Intellectuals and the Future
of Africa: Some Preliminary Observations
2003 September 21-22
Dr. Maulana Karenga
A New York Conference on the
Contribution of African Diasporan Intellectuals to the
African Union and the New Partnership for Africa's Development
Habari gani? Let me say first I am very honored to participate
in this critical conference on "Intellectuals and the Future of
Africa". And I'd like to offer words of thanks and appreciation
to Mr. Amadou Bocoum, Consul General of Senegal and Mr. Howard
Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture for organizing the conference as well as to all their allies,
assistants and workers who aided in pulling together this historic
project of building and practicing pan-Africanism in this our time.
The central question of the role of African intellectuals in
the conception and construction of the future of Africa at this
critical juncture in our history is both unavoidable and urgent.
It is a question with deep roots in the pan-African project. From
the early 19th century thinkers who posed Africa as both an ancient
cultural ideal and a modern source of allegiance and obligation
to the pan-Africanists of today, we have all stressed the need
for intellectuals, men and women of ideas, creativity, knowledge,
skill and commitment, to reconstruct themselves and rebuild Africa
and ultimately build the world we all want and deserve to live
in. Maria Stewart, Martin Delaney, Sylvester Williams, W.E.B. Dubois,
Marcus Garvey, Mary McLeod Bethune, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Kwame
Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Amilcar Cabral and others
have put forth this call and reaffirmed the compelling urgency
of this commitment. This call and commitment are rooted in the
self-conscious acceptance of our shared history as African people,
a shared condition of oppression and a shared will to free ourselves
wherever we are, to develop and harness our human and material
resources and to use them to push our lives forward and live full
and meaningful lives.
In order to do this, the intellectual must take upon him- or
herself certain essential obligations. The first is to define
our mission with the utmost clarity, to define correctly the
historical juncture and moment in which we now live, its cultural,
political and economic meaning and its meaning for us as African
peoples and as a world African community. Here, I am reminded of
Mary McLeod Bethune's statement that we intellectuals "must discover
the dawn and share it with our children and the masses who need
it most." Moreover, African intellectuals must mark off the field
of action and then, as Maria Stewart says, we must enter this field
of action as both an obligation and opportunity. And the opportunity
here is not only to free ourselves, but also to expand the realm
of human freedom and offer a new model of what it means to be human
in the world. We must, Fanon says, "reconsider the question of
humankind," its current condition and future prospects. Who are
we if we are not the fathers and mothers of human civilization,
who stood up first and spoke the first human truth and taught the
world some of the basic disciplines of human knowledge in the Nile
Valley-Jew, Gentile, Hittite, Hyksos, Greek, Roman, Persian and
all others who came. And what will we become, if we do not stand
up now, harness our human and material resources, improve and enrich
our lives as African people, speak our own special cultural truth
and make our own unique contribution to the forward flow of human
history?
We must, then, concern ourselves not just with the future of
Africa, but with the project and promise of Africa as the future,
as the future of our people and the future of the world, without
making chauvinist claims and without denying the great difficulties
or minimizing the awesome responsibility involved. As Cabral says,
we must "mask no difficulties, tell no lies and claim no easy victories." We
have, as pan-Africanists, always wanted and sought to pose Africa
at its best, as a moral ideal, a cultural ideal. Thus, the work
of Molefi Asante, myself and others have been dedicated to lifting
up this need for us to think in African-centered ways, to locate
ourselves in our own culture, think new thoughts and to constantly
bring forth the best of what it means to be African and human in
the fullest sense.
Such a position and process of necessity leads us to the second
requirement or obligation for the African intellectual-self-preparation.
Even though we have posed the defining of the mission first, it
is clear that in the final analysis, unless intellectuals properly
prepare themselves for new forms of thought and practice, the conception
and carrying out of the mission will be seriously compromised.
Thus, Stewart, DuBois, Fanon, Cabral, Cruse, Frazier, Toure, Bethune
and others stress the need for the intellectuals to make themselves
worthy and capable of this awesome historical task. This means
above all to free ourselves from the legacies of colonialism and
racism, from national and ethnic chauvinism, from class elitism
and from any and all commitments to sexual inequality in thought
and practice and to invest ourselves in the health and wholeness
of our people, in their liberation and their achievement of the
good life they long for, work for and deserve. DuBois stated rightly
that a central problem of education is the problem of developing
people who are not only conscious and capable, but also committed.
This is critical, for many intellectuals have various forms of
knowledge, but do not use it wisely or commit themselves to use
it in the service of the people. Indeed, instead of engaging in
dignity-affirming and life-enhancing practices in the interest
of the people, they often engage in dignity-denying and life-diminishing
practices and processes of the dominant society.
What is required here is reaching back and reaffirming the ancient
African epistemological understanding that our approach to knowledge
must not be one of knowledge for knowledge sake, but rather knowledge
for human sake. Thus, we must always ask ourselves how can we use
our knowledge to improve the African and human condition and enhance
the African and human future? This means that some of us must pass
through three basic stages of development suggested by Fanon-parasitic
assimilation and emulation, recovery of historical memory without
progressively moving forward, and finally the development of generative
ideas and emancipatory and creative practices that serve the interests
of African people and humanity.
Many Africans educated in European schools out-European the Europeans,
thus engaging in a parasitic assimilation and emulation that is
both what Fanon calls an "obscene caricature of Europe" and a great
loss to Africa and African people. Secondly, intellectuals, Fanon
tells us, often go through a stage of defiantly recovering historical
memory without a progressive and assertive move toward the future.
I'm paraphrasing Fanon, but these are important categories here.
You see to grasp historical memory and to stay there is to be an
atavist, but to grasp the historical moment and memory and to use
it as a foundation upon which we conceive and bring into being
a new future, that is what our history and our struggle demand.
Finally, intellectuals must move to develop generative ideas and
practices, not simply become janitors of history, looking for stench
and stain in everybody's life, but in fact move to imagine a new
world and to lay the structural and philosophical basis for bringing
that world into being. And at the heart of this we must teach the
people that struggle is the path to the future.
Also, it is important for intellectuals to put forth critiques
of the constraints on African and human freedom and human flourishing,
i.e., ideas and practices of white supremacy, class domination,
class interests over mass interests, all forms of sexism and
similar ideas of domination that contradict and contravene the
best of what it means to be both African and human in the fullest
sense. Clearly, they must also make an ongoing critique of all
suspect talk about the end of history, the self-congratulatory
illusion that everything has been solved by Europe's triumphant
move into the 21st century; that there are no major battles to
be fought now that Europe and its offspring are exhausted. We
must remind them that they are not the center of history, but
that we and other peoples of the world are still in the process
of shaping the world in a more human image and interest and that
this world-shaping process is rooted in and reflective of ongoing
struggles around issues of freedom, justice, power of people
over their destiny and daily lives and peace in and for the world.
Surely history is still moving forward through these ongoing
struggles. For still the oppressed want freedom; the wronged
and injured want justice; the people want power over their destiny
and daily lives; and the world wants peace. And Africa must be
a source and model, a paradigm of this human possibility, this
promise which emerges in the context and crucible of struggle.
Moreover, African intellectuals-continental and diasporan-must
offer correctives to the constraints on human freedom and human
flourishing, correctives of both thought and practice which
point toward freedom-freedom from want, toil and domination. And
they must challenge us to take the ideas, inspiration and spirit
of this conference and subsequent ones and turn them into a sustained
process of motivation, organization, reflection and continued dialogue
that result in sustained structures and practices directed toward
our liberation and flourishing as a people. And above all, these
ideas and practices must be rooted in those ancient African ethical
pillars: respect for the dignity and rights of the human person;
the well-being and flourishing of family and community; the integrity
and value of the environment; and the reciprocal solidarity and
cooperation for mutual benefit of humanity. The critical task
then is to struggle to build and sustain free and empowered communities,
just and good societies and a good and sustainable world.
Also, African intellectuals must be, above all, teachers,
sustainers and servants of the people. They must teach the
people the unlimited possibilities inherent in them. The ancient
teachings of Egypt found in the Husia say "it is wrong
to walk upside down in darkness, therefore, I will come forth
and bring forth the truth which is in me; for surely it is within
me." If it is not in African people, where will we find it? We
must break through the catechism of impossibilities taught by
oppressors and teach the people a new way to walk in the world-a
dignity-affirming and self-developing way to understand and assert
themselves. What the world needs most and what Africans certainly
need now is a sense of possibility. The unity and development
of Africa, the shaping of the African future and the shaping
of Africa as the future depends both on the continent and the
world African community. And this massive project can only be
achieved through the upward thrust of the people, through their
coming into consciousness, through their taking their destiny
and daily lives in their own hands and shaping them in their
own image and interests.
Our intellectuals must always engage the masses in revivifying
exchange or as Aimé Césaire says, they must constantly
be in revivifying contact with the masses to measure themselves
and to know themselves. How do we know ourselves outside of our
people? How do we monitor ourselves at the courts and among the
courtiers of Europe except in relationship to our people? And how
do we in fact build the world we want and deserve to live in as
African people, if we do not involve the people themselves? We
must create contexts and structures for them to assemble, to discuss,
to propose, to contest, to receive these expansive ideas that we
talk about and to let them respond to them and then go back and
see if they can be put into practice. We must teach the masses,
as Fanon says, that "everything depends on them, that if we stagnate,
it is their responsibility, and if we go forward it is due to them." And
central to this is their level of awareness of self, society and
the world. Thus, everything must be directed toward the awareness
and involvement of the people. As Fanon reminds us, "If the building
of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on
it, then, that bridge ought not to be built and the citizens can
go on swimming across the river or going by boat."
In addition, African intellectuals must constantly dialogue
with African culture. The recovery and reconstruction of
Africa as a continent and world community depends on the recovery
and reconstruction of African culture and our using it as a foundation
and framework to improve our current condition and to enhance
our future. Sekou Toure has given us a focal category of engagement,
saying that our efforts must be directed "towards full re-Africanization." And
in order to do this, in order that we not come to Europe and
ask for answers even when we say we're being independent, we
must do intellectual archaeology and current critical analysis
within the context of our own culture. That is what Molefi Asante
means when he talks about location, about centering ourselves
in the rich, ancient and modern context of our culture. Where
do we stand when we are talking about Africa? Do we stand on
the edge of it, or do we stand at the center of what it means
to be African in the world? To stand at the center, we must constantly
dialogue with Africa and African culture. By dialoguing with
Africa or African culture, I mean continuously asking it questions
and seeking from it answers to the fundamental questions of humankind.
How do we build the world we want and deserve to live in? How
do we build strong families and strong male and female relationships?
How do we establish and sustain a right relationship with the
environment? How do we create a development program that is people-focused
and ecologically sensitive? How do we honor our elders and ancestors
in these times, cherish and challenge our children, care for
the poor and vulnerable, and build the free and empowered communities,
the just and good societies and the good and sustainable world
we all want and deserve to live in? Only by re-Africanization,
by doing this kind of intellectual archaeology, recovering and
reconstructing African values and bringing forth the best of
what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense can
we do this. Then we can do what Cheikh Anta Diop asks us to do:
to use this recovered and reconstructed data to (1) reconcile
African history with human history; (2) build a new body of human
sciences; and (3) renew African culture.
Finally, our role and responsibility as intellectuals must be
informed and undergirded by ethical commitment and practice,
a self-conscious commitment, to speak truth, do justice, be people-focused,
and constantly bring good into the world. The Odu Ifa (78:1)
of ancient Yorubaland says that if we are to build a good world,
there are five fundamental requirements. And with these I'd like
to conclude. The first is "wisdom adequate to govern the world." The
very word akoso, to govern, in Yoruba means to gather people
together for good purposes. So we must gather our people together
for good purposes. And we must have the wisdom to do that. Wisdom
(ogbon) here refers to depthful insight, critical and right
judgment based on a broad range of knowledge, experience and resultant
understanding. And the wisdom, in an African context, is always
ethical and moral wisdom, not simply political, economic, scientific
or technological wisdom, but rather a wisdom which privileges and
promotes the Good. People can be very grounded in economics, politics,
science or technology, but that doesn't mean that they have the
interest of the masses. Indeed, they could confuse class interests
with mass interests, personal interest with collective interests
and thus act against the interests of the masses.
The second requirement is sacrifice. We must teach our intellectuals
and our people to sacrifice for the greater good. I know people
suffer all the time, but I'm talking about new sacrifice, a sacrifice
for a greater vision, a sacrifice to end sacrificing uselessly
and needlessly; an end to being rich in material and poor in possibilities
of using it; an end to having unlimited talent and not being able
to develop it because poverty often strips people of their will.
We say in my philosophy, Kawaida, "people don't live by bread alone,
but they can only come to that conclusion after they've eaten." So
we must build the material basis for people to sit down and think
and imagine new ways of being human in the world and we as intellectuals
and a people cannot do that, if we don't sacrifice for the greater
and common good.
Thirdly character is required. As intellectuals, we must be men
and women of character as well as men and women of culture, In
fact, by definition, a man and woman of culture, in the African
sense, is a man and woman of character. Fourthly, the love of doing
good, especially for those who need it most is also required. It
is essential that intellectuals love to do good for African people,
not just do it because it's profitable, not just do it because
we're obligated or because people are watching us, but because
that's how we understand ourselves as an African in the world.
Indeed, it is in pursuit of our purpose that we understand ourselves,
develop ourselves, and confirm ourselves as African people. And
finally, the Odu says that the fifth requirement for creating a
good world is "the eagerness and struggle to bring good into the
world and not let any good be lost." Let us go forth then as African
people, conscious of our dignity and destiny and confident that
we can achieve it and leave a legacy for those who come after us
worthy of the name African. |
