Afro-Pessimism

By Professor Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D.
The Johns Hopkins University

Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science

I recall some years ago before he died, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) saying that until the continent of Africa was free, Black people nowhere would be free.  Africa, like many Blacks in the African Diaspora, remains the captive of external forces.  Yet, like the figures of Ward Connerly, Clarence Thomas, or Condoleeza Rice, a certain amount of collusion takes place.  Although national flags fly over the capitals of every African nation, suggesting independence and popular freedom, there is much unfreedom, chaos, and despair among the people.  How do we explain or understand the contradictions of African independence today?

There is a good amount of rethinking going on within global African and African-descended communities.  Just yesterday, I was reading Elias Kifon Bongmba. 2006. THE DIALECTIC OF TRANSFORMATION IN AFRICA. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.  He is from Cameroon. He, like many other African intellectuals, is trying to make sense of a growing sense of "Afro-pessimism" that plagues the African continent.  For him, the African crisis is the result of a number of internal factors: the privatization of power by African elites, the pauperization of the state, the prodigalization of the state, and the proliferation of violence.  As solution to these internal contradictions, Bongmba calls for a shift from pessimism to optimism, love and a new humanism.  

We live in tragic times.  Recall, Cornel West's essay on nihilism in Black American communities in his book, RACE MATTERS.  Isn't it similar to the African sorrow songs of Afro-pessimism? However, I am critical of the solely internal gaze that merely blames the victim.  Being hopeless, helpless, and unloved become the major characteristics of this nihilist threat, according to West. Is there another way of looking at the ascent of nihilism in the present historical moment?  Much like Bongmba, West calls for the love of ethic as a solution.  Why didn't he call for whites to end anti-Black racism?  The exclusively internal gaze doesn't challenge European neocolonialism in Africa any more than it challenges white supremacy in the USA.  Please see my critique of West in "Afro-Nihilism: A Reconsideration," in CORNEL WEST: A CRITICAL READER, edited by George Yancy.

In the process, Bongmba mentions the important scholar Mahmood Mamdani's widely read book, CITIZEN AND SUBJECT: CONTEMPORARY AFRICA AND THE LEGACY OF LATE COLONIALISM (1996).  I also would suggest Mamdani's later book, WHEN VICTIMS BECOME KILLERS: COLONIALISM, NATIVISM, AND THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA (2001).  And then there is Manthia Diawara's cultural criticism of contemporary Africa, entitled IN SEARCH OF AFRICA (1998).  All of these studies focus on Afro-pessimism in one way or another.  Self-criticism always is good, but it cannot be the only manner of criticism.  Yet, this is a good bit of what is taking place today.  Many African leaders, particularly military leaders, have seized state power and are wielding it abusively.  But then, power knows no ethics.  Power is about power!  How have African elites gained such power, how do they continue to rule, and in whose interest do they really rule?  In my humble judgment, the analysis of internal contradictions alone won't help to answer these questions sufficiently.

Long before he died, Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah talked and wrote about neocolonialism. In order to resist this reality, he called for something like a united states of Africa--independent states that worked for the collective development of the continent's people.  Perhaps his downfall occurred, as Bongmba suggests, occurred because he attempted to accomplish his aims through the use of a single political party.  OK, so the one-party state has been problematic in Africa.  But then, there also are multi-party configurations.  Conflict, severe conflict, remains.

Way back in the late 1960s, as a graduate student at UCLA (working on an M.A. degree in African Studies), I was interested in the African struggle for independence, its aftermath, and the acceptance of European-carved state boundaries.  The argument among my professors and other white/western scholars was that independent African nations should yield to those state boundaries.  But those state boundaries often went counter to the configurations of African nationalities.  It was said that Africans should yield to those boundaries so as not to give rise to small states that supposedly would not be able to sustain themselves for whatever reason.  But look at Luxembourg in Europe, I shouted to my professors!  I recall thinking that those European-carved boundaries would cause unforeseen contradictions in the years to come. Why?

Well, prior to 1914, there was no Nigeria!  The Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani were all separate nations.  Now, that didn't necessarily mean that there was always peace within or among these nations, but to force them into one state set in motion, after independence, long lasting contradictions and dilemmas.  The Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani, and other nationalities in contemporary Nigeria historically were different people with different cultures, political arrangements, etc., before Europeans arrived.  But sure enough, on the eve of Nigerian independence--actually, Nigeria should have become independent before Ghana--a power struggle began between Yorubas and Igbos over who would rule the Nigerian state.  Yoruba leader, Awolowo, and Igbo leader, Azikiwe, fought it out in the 1950s.  Although independence came, these internal contradictions were not settled.  Then the Nigerian-Biafra war emerged in the late 1960s.  Nigeria withstood the Igbo national challenge, but the contractions only mirrored the dilemmas that would plague Nigeria and other African nations well into the 21st century.

My argument, then, is that the acceptance of European-carved boundaries set in motion a great amount of the present conflict in Africa.  The struggle for power among leaders of opposing nationalities has resulted in the privatization of power within certain nationalist (read "tribal") leaders in opposition to other nationalities (read tribes).  So, there is genocide.  I often wonder what would have happened if the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani, and other nationalities in Nigeria had decided to return the pre-colonial national or independent or separate status.  Suppose the Kikuyu, Luo, Massai and others remained independent or separate after the independence of Kenya?  The question could be pertinent for nations throughout the continent of Africa.  My point is that although present internal contradictions are real, they may have their origins in external forces, which continue to gnaw at the very existence of Africans on the continent and their descendants in the Diaspora.

Just quickly.  Suppose in year 2010 China were to colonize the USA and Canada and then force them into one state?  By 2030, the USA and Canada fight for and win back their independence. Would they remain one state or would they go back to their pre-colonial separate nation-state existence?  What do you think would happen?

Why are we trying so hard to forget the long history of Africa?  We don't have to be adherents of Afrocentricity to reject misconceptions of Africa and to value the significance of African antiquity—of Africa before the coming of European imperialists and colonialists.  Memory establishes identity.  And like the blues, memory can help us remember those who did us wrong!

Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer
Department of Political Science

Coordinator of Programs and Undergraduate Studies
Center for Africana Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
Greenhouse 107
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: 410-516-7659
FAX: 410-516-7312
E-Mail: fwhayes3@jhu.edu
http://web.jhu.edu/africana/index.html

***Professor Hayes was Ebrima G. Sankareh’s Political Science adviser at North Carolina State University.

Professor Floyd W. Hayes III