Africa has meant many things to many people: to some it is the land of the noble savage; to others it is a vast reservoir of cheap labor and raw materials for exploitation; to yet others it is a vast continent of jungles and cannibals, remote and exotic, a persistent enigma.¹

THE PROBLEM

It is not easy for an African to talk about Africa without referring to the age-old issues associated with it: poverty, slavery, illiteracy, and the like. But there is also a danger of drifting into apologetics and rationalizations of the events as they stand, and of pointing fingers at some historical development or some common experience². At the risk of sounding pedantic or overly cynical, I would dare to harp, albeit mildly, on the selfsame hackneyed areas of concern since their very pervasiveness can only be indicative of their importance as factors in the life and history of the African.

Abosieh Nicol graphically captures the enigma of Africa and concludes that in the final analysis only Aricans could say what Africa is:

Africa, you were once just a name to me,

but now you lie before me with somber

challenge . . .

You are not a country, Africa

You are not a concept

Fashioned in our minds, each to each,

to hide our separate fears, to dream

our separate dreams.

Only those within you who know

their circumscribed plot

and till it well with steady plough . . .

(can say), "This is my Africa" meaning

"I am content and happy.

I am fulfilled, within, without, and round

about.³

Some have disparaged Africa for its lowly state in the field of science and technology. Some have revelled in the supposed past glories of Africa as though that were sufficient to cater for today's challenges. A recent Daily Telegraph report speaks about the excavations in Sudan of a lost city which dates back to between the eighth century B.C. and the Middle Ages:

The dig has so far uncovered a palace, houses, wall inscriptions, pottery and leather bags which show indigenous monumental architecture and writing systems as well as traces of outside influences such as those of Greece and Turkey.⁴

Revelling in this type of discovery is self-defeating since most industrialized societies have their own share of excavations and lost cities, and yet have kept new cities going. In this regard Fanon's caveat is very pertinent:

I am convinced that it would be of the greatest interest to be able to have contact with a Negro literature or architecture of the third century before Christ. I should be very happy to know that a correspondence had flourished between some Negro philosopher and Plato. But I can absolutely not see how this fact would change anything in the lives of the eight-year-old children who labor in the cane fields of Martinique or Guadalupe.⁵

The image of the African is of one desperately wanting to be heard. Trying to outdo himself to show that he actually belongs in the society of humankind, he would eagerly display his prowess in the fields of culture, of sport, of intellect and of civilization. All these efforts seem to meet with a rather listless audience who, it seems, will always require double evidence to doctor their credulity and would then give a complement more from courtesy than from solidarity. The African knows it. Even their own identitycultural, political, religiousmust await the verdict of skeptical, stern-faced critics before they could lay any claims to authenticity.

In the political sphere, it took the boundaries arbitrarily drawn at the coffee table for African nations to emerge, irrespective of natural boundaries or cultural differences, and without the slightest regard for the wishes of the people. Along with the political definition came the religious, with a brand new set of moral codes forcibly supplanting the traditional ones. Traditional piety suddenly became idolatrous and traditional marriage which was polygamous became adulterous. On the socio-cultural level, native languages were outlawed and with them went the folkways.

The African then became by definition an eternal student whose every facet of existence must first be vetted before it could validly be adopted. Thus severed from his roots, the African has not found any sure foothold, either in the received cultures or in his embattled one. Deprived of the use of his mother tongue, he has not quite learned the new ones; yet his destiny is made to hang on this. He is thus conditioned to learn by rote things which are of little significance to his normal life.

On the political scene he is either pro-West or pro-East. Democracy is defined in ways that are incomprehensible to him and he is forced to regard as democratic a system which he would consider as devoid of consensus.⁶ Though the multi-party system may sound democratic, in reality it is the winning party whose determinations become law for all. It regards even a simple majority as a consensus and only rarely has recourse to referendums.

On the religious plane the story is no more comforting. As Ali Mazrui rightly points out, the African continent has produced no major world religion. Depending on the way one looks at it, this fact may be considered a lack on the part of Africa. The fact is that to universalize any religion some kind of conquest - military, political, ideological - some kind of imposition of values, seems to be the key. African religions have been in the business not of subjugating, but of coexisting with others. The result of this tolerance is that foreigners have been able to propagate their own religions unhindered for the most part, especially where confrontation has not been used as a means.

Africa thus became the great arena of frantic missionary activities from the great religions whose interest is served by universalism and the sense of supremacy. Mazrui sums up the situation:

Perhaps no other continent has faced such massive attention by those who have had religions of sacred wares to propagate. In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and much of the twentieth centuries Christianity found its greatest area of voluntary dedication among private agents within the African continent. Europe exported not just administrators and businessmen, but also peddlers of religious beliefs. Even before the Christians came, the Muslims had disseminated their religious ideas in various parts of the continent.⁷

We may consider this an enrichment, but the worried piecing together of succeeding events in colonial and post-colonial Africa has led to the exasperated conclusion that this was all an imperialistic, opportunistic gimmick, designed in the first place, not to Christianize or morally uplift, but as a cover for "doing in" the African. It takes a brave and persistent act of faith to dismiss this, or an equally energetic new approach to generate a less pessimistic point of view.

Thus, in Africa there is the situation of a variety of indigenous religions, coexisting and interacting with Islam and Euro-Christianity. This is the tripartite soul of Africa for which Nkrumah tried to propose a synthesis in his consciencism: a concept which in the religious plane would amount to a federation or confederation:

With true independence regained, . . . a new harmony needs to be forged, a harmony that will allow the combined presence of traditional Africa, Islamic Africa and Euro-Christian Africa, so that this presence is in tune with the original humanist principles underlying African society.⁸

In the final analysis it is the African who must define himself. All external parties should spare themselves the effort of always wanting to oversee what the African is about. The attempts to oversee have given rise to all kinds of misconceptions and problematic stereotypes which distort rather than define the true image of the African. Most notorious among all these are race, color and ideology, each of which will be discussed in the subsequent sections of this paper.

The African fares no better from the elements. He is almost an endangered species as a result of drought, pests, floods or famine. Aimé Césaire captures the situation in his inimitable way with the picture of a peasant farmer hand-tilling an arid soil with his hoe or "dabat":

Strike peasant, strike (the soil with your "dabat")

The first day the birds died

the second day the fish ran aground

the third day the animals emerged from the forest

and girdled the towns in a great belt hot and very strong.⁹

Along the same line Leopold Senghor laments the predicament of the African whom he sees in the image of a woman despoiled and disgraced, the hapless victim of an impending cataclysm: "Naked woman, black woman! I sing your passing beauty from that I fix in the eternal before jealous destiny burns you to ashes."¹⁰

The Africa presented by the ethnologist is a legend in which his audience readily believed. The African tradition as it appears in the light of the neo-African culture may also be a legend, but it is one in which the African intelligence believes. It is their perfect right to declare authentic, correct and true those components of their past which they believe to be so. Thus, the conception of the tradition as it appears in the light of the neo-African culture must be considered the most valid, since it is the one which from now on will form the future of Africa. Neo-African culture appears in an unbroken extension as the legitimate heir of tradition.

THE QUESTION OF AFRICANITY

The geographical entity known as Africa cannot be classified as a national community, nor defined in terms of a common language, culture or worldview.

Ideologically, the northern part of Africa, predominantly Muslim, identifies more with the Arab world more than with Africa. According to Southern Africa's policy of apartheid, until recently whites have not considered themselves as Africans; indeed, the whole idea of apartheid has been aimed at Africans on the basis of color. Whites have their affiliations with Western Europe and the United States as the home of their forebears. Thus, we are left with the sub-Saharan southwest and central Africa, often referred to as the "real" Africa or "Black Africa".¹¹

There are the African Americans (courtesy of the Reverend Jesse Jackson) and the African Caribbeans (so-called "Black Souls in a white world") who by accident or design are black migrants or descendants of former slaves. There are the offspring of intermarriages between Africans and non-Africans.¹² Who then wears the African badge; is it possible to have in-between Africans or people more or less African than others?

Even the aspect of color does not seem to provide the ultimate answer to the question of African or any identity. There are many light-skinned people in Africa, just as there are so many dark-skinned people in other parts of the world. It is, however, noteworthy that most of the attempts at identifying the African, even by Africans themselves, have never quite succeeded in getting away from the question of color. One possible explanation is the fact that the human mind often tends to work within established categories such that opinions earlier held tend to influence subsequent views. Some of the theories proffered as to the content of Africanity lean heavily on the question of race and color. Negritude is one such theory.

The Question of Race

The African does not pass simply, like any other person, but always is considered minutely with uncanny curiosity. Frantz Fanon shares his personal experience:

The schema of my normal body experience had dissolved, attacked at several points, gave way and was replaced by a schema that was racial and epidemic. In the train, I was responsible at one and the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I looked at myself objectively, discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics. And I understand all that was being held against me: cultural backwardness, fetishism, slavery, cannibalism. I wanted to be a human being, nothing more than a human being.¹³

As a result of this kind of situation, many African Americans wanted to become white to liberate themselves from the burdensome memory represented by a more highly pigmented skin; others wanted to seek their salvation in the acquisition of the African heritage in the new-fangled spirit of Pan-Africanism.

The grand division of humanity as Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid seems to be altogether arbitrary. For instance, the blacks in India or Sri Lanka do not look like those in Africa. Nor can one accurately point to differences in mental and intellectual endowments as criteria since geniuses as well as dunces exist in every camp. Another fallacy, based on an incomplete understanding of the theory of evolution, is the idea that some races have some of what have been termed "primitive" features such as hairiness, thinness or thickness of lips or heels, etc.¹⁴ The point to be made here is that there is no justification to be drawn from history, geography, sociology, anthropology, or anatomy to support the idea of one race being innately superior to another. The percentage of people who assume this state of affairs even among Africans themselves is surprising. One such person is Leopold Sedar Senghor of Ivory Coast.

Rationalizing with Color: Senghor's Negritude

Senghor sees the common factor of Africanity as consisting in the state of being black or Negritude. This is clearly an extrinsic and superficial analysis. He describes Negritude as:

The whole complex of civilized values, cultural, economic, social and political which characterize the black peoples, or precisely the Negro-African world. All these values are essentially formed by intuitive reason, which expresses itself emotionally through self-surrender . . . through myths . . . and above all, through primordial rhythms synchronized with those of the cosmos.¹⁵

These values, according to Senghor, consist in the sense of communion, the gift of myth-making, and the gift of rhythm. Negritude is community-based: communal and not collectivistic. Though socialist in character, it is founded on spiritual and democratic values.

Senghor's analysis understandably met with criticism in that he, among other things, advocated a process of miscegenation which hopefully would get rid of the dark pigmentation over the generations. He also considers the African as emotional rather than rational: "Emotion is black, . . . reason is Greek."¹⁶

When confronted with these things he was not about to change his views:

Young people have criticized me for reducing Negro-African knowledge to pure emotion, for denying that there is an African `reason.' . . . I should like to explain myself once again . . . "European reasoning is analytical, discursive by utilization; Negro-African reasoning is intuitive by participation."¹⁷ As if to complete his coup de grace, Senghor ventures into the area of epistemology and claims that African epistemology starts from a different basic postulate: "He (the African) does not realize that he thinks; he feels that he feels, he feels his existence, he feels himself."¹⁸ Hence his epistemology begins with the premise (following Descartes?), "I feel, therefore I am."

Senghor never said how he came about this outrageous conclusion and on what basis such stereotypes can claim validity. One would wonder if such conclusions were a result of some careful thought or an attempt to confirm his assertion that Africans feel rather than reason. He, an African of his own construction, lives up to the stereotype he has created. This approach is all too apologetic; it is like saying aloud that black is also good, beautiful, valid and genuinein a secondary or concessionary sense. Such a position arises out of a kind of inferiority complex, cleverly but not too successfully disguised. In the final analysis it hangs the African identity precariously upon color, while ignoring the ontology which is the root of personal identity.

Among the critics of Senghor is Paulin Hountondji, who describes Negritude as an alibi for evading the larger and more pressing political problems of national liberation.¹⁹ Ghana's Kofi Busia dismisses Negritude as a convenient abstraction, a conceptual toll for researchers who are trying to find common cultural traits that will distinguish the Negro African from other races. According to Busia, heightened sensibility and strong emotional quality cannot be claimed as the exclusive possession of Negro Africans. Besides, race and culture do not necessarily go together, and historical circumstances have put the Negro Africans into different cultures.²⁰ Ezekiel Mphahlele sees Negritude as the unrequited yearning in the heart of alienated or assimilated Africans for the dream Africa of their ancestors. As far as he is concerned, Negritude is bound up with racialism and tends to accentuate Africa's "underdoggery".²¹

A closer look at Senghor's theory would reveal its vagueness in the use of such terms as civilized values, intuitive reason, emotion, self-surrender, myths, primordial rhythms. Civilized, for Senghor, would be synonymous with Westernized, and with that meaning go the other concepts as corollaries: self-surrender to these (Western) values, etc. There is no question of trying to examine more closely for the purpose of understanding and if necessary changing the status quo. Intuitive reason is almost the opposite of deductive, reflective reason, and is more consistent with the emotional than with the rational. Thus in Senghor's theory, the African floats aimlessly with the current on the turbulent waters of the universe and reality; on the flimsy rafts of color, comfortably ensconced on the easy chair of emotions, bereft of the compass of intentionality, with no provisions against hunger, wind and storm; with no plans, no aim, no target; blissfully relying on random flashes of ideas in order to arrive nowhere but where the tides turn.

Aime Césaire, Leopold Senghor, Leon Damas and a few others had coined the term Negritude, and defined it to mean "the consciousness of being Black," the simple recognition of a fact that being Black the African refuses to lose himself in the non-Black. Returning from the 1963 African Summit Conference, one participant exclaimed: "We have discovered our common identity!"by which he meant, color. The naiveté of such euphoria is self-evident, since it would seem that the speaker was for the first time discovering his color. Surprisingly enough, philosopher President Julius Nyerere was caught in the fever of this kind of euphoria as can be seen from the following statement he made in a speech in 1960:

Africans all over the continent, without a word being spoken either from one individual to another or from one African country to another, looked at the European, looked at one another, and knew that in relation to the European, they were one.²²

This cryptic observation based on "looking" would tend to suggest that Dr. Nyerere has fallen into the tendency to regard color as the important identification tag for the African, since it, more immediately than anything else, visibly distinguishes him from other people.

Nigeria's Nnamdi Azikiwe wisely warns against the danger of a too narrow definition of the African along racial lines. To do so would amount to parochialism, and chauvinism, by whatever name it is called, has always been a disintegrating factor in human society. It builds a wall between "Us" and "Them". In daily life, one who is conscious of being or having something peculiar is likely to be eternally recluse, unrelaxed, and always on his/her guard. Being black does not have to divide the African away from the rest of humanity. If anything, it should be a perspective or channel for joining the wider family of humankind.

Nigeria's late Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, promptly distances himself from any such activity:

I do not believe in what some people call the African personality. There is no such thing as African personality. Africans belong to the human race and . . . talk of African personality betrays an inferiority complex.²³

The Ideological Factor: Nkrumah's Consciencism

Kwame Nkrumah believed that the present-day African society has lost its identity as it is buffeted by three rival ideologies: the traditional beliefs and practices, which, in turn, are engaged in a tug-of-war with Euro-Christian tenets, on the one hand, and Islamic tenets, on the other. This struggle has generated a crisis of conscience in the African since one ideology upholds what another spurns, and the African is expected to cope with all. The resolution of this conflict will be found in consciencism which Nkrumah describes as: "A philosophical standpoint which, taking its start from the present content of the African conscience, indicates the way in which progress is forged out of the conflict in that conscience."²⁴

The main features of Nkrumah's consciencism include the principle of egalitarianism and the consideration of man as an end rather than a means. Philosophical consciencism therefore forms "the theoretical basis for an ideology whose aim shall be to contain the African experience of Islamic and Euro-Christian presence as well as the experience of traditional African society, and, by gestation, employ them for the harmonious growth and development of that society."²⁵

Nkrumah sounds positive, but on a different note from Senghor. He at least recognizes that the African is, and that he does possess something of value that could be enriched by contact with the Euro-Christian and Islamic values. He is not merely adventitious. Unlike Senghor, Nkrumah is not about to deny arbitrarily the African the gift of analytical and discursive reason. At the inauguration of the University of Ghana, in November 1961, he said: "We have never had any doubt about the intellectual capacity of the African."²⁶

Nkrumah's point of departure in the crisis of the African conscience makes his theory rather reactionary in approaching the African as trying very hard to contain the influence of these three elements. That approach led Nkrumah to assumewithout trying to explainthe values proper to the African. He was reacting against colonialism, but forgot the who of the African in his pursuit of the what that is the conscience. No identity could be established on the basis of conscience alone.

The situation is rendered more complex by Nkrumah's espousal of materialism on which he bases his concept of egalitarianism. In furtherance of his belief in materialism Nkrumah would deny that matter owes its existence either to thought (Descartes' Cogito), or to feeling (Senghor). Weighing both reasonings: I think, therefore I am and I feel, therefore I am he rejects both. But inasmuch as feeling is a more physical experience than thought, and therefore a greater concession to the autonomy of matter, Nkrumah would choose Senghor over Descartes.²⁷ Thus, while asserting the African rational capacity, Nkrumah is willing to forsake it in order to uphold the primacy of matter. This shying away from the issue of rational capacity is almost tantamount to a denial. Nkrumah's African in the final analysis is no more than a one-dimensional man without spiritual values or telos. Not too many Africans will identify with such an image.

The Socio-political Factor: Nyerere's Ujamaa

Both Senghor and Nkrumah advocated socialism for Africa, or rather as Africa's best bet. Nyerere advocates socialism as already operational in Africa and descriptive of Africa's social structure. Senghor points to color, Nkrumah to ideology, and Nyerere to society. The Ujamaa concept arises from the need to develop people, rather than things. The person is very important in Nyerere's formulation, which describes the Ujamaa villages as follows:

Ujamaa villages are intended to be socialist organizations created by the people, and governed by those who live and work in them. They cannot be created from outside, nor governed from outside. No one can be forced into an Ujamaa village, and no official at any level can go tell the members of an Ujamaa what they should do together, and what they should continue to do as individual farmers.²⁸

Nyerere describes the basis of this society as equality and respect for human dignity, the sharing of the resources which are produced by common efforts, work by everyone and exploitation by none. He makes clear that Ujamaa is not intended as a revival of the old settlement schemes under another name; it is a new conception. No doubt Nyerere is protesting against the injustices of capitalism.

He tried to uphold the primacy of the person over matter, a compromise Nkrumah would gladly make. Nyerere's theory would uphold the spiritual values of mankind without compromising the demands of justice and equality: his own African has a destiny beyond the material. He was Catholic by religious belief, as were Senghor and Nkrumah.²⁹ However, Nyerere's views are basically idealistic and never fully reckon with the concrete realities of life where ideals fail to be realized, people become disenchanted or disillusioned, and leaders falter or fail. The Ujamaa experiment experienced severe tests in Tanzania and in many instances did not quite stand up. Another important factor to consider is that what Nyerere envisaged in Ujamaa is the image of a well-run society, where all citizens are happy and contented; thus it fits any society and cannot be claimed for Africa alone.

Despite all that has been said above, the issue of African identity is not yet nearly resolved. One may begin to wonder if the whole business of African identity is not a mere intellectual conception with no footing in reality. In any case, since color, ideology and the social factors, each taken by itself, have failed to give any conclusive lead, this means that the Africanor for that matter any persongets lost in the rubble when a whole is reduced its to components and each part is studied in isolation. The entire enquiry must be taken up once again and from a different angle.

AFRICANITY: FACT OR FANCY

To the question, who is the African, Jacques Maquet responds:

The African is the Yoruba craftsman and the Tutsi lord, the Nairobi mechanic and the Ibadan professor, the Fulani nomad and the Congolese villager, the hunter of the great forest and the warrior of the high plateau, the woman trader of Dakar and the factory girl of Bouake, the Benin sculptor and the Lumumbashi painter. This list of differences within the sub-Saharan Africa could be extended indefinitely.³⁰

Maquet goes on to identify the constants of Africanity as becoming an African, finding one's place among kin, depending on lineage, going back to ancestors, being in harmony with reality, marrying several wives, making lineage continue, controlling without coercion, ruling alone, being identified with the people, existing for others, fixing inequalities.

As far as Maquet is concerned, his typical African manifests these characteristics. Put in other words, Maquet's African is always living in the past, a simpleton that never goes beyond the sensory level of existence, godfatherish in government, making sure that no one surpasses others, brutish, and incapable of reflection. So, according to Maquet's listing, wherever you look and find someone satisfying these characteristics, that person is an African! Consider the carefully sketched roles listed by Maquet: not one of them involves any intellectual activity! There is this meaningless talk of "being in harmony with nature", which implies a chronic passivity arising from an innate incapacity to subdue nature and make it serve his needs.³¹

What we have had to contend with so far have been one abstract, generalized concept after another. No wonder none of them has succeeded in leading to a final resolution to our quest. Each talks about the African in the universal and therefore could not possibly lay claim to concreteness since the universal African, like the universal man, nowhere exists. Because of the great diversity found in Africa, it would be difficult even to talk realistically of a typical African, even though many traits and characteristics could be considered to be common among the peoples of Africa. When Nkrumah and other Pan-Africanists talk of the African personality, they probably took for granted the principles characteristic of the human personalityself-consciousness, reflective thinking, abstract thought, power of choice, aesthetic appreciation, worship and faith in a higher power, and creativity³²and situated them in Africa. This was an understandable reaction to the denial of these by some Western writers, particularly Levi-Bruhl and Robert Knox. But they failed to go far enough and were instead trapped in the reductionism that their theories inevitably entailed. The object of the enquiry is neither abstract thought nor a particular thought process, but a person, a self, a thinker, an African. This is where Nyerere has superseded all the others: in giving the pride of place to the person, the individual by himself and as a member of society. The concept "African" will be understood in this light henceforth. To get at this African, the contributions of the non-Africans are useful and helpful supplements, while the African self-affirmation leads the way.

African Personality/Identity

Apart from identifying documents, from traits of color or culture, something remains and perdures, looming larger than life itself. Reflecting on the transcendental qualities of the human personality I have observed as follows:

The human personality is impenetrable, incommunicable and even indestructible. Perhaps it could be frustrated or hampered by circumstances or the sheer bad will of others. It could also be enhanced, helped up and enriched by others through love or education. Even if we explain a man's body or mind, we could never explain his personalitythat which makes him himself and absolutely no other. . . . I can lose everything . . . even life itself. But I can never lose my personality.³³

In the light of this observation, it seems that it is the African personality that must manifest itself so that the African can take his place on the world scene. Crucial to the question of personality development is contentment with what one is or has, while not giving up on what one should be. The African has been barraged into lack of self-confidence and lack of contentment with himself and his potentials: unwittingly an inferiority complex is his lot. This lack of contentment brings with it envy, irritability and lack of inner peace.

The antidote for lack of contentment is its oppositeself-confidence, that grows from courage and optimism. Mokwugo Okoye is quick to point out that the African has indeed a lot that he can be proud about:

I had thus no need for complexes of contempt, rage or dissembling, and everywhere I moved I saw myself as the equal or even superior of the people about mea pardonable sin after emerging, with my country, from a long period of repression and humiliation.³⁴

As was pointed out at the beginning of this paper, the African is beset by an identity crisis that is rather difficult to overcome. This crisis haunts him on the socio-political and ideo-psychological levels, in the clothes he wears, the food he eats, the language he speaks, the way he worships, the way he rules or is ruled, acts or reacts. The spectre of the slave trade hangs uncomfortably over him with wounds that do not seem to heal. C.L.R. James describes the horror of

Whipping, hot wood on the buttocks, salt, pepper, citron, cinders, aloes, and hot ashes poured on bleeding wounds, mutilation of limbs, ears and private parts, burning with wax, being burnt alive, roasted in slow fires, filled with gunpowder and blown up, buried neck-deep in the earth and head smeared with sugar to attract flies and insects to a living feast³⁵

all in the pursuit of wealth.

The trauma can hardly be exaggerated. Just for the sake of comparison, decades after the Vietnam war some of its American veterans still suffered the after-shocks. In Japan the population still bears the after-effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The victims of Auschwitz are still deeply troubled over their terrible experiences, and international outrage did not let up on seeking out and dealing with all those who had anything to do with it. By the same token, a situation of trauma and intimidation that built up over several generations is likely to take a considerable while to remedy, given the good will of all parties. All this is on the psychological level.

Ideologically, the African long was torn between Western capitalism and Eastern bloc socialism: there was no word of any other possibility. His leanings were adjudged right or wrong according as he leaned right or left, conservative or liberal; he ruled well or badly according as he follows Westminster/Washington or Moscow/Beijing.

In belief, he is either Christian or Communist, perhaps Muslim or otherwise Animist. He is expected to be converted to one or several of the options and loyally to conform to their demands. Any wonder then that he never quite seems to attain complete "conversion", but rather seems habitually to "depart from orthodoxy"preferring on many occasions to follow the ways of his fathers. W.M. Ramsey describes this dislocation from his own roots:

You may in outward appearance convert people to a new . . . faith; but if they are not educated up to the level of intellectual and moral power which that higher faith requires, the old ideas will persist in the popular mind, all the stronger in proportion to the ignorance of each individual; and those ideals will seize and move the people, especially in cases of trouble and sickness, and in the presence of dread of death³⁶

Edwin Smith noted with some horror how some Africans, to mark their conversion, discarded their "handsome, flowing white robes and appeared in khaki shorts and a helmet of khaki."³⁷

From his new mentors the African picked up a goodly amount of scandals, especially in the field of morals. Mokwugo Okoye criticized the Christian churches for making rogues of honest men, self-seekers out of unselfish men, liars and perverts and neurotics out of those free from these defects: "Those who ruled gave the African peasant a fine training in chicanery and petty-fogging so that, having rejected his jujus and taboos, he can now swear falsely on the Bible, cheat and steal without qualm."³⁸ Polygamous marriage, which to him was a normal, honorable form of marriage, was censured as illegitimate, yet he sees it practiced by rotation in the form of divorce and remarriage.

There is the exaltation of celibacy as a super virtue within some segments of the Christian (Catholic) religion, but the African now watches as it is being seriously attacked and in danger of being overthrown. Finally, killers who, according to African ethics, are supposed to be killed, walk free due to strange twists in the interpretation of the law and the administration of justice.

William Abraham describes the African as a man of two worlds: belonging to one world, but being fiercely exposed to another. The African has been exposed in no consistent or radical fashion to a milieu which is different from that to which he belongs, though the latter continues to surround him. He is indeed a displaced person. His mastery of the "new culture" is neither comprehensive nor definitive. So his state of confusion is not yet overcome, and this cultural ambiguity is accompanied by misgivings of wide ranging proportions.³⁹

The period of loss of independence has entailed for Africa a certain measure of deculturization which fortunately was not total. The cleavage between town life and village life was sufficient to prevent the deculturization from sweeping through. Because the vast majority of the African population belongs to the village rather than to town life, Africans have a clear but decisive choice before them: whether to be as alien to their own people as had been the government, or whether to pose problems and formulate ideals and national objectives meaningfully in terms of the cultures of Africa. Africa is in crisis at various levels, but that is to be expected in a period of decision and transition such as Africa faces at the moment.

The time of transition, whether short or long, will confront the African with an important decision: whether to accept modern civilization at his own expense, or to do so on his own terms, or to reject everything completely and slip back into the limbo of the past.

THE WAY OUT

The best way out of sleep is to wake up, especially if the sleep is wasting time. No one can be praised forever for failing to get out of sleep, no matter the circumstances that led to the inactivity. Africans have many avenues for "escape," but their embattled situation must be recognized as such by them if they are to make use of the opportunities which present themselves. Nigeria's Mbonu Ojike thinks the way out is to "boycott all boycottables," meaning a severance of all links and a renunciation of anything that is not "homemade" to Africa. That would be like winding the clock backwards. Nkrumah thought the way out of the political quandary was through an armed revolution. That would be suicidal. On the ideological level, he envisaged a kind of federated approach whereby the African can rescue for himself what is best in Christianity, Islam and the traditional values. Leopold Senghor would have an intermarriage between the African values and the "civilized values," physically through a process of miscegenation, and ideologically through a process of assimilation. Paulin Hountondji thinks it is not sufficient to study African cultures; they must be lived, practiced and, where necessary, transformed. As to how this could be achieved, Hountondji thinks the best way is to adopt Western science.⁴⁰ Fair enough, but the question is how this adoption is to be achieved beyond what already obtainsperhaps he means industrialization. Ngugi Wa'Thiogo hits the bottom line: the African must work to decolonize the mind.

Political independence has been attained, but not cultural, economic and ideological independence. When all these have been attained then, in the words of Frantz Fanon, there will be "not only the disappearance of colonialism, but also the disappearance of the colonized man.⁴¹

Claretian Institute of Philosophy

Nekede Owerri, Nigeria

1. Mokwugo Okoye, African Responses (Devon Ilfracombe: Arthur H. Stockwell Ltd., 1964), pp. 9-12.

2. An example of this is a famous poem by Mokwugo Okoye entitled "Ompigro" where he gives a catalogue of his grievances against the white man. (See cover page of the above work). Senghor also wrote another poem entitled "God Forgive White Europe" (See Martin Minogue & Judith Molloy, Ed., African Aims and Attitudes [London: Oxford University Press, 1974], p. 62). Nkrumah's invectives in his books, Towards Colonial Freedom, Africa Must Unite, etc., are all too well-known.

3. Jacob Drachin, African Heritage (New York: Collier Books, 1964), p. 119.

4. The Daily Telegraph (London and Manchester: January 4, 1988).

5. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 230.

6. A typical example is the idea that democracy consists necessarily in a multi-party arrangement and that anything else is contrary to democracy. The fact of the matter is that this ends up in an elected dictatorship whereby the winner constantly spites the loser. Mugabe's one-party arrangement in Zimbabwe drew a particularly bad press from the West, even though the people themselves made the choice and seem happy with it.

7. Ali A. Mazrui, World Culture and the Black Experience (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1974), p. 32.

8. Ibid.

9. For a detailed discussion of this issue see Paul Bohannan, Africa and Africans (Garden City, NY: The Natural History Press, 1964), especially pp. 60-78. See also Hild Kuper's graphic description of actual events where the African is considered with great disdain. For this see Simon and Phoebe Ottenberg, ed., Cultures and Societies of Africa, pp. 539ff.

10. Jacques Maguet talks of physical differences between the races, along with profound mental differences both intellectual and emotional, so that individuals of certain races are not capable of achieving the same intellectual development as those of other races, but have a character which makes them unable to command and which predisposes them to obey (surely based on Aristotle). See his Africanity, the Cultural Unity of Black Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 3.

11. See Jahnheinz Jahn, Muntu: An Outline of Neo-African Culture, trans. by Marjorie Greene (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1961), pp. 19-21.

12. A study conducted by James F. Downs reveals that 70 percent of American blacks have at least one white ancestor, and 30 percent of American whites at least one black ancestor. See his Cultures in Crisis (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1972), p. 3.

13. Fanon, p. 114.

14. Downs, p. 13.

15. Leopold S. Senghor, "What is Negritude?" in Ideologies of the Developing Nations, ed. by Paul E. Sigmund (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), p. 250.

16. Senghor, Negritude et Humanisme (Paris, Seuil, 1964), p. 24.

17. Senghor, On African Socialism (London, Pall Mall, 1964), p. 74.

18. Senghor, "The Spirit of Civilization, or the Laws of African Negro Culture," address given at The First International Conference of Negro Writers and Artists, Proceedings in Presence africaine, special issue (June-November 1956), p. 64.

19. Paulin J. Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library for Africa, 1983), pp. 159f.

20. Minogue, p. 239.

21. Ibid., p. 237.

22. Julius Nyerere, Symposium on Africa (Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, 1960), p. 149.

23. Quoted in Allah-De, "Words, Words Galore," Sunday Times (Lagos, May 26, 1963), p. 9.

24. Keame Nkrumah, Consciencism (London: Panaf Books, 1974), p. 79.

25. Ibid., pp. 68-70.

26. See "Ghana's Cultural History," extracts from his speech at the inauguration of the University of Ghana, Presence africaine 13 (1962), pp. 7-14.

27. See Ali Maxrui's discussion on consciencism in his World Culture and Black Experience (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), pp. 16-19.

28. Nyerere, p. 149.

29. Senghor himself is a devout Catholic and Nkrumah was brought up a Catholic but later on in his political career was no longer active.

30. Maquet, p. 3.

31. Maquet no doubt bases his position on what Aristotle said about some people born to rule and command while others are disposed only to obey.

32. See Minogue, p. 239.

33. Isu Marcel Onyeocha, "Who are You?" paper presented to Owerri Diocese, Nigeria, April 17, 1987.

34. Mokwugo Okoye, p. 19.

35. C.L.R. James, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, p. 27.

36. See Edwin W. Smith, Knowing the African (London: Lutterworth Press, 1946), p. 15.

37. Smith, The Golden Stool (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1927), p. 264.

38. Okoye, p. 15.

39. W.F. Abraham, The Mind of Africa (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), p. 35.

40. Hountondji, p. 159.

41. Okoye, p. 250.