aspirations
Dr Eddy Maloka
CROSSFIRE
South Africa’s geopolitical position within the region and xenophobia were raised sharply in articles that have appeared in the Mail & Guardian recently.
These critical issues are raised against the background of our country’s call for the “African renaissance” which has failed to bring on board the old debate about the very same issues.
In 1964 Walter Wallbank published Documents on Modern Africa. The introduction to his chapter on “The African Renaissance and the African Past” tried to capture the mood of the time: “… [there] has been the revolution in New Africa’s ideology generally referred to as the African Renaissance. This reawakening has two facets. The first is the rediscovery of the African past; the second the affirmation of what is believed to be the unique qualities and the new proud destiny of the Negro peoples.”
The belief in an Africa that will rise and take its position as an equal partner in world affairs is as old as colonisation, and was articulated in various forms in the past.
Notable among African scholars who came to be associated with the renaissance before World War II were the South African, Pixley ka Isaka Seme; the Nigerian, Nnamdi Azikiwe; and the Senegalese, Cheikh anta Diop.
Seme advocated for “The Regeneration of Africa” in his 1905 essay. The following year, he proclaimed: “The brighter day is rising upon Africa. Already I seem to see her chains dissolved.”
Azikiwe published his Renascent Africa in 1937 wherein he called for a “New Africa” that was to stand on five pillars: spiritual balance, social regeneration, economic determination, mental emancipation, and national self- determination.
Diop, in his 1948 essay entitled When can we talk of an African Renaissance? was convinced that “the development of our indigenous languages is the prerequisite for a real African renaissance”.
With the decolonisation of Africa after World War II, the renaissance movement gained momentum, reaching its peak in the 1960s. At the centre was Pan-Africanism that had begun at the turn of the century as a reaction to racial discrimination and colonial rule.
Thanks to the rise to prominence of African post-colonial leaders – notably Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Leopold Senghor of Senegal, Sekou Toure of Guinea, and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania – Pan-Africanism flourished as “African socialism” and Negritude. Congresses and conferences were organised by these leaders to bring together intellectuals to popularise and flag out these concepts. Consequently, the number of schools and universities multiplied in response to the renaissance call, while externally, especially in the United States, Britain and France, African studies journals and institutes were created. It was in this context that books such as Basil Davidson’s The African Awakening (1955) and Leonard Barnes’ African Renaissance (1969) were published.
There was great optimism. Azikiwe even thought that “the 20th-century African is bound to be renascent”. Barnes was even more precise, he was convinced that overcoming the hiccups that were being experienced in the 1960s was a matter of time.
But by the end of the 1960s, against the background of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the overthrow of Nkrumah, among others, post-colonialism started tasting sour.
By the 1970s, military rule was prominent in Africa. Even the Pan-African Congress Movement conference (1974) in Dar es Salaam could not rescue the renaissance movement.
The current renaissance movement has a lot to learn from its predecessor. A weakness of the “first wave” renaissance movement was its failure to develop into a social movement, as it was confined to intellectuals and a political elite.
Today’s African renaissance is better positioned. Significant progress has been made towards achieving regional economic integration. The continent has developed its own capacity to handle intra- and inter-state conflicts.
Political unity, Nkrumah’s main dream, is now a possibility, especially after the extraordinary Organisation of African Unity summit that was held last September in Sirte, Libya.
The biggest challenge, however, is to develop “African renaissance” into a coherent ideology so that it does not become vulnerable to abuse and manipulation. Secondly, this renaissance movement has to be rooted among the masses if it is to succeed; it must have a clear sense of the forces that must be mobilised in order to bring the renaissance about.