Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T08:17:42.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Difficulties of Cultural Emancipation in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

For a long time ‘emancipation’ in Africa meant solely liberation from European rule. But when 17 African states became independent in 1960 and when from 1956 to 1966 32 countries finally attained national sovereignty, the continent, in part, emancipated itself from this type of colonial rule. Only in Southern Africa is it impossible to speak of emancipation in international legal terms. This state of affairs has engendered a strong sense of solidarity among independent African nations vis-à-vis the ‘unresolved’ area of the continent, as reflected in every conference of the Organisation of African Unity, as well as in many United Nations resolutions. However, it soon became clear to those who equated emancipation with legal sovereignty, with governments run by Africans with national flags and national anthems, that true emancipation must mean something else.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 65 note 1 See Greiffenhagen, Martin (ed.), Emanzipation (Hamburg, 1973).Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 Kant, Immanuel, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ [1784], in The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kant's moral and political writings (New York edn. 1949), p. 132.Google Scholar

page 66 note 1 Marx, Karl, ‘On the Jewish Question’ [1843], in Early Writings (New York edn. 1964), p. 26.Google Scholar

page 66 note 2 Fanon, Frantz, Les Damnés de la terre (Paris, 1961),Google Scholar later translated and published as The Wretched of the Earth (London, 1967).

page 66 note 3 See ‘Neo-Colonialism’, in Voice of Africa (Accra), I, 4, April 1961, p. 4.

page 66 note 4 Nkrumah, Kwame, Neo-Colonialism: the last stage of imperialism (London, 1965).Google Scholar

page 67 note 1 Lemberg, Eugen, Nationalismus (Hamburg, 1964), Vol. I, p. 117.Google Scholar Cf. Vaillant, Janet G. ‘Dilemmas for Anti-Western Patriotism: Slavophilism and Négritude’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XII, 3, 09 1974, pp. 377–93.Google Scholar

page 67 note 2 Other countries, notably Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, knew far earlier groups of ‘educated Africans’ during the second half of the nineteenth century who fought against cultural imperialism. For example, the Mfantsi Amanbu Fékuw was formed in Cape Coast in 1889 because, as J. Mensah Sarbah put it, the founders ‘dissatisfied with the demoralising effects of certain European influences, determined to stop further encroachments into their nationality’-Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana, Vol. I,Google ScholarThe Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), p. 150. See also Wauthier, Claude, L'Afrique des Africains (Paris, 1964);Google ScholarGrohs, Gerhard, Stufen afrikanischer Emansipation (Stuttgart, 1967);Google ScholarJuly, Robert W., The Origins of Modern African Thought (London,1968);Google Scholar and Geiss, lmmanuel, The Pan-African Movement translated by Keep, Ann (London, 1974).Google Scholar

page 68 note 1 See the autobiography of Gué, Lamine, Itinéraire africain (Paris, 1966).Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 Fanon, Frantz, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris, 1952).Google Scholar

page 69 note 2 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, La Communazité française impériale (Paris, 1945), p. 71.Google Scholar

page 69 note 3 Scnghor, Léopold Sédar, ‘Der senegalesische Weg zum Sozialismus’, in Afrika-Forum (Munich), 9/10, 1970, p. 353.Google Scholar

page 69 note 4 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, Négritude und Humanismus (Düsseldorf, 1967).Google Scholar

page 69 note 5 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, ‘Die Wurzeln der Négritude’, in Afrika Heute 1961, Jahrbuch der Deutsehen Afrikagesellschaft (Köln, 1962), p. 102.Google Scholar

page 69 note 6 See Grohs, op. cit. p. 187.

page 70 note 1 Kamphausen, H., ‘Kritische afrikanische Stimmen zur Négritude’, in Grohs, Gerhard (ed.), Theoretische Probleme des Sozialismus in Afrika (Hamburg, 1971).Google Scholar

page 70 note 2 Markovitz, L., Léopold Sedar Senghor and the Politics of Négritude (New York, 1969), pp. 45–6.Google Scholar Similar criticisms are made by Franklin, A., ‘La Negritude, réalité ou mystification?’, in Presence africaine (Paris), XIV, 1953, p. 287.Google Scholar

page 70 note 3 Ouologuem, Y., Le Devoir de violence (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar

page 71 note 1 Mphahlele, Ezekiel in Transition (Kampala), IX, 1963, p. 7.Google Scholar

page 71 note 2 For a critique of négritude, see also Grohs (ed.), Theoretische Probleme des Sozialismus in Afrika; Kumerloeve, Arnd, Négritude und afrikanische Kultur (Hamburg, 1971);Google Scholar and Tibi, B., ‘Romantische Entwicklungsideologien’, in Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik (Cologne), Nos. 5 and 6.Google Scholar

page 71 note 3 Hennebelle, Guy (ed.), Les Ciridmas africains en 1972 (Paris, 1973).Google Scholar

page 71 note 4 Amin, Samir, L'Afrique de l'ouest bloquée (Paris, 1971).Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 See, for example, van den Berghe, Pierre L., South Africa: a study in corfiict (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).Google Scholar

page 72 note 2 Mphahlele, Ezekiel, The African Image (London, 1962), p. 25.Google Scholar

page 72 note 3 Ndebele, Njabulo, ‘Black Development’, in Black Viewpoint (Durban), Sprocas Black Community Programme, 1972, p. 26.Google Scholar

page 73 note 1 Mphahlele, op. cit. p. 36.

page 73 note 2 Ndebele, loc. cit. pp. 22–3.

page 73 note 3 See Zahar, Renate, Kolonialismus end Entfremdung, Zur politischen Theorie Frants Fanons (Frankfurt, 1969),Google Scholar and Gendzier, Irene L., Frantz Fanon: a critical study (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

page 73 note 4 Black Review, 1972 (Durban), Sprocas Black Community Programme, pp. 40–2.

page 74 note 1 See ibid. for one of the first surveys of the cultural activities of self-aware black South Africans.

page 74 note 2 Gordinier, Nadine, ‘The Novel and the Nation in South Africa’, in Killam, G. D. (ed.), African Writers on African Writing (London, 1973), p. 52.Google Scholar

page 74 note 3 See also Buthelezi, Manas, ‘Der Platz des Missionars in suedafrikanischen Kirchen’, in Margull, H. I. (ed.), Keine Einbahnstrassen (Stuttgart, 1973), p. 73.Google Scholar

page 74 note 4 See, for example, Apartheid andthe Church (Johannesburg, 1972), Sprocas Black Community Programme.

page 75 note 1 See Grohs, Gerhard and Tibi, B. (eds.), Zur Soziologie der Dekolonisation in Afrika (Frankfurt, 1973).Google Scholar

page 75 note 2 Reprinted in Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Unity (Dar es Salaam, 1967), pp. 162–71.Google Scholar

page 75 note 3 Compare the critique by Koll, M. in Grohs (ed.), Theoretische Problems des Sozialismus in Afrika, p. 555.Google Scholar

page 75 note 4 Irele, Abiola, ‘The New Realism in African Literature’, Jahn Symposium, University of Mainz, 04 1975.Google Scholar

page 75 note 5 Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Socialism (Dar es Salaam, 1967).Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 Lemberg, op. cit. p. 4.

page 76 note 2 See, for example, Whiteley, William, Swahili: the rise of a national language (London, 1969);Google Scholar and Mkelle, M. Burhan, ‘Kiswahili in the Age of Full Commitment’, in East African Journal (Nairobi), 07 1972, p. 27.Google Scholar

page 76 note 3 See Ranger, Terence O., The Recovery of African Initiative in Tanzanian History (Dar s Salaam, 1969),Google Scholar and Kimambo, I. N. and Temu, A. J., A History of TanzaniaM (Nairobi, 1969).Google Scholar

page 77 note 1 See Nellis, John R., Theory of Ideology: the Tanzanian example (London and Nairobi, 1972), p. 192.Google Scholar

page 78 note 1 See Grohs, Gerhard, ‘Kulturelle Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse’, in Afrika Heute (Bonn), II, 1971, p. 29.Google Scholar