Feature Article of Saturday, 1 March 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyones head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children(Amilcar Cabral).

A fool is a wise mans ladder (A South African Proverb).

This is not to say China, like the West, does not benefit from Africa by supplying arms to pariah regimes in Africa, Sudan and others, further adding to the balkanization of the African world. It is to underscore why the research focus of our institutions should be morally expansive and ideologically progressive, pushing through and beyond the concrete narrowness of ethnic, racial, or national trivialities. Peter Tosh also asked that real criminals in society should be clearly identified by the powers that be rather than their merely pontifying about crime. This is a very good question. Who are the real criminals in the dehumanizing enterprise of the non-Western world, particularly of the African world, we may alternatively pose in his behalf?

However, the real criminals may as well include the Eurocentric leadership of the African world, enemies of the African worlds progress on matters related to development, growth, democratization, economic sustainability, and self-reliance. Tosh also said the attainment of equal rights and justice should constitute the moral prerequisites for peace (See Equal Rights). That also means its the moral responsibility of Afrocentric researchers to smoke out these sheepish Africans leaders, their unscrupulous and shadowy patrons, from their Eurocentric carapace and throw them at the devouring feet of the roaring tigerish masses. But why do we go hungry when Africa has vast expanse of land part of which she leases to Western multinationals and Asians? Why do we import petroleum products when Africa is awash in natural gas and other petroleum products?

Why do we face energy problems when the equator cuts through Africa like a hot knife driven through a solidified bar of butter? Why do we import Western-made chocolate products when Ghana and Ivory Coast count among the worlds largest producers of cocoa beans? Why do we lack engineers when many of our engineers count among the best in the West (world)? Why do we lack health professionals when many of our nurses, doctors, pharmacists, psychologists, and psychiatrists count among the best in the West (world)? Why do we lack philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, sociology, English, history, and engineering professors and researchers when many of our people in these disciplines count among the best in the West (world)? Progressive African culture should be part of the totality of institutional or organizational exercise.

What is culture? The generally accepted meaning of culture is that its the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of people or human beings and transmitted from generation to another, writes Bennie A. Khompa, adding: It includes, according to Sekou Toureall the material and immaterial works of art and science, plus knowledge, manners, education, mode of thought, behavior and attitudes accumulated by the people both through and by virtue of their struggle for freedom from the hold and domination of nature. We also include the result of their efforts to destroy the deviationist politics, social systems of domination and exploitation through the productive process of social life (See Khompas The African Personality). Interestingly, Khompa shows through his brilliant and powerful essay that thought culture may appear alike in all societies, in fact, it is not universal.

He, therefore, employs the conceptualization of African Personality, a theory advanced by the likes of Nkrumah and Nyerere to buttress his case. Then again, culture has a language dimension and therein lies moral demands for cultural relativism. For instance, Prof. Daniel L. Everetts influential work calls Chomskyan Universal Grammar into question (See Everetts Language: The Cultural Tool, and Dont Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle; see also Robert Lowies Culture & Ethnology, Donnellys Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, and Roger L. Blackburns 2011 study of the Universal Periodic Reviews). Among other important conclusions that can be drawn from these works is the fact that there is nothing called cultural universalism. Nkrumahs progressive ideas are still very relevant to our contemporary civilization.

In other words, culture is relative. And culture is not static. Change is the only constant in life, as some prefer to put it. Therefore, the changes we introduce in our cultural thinking should positively address Africas pressing needs. This is precisely why the theory of Afrocentricity eschews uncritical copying of non-African ideas. Indeed, Molefi Kete Asante has advised us to always make sure, first, we have progressive African ideas firmly in place, then second, we use that as the evaluative foundation upon which other progressive ideas from without should be raised (See Decolonizing Our University, international conference held in Malaysia, 2011). These questions directly lead to the political economy of brain drain, political instability, and lack of opportunities for intellectual independence and growth, among others, in some parts of the African world. Consequently, an Afrocentric organization should try to answer these questions without ideological or sociopolitical partiality.

The rest is here:
A Moral Imperative For Organizing (ll)