African Political Ideas

POS 204
 Introduction
• Understanding political ideas is mainly rooted in political
action as such there is a close relationship between
African Political Ideas and African Political Action. *
• Origin of African Political Ideas- contentious.
• Eurocentric view- borrowed ideas from outside the
continent, no African political ideas.
• Since the 1960s African Political Analysts and politicians
rejected the Eurocentric view arguing that Africans
expressed their ideas in music, art, sculpture among
other means.
• African analysts like Ndabaningi Sithole, George
Shepperson argued for African political thought
being as old as the human society in Africa despite it
being primitive with ‘illiterate’ people.
• Wherever there are political problems and activities
and people concern themselves with these problems
and activities, there is political thought. As such
thought and politics are of the same age.
• Where there are political problems, which call for
political solutions, thought precedes action.
• Modern African Political thought started with cultural
nationalism* mainly because the colonisation of Africa
was justified in terms of cultural inferiority of the
Africans or the non-existence of culture in Africa.
• African thought therefore came as a way of the
colonised turning the argument of the coloniser against
them, arguing that they had a culture that had to be
taken into account in colonial rule.
• Cultural nationalism in that sense was a plea by the
colonised for acceptance by the coloniser as a cultural
man rather than
 Content of African Political Thought
• Major aspects include;
- Humanism
- Decolonisation
- Liberation
- Unity
- African Socialism
- Self- Releiance.
 Originality of African Political Thought

• Before colonial powers there were bitter tribal

wars resulting in domination and subjection of
weaker tribes*.
• Some analysts argue that such fighting meant
that freedom was known to Africa way before
the colonialists came.
• Several arguments have been advanced on the
originality of African political thought; Import
thesis, Cultural Nationalism and Negritude.
 Import Thesis
• Points out that the central argument of historical studies in relation to African
Political Ideas is that nationalist thought in Africa was derived from the
Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary thought that came from abroad.
• Argued that the troubles of Africa result from importing foreign ideas instead
of building upon indigenous ones.
• Hensbroek argues that historical events have been used to understand the
origins of African political thought, for instance the history of anti-colonial
struggles which can be divided into 2;
• 1. primary resistance characterized by African communities revolting against
colonial invasions.
• 2. the civil colonial liberation movements developed within the colonial
context.
• Import thesis is advanced in explaining civil colonial liberation movements
developed in those areas where colonial presence became first established,
West African settlements of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast.
• Analysing the work of African scholars since the 1850s,
the import element can be identified in the development
of Christian abolitionist ideas combined with Pan Negroist
ideas that came to Africa from America with influential
intellectuals like Edward Wilmot Blyden.
• In recent history there are scholars like Nkurumah with his
Marxist inspired nationalism and African Socialism being
influenced by the European idea of Welfare state and
humanist Christianity.
• Some have also argued that African communism and
multi-partyism tend to be seen as foreign imports.
• Hensbroek argues that such views of importation of foreign
ideas can be rejected on the basis that African intellectuals
such as Mensah Sarbah and Casely Hayford made use of
European training and European ideas when beneficial for
their movements.
• He added that the thrust of such movements, the participants
and their political discourse were not European. These ideas
were creative indigenous resistance in their own right.
• For example Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society pushed for
the resistance against colonial land laws, which was purely
African.
• The Africans had their own political systems before the
coming of the white colonialists.
• Casely Heyford identified in his study of the Akan
traditional system, an elaborate division of roles and tasks
between council and the chief which resembles the
separation of powers between the legislature and the
executive in the modern day.
• Hayford noted that in the Gold Coast, there were attempts
by traditional African leaders to establish schools and
compulsory education in the 1870s which was
unprecedented even in European countries at that time.
• Hensbroek concluded that rather than a process of
importing, there was a process of selective appropriation
and re-coining of terms and ideas within struggles and
discourses that were perculiar to Africa.
• Such appropriation is a sign of an open minded and
pragmatic orientation rather than dependency.
• This however does not deny the fact that some political
ideas were wholly imported from outside Africa…. eg?
• These arguments are substantiated by people like J.
Nyerere who always made reference to his ideas being
related to traiditional African values. *
 Cultural Nationalism
• Form of nationalism in which the nation is defined by
a shared culture. It focuses on national identity,
shaped by cultural traditions and by language.
• Cultural nationalism, was used as a starting point in
most African political ideas since colonialism was
justified in terms of cultural inferiority of the Africans
or non-existence of culture in Africa.
• As noted in the introduction, cultural nationalism
was a plea by the colonised for acceptance by the
colonisers as a cultural man.
• The history of the governance systems of different tribal
groups in Africa, shows that Africa had its own political ideas
before the coming of the colonisers.
• Black Africans had viable systems of governance before the
missionaries and other colonising elements came.
• Julius Nyerere argues that Africa had its own type of
democracy, monistic democracy based on egalitarian society
where resources were shared equally.
• The African system of government, for example one
comprising of the King, the Dare and the Headman was a
centralised type of democracy opposed to the Western
pluralist democracy.
• Ndabaningi Sithole, in his Article ‘The African Himself’, discussed
important areas of African systems of life such as philology, slavery
and judicature to illustrate the existence and or non existence of
African political ideas before the European occupiers came.
• Sithole argues that the African way of life showed beyond any
reasonable doubt that there were strong political ideas in Africa, way
before colonisation.
• Sithole focused on issues of absence or presence of freedom and
democracy in his argument.
• It is important to note that the tribal wars that were fought, pointed
to the fact that African tribes deprived each other of freedom long
before white people came to the continent as such Sithole concluded
that freedom was known to Africa since time immemorial.
 Negritude
• Was a black literaty and cultural movement that
existed between the 1930s and 1950s.
• First took shape among French speaking writers,
most of whom were studying in France.
• Senghor, was the leading figure on the Negritude
movement.
• For Senghor, negritude is the whole complex of
civilised values, cultural and economic which
characterise the black people especially the Negro
Africans.
• Negritude can be traced to the shared experiences of
Africans who suffered under slavery and colonialism. It
developed partly as a response to Western views of Africa as
a primitive and savage land and of blacks as an inferior race.
• These views inspired people in the negritude movement to
emphasize positive African qualities such as emotional
warmth, closeness to nature and reverence or respect for
ancestors.
• Negritude came to represent black protest against colonial
rule and assimilation of Western culture and values by
blacks, as it developed.
• In the eyes of the Westerners, exotic civilisations were static in
character and not dynamic. In extreme cases black Africans
were regarded as uncivilised at all.
• The Negritude movement originated from the resistance of
what the white referred to as ‘civilising mission’ as their
justification for colonising Africa
• The British used indirect rule which respected the existing
traditional values and structures as well as reinforcing native
civilisation. The French and Portuguese’s approach was exactly
the opposite as they forced the African people to be
assimilated to European civilisation to the detriment of their
own civilisation.
• This forced approach is what influenced the rise of
Negritude.
• The central objective of negritude is to assimilate
what is positive.
• This supports the views of Senghor who argued
that Negritude should not be perceived and
treated as expressing itself more and more in
opposition to all Western values, rather it should
be regarded as a complementary aspect to human
civilisation.
• Those who are for negritude should be concerned with taking
from western civilisation only those humane values and blend
them with Negron African values.
• In doing this, disciples of negritude will be helping immensely
toward improving universal human civilisation.
• Supporters of negritude question Eurocentric thesis about
African culture being static as monstrous and anti-humanistic.
• They insist that negritude is humanistic as it accepts and
welcomes the complementary values of western culture in
particular as well as the positive aspects and values of other
civilised states.
• Negritude welcomes all exotic values to the extend that they
can be viewed as ingredients in the construction of a human
civilisation that has the potential of embracing all human
kind.
• Senghor, just like Kenyatta believed that colonialism had
resulted in cultural and racial alienation particularly in
former colonies or France and Portugal. He also believed
that cultural alienation transcended all aspects of life and
resulted in social, economic and political alienation.
• The philosophy of negritude only could end this culture of
alienation and re-establish a process of cultural reintegration
with the African culture and all its positive values.
• Senghor predicted that the coming African renaissance
was to be less the work of the politicians than of the
writers, painters, musicians, artists, who in his opinion
excellently portrayed the whole African culture in their
trade.
• At the 1st conference of negron writers and artists in
Paris in 1956, Senghor openly expressed his views
about the primacy of African culture when he said that,
‘we want to liberate ourselves politically in order to
justly express our negritude throughout black values.’
• For him political liberation was a necessary
pre requisite for cultural liberation therefore
he denied that culture is subservient to
politics, arguing that African politicians have a
tendency of ignoring culture to make it an
appendage of politics.
• Culture should be viewed as the basis and aim
of politics, since it is the very texture of
society.
• Senghor’s theory of negritude reaffirms strongly
the dignity of traditional Negro African culture
blended with those positive humanistic values
found in Western culture to produce what he
referred to as civilisation of the universal, thus
maintaining its humanistic foundation.
• He however warned that assertion of one’s
negritude does not and should not be allowed
to mean or inspire black racism against whites.
• Senghor’s ultimate goal was to blend all the
positive aspects of all civilisations to produce a
universal civilisation that is humanistic.
• He argued that it was only through the
resolution of contradictory elements that
progress can result.
• Both Negro Africans and the Westerners
should contribute to the final construction of
the universal civilisation.
• Broadly negritude’s precoccupation was;
- The artistic enunciation of African cultural
values
- The evocation of an African heroic past
- The denunciation of the ills of colonialism
- The acceptance of and pride of being black
- The rejection of Western domination
- Denunciation of Europe’s lack of humanism.