Introduction
TO understand Africa one needs to dig deep into the history and nature of African identity. You have to be clear about what it means to be African; both the hardware and software characteristics of African-hood.
The Notion of Africa
This effort to define Africa would appear a purposeless activity if we consider the logical truth that “everything is what it is and not another thing”. (Wiredu in Wiredu and Gyekye: 1992: 59). Accordingly, it follows that Africa’s identity cannot be about whether Africa is what she is, but perhaps what she ought to be. Wiredu’s position is quite convincing as a starting point: that “individuals, let alone nations and whole continents, do not start wondering whether they are what they ought to be if everything seems to be going well” (Ibid. p.59). True, we would not worry about who we are if all was well. The atrocities and monstrosities of colonialism and its sequels, and their attendant evils make it crucial that Africa goes through soul-searching in order to establish what it ought to be from what it has been made to be by Europe, as shown by the preceding chapter.
We have already illustrated that the received picture of Africa, its depiction by Europeans, has been predicated on the construction of “otherness”, the binary opposition between Europe and Africa, in which the latter is invested with all the evil and primitive attributes, in contrast to the glorious virtues of its counterfoil. Africa has been so perceived in spite of her proven status as the cradle of mankind’s civilisation, in spite of her wealth in peoples and cultures, and even so in spite of the testimony from attested historians that the present world civilisation owes a lot to African civilizations. However, the questions that concern this inquiry are: What is this Africa? Who is this African? And what does this African-ness entail?
According to Ali Mazrui the term “Africa” originated as applying to the north of the continent where it was associated with ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley, the place which is credited as the cradle of human civilisation, and hence the birthplace of the systematic study of an African civilisation. Ali Mazrui identifies this period in African history as 14th century BC. However, the concept of Africa as the continent is known today, crystallised after the 18th century, when it describes both Arab Africa (North Africa) and Black Africa South of the Sahara.
Other researchers attest to the fact that history and archeology confirm that Africa has had a civilisation which extended from Egypt to Angola and from Timbuktu to Zimbabwe. The same research also confirms that this civilisation “consisted of a complex of cultures which in their structure showed a marvelous formal and thematic uniformity to be observed in their [oral] literature and mythologies” (Mabona, quoted in Chivaura in (Eds) Haverkot and Rest: 2007: 229). Chivaura further postulates that the indigenous peoples of Africa share a common religion, philosophy of life and culture. (ibid: 229). These indigenous modes of culture and action have certainly not been totally eclipsed by colonialism, mainly because, thanks to its limited psychological penetration, the populations in the rural interior of the colonised African countries retained large parts of their indigenous world outlook, and therefore can be used as sources from decolonising bearings can be plotted.
Mazrui identifies a further racial dichotomy: the African in a continental sense which includes Arab Africans in the North and the African in racial sense; the latter singling out the sub-Saharan Blacks. The former he calls “the continental African of the soil” and the latter, both “son of the soil and son of Africa’s racial blood”. (ibid: p.12). It is the latter sense that concerns this thesis more. The African worldview here espoused strictly refers to the systematic study of the customs and traditions of the Africans who are the sons and daughters of the soil and at the same time sons and daughters of Africa’s racial blood. Such a view of Africa is shared by Chinua Achebe (1988:92) who argues that this Africa:. . .is not only a geographical expression; it is also a metaphysical landscape -it is in fact a view of the world and of the whole cosmos perceived from a particular position.
Here Achebe insists that besides biological or genetic rootedness, the African identity derives principally from the African sensibility, the African worldview, which in fact should be the subject of history. To this end Achebe shares George Thompson’s challenge to the African artist that:
An African writer must be a person who has some kind of conception of the society in which he is living and the way he wants the society to go. (Cited in Achebe: 1988: 88).
Earlier in the same essay Achebe argues that every literature must seek the things that belong:
Unto its peace, must, in other words, speak of a particular place; evolve out of necessities of its history, past and current, and the aspirations and destiny of its people”. (Ibid p.74)
In a sense Achebe and Thompson argue that the articulation of the African philosophy involves certain imperatives chief among them sharing the internal sensibility of that worldview; and to do so one has to belong to the whole tradition ‘in spirit and in truth’.
Urmilla Bob in (Ed: Chiwome, Mgami and Furusa: 2000) crystallizes the two’s characterization by extending African-ness beyond just the skin pigmentation or geographic location. He states that the term ‘African’ refers
To a heritage, a social creation and personal identity that is rooted in a common origin, struggle and experience (Chiwome et al: 2000:120).
Bob further transcends African-ness by locating it both in the physical and the affective [and placing higher value in the latter], thereby bringing about a special distinction between Blacks and Whites. This distinction leads to the conclusion that it is not so much about the African people and the Western people as it is about “African thought” and “Western thought” (Ibid: 128); a conclusion that places the fundamental difference between the races not in race, but in their perceptions, sensibilities and worldviews as conditioned by their historically determined cultures. This then brings us to an investigation of the philosophy that constitutes the African worldview.
This inquiry discusses two main underlying systems of ideas in which African thought is premised, namely, Afro-centricity and Africa-centredness. Granted, African thought as espoused in the African cultures pre-date these philosophical coinages, but they remain the most representative African theoretical underpinnings to a retrospective, introspective and proactive analysis of Africa’s emancipation from its colonial handshake with Europe and its allies. Both philosophies seek to shake off colonial ways of perceiving the African reality and replace such imposed or borrowed goggles with new local lenses informed by an Africa-centred worldview. Their central concern is, as it were, to move the centre of perception and influence of African affairs back to Africa; to re-privilege Africa with the power of self-determination; to restore its lost glory and role in global affairs.