The `African renaissance’ will be a central pillar of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency, writes Ferial Haffajee
`The rich king of Timbuktu … keeps a magnificent and well-furnished court … Here are great store of doctors, judges, priests and other learned men …”
This was Moorish writer Leo Africanus writing in the 16th century and quoted by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki in an “African renaissance” lecture earlier this year to a Tokyo audience.
Mbeki was welcomed like a king of Timbuktu to a glitzy “African renaissance” conference in Johannesburg this week where he took two days out of his busy schedule to listen to a great store of doctors, judges, priests and other learned men.
His courtiers had arranged a welcome slightly discomforting in its adoration. As he entered the room, loud-speakers boomed out his “I am an African” speech that in 1996 set the theme for the Mbeki presidency.
His voice was everywhere: “The leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito. A human presence among all these, I know that none dare challenge me when I say, `I am an African.'”
A beaming Mbeki took the podium to kick- start a conference that promised to put the meat on the bones of his concept. Mbeki has become the brand manager of the “African renaissance” – an idea that has caught on like wildfire, with even South African detractor Robert Mugabe using it to describe an African future.
But of late, questions have been raised about the elusive “renaissance”. Many of the flags standing majestically in the grand conference room at the five-star hotel are daubed with red. At least a dozen African states are at war, and the continent’s countries continue to fill the bottom ranks of the United Nations Human Development Report.
But this was not a conference about war and poverty – it was about laying the groundwork for the Mbeki presidency of which the “African renaissance” will be a central pillar.
Mbeki has ambitions to make South Africa an economic and intellectual centre like Timbuktu. From the 14th to 16th centuries, that West African city was like a Wall Street, a vital node in the trade routes which criss- crossed Africa. It was also a world- leading Islamic centre of learning.
In South Africa in 1998, we are about to witness the start of African Renaissance Incorporated. An African Renaissance Institute will be up and running by the end of the year, a membership organisation launched and several books published on the topic. Money will be no object because business will always line up to support a presidential philosophy.
Mbeki has appointed an inter- ministerial committee on the “African renaissance”. And before next year’s election, South Africa will host another conference to discuss the continent’s rebirth.
Outside the government, the midwives of the “renaissance” have been handpicked or self-appointed. They include publisher Thami Mazwai, academic Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, SABC executive Thaninga Msimango and businessman Reuel Khoza. Other leading lights include members of Mbeki’s kitchen cabinet, like businesswoman Wendy Luhabe, media executive Khulu Sibiya and policy analyst Vincent Maphai.
It is from this group that Mbeki will draw the content of his philosophy geared at sculpting him as an African statesman in the mould of Julius Nyerere. Speaker after speaker at the conference pointed out that the idea of African regeneration is an old one.
Asked academic Mahmood Mamdani: “When did the `African renaissance’ begin? Was it in 1994 or earlier? Is it a turnkey South African export to the rest of Africa? Could it be that it comes from many sources – that its waters come from many springs?”
Mamdani’s quest for modesty was echoed again and again, inside and outside the conference. The continent is ambiguous about the role of South Africa in Africa’s reawakening. Some welcome the economic boost the country brings, but there is also suspicion of its close relations with the United States and the leading role South Africa has assumed for itself.
The conference heard that many African ambassadors had declined invitations. “They ask, `What’s this African renaissance nonsense?'” complained Mazwai.
Mbeki is aware of the rumbling. Those opposed to a “renaissance”, he said, benefited from the old Africa. The deputy president implied that his leadership role had been sanctioned by Nyerere himself on a recent visit.
“I discussed the issue with Julius Nyerere. He said to me `South Africa is too hesitant, too shy. You know what is going to result from your shyness? Since you are not doing what you have to, we will come to the conclusion that you have a secret agenda which has nothing to do with the development of the continent.'”
Other than the start of marketing of the “renaissance” industry, little was decided this week on how to go about that reawakening. The implementation strategy for a “renaissance” may not be easy, but a lot was left unsaid at the conference.
War and peace were little mentioned, other than by Cape Town-based academic Kwesi Prah who said, “If you look around this continent, we have conditions of generalised war. We need to be able in our minds to resolve that contradiction: is it possible to have a rebirth and reawakening under such conditions of war and bloodletting and instability?”
African leaders have in the past month chosen the path of military intervention to quell war and unrest. They are joined now by Mbeki who increasingly is also choosing the jackboot to deal with those he says, “Do things that are wrong and unacceptable and say … `This is the African way of doing things.'”
But his vision of an “African renaissance” is taking on an increasingly economic flavour, with an emphasis on “moral renewal”. Again this week, Mbeki castigated the corruptible and the corrupt – those who come from “overseas with bags of money”.
And on a continent cowed by structural adjustment programmes, Mbeki also aimed a broadside at the global economy with the view that Africa must find its own solutions. “We [Africa] must be in the forefront in challenging the notion of `the market’ as the modern god, a supernatural phenomenon to whose dictates everything human must bow in a spirit of powerlessness.”
He added, “There must be something out of joint where wealth begets poverty.”