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Which Pan-Africanism? A Critical Reading of Ngugi’s ‘Re-membering Africa’
 
 
“The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances… But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission. Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
 
A quote from Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2009) book Re-membering Africa that was recently posted online sparked an interesting query from his compatriot: ‘Has this book arrived here in Kenya? Is it available in Africa? Or should we wait until it is savoured exhaustively in Euro-America!’ Needless to say information on how to get hold of it was appreciated to the extent that another Kenyan thus exclaimed just after reading its launching review: ‘It has really awakened me!’
 
This quest for a book that was published a year ago reveals in a ironic way the twin tragedy that Ngugi has been attempting to transcend over the years – the limited (and lack of) access to knowledge produced in and on Africa among and by Africans. Apparently this book is published by East African Publishers Limited based in Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam. Interestingly, it was launched at the University of Dar es Salaam among, I presume, other places in Africa.
 
It is this ironic background – the story of a very important book published in Africa yet not widely, as in adequately, known among Africans – that has prompted me to pen this critique. The book constitutes four chapters, three of which are based on the 2006 McMillan-Stewart Lectures at Harvard University. The other is primarily based on a lecture I was privileged to attend and which left a lasting impression on my mind – The 2003 Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town. As such the book has varying themes but they are all tied with a common thread – the importance of memory in explaining and renewing contemporary Africa.
 
Ngugi’s preface categorically states that this “book speak about the decolonization of modernity” as there is “no region, no culture, no nation today that has not been affected by colonialism and its aftermath.” The author is so convinced of this to the extent that he affirms that “modernity can be considered a product of colonialism.” Now to those who have been following Ngugi’s consistent works this claim may not seem new. But what makes it novel is this research finding:
 
It was astonishing to discover, in writing them, the centrality of the Irish experience to the colonial question, especially as it relates to language, culture, and social memory. Ireland was England’s first colony, and it became a prototype for all the English colonies in Asia, Africa, and America. Irish missionaries, army officers, and administrative officials were often considered part of the British empire, thus possibly explaining why Rudyard Kipling chose to make Kim, the eponymous hero of his novel, both Irish and working class, as if to show both the British proletariat and the colonized alike were willing servants of the empire. Anglo-Irish literature was certainly used in the service of the cultural self-image of the empire: It was integral component of the English canon in schools and colleges in Africa, often taught as the empire’s “gift to the world.” But colonial context of the Irish writers’ texts was erased from their artistic being (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: vi - vii).
 
On the basis of this finding Ngugi aptly entitles chapter one of the book ‘Dismembering Practices: Planting European Memory in Africa.’ Therein he provides two individual cases that highlight how Euro-American colonial-cum-capitalist modernity could not really thrive without first trying to erase the memories of those it sought to colonize and capitalize in ‘new lands’.
 
The first case is that of Waiyaki wa Hinga who resisted British military occupation in the 19th Century. When the British captured him they removed him from his region, that is, the base of his power. In the realm of military tactics this is quite understandable. Even killing him is logically explainable. But they didn’t just kill him – they buried him alive with his head facing the bowels of the earth. Why such a strange form of burial? Ngugi’s explanation underscores the fact that this was an act of cultural imperialism aimed at making a statement against the cultures of those who were resisting colonialism. To Ngugi, the British applied this cultural-cum-military tactic in “opposition to the Gikuyu burial rites’ requirement that the body face Mount Kenya, the dwelling place of the Supreme Deity.” It is indeed an old tactic that even features in Biblical narratives of conquests whereby the vanquished’s names, bearing their God, were changed. “Similarly”, he notes, “in Xhosaland, the present-day Eastern Cape of South Africa, the British captured King Hintsa of the Xhosa resistance and decapitated him, taking his head to the British Museum, just as they had done with the decapitated head of the Maori King of New Zealand.”
 
Yes, if I may add, the Germans did the same with Mtwa Mkwawa of Uhehe – who successfully defeated them in the famous battle of Lugalo – and went on to hang in public the consortium of leaders who were inspired my Kinjeketile Ngwale of Ngarambe to resist German occupation in the legendary Maji Maji War (1905 – 1907). “The relationship between Africa and Europe”, as Ngugi aptly observes, “is well represented by the fate of these figures” since a “colonial act – indeed, any act in the context of conquest and domination – is both a practice of power, intended to pacify a populace, and a symbolic act, a performance of power intended to produce docile minds.” This relationship is characterized by what the author refers to as dismemberment and defines as an “act of absolute social engineering” that occurred in two stages. In the first stage “the African personhood was divided into two halves: the continent and its diaspora.” Then, in the second stage, the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 “literally fragmented and reconstituted Africa into British, French, Portuguese, German, Belgian, and Spanish Africa.” This tragedy and what followed afterwards is what Ngugi’s Re-membering Africa aims to undo:
 
The result was an additional dismemberment of diasporic African, who was now separated not only from his continent and his labour but also from his very sovereign being. The subsequent colonial plantations on the African continent has led to the same result: division of the African from his land, body, and mind…Whereas before he was his own subject, now he is subject to another (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 3 - 4).
 
Thus, both generally and specifically, the African mind/memory has been colonized and neo-colonized by Euro-American “capitalist modernity”. Invoking, albeit not entirely agreeing with, V. Y. Mudimbe’s Idea of Africa, Ngugi’s reaffirm that wherever “they went, in their voyages of land, sea, and mind, Europeans planted their own memories on whatever they contacted.” He then narrates the way this was done, from how our places – such as Kirungii and Namlolwe – were renamed Westlands and Victoria respectively and our names – such as Ngugi –  was changed to James to submit Africa to Euro-American memory and identity. It is this submission that stamped and continues to stamp Euro-America’s sense of ownership of Africa. Predictably, Ngugi moves to, and concludes with, his favourite subject of language to unmask this process:
 
If the planting of its memory on the body was effected through names, the one on the mind was accomplished through the vast naming system of language… Africans, in the diaspora and on the continent, were soon to be recipients of this linguistic logic of conquest, with two results: linguicide in the case of the diaspora and linguistic famine, or linguifam, on the continent. Linguicide…is the linguistic equivalent of genocide. Genocide involves conscious act of physically massacre, linguicide, conscious acts of language liquidation…This is precisely the fate of African languages in the diaspora…On the continent, languages are not liquidated in the same way. What happens to them, in this post-Berlin Conference era of direct colonialism, is linguistic famine. Linguifam is to languages what famine is to people who speak them – linguistic deprivation and, ultimately, starvation… In the African continent, African languages – deprived of the food, water, light, and oxygen of thought, and of the constant conceptualizing that facilitates forging of the new and renewal of the old – underwent slow starvation, linguifam (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 11 - 14).
 
Since language is indeed “a communication system and carrier of culture by virtue of being simultaneously the means and carrier of memory” that bears “the weight of a civilization”, the ultimate result of this dismemberment through linguifam, and thus, culturefam, is a “destruction of the base from which people”, in this case, us, Africans, “launch themselves into the world.”
 
Thus far, I agree with Ngugi. As far as re-membering our African languages is concerned I have no qualms with him. The problem starts when he invokes a global version of ‘Pan-Africanism’ and a Euro-American conceptualization of ‘African Renaissance’ and ‘Afro-modernity’. I have already addressed the racialist pitfalls of the former in my online discussion with champions of such a version so I won’t dwell so much on it. Here it is important to observe that Ngugi’s apt premise that Africa has been dismembered between the continent and diaspora logically leads to his conclusion that re-membering such an Africa is to bring back these two halves together. This is how he puts it in the second chapter entitled ‘Memory, Restoration and African Renaissance’:
 
Political Pan-Africanism should make the continent a base where African peoples, meaning continentals and people of African descent, can feel truly at home – a realization of the Garveysian vision of Africa for Africans, both at home and abroad. Such an Africa would be a secure base where all peoples of African descent can feel inspired to visit, invest, and even live if they so choose (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 68).
 
Inherent in such a conceptualization is the idea of ‘race’ – the African/Black race to be precise – as a tie that visibly bind what has been referred by Chinweizu, in an online discussion, as “the Pan-African constituency.” The Julius Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies who presented the book’s launching review referred to above thus captures this race-cum-cultural dilemmatic which, intentionally or unintentionally, reduces Pan-Africanism to a racial project:
 
Often both the ideologues and detractors present pan-Africanism as a racial construct… Yet, the notion of the African nation, even among Pan-Africanists, is a fiercely contested concept. It is, unfortunately in my view, formulated in a rather fruitless question: ‘Who is an African?’ Are the Arabs in North Africa part of the African nation and therefore included in the Pan-Africanist project? Are the Indians in East and Southern Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa, the Boers and Malays in South Africa etc. Africans? (Issa G. Shivji, 2010, on Kwame Nkrumah’s Thought in the Evolution of Pan-African Ideology)

It is my contention that by invoking the essentialist term ‘African descent’ Ngugi falls into this pitfall of presenting Pan-Africanism as a racial construct. If I were to rewrite his call above I would invoke Mwalimu Nyerere’s no-racial clarion call for an inclusive continental Africanity by declaring that Political Pan-Africanism should make the continent a base that “will belong to Africans” whereby “this word ‘Africans’ can include all those who have made their home in the continent, black, brown, or white” (Julius K. Nyerere, June 1961, on The Future of Africa).
 
This conceptualization of Pan-Africanism is local in a continental sense, rather than global in a diasporic sense, and in a significant way it augurs well with Ngugi’s own call that “Economic Pan-Africanism will translate into a network of communications – air, sea, land, telephone, Internet – that ease intra-continental movements of peoples, goods, businesses, and services” whereby “Africa becomes a power bloc able to negotiate on an equal basis with all other global economies (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 67 - 68). Such a Pan-Africa, I still assert, is post-racial.
 
© Chambi Chachage

Cranford Pratt: The Critical Phase in Tanzania 1945-1968: Nyerere and the emergence of a socialist strategy, Cambridge University Press, digitally printed version 2009 (originally published 1976), Cambridge [ISBN 978-0-521-11072-3]
 

Reviewed by Janet Bujra, University of Bradford
 
When Tanzania is rife with accounts of corruption in high places, it is not surprising that there has been a revival of interest in the incorruptible first President, Julius Nyerere, especially amongst young political activists in Tanzania.  One such described Nyerere’s legacy as “generating passionate public debate aimed at bringing positive social and economic change” (Chambi Chachage in Pambazuka 452, 2009). A newly founded Chair – the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorship of Pan-African Studies has been awarded to Issa Shivji, author of the critical account, Class Struggles in Tanzania in the 1970s. The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation’s tenth anniversary of Nyerere’s death, held in Dar es Salaam last year, was an enormous success in attracting a large and lively audience and many young people.
 
Hence the publication of what seemed like a new study of crucial years in Nyerere’s life as President – those immediately preceding and following independence, seemed promising. Sadly Pratt’s book is a reprint from 1976 which seems to have been reproduced by Cambridge University Press as a “digitally printed version” (complete with American spellings and occasional errors) simply because it could be done.  It is disconcerting to find the present tense being used to reflect on the potential of a leader dead for a decade. Whilst it is instructive to look at Pratt’s views of this period, this book demanded an introduction, framing the debate about the events of the time and their aftermath and explaining why it is pertinent to re-issue it now.
 
In view of the above it is unfair to point out that Pratt has not responded to later work, such as that of Susan Geiger on the emergence of TANU as a political party, or critical or more measured accounts such as those of Yeager or Coulson, and the vast output of reflection on Nyerere’s leadership, which continues. What is amazing is the sheer ferment of analysis and critique that did go on in the decade following Tanzania’s independence which is covered here. Pratt refers to work by Cliffe, Saul, Arrighi, Ngombale-Mwiru, Shivji, Rweyemamu and many others published in the early seventies, though he distances himself from what he calls ‘Marxian scholarship’.
 
Pratt is clearly a fan of Nyerere’s and sometimes eulogises his contribution. He also describes him throughout as a ‘socialist’ and sees Tanzania as heading in a socialist direction, though frequently having to qualify that label. At the heart of Nyerere’s conception of socialism was a deep commitment to equality and to a form of African communitarianism; he was no Marxist. What is exceptional about this book and makes it well-worth reading even now, is the spotlight it puts on the struggle between vision and reality in the struggle to establish a nation state. We talk glibly of independence, and yet Tanzania came to this momentous moment with hardly any personnel capable of running a country or delivering public services, still reliant on colonial civil servants, with minimal industrial development and the mass of the population dependent on subsistence agriculture. As Pratt shows, in the first few years the government’s hold on power was precarious, with very little capacity to enact change. At one point Nyerere had to be rescued by the British from a coup attempt by army discontents.
 
Expectations were also impossibly high, though Nyerere always had a groundswell of popular support from which he was able to pull off quite audacious political acts. One of these was his welcome to African liberation movements (especially the ANC) to locate themselves in Tanzania and his active advocacy of pan-Africanism. Another was his willingness to forgo foreign aid on matters of principle, despite Tanzania’s dependence, and to accept aid from China and East European socialist countries.  He intervened in the revolutionary turmoil of the newly independent Zanzibar and manoeuvred a union of the two countries which has continued to cause difficulties. But he  also took  a constitutional stand on ensuring that  racial minorities in Tanzania enjoyed equality with African citizens – a position that was understandably unpopular, given the privileged socioeconomic position which these minorities had enjoyed in the past.  Conversely he inveighed from the beginning against class privilege, ‘parasitism’ and the danger of entrenched income and wealth differentials; as well as for self-reliance and open debate. He  brought the party (the Tanganyikan African National Union, TANU) very centrally into the decision making and policy formulation process and shifted within a few years to espousing a one-party state, whilst establishing democratic safeguards and a functioning National Assembly. Pratt’s account of the process whereby democratic freedoms were defined as incorporating one-party rule but the exclusion of other organised political elements (the unions and the cooperative movement were soon incorporated into the state) is an instructive one. Pratt shows how this culminated in the promulgation of the Arusha Declaration of 1967 (only six tumultuous years after independence) in which a socialism of self-reliance and planned transformation of rural production was combined with a nationalisation of the commanding heights of Tanzania’s economy (a few foreign-owned banks and processing industries).
 
The focus of this book is on Nyerere, but Pratt is aware that, to adapt Marx, leaders ‘make history, but not under conditions of their own choosing’. Nyerere was a remarkable, even a unique leader, a man of vision and restless intelligence, an exceptional communicator with ordinary people, fired by an optimism of the will, constantly seeking to solve problems. This is well-illustrated here. But he was faced by a universe of enormous challenges and difficulties which could not be moved by one man alone or simply through exhortation. Nyerere could not have achieved what he did without popular and party support, or expedient alliances abroad, though there is no denying the effort and intelligence he put into manoeuvring and sustaining these relationships. Pratt’s focus on the leader leads him to be fairly vague about rural transformation or the problems entailing in transforming a dependent economy at the mercy of the world’s markets. And the book comes to an end just as the scene is set for the contradictions and dilemmas to test Nyerere’s vision of Tanzanian socialism to its limit.
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My mission is to acquire, produce and disseminate knowledge on and about humanity as well as divinity, especially as it relates to Africa, in a constructive and liberating manner to people wherever they may be.
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Address: P. O. Box 4460 Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania
Cell : + 255 718953273
Blog: http://udadisi.blogspot.com/
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