WORLD POLITICKING: A political Dilemma of the African Identity Revisited

What is the African identity?

Scholars have not really addressed this issue, yet, this is the crippling factor of African politics and politicians. Is the African identity what Tom Mboya describes as African Values? He says that these values are "the proven codes of conduct in the African societies...that has conferred dignity on our [African] people and afforded them security regardless of their situation in life.”[1] In search of an African identity, African leaders like Nkrumah forgot that it was human beings that made the nation, and not the materialism that the leaders succumbed to. I have wondered what it would have been like, if African leaders did not rebellious jump to Socialism as a means of governance... At the time of independence, they were still in the state of euphoria of being free. The urgency of the creation of postcolonial states did not give the African people enough to understand that they were free. Instead, they were pulled into a system and forced to act a certain way with or without their consent. In a way, they had moved from one colonial rule, to another, only that this time, it was by their fellow Africans. Nyerere used forced to get some of the peasants into the communal villages, and burnt any private holdings that they had. Any opposition to the one man-one party state was met with violence. Instead of the African people being free, they had to face dictators who demanded loyalty or death.

A major mistake was in idolizing pre-colonial African societies. Nyerere assumed that an egalitarian system would be ushered in without conflict and that in time; every member of society would soon learn the value of communal work. This assumption turned out to be false because Nyerere did not envision the “massive peasant opposition to Ujamaa, nor the failure of communal methods of production and consumption.”[2] Like Nyerere, the leaders did not pay attention to the created the liberal laissez-faire system that had been left behind by the Europeans. Those who recognized it, tried to crash this system by becoming dictatorial and crushing any individual interests that would take precedence over the community.

This idolization failed to realize that even without the European materialism, money, ideas, and values, Africa had never been perfect. By recapturing the spirit of Africa, these leaders would have had to start from scratch. They would have to face the tribal rivalries, droughts, and hostilities among families and the imperfect governing systems that embodied this “African spirit".
Humanity, dignity in being part of a family, being proud of one’s origins, integrity, and a strong past- those are the traits of an African identity. Community is just a setting that allows all these characteristics can be practiced. It seems that African leaders have forgotten what pre-colonial african society was like, and more than that, they have misinterpreted the society and used this "blinded" vision as their propaganda to steal from their own people.

[1] William H. Friedland., and Carl Gustav Rosberg. 1964. African Socialism: 251

[2] Fatton, The political ideology of Julius Nyerere: 15