Revised November 2001

Second Lecture

 DuBois Centre, Ghana

PAN AFRICANISM AND THE GLOBALIZATION

OF AFRICA: A TRIPLE PROCESS*

by Ali A. Mazrui

Let me reiterate briefly some propositions about globalization with which I introduced my first essay.

·        That although the word “globalization” is new, the process of globalization has been going on for centuries.[1]

·        That the engines of globalization in history have been the expansion of religion, the rise of empires, the triumph of technology and the internationalization of economy

·        That two forms of globalization at the beginning of the twenty first century have attracted special attention – (a) the Information Super highway through the computer and the Internet (b) the economic super highway through global capitalism, transnational corporations and international trade

·        That the most comprehensive definition of globalization is all change which is leading the world towards a global village. Globalization is the villagization of the world.[2]

Globalization: Economic and Cultural

            Two forms of globalization have affected Africa in contradictory ways -- economic globalization, on the one hand, and cultural globalization, on the other.  The forces of economic globalization in the world as a whole have deepened the marginalization of Africa.[3]  The forces of cultural globalization, on the other hand, have substantially penetrated and assimilated much of Africa.

            On attainment of independence the economic marginalization of Africa was partly due to the fact that colonialism had created an elite of consumption rather than an elite of productivity.  The post-colonial African elite was more adept at making money than at creating wealth. Money could be made in a network of capital transfers without generating genuine growth.  The African elite had learnt the techniques of circulating money without a talent for creating new wealth.

            The colonial impact in Africa had generated urbanization without industrialization, had fostered Western consumption patterns without Western productive techniques, had cultivated among Africans Western tastes without Western skills, had initiated secularization without the scientific spirit.  The stage was set for the marginalization of Africa in the era of globalization. Let us take Nigeria as a case-study.

One had hoped that petroleum would enable countries like Nigeria to join the more prosperous forces of globalization.  Following the dramatic rise of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Nigeria became the fifth largest producer of petroleum in the world.[4]  Yet the nature of elite of consumption, and the shortage of relevant skills, plunged the Nigerian economy into mismanagement, corruption and debt.  Long lines at petrol stations and recurrent shortages of fuel were the order of the day.  Commercial activity was often disrupted by shortages of petroleum products -- diesel, kerosene, cooking gas, and other commodities.  The giant of Africa was in danger of becoming the midget of the world.  Africa's Gulliver was in danger of becoming the Lilliput of the globe.

            On the other hand, cultural globalization had indeed substantially co-opted most of Africa to its ranks.  Christianized Africa especially has demonstrated remarkable receptivity to the forces of cultural globalization through Westernization.  Although Christianity arrived in India eighteen centuries before it arrived in West Africa, the population of Christians in India is still little more than two per cent (2.5%) whereas the population of Christians in West Africa is over thirty-five per cent (35%).[5]  In one century Christianity has made more headway in West Africa than it has done in India in nearly two thousand years.

            At least for a while, West Africa has also been very receptive to Western education.  By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nigeria, for one, had exported more highly educated personnel to the United States (proportionally) than had any other country in the world.  Of all the new immigrants to the United States, the Nigerians had the highest proportion of graduates.  The great majority of these immigrant Nigerians were Igbo, Yoruba and other southerners. Ghanaians in the USA, though fewer in number, were also highly educated.[6]

            In addition to religion and education as forces of cultural globalization, there has also been the impact of major European languages as international media of communication.  In the case of West Africa, the impact of the English language has been relatively profound.  Anglophone West Africa has produced its own simplified version of English (Pidgin) as a grassroots lingua franca.[7]  But standard English has made great strides -- producing such world-class literary figures as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and our own Atukwei Okai.  The great majority of West Africa’s great writers in the English language are from Christian background -- complete with the Nobel Literary Laureate, Wole Soyinka.  Once again West Africans have shown great receptivity to cultural globalization in a European idiom.

 In global terms Africa as a whole was economically on the periphery. We have been culturally globalized but economically marginalized.

            What about political globalization? How has that affected Africa and indeed Ghana?

The Nation State and Political Globalization

            One form of globalization which has been dramatically under estimated is the spread of the nation-state. This is sometimes called the Westphalian system – a system of organized sovereign units which emerged out of the Treaty of Westphalia in Europe in 1648.[8]

The expansion of the system of sovereign states was itself in stages of globalization. At first the right to sovereignty was, according to Europeans, limited to Christendom.

            The law of nations applied to Christian nations only – which was interpreted to mean Europe and the Americas.

            The international law was later extended to include the Ottoman Empire – an Islamic empire state rather than a Christian nation state.

            The law of nations was now interpreted to apply to only civilized nations. Since much of Africa and Asia were regarded as uncivilized, their sovereignty was not entitled to respect.

            Even such defenders of liberal democracy as John Stuart Mill could argue that what he called “barbarians” had no rights as “nations” – except the right to be gradually civilized towards nationhood.

            Karl Marx – in spite of his radicalism – regarded British rule in India not as a violation of Indian sovereignty but as a contribution to India’s progress.[9] British capitalism was a more progressive force than Hindu feudalism. The British were civilized – the Indians needed to be civilized.

            F. Engels, Karl Marx’s friend, similarly applauded French colonization of Algeria in the 1830s.[10] The French were not violating the sovereignty of North Africans; they were bringing the torch of progress to the darker recesses of Bedouin barbarism.

            The Westphalian system of respect for sovereign nations and states had yet to be globalized.

            The entire history of the colonization of Africa and Asia hinged on the European belief that the rules of international law did not apply outside the lands which Europe regarded as civilized.

            There was therefore no question of violating the sovereign rights of Africans, Indians or Malays. Colonization of African and Asian societies was not against international law as interpreted at the time by Europeans.

            Gradually European powers conceded sovereign respect to Asian countries, beyond the Ottoman Empire. Japan began to be grudgingly treated as a respectable player in the power game. China, Thailand and Persia were somewhat tolerated. And after World War II European Empires in Asia began to disintegrate. India and Pakistan became independent.[11]

            International law and respect for sovereign rights were extended to more and more Asian countries and to Arab countries. But was Black Africa civilized enough to bear the burden of sovereign independence?

            Ghana became the new frontier of the entire Westphalian system. Could the right to sovereignty be conceded to Black people? Ghanaian nationalists of all persuasion became part or the vanguard for pushing the frontiers of the whole system of sovereign states and sovereign nations, to include African societies regardless of religion.

            Until the period between the two World Wars Ethiopia and Liberia could be tolerated partly because they were under Christian control. But could the Westphalian system proper be extended to all Black Africa regardless of religion in spite of the alleged lack of civilized standards?

            Haiti after their revolution of the 18^th century tried hard to be a Black Republic liberated from France, but America recolonized Haiti.

            The Gold Coast as a colony became the testing ground – in spite of the fact that across the continent in Kenya the raging Mau Mau was seemed to indicate the worst Western fears of African primitivism.[12]

            Paradoxically, the very ferocity of the Mau Mau was in Kenya in the early 1950s helped Ghana’s cause for a smooth constitutional transition to self-government and majority rule.

            The British decided that a constitutional and Gandhian Nkrumah was by far preferable to the “terrorist barbarism” of Jomo Kenyatta – the man who a British Governor denounced as “leader unto Darkness and Death”.[13]

            The Westphalian system was on the verge of getting globalized from the Gold Coast outwards. Sovereign rights were on the verge of being conferred on Black Africans in spite of the “atavism” and “primordial features” of Mau Mau.

            Ghanaian nationalists of all persuasion – Danquah, Nkrumah and others – helped to propel the Westphalian system to cross its last frontier into the Black African domain.

Nation-Building vs. Pan African Integration

            But here the great paradox of Kwame Nkrumah’s career began to take shape. The same Nkrumah who had struggled so hard to establish the right of Black people to organize themselves as nation-states and sovereign states became a passionate champion of a continent-wide federation of nation-states.[14]

            The call for the independence of Ghana from British colonial rule was indeed the extension of the Westphalian system sovereign states to include Black societies. But the call for a continent-wide unification of the whole of Africa in all its cultural ethnic and linguistic diversity was an entirely different kind of paradigm from the nation-state. Nkrumah was calling for a super-state of two thousand languages.

            What Kwame Nkrumah might not have fully comprehended was that Ghanaians were challenging the Westphalian system of nation-states from two angles. Pan-Africanists like Nkrumah himself were challenging the nation-state by calling for a supra-state which was Africa-wide. On the other hand, Asante or Aslanti nationalists were challenging the nation-state from the sub-state level.

            Nkrumah and the Nkrumahists dreamt of a post-Westphalian system of enlargement of political scale. Asante nationalists emphasized a pre-Westphalian heritage of ancestral loyalties and traditions.

Nkrumah wanted to accept the nation-state – and then transcend it. Asante nationalists asked: “Why embrace a foreign system in the first place?”

In keeping Ghana within the Westphalian tradition of a single state, Nkrumah resorted to the one party system. (One country, one party, one loyalty). In pushing Ghana towards continental aspirations, Nkrumah rejected such sub-regional compromises as East African Federation.[15] Nkrumah and Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania were rivals in Pan-African leadership.

Degrees of Pan-Africanism

           One major arena in which Julius Nyerere was a rival to Nkrumah was the arena of regional integration. For years Nkrumah had been the eloquent voice of Pan-Africanism and the symbol of the continent’s quest for greater integration. On a more modest scale Nkrumah had even attempted to lead a union first between Guinea and Ghana, and later between Guinea, Ghana and Mali. But these attempts at unification which Nkrumah had led proved abortive.

font-weight: normal">        Then in 1961 and 1962 it appeared as if Nyerere was going to succeed in leading the East African countries to a regional federation. By June 1963 the three heads of government in East Africa – Kenyatta, Obote, and Nyerere – felt confident enough to announce plans to form an East African federation before the end of the year.  In 1960 Nyerere had already stolen the limelight on federalism in Africa by announcing his readiness to delay Tanganyika’s independence until Kenya and Uganda became independent if this would facilitate the formation of an East African federation. In June 1963 Kenya was still not independent, but the other two had attained theirs. This time the clarion call was not for Tanzania to delay its independence but for Kenya to speed up its own timetable of decolonization.  The British were called upon to grant Kenya independence by December 1963 so as to enable it to join in federation with the other two. It was in this sense that Nyerere had by that time become a symbol of African unification, apparently standing a greater chance of success in effective inter-territorial integration than Nkrumah had stood in his own ventures with Guinea and Mali.[16]

           Nkrumah’s reaction was not overly subtle. He propounded a new thesis that sub-regional unification of the kind envisaged in East Africa was in fact simply “Balkanization writ large”. Further the enterprise was likely to compromise the bigger ambition of a continental union in Africa. It was a case of the good being the enemy of the best – and East Africans who accepted the minimally good achievement of sub-regional federation would no longer have the incentive to embark on continental union as a more a effective bulwark against neo-colonialism and poverty. Nkrumah pointed out that his own country could not very easily join an East African federation. This proved how discriminatory and divisive the whole of Nyerere’s strategy was for the African continent.

           Nyerere treated Nkrumah’s counter-thesis with contempt. He asserted that to argue that Africa had better remain in small bits than form bigger entities was nothing more than “an attempt to rationalize absurdity”. He denounced Nkrumah’s attempt to deflate the East African federation movement as petty mischief-making arising from Nkrumah’s own sense of frustration in his own Pan-African ventures.

           Nyerere became sensitive to the danger of having his credentials questioned or compromised as a result of Nkrumah’s initiative. And so when in January 1964 Nyerere was compelled by circumstances to invite British troops to re-enter his country in order to disarm his own local military mutineers, the Mwalimu was so conscious of his vulnerability to critics like Nkrumah that he immediately invited the Organization of African Unity to meet in Dar es Salaam and hear an explanation of why he had been forced to invite British troops.[17]  So keen was he to protect his country from the stigma of neo-dependency that he was prepared to risk incurring the displeasure of Kenya and Uganda rather than compromise his pan-African respectability. His independent initiative to invite the OAU to Dar es Salaam did in fact irritate the two other East African countries that had been similarly forced to invite British troops to disarm their own mutinous soldiers. Obote of Uganda was impelled to express public skepticism about the utility of the cleansing ceremony in Dar es Salaam.

           Was the ceremony effective in cleansing Nyerere’s reputation? By the time the heads of African states met in Cairo in the middle of 1964, Nkrumah was prepared to state his skeptical position officially. He doubted the credentials of Dar es Salaam as the headquarters of liberation movements in the light of Dar es Salaam’s readiness to invite British troops in. Admittedly, by that time Nyerere had taken the precaution of asking the British troops to leave and having them replaced by Nigerian troops in Tanganyika. But from Nkrumah’s point of view, the harm had been done. A country which could actually take the initiative in invite troops of her former colonial ruler, and then express public gratitude to her former colonial ruler for that loan of troops, could not be trusted as the headquarters of African liberation movements. Nkrumah was therefore asking the Organization of African Unity to reconsider the decision to entrust liberation to a capital like Dar es Salaam.

           Nyerere was indignant. He went public with his attack on Nkrumah. He referred to people who pretended that they were in favour of African continental union when all they cared about was to ensure that “some stupid historian in the future” praised them for beingin favour of the big continental ambition before anyone else was willing to undertake it. Nyerere added snide remarks about “the Redeemer” (Nkrumah’s self-embraced title of the Osagyefo).

           On balance history has proved Nkrumah wrong on the question of Nyerere’s commitment to liberation. Nyerere was second to none in that commitment.

           At that Cairo conference of 1964 Nkrumah had said “what could be the result of entrusting the training of Freedom Fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?” Nyerere had indeed answered “the good Osagyefo” with sarcasm and counter-argument. But Nyerere was also already trying to sharpen his country’s militancy in anti-colonial policy. At Cairo he took the posture of a leader disillusioned with the arts of persuasion in matters of liberation. He now demanded rigorous action to expel Portugal from Africa. As he put it:

“I am convinced that the finer the words the greater the harm they do to the prestige of Africa if they are not followed by action …Africa is strong; font-weight: normal"> enough to drive Portugal from our Continent. Let us resolve at this conference to take the necessary action.”[18]

           Nyerere did indeed attempt to take the lead in this new militancy. He became the toughest spokesman against the British on the Rhodesian question. His country played a crucial role at the OAU Ministerial meeting at which it was decided to issue that fatal ultimatum to Britain’s Prime Minister, Harold Wilson – “Break Ian Smith or Africa will break with you.”

           But on the question of regional integration the record for Nyerere has been less happy.  Nkrumah, as we have indicated, had argued that the smaller unions could harm bigger ones. It is not clear if an East African Federation would have harmed the continental union; what is clear is that the more modest union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar to form Tanzania might well have harmed the prospects for a broader union in East Africa as a whole.[19] There are occasions when a blind plunge into union is what is needed if the union is to take place at all. The smaller union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar dramatized the difficulties of unification. Even on issues which would obviously be for a central government – like foreign relations – it was soon clear that Dar es Salaam’s right to conduct foreign relations for Zanzibar was for a while neither complete nor predictable. The issue of the representation of the two Germanies in the 1960s was particularly illuminating in this regard. Zanzibar under President Abeid Karume had cultivated the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) Tanganyika had relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).

        The problem arose over the Hallstein Doctrine of the German Federal Republic in the 1960s  which insisted that, apart from the Soviet Union, no country could have full diplomatic relations with East Germany and still have diplomatic relations with West Germany. Before the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, East Germany had had diplomatic relations with Zanzibar and West Germany with Tanganyika. When the union was formed in April 1964 the question arose as to which of the two Germanies should retain diplomatic relations with the United Republic of Tanzania since the Hallstein Doctrine made it impossible to have relations with both. Dar es Salaam decided on a policy of retaining relations with the West Germans, but trying to get this question accepted by Zanzibar turned out to be a delicate issue. In the end Zanzibaris were persuaded that alternative kinds of relations could be established with the East Germans without necessarily violating the Hallstein Doctrine. Relations at the rank of consulate general were decided upon. But the West Germans were not completely satisfied. As one way of expressing their disapproval, the West Germans, while maintaining relations with the United Republic, decided to withdraw their military training assistance which they had been giving the Tanganyikans. Nyerere in turn decided that if the West Germans were going to withdraw one kind of aid to Tanganyika, they might as well withdraw all their aid.

           One moral, which Nyerere drew from this whole experience, was the simple risk of having to rely on foreign aid. But the domestic moral, which was drawn, was that Zanzibar’s choice of policies even in foreign affairs was not entirely controllable by Dar es Salaam.

           For East Africa as a whole the experience of difficulties between Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, encompassing even the banning of a Dar es Salaam newspaper of the ruling party, The Nationalist, from entering Zanzibar illustrated to Kenyans and Ugandans and indeed Tanganyikans the kind of difficulties which would attend the formation of a even bigger union among the three mainland countries. Nkrumah’s assertion that smaller unions could also easily undermine the chances of bigger unions had, in East Africa’s experience, found some substance of vindication after all. Nkrumah’s grand vision of a post-Westphalian Africa, united Cape to Cairo, Dakar to Dar es Salam, might one day be the answer after all.

font-size: 12.0pt">            But the other major challenge to the Westphalian system in Ghana is not from above but from below. It is the challenge of Ashanti nationalism rather than the challenge of continental Pan-Africanism. To what extent can Ashanti be treated as a distinct society without unraveling the whole Westphalian system of the nation-state?

            Similar questions can be raised about the nationalism of the Ga, or the Fanti or the Ewe. But the Ashanti case is paradigmatic.

Asymmetrical Federalism: Global Perspectives

            Although the United States was among the first societies to experiment with governance based on geographic federalism, Muslims in history were the first to experiment with cultural federalism. Ashanti is a geo-cultural unit. The millet system of the Ottoman Empire was a kind of religio-cultural federation. Today we ask whether if Nigeria is a secular federation, can some constituent states nevertheless be theocratic? Is national secularism compatible with official religion at the state-level?

            This raises the issue of whether federations are viable if the constituent states are asymmetrical in their constitutional systems. The Ottoman Empire gave cultural autonomy to religious groups. Quebec in Canada has been demanding treatment as a distinct society. If Islamic law in Nigeria risks discriminating against non-Muslim Nigerians, language policy in Quebec risks discriminating against English-speaking Canadians. There is a built-in asymmetry in the Canadian federation when one province can give the French language special status while the rest of the country is primarily English speaking.  The French language is the "Sharia" of Quebec.[20]

            Comparable asymmetry exists in the Indian Federation in which the de facto status of the Hindi language differs between Northern states and Southern states, although both Hindi and English are dejure national languages.  Can the Ashanti be treated as distinct asymmetrically in the new Ghanaian constitution?

            The United Kingdom, Ghana’s former imperial ruler, virtually invented asymmetry as a constitutional order.  Scotland has had its own law, its own currency and more recently its own regional assembly under Tony Blair since the 1990s.  On the other hand, Northern Ireland had a separate regional assembly long before either Wales or Scotland. As for England, it has no separate regional assembly distinct from the national parliament of the whole country. In short, the United Kingdom has never tried to have symmetrical constitutional arrangements for its main constituent regions (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).[21]

Our African paradigm here can still be Nigeria. Is Nigeria -- like China before it -- heading for a system of "ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS"?  Could Nigeria be half secular and half theocratic?   Zamfara in Nigeria in the twentieth century had turned to Islamic law.  Scotland much earlier had turned for guidance to Roman law, as developed by the jurists of France and Holland.  The legal practices and judicial institutions Scotland were not based on Roman law, but there was considerable infusion of Roman principles into it.

            Like Zamfara, Scotland not only had a separate legal system from the rest of the country; like Zamfara, Scotland also declared allegiance to a different religion.  Zamfara in the twenty-first century had turned to Sunni Islam; Scotland continued its allegiance to a separate Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) from 1707.  A separate Scottish church and a separate Scottish legal and judicial system have continued to the present day, although Scottish law has borrowed a good deal from English law in more recent times. Alongside the constitutional asymmetry, some degree of national integration was taking place among the constituent regions of the United Kingdom.  The whole country was getting Anglicized and "Britishized" into a relatively coherent whole.[22]  Similarly, the decision of Zamfara, Kano and other Northern states in Nigeria to go Islamic need not be incompatible with the wider process of Nigerianization and national integration.  Similarly, an Ashanti treated asymmetrically distinct could still be compatible with nation building.

            A less enduring asymmetry was the ban on alcoholic drinks in the history of the United States.  Initially prohibition of alcohol was by individual states.  The first state law against alcohol was passed in Maine in 1850, and was soon followed by a wave of comparable legislation in other states. This was followed by two other waves of laws at various state levels.[23]

            Meanwhile, a campaign for alcoholic prohibition at the Federal level had been gathering momentum.  A constitutional amendment against alcohol needed a two-thirds majority in Congress and approval by three quarters of the states.  Such a constitutional change was ratified on January 29, 1919, and went into effect on January 29, 1920, as the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States' constitution.[24]

            Just as the Sharia in Nigeria can only work where there is popular support for it, the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States only worked where public opinion was genuinely for temperance and against alcohol.  Prohibition at the federal level created resentment among those states which were not against alcoholic drinks, and in large cities in the United States where alcohol had long become a way of life.[25]

            Bootlegging emerged as a new kind of crime -- the most dramatic embodiment of which was Al Capone and his bootlegging gang (illicit alcohol underground) operating from Chicago.  Prohibition at the federal level created more problems than it solved.  In less than fifteen years the United States was ready to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment.  In February 1933 Congress adopted a resolution proposing a new constitutional amendment to that effect.  On December 5, 1933, Utah cast the 36^th ratifying vote in favour of the Twenty-first Amendment.  At the federal level alcohol was legal again.[26]

            A few states in the Union continued to be "dry states", and chose to maintain a statewide ban.  But the disenchantment which the Federal-level prohibition had created adversely affected attitudes to temperance even in those states which had once led the way in favour of prohibition.  It is arguable that prohibition at the state-level might have lasted much longer if the original asymmetry (some states for and some states against) had been respected and allowed to continue.  The Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment was a pursuit of national symmetry in American attitudes to alcohol.  The Eighteenth Amendment sought a premature national moral consensus on alcohol -- and thereby hurt the cause of temperance in the country as a whole.  By 1966 virtually all the fifty states of the Union had legalized alcoholic drinks -- though some preferred that drinking be restricted to homes and private clubs rather than be served in public bars and saloons.

            More recently in Africa and the United States there has been the debate about the death penalty. In a federation like the United States or Nigeria, do different punishments for the same offense in different states violate the principle of "equal protection before the law"?  Saudi Arabia has been known to put to death even a Princess on charges of adultery. One of the principles the American judicial system continues to share with majority opinion in the African world is the acceptance of the death penalty. 

            In Kenya the law and the courts have been willing to impose capital punishment, but the President has been reluctant to carry it out.  The judiciary passes the death penalty, but the executive branch allows a de facto stay of execution.  In Ghana three former Heads of State were executed in 1979.  This was a higher rate of regicide than almost anywhere else in Africa.

It is in the nature of federalism in countries like the United States that some laws be state laws and some be federal enactments.  Therefore some offenses would be state offenses and others federal felonies.  The state offenses are bound to differ from state to state.

            But can there really be "equal protection before the law" when a citizen can be subject to the death penalty in one state and have a light sentence in another state for the same offense?  In reality a similar asymmetry has been persistent in the United States.  First, there is the fact that the death penalty has been abolished or ceased to be carried out in some American states and not in others.  Texas is the leading executioner-state in the Union; Massachusetts has no death penalty at all.  New York State had no capital punishment when Mario Cuomo was Governor, but has now reinstated the death penalty under Governor George Pataki. However, juries are reluctant to impose the death penalty.

            Even more controversial are the following twin-questions:  Can the death penalty be applied to mentally retarded offenders?  Can it be carried out on young offenders whose crimes were committed when they were still minors?  Some states have said "YES" to both questions -- "kill them!"  Surprising as it may seem, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that it was perfectly constitutional to execute the mentally retarded or young offenders whose offenses were committed when they were minors. In Penry v. Lynaugh (1989), the Court ruled that execution of a “mildly to moderately retarded” person did not violate the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment); and in Stanford v. Kentucky (1989) the Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment did not prohibit the death penalty for a defendant who was 16 or 17 years old at the time of committing the crime. [27]

            Twelve years later, in the year 2001, the issue of executing the mentally retarded is back before the U.S. Supreme Court with the case of a convicted killer whose mental capacity is that of a seven year old.  The U.S. Supreme Court had previously said it was constitutional to execute this very offender, but new considerations have brought the case back to the Court.  No ruling has yet been made.[28]

            Behind it all is a nation still divided on the death penalty with some states upholding it and others rejecting it as "cruel and unusual punishment.” It seems almost certain that the United States will abolish the death penalty before most of Africa does. What we have raised here is the difficult issue of constitutional asymmetry. Is Ashanti the Quebec of Ghana? Can it be treated as a distinct society without endangering the whole Westphalian system in Ghana?[29] 

Conclusion

            We have attempted to identify in this lecture three inter-related processes of globalization – cultural, economic, and political. Ghana’s role in all three has been exceptional.

            Cultural globalization in Africa has been inseparable from cultural Westernization. Why was Ghana the first to be conceded independence by Britain? Did the British feel that the Gold Coast was the most Anglicized of all its African colonies and therefore closer to breaking the civilizational barrier?

            Within less than five years of Ghana’s independence Willy Abraham was elected a Fellow of All Soul’s College, Oxford, the most sacred and the most British of all Oxford colleges. Later on, another Oxford man, Kofi Busia, actually presided over Ghana as Head of State. No other former British colony has felt more directly the shadow of the British establishment as Ghana had done in its early years. Indeed, Queen Elizabeth II even confided in Kwame Nkrumah when she was heavy with her second baby –“I am pregnant, Mr. President”- long before it was announced to the world. And Nkrumah was made a member of the Queen’s Privy Council. In the early years of Ghana’s independence the British felt they had created an African England:

Winds of the world give answer

They are whimpering to and fro

Who would know of England

Who only England know?

             In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia had launched the paradigm of sovereign states and sovereign nations. But for over three hundred years Europe believed such a paradigm was not appropriate for African people. The Law of Nations was supposed to apply only to civilized peoples – and Black Africans were deemed uncivilized.

            It was Ghana, led by Nkrumah, Danguah and others who broke through this civilizational barrier and made it possible at last for a Black country to be entitled to sovereignty regardless of Christian credentials. The extension of the nation-state system to Black societies was a form of political globalization.

            But the same sovereignty which politically globalized Ghana helped to economically marginalize the country. In 1957 Ghana and South Korea were approximately on the same level of per capita income, with good economic prospects for both countries. By the beginning of the 21^st century South Korea had become the 12^th industrial power in the world – while Ghana was in danger of being marginalized into the ranks of the poorest societies.[30]

Nkrumah had one answer – the nation-system for Ghana alone was not enough. The same Nkrumah who had struggled so hard to break the civilizational barrier of sovereignty for Ghana was soon involved in a struggle for giving up that sovereignty for the sake of wider continental unification. “Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else will be added unto you.” Did Nkrumah mean the political kingdom of Africa rather than the sovereignty of Ghana alone?

But humans do not live by state structures alone. The challenge to the nation-state in Ghana came not only from above [seeking continental unification] but also form below [maintaining the autonomy and traditions of Ashanti]. We have used the Ashanti here as a special case study.

            Both Nkrumah and the Ashanti were right. Nkrumah recommended continental unification partly in order to arrest Africa’s economic marginalization. The Ashanti have insisted on autonomy and tradition partly to put limits to cultural globalization. Nkrumahism has been a quest for Africa’s empowerment. Ashanti traditions have been a quest for Africa’s authenticity.

            Africa will need both empowerment and authenticity for the next civilizational breakthrough – the breakthrough of genuine Re-Africanization of Africa in spite of the forces of globalization.

END NOTES