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Advancing Our Proud Continent
By Molefi Kete Asante
(First Published in City Press, October, 2004)
IN Dakar, Senegal five hundred
intellectuals from Africa and the diaspora participated in the AU
meeting.The African heads of state and intellectuals referring to
the legacies of heroes such as Zumbi of Brazil, Yanga of Mexico,
Nat Turner of the US and Nanny of Jamaica, spoke with vigour and
enthusiasm about the possibilities of an African renaissance. We
had come together to see how African intellectuals could envision
the future.
We wanted to know how Africa could
embrace the courageous efforts of African Venezuelans, African Brazilians,
African Colombians, African Peruvians, and others from South and
Central America and the Caribbean - in addition to those in North
America and Europe.
The word "diaspora" comes
from the Greek word "diaspeirein" and it means a dispersion.During
the past five hundred years many Africans were scattered all over
the world and settled in foreign lands.
The past five hundred years have
tested our wills and brought us into contact with avaricious and
aggressive cultures that sought to undermine the very basis of our
humanity.
It has been our resilience on the
continent and in the diaspora that has kept us strong. Like the
palm that sways in the storm but does not break, we have taken the
blows, the awful, brutal blows of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid
- and survived.
Yes, it is true that some of us
have been broken, shocked , injured and stunted in our growth by
the assaults , but for the most part our resilience has been noble.
While I am on this subject, let
me be clear that Africa was not responsible for its own devastation.
The enslavement of Africans was not an African initiative. No African
state built ships to transport Africans across the oceans. No African
state or kingdom ever insured fleets of ships for the slave trade.
No African people ever used slavery as a principal mode of production.
So we must not allow Europe to set the agenda for the discourse
on the enslavement of our people by trying to minimise Europe's
role and maximise the role of Africans.
Indeed, there were some Africans
that collaborated with the Europeans but they were never the majority
nor the initiators of this evil . There were some Jews in the Second
World War that collaborated with the Nazis and there were some Africans
that collaborated with the South African white regime , but in neither
case can we blame the collaborators . They were in many ways victims
themselves. Too often, the West has come to dictate the terms of
our research, the content of what we study and how we report that
content. It must be reported to the West, as they say, the mainstream
journals, meaning white European journals. This is a trap our best
intellectuals must avoid . If there must be material advantage to
scholarship , let Africa set the terms, let the governments of Africa
establish the awards that will attract the best minds to work in
the interest of Africa.
We must assume an Afrocentric stance
on everything that affects Africa. I ask you to question all ideas
that are non-African, not to dismiss them for being foreign but
to see if they are consistent with our goals and aims. We must all
learn to be the people of our ancestors, not the servants of international
imperialist masters. This is the source of our victory and the revival
of the glory that brings us together with each other. We must talk
and we must act. We must harmonise and we must be ready to create
chaos in the lives of those who will seek to retain control over
African people.
Our intellectuals and politicians
must not be allowed to abandon us to the nightmare of the imperialists
who seek, even while we sleep, to regain control of Africa through
the fundamentalism of anti-African religions.
What we need and I am not the first
to suggest this, is an ideology that centres our thinking on Africa
itself. Afrocentricity is a quality of thought or action that allows
the African person to view himself or herself as an agent and actor
in human history, not simply as someone who is acted upon. It gives
us a perspective as a subject , not from the margins of being victims
or being an object in someone else's world. We are creators, originators
and sustainers of our ethics, values and customs. We seek to replace
no one, we seek only to be for ourselves as a way of being for the
world. Just a simple matter like when we say classical music we
must mean our own classical music. European concert music must not
assume the principal place in our pantheon of music. We must act
like we are owners of ourselves before we can claim our birthright
as Africans in the traditions of our ancestors. We must not allow
others to define us as outside of history or the world. We must
put ourselves firmly into our own experiences. Our political leaders
must have good, strong, bold, and loyal intellectual guidance. Loyalty
does not imply rubber stamping, but rather an intelligentsia that
understands the threat to Africa and is committed to Africa.
We must have a Pan African solidarity
with the African world community, a desire for the revitalisation
of Africa, a consciousness of victory and some accountability to
the objectives of African renaissance if we are to realise African
advancement. In l980 the brilliant Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta
Diop told me something that I have never forgotten when, in my youthful
exuberance, I announced to him that I wanted to devote my career
to the defence of Africa. He said, "Africa needs no defence,
it only needs to be advanced. Go out and advance Africa."
Schools in Africa must include
in their curricula information from the diaspora. There is no reason
why every African child should not know Mae Jemison, the first black
woman to fly into space or Guion Bluford and Arnaldo Tamayo, the
first African men to fly into space. The hegemony of the West in
all its forms, whether capitalist, marxist, christian, secular,
socialist or globalist has been to the advantage of Europe at the
expense of Africa.
We do not have to destroy the environment,
to ruin human lives, or pollute the earth to advance. That is why
I am suggesting a new, more powerful model, based on the idea of
comparative examinations of African cultures. We will not be saved
by grants and we cannot develop on handouts and restricted gifts.
There will be no saviours from outside of Africa.
I am ready to see us establish
ourselves at the centre of the world stage. I am ready to see us
create an integrated African world where the ideas, energies and
concepts that have made us creative, resilient, and capable, are
used for moral and political leadership. I am ready to see us cast
aside all neuroses that are associated with the legacy of colonialism,
enslavement and apartheid.
I am ready to see us accept our
culture as a heritage to be shaped and moulded, rather than baggage
to be thrown to the side. I am ready to see us seize the intellectual
initiatives for our own destiny.
Molefi Kete Asante is one of
the most published contemporary scholars, having written more than
sixty books and three hundred articles.
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