Pan-Africanism, development, and democracy in global Africa for the new millennium demands exceptional leadership. In this essay, I examine the typology of leadership in global Africa and trace the challenges for future leadership in global Africa. The emergence of a new style of leadership is critical not only for global Africans, but also for a world confronting globalization and complexity on an unparalled scale.1
A Typology of Leadership
The history
of leadership in Africa has stood on eight pillars.2
Were they eight styles of command or eight categories of commanders?
At the time of independence there was a lot of discussion about charismatic
leadership. This discourse was greatly influenced by the man who
led the first Black African country to independence - Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana. He himself was a charismatic leader with considerable
personal magnetism.3 I first
met him in New York in 1960 and fell under his spell. Nnamdi
Azikiwe was also a charismatic personality, but his magnetism waned after
the civil war in Nigeria (just as Winston Churchill's charisma waned after
World War II for different reasons).
I also happen to think that
Idi Amin Dada of Uganda had a lot of charisma, which enabled him to survive
in power for eight years until a foreign army (Tanzanian) forced him out.4
Idi Amin (whom I knew well) was a brutal ruler who nevertheless captivated
a substantial following, both at home and abroad. A more positive
charismatic figure was Malcolm X (Malik El-Shabazz) of the African Diaspora.
I met him in New York in 1961.
A mobilization leader
is another category. Nkrumah tried to use his charisma for mobilization,
but in reality Nkrumah was not a particularly successful mobilization leader
in Ghana after independence. On the other hand, Julius K. Nyerere
in Tanzania was both charismatic and mobilizational. He succeeded
in arousing the masses to many of his causes. Gamal Abdel Nasser
in Egypt was also both charismatic and mobilizational from the Suez crisis
in 1956 until his death in 1970. The most impressive mobilization
leader in the history of Black America was first Marcus Garvey and secondly
Martin Luther King Jr. Louis Farrakhan astonished the world
by mobilizing the Million-Man march.5
A reconciliation
leader seeks areas of compromise and consensus from among disparate points
of views. Nigeria is a difficult country to govern. So far
mobilization has not worked for long. Reconciliation as a style of
leadership is often essential. Both General Yakubu Gowon (who led
the Federal side during the civil war) and General Abdulsalami Abubakar
(who provided a transition between tyranny and redemocratization) were
reconciliation leaders. They attempted to find areas of compromise
in widely divergent Nigerian points of view. Both Jesse Jackson and
Jimmy Carter are reconciliation leaders in world affairs. Domestically
Jesse Jackson has promoted a rainbow coalition less spectacularly.6
A housekeeping style
of political power is minimalist in sense of purpose. There is more
governance and less genuine leadership, more verbosity and less vision.
The Kenyan political elite since the late 1980s has been at best a housekeeping
elite – governing without leading, maintenance without movement.
An African military head
of state, Murtala Muhammad, was the best approximation to a disciplinarian
leader that Nigeria has had. He was assassinated within months of
capturing power from Gowon. Muhammad Buhari was also a disciplinarian
Nigerian head of state. But it is not certain that a disciplinarian
style is what Nigeria's ethnic and sectarian realities can really sustain
for very long.7 But this option
should at least be carefully considered. Was W.E.B. DuBois a disciplinarian
leader - an austere "no-nonsense" figure?
A patriarchal system
is one in which a father figure emerges, using the symbolism of the elder
and the patriarch. Jomo Kenyatta was already about sixty years old
when he emerged from a colonial prison in Kenya to assume the reins of
power. He carried the title of Mzee, meaning both "the Elder" and
"the Old Man". He ruled Kenya from 1963 until he died in 1978.8
Félix Houphouët-Boigny of the Côte d'Ivoire was also
a patriarchal leader who presided over the destiny of independent Côte
d'Ivoire from 1960 until his death in 1993. Among 20th century American
presidents Dwight Eisenhower was a patriarchal figure in this sense of
"father-figure".
Nelson Mandela was both
a reconciliation leader and a patriarchal figure. His long martyrdom
in prison (1964-1990) and his advancing years gave him the credentials
of the patriarch. His moral style in his old age was a search for
legitimate compromises. The latter was a style of reconciliation.
Was Nelson Mandela also a charismatic figure? Or, was he only a hero
in history? That is a more open question.
Ibrahim Babangida played
a patriarchal role in his transition program, but he was too young for
such a role. Babangida's constitutional transition could have made
him Nigeria's Charles de Gaulle, but the experiment collapsed when Moshood
Abiola's election as president was not acknowledged by the military.
Has Africa really produced
technocratic political leadership? The answer is yes - but
rarely at the level of the presidency. Some vice-presidents have
been technocrats or potential technocrats. Kenya has had a series
of quasi-technocratic vice-presidents, some of whom got "debased" in office.
They include Vice-Presidents Mwai Kibaki (distinguished economist), Josephat
Karanja (former University Vice-Chancellor) and George Saitoti (former
professor). Are Thabo Mbeki and Yoweri Museveni essentially technocratic
leaders? Ghana's Jerry Rawlings was part disciplinarian and part
technocratic.
Personalistic political
style in Africa is sometimes indistinguishable from monarchical political
style in our sense. Both entail the personification of power.
But the monarchical tendency goes further and sacralizes authority while
simultaneously seeking to create an aristocratic impact. Hastings
Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was definitely a personalistic political leader,
demanding unquestioning political allegiance. But was he also a pseudo-monarch,
seeking to give his authority a semblance of sacredness? Marcus Garvey
in U.S. history combined mobilization effectiveness with monarchical tendencies.
Richard Nixon was an imperial president of the United States while he lasted.
More literally Jean-Bedel
Bokassa of the Central African Republic tried to create a new monarchical
and imperial dynasty, with himself as the first Emperor. He even
renamed his country "the Central African Empire". He held an astonishingly
lavish coronation that was supposed to be paradoxically Napoleonic.9
A new aspect of the monarchical
tendency which is emerging is the dynastic trend in succession. Laurent
Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been succeeded by his
son Josef Kabila. In Zanzibar Abeid Karume has produced a successor
in his son. In Egypt Husni Mubarak may be grooming his son to succeed
him. In Kenya Raila Odinga is trying to follow the nyayo (footprints)
of his famous father, Oginga Odinga. And in the United States, George
W. Bush as President has succeeded George Herbert Walker Bush.
In addition to these nine
types and styles of leadership there have been a number of pre-colonial
cultural traditions which affected those types and styles. The
most obvious was the elder tradition in pre-colonial African culture, which
has probably conditioned the patriarchal style after independence.
The reverence of Jomo Kenyatta as Mzee (the Elder) in Kenya was
substantially the outcome of the precolonial elder tradition still
alive and well. Nelson Mandela by the time of his release was also
a heroic Mzee. Was Ronald Reagan held in affection by the
American people partly because he was perceived as an elder?10
Also obvious as a continuing
tradition from precolonial times was an older version of the monarchical
tendency. Even African societies which were not themselves monarchical
were influenced by the royal paradigm. Kwame Nkrumah attempted to
create a monarchical tradition in independent Ghana by declaring himself
life-president, by sacralizing his authority with the title of Osagyefo
(Redeemer), by surrounding himself with a class of ostentatious consumers
passing themselves off as Ghana's new political aristocracy, and by increasingly
regarding political opposition to the president as the equivalent of treason
(a monarchical version of intolerance).
Less obvious as a precolonial
conditional factor was the sage tradition. This involved respect
for wisdom and expertise. In the modern period the sage tradition
was rapidly modernized to include the new products of western-style high
schools, and later western-style colleges and universities. In Black
America history W.E.B. Dubois was the supreme sage of the twentieth century.11
The sage tradition from
the post-colonial period has sometimes resulted in promoting among Africans
ostentatious display of Western learning.
Tapping on modernized versions
of the sage tradition a number of founding fathers of independent Africa
tried to become philosopher-kings. They attempted to philosophize
about man and society and about Africa's place in the global scheme of
things. Kwame Nkrumah wrote books and became the most prolific head
of state anywhere in the world. Léopold Sédar Senghor
of Senegal was a more original political philosopher and poet.12
Some leaders attempted to
establish whole new ideologies. Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania inaugurated
ujamaa, intended to be indigenously authentic African socialism.
Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia initiated what was called "humanism".
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had previously written The Philosophy of
the Revolution and subsequently attempted the implementation of "Arab
socialism". Muammar Qaddafy of Libya has the Green Book championing
the third way.
The modernized version of
the Western tradition also popularized the use of honorary doctorates as
regular titles of Heads of State. Thus the president of Uganda became "Dr.
Milton Obote", the president of Zambia became "Dr. Kenneth Kaunda" - just
as the president of Ghana before them had become "Dr. Kwame Nkrumah".
These had been conferred as honorary doctorates, but they became regular
titles used in referring to these heads of state. The sage tradition
was attempting to realize itself in a modern veneer. African presidents
were trying to become philosopher-kings. After his presidency, Yakubu
Gowon took the more difficult route and studied for his PhD at Warwick
University, England.
Finally, there was
the precolonial warrior tradition, emphasizing skills of combat,
self-defence and manhood.13
Did this survive into the colonial period and onwards into independence?
The Mau Mau fighters in colonial Kenya in the 1950s were greatly influenced
by traditional warrior virtues, especially those of he Kikuyu. Even
liberation fighters in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe two decades later, who were using
much more modern weapons, were mainly recruited from the countryside and
were deeply influenced by traditional concepts of the warrior.
But were African soldiers
in regular African state armies part of the continuities of the warrior
tradition? Were the Abdulsalami Abubakars fundamentally still old
warriors? It largely depends upon how much of the old African cultural
values are still part of their attitudes to combat, self-defence and manhood.
General Abubakar himself maintained high standards of integrity.
But sometimes those old warrior values go awry in a modern military ruler.
The warrior tradition went wrong when personified in Idi Amin Dada of Uganda.
Idi Amin was a warrior-soldier who was mis-cast as head of state in the
modern world. He fluctuated between brute, buffoon and genuinely
heroic figure. He courageously took on some of the most powerful
forces in the world - and yet pitilessly victimized some of the most powerless
individuals in his own country from 1971 to 1979. In Idi Amin the
warrior tradition had gone temporarily mad.
Nine types of political
leadership and four precolonial traditions of political culture have helped
to shape post-colonial Africa and Black America in the twentieth century.
The question which now arises is whether the 21st century will either reveal
totally new styles of leadership or create new combinations of the old
styles and traditions and produce better results than Africa and its Diaspora
have accomplished so far.
Here we must turn from styles
of leadership to goals of leadership. We know that the twentieth
century produced very effective leaders of liberation. Nationalists
like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Sekou Toure of Guinea fought against
great odds to gain us independence. There were many other brilliant
liberation fighters all over the continent who helped Africa end its colonial
bondage.
But leaders of liberation
were not necessarily leaders of development. One African leader
after another let Africa down in the struggle to improve the material well-being
of the African people. Only a few African leaders since independence
have demonstrated skills of development on the ground. Considering
what a terribly damaged country he had inherited, Yoweri Museveni deserves
some credit for bringing up Uganda from the depths of despair to one of
the main regional actors in the Great Lakes region.14
It is to be hoped that the coming African Renaissance will produce more
and more leaders skilled in the arts of development. In Black America
Louis Farrakhan has been a leader of development as well as liberation.
His effort to combat drugs and crime and promote economic self-reliance
are cases in point.
In addition to leaders of
liberation (like Mugabe, Sekou Toure, Samora Machel, Zik and
Nkrumah), and leaders of development (like Yoweri Museveni, Louis
Farrakhan, and Habib Bourguiba), has global Africa produced leaders of
democracy? This is a much tougher agenda. The Diaspora has
produced civil rights leaders. South Africa has the most liberal
constitution in the world, and has ended political apartheid. But
the wealth of the society is still maldistributed along racial lines.
The mines, the best jobs, the best businesses, are still disproportionately
owned by non-Black people. Leaders like Nelson Mandela and Thabo
Mbeki have presided over substantial political democratization, but they
have also had to tolerate substantial economic injustice.
In Nigeria Abdulsalami Abubakar
provided a smooth transition from the tyranny of Sani Abacha to a Nigerian
return to democracy and civilian rule. In that democratic return
Olusegun Obasanjo was elected the first Nigerian president of the new millennium.
It was a very promising choice. After all, in 1979 Olusegun Obasanjo
became the first African military ruler to hand over power voluntarily
to a freely elected government. In 1979 Obasanjo had also been the
first Nigerian military ruler to let political power slip from his own
ethnic group without attempting to subvert the process.
However, Olusegun Obasanjo
in the new millennium is still being tested. He is confronted with
Shariacracy in some Northern states, with Yoruba nationalism in some Western
states, and with demands for confederation among some of the Ibgo nationalists.
In style will Obasanjo emerge as a gifted reconciliation
leader? In normative Africanity is he a warrior or a sage?
And in ultimate goals for Nigeria, does Olusegun Obasanjo stand a chance
of emerging as a successful leader of genuine democratization?
We know that Africa has
been served well by leaders of liberation. We are concerned that
we have not produced enough leaders of development. In Nigeria and
elsewhere we are also looking for leaders of democracy. Perhaps Abdulsalami
Abubakar should in the future entrust his political fate to the Nigerian
electorate. They may well elect him to a fuller term as Head of State.
His humility is one of his greatest assets. So was his readiness
to relinquish power voluntarily in 1999.
What about leaders of Pan-Africanism
and wider transnational solidarity? Clearly this is a fourth goal
on top of liberation, development and democracy.
In the new millennium all
those four goals (liberation, development, democracy and Pan-Africanism)
may have to be examined in the context of globalization. Let
us now turn to these dimensions.
What, for example, is the
impact of globalization on relations between Africans and African Americans?
Is globalization bringing them closer together or pulling them farther
apart? Let us first define "globalization" itself. Some
analysts have seen it mainly through the expanding world markets and deepening
interdependence within the world economy. Other analysts have seen
"globalization" through the information superhighway and the Internet revolution.
But it is possible to take an even more comprehensive view of globalization
- regarding it as consisting of all the forces which are leading the world
towards a global village. Globalization is thus the villagization
of the world.15
But for people of African
ancestry is there a globalization within the globalization? Is there
a globalization of the black race within the globalization of the world?
I first coined the term "Global Africa" for the final episode in my television
series The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC/PBS, 1986).16
By it I meant the experience of people of African descent world-wide.
Until the middle of the twentieth century "Global Africa" meant the people
of Africa itself combined with the African Diaspora in the Americas, the
Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East. What has been happening in the
twentieth century is a more extensive globalization of Global Africa -
making the African factor on earth more truly omnipresent and omnidirectional.
Let us explore those forces which have been further globalizing the phenomenon
of Global Africa.
Globalizing the Dual Diaspora
A major
factor has been the dualization of the African Diaspora. There
has been the new migration of Africans to the Middle East, Europe, the
Americas, Australia and elsewhere - the new Bantu migration on a global
scale. In a sense this process has been creating two African Diasporas
- the new Diaspora of colonialism alongside the older Diaspora of Enslavement.
The Diaspora of Enslavement
consists of survivors of the Middle Passage and their descendants.
The Diaspora of Colonization are the survivors of the partition of Africa
in exile and their descendants. The Diaspora of Colonialism
are casualties of the displacement caused either directly by colonialism
or by the aftermath of colonial and post-colonial disruptions.17
As part of the Afro-Atlantic
paradigm, the Diaspora of Enslavement has played a major role in
shaping the culture and lifestyle of the Western hemisphere. Perhaps
never in history has a people in bondage exerted a greater influence on
the culture of their masters.
In the case of the United
States, it is arguable that whatever is uniquely American in the United
States' culture and lifestyle has been due to two very different forces
-- the impact of the frontier and the impact of the Black presence in the
American experience. As Isidore Okpewho has said:
European influences were a "given". Thomas Jefferson and the founding father looked to such European thinkers as John Locke and Montesagne. Euro-Americans liked to think of themselves as heirs to Greece and Rome. But where was the American personality?18
Frederick
Jackson Turner (1861-1932) provided one answer -- the significance of the
frontier in American history. He argued that the American
character was decisively shaped by conditions of the frontier, which evoked
such qualities as "coarseness and strength... acuteness and inquisitiveness,
that practical turn of mind ... restless, nervous energy ... that buoyancy
and exuberance which comes with freedom ...".19
He argued that what was uniquely American in her institutions was not the
Mayflower, but boundless land, and the spirit of taming the rugged frontier.
But Frederick Jackson Turner forgot one thing -- what was uniquely American
was also the Black presence alongside the Frontier. This is the
presence which nurtured American capitalism in its infancy and nurtured
American democracy in its maturation.
In its infancy, American
capitalism needed Black labour. This is the link between America
and the imperative of labour. In its maturation in the twentieth
century American democracy needed the civil rights movement and deracialization
to realize its original concept that "all men are created equal."
It was Blacks who held American democracy accountable to its own ultimate
ideals. The echoes were heard all over Africa in the new Afro-World
Wide Web. The Afro-Atlantic paradigm was at work again. The
civil rights movement fed into the feminist movement.
Young capitalism often needed
young black labour; but more mature U.S. democracy needed more mature Black
stimulation. The World Wide Web has forged U.S. links. The
African presence in America has also deeply influenced music, literature,
food culture, sports and the performing arts.
The distinction between
the Diaspora of Slavery and the Diaspora of Colonialism gets more complicated
with the distinction between (a) African Americans (Americans is the noun
and African the adjective) and (b) American Africans (Africans is the noun).
The great majority of African Americans are a product of the Diaspora
of Enslavement. The term "African Americans" can be either hemispheric
(meaning all descendants of enslavement in the Americas) or national
(meaning all descendants of enslavement in the United States).
American Africans
(or Americo-Africans) on the other hand, are products of the Diaspora
of Colonization. They are usually first or second generation immigrants
from Africa to the Americas. They may be citizens or permanent residents
of Western hemisphere countries.20
What is distinctive about
American Africans is that their mother tongue is still an African
language. (In the case of Americo-Liberians, they could still speak
Liberian English.) Secondly, American Africans usually still have
immediate blood relatives in Africa. Thirdly, they are likely
to be still attached to the food culture of their African ancestry.
Fourthly, American Africans are still likely to bear African family
names, although this is by no means universal, especially among Lusophone
Africans, Liberians and Sierra Leoneans.
On the whole African Americans
tend to be more race-conscious in their political orientation than American
Africans. On the other hand, American Africans might still be more
fundamentally "tribal" when the chips are down.
When does an American African
family evolve into an African American family? When it loses its
ancestral language. The umbilical chord is language. The children
of Professor Nkiru Nzegwu of Binghamton University are still American Africans
(hemispherically) because the children still speak fluent Igbo. On
the other hand, my children are now more African Americans -- their linguistic
umbilical chord has been cut.
But when American Africans
become African Americans, it does not mean other ties with Africa are cut.
Relatives in Africa still abound. Concern for Africa is often still
intact. And the internet is now providing a new network of Afro-Atlanticism,
a new language.
Let me repeat that in the
case of African Americans the noun is "Americans". What kind of Americans?
African Americans. In the case of American Africans, the noun
is "Africans", the adjective is American. What kind of Africans?
American Africans!
Between African Americans and American Africans
We must
focus not just with relations between African Americans and Africans but
also between African Americans and Africa as a continent.
Do African Americans empathize with Africa? If so, how much?
Indeed it is worth examining relations within the United States between
American Africans and African Americans. There are areas of solidarity
in those relations; and there are areas of tension.
When Amadou Diallo was overkilled
by four white policemen in New York City, pouring forty-one bullets into
him, it sent shock waves in the Big City not just among immigrant Africans
but also among African Americans, Latinos and other disadvantaged groups.
Being fellow victims of white racism and police brutality is an area of
solidarity.
And yet many African Americans
feel that Africans generally are not concerned with race enough because
of vastly different historical experiences. Among African Americans
many give race 60% relevance in their lives while Africans give it only
35% relevance. This difference in racial preoccupation can be
a cause of stress.
The majority of Africans
(or American Africans) and African Americans are in support of affirmative
action. This is an area of solidarity. But who precisely
gets the jobs or the educational opportunities?
In reality the greatest
beneficiaries are probably white women, but there is sometimes rivalry
between African Americans and American Africans over jobs, business opportunities,
and other scarce resources. This area of professional and occupational
competition can be a source of stress.
Until recently the great
majority of Africans in the United States were college graduates or in
the process of acquiring college degrees. Many Africans who came
to the U.S.A. came for educational purposes or got their visas and green
cards on the basis of special qualifications. The majority of African
Americans, on the other hand, did not have college degrees. This
introduced a partial class factor between the two groups.
This class factor is now
eroding for two reasons. There are more Africans in the United States
who do not have a college degree and are not seeking one. Secondly,
there are more and more African Americans who are exceptionally well trained
and educated.21 So this difference
is evening out between African Americans and American Africans.
Many African American heroes
are also African heroes. This includes the late Martin Luther King,
Jr., the boxer Muhammad Ali, the basket-ball player Michael Jordan, the
novelist Toni Morrison, and many African American singers. This is
an area of solidarity. Even controversial Louis Farrakhan has millions
of African admirers. On the other hand, African heroes are seldom
well-known in black America apart from Nelson Mandela. Only the staunchest
Pan-Africanists among African Americans have ever heard of Kwame Nkrumah,
Sekou Touré, Julius Nyerere or Wole Soyinka.
African-American lack of
familiarity with African heroes is not really a cause of stress.
It just represents a missed opportunity for further solidarity.
Expanding globalization
may restore the balance. In any case African American heroes get
much more global publicity because they are citizens of a super-power.
It has therefore been easier for Africans in Africa to know about them
than for African Americans in the United States to hear of Julius Nyerere
or Kofi Annan.
Globalization has also witnessed
the rise of Africans to positions of leadership in global organizations.
But here it may be worth distinguishing between Africans of the soil
and Africans of the blood. Boutros Boutros-Ghali , the first
African Secretary General of the United Nations, was an African of the
soil. Kofi Annan, the second African Secretary General is an African
of the blood. North Africans like Boutros-Ghali belong to the African
continent (the soil) but not to the Black race (the blood). On the
other hand, African Americans are Africans of the blood (the Black race)
but not of the soil (the African continent). Sub-Saharan Africans
like Kofi Annan are in reality both Africans of the soil (the continent)
and of the blood (the race). Globalization has given Africans of
the soil and of the blood new opportunities for leadership at the global
level itself.
Even before the two African
Secretaries-General of the United Nations, Africa had already produced
a black Director-General for UNESCO in Paris (the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization). He was Amadou Mahtar M'Bow,
an African of the blood from Senegal. His openly pro-Third World
policies infuriated the United States, which finally withdrew from UNESCO
in 1985 followed by its compliant ally, the United Kingdom. The United
Kingdom returned to UNESCO in 1997 after the sweeping victory of the Labour
Party in the 1996 elections.
With regard to the United
Nations itself, Africa is the only region of the world apart from Europe
to have produced more than one Secretary-General for the world body in
the twentieth century. Europe has produced three Secretaries-General,
Africa two, and the other regions of the world have produced either one
each or none so far.
The International Court
of Justice at the Hague elected in 1994 an African of the soil for its
President - Mohammed Bedjauni of Algeria. The World Bank since the
1990s has had two African Vice-Presidents - Callisto Madivo, an African
of the blood from Zimbabwe, and Ismail Serageldin, an African of the soil
from Egypt. In 1999, Serageldin was also a serious candidate to become
the first UNESCO Director-General of the new millennium.
The Commonwealth (what used
to be called the British Commonwealth) has fifty-four members. Its
Secretariat is at Marlborough House in London. Throughout the 1990s
the Commonwealth had Chief Eleazar Emeka Anyouku as its Secretary-General.
The Chief is an African of the blood from Nigeria. The largest member
of the Commonwealth in population is India; the most industrialized include
Canada, Great Britain and Australia; and the largest black member of the
Commonwealth is of course Nigeria.
Globalization has also permitted
the emergence of Black and African moral leadership on a world scale.
It began with the Nobel Prize winners for peace. Over the years these
have included Ralph Bunche (1950), Albert Luthuli (1960), Martin Luther
King, Jr. (1964), Anwar Sadat (1978), Desmond Tutu (1984), Nelson Mandela
(1994), and F.W. de Klerk (1994).
Ralph Bunche and Martin
Luther King, Jr. were of course African Americans and therefore Africans
of the blood in our sense, but not of the soil. Anwar Sadat and F.W.
de Klerk were Africans of the soil but not of the blood. Albert Luthuli,
Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were Africans of both the soil and the
blood. All three were South Africans, as was F.W. de Klerk.
But we should note that F.W. de Klerk is an "African of the soil" by adoption
rather than by indigenous roots to the continent. Most North Africans,
on the other hand, are indigenous to the continent, although there has
been considerable racial mixture with immigrants over the centuries.
As the twentieth century
was coming to a close Nelson Mandela achieved a unique status. He
became the first truly universal Black moral leader in the world in his
own lifetime. Martin Luther King, Jr. achieved universal status after
his death. When Dr. King was alive half of mainstream America rejected
him and regarded him as a troublemaker. Mandela was fortunate to
have achieved universal moral admiration without having to undergo an assassination
beforehand. No other Black man in history has pulled off such a "pre-humous"
accomplishment (as distinct from a posthumous elegy). In the recognition
of Mandela the human race may have taken one more step forward in the search
for universalized ethical sensibilities.
As for Abdulsalami Abubakar,
he played the role of midwife to the rebirth of Nigeria's democracy.
He is a Nigerian of distinction and an African of historical dimensions.
But he is also a MUSLIM. Let us now turn to Islam in the Black experience.
Between the Global Ummah and Global Africa
Globalization has also forged new
links between Islam and Global Africa, and provided opportunities for African
Muslims to play a bigger role in both the global ummah and among countries
in Global Africa.
When Mahtar M'Bow was the
Director-General of UNESCO he was the highest ranking Muslim of any race
in the United Nations system. Professor M'Bow was an African of the
blood from Senegal, as we indicated.
Ismael Serageldin, as one
of the Vice Presidents of the World Bank in the 1990s, has been one of
the highest ranking Muslims in this International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development. Serageldin is, as we indicated, an African of the
soil from Egypt.
Another African Muslim of
the soil became head of the World Court at the Hague when Justice Mohammed
Bejaouni of Algeria was elected President of the International Court of
Justice in 1994.
The Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) - with its headquarters in Vienna, Austria -
has four African members. These are Nigeria and Gabon (Africans of
the blood) and Algeria and Libya (Africans of the soil). From time
to time these African countries have provided Secretaries-General and other
OPEC leaders, often Muslim.
And of course the Organization
of African Unity, the most important continent-wide organization in Africa,
has had a Muslim Secretary-General throughout the 1990s into the new millennium.
Salim Ahmed Salim is an African of the blood from Tanzania.
There are 1.2 billion Muslims
in the world - but the only continent which has a Muslim majority is Africa.
The total population of Africa is over 700 million of whom over half are
now Muslim.
Nigeria has more Muslims
than any Arab country. When Nigeria is combined with Ethiopia, Egypt
and Congo (Kinshasa) - the four most populous African countries - the Muslim
population is over 180 million.
There is now a significant
number of Muslims in the United States. The population of Muslims in the
United States has begun to outstrip the population of Jews. Of the 6 to
7 million Muslims in the USA 42% are black.22
The Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan is part of that 42% but only
a fraction of it. However, a highly visible fraction.
Between Lugardization and Globalization
The coming
of the Nobel Prize to Nigeria in 1986 was a symptom of yet another major
force—the force of cultural globalization, which has recently coincided
with the digital revolution. We said that globalization consists of the
forces which are leading the human race towards a global village. But since
the 1990s globalization has also carried the seeds of cultural revivalism
– ranging from ethnic resurgence to religious revival. In Northern Nigeria
globalization has converged with the legacy of Lord Lugard, the British
unifier of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914, and the author of the
colonial policy of Indirect Rule.23
Nigeria is the largest concentration
of Muslims on the African continent. It has more Muslims than any Arab
country, including Egypt. Since Olusegun Obasanjo became President in May
1999, some predominantly Muslim states in the Nigerian federation have
taken steps towards implementing the Sharia in their own states, although
the country as a whole is supposed to be a secular republic. This has caused
consternation among non-Muslim Nigerians. Indeed, in Lord Lugard’s own
Kaduna state, this Christian consternation exploded into inter-communal
riots which cost hundreds of lives early in the year 2000. But the momentum
for SHARIACRACY still continues. Is Shariacracy an inevitable part of the
legacy of Lord Lugard's Indirect Rule in the North?24
Many different reasons have
been advanced for the rise of Sharia advocacy and Sharia implementation
in Northern Nigeria. One explanation is that the Nigerian federation is
getting more decentralized, and part of the decentralization is taking
the form of cultural self-determination. In Yorubaland this cultural self-determination
is taking the form of Yoruba nationalism. In Igboland it is taking the
form of new demands for confederation. In the Muslim North cultural self-determination
is taking the form of SHARIACRACY. Did Lord Lugard’s Indirect Rule lay
the foundations of Shariacracy in the year 2000?
Another explanation for
the rise of Sharia militancy is to regard it as political bargaining chip.
As the North is losing political influence in the Nigerian federation,
it is asserting new forms of autonomy in preparation for a new national
compact among the contending forces which Indirect Rule helped to demarcate.25
What has not been discussed
is whether the rise of Sharia militancy is itself a consequence of globalization.
One of the repercussions of globalization worldwide has been to arouse
cultural insecurity and uncertainty about identities. Indeed, the paradox
of globalization is that it both promotes enlargement of economic scale
and stimulates fragmentation of ethnic and cultural scale. The enlargement
of economic scale is illustrated by the rise of the European Union, and
by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The fragmentation of
cultural and ethnic scale is illustrated by the disintegration of the Soviet
Union, the collapse of Czechoslovakia into two countries, the rise of Hindu
fundamentalism in India and Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan, the
collapse of Somalia as a state after penetration by the Soviet Union and
the United States, and the reactivation of genocidal behavior among the
Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi.
Because globalization is
a special scale of Westernization, it has triggered off identity crises
from Uzbekistan to Somalia, from Afghanistan to Northern Nigeria. Fragile
ethnic identities and endangered cultures are forced into new forms of
resistance. Resisting Westernization becomes indistinguishable from resisting
globalization.26 In Nigeria the South
is part of the vanguard of Westernization and therefore the first to respond
to globalization. When, in addition, the South appears to be politically
triumphant within Nigeria under Obasanjo’s presidency, alarm bells are
sounded in parts of the North. This may not necessarily be Northern distrust
of Yoruba or Igbo cultures. It may be Northern distrust of Westernization.
Is Southern Nigeria a Trojan horse for globalization? And is globalization
in turn a Trojan horse for Westernization? Paradoxically a Westerner called
Lord Lugard had helped to nurse Northern distrust of cultural Westernization.
The Sharia under this paradigm
becomes a form of Northern resistance—not to Southern Nigeria, but to the
forces of globalization and to their Westernizing consequences. Even the
policy of privatization of public enterprises is probably an aspect
of the new globalizing ideology. Privatization in Nigeria may either lead
to new transnational corporations establishing their roots or to private
Southern entrepreneurs outsmarting Northerners and deepening the economic
divide between North and South. Again the Sharia may be a Northern gut
response to these looming clouds of globalization.
In Nigeria the Sharia is
caught between the forces of domestic democratization and the forces of
wider globalization. On the one hand, Lord Lugard had helped to protect
Islam in Northern Nigeria—and Islam had been an earlier form of cultural
globalization within a worldwide community of believers. On the other hand,
the legacy of Lord Lugard had helped to heighten Hausa-Fulani identity,
and was therefore a particularizing force. Both Globalization and Lugardization
in Northern Nigeria had therefore contributed to the rise of Shariacracy.
Islam and Global Africa: In Search of Partnership
Beyond
Nigeria and even Africa, why has there been a Black fascination with Islam?
Why is the Muslim population in Global Africa still expanding?
Among African Americans
there have been push-out factors in the mainstream culture, and pull-in
factors in the cultural and ethical attraction of Islam. The push-out
factors in the wider American society have made African Americans feel
excluded or rejected at some levels. The pull-in factors in Islam
and Islamic culture have made some African Americans feel welcome and intrigued.
The push-out factors in the wider American society are rooted in centuries
of racial experience and the sociology of racial exclusion.
The pull-in factors in Islamic
culture offer a paradoxical alternative - both cultural autonomy and religious
universalism for African Americans. Sobriety and prohibition of alcohol
in the Islamic ethos have also fascinated sections of the Black Diaspora
that have been decimated by drug abuse and alcoholism.27
Africa is not only the first continent to have a majority of Muslims;
it is also witness to the largest continuing expansion of Islam.
Conversions to Islam are faster in the Black world than in other sections
of humanity.
Natural population growth
among Muslims in Africa and in the world is faster than among most non-Muslims.
Indeed, the Muslim world as a whole is expected to become 25% of the human
race in the course of the 21st century.
The largest country in population in Africa is Nigeria - which as a
country probably has a majority of Muslims. The second largest country
in population on the African continent is Egypt - which is of course an
Islamic leader.
The largest African country
in territory is Sudan - which is about two-thirds Muslim. Almost
half the members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (a world-wide
53 member inter-governmental Islamic fraternity) are African. Its
Secretaries-General have ranged from the African of the blood Hamid Algabid
(Niger) to the African of the soil Azzedine Larak (Morocco).
Should African Muslims establish
links with Global Africa as a whole? African-Americans are of course
a large African descended population lodged in the most powerful nation
on earth. Perhaps Muslims of all races in the United States should
join forces with African Americans of all faiths in a joint struggle for
both racial justice and cultural dignity. The American Muslim Council
in 2001 held its first joint consultations with the NAACP in Washington,
D.C. The Nation of Islam and other Muslim groups in the country
have also sometimes adopted that coalition principle as a cornerstone of
their national agenda.
There are now at least as
many Muslims as Jews in the USA and probably more - though the Muslims
are more subdued and far less powerful than the Jews.28
And yet, numerically there are more African Americans than there are Jews
in the whole world added together. What Black and Muslim people can
learn from the Jews include the following:
(A) Solidarity in a common cause
(B) Organization and mobilization
(C) Purposeful Manipulation of the political process
(D) Creative Tapping of the guilt complexes of former oppressors
(E) Turning martyrdom into a political resource
This is where the crusade for Black reparations looms into relevance. Jews have received partial compensation for the horrors of the Holocaust under the Nazis in Europe (1933-1945). From the 1990s Swiss Banks have been held accountable for illegitimate gains they might have made from Jewish victims of genocide during World War II. Also, from the 1990s German manufacturing corporations were being forced to set aside billions of dollars to compensate those who had worked under slave-labour conditions during the Third Reich. A relatively few Jewish activist organizations have been able to hold powerful economic giants in Europe liable for compensation for exploited and victimized Jews. What about compensation for hundreds of years of Black enslavement? Or is that a cruel joke?
In Search of Historic Reparations
Globalization
has reawakened the crusade for Jewish reparations. Also getting globalized
is the reparations movement to compensate Black people for hundreds of
years of enslavement and exploitation. The fighters for the abolition
of slavery became known as "abolitionists"; the new crusaders for Black
compensation are the reparationists.29
In 1992, I and eleven others
were sworn in before the Presidents of Africa. We were to constitute
the Group of Eminent Persons to pursue and to explore the modalities and
logistics of campaigning for such reparations. The "swearing in"
occurred in Dakar, Senegal. Reverend Jesse Jackson came to meet with
our Committee to give us moral support. So did Nelson Mandela,
who was at the time newly liberated, but not yet elected President of South
Africa.
We elected Chief Moshood Abiola as Chairman
of our group of 12 Eminent Persons. Abiola was a Nigerian philanthropist
and publisher. He ran for the Presidency of Nigeria - and won in
June 1993. However, he was not allowed to take office. The
army in Nigeria aborted the final election announcement. When he
called a rally and declared himself President of Nigeria, he was arrested
and charged with treason.
In 1996 I saw General Sani
Abacha, the Military Head of State of Nigeria at the time. I asked
him to continue Nigeria's support for the reparations movement and to release
our Chairman of the Reparations Group, Chief Abiola. President Abacha
was gracious to me, but unbending on the issue of Abiola.
Chief Abiola was still in
prison when General Abacha died suddenly in June 1998. Prospects
for Abiola's release improved. Unfortunately Abiola too was suddenly
taken ill and died unexpectedly on the eve of his being released from prison.
The reparations movement received a severe blow because Abiola had been
a man of means committed to the cause. Nigeria lost a gifted leader.
There is a distinct reparations
movement in the United States - including a brave attempt in Congress by
Representative John Conyers to get a bill passed to appoint a commission
to go into the feasibility of reparations.30
Other figures in the United States include TransAfrica’s Randall Robinson,
who wrote a book on the topic in 2000.31
There is also a reparations movement in the United Kingdom. It had
one champion in the House of Commons (the late Bernie Grant ) and one champion
in the House of Lords. Reparations has also been a topic on talk-shows
in the Caribbean. Globalization has given reparations a new momentum,
but just as the abolitionist movement took generations, so will the reparationist
crusade.
Also relevant was President
Bill Clinton's tour of African in 1998 - the first U.S. President to go
to so many African countries, meet so many African leaders in Africa, and
come so near to apologizing for the wrongs that America had done to the
Africans across the centuries.32
Of course Clinton did not offer compensation - nor was he asked for it.
But the next best thing to compensation is an apology for the sins of one's
forebears. Clinton in Africa came near to expressing deep regret,
though not a formal apology.
Under the administration
of George W. Bush can the appointment of an African-American be counted
as a form of reparation if the social mobility is high enough? Is
a Secretary of State of African descent (Colin Powell) a form of reparation?
If Powell one day became the first American President of African descent
could that be counted as a form of reparation? Reparation needs to
be multifaceted. When a descendant of a former slave governs descendants
of former slave-owners, is that a particularly poetic form of reparation?
Conclusion
The National
Summit on Africa is a movement led by distinguished African Americans like
Leonard Robinson, Herschelle Challenor, C. Payne Lucas, and Andrew Young.
The movement seeks to draw greater attention to African problems in the
United States, help to find solutions to those problems, and strengthen
the economic, trade and cultural ties between the peoples of Africa and
those of the United States.
A literal national summit
of leaders of opinion took place in Washington, D.C. in February of 2000.
Meanwhile, members of the movement are in support of the African Growth
and Opportunity Act which went before Congress in 1998 and 1999 - seeking
new linkages between American investors and African opportunities, and
a new equilibrium between where aid ends and trade begins. Congressman
John Conyers Jr. of Michigan has an even more progressive concept, which
aspires to have the African debt cancelled. Congressman Jesse Jackson
Jr. has been even more radical in his sympathies for Africa.
Meanwhile, the physical
African presence in the world is expanding demographically. But the leadership
of Africa’s crusade is beginning to come from sons and daughters of the
continent and Africa's descendants in the Diaspora. In 1996, I was
in Australia as a guest of Australian organizations. My last two
days were reserved for the African community of Melbourne. I addressed
them in the hundreds about their ancestral continent. When I first
visited Australia more than a quarter of a century earlier, such a thing
would not have happened. There would not have been much of an African
presence in Melbourne.
In 1997, I was in Sweden
as a guest of the Nobel Foundation. My official hosts were therefore
Swedes. But on my first night in Stockholm guess who entertained
me to dinner? Afro-Swedes! Africans who are now Swedish citizens.
Also in 1997, I was in Malaysia. At the International Islamic University
in Kuala Lumpur there were male and female African students from different
parts of the continent. The students asked the University for a special
African session with Ali Mazrui, and they got it. I was also stopped
once or twice in the streets of Kuala Lumpur by other Africans (complete
strangers) who recognized me from my television series. In the 1950s
there would not have been much of an African presence in Kuala Lumpur.
What does all this experience
tell us? It tells us that the demographic African presence in the
world is expanding. There are more countries with Black people in
their populations today than there have ever been in history. The
black skin is becoming less and less exotic as a sight in the streets of
the major cities of the world. The globalization of Africanity is
at hand.
As we have indicated elsewhere,
Secretse Khama did live to become President of Botswana with Ruth as the
white First Lady after independence. Africa has had other Heads of
State with white first ladies -- such as Léopold Senghor of Senegal.
And Jerry Rawlings, President of Ghana for two decades, had a Scottish
father. Africa leads the way in racial tolerance. It leads
the way in religious ecumenicalism. Africa has had leaders of liberation.
It now needs leaders of development and democracy. Abdulsalami Abubakar
played his part as a mid-husband to the rebirth of democracy in Nigeria.
The African Diaspora continues
to expand with or without conspiracy theories. The globalization
of the African peoples is struggling to come home. People of African
descent continue to multiply in the most unexpected parts of the world.
Pan-Africanism has yet to catch up with them. To paraphrase the words
of "Global Africa", the final episode of The Africans: A Triple Heritage
(BBC/PBS, 1986):
We are a people of the day before yesterday and a people of the day after tomorrow. Long before slave days we lived in one huge village called Africa. And then strangers came and took some of us away, scattering us in all directions of the globe. Before the strangers came our village was the world; we knew no other. But now we are scattered so widely that the sun never sets on the descendants of Africa. The world is our village, and we plan to make it more human between now and the day after tomorrow.
Notes
1. The many issues that will demand outstanding and ingenious leadership are detailed in Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap (New York : Knopf, 2000).
2. For one analysis of comparative African leadership, see A. B. Assensoh, African Political Leadership: Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius K. Nyerere (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1998).
3. A Weberian discussion of Nkrumah as a charismatic leader may be found in E. O. Addo, Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of Religion and Politics in Ghana (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), especially pp. 22-23 and pp. 99-122.
4. See Gordon Matatu, “The End of Uganda’s Nightmare,” Africa (May 1979), pp. 10-16.
5. For historical overviews of African American leadership, consult V. B. Thompson, Africans of the Diaspora: The Evolution of African Consciousness and Leadership in the Americas from Slavery to the 1920s, (Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2000) and John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the 20th Century (Chicago and Urbana, IL: University of 1llinois Press, 1982).
6. The emergence of the Rainbow Coalition is detailed in Paulette Pierce, “The Roots of the Rainbow Coalition,” Black Scholar 19, 2 (1988), pp. 2-16.
7. These divisions make Nigeria difficult to govern; see Simeon O. Ilesanmi, Religious Pluralism and the Nigerian State (Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1997) and Joseph A. Umoren, Democracy and Ethnic Diversity In Nigeria (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996).
8. For a biography, see Dennis Wepman, Jomo Kenyatta (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985).
9. A portrait of this leader may be found in Brian Titley, Dark Age : The Political Odyssey Of Emperor Bokassa, (Montreal; Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997).
10. Even many young Americans who disagreed with Reagan policies saw him as a slightly misguided “avuncular” figure.
11. For a recent overview of this towering figure in African American emancipation, see Gerald Horne and Mary Young, eds., W.E.B. Du Bois : An Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000).
12. For a biography of Senghor, see Janet G. Vaillant, Black, French and African: A Life of Léopold Sédar Senghor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
13. See Ali A. Mazrui, The Warrior Tradition in Modern Africa (Leiden : Brill, 1977).
14. Politically, Uganda has been involved in the Great Lakes crisis; see The Economist (September 23, 2000), pp. 51-52. Economically, before the intervention, it appeared that Uganda may have good economic prospects under Museveni; see Robert L. Sharer, Hemar R. De Zoysa and Calvin A. McDonald, Uganda: Adjustment With Growth, 1987-1994 (Washington, DC: IMF, 1995).
15. One of the more scintillating accounts of the forces of globalization and its implications is The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1999) by the foreign affairs columnist of the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman. More academic treatments of globalization may be found in Bruno Amoroso, On Globalization: Capitalism in the 21st Century (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: MacMillan, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998) and Robert K. Schaeffer, Understanding Globalization: The Social Consequences of Political, Economic, and Environmental Change (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997).
16. The companion volume is Ali A. Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (London: BBC Publications, 1986).
17. There is a plethora of writing on the African Diasporas. See, for instance, Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod, eds., Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999); E. L. Bute, The Black Handbook: The People, History and Politics of African and the African Diaspora, (London and Washington: Cassell, 1997); Joseph E. Harris, The African Diaspora (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1996); and Michael L. Coniff, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
18. Isidore Okpewho, "Introduction" in Isidore Okpewho, Carol B. Davies and Ali A. Mazrui, eds., The African Diaspora: African Origins and New Identities (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. xiii.
19. Frederick Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, London: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston), p. 37.
20. On recent African immigrants to the United States, see Kofi A. Apraku, African Emigres in the United State: A Missing Link in Africa’s Social and Political Development (New York,Westport,CT, and London: Praeger, 1991) and April Gordon, “The New Diaspora: African Immigration to the United States,” Journal of Third World Studies 15 (Spring 1998), pp. 79-103.
21. According to Census Bureau statistics, the number of blacks with associates, bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees has been steadily rising since the 1980s; see Table No. 308, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997,(Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census) p. 194.
22. See Mary H. Cooper, “Muslims in America,” Congressional Quarterly Researcher 16, 3 (30 April 1993), p. 364.
23. On this important figure in British colonial history in Nigeria, see Dame Margery F. Perham, Lugard (2 volumes) (London: Collins, 1956-60).
24. See Michael Crowder, “Lugard and Colonial Nigeria: Towards an Identity,” History Today 36 (February 1986), pp. 23-29.
25. An overview of the North-South and other cleavages bedeviling Nigeria may be found in The Economist (January 15, 2000), pp. 14-15.
26. One of the influential books in this area is Benjamin R. Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld: How the World Is Both Falling Apart and Coming Together-And What This Means for Democracy (New York: Times Books, 1996).
27. For one treatment of Islam’s interactions with African-Americans see Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997).
28. On the limited political influence exerted by an estimated 6 million US Muslims and the hindrances to their full participation, see The New York Times (October 27, 2000), p. 1.
29. Consult Ali A. Mazrui, “global Africa: From Abolitionists to Reparationists,” African Studies Review 37, 3 (December 1994), pp. 1-18.
30. A report on this effort is in TheNew York Times (July 21, 1994), Section B, p. 10. Not surprisingly, the bill stalled in the Republican-dominated House Judiciary Committee; see The Tri-State Defender 45, 48 (Deember 4, 1996) p. 7A.
31. Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (New York: Dutton, 2000).
32. For an overview of the Clinton visit,
see The Economist (April 4, 1998), p. 53.
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