In
his article ‘The African Renaissance’, Prof. Herbert Vilakazi says: “We
are talking about a process we as Africans should start, aimed at putting Africa
back on her feet, having fallen some four centuries ago. The fall of Africa was
occasioned by the African slave trade, that is, by the invasion of Africa by
European merchants and powers aimed at capturing millions of able African men
and women to be slaves in North and South America, and in the Caribbean Islands.
The 16th and 17th and 18th enturies was a period in Western Europe of the rise
of capitalist civilisation and of a market economy based on the transformation
of all types of property into private property.
The African slave trade called for a moral and intellectual justification, and
that justification was racism against the African, and against everyone who bore
African physical features. As the German scholar, Frobenius put it: "The
Negro was turned into a semi-animal."
This horrible experience, and its justification, became lodged in the psyche of
Western civilisation and its people -and this psyche is still a major problem in
our time.
In the process, Africa was denied the status of a civilisation, similar in
status to Indian civilisation, Chinese civilisation, Western civilisation,
Islamic civilisation.
Africa was said to have no civilisation of her own, nor a unique history of her
own. The noted English historian of civilisations, Arnold Toynbee, wrote in his
A Study of History: "It will be seen that when we classify mankind by
colour, the only primary race that has not made a creative contribution to any
civilisation is the black race." Countless Western scholars, not to mention
the average person, are of this view.
These are merely expressions of the racist confusion and distortion of facts
regarding African culture and civilisation which resulted from the African slave
trade and the conquest of Africa by Europe.”
I would like
to contest Prof. Vilakazi’s statements on ‘slavery’ and ‘civilization’
by quoting from British philosophers and historians. It is a sad historic fact
that about three million slaves were shipped to western colonies and Europe from
Africa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the words of Dunoyer,
“the economic régime of every society,
which has recently become sedentary, is founded on slavery of the industrial
professions. In the hunter period
the savage warrior did not enslave his vanquished enemy, but slayed him; the
women of a conquered tribe may be carried off as wives or slaves.
At later stages of man’s development, slaves were used on the lands to
produce food so that slavery seemed to be a universal and inevitable
accompaniment in history.”
The slave
trade was well established in Europe and in the Arab world hundreds of years
before Africa was discovered and white slaves were used. But that was the imperfect world that existed at the time.
It would be wrong, however to place the focus only on Europe, as the
African slave trade with Arabia was of similar if not greater proportions.
Even after the West abolished slavery, Arab countries continued with this
atrocity. Little was known of the
methods by which the slaves were obtained, or of the raids and burning of
villages and wholesale depopulation of large regions to supply slaves to the
Mohammedan markets in the East, not to mention the demand for Africa itself. The export of slaves from East Africa to Arabia, Iran, and
India had been a lucrative trade for centuries until it was finally stopped by
Britain in 1845. Even as recently
as 1953, several Saudi’s went to West Africa posing as Moslem missionaries and
invited thousands of Africans on a pilgrimage to Mekka. On arrival the pilgrims were arrested for entering the
country without visas and were sold as slaves. In the late 1950’s there were
between 500,000 and 700,000 slaves in Arabia.
But slavery,
as practiced in Africa, was even more horrendous and still continues on a large
scale, even to this day. On 6
March 2002, the French TV channel TF1, reported in its main news bulletin how an
estimated 15 000 children, abducted from Mali with promises of a better life,
were sold as slaves to cotton plantations in the Ivory Coast.
I still
cannot come to grips with the question of how a handful of slave traders could
capture up to a hundred or more able-bodied men at a time and march them over
hundreds of kilometers to the coast. Was the psyche of the Africans such that
they could so easily be intimidated into submission?
Was collusion with family members, who made a few bucks out of selling an
unwanted cousin or brother perhaps a factor? Why did the local Africans co-operate with the slave traders?
This aspect casts a shadow over the morality of the Africans themselves.
Now
coming to the question of civilization: Arnold Toynbee’s ‘A Study of
History’ is a monumental work based on Toynbee's thesis that history reflects
the progress of civilizations or societies rather than of nations. It is a
comparative study of 26 civilizations in world history, analyzing their genesis,
growth, and disintegration. According to Toynbee's hypothesis, the failure of a
civilization to survive was the result of its inability to respond to moral and
religious challenges, rather than to physical or environmental challenges.
Whilst the
slavery period must have been a traumatic period in Africa’s history,
Toynbee’s hypothesis dictates that it will be a mistake to take for granted
that such an occurrence caused Africa to dislocate a once proud civilization, or
to prevent it from developing a civilization of its own.
Vilakazi becomes guilty of mixing present-day political rhetoric,
frequently heard at the recent Durban Conference, with his regurgitated history
of Africa, and comes to a confused conclusion that it is the West that destroyed
African civilization or prevented Africa from developing one.
In so doing, he distorts history to suit a rhetorical argument.
Part of his
confusion is that he does not seem to be clear on what he means by ‘culture’
and ‘civilization’. D.G.
Mandelbaum regards civilisation to be “a
kind of culture that includes the use of writing, the presence of cities and of
wide political organisation and the development of occupational specialisation.
A civilization is a culture, usually maintained by a large population
over a considerable period.”
Other
scholars prefer to use the two terms neither as synonyms nor as antonyms, but as
a class of phenomena, culture, and a subclass of it, civilization.
The two therefore are not synonymous.
As an English word, the content of the word ‘civilization’ was
derived from an English perspective. It
sounds preposterous to redefine its meaning in African terms or to accuse
English scholars as racists so as to ascribe an African meaning to that concept.
Mandelbaum
says that the “use of writing is a
convenient clue for identifying civilization because in the known cases, the
introduction of writing into a culture so improves cultural transmission and so
enhances the availability of knowledge as to effect and change all else in the
society or culture. Similarly the
maintenance of cities and the specialization of occupation make available to a
people more effective energy and wealth than they collectively possessed
before… Once an economic basis is therefore available, the possibility is
open, as it it not otherwise, for the development of civilization.”
Toynbee
is quoted to have said: “I do not
believe that civilizations have to die, because civilization is not an organism.
It is a product of wills.”
As
seen from a Western perspective, and according to this description of
civilization, Central, East
and Southern Africa cannot claim to have had a civilization.
It was only when the first Europeans or Arabs arrived, that true cities
were built and the written word introduced.
An exception may be the Yoruba, of West Africa, whose tribe numbered
hundreds of thousands, who maintained cities and specialists, but lacked writing
and some other appurtenances such as public works, which usually accompany
civilization. Pre-colonial
African civilizations are therefore mutually exclusive concepts.
Vilakazi
asks: “When we speak of China, India,
Japan, or the West, as a civilisation, what do we have in mind? What is a
civilisation? We have in mind a complex of culture, language or languages, a
religion or religions, a world-view, a pattern of historical experience, a
certain technology and manner of using that technology, an identifiable pattern
in architecture, art, music, poetry, literature and dance, a certain body of
knowledge, science, medicine, values, a certain cuisine and manner of dress and
general habits, etc. A civilisation is all these things and more, as long as
they form a set, like a set of pots.”
Prof.
Vilakazi’s statement: “I must stress that this is a
most serious problem in this era of democratisation, when the majority of
society, the non-Western African people, and the non-Western culture of the
majority, are supposed to be the motive power and guide for the future
development of African societies.”
But others
maintain that it is not the majority that is supposed to guide the future
development of African societies, but the creative minorities in their midst.
What happens when this tiny creative minority is squashed or caused to flee? Ayn
Rand's "The Fountainhead"
envisages a rapid decline for the rest of society should this minority withdraw.
This theme was also of great interest in the ancient world, in which
civilisations rose and fell according to how they harnessed their creative
element.
Vilakazi
continues: “A wide gap exists between
Western-educated sections of society, on one hand, and the principles and
patterns of African civilisation, on the other hand. Knowledge of the principles
and patterns of African civilisation became lost in the consciousness and mental
set of African intellectuals, not to even speak of White, Indian, Coloured, or
Arab intellectuals.”
With his
‘principles and patterns of African civilization’ Vilakazi probably refers
to the intricacies and charm of indigenous African culture, as practised by the
Negroid communities of Africa and not to the culture of the other indigenous
communities, after nearly 400 years of assimilation with the African continent,
such as Arabs, Indians, Coloureds or Whites, who “…are
attempting to place our society on the tracks leading to the West: they seem
intent upon creating a Western society on African soil.”
Vilakazi then
makes this startling remark: “The most
difficult challenge to Whites, Indians, Coloureds and to educated Africans, is
to change their mind-set, which is largely Western, and to be willing to go to
ordinary African people in rural and semi-rural areas, to learn from these
ordinary African people the principles and patterns of African civilisation.”
He then
expands as follows: “This country needs
to undergo a cultural revolution. I am talking, first and foremost, of Whites,
Indians, Coloureds, and educated Africans making a conscious, massive, heroic
effort to imbue themselves with the spirit and knowledge of African culture,
African traditions and African civilisation. An enormous cultural revolution is
necessary in this country.” One
cannot help but to detect an element of cultural chauvinism is his statement.
He wants an enormous ‘cultural revolution’, an unfortunate choice of
words, recalling Mao Zedung’s failed attempt at social engineering in China,
which cost millions of lives.
One can
hardly imagine hordes of Whites, Indians Coloureds and educated Africans
descending on villages to go and discover the ‘patterns of African
civilization’, when they, as the creative minority, are already busy building
a real African civilization, day by day. This
creative minority is indeed synthesizing Western civilization with several
African cultures, a unique culture and civilization adapted to the realities of
Africa.
Vilakazi then
continues to call for a few more revolutions, namely, an Agricultural, and
industrial and even an educational revolution.
He then embarks on a track into the mysterious area of Western industry
and immediately loses himself:
“Our industrialisation is faulty. The essence of industrialisation is the
development of the capacity to design and produce machinery. Because of the
wastefulness and economic plunder inherent in our peculiar white supremacy, this
did not occur in South Africa. What we call industrialisation is often the
assembling of machine-parts which are imported from abroad.
As a result, there is hardly any machine-tool industry in our country, which is
crucial. This had implications for our education system, in the failure to
incorporate applied mathematics, applied physics, chemistry, etc., in our
curriculum, which is proper foundation for a machine-tool industry.
Essentially, our curriculum has little or no relevance for the real
development needs and development strategy of the country, leaving aside the
issue of the incorrectness of our
development strategy, as it is not focussed upon the need to develop the
capacities of the overwhelming majority of the society, the African people, who
are the people who shall move this country forward.”
One shudders
to think that such muddled thinking could influence policy. Atlantis is a huge
exporter of engines and engine parts. The
body components of some cars are pressed nearly entirely in South Africa. Our
engineering fabricating industry is renowned for its quality work.
Vilakazi’s often-used
refrain “… the African people, who are
the people who shall move this country forward,” is a naked attempt at
arousing African fundamentalist sentiments to be admixed to the core of our
economy, obviously a closed book to him. It is the creative minority that will move the country
forward, as it has done in every country in the past.
I can only
conclude that Vilakazi’s frequent statements that ‘Whites,
Indians, Coloureds and educated Africans’ are out of touch with ‘African
civilization’, means that they are
disqualified to be true Africans. I also conclude that he targets those
communities in his African Renaissance strategy for a mental transformation to
embrace African civilization, (culture?). Is
it not as thoughtless as Mao Zedung’s closure of all public schools during
China’s cultural revolution? Can
his ‘African civilization’ really be the panacea for the African Rennaisance
project? Would it not be a better idea to follow the route taken by Japan,
China, Malaysia and other successful Pacific-rim tiger countries and to take
what is best out of Western civilization, but to retain one’s own culture?
Africa has many great cultures that can co-exist with Western
civilization.
Professor Vilakazi, let the rural communities be the guardians of Africa’s diverse cultures, and the metropolitan communities the developers of African civilization: That is a formula that may work!
Johann Wingard
7th March,
2002
2413 words