6TH MWALIMU NYERERE INTELLECTUAL FESTIVAL: 9TH -11TH APRIL, 2014
THEME:
LIBERATING THE MIND FOR AFRICA’S ADVANCEMENT
Liberating
the Mind for Africa’s Transformation
BY
PROF. PLO
LUMUMBA CPS (K), MKIM
The
Vice Chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam, Prof. Rwekaza Mukandala,
the MwalimuNyerere distinguished Professor,
Penina
Mlama, fellow academics, ladies and gentlemen.
I am happy to join with you today on the occasion of the commemoration
of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
At
the very outset, we must commence these proceedings by remembering the immortal
words of Mwalimu Nyerere, spoken on the 25th day of May, 1963 in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where he said:
“…We did not come here to
discover whether we all want a free Africa. Even the greatest enemies of
African unity know that the one thing on which there can be no doubt that the
whole of Africa speaks with one sincere voice, it is our desire to see an
Africa completely freed from foreign domination and racialism. We came here to
find out what we should all do now in order to bring about the final liberation of Africa.
We did not come here to
discover whether we want Africa unity. Again, even our enemies know that we
sincerely desire unity. It is their fear of the consequences to them of complete
African unity, which makes them emphasize our differences and hope-wishfully-
that these differences will make it impossible for Africa to unite. No, we did
not come here to find out whether we desire unity. We came here to find out our
common denominator in our approach to African unity…”[1]
Mwalimu
and his contemporaries such asKwame
Nkrumah of Ghana, Modibo Keita of
Mali, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Milton Obote of Uganda, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, SamNujoma of Namibia, Nelson Mandela and many others may be
gone and it is equally true that their vision may have been blurred by the
passage of time, but the truth is that Africa must remember them and go back to
the basics which they had identified so ably, but which we have ignored so
blatantly.
Fifty
(50) years since most African countries attained political independence, Africa
still remains ravaged by poverty, disease, famine, violence and death.
These issues have been taken as the reflection
of Africa’s identity and pickled into the conscious and sub-conscious minds of
her people over the centuries. She has been diagnosed as suffering from what
has been described as the African crises[2],
which term in the political lexicon, refers to any of the problems faced by the
African continent.
They call the Third World the
lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this
realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore
indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and
impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any
discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still
call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is
not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting
in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the
day.[3]
All
these definitions of Africa have eroded her true identity to this day and even
as Africa celebrates 50 years of the creation of the Organization of African
Union (now the African Union), we must contend with this painful question about
our identity. In the words of one of the great Ghanaians, Dr. JE Kwegyir Aggrey
said:
My people of Africa, we are
created in the image of God but men have made us think we are chickens, and we
still think we are, but we are eagles.
In
both the political and academic press, the so called ‘African crisis/problems’ are
usually defined in the economic terms, ignoring the core problem from which all
other problems stem; mind-set.
The
role of the mindset in spurring or deterring Africa’s economic, social and
cultural advancement has been ignored, despite the fact that it has been, and
continues to be at the heart of Africa’s past, present and future experiences,
particularly Pan-Africanism.
History of Africa and
Early Shaping of the African mind
Against
common belief, the history of Africa did not begin in slavery and despite the
peculiarity, horror and duration of enslavement of Africans, slavery occupies a
minor time-frame in the over 120,000 years of Africa’s history. The slave
mentality therefore was a strategy used to psychologically conquer and subdue
Africans.
Many
people have this view of Africa sitting still and being imposed up from
outside. They forget that Africa was an active trade partner with Arabia, and
China. They forget because the forces that plotted against Africa knew that the
only way to keep Africans subdued was by overcoming them in the mind. Indeed,
in the words of Steve Biko, “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is
the mind of the oppressed.”
This
age-old weapon has been used on Africa to drain her of her rich history and
strip her of her identity, heritage and pride. The Eurocentric habit of
"tribalizing" Africa and portraying it as a dark, pagan, licentious,
unorganized continent that is basically emotive and the legacy of washing out
Africa's historical record can be summed up by the racist words of the Scottish
philosopher David Hume:
I
am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There
scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any
individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious
manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences.
The western superiority complex was further
captured in the words of the former South African president P.W. Botha who in a
secret speech delivered in 1985 to his Cabinet said in part:
…[So] brothers and sisters, let us join hands to fight against this black devil. I appeal to all Afrikaners to come out with any creative means of fighting this war. Surely God cannot forsake his own people whom we are. By now everyone of us has seen it practically that the Blacks cannot rule themselves. Give them guns and they will kill each other. They are good in nothing else but making noise, dancing, marrying many wives and indulging in sex. Let us all accept that the Black man is the symbol of poverty, mental inferiority, laziness and emotional incompetence…
This
mentality was imposed on Africans as slavery and colonialism set in and pain
became the continent’s default position. From the 7th Century, Arab
trade within sub-Saharan Africa led to a gradual colonization
of East Africa, around Zanzibar and other bases while early
European expeditions concentrated on colonizing previously uninhabited islands
such as the Cape Verde Islands and São Tomé Island, or establishing
coastal forts as a base for trade.[4]
Established
empires, notably Britain, Portugal and France, had already
claimed for themselves vast areas of Africa and Asia, and emerging imperial
powers like Italy and Germany had done likewise on a smaller scale.
With
the dismissal of the aging Chancellor Bismarck by Kaiser Wilhelm
II, the relatively orderly colonization became a frantic scramble. The
1885 Berlin Conference, initiated by Bismarck to establish international
guidelines for the acquisition of African territory, formalized this "New
Imperialism".
To
this day, Africa remains the only continent whose Sovereign States are still
referred to as Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone or Arabophone, in an effort
to define her continued subservience to former colonial powers and other
post-colonization powers like USA, Russia and China.
Inferiority
complex and low self esteem were the products of these systems of definition,
and Africans were made and indeed forced to believe that they would amount to
nothing and could do nothing on their own. They were even denied the right to
dream and were taught to hate themselves, no wonder negative ethnicity is the
fastest growing ideology in Africa.
Negative
ethnicity has been a mental weapon the colonizers used to divide and subdue
Africans. Kenya’s KoigiwaWamwere captures this well in his book, ‘Towards Genocide in Kenya’as follows:
To each community negative
ethnicity is glorified as savior and destroyer of enemies. But because it
promises the destruction of all communities, negative ethnicity is the divider
of all and a savior of none. Once all communities are isolated from one another,
the propagators of negative ethnicity are free to promise each
salvation-through the destruction of others.
As
a result of colonialism and imperialism, Africa lost not only its sovereignty,
but also control of its natural resources like gold and rubber. Europeans
justified this using the concept of the White Man's Burden, an obligation to "civilize" the
peoples of Africa, a mentality they gladly held and perpetuated.
Press for Freedom and
Rise of Pan-Africanism
Africans
however,begun to realize that the state of slavery and colonization was not a
natural state as they had been brought to believe. The period after World War
II in the 19th Century saw the rise of Africans against colonialism
andthe press for freedom begun with growing independence movements, indigenous
political parties and trade unions.
By
the 1930s, a small elite of leaders educated in Western universities and
familiar with ideas such as self-determination, arose. These leaders, including
leading nationalists such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame
Nkrumah (Ghana), Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal), and Félix
Houphouët-Boigny (Côte d'Ivoire), and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who we
celebrate today, came to lead the struggles for independence.
The
mindset and posture of these trail-blazers was the reason why the colonialists
could no longer hold fort in Africa. These nationalists were clear about the
future of Africa and with them came the rise of Pan-Africanism, whose core
stress was the need for ‘collective self-reliance’. The
hegemony of these leaders is reflected in the words of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah
who in calling for urgent change said:
“We cannot afford to pace our needs, our
development, our security, to the gait of camels and donkeys. We cannot afford
not to cut down the overgrown bush of outmoded attitudes that obstruct our path
to the modern open road of the widest and earliest achievement of economic
independence and the raising up of the lives of our people to the highest
level.”[5]
Even
in the absence of modern day communication technology like social media, there
was connectivity of purpose with one message-freedom, from Ghana with Kwame
Nkrumah to Mali with Modibo Keita and South Africa with Nelson Mandela, from
Guinea with Ahmed SekouToure to Congo with Patrice Lumumba and Namibia with Sam
Nujoma, and from Kenya with Jomo Kenyatta to Tanzania with Mwalimu Julius
Nyerere.
Aware
of the long term post-independence colonization plan, he (Kwame Nkrumah) in May
24, 1963 in Addis Ababa continued to say:
…on this continent, it has
taken us long to discover that the struggle against colonialism does not end
with the attainment of national independence. Independence is the prelude to a
new and more informed struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and
social affairs;to construct our society according to our aspirations unhampered
by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interferences…
He
called Africans to unite or perish but his contemporaries did not listen to him
and because of that, today Somalia is struggling to regain its status as a
sovereign state, Ethiopia is still emerging from the Dergue regime, South Sudan
is again up in arms on ethnic lines as neo-colonialists siphon the oil away
while Congo, Central African Republic and Libya and others are unstable.
Today,
to avoid pain, our young Africans have died in the Mediterranean Sea while
others camp in western embassies begging, wailing and kicking as they are
thrown out in pursuit of the “almighty
Green Card”, which in actual fact is nothing but uncertainty and neo-slavery.
This
is in exact contrast to what happened a century ago when our young African men
and women at a place called ‘the point of
no return’, gave spirited fights, refusing to go to the west too be used as
tools of labour to convert Europe and America to new industrial giants. This
reflects how much the west have subdued Africa in the mind.
We
ignored the Pan-African vision and
now we are neo-colonized under the guise of education and trade but as usual we
appear not to see because of the posture we have chosen to take is that of the
proverbial ostrich.
In
education, while many African countries have built many universities, there is
no care given to what our markets need and to the future of the world and even
the elite and African intelligentsia have no faith in their education system,
preferring to send their children “oversees”, depending on who colonized them. This
is what Carter G Woodson referred to as the ‘Mis-education of the Negro’.
In
the national universities, the young Africans have adopted a cargo-cult mentality described by Chinua
Achebe as:“The belief by backward people that the things they desire will come
to their port of hope without any effort on their part”.
The young people spend time on frivolities of
social media, preferring to take the short cuts and cheat in exams, leading to
a generation of professionals without professionalism and skill.
Contrary
to the desire of the Pan-African founding fathers for self determination and
right to construct our society according to our aspirations, the youth have
been mentally subdued and there is no more emphasis on African aspirations and
values being cultured in them while in school.
Instead
they have become the zombies of the west through modern telecommunication and
technology, incapable of managing real issues in their contexts.
In
health, we have built hospitals but when we are sick those who can afford seek
treatment in the land of the erstwhile colonizers, sending a clear message that
we still consider them superior.
In
sports, we still marvel and Europe and America and celebrate foreign victories
while the potential in our young men and women lies fallow and eventually
wastes away in parties and drug addiction.
In
agriculture and industrialization, the words of the renown scholar Prof Ali
Mazrui best captures Africa’s status. He says that: “Africa produces that which
it does not consume and consumes that which it does not produce”.
Instead
of subduing the land, the land has subdued us and as we complain of drought and
famine in our arid regions, nations like Israel have turned their deserts into
oases of food production.
Despite
having the best climate and natural(soil) resource, Africa cannot even feed
herself. We have become perennial beggars who in the words of the former Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, are “a scar on the conscience of the world”.
We blindly consume what other civilizations have discarded and in the process
kill our capacity to produce and our industries.
Africa
is the richest continent in terms of natural resources with gold, uranium,
cobalt, oil and with universities offering engineering courses but due to the
“chicken mentality” we cannot exploit our resources. Instead, it is Tullow and
British Petroleum and Shell, Elf and Shell, Exon, Chevron, Total and the
Johny-come-lately Chinese companies that exploit the resources for us and pay
themselves with more than half of the same.
In
arts and literature and matters as mundane as fashion, we do not recognize our
own, and it is not until the west recognizes us that we feel worthy. Our heroes
are Tom Cruise instead of Olu Jacobs; Angelina Jolie instead of Ugezu J Ugezu
and Kenya’s Lupita Nyong’o only acquires value when the American film industry
recognizes her talent. Until the Nobel Peace Prize recognizes our Africans of
repute, they remain uncelebrated.
In
a world where information technology rules lives, Africa is denied the right to
tell its own stories as the air is filled with western media and philosophies.
Africa cannot even tell its stories except infantile gibberish of the political
class. It used to be said that until the
lions have their own historians, it is the exploits of the hunters that will
forever be talked about and not the bravery of the lion.
We
can go on and on wailing but there is no point in so doing as one thing is
crystal clear, that Africans must have a monumental mental shift, failing which
she will remain where she is-an underdog of the world.
It
is this generation that must ask,“For how
long will we behave like children of a lesser God?”
Now
is the time to introspect, to go back to the drawing board from where our minds
were corrupted and twisted. There is a sense of great urgency for us to act and
change the way we think. In the words of Martin Luther King Jnr,
“…this is no
time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug
of gradualism but a time to act with the fierce urgency of the now.”
Renewing the African
Mind
The way to
renewing the African mind is first by embracing our identity as exhorted by Charles
Brandon Boynton who said:
My advice then to the black man would be, be not ashamed of your race or colour. Dare to be a black man, and accept the position that God has assigned you and do not believe that it is an inferior or degrading one. Be a black man. It is honourable to be a black man as it is a white one. Aim to make yourself not a white man, but a perfect black man, have faith in your race, in its capability and in its future. Give your presence, your influence, your support to our own race and colour.
Once
we internally reconcile with who we are come to a place of inner confluence, we
are able to effect change on our external environment in terms of spurring
Africa’s economic, social and cultural advancement.
We
must then re-awaken the eagle nature that was buried in the “chicken mentality”,
look up take a leap of faith and fly, never looking back as advised by Dr.
Aggrey in his analogy.
We
must adopt the same posture of mind as that of Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the
President of the African Union Commission who sees a new Africa or rather has a
new lense through which she sees Africa, not in the Eurocentric definition but
as the next utopia.
Speaking in Addis Ababa in January 30,
2014 Dr. Zuma in her imaginary letter to Kwame Nkrumah written in 2063 (African
Union vision 2063), she foresees an Africa whose economy has grown to be the
third largest in the world, whose politics has stabilized, whose infrastructure
has greatly improved with high speed trains and electricity, Pan-African
companies and industries and whose people are happy and have self-belief,
having liberated themselves from the perpetual complaint mode.
However,
while I embrace Dr. Zuma’s vision and enthusiasm, I am of the view that lofty
declarations in and of themselves will not liberate Africa. She is allowed to
dream but as I remember, even from Martin Luther King Jnr, after you dream you
must wake up, otherwise the dream remains just that, a dream.
Effecting
change in our education system to embrace, inculcate and reflect our African
ambitions and values would ensure mentality change in our posterity and ensure
no more poison of low self-esteem flows in the veins of our children.
The
critical role of values-based education right from pre-school to post-graduate
studies cannot be gainsaid. This encompasses the informal education at home
where there must be a return of values back into the African households and
homesteads. Parents must find time to breathe life into their children and
children must find time to lend their ears to wisdom from their elders.
A
change in mind and fortification of identity at this stage would cause massive
national and ultimately the continent. As is said, if everyone sweeps their
front porch, the street remains clean. Similarly if our children are taught to
value themselves, and not take in and regurgitate all the western media feeds
them, there will emerge a new Africa, one that the founders of Pan-Africanism
saw from afar and proclaimed.
Change
in our world view, strongly informed by a fortified internal confluence and
confidence would automatically impact our economies as we would become more
conscious in the kinds of agreements we enter into with neo-colonizers,
questioning the reason and long term impact behind every deal.
An
appreciation of our human resource and particularly the intelligentsia so that
our government officials are chosen on the basis of merit and professionalism
would go a long way in transforming Africa.
Further,
our leaders should surround themselves with voices of reason that can analyze
the heart of things and give the governments in Africa sound advice.
The
highbrows of Africa, the stewards of intellectualism and progressiveness must
no longer be satisfied with lofty cheques and frivolous quaffing in pubs at the
end of every working day but reserve the evenings for brainstorming, as advised
by Field Ruwe, a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author in his article,
‘You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum! If
You Consider Yourself Smart, Please Read This’.
Conclusion
Today,
as we sit here under the symbolic shadow of Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere,
we must remember the issues that he stood for.
I
remember on the occasion of Mwalimu’s 75th Birthday, under the editorial
guidance of Haroub Othman, essays were published in honour of Mwalimu under the
title, ‘Reflections on Leadership in
Africa Forty Years After Independence’.
The
issues that emerged at that time included some of the following: Critical
elements of a new democratic consensus in Africa, leadership and the dynamics
of reform in Africa, Vision of Leaders in the 21st Century: The
Nyerere Legacy, Leadership, Nationalism and Forty Years of Ethnic Conflicts in
Africa, Presidential Oratory for the Pan-African Cause: The Nyerere Harangues
among others.
Today,
the issues that pre-occupied the writers then, remain valid. Africa continues
to bleed in South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Egypt and many others and sadly, a new specter
perhaps more pernicious has emerged. This is the specter of terrorism, whose
executors kill and maim indiscriminately.
Corruption
has assumed cancerous proportions and its debilitating impact can be seen in
many African countries.
I
remember in 1995 when Mwalimu was asked by the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi to
speak at the delegates’ conference and to elect a presidential candidate, he
said in Kiswahili to underline his disgust at corruption that:
“…Ikulu
ni mahali patakatifu, sikuchaguliwa na watanzania kuligeuza pango la walanguzi…”
Those
words of Mwalimu have even greater meaning today in Africa where we celebrate
thieves and elect them into public offices.
During
his lifetime, Mwalimu fought against ethnicity and was recognized the world
over as the architect of a country where the cancer of ethnicity had been
conquered, a legacy that has transcended his time and is alive among the people
of Tanzania today.
He used to say
and we must remember this fondly that,
“…umuhimu wa kabila katika karne ya ishirini na moja ni tambiko…”
“…umuhimu wa kabila katika karne ya ishirini na moja ni tambiko…”
Today,
Africa is being torn apart by ethnicity and we are succumbing to it.
In
the areas of education, health and agriculture, the great Mwalimu was equally
eloquent and honest in his prescriptions. He recognized that early that the
long term health of Africans not only required but demanded that Africa must be
self-sufficient.
As
we speak, Africa cannot feed herself, the quality of education in Africa is
suspect and there is a sense in which Africa is in a crisis that demands urgent
attention.
That
is why we are gathered here at Dar es Salaam University at which Mwalimu held
many a debate, not to philosophize, moralize and intellectualize but to seek
solutions to the African plight.
I
have no doubt in my mind that if Mwalimu were here today he would exhort us to
remember that the mind is the standard of the man, that Africans must change
their attitude; that Africans must recognize that they are not children of a lesser god, and know that
self-esteem is the only avenue to self-realization and I have no doubt that he
would have reminded us in Kiswahili that, “Mtaka cha mvunguni, sharti ainame.”
He
would have continued in Kiswahili, if only to emphasize that, “Jishinde
ushinde” and would not have stopped there, but would have gone on, half
warning us half exhorting us with the Swahili proverb, “Mlilala handingwa handingwa muwe
macho haambiwi tule.”
If
I was speaking in Kenya, Uganda or Burundi, there would have been wisdom in
translating the Swahili proverb but not here, the home of Kiswahili.
So
as I conclude, permit me to say that Africa will only know her potential when
her sons and daughters undergo a mental revolution that will make them realize
that the battle today is the battle of the mind and that René Descartes was
right, when he said; cogito ergo sum
- I think therefore am I.
THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS
[1]Mwalimu
Nyerere, 1963 Organization of African Union Summit of Heads of State in Addis
Ababa.
[2]Moyo
J.N, The Political Administration:
Understanding Bureaucracy in African History, Harare (1992) p xviii.
[3]
Field Ruwe, ‘Opinion: You Lazy
(Intellectual) African Scum! If you consider yourself smart, please read this’.
[4]
Wikipedia.
[5]
Kwame Nkrumah
