Post-colonial Africa must diversify the foreign cultures from which it seeks to learn. There is excessive reliance on the West as the only source. What is there in Japanese culture that has enabled the Japanese to beat the West at their own industrial game?
In 1868, the Japanese asked themselves: ‘Can we economically modernise without culturally Westernising?’ They embarked on selective industrialisation under the slogan of ‘Western technique, Japanese spirit.’ Fifty years later, they had become an industrial power to reckon with. What was there in Japanese culture that enabled them to remain Japanese culturally and still pull off an industrial miracle before World War II?
Then, Japan was briefly occupied by the Americans after WWII. When the occupation ended, Japan embarked upon its second industrial miracle, less culturally selective than the first, but even more technologically triumphant. What was there in Japanese culture that made such miracles possible?
Africa needs to look eastwards towards the Japanese experience for cultural insights relevant to modernisation and development. Africa’s post-colonial condition is full of the baggage of the old colonialism. How do we decolonise post-coloniality? What is the exit strategy out of dependency?
Africa should look more closely at countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and others in Asia that had the same per capita income as Ghana in 1957. They have since left most of Africa far behind in per capita income and industrial growth. To what extent are the economic achievements of the ‘Asian Tigers’ due to cultural factors? Can foreign cultures be studied for lessons that are relevant for others?
Of course, Africa has been studying Western culture for decades in the hope of stimulating its development. It is time that it diversified the cultural models it examines for developmental lessons. Such diversification may help reduce our dependency upon the West in other areas of endeavour as well.
One strategy in the fight against that dependency is horizontal integration. It involves not only national integration within each country, but regional integration as well. Pan-Africanism then becomes an instrument of horizontal integration; and Pan-Africanism is partly rooted in cultural and racial identification.
In reality, Pan-Movements are born out of a combination of nightmare and dream, anguish and vision. What was the nightmare and dream that released the forces culminating in the formation of the European Union as a success story?
Pan-Europeanism had two parents: poetry and war. Poetry provided the vision and the sensibilities of being European; war provided the practical impetus, either through conquest (as European nations expanded and contracted) or through a desire to avoid future wars. That was EU’s combination of nightmare and dream.
After World War II, the Schuman Plan and the European Coal and Steel Community illustrated the creation of deliberate Pan-European interdependence to avoid future risk of war.
The Cold War simultaneously divided Europe between East and East and united Europe within each camp. Once again, nightmare and dream played their paradoxical integrative roles.
Two schools of thought
The poetry of Pan-Europeanism goes back at least to the European Renaissance, as Europeans were stimulated by a new sense of shared civilisation. By the time of the French Revolution, William Wordsworth could proclaim passionately:
• Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
• But to be young was very heaven.
However, the French revolution was also a combination of both poetry and war, the two major stimuli of Pan-Europeanism. The French revolution was both nightmare and dream.
Does Pan-Africanism have a comparable stimulus of poetry and war?
The real stimulus for Pan-Africanism has been the combined power of poetry and imperialism, rather than poetry and war. The poetry includes legends of past heroes and makers of history. There have been two schools of Pan-African cultural nationalism: romantic primitivism and romantic gloriana.
Romantic primitivism celebrates what is simple about Africa. It salutes the cattle-herder, rather than the castle-builder. In the words of Aime Cesaire:
• Hooray for those who never invented anything.
• Hooray for those who never discovered anything.
• Hooray for joy! Hooray for love!
• Hooray for the pain of incarnate tears.
• My negritude is no tower and no cathedral.
• It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.
Conversely, romantic gloriana celebrates Africa’s more complex achievements. It salutes the pyramids of Egypt, the towering structures of Aksum, the sunken churches of Lalibela, the brooding majesty of Great Zimbabwe, the castles of Gonder. Romantic gloriana is a tribute to Africa’s empires and kingdoms, Africa’s inventors and discoverers, great Shaka Zuku, rather than the unknown peasant.
Both forms of Pan-African cultural nationalism were a response to European imperialism and its cultural arrogance. Europeans said that Africans were simple and invented nothing. That was an alleged fact. Europeans also said that those who were simple and invented nothing were uncivilised. That was a value judgment.
Romantic primitivism accepted Europe’s alleged facts about Africa —that it was simple and invented nothing, but rejected Europe’s value judgment — that Africa was, therefore, uncivilised. Simplicity was one version of civilisation. Romantic primitivism said:
• Hooray for those who never invented anything.
• Who never discovered anything…
Romantic gloriana, on the other hand rejected Europe’s alleged facts about Africa —that Africa was simple and invented nothing; but it seems to have accepted Europe’s values that civilisation is to be measured by complexity and invention.
Same African countries can produce both types of Pan-African nationalists. Senegal’s Leopold Senghor had been a major thinker and poet of the Negritude school. Negritude is associated with romantic primitivism. Senghor’s most hotly debated statement is: Emotion is black…Reason is Greek.
Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal’s Renaissance man, belonged more to the Gloriana School. He spent much of his life demonstrating Africa’s contributions to global civilisation. And he was most emphatic that the civilisation of Pharaonic Egypt was a black civilisation.
This was all in the grand Pan-African tradition of romantic Gloriana.
About The Author(s): Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya. Additionally, he is the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, Professor in Political Science, African Studies, Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS). Mazrui also holds three concurrent faculty appointments as Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large in the Humanities and Development Studies at the University of Jos in Nigeria, Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies at Cornell University. [MORE >>] [Personal Website] [More Articles By Prof. Mazrui].
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