Draft: October 2001

by Ali A. Mazrui

In this new millennium the forces of globalization are likely to continue, against the background of the meaning of the twentieth century in world history.  As we have previously mentioned, scholars have now interpreted globalization in three distinct ways:[1]

            Our basic thesis in this presentation is that Africa has been central in causing globalization, but marginal in controlling globalization.  We are referring here to globalization in the comprehensive sense -- the villagization of the world.

            Africa in the Annals of Globalization

            Where does Africa fit into this saga of globalization, homogenization, and hegemonization?  We mentioned earlier that the four engines of globalization in history are religion, technology, economy, and empire.  Let us first take the engine of religion.  Pharaoh Akhenaton is widely regarded as the father of monotheism, and it was monotheism that later became the most globalizing of all religious principles.  Was Pharaoh Akhenaton a rasūl (apostle) or a nabī (prophet) or neither?  The Qur'an tells us that God sends a rasūl  to each nation (Qur'an 10:47, 16:36).  Was Akhenaton the rasūl to ancient Egypt?[3] In addition, Moses was born in Egypt.  So in that sense, Egypt is the cradle of Judaism, even if one does not accept the thesis that Moses himself was Egyptian (a thesis made famous in the twentieth century by Sigmund Freud's theories about Jewish identity).[4]  Judaism became another monotheistic tradition born in Egypt.

            If Egypt was the country from which Moses later fled, it subsequently became the country in which the infant Jesus found asylum from the deadly machinations of King Herod.

… the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph [Mary's husband] and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.  Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him." (Matthew, 2:13-23).

            The underlying logic of the story is that without asylum in Egypt, there would have been no Christianity, for the infant Jesus would have been "crucified" in the cradle. Is Egypt therefore the savior of Christianity, another globalizing religion?  If Egypt is the place of asylum for the infant Jesus, what is Egypt's historic destiny for Islam, yet another globalizing creed?

            Egypt represents the first grand clash between Christian power and Muslim power, for it was the first territory that the Arab Muslim armies were able to detach from the Byzantine Empire.  Some would argue that this first blow set in motion a process that culminated in the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim armies several centuries later.  The conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453 by the Turks inaugurated the height of the Ottoman Empire.[5]  The Arab conquest of Egypt also fertilized the flowering of an Islamic civilization on Egyptian soil, one of whose institutions is al Azhar University, a center of learning that has lasted for a thousand years.  Can we describe al Azhar as the first global university, for has it not always attracted students from throughout the Muslim world? These have all been globalizing forces, mainly emanating from North Africa.

We earlier referred to technology as another engine of globalization across time.  Were the ancient Egyptians the first to use technology for grand constructions of eternal durability?  Long before the construction of the Aswan Dam by Soviet engineers in the 1950s, there was the construction of the great pyramids linking the living with the dead.  Ancient Egypt was arguably among the first grand civilizations.  Technology and empire were linked in anticipation of new worlds to conquer.  Much closer to our own day is a different kind of construction in Egypt: the building of the Suez Canal under the direction of the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps.  Hundreds of Egyptian workers died while building this canal, thereby making it not just a product of Western expertise and capital, but also one of Egyptian sweat and blood.  The canal was a major contribution to globalization, since it helped to connect Europe, Africa, and Asia in new ways.  But the canal is also a monument to technology and economy as engines of globalization.[6]

By the second half of the twentieth century, Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser (reign1953-70) saw Egypt as a center of three circles: Arab, Islamic, and African (a triad of cultures).[7]  Egypt had become a bridge across three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe (a triad of continents).  In one way or another, Egypt had nursed four different monotheistic traditions (Akhenaton, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

But Egypt lost control of globalization.  It was central in causing it, but marginal in controlling it.

Migration and Globalization of Labour

            Under compulsion Africa also initiated the globalization of labour without having much control over it.  That was what the slave trade was all about -- the most extensive internationalization of labour ever to have occurred until then.  Millions upon millions of Africans were forced to migrate in degrees to four other continents -- North America, South America, Asia and Europe.[8]

            The slave trade was the first big adventure in the globalization of labour.  The impact also initiated diaspora-formation, leading to the emergence of a global Africa.[9]  Once again Africa was central in the causing of globalization but marginal in controlling it.

            We mentioned that one of the engines of globalization across time was the economy.  Africa as a continent helped to globalize the economy in two contradictory ways.  Firstly, by being a land-mass obstacle to European ships wanting to trade with Asia.  For centuries European ships could not circumnavigate the Cape and get to Asia.

            But why was that a contribution to globalization?  After all, it was preventing trade between Europe and Asia rather than facilitating it.  Africa's role as an obstacle to Europe's access to Asia was a major reason why Europe decided to look for an alternative route westwards across the Atlantic.  Christopher Columbus could only get support for his initial voyages in the hope that he would find a westward route to the East Indies.

            Had Europe found it easier to go to Asia round Africa, the so-called discovery of the Americas might have been delayed for at least another century -- with enormous consequences as to which European power might have colonized which bit of the Americas.  The nature of globalization would have been impossible without the inclusion of the Americas.

            By a happy coincidence Vasco da Gama managed at last to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope at about the same time as Christopher Columbus was exploring the New World.  Both the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic became trade routes.  Africa had helped initiate globalization without controlling it.

            By the second half of the nineteenth century imperialism as another engine of globalization decided to build the Suez Canal across Egyptian territory.  It is true that Western capital and the engineering of Ferdinand de Lesseps were crucial factors in the building.  But both the labour and the territory were Egyptian.  Indeed, hundreds of Egyptian lives were lost in the course of the construction of the Suez Canal through accidents, drowning and shoddy safety measures.

            The opening of the Suez Canal was an important stage in the globalization of trade.  Western capital, Western skill, African lives and African territory built the Canal.  Africa was once again central in helping to initiate globalization, but marginal in controlling it.

            In the days of Kwame Nkrumah, Pan Africanism derived inspiration from the struggle against colonialism, racism and apartheid. In the 21^st century will Pan Africanism be inspired by the twin ambitions of African Renaissance and Black Reparations?

            I and others have written about the African Renaissance in a variety of senses.  But we have almost always focused on the Renaissance of the African continent.  The word “African” in the “African renaissance” has tended to exclude the Diaspora and to focus only on the ancestral continent.

            In 1986, I coined the term “GLOBAL AFRICA”.  I used the term as the title of programme 9 of my television series “THE AFRICANS: A TRIPLE HERITAGE”  (BBC-PBS, 1986).  In this presentation today I return to the term “Global Africa” – meaning the linkages between Africa and her sons and daughters scattered around the world.

Winds of the world give answer

They are whimpering to and fro

And who would know of Africa

Who only Africa know?

I shall discuss the issue of both reparations and the renaissance on the global scale.  The issue of reparations and the issue of Africa’s renaissance meet on two ultimate principles – the redistribution of power globally and the reactivation of skills locally.  The power structure within the world system needs to be redistributed in such a way that Global Africa becomes less marginalized and moves towards becoming a major player.  If willingly promoted by the most powerful countries of the West, this would be both a form of reparations and a contribution to the African Renaissance.

            But in addition skills of the African peoples worldwide need to be reactivated, targeted and enhanced at the local level.  The full creative potential of global Africa may need to be re-kindled.  In part, this may require skill-transfer from the most advanced countries to the less.  This form of reparation could thus enrich the Renaissance.

Three Forms of Reparations

             At a summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1992, the Heads of State of Africa appointed me and eleven others to constitute a Group of Eminent Persons to explore the modalities and logistics of a campaign for Black reparations worldwide.  Our group of 12 members did indeed elect as our chairman Chief Moshood K.O. Abiola, who was subsequently elected president of Nigeria in June 1993 but was prevented from taking office by the military and later imprisoned.  He died on the eve of being released in 1998.

            Our Group of Eminent Persons on reparations elected as our co-chair Professor Mohtar M’Bow, former Director-General of UNESCO.  And we elected as our Rapporteur-General Ambassador Dudley Thompson, Q.C., a distinguished Jamaican jurist and diplomat.  The Nigerian government under President Ibrahim Babangida promised us a preliminary budget of half-a-million dollars to enable us to make a start.

            We continue to believe that the damage done to Black people is not a thing of the past but is here and now.  It lies in the disproportionate Black faces in the jails of America, the disproportionate Black infant mortality rates in the United States, the ease with which a Black man in police custody in London (like a certain Mr. Lumumba) or in Paris (like a 17 year old Congolese boy) can get killed by the police – the cheapness of Black lives from the sadistic streets of Rio de Janeiro to the masochistic streets of Soweto in South Africa.  The damage is here.  And the debt has not yet been paid.

            How is the reparations to be paid?  I have explained that there are at least three modes – these are modern versions of payments of ancient heads of cattle from one tribe to another in the form of restitution.

And why should all the permanent seats of the United Nations Security Council be given to countries that are already powerful outside the UN?  Is there not a case for giving Africa a permanent seat with a veto –not because Africa is powerful but because it has been rendered powerless across generations?  We need to redeem the damage which is here. Moreover, the Security Council of the UN has a big role to play in Africa.

In the 1960s the United States invented the concept of affirmative action – an effort to make allowances for historic disabilities whenever minorities applied for jobs or sought other opportunities.[11]  It was a progressive step towards racial redress and socio-economic justice.

We now need to make a transition from affirmative action to a more comprehensive affirmative action II in the form of reparations.  It is in fact the logical next step after affirmative action I.  Conservatives believe that the next step after affirmative action should be a free play of market forces.[12]  But the bondage of history denies the market autonomy.  Residual racism is an impediment to the market.  We have to move beyond affirmative action to the affirmative action II as a reactivation of the Black peoples the world over. 

            There is a primordial debt to be paid to Black peoples for hundreds of years of enslavement and degradation.  Some of the causes of global apartheid lie deep in global  history.  It may take a generation to win the crusade for reparations – but a start has to be made.[13]  This will be one more aspect of reverse evolution back to ancient ways of settling moral debts between tribes.  This damage is here.  It is time to mend.

Power Sharing and Upward Mobility

            I have mentioned that one possible form of reparations is power sharing in the citadels of ultimate control. Here and in the past I have indeed illustrated power sharing in relation to international institutions which have disproportionate leverage on the fates and destinies of African peoples.

            I have therefore called upon special representation of Africa and the Black world on the governing boards of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  Others and I have also called for a permanent African seat on the Security Council of the United Nations – with or without the veto.[14]

            In this lecture, however, I would like to add another sense of power sharing as a contribution to reparations – accelerated upward social and political mobility for people of African descent within the countries which had previously enslaved or colonized them.

 General Colin Powell has become the first Black Secretary of State of the United States. If such upward political mobility leads on to other instances, then the rise of Colin Powell becomes a contribution towards the payment of American debt of reparations.

            This would become reparations in the sense of sharing power rather than sharing resources.

            But if the rise of Collin Powell leads on to complacency about promoting any other Black to such a high level then Powell’s rise becomes an impediment to the multiracialization of power in the USA, rather than its facilitator. For example the rise of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain became an impediment to the rise of other women rather than a facilitator of the audrogynization of power in Britain.[15]

            If one day Colin Powell does actually become President of the United States, either directly after running himself or indirectly after he first becomes a Vice President and then succeeds upon the death of his President, a Black President of the United States would constitute part of reparations. It would constitute power sharing at the highest level between descendants of slave-owners and descendants of slaves.

            France has had a paradoxical history in relation to its colonies and former colonies.  Africans shared power with the French in Paris more when the Africans were colonials than they do now that the Africans are independent. The late Felix Houphouet-Boigy of the Ivory Coast was a member of the Cabinet in Paris during the Fourth Republic more than once.  African deputies to French institutions in the metropole influenced French political parties and struck bargains with them.  And in 1958, when his country Senegal was still a colony, Leopold Sedar Senghor participated in drafting the Constitution of the Fifth Republic of France.[16] This was power sharing between the master and the subjects at a time when the master was still in complete and dominant control.

            Curiously enough, the independence of Senegal and the Ivory Coast gave more independence to France than to its former colonies.  French institutions in Paris no longer had direct participation by Africans.  Nor were French political parties any longer obliged to wheel and deal with Africans in the French political process.  Paris was politically dis-Africanized.[17]

            But were Dakar (Senegal) and Abidjan (Ivory Coast) de-Gallicized in any fundamental sense?  The Africans lost influence in France, but the French retained power in Africa at least for the rest of the twentieth century.

            But as Africans are now helping France become a bigger sporting power (including winning the World Cup in soccer) will there be a return to African political influence and leverage in Paris?[18]  Will this now come from the African Diaspora resident in France?

            At the moment a Black President of the United States seems more likely in the twenty-first century than a Black President of France, but a Black Prime Minister of France in quite foreseeable – leading on to co-habitation between a white President and a Black Prime Minister.  Such a re-Africanisation of political power in Paris would indeed constitute partial reparations.

            In Britain and the United States there has been some improvement in the representation of Black People in the legislatures.  In Britain this included Bernie Grant, a Black member of the House of Commons who was himself a champion of reparations, and who died recently.  There have also been Black and Asian members of the House of Lords.

            In the United States there is the Black Caucus in the House of Representatives, including Congressman John Conyers, a champion of reparations for African Americans. I personally do not regard representation in the Lower House as a form of reparations.  It is more a symptom of democracy at work.  But a Black Senator representing a whole state is a form of power sharing in the reparations sense.[19]

            And a Black member of US Supreme Court-especially one who is sensitive to Black concerns like Thurgood Marshall – qualifies as relevant power sharing.  There is a problem with Justice Clarence Thomas.  Genetically he is probably more purely African than Thurgood Marshall was.  But ideologically Clarence Thomas is far less Africa-friendly than Marshall was.[20]  It is a genuine dilemma as to whether Clarence Thomas’s presence on the US Supreme Court qualifies as partial reparations.

Was Clinton A Stage Towards Reparations?

            Toni Morrison, the African-American Nobel Laureate, once referred to Bill Clinton as “the first Black President of the United States”.[21]  Bill Clinton’s Presidency certainly did not qualify as reparations, but did his Presidency improve the chances for reparations?

            Why did he appear as the equivalent of a Black President?  The following factors about Clinton were relevant:

• Poor family circumstances from a poor state of the South

• Being briefly brought up by a single parent.

• Ending up with a name (Clinton) other than that of his biological father

• Against all odds, doing brilliantly.  In Clinton’s case, goes to Oxford as Rhodes

• Scholar and later to Yale Law School.

• Having his enemies use sexuality as a method of bringing him into disrepute – as  they had tried with Martin Luther King Jr. thirty years earlier.[22]

            But did the Clinton years prepare the ground for reparations?  President William Jefferson Clinton’s first administration (1992-1996) was disastrous for Africa.  He scrambled out of Somalia as soon as there were American causalities.  He was guilty of criminal neglect of Rwanda amid reports of an impending catastrophe in 1994.  Different decisions by him could have saved thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives in Rwanda.  As for his first Secretary of State Warren Christopher, he never visited sub-Saharan Africa until the tail end of his tenure in office--as contrasted with some twenty visits he paid to the Middle East.

            In general, Clinton’s first administration was a series of missed opportunities in foreign policy, from Bosnia to Liberia.  The United States was a reluctant super power for four years.  The United States abandoned Somalia at the first loss of American lives.

            But there was a dramatic change in Clinton’s second administration (1996-2000).  The replacement of Christopher with Madeline Albright was a major PLUS for Africa.  Secretary of State Albright was better informed about Africa and was far more interested in Africa’s problems.  Her background as United States Ambassador at the United Nations also helped.[23]

            In his second administration Bill Clinton (1996-2000) emerged as the most Africa-friendly president that the United States had ever had.[24]  There was a mood of Afrophilia--affection for Africa.  He traveled more widely in Africa than any President before him.[25]  Was that the first step towards reparations?  He was almost the only US president who expressed concern for Africa in a State of the Union Address.

            Clinton’s administration also started an initiative in skill-transfer-to train African soldiers for a “crisis response” initiative when there was a breakdown of state institutions in neighboring African countries.  An African Center of Security and Strategic Studies was also set up.[26]  Clinton either supported or initiated unique conferences about the African situation.  He and his Secretary of State were highly visible at the National Summit on Africa in Washington DC in February 2000.  The highest-ranking African to address that National Summit was Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi.  The event was an opportunity for President Clinton and President Moi to start rebuilding bridges between the two countries.  It was not yet power sharing, but the National Summit on Africa was a quest for a bigger pro-Africa constituency in the United States.

            A concern for AIDS in Africa made the Clinton Administration turn it into an issue of international security.  For the first time ever the Security Council of the UN addressed a health menace.  Vice President Al Gore presided.[27]       

            Advanced levels of racial democratization may constitute a form of partial reparation.  This involves power sharing at advanced levels of racial equalization.  Under the Anglo-American paradigm Blacks have risen within the liberal rules of the game. A Black Secretary of Commerce in the United States under Bill Clinton or a Black Justice of the US Supreme Court under George Bush Senior were phenomena within the liberal rules of the game.  At such a level of power-sharing, reparations begun.  Clinton accelerated Black upward political mobility.

            In the paradigm of France, Blacks have risen within the cultural rules of the game.  The assimilationist aspects of French culture have historically permitted considerable upward social mobility regardless of color.  At a certain level of power sharing, French assimilative empowerment was partial reparations.

            In the paradigm of the Arabs, Blacks have risen within the genealogical rules of the game. Upward social mobility sometimes comes with upward genealogical mixture.  Of the four Presidents Egypt has had since the 1952 revolution, two presidents had Black African blood.  These were Muhammad Neguib and Anwar Sadat.  In Saudi Arabia there are powerful princes with Black African blood.  This includes Prince Bandar bin Sultan who has been Saudi Ambassador to the Untied States almost for a whole generation. 

            If upward political mobility in the Anglo-American world is by the LIBERAL rules, and in the French world it is by the cultural rules, in the Arab world upward political mobility has been partly by the genealogical rules.  Clinton played his part in promoting Blacks.

The Brain Drain and Skill Transfer

            The second major area of potential reparations is skill-transfer. This is crucial for the African Renaissance.  One of the worst damages inflicted on the Africa people by both slavery and colonialism is the undermining of their capacity to help themselves economically and technologically. Globalization has caught up with this damage.

            Colonialism did build schools and universities in parts of Africa – but these institutions often produced skills of dependency rather than of self-reliance.

            In the new millennium there has been considerable discussion about the digital divide – with Africa on the deprived side of the divide.[28] 

            The group of 7 or 8 industrial nations has embarked on a program of helping poorer countries to digitize themselves.  Japan has allocated a preliminary fund for the computerization of less technological societies.  If digitization and computerization are done in Africa in ways which truly enhance skilled self-reliance rather than new forms of dependency, such digitization of Africa could constitute partial reparations.

            But for the time being there is at least as much skill-transfer from Africa to the West as there is from the West to Africa.  Nigerian analysts have started analyzing their country’s skill-transfer to countries like the United States.[29]

            One of the best-educated ethnic groups in the United States is, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Nigerians living in America.  It is estimated that sixty-four percent of Nigerians over eighteen years old living in the United States have one or more university degrees.

            Half the members of major Nigerian associations in the United States probably have master’s degrees and doctorates.  If these figures are correct, this is skill transfer from Africa to America instead of the other way round.

            On the other hand, it is estimated that Africa spends four billion dollars a year on 100,000 foreign experts.  Sometimes skill transfer from the West Africa is in exchange for capital transfer from Africa to the West.

            When you compare the Nigerian presence in the United States in the year 2000 with what it was like when Nnamdi Azikiwe first arrived in America in the 1920s, the contrast is stark.  When Zik set foot in America in 1924, the number of Nigerians in the U.S. was probably less than ten.  By the end of the twentieth century the number of Nigerians in the United States had risen to a quarter of a million.[30]

Philip Emeagwali, the computer analyst from Lagos, may have been overstating the case, but even his hyperbole is at least worth considering. Philip Emeagwali says:

“One in three African university graduates live and work outside Africa. In effect, we are operating one third of African universities to satisfy the manpower needs of Western nations.  One third of Africa’s education budget is a supplement for the American education budget.  In effect, Africa is giving developmental assistance to the United States.”[31]  Educated  Ghanaians in the United States are fewer than educated Nigerians but the level of qualifications of Ghanaians are equally high.

Yes, there is indeed a skill-transfer – but it seems to be going in the wrong direction.  Former victims are paying knowledge-reparations to former victimizers!

            A debate between Ali Mazrui and Jerry Rawlings in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum in 1998 addressed the Brain drain and its push out factors and the  Brain drain and its pull in factors. Pull-in factors are in the West and other magnet-host colonies; push-out factors are adverse conditions in other places like Africa.

Globalization of Reparations

            While in many areas of globalization, Africa was often a vanguard, there is one area where Black people are the last kids on the block.  This is the area of reparations as a global phenomenon.

            David Horowitz is a neo-conservative American critic of reparations.[32] Horowitz says little about the role of slavery as part of the original foundation of American capitalism.  American prosperity grew out of the convergence of three forces -- European political ideas, the impact of the frontier and the role of Black people in the political economy of the United States. As I said in my First Lecture, Black Americans were there productively at the birth of American capitalism; African Americans were also there in the struggle for the maturation of American democracy.

            By contributing their labour at a formative period of American capitalism, Black Americans helped to lay the foundations of the American economy.  By fighting for their civil rights in the twentieth century, and helping to pull down the walls of discrimination, African Americans were calling upon U.S. democracy to rise and live up to its ideals.

            The damage to the slaves themselves is another area which David Horowitz has preferred to forget.  This includes people who did arrive in plantations in the United States and served as enslaved labourers.  But the damage on slaves includes those who died in transit -- the millions who perished in the Middle Passage.

            David Horowitz more-or-less questions the legitimacy of paying reparations for those who are already dead.  In the case of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, the compensation was paid to the survivors.[33]

            But there are occasions when compensation is not acknowledged as such but is nevertheless reparations.  Why did Western powers support in 1947-48 the creation of a state for the Jewish people?  Why did the West, as they controlled the United Nations, create a state for the Jews?  The whole state of Israel was created as reparations to the Jews for Western sins of commission (like the Holocaust itself) and Western sins of omission (the West turning the other way while the Nazis brutalized the Jewish people).

            Reparations is not always in the form of money.  It can be in the form of territory.  The most spectacular reparations paid to the Jews in the twentieth century were not merely the billions of dollars paid to them; the most spectacular reparations was the creation of the Jewish state itself.

            Unfortunately this territorial reparations was at the expense of somebody else -- the Palestinian people. Kwame Nkrumah was moving towards the  Palestinian cause from 1963 onwards.

            Was Zionism itself a globalizing force -- a variety of Empire?  If so, in what sense was Africa once central to the initiation but marginal in controlling it?

            One of the best kept secrets in Departments of Africana Studies and Judaic Studies was the simple fact that Israel was nearly created in Africa.  At the beginning of the twentieth century the British felt that the Jews were entitled to some kind of compensation for their humiliation in Europe -- but at that time the British intended the territorial price to be paid by East Africans.

            Joseph Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary, approached Theodor Herzl, the Austrian leader of the Zionist movement, and offered him parts of what is today Uganda and Kenya.  Theodor Herzl was interested, and recommended to the Zionist Congress acceptance as an initial home for the Jews.  Fortunately for Ugandans and Kenyans the Jews were hopelessly split over the issue and the deal fell through.[34]

            Zionism as a territorial ambition was nearly consummated in Africa, but not controlled by Africans.

            What would have been the Jewish highlands of Kenya later became the White Highlands of Kenya, reserved mainly for white Gentiles.  Again fortunately for Kenya, the white Gentiles did not come to Kenya in as large numbers as Jews would have done had Israel been created in East Africa.

            David Horowitz argues that many Americans of today should not be made to pay for sins of hundreds of years ago.  When the Zionist Movement shifted its gaze away from East Africa to the Holy land, why were Palestinians of 1948 being made to pay for the tragedy of Jewish dispersal two thousand years earlier?  Indeed, why are Palestinians still paying for two thousand years of Jewish victimization by others?

            Roman Catholics sacked Greek Orthodox Constantinople in April 1204. This was  800 years ago, killing thousands of religious rivals.  The Greek Orthodox Church had been demanding an apology since this Fourth Crusade.  It was not until his May 2001 visit that they got it from Pope John Paul on his visit to Athens.[35]

            David Horowitz is partially right that many African Americans are better off in the United States than they would have been in Africa.  But that is far from the complete story.

            The consequences of slavery are not all in the past.  Many are here and now -- in the deprivations of the underclass, in the disrupted homes and families, in the high levels of drug abuse, in the masochistic levels of internalized violence, in the disproportionate number of Blacks in prison, in the disproportionate number on death row or already executed.

Globalization and Inter-marriage

            Perhaps one of the last frontiers of globalization will be inter-marriage across races, nations and continents. This is bound to be slow since it requires intermingling of populations and considerable improvement in communications. Nevertheless, the question has arisen: Is globalization by intermarriage the only kind of globalization in which Blacks are capturing the leadership?

            Sometimes inter-racial marriage can symbolize racial egalitarianism, but be basically incompatible with Pan Africanism. On the other hand, there may be occasions when inter-racial marriage is a matrimonial expression of Pan Africanism. Children of inter-racial mating may test the egalitarianism of the societies to which they belong.

With a few small strokes of history, Ghana has manifested a number of these major issues of race and mating.

            When Joe Appiah married the daughter of a major British political figure, Sir Stafford Cripps, during the colonial period, the news was sensational.

            After all, Imperial Britain had not allowed an African King, Seretse Khama of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) to marry a white woman, Ruth, if Seretse still wanted the throne. Ghanaian Appiah challenged the Empire into its citadels – seeking out a fair member of the British establishment.

            The world did not know it at the time but Joe Appiah was setting a precedent which was going to be carried to greater daring levels when the Egyptian, Dodi Al-Fayed, started courting Diana, the Princess of Wales in 1997. If a colonial Ghanaian called Appiah could get away with marrying the daughter of a British Minister, could a postcolonial Egyptian marry the mother of future King of England (William)?

            Although Appiah’s marriage was no doubt a union of love, it was widely regarded as a symbol of racial egalitarianism. That was definitely a plus. But since it was not a marriage between two different African countries, the Appiah sensation- through egalitarian – was not Pan-Africanist.

            Kwame Nkrumah’s marriage to Madame Fathiyya, on the other hand, was Pan-Africanist almost consciously. In the ancient days of kings and queens solidarities were forged through Royal marriages, in the new era of regional integration, solidarities can be formed by cross-national marriages – like Nkrumah’s marriage to an Egyptian lady (Fathiyya) and Robert Mugabe’s first marriage to a Ghanaian lady (Sally Hayfron).

African societies accept First Ladies from other countries, or other races or other continents. When Seretse Khama finally became President of independent Botswana, his first lady could at last be white without any problem. President Leopold Sedar Senghor also had a white First Lady (French). His successor, President Abdou Diouf had a First Lady who was Roman Catholic in a country which was 94% Muslim.

We have never had such levels of tolerance in Western history – never a Black First Lady in the White House in Washington or a Muslim wife at No. 10 Downing Street, London, or a person of racially mixed parentage as President of France, in Paris.

            Jerry Rawlings was elected President of Ghana in 1992 and 1996. Rawlings’ father was a Scotsman, his mother a Black Ghanaian. The world has never witnessed a half-Black Prime Minister in power in Canada or Great Britain, or a racially mixed Chancellor in Germany.

            For better of for worse, the most historically important Presidents of Ghana so far have been Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry Rawlings. Nkrumah practiced inter-racial mating; Rawlings was a product of such mating. Nkrumah was the husband in an inter-racial marriage. Rawlings was the child of another such marriage.

            Joe Appiah preceeded Dodi Al-Fayed in courting a partner from the British establishment. Kwame Nkrumah preceeded Diana in their choice of an Egyptian mate.

            But Nkrumah could marry an Egyptian and call one of his children Jamal (as indeed I have after marrying an English woman). But Diana’s choice of an Egyptian carried more ominous implications. Would the future King William of England have had a half-brother called “Abdullah” or “even Nasser”? Would Britain’s King William have had a half-sister called Ayesha or Khadija? Even if the names “Saddam” or Qaddafi” were unlikely to have been borne by Diana’s children with Dodi Al-Fayed, the implications were grave enough to have raised a grave issue. Was Diana another Shakespearean Desdemona, killed not by her own Egyptian Othello, but by an Iago who wanted to prevent the marriage in the first place?

We may never know for certain the causes of that car accident which killed Dodi and Diana in Paris in August 1997. We do know that a Dodi-Diana marriage would have been globalization by intermarriage on a spectacular scale.

            Ghana has been at the center of the globalization through intermarriage in some important ways, culminating in giving the United Nations a Black secretary-general (Kofi Annan) who was married to a Swede.

Conclusion

            As for the two historically most significant Ghanaian leaders, Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry Rawlings, their political records mattered more than their matrimonial background. Nkrumah started as a democrat and lover of freedom and drifted towards authoritarianism. Rawlings started as authoritarian and evolved into a democrat. The two had widely divergent Odysseys.[36]

            Nkrumah had two platforms by which to be judged – the domestic platform of Ghana and the continental platform of Africa as a whole. On balance Jerry Rawlings has primarily one platform by which to be judged – his contribution to Ghana.

            Nkrumah was a great African – so great that when the BBC had a contest in 1999 for the choice of African of the Millenium, it was not Shaka Zulu or Nelson Mandela who got the most votes. It was Kwame Nkrumah.            But with regard to Ghana it is possible to argue that Nkrumah left it poorer than he found it, and less free than he himself had once made it.

            With Jerry Rawlings he stands or falls on his policies for Ghana. It is agruable that he found Ghana unfree, made it even more in bondage – but then remarkably led Ghana’s transition towards democratization. While Nkrumah left Ghana a less open society than he found it, Rawlings left Ghana so far a more open society than he found it.

When Nkrumah was alive his presence on the scene was an impediment to his own dreams. Many African leaders objected to Pan Africanism in the 1960s because they disliked Nkrumah. Today the memory of Nkrumah is one of the greatest assets of the Pan-African movement. Nkrumah’s own name is unifying.

When the high heart we magnify

And the sure vision celebrate

And worship greatness passing by

Ourselves are great.

In Nkrumah greatness passed us by and we did not fully notice it. It took time for the vision to sink in. A son of Ghana touched the African continent briefly – and the African continent has never been the same again.

NOTES