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The romantic sleep of Ubuntu produces monsters in Rwanda, Sudan, S.Africa

Saturday April 25 2015

Many people have commented on the xenophobic killings and the defacing of historical monuments in parts of South Africa.

However, these commentaries have failed to see the link between the two acts and, more fundamentally, to see them as symptomatic of the failure of the cultural nationalist ideology that has influenced discourse on Africa’s socio-political renaissance.

Cultural nationalism, no matter its guise, makes two bizarre claims: (1) That pre-colonial African society was characterised by humanist principles that define the African worldview. (2) That an African renaissance can thus only happen if we revive or recreate the values and practices that presumably underpinned this humanist society.

This way of thinking causes us to miss opportunities to engage with our reality and, unfortunately, often shapes views, policies and practices that are inimical to our developmental and constitutional goals.

Thus some years ago, at a conference called “The Pan African Colloquium: Educational Innovation in Post-Colonial Africa” at the University of Cape Town, many of the presentations, especially the popular ones, analysed the problem of education in Africa in terms of Eurocentricity vs. Afrocentricity, calling, to loud cheers, for syllabi to be Africanised.

These scholars, from African universities whose world rankings were dismal, just like today, and whose physical infrastructure at the time was in a shambles (remember the Education Building at the University of Nairobi?) could not see the irony of castigating “Eurocentric” universities such as UCT with their beautiful grounds and infrastructure, world class resources and high global rankings.

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Cultural nationalist theories on education and knowledge had blinded our professors to the real problems of high education in Africa — few resources, low research capability and a shaky tradition of scholarship and scholarly production. But it was also a cynical intellectual pantomime, for at the end of the conference, the venerable professors made sure to leave their revised CVs behind.

There are other occasions when we have missed the opportunity to discuss the real problems facing us and, instead, chosen to debate along the lines Achebe has dismissed as “stereotyped notions of struggle as indeed everything else.”

Thus, for instance, at pan-Africanist conferences in the 1980s and 90s, convened to discuss Africa’s future, scholars debated myths about Africa’s humanitarian past, missing the opportunity to debate, and demand enactment of, modern constitutional governance.

Three periods of history

Likewise, our historians see history as constituting three distinct periods: A pre-colonial humanist civilisation; a colonial period defined by destruction of this humanist civilisation, and a postcolonial period of revival of the humanist pre-colonial civilisation.

In his book, Consciencism, the late Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana and the high priest of pan-Africanism, sees the goal of the anti-colonial struggle as the “restoration of Africa’s humanist and egalitarian principles.”

The complex nature of history is thus reduced to a politically correct schema in which Africans are angels and Europeans evildoers. Accordingly, history books will not mention the participation of Africans in the slave trade or say that Nkrumah established the first postcolonial dictatorship in Africa.

So those debasing monuments in South Africa think they are erasing the symbols of an evil presence that destroyed an idyllic African civilisation.

However, should not this energy be focused on creating a society that produces geniuses in engineering, technical innovation and medical research, etc, so that statues in their honour can be erected alongside those deemed offensive?

Likewise again, we refuse to recognise that ethnic consciousness predates colonialism so that we can devise ways of creating new national identities, as well as promote cross-country cultural exchange programmes. Instead, we spew notions of natural African brotherhood.

Could not an honest post-Independence dialogue on ethnicity and national identity have prevented genocide in Rwanda or the current genocidal rampages of the Dinka and the Nuer in South Sudan?

Instead of being lulled to sleep by romantic notions of Ubuntu, could not educational and cultural dialogues, as well as robust enforcement of laws protecting foreign workers have prevented xenophobic killings in South Africa?

It is time to move discourse on Africa past the cultural nationalist intellectual tradition. Otherwise, the vile acts in South Africa, and ethnic violence and underdevelopment in Africa will continue to define our postcolonial experience.

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