Decolonising the African Renaissance

Introduction.

The ongoing efforts to develop and reclaim the rightful place of an African Philosophy within the global context, especially within the aftermath of a universalising colonial project of domination and control, has moved from the abstract production of knowledge to congeal into a fully-fledged philosophical, political and economic movement by Africans to re-appropriate control over the right to “define for themselves who they are and who they should be” (Mbeki, 1998), but which broadly still rests with the ex –colonial powers of the West  and which is realised through the irresistible imperative towards globalisation based on the metaphysical narrative derived solely from the European experience.

This movement of thought and political will has a long history of dialectical engagement, stemming from the visionary articulation by Cheikh Anta Diop in his 1948 essay “When Can We Talk of an African Renaissance?”

The dialectical process of renewal /reclamation, gained impetus as the continent emerged from the period of formal colonialism in the 1960`s, and intellectual giants ranging from Senghor who saw the Negritude movement as essential to an African Renaissance, to Nkrumah who argued for a new “African personality” and a new “consciencism”.

With the emergence of an apparent resolution of the last colonial conflict in Southern Africa in the 1990`s and the emergence of Nelson Mandela as a new icon of an African Renaissance, the dialectical impetus of an African Renaissance was renewed and was most famously elaborated into a critical and urgent philosophical, political and economic project, by then Deputy President of the South African Republic, Thabo Mbeki, through his “I am an African” speech.

In “Globalisation and African Renaissance”, MF Murobe seeks to propose that the ethical values enshrined in Ubuntu provides an alternative ethical value system which cold underpin the movement away from the self-interest of western neo-liberal politics and economics which produces inequality and indebtedness and which “cannot bring about the common good.”, towards a “global consciousness” of interrelatedness and a global ethics  in which we realise that “our existence depends on the well-being of the whole”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 674)

In this essay we will briefly consider the key elements of Murobe`s proposal and critically consider its validity within the unfolding landscape of globalisation as a hegemonic imperative driven by Western philosophy, politics and economics.

Interrelatedness and neo-liberal economic practices.

Murobe begins his proposal by accepting as a given the existing reality and continuing imperative for the world to globalise and that all that remains for us to do is to engage with this reality as either Afro-pessimists or Afro-optimists. Murobe dismisses the Afro-pessimistic view and posits instead that the only way to an African Renaissance is through the social, economic and political regional integration of African states. (Murobe, 1998, p. 671)

Murobe shows that the globalisation imperative which connects us in new ways and which implies an increased related and relatedness,  is closely interlinked to a neo-liberal economics which because of the systemic inequality that it creates, is “no longer able to control the powers of the nether world which he has called up by his spells”[1]. The roots of this dilemma according to Murobe are to be found in what he calls the “conviction” (alluding here to the almost religious dogmatism that accompanies such conviction), that “self-interest and altruism need to be held in balance, with self-interest being the dominant value”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 673)

Murobe contends that self-interest and altruism are incompatible and leads to an unresolved moral conflict and this “reveals that the doctrine of self-interest is actually built on fallacious grounds”.

Murobe delves extensively into the dialectic and proposed moral conflict between self-interest and altruism and laments the Darwinian natural selection on which it is based.

In considering self interest in terms of international relations, Murobe attempts to show that National self-interest cannot lead to solidarity at the global level and that if globalisation means that we are increasingly related and interrelated, then it becomes “nonsensical to talk of national interest apart from the global implications of this interest”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 673)

If it is correct that we are increasingly related and interrelated, Murobe argues, that then it is perhaps correct that “instead of talking of National interest, we should perhaps talk of global interest so that we might be able to come up with a global ethics.” (Murobe, 1998, p. 673) in which the “present dualistic economic and political system should be substituted with a another, more holistic economic model”. (Murobe, 1998, p. 676)

To the criticism that an African  moral outlook is incompatible with economic development and that the concept of Ubuntu teaches Africans to evade responsibility,[by hiding] behind the collective decision of the tribe , Murobe argues instead that  a “proper understanding of responsibility should be that which sees the individual`s well-being as immersed in a web of relationships”, rather than as a “human being as a biological entity who pursue his or her own interest for his or her own survival”.   (p.680)

In making the case against cultural vindicationists, which Murobe argues suffers from a “logic of subsumptive rationality” in which reality is treated as a constant, Murobe argues that if we see globalisation as implying relatedness and interrelatedness, then we should account for change and becoming and challenges the cultural vindicationists to go beyond cultural self-vindication. (P.682)

 In order to do this Murobe suggests that the “problem that needs to be re-evaluated is that of ethnicity”(p. 684). The problem of ethnicity is seen both as a legacy of Western colonialism`s “ethic of self” pitted against the collectivity of the colonised, but also as one in which African politicians use it as a tool to achieve and control political power. (p. 685)

Murobe argues that in order to overcome this dilemma,  it calls for a vocational politics in which the politician sacrifices his personal good for the common good, rather than a professional politics which is motivated by the survival of the individual politician. (p.685)

Some reflections

While Murobe makes a case for the need to realise an alternative philosophical, political and economic model with which to challenge the unrestrained creep of the global hegemony of a Western Eurocentric metaphysics, underpinned by an economic system premised on the metaphysics of natural selection and survival of the fittest, and on which basis, those who are currently at the top of the pyramid will ensure their survival while those at the base of the pyramid  are “endangered species”, Murobe unfortunately does not provide a sufficiently viable theory for how this is to be achieved.

Murobe does not for instance factor into his considerations, the issue of power and privilege and the distortion that it imposes on the theoretical considerations. Murobe leaves very little room to consider how diametrically opposed world views such as the “ethic of self” and that of “collectivity” would evolve within a dialectic in which the power differentials between the two are grossly distorted in favour of the former.  Murobe indeed discounts such a dynamic when he claims that self- interest and altruism are incompatible and leaves us with the impression that we are left with a Manichean choice between self-interest and collectivism. This dualism displayed by Murobe seems to be in direct contradiction to the claims of relatedness and interrelatedness that Murobe wishes to propose.

In fairness Murobe does realise the problem of dialectical power, when he proposes that in order for African states to attempt to challenge the dominant metaphysis of the “ethic of self” that African states would need to pool their resources in order to stand a chance against what could be described as an imperial hegemony[2].  

However Murobe seems to suggest that Africa requires a political renaissance before it can consider an economic one. In this assertion, Murobe assumes firstly that a renaissance or renewal would be a sufficiently robust mechanism to address the fundamental conflict of interest between a dominant Western hegemonic paradigm of the ethic of self and the resurgent African paradigm of Ubuntu.  

And secondly Murobe assumes that “professional” politics as an arena of power and privilege is open or susceptible to moralistic calls without the collective involvement of the community, collective.

Both these assumptions present themselves as Utopian visions couched within the current imposed Western Paradigm, rather than as viable philopraxis informed by Africans and defined by Africans for themselves.

In the first instance, the assumption that renewing a political system without considering the origins of the system and its contextual relevance and applicability as well as its design and intention to the African experience is bound to result in an analysis that is not sufficiently grounded in the African experience and as such would struggle to present itself as an African solution, Rather, the charge could be made that assuming the current imposed Western liberal democratic systems are merely in need of renewal is fundamentally at odds with Murobe`s own understanding of what is required, namely the substitution of the present dualistic economic and political system with another.

In the second instance, Murobe falls once gain into the trap of developing his theory within the confines of the broad paradigm of Western metaphysics of the “ethics of the self” when he proposes that it is indeed only the Big Men who make history and that it is the politicians who must bear the moral responsibility of ending it.

Murobe again encounters here the contradictions inherent in his argument when he concedes the very argument he vehemently argued against when claiming that “a proper understanding of responsibility should be that which sees the individual`s well-being as immersed in a web of relationships”. By arguing that it is only the politicians who should take responsibility Murobe inadvertently reverts to the argument he refuted  by suggesting that the individual is the key actor within society and by so doing dilutes the role and responsibility of the collective, indeed the very foundation of his argument,  in bringing to fruition the solution he proposes.

Conclusion

The idea of an African Renaissance has been an ever present intellectual, political and economic imperative for a continent that has suffered some of the worst excesses of Western Colonial domination.  Despite the contentions for or against a Renaissance, De-colonisation, or Revolution, every effort to further develop, problematize and analyse what this task entails must be welcomed and appreciated as a necessary step towards producing our own knowledge, reclaiming our rightful place in the community of the world and in defining for ourselves who we are and who we should be.

The relatedness and interrelatedness of this project often means that our paradigms will merge and collide, swirling in the warm life giving ocean of knowledge production and progress. It is understandable then that we will mix our metaphor’s and confuse our arguments in the process.   

The thesis proposed by Murobe is an important contribution to the post-colonial debate about how the underdeveloped world, and Africa in particularly, should approach the project of untangling and decolonising its philosophy, politics and economics from the shackles imposed by past colonial powers.

The shortcomings in the theory, particularly those highlighted above, in which theories and philosophies are constrained and subsumed by the colonial world view, should serve not as reasons to dismiss the thesis, but instead should act as sites of philosophical engagement which could provide greater clarity to the tasks that must be accomplished.

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[1] Murobe quotes Marx to illustrate this point. Pg 673

[2] "Hegemony" is an indirect form of imperial dominance where the hegemon (leader state) rules subordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. Given the anomalous nature of the philosophical challenge faced by Africa and other post-colonial states as well as the constricting nature of control employed by economic powers, the term imperial hegemon seems useful to denote the underlying power dynamics.