 76, 80, 87, 112, 113, 114, 119, 127, 128, 131, 137, 138, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 173, 174, 175, 181, 194 Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, 49, 56, 156 Christians, 33, 35, 48, 69, 74, 75, 112, 160, 174, 182 Christopher Columbus, 157, 166, 194 Church Missionary Society, 83 Çiller, Tansu, 39 Civil Service, 98 Cleopatra, 156

359

Clinton, Bill, 177 Cold War, 11, 23, 25, 43, 71, 93, 175, 184, 185, 186, 189, 194, 196, 198, 200 Collège de France, 63 Columbia University, 79, 199 communism, 4, 24, 39, 137, 138 Communist Party, 114, 122 Conference on Trade and Development, 98 Confucius, 198 Congo, 22, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 134, 175 Congolese, 1, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 128 Consciencism, 8, 55, 58, 81, 156, 160 Conservatism, 13, 14 Cooper, Gary, 134 Côte d’Ivoire, 15, 21, 74, 148, 193 Crahay, F., 10 Crow, Jim, 132 Crowder, Michael, 111 Crusades, 43, 69 Cuba, 23, 24, 25, 98, 127 Cuban missile crisis, 24, 150 Curtin, Phillip D., 3 Cyprus, 36, 175, 176 D’Israeli, Isaac, 174 da Gama, Vasco, 182, 194 da’wa, 75 Dahomean, 116, 117 Dahomey, 116, 117, 123 Dakar, 63 Dallal, 43 Danish Virgin Islands, 51 Dar es Salaam, 74, 111 Dar-el-Islam, 43 Darfur, 52, 71, 175, 176, 200 Darlington, C. D., 61 Darwin, Charles, 2, 60 Darwinism, 1, 2, 3, 5 Davidson, Basil, 84, 113 de Gaulle, Charles, 166 Declaration of Independence, 33, 121

360 DeGraft-Johnson, Dr. J. C., 83 Dei-Anang, Michael, 81 democracy, 3, 4, 9, 25, 36, 47, 71, 73, 102, 108, 109, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 184, 189 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 74 Democritus, 84 Department of Immigration and Absorption of the Jewish Agency, 65 Descartes, René, 7, 81 détente, 115, 119 Dia, Mamadou, 99 Dini ya Misambwa, 80 Dinka, 127 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 81, 84, 85, 160, 161 Disraeli, Benjamin, 174 Dogon, 8 Dome of the Rock, 46 Du Bois, W. E. B., 18, 53, 63, 85, 121 Dumas, Alexandre, 61, 62 Durban, 114 Dutch, 132, 140, 194 Dynastic Egypt, 84 Dynastic Period, 83 Ebouassi, B. F., 10 egalitarianism, 97 Egypt, 9, 16, 17, 21, 23, 36, 48, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 69, 72, 73, 75, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 122, 123, 131, 134, 148, 149, 155, 157, 158, 160, 164, 165, 166, 174, 185, 192, 194 Einstein, Albert, 60 El-Baradei, Mohammed, 34 El-Shaab, 36 Embu, 18 Emperor Akbar, 48 Emperor Constantine I, 194 Engels, Friedrich, 5 Enlightenment, 117, 155, 167 Enugu, 34 Eratosthenes, 82

Index Eritrea, 156, 178, 185 Ethiopia, 5, 17, 22, 25, 27, 52, 53, 55, 69, 85, 127, 134, 156, 160, 161, 172, 174, 181, 182, 185, 193 ethnocentrism, 3, 4, 85, 87, 132 Eudoxus, 84 Euphrates, 82 Eurafrica, 192 Eurasia, 83, 84 Facing Mount Kenya, 13, 62 Falasha, 27 Fanon, Frantz, 8, 117, 119 fard’ayn, 48 fardkifaya, 48 Farrakhan, Louis, 51, 54 Farsi, 197 Fathia, Helen Ritz, 52 fatwa, 9, 35 Federal Republic of Germany, 178 female circumcision, 75 Fertile Crescent, 83 Fez, 54, 157, 158 fiduciary, 105 Fields of Wheat, Rivers of Blood, 37 First Byte Corporation, 47 First World War (WWI), 118 Fisk University, 122 Flynn, Errol, 133, 134 Forman, James, 65 Fort Jesus, 57, 183, 194 Fourth Republic of France, 166 FPO Party, 36 Franchise Action Council of the Coloreds, 114 Francophone, 15, 166, 172 FRELIMO, 21, 117 French Congo, 91 Freud, Sigmund, 60 Fukuyama, Yoshihiro, 5, 171 Futah, 52 Gabon, 2 Gaddafy, Muammar, 73 Gallagher, John, 86 Gandhi, Indira, 150 Gandhi, Kasturba, 113

African Thought in Comparative Perspective Gandhi, Mohandas, 33, 111, 115, 116, 119, 198, 200 Gandhism, 35, 114, 115, 116, 119, 198 Garang, Colonel John, 176 Garden of Eden, 19, 123, 156, 161 Garvey, Marcus, 18, 53 Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, 45 Gboro, 14 Gbowee, Leymah, 34 General Will, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 109 Geneva, 98 gentiles, 59, 60 George III, 13 Georgetown, 54 Gerontocracy, 14 Ghali, Boutros-Boutros, 22 Ghana, 10, 13, 18, 37, 51, 56, 61, 66, 81, 83, 87, 118, 119, 122, 160, 161, 162, 165, 174, 186, 193, 198 Gikuyu, 14 Ginwalla, Dr. Fran, 197 gloriana, 54, 55, 161 Goebbels, Mastermind of the Third Reich, 36 Gold Coast, 51, 118, 178, 186 Gondar, 164 Goody, Jack, 66, 143, 144 Gore, Al, 174 Gospel, 10, 75 Gowon, General Yakubu, 71 Great Britain, 17, 35, 38, 174, 186 Greco-Asiatic empire, 79 Greco-Roman, 56, 62, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, 147, 155 Greece, 37, 41, 79, 80, 85, 86, 87, 123, 137, 147, 156, 161, 165, 173 Greek, 37, 41, 43, 52, 59, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 119, 148, 155, 156, 176 Greenwich Mean Time, 167 Group Areas Act, 114 Guerrillas, 116 Guevara, Ché, 119

361

Guinea, 22, 56, 73, 98, 111, 117, 118 Guinea Bissau, 118, 119, 167 Guinea Conakry, 70 Gupta, Dr. Sanjay, 199 guru, 15 Guyana, 54, 197 Gyekye, Kwame, 10 Habtu, Haile, 56 Haidar, Haidar, 36 Haider, Dr. Jörg, 36 Haile Selassie I, 53, 85 Hajj, 48, 54, 127 Ham, 1, 2, 5 Hamites, 85 Harvard Educational Review, 60 Harvard Law School, 199 Harvard University, 45, 177 Hatchett, John F., 64, 65 Hausa, 18, 29, 43, 52, 57, 75, 160, 173, 174 Hausa-Fulani, 18 Hayek, F. A., 102 Hebrew, 80 Hegel, Friedrich, 1 heresy, 10, 28, 29, 66, 71 Herodotus, 85, 87 Herskovits, Melville J., 85, 86, 159 Higham, Charles, 133, 134 Hijrah, 45, 48 Hinawy, Farid Hinai alias, 192 Hindu, 43, 143, 195 Hindustani, 197 Hippocratic Oath, 87 Hitler, Adolf, 65, 134, 138, 140, 173 HIV, 74, 75 Hobbes, Thomas, 91, 97, 107 Hodgart, Matthew, 64 Hodgkin, Thomas, 80, 97 Hodgson, Marshall G. S., 82 holocaust, 33, 36, 164 homosexuality, 35, 75, 138 Horn of Africa, 71, 156, 184 Hountondji, P. J., 10 Houphouët-Boigny, Félix, 14, 22 Houtondji, Paulin J., 8

362 Hugo, Victor, 9 Hunan, 52 Huntingford, G. W. B., 83 Huntington, Samuel, 171 Hyder, Dr. Mohamed, 87 Ibadan, 73 Ibn Rushd, 41 Ibn Sina, 41 Igbo, 19, 20, 22, 29, 55, 75, 127, 172, 173, 174 Ileo, Joseph, 91 imams, 37, 38 imani, 57 inalienable, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 163 Indian Nationalist Movement, 118 Indian Ocean, 83, 181, 184, 186, 189, 193, 195 Indians, 1, 3, 5, 34, 44, 85, 114, 128, 141, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200 Indirect Rule, 13, 69, 70, 92 Indonesia, 38, 199, 200 Industrial Revolution, 45, 148, 164, 167, 194 insan, 41 Institute of Scientific Information, 44 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), 195 International Monetary Fund, 184, 193 intifadah, 38 Iqra’, 41, 47 Iran, 35, 73, 143 Iranian Plateau, 83 Irving, David, 36 Islamabad, 74, 182 Islamic Reformation, 45, 46, 47, 48 Islamization, 43, 48, 54, 55, 57, 70, 75, 82, 156 Islamophilia, 51, 52, 56, 57 Islamophobia, 173 Isle of War, 184 Israel, 27, 37, 44, 65, 189, 192 Ivory Coast, 70, 147, 148

Index Jabbar, Karim Abdul, 57 Jackson, Jesse, 163, 199 Jairpur, 143 Jamaat al Muslimeen, 58 Jamaica, 18, 53, 127 Japan, 47, 84, 131, 132, 133, 143, 172, 184, 192, 195, 200 Jefferson, Thomas, 5, 121 Jehovah, 67, 113 Jerusalem, 46, 131, 159 Jesuits, 45 Jesus Christ, 10, 41, 46, 60, 67, 114, 115, 131 Johannesburg, 73, 114 Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen, 34, 177 Jok, 128 Jomo Kenyatta, 13, 198 jua, 131 Judaism, 17, 41, 56, 59, 60, 61, 127, 131 Judeo-Christian, 33, 62, 80, 81 Juliasi Kaizari, 11 Julius Caesar, 11, 60 Kabaka, 69 Kaduna, 35, 74 kaffir, 72 Kaiser Aluminum, 37 Kano, 73 Karachi, 35, 37 Karakasidou, Anastasia, 37 Karamojong, 8 Karenga, Maulana, 163, 164, 165 Kasavubu regime, 91 Kasavubu, Joseph, 91, 95 Kaunda, Kenneth, 22, 23, 115, 116, 119, 198 Keller, Edmond, 164, 165 Kemet, 148, 160 Kennedy, John F., 72, 109 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 33, 184 Kenya, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 27, 51, 73, 82, 87, 94, 111, 112, 113, 127, 128, 134, 149, 167, 174, 175, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200

African Thought in Comparative Perspective Khaldun, Ibn, 42, 158 Khartoum, 71, 156, 176 Kigali, 175, 176 Kiganda, 83 Kihei, 112 Kikuyu, 13, 14, 18, 20, 27, 28, 33, 55, 112, 118, 128, 172 Kikwete, Jakaya Mrisho, 175 King Gezo, 116 King Hassan II, 9 King Henry VIII, 45 King Leopold, 92 King Solomon, 27 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 34, 115, 186, 198, 200 Kinshasa, 74, 91 Kintu, 14, 27, 128 Kipling, Rudyard, 2 Kisii, 178 Kismayu, 175 Kiswahili, 11, 22, 29, 43, 57, 160, 183, 196, 197 Koran, 52, 80 Kordofan, 52 Korean War, 196 Koreans, 44, 193 Kuper, Leo, 114 kusur, 52 Lady Lugard, 167 laissez faire, 21, 104 Lakwena, Alice, 178 Lalibela, 144, 164 Lamu, 36, 73 Langrishe, Hercules, 95 Latin, 80, 81, 84, 85, 87, 88, 132, 140, 155, 160 Latin America, 13, 98, 99, 140, 196, 198 Leakey, L. S. B., 82 Lebanon, 36, 56, 139 Leme, 14 Lenin, Vladimir, 11, 22, 29, 97, 115, 118, 119, 138, 198 Leninism, 10, 11, 22 Lenshina, Alice, 115 lesbianism, 35, 75

363

Levi-Strauss, 67 Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 111 Liberia, 51, 52, 53, 56, 123, 160, 161, 177 Lieberman, Joe, 72 Limpopo, 63 Lincoln University, 53 Lincoln, Abraham, 121 Locke, John, 171 Lo-Dagaa, 66 London, 2, 36, 38, 64, 74, 84, 96, 108, 109, 149 Lord Milverton, 94 Lourdes, 17 Lucifer, 132 Luganda, 88 Lugard, Frederick, 69, 79 Lugbara, 7, 14, 127 Lumpa Church, 115 Lumumba, Patrice, 92, 93, 94 Luo, 14, 28, 127, 128, 199 Luthuli, Albert, 34, 119, 198 Lyuba, 131 Maathai, Wangari, 34 Mabepari wa Vanisi, 11 Macedonia, 37 Machel, Samora, 22 Macmillan, Harold, 24 Macpherson, Fergus, 115 Macpherson, Margaret, 88 Mad Mullah, 17 Mafia, 133 Mahdi, 17, 22, 71 Mahdi, Sadiq el, 71 Mahdist Revolt, 17 Maiduguri Mean Time, 167 Mair, Lucy, 80 Maji Maji, 17, 111 Makerere, 88, 196 Malawi, 15, 16, 21, 51, 69, 72 Malay, 43, 51 Malcolm X, 51, 53, 54, 59 Mali, 54, 56, 62, 70, 73, 157, 161 Mali Empire, 156 Malik, Abu Abdallah, 45 Mandela, Nelson, 22, 34

364 Maputo, 175 Martinique, 54, 62, 80, 161 Marx, Karl, 5, 8, 22, 28, 29, 37, 60, 65, 66, 67, 99, 111, 117, 119, 137, 148, 171 Marxism, 10, 22, 29, 39, 84 Marxist, 8, 22, 24, 29, 84, 98, 111, 115, 118, 119 Marxist Manifesto, 137 Masina, 52 Masinde, Elijah, 62, 80 Masjidullah, 53 Mastermind of the Third Reich, 36 Mathew, Gervase, 82 Mau Mau Movement, 18, 34, 112, 113 Mauritania, 70 Mayo, Henry, 106 Mazrui, Sheikh Muhammad Kasim, 42 Mbiti, John, 10, 14, 127, 128 Mboya, Tom, 74, 186 McDonald’s, 33 McNeill, William H., 4, 86 Mecca, 27, 41, 42, 45, 46, 54, 59, 127, 156, 157, 159, 182 Medina, 17, 41, 45, 54, 182 Mediterranean, 82, 83, 85, 86, 132, 161, 165, 166 Meiji Restoration, 131, 133 Mengistu, 177 Meru, 18, 131 Mi’raj, 46, 48 Michels, Robert, 102, 106 Middle Ages, 45 Middle East, 74, 82, 83, 172, 182, 189 Middle Passage, 199 Mier, Golda, 150 Mill, John Stuart, 3, 5, 66, 101, 104, 108, 117, 134 Milton, John, 132 Minh, Ho Chi, 119 miscegenation, 122, 138, 139, 140 Mkapa, Benjamin, 72, 175 Moghul Empire, 48

Index Moi, Daniel arap, 189, 193 Mombasa, 27, 57, 73, 87, 172, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 193, 194, 195, 196 Mombasa Times, 183 Monod, Jacques, 63 monogamy, 74, 114, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141 Monrovia, 175 Morocco, 9, 17, 38, 54, 56, 73, 157, 158, 182 Moscow, 24, 120 Moseley, Roy, 134 Moses, 46, 131, 166 Mother Teresa, 34 Mozambique, 9, 21, 22, 111, 117, 118, 167, 193, 197, 198 Mozambique Liberation Front, 21 mranaha, 144 Mt. Sinai, 159 Mudimbe, Valentine Y., 1, 155, 159, 160, 161, 162 Muezzin, 56 Mugabe, Robert, 21, 22, 23, 35, 52 Muhammad Ali, 51, 53 Muhammad, Elijah, 53, 54, 57 Mullahs, 37, 38 Muluba, 92 Muluzi, Bakili, 51, 69, 72 Mumbi, 14, 27, 128 Muqaddimah, 42, 158 Musa, Mansa, 157 Museveni, Yoweri, 177, 178, 197 Muslim Brotherhood, 9 Mutharika, Bingu wa, 72 Mvita, 181, 184 Mwalimu, 16 Mwinyi, Ali Hassan, 72, 175 Mwiri, 88 Napoleon, 66 Narkis, Uzi, 65 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 8, 9, 16, 23, 24 National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 122

African Thought in Comparative Perspective National Endowment for the Humanities, 37 National Liberation Front (NLF), 117 National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), 111 nationalism, 3, 13, 17, 18, 19, 21, 45, 54, 55, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91, 93, 111, 115, 174 Ndebele, 18, 28, 176 Neffertiti, 131 Negritude, 1, 5, 19, 51, 59, 61, 62, 80, 81, 83, 85, 88, 132, 155, 164 Negroid, 84, 166 Negrology, 62, 63, 64 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 23, 24, 198, 200 Netherlands, 38, 199 Neto, Agostinho, 8, 22 New Delhi, 74 New International Economic Order (NIEO), 23 New Nations, 80 New Testament, 41, 113 New York City, 64, 65, 74, 186 New York Times, 65, 134, 161 New York University, 64, 65 Ngwazi, 16 Nicol, Davidson, 158, 159 Niger, 70, 157 Nigeria, 14, 18, 19, 20, 27, 35, 54, 56, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 121, 156, 160, 167, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 193, 195, 196 Nigerian Civil War, 34, 121 Nile Valley, 69, 82, 83, 86, 87, 122, 131, 144, 148, 160, 161 Nilo-Hamites, 83 Nilotes, 83 Nimeiry, Col. Jaafar Muhammad, 71 Nimeiry, Ja’afar, 10 Njonjo, Charles, 193 Nkomo, Joshua, 22, 113

365

Nkrumah, Kwame, 8, 11, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 61, 79, 81, 88, 118, 156, 160, 198 Noah, 2, 5 Nobel Committee for Peace, 34 Nobel Laureate, 44 Nobel Prize, 34, 44, 60, 63 Nonaligned Movement (NAM), 23 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 166, 194 North Star, 122 nostalgia, 27, 147, 150, 160 Nuer, 66 Nuremberg, 34 Nyamwezi, 131 Nyang, Sulayman, 58, 161 Nyerere, Julius K., 5, 10, 11, 15, 16, 22, 52, 72, 97, 98, 99, 111, 148, 159, 175 Obama, Barack, 34, 173, 199, 200 Obasanjo, General Olusegun, 71 Obote, Milton, 72 Odinga, Oginga, 8, 14 Ogotonmeli, 8 Okigbo, Christopher, 58 Old Testament, 4, 41, 55, 58, 113, 174, 177, 178 Olduvai Gorge, 159 Oliver, Roland, 82, 85 Omani, 57 Omukama, 83 On Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 2 Onitcha, 34 Orange Free State, 114 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 18, 159 Organization of the Islamic Conference, 56, 73 Orientalism, 1, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162 Oromo, 177 Osagyefo, 16 Oslo, 34 Ottoman, 43, 48, 148 Ovambo, 8

366 Oxford University, 12, 51, 56, 89, 108, 109 p’Bitek, Okot, 10, 128 pacification, 112, 114 Packenham, Robert A., 3 Padmore, George, 18 Pakistan, 38, 182, 189 Palace of Versailles, 143, 144, 148 Pan African Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA), 114 Pan-African Congress, 18, 122 Pan-Africanism, 8, 18, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 88, 122, 124, 159, 189, 193, 200 Pan-Islam, 53 Paradise Lost, 132, 135 Paris Commune, 118 Parkes, Henry Bamford, 82 Parliament, 16, 57, 173, 197 Parsons, Talcott, 4 Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG), 97 Pass Laws, 114 patriotism, 17, 29, 94, 97, 178 People of the Book, 48 Perham, Margery, 140 Periplus, 82 Persia, 144, 194 Persian, 43, 82, 159, 185, 197 Persian Empire, 61 petro-da’wa, 75 Pharaoh, 84, 148, 163, 166 Pharaoh Akhenaton, 131 Pharaoh Ikhenaten, 165 Philadelphia, 44, 53, 122 Philippines, 76 Phoenicians, 155, 156, 161, 165 Picture of Dorian Gray, 34 Plamenatz, John, 33, 184 Plateau State, 20 Plato, 67, 84, 88, 137, 138, 158 polyandry, 137 polygyny, 35, 74, 137 Port Harcourt, 74 Potter, Barnett, 60 Powell, Colin, 199, 200

Index Presbyterian Theological College, 51 Présence Africaine, 87 presentism, 147, 148, 150 Princeton Theological Seminary, 52 Prophet Muhammad, 5, 10, 35, 36, 41, 42, 45, 46, 56, 57, 134, 181, 182 Protestant, 20, 45, 51, 72, 122, 127, 172, 176 Prussia, 5 Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 37, 160, 161, 165 Punt, 83 purdah, 75 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 61 Pythagoras, 84 Qaddafi, Muammar, 9, 37 Qarawiyin University, 157 qiblah, 42 Queen of Sheba, 156 Qur’an, 35, 41, 42, 47, 48, 55, 57, 70, 127 Rabah, 5 raison d’être, 24 Ramadan, 42 Ramses II, 144 Ranger, Terrence, 111 Rapid Deployment Force, 185 Ras [Prince] Tafari, 53 Rastafari Movement, 53 Rastas, 55, 127 Red Sea, 82, 83, 139, 156, 159, 166, 185 Reformation, 20, 44, 45, 122, 167, 172 Renaissance, 63, 167 Renan, Ernest, 27 Republic of Mali, 156 Republic of Plato, 88 Reverence, 15 Revolutionary Council, 71 Rhine-Danube frontier, 85 Rhodes, Cecil, 3 Rhodesia, 18, 34, 93, 111, 115, 119, 149

African Thought in Comparative Perspective Rice, Condoleezza, 199 Rift Valley, 166 Riyadh, 74 Robinson, Francis, 45 Robinson, Prime Minister A. N. R., 57 Robinson, Ronald, 86 Roman Empire, 83, 85, 86 Romans, 3, 79, 82, 86, 155 Rome, 37, 79, 80, 147, 149, 156, 161, 194 Roosevelt, Theodore, 184, 185 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1, 9, 19, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108 Rushdie, Salman, 35, 36, 173 Russell, Bertrand, 144, 148 Russian Revolution, 137 Rustow, Dankwart A., 91 Rwanda, 10, 17, 174, 175, 176 safari, 185 Safire, William, 134, 135 Sahara, 18, 21, 52, 56, 75, 82, 131, 157, 159, 160 Said, Edward, 1, 155, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162 Saint Bernadette, 17 Salaam, Muhammad Abdul, 44 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 80 Sasa, 14 Satan, 71, 132 satyagraha, 34, 115, 116 Saudi Arabia, 35, 75, 139 Sauti ya Haki, 42 Schweitzer, Albert, 2 Seko, Mobutu Sese, 134 Seligman, C. G., 85 Senaar, 52 Senghor, Léopold, 10, 14, 15, 22, 59, 62, 63, 64, 72, 81, 85, 87, 98, 99, 161, 174 Separate Representation of Voters Act, 114 Shagari, Al-Haji Shehu, 70 shahadah, 41, 42 Shaka, 112

367

Shamuyarira, Nathan, 113 Sheikh Al Islam Moulay Al Arbi Alaoui, 9 Sheikh al-Bishti, 9 Shem, 2 Shils, Edward, 4 Shona, 18, 28, 113, 149, 176 shura, 9 Sierra Leone, 158, 160, 161 Simbel, Abu, 144 Smith, Ian, 34, 113, 115 Snow, C. P., 60 Social Contract, 97, 107, 108 socialism, 9, 10, 11, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 117, 122, 148 Sokoto, 70 Somali, 17, 57, 75, 192 Somalia, 17, 53, 71, 75, 82, 174, 176, 186, 192, 193 Somaliland, 17, 71, 176 Songhai, 62, 156, 157, 161 South America, 197 sovereign, 63, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 132 sovereignty, 18, 45, 46, 47, 87, 97, 98, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 173 Soviet Union, 22, 24, 71, 99, 138, 189, 198 Soyinka, Wole, 56, 58 St. Peter’s Basilica, 149 St. Thomas, 51 Stacey, Tom, 91 Stalin, 173 Stuckey, Sterling, 63 Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, 65 Sudan, 10, 17, 35, 43, 66, 70, 71, 75, 86, 139, 155, 157, 158, 161, 174, 175, 176, 192, 198, 200 Sudanese Civil War, 70, 176 Suez Canal, 64, 185 Sukarnoputri, Megawati, 38 Suleiman I, 48 Sultanate of Oman, 192 Summers, Larry, 177

368 Sunday Times, 91 Sunni, 45, 57 suzerainty, 86 Swaziland, 17 Sweden, 21 Switzerland, 21, 38, 127, 173 Syria, 56, 139 tabligh, 75 Taha, Mahmoud Muhammad, 10, 71 Taj Mahal, 55, 144, 148, 149, 197 Taliban, 46 Talmon, J. L., 102 Tamil, 176 Tananarive Conference, 95 Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), 16 Tanzania, 16, 17, 22, 23, 69, 72, 74, 76, 97, 98, 111, 128, 131, 135, 148, 159, 175, 193, 197, 198, 200 Tanzania African National Union (T.A.N.U.), 98 Tehran, 74 Telli, Diallo, 81 Thales, 84 Thatcher, Margaret, 150 The Bible, 41, 70, 186 The Canon of Medicine, 41 The Committee to Stop Hate, 65 The Dual Mandate, 79 The Economist, 93 The Fault, Black Man, 60 The Manifesto of the Communist Party, 65 The Merchant of Venice, 11 The Modern Traveller, 112 The People, 88 The Satanic Verses, 35 The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, 58 The White Man’s Burden, 2 Theocracy, 47 theory of relativity, 67 Third World, 22, 23, 24, 35, 99, 151, 164, 174, 189, 195, 197, 198, 199 Tiananmen Square, 38 Tidy, Michael, 161

Index Timbuktu, 19, 54, 81, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161 Times, 2, 64 Tito, Josip Broz, 24, 25, 198 Tiv, 33 Tobago, 197 Torczyner, Jacques, 65 totalitarian, 4, 102 Touré, Sékou, 21, 22, 56, 73, 97, 99 Towa, M., 10 Transition, 56 Transitional Military Council, 71 Transvaal, 114 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 1, 85 Tri-Continental People’s Solidarity Organization, 98 Trinidad, 18, 54, 57, 197 Trinity, 58, 80, 128 Trojan Horse, 10 Tse-tung, Mao, 15, 16, 119, 192, 198 Tshombe, Moise, 92, 95 Tucker, Bishop Alfred, 83 Tunis, 144, 157, 158 Tunisia, 9, 15, 21, 38, 73, 144, 155, 158 Turkey, 39, 76, 182 Turner, James, 64, 65 Tutu, Desmond Mpilo, 34, 198 Tyro, 61 Uganda, 8, 15, 18, 72, 83, 86, 87, 88, 128, 134, 140, 177, 178, 182, 183, 186, 189, 193, 195, 197, 200 uhuru, 57 ujamaa, 11, 57 ulamaa, 9 United Nations, 91, 98, 159, 175, 186, 193, 195 United Nations General Assembly, 99 United Nations’ Environmental Programmes’ (UNEP’s), 186 United Republic of Tanzania, 16 United States, 5, 17, 18, 20, 24, 35, 37, 38, 39, 44, 46, 51, 53, 54, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 71, 72, 73,

African Thought in Comparative Perspective 75, 109, 115, 121, 122, 123, 132, 133, 134, 140, 147, 158, 159, 161, 163, 167, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 182, 184, 185, 186, 194, 195, 198, 199, 200 United States Supreme Court, 46 universalism, 4, 33, 35, 36, 45 University College of the Gold Coast, 87 University of Cambridge, 183 University of Chicago, 177 University of London, 45, 85 University of Nairobi, 87 University of Pennsylvania, 53, 80 University of Sussex, 64 University of Wittenberg, 81 Urdu, 43, 197 Utilitarianism, 104, 109 van Sertima, Ivan, 123 Vatican, 34 Verwoed, Hendrik F., 34 Vietnam, 23, 166 Vorster, Prime Minister, 115, 116 Waday, 52 Wajed, Sheikh Hasina Rahman, 38 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 97 Walloons, 17 Warsaw Pact, 194, 198, 200 Washington, DC, 24, 37, 65, 147, 158 Waswahili, 183, 189, 192 Weber, Max, 45, 172 Wheeler, Sir Mortimer, 82 White Highlands, 183 Wilde, Oscar, 34

369

Wilson, Reverend D. A., 52 Wolof, 8, 57 Wordsworth, William, 29, 129, 143 World Bank, 184, 193, 195 World Health Organization (WHO), 74, 195 World Politics, 171 World Trade Organization (WTO), 195 World War II, 35, 184, 185, 186, 194, 198 World Wide Web, 44, 45, 47 Yamoussoukro, 148 Yemen, 75, 83, 139, 176, 185 Yoruba, 8, 14, 18, 20, 22, 27, 29, 54, 55, 57, 65, 75, 127, 128, 159, 173, 174 Yorubaland, 22 Young, Andrew, 159 Yugoslavia, 24, 25, 198 Zaire, 10, 17, 134, 192, 193 Zakaria, Fareed, 199 Zam, 17 Zamani, 14 Zambesi River, 86 Zanzibar, 16, 17, 75 Zaria, 70 Zewail, Ahmad, 44 Zia, Khaleda, 38 Zimbabwe, 18, 21, 22, 28, 34, 35, 111, 113, 115, 149, 164, 176 Zionism, 17, 123, 192 Zionist Organization of America, 65 Zulu, 79