The rhetorical question whether Africa can afford anything in global
affairs is preposterous because the continent of Africa does have
very limited options with very scarce resources to affect anything
beyond dictates from the West.
I shudder when neo-panafricanists brandish a romanticized perspective
of African History and relapse to atavistic paradigms of leadership
from renown past politicians.   Nkrumah, Lumumba and Mandela belong
to different categories of leadership in time and space.   Mandela is
a freedom fighter, Lumumba although enlightened but compromised with
communist dogma; and Nkrumah was by all means a platonic tyrant and a
dictator despite his sincere efforts to de-colonize Africa.
I do respect Professor Franklin and absolutely agree with his
observations on slavery that it essentially robbed Africa.   However,
the challenge for us Africans is not only analysis but to think
synecdochically about slavery in general and the Trans-African slave
trade in particular- Africans where actively involved in that inhuman
institution also.  A large number of local chiefs sold their brothers
and sisters to the white man.  In fact former colleague of mine in
the Gambian Army used to brag about how is great great grand father
sold Banjul to the British for a bottle of rum!
I will never deny that there is a corrosive influence from Europe and
Arabia perhaps but the solution to the imminent African problem is
within the Africans themselves…This was the same little secret that
Kemal Ataturk realized about Turkey and set the agenda for a total
cultural transformation to get out of the DARKNESS.


Ebou

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