Postcolonial Constructivism: Mazrui's Theory of Intercultural Relations (Global Political Thinkers) 3030605809, 9783030605803

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GLOBAL POLITICAL THINKERS SERIES EDITORS: HARTMUT BEHR · FELIX RÖSCH

Postcolonial Constructivism Mazrui’s Theory of Intercultural Relations Seifudein Adem

Global Political Thinkers Series Editors Hartmut Behr School of Geography Politics & Sociology Newcastle University Newcastle, UK Felix Rösch School of Humanities Coventry University Coventry, UK

This Palgrave Pivot series presents ground-breaking, critical perspectives on political theory: titles published in this series present influential political thinkers on a global scale from around the world, with interpretations based on their original languages, providing synoptic views on their works, and written by internationally leading scholars. Individual interpretations emphasize the language and cultural context of political thinkers and of political theory as primary media through which political thoughts and concepts originate and generate. The series invites proposals for new Palgrave Pivot projects by and on authors from all traditions, areas, and cultural contexts. Individual books should be between 25,000 and 50,000 words long according to the Palgrave Pivot format. For more details about Palgrave Pivot, an innovative new publishing format from Palgrave Macmillan, please visit www.palgrave.com/pivot. Emphases shall be on political thinkers who are important for our understanding of: - the relation between individual and society and conceptualizations of both;  forms of participation and decision-making;  - conceptualizations of political deliberation and discourse; - constructions of identity; - conceptualizations of the ‘human condition’ of politics; - ontologies and epistemologies of the political/of politics;  - conceptualizations of social and political change and/or tradition; and  - conceptualizations of political order, their rise and fall More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15014

Seifudein Adem

Postcolonial Constructivism Mazrui’s Theory of Intercultural Relations

Seifudein Adem Graduate School of Global Studies Doshisha University Kyoto, Japan

Global Political Thinkers ISBN 978-3-030-60580-3    ISBN 978-3-030-60581-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Jon Arnold Images Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

It was about six years ago that the idea of writing this book first occurred to me. Subsequently, I sent a book proposal to Palgrave, in August 2014, exactly two months before Ali Mazrui died. Several months later, I received the contract from the publisher. But I had to put the project on hold until now as I needed to devote myself to other more urgent matters. In the contract package from Palgrave was also comments by an anonymous reviewer. With reference to Mazrui’s critics, that reviewer wrote: ‘Mazrui stands a good chance of being remembered when many of his critics have been forgotten’. I then said to myself I could not agree more. But that is not all why I am bringing up this story. On the Internet, something not totally unrelated to the above captured my attention recently. The lecture Mazrui gave in 1979  in the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) Reith Lectures series, titled ‘Clash of Cultures’, was listed—as of February 10, 2020—as the second most popular, among the twenty best episodes, measured in terms of the number of people who had listened to them. The Reith Lectures, named after the founder of the BBC, Lord Reith, is a long-­running annual event that began in 1948 in which prominent scholars, opinion-makers, and artists are asked to give a series of lectures on a timely topic. Including Mazrui, there have been seventy-one Reith lecturers to date (1948–2019). That Mazrui was sitting at the number two position in this galaxy of brilliant minds that included Arnold Toynbee and George F.  Kennan, John Searle and Edward Said, Wole Soyinka and Stephen Hawking must say something about Ali Mazrui. I wish to congratulate, therefore, that v

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anonymous Palgrave reviewer for sheer prescience. He has been vindicated. He clearly foresaw that Mazrui’s fame will outlive him! In some ways, another person who seemingly foresaw this was Mazrui himself. He wittily put it in 2012 in this way: ‘As long as the deceased is remembered by name, he is not completely dead; in fact, he combines death with life.’ The bulk of the materials I relied on for preparing this manuscript was typed and organized with impressive thoroughness over a period of many years by the secretarial and administrative staff of Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS) at Binghamton University, New  York. Even at the risk of inevitably, but inadvertently, leaving some names out, I therefore wish to mention these individuals in alphabetical order: Jamie Barvinchak, Nancy Hall, Gloria Hopkins, Nancy Levis, Ravenna Narizzano-Bronson, AnnaMarie Palombaro, Anne Pierce, Barbara Tierno, and Jennifer Winans. This book is indebted to them all as well as to the four associate directors of IGCS who served it while it lasted, to its two dozen or so visiting professors/fellows/associates, and to its many graduate and research project assistants. A special note of thanks is due to the late Abdul Samed Bemath, the South African Librarian and Bibliographer of the scholarship of Ali A. Mazrui; Bemath passed away in July 2020. He was a good man. As it took me five years to conceive, develop, and finalize this book in its present form, the different phases of the project had to be completed in different places: Binghamton and Ithaca, New York; Herndon, Virginia; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Hong Kong, China; Frankfurt, Germany; and Kyoto, Japan. I am therefore very thankful for the tremendous help and encouragement I received in these locations from many people, including relatives, friends, and colleagues. More specifically, I would like to thank the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, not only for granting me access to its ‘Ali Mazrui Papers 1959–1989’, which included his manuscripts and correspondence, but also for awarding me the 2019 Bordin-Gillette Fellowship in support of my work on this project. Much appreciation is due to Doshisha University’s Graduate School of Global Studies in Kyoto, Japan, for the quiet and collegial atmosphere I was afforded to reflect on, shape, reshape, and, in the strange shadow of COVID-19, finalize this project in August 2020. Similarly, I am grateful to the Ali Mazrui Center for Higher Education at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, for the encouragement I have received.

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On a personal and professional level, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Professors Yoichi Mine, Hisae Nakanishi, John Edward Philips, Alamin Mazrui, Thomas Uthup, Jayantha Jayman, and Michael Cross for their all-rounded and critical support. Palgrave Macmillan agreed to publish this manuscript and published it, which is also greatly appreciated. Most of all, I am extremely indebted to one person—Professor Ali Mazrui, the person this book is about, its subject matter, for giving me unlimited access to his life and his life’s work. I am solely responsible for any errors in this book. Kyoto, Japan December 2020

Seifudein Adem

Contents

Part I General Overview   1 1 Introduction  3 Part II Ali Mazrui and the Study of International Relations (IR)  17 2 The Birth of a Scholar 19 3 Mazrui’s Rise and Decline in IR 27 4 Mazrui’s Revival in IR 33 Part III Ali Mazrui’s Postcolonial Constructivism  41 5 Postcolonialism 43 6 Constructivism 51 7 Postcolonial Constructivism 61

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Part IV The Vocabulary of Ali Mazrui’s Discourse  75 8 Paradoxical Propositions 77 9 Analytical Categories135 Part V Semi-autobiographical Data 269 10 Mazrui’s Interactions with Others271 Appendix: When Mazrui Led the Way311 Index319

About the Author

Seifudein  Adem is the intellectual biographer of Professor Ali Mazrui (1933–2014). Adem worked closely with Mazrui when, from 2006 to 2016, he served as the Associate Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS) at Binghamton University, New  York, USA.  Mazrui was the founding Director of IGCS since 1991. Adem traveled with Mazrui extensively, either as his driver or as his health escort, and sometimes they jointly presented papers at conferences. Dr. Adem’s close association with Mazrui, particularly in the last ten years of his life, and his full consultation of virtually all that have been written by Mazrui and about him have enabled him to understand Mazrui’s thoughts and perspectives. Seifudein Adem currently teaches at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Dr. Adem (left) with Professor Mazrui in San Diego, California, at the ISA annual convention, April 2012

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PART I

General Overview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book is ambitious and distinctive. It is intended to serve as a useful source of information about Ali Mazrui and his ideas in a manner that is both scholarly and decidedly of human interest. It seeks to tell the Mazrui story in an original way. The ambition is to introduce Mazrui’s vast and stimulating scholarship to a wider audience and do so as comprehensively as possible. The first thing to note about Mazrui is that he was a prolific writer. When asked why he wrote, Mazrui (1974: 100) said: ‘…this tremendous urge to communicate. This is why I write at all, why I write so much, why I write on such varied subjects.’ He uttered these words thirty years before he passed away in 2014. All in all, Mazrui had published more than forty books and a large number of essays. In terms of his contribution to intellectual discourse and policy debates, Mazrui had simply no peers in Africa. He wrote with great verve and uncommon flair; he wrote with grace, clarity, and imagination. Apart from why and what he wrote, it was, in fact, how Mazrui wrote which, in no small measure, drew the attention of many of his admirers, giving rise in the process to the phenomenon known as Mazruiphilia.

What Is Mazruiphilia? Mazruiphilia, as Dunstan Wai (1998: 52) defined the term, is ‘the intellectual fascination and personal affection Ali Al’amin Mazrui has inspired in so many, through his personal magnetism, his scholarship, [or] his © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_1

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intellectual versatility’ (also see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018: 267–275). Many Mazruiphiles are also most knowledgeable about Mazrui’s scholarship. I must therefore begin by quoting a few passages from them. ‘No political scientist writing today exhibits an equal virtuosity in the handling of ideas and images, connexons and paradoxes, overtones and undertones and implications … [Mazrui] breathes enthusiasm and excitement into everything he discusses,’ wrote Colin Leys (1967: 51). Rupert Emerson (1967: 56–57) observed: ‘Nothing pleases Ali Mazrui better than to seize upon an idea, a slogan, an event, and to worry it, toss it up in the air and watch it come spinning down, stand it on its head, turn it inside out, and adroitly dissect it piece by piece. Nor is there anyone who indulges in such sport with greater wit and skill … [H]is analysis is always enriching as well as entertaining, and often cuts at the heart of the matter.’ Writing at about the same time as Leys and Emerson, Jitendra Mohan (1968: 389–390) also commented: ‘Ali Mazrui’s flair for the colorful phrase, the striking metaphor, the novel comparisons, the bold hypothesis, the dashing generalization, all give his writing an air of fluency and readability.’ Some years later, M. Grieve (1980: 50) noted: ‘Mazrui is a superbly lucid and entertaining writer; qualities from which even his demonstrated penchant for the neologism cannot detract. He is an original thinker …’ These observations made by Leys, Emerson, Mohan, and Grieve, among many others, are staggeringly precise. What is more, Mazrui never deviated for the rest of his life from the style of writing and brand of scholarship these scholars had identified in him decades earlier. But there is additional reason why readers were drawn into Mazrui’s works. As Es’kia Mphahlele (2006) put it: ‘What lures the reader deeper into the subject [of Ali Mazrui’s writings] is the effect of [his] method of exploration. For example, apart from the interest his subject holds, he anticipates the reader’s questions, doubts and counter-observations, and so keeps way ahead while at the same time unfolding his own brilliant thinking for us to understand.’ What Mphahlele spelled out above, James Mittelman (2014: 164) also seemed to suggest when he described Ali Mazrui as a ‘great conceptualizer’. Did Omari Kokole (1998: 12), too, have the same thought in mind when he reminded us about Mazrui’s power to ‘x-ray’ ideas? This, I think, is a defensible interpretation. Let us hear also from other Mazruiphiles. First from the  former US Secretary of State John Kerry (1986) and the current Special Envoy for Climate in the Biden Administration; he said when he was a US Senator in

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defense of the showing of Mazrui’s TV documentary) that Mazrui: ‘provided the American people with an-all-too-rare look at Africa from an African perspective’. In a nationally televised tribute in 1988, Kenneth Kaunda, the first president of Zambia, ‘thank[ed] God for giving Africa Ali Mazrui’ (Mazrui 1989). Only years after he was freed from prison, Nelson Mandela hence saluted Mazrui as ‘an outstanding educationist’ (Mazrui 1996). And Kofi Annan described Mazrui as ‘Africa’s gift to the world’ (Mazrui 2001). Wole Soyinka (2015: 193), the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and Mazrui’s erstwhile intellectual adversary, also wrote warmly, after Mazrui’s death, about ‘the intellectual industry of scholars such as Ali Mazrui’. Soyinka added: ‘I already feel his absence, and miss him.’ Salim Ahmed Salim, the former Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity and Prime Minister of Tanzania, thus remembered Mazrui: ‘For many, the very name—Ali Al’amin Mazrui— triggers an intellectual enthusiasm for a deeper insight of the world and an understanding of how its many parts interconnect’ (Adem et al. 2016: ix). And Mazrui’s longstanding friend and colleague Richard Falk has this to say: ‘…no one I have known, better exemplifies the human potential to please mind, body, heart, and soul of others than Ali Mazrui’ (Adem et al. 2016: 119). Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, also wrote shortly after Mazrui died: ‘When a great mind like Professor Ali Mazrui passed on, we have to stop and ponder over what we shall do together to fill the immeasurable void that inevitably arises. The starting point is that we, especially our youth, must critically read and re-read everything Ali Mazrui wrote’ (Adem et al. 2016: 363). IR scholars Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2019: 176) have also said: ‘[Ali Mazrui] may be described as Africa’s great conceptual synthesizer and hybridist thinker.’ Of course, Mazrui had many critics, too, as The New  York Times (October 20, 2014) quickly reminded readers with its eye-catching headline  of Mazrui’s obituary: ‘Ali Mazrui, Scholar of Africa Who Divided US Audiences, Dies at 81’ (italics added). The three thick volumes, published on ‘Ali Mazrui and His Critics’, also attest to Mazrui’s capacity to effectively engage and educate, as well as provoke (see Alamin Mazrui and Mutunga 2003; Alamin Mazrui and Mutunga 2004; Adem et al. 2013).

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About the Book Let me now turn to the nature of this book and its structure. The book, which has five parts, ten chapters, and an appendix, is, primarily, an attempt in four parts to introduce Mazrui’s multifaceted body of knowledge by letting him speak to the reader, mostly in his own words, but also through the words of those who knew him well. Part II, Chaps. 2, 3, and 4, briefly describes Mazrui’s emergence as a scholar and his changing fortunes in IR.  The goal is to identify and consider the major factors that shaped Mazrui’s approach to the discipline. Ali Mazrui was seen, and saw himself as playing, among others, the role of a historian of what he called global culture, and his approach to culture was normative. In addition, what an ethical world order should look like and how it could be constructed had been a major preoccupation of him for over half a century. Mazrui had been compared by some of his colleagues (and by Mazrui himself) with a broad range of historical figures and intellectuals: Ibn Khaldun, W.  E. B.  Du Bois, C.  L. R.  James, George Orwell, James Baldwin, the father of Barack Obama, and Barack Obama, among others. Many of these individuals were Mazrui’s contemporaries about whom he also wrote; in fact, he deeply admired some of them. That Mazrui was compared with such diverse set of luminaries should not at all be surprising given that he had also been seriously described as ‘Multiple Mazrui: Scholar, Ideologue, Philosopher, Artist’ (Sawere 1998: 269–289). In order to gain insights into Mazrui’s contribution to IR, it would be more instructive to briefly compare him with two disciplinary icons, E. H. Carr and Susan Strange. Both Carr and Mazrui were gifted-writers who could communicate with a wide range of audiences; they were both capable of transforming abstract theory into more intelligible idea without overly distorting much in the process. Their primary interest also lay in macro-history, the broad and deep changes internationally. Mazrui was a macro-historian by design; he declared quite early on his commitment to ‘the study of global trends and their moral implications’ (Mazrui 1976: xix). A successful macro-historian, of course, requires not only a mind capable of dissecting his/her subject matter and comprehending complex theories but also the capacity to ‘see’ things from a long-term perspective. Both in the case of Mazrui and Carr, the macro-historian in them was abundantly clear (Carr 1990: 7–30; Mazrui 1990).

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Mazrui and Carr also shared the desire to unmask aspects of the ‘received truth’, either for the sake of knowledge or for transforming or at least influencing the course of events in desirable ways. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis illustrates this proclivity in him quite well, especially as it relates to the ideas of morality and harmony of interest in international relations (Jayman 2018: 151–175). Carr (2001: 62) had also examined what he called ‘the political good’ vis-à-vis ‘the moral good’. One of Mazrui’s favorite quotes, which he had used more than any other, was a powerful normative statement from his mentor at Oxford, John Plamenatz: ‘the vices of the strong acquire some of the prestige of strength’ (1976: 7). It encapsulates Mazrui’s approach quite well. Another intellectual with whom Mazrui shared the inclination to unmask and challenge received truth was Susan Strange. Strange is regarded as the founding mother of the field of international political economy in Britain and a truly outstanding scholar of international relations. Strange and Mazrui showed the courage to take on and challenge orthodoxies even when it was not fashionable or popular to do so (see, e.g., Strange 1982, 1994; Mazrui 1990). They were both iconoclastic analysts and original thinkers; they were also effective communicators. On a more substantive level, there appears to be an overlap between Susan Strange’s theory of structural power and Mazrui’s concept of structural dependency. In States and Markets, Strange (1988: 119) introduced the four structures of power in global political economy: namely the security structure, the production structure, the financial structure, and the knowledge structure. In a manner that seemed to have anticipated Strange’s theory, Mazrui laid down (1985: 181–183) and elaborated (1976: 6–7) the five elements of his concept of structural dependency: production, consumption, currency or liquidity, technology, and (the English) language. The two conceptual formulations are neither alike nor even related. Mazrui’s frame of reference was clearly narrower than Strange’s since he was concerned more with North–South relations or, more specifically, the relationship between the US and the Third World. But it cannot also be denied that there is a degree of convergence between Mazrui and Strange at least in terms of the questions of what the relevant issues were and how they should be formulated. An obvious divergence between Mazrui and Strange is, not surprisingly, that international economic and financial issues were generally outside Mazrui’s area of

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intellectual preoccupations. The blind spot of Susan Strange’s approach was, also not surprisingly, the minimum role she assigns to cultural forces in world affairs. In my view, Ali Mazrui was one of the most underexplored IR scholars, and there are many purported reasons for this. There were those who felt that Ali Mazrui was primarily concerned with issues relating to the Third World. But the fact is that Mazrui’s writings were not exclusively, or even primarily, about Third World issues although he deliberately focused on points of intersection in the North–South relations. But he was indeed incapable of restricting himself to a narrow field of inquiry, in geographic and disciplinary terms. In its scope, Mazrui’s scholarship was unmistakably global. But even if the primary focus of his teaching and research were the Third World, would that become good enough a reason for ignoring its relevance to IR? Others thought that Mazrui focused too much on domestic or comparative politics rather than on international relations. This was also a less defensible claim, but let us assume for a moment it was true. Review of the history of international relations thought clearly shows that the discipline emerged partly as a result of the cumulative syntheses of the works of political philosophers, works that had almost nothing to do with international relations or inter-state relations in the modern sense of the term. In fact, in some cases, what these philosophers had written about the nature of the relationship among individuals in domestic politics (of a hypothetical society) was later extrapolated to relations among contemporary states. Still others believed that Mazrui’s scholarship encompassed not only international relations and comparative politics but also sociology, sociolinguistics, and literary studies, and that he also extensively wrote about what mainstream discipline considers trivial. To define Mazrui’s scholarship in such broad terms is accurate, but to imply that therefore it did not have plenty to offer to IR made much less sense. But the challenges Mazrui posed to established ways of thinking had undoubtedly contributed to the relative obscurity of his scholarship in IR. Mazrui, too, seemed to be aware of his place in the discipline, or lack thereof, without being bitter about it. As he quipped after he received the 1999 International Studies Association (ISA) Distinguished Scholar Award: ‘At the session there were moving tributes from colleagues … It was more than I deserved. However, the organizers had over-estimated the size of my fan-club in ISA!! So the hall was much larger than the crowd that turned up!!’ (Mazrui 2000).

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When all is said and done, this much is clear. Mazrui’s worldview does not fit neatly into any particular theory. His theoretical contribution to the mainstream discipline is therefore minimum. This has also partly to do with his position on ‘theory’. The very notion of an all-encompassing theory is anathema to him. He was generally unconcerned about the lack of consistency between his major propositions and mainstream theories. If so, it is fair to ask: what is it that undergirds his IR scholarship? I provide a tentative answer by reading into his work my own theoretical interpretation in Part III, Chaps. 5, 6, and 7, and making three inter-related claims: (a) Mazrui’s scholarship synthesizes elements of postcolonialism and social constructivism, (b) the synthesis can be described as postcolonial constructivism, and (c) postcolonial constructivism is a potentially useful theory for understanding intercultural relations from the perspective of the Global South. The terms ‘theory’, ‘approach’, and ‘perspective’ are used in this book loosely—and interchangeably. And, in using them in this way, I am not also widely diverging from the IR tradition—these labels are sometimes similarly used in the discipline, owing to issues internal and external to IR ‘theories’ (Burchill and Linklater 2005: 11–12). In a series of mini-chapters, Parts II and III thus attempt to distill what could be some of the elements of an outline of a theory of postcolonial constructivism out of Mazrui’s historical scholarship. The next two parts of the book, Parts IV and V, are the most important, as they largely present to the reader Mazrui in his own words; they are also less abstract. More specifically, Part IV, Chap. 8, lists Mazrui’s paradoxical propositions, his testable observations, which he had often used for highlighting and critically analyzing contradictions in social reality. It is a sketch of generalizations based on deductive logic with a hint of reasoning behind them. But we could also see elsewhere, in Chap. 10 for instance, an inductive mind at work. This probably means that a deductive and inductive interpretation of Mazrui’s intellectual outputs is possible, implying a unity that overcomes the rigid, conventional division between the two. (This point is expounded in Chap. 7.) The collection presented in Chap. 8, I think I can say, is therefore more than powerfully insightful comparative antitheses, as important as they are; they also suggest a methodology that informs a worldview. Chapter 9 introduces Mazrui’s analytical categories, his neologisms, and the context in which they were articulated or should be understood. Many of these are terms which Mazrui coined to, in the words of Dunstan Wai (1998: 39), ‘break the molds of ossified thinking’. Occasionally,

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Mazrui also combined common words in a cleverly uncommon way. Sometimes, the originality of the words thus lies in how they are defined or in the distinction being made rather than in the words themselves. But Mazrui did not merely bequeath to us a large number of such concepts. Many of them are parts of what he called perceptive typologies, used, as amply demonstrated in the chapter, for making complex phenomena more comprehensible. In other words, Mazrui’s neologisms and oxymoronic combinations that are formed by derivation, by compounding, by invention (coinage), or by blending or amalgamation, play a significant role in simplifying and clarifying representations that are ordinarily expressed in other texts, when they are, only by phrases or clausal descriptions. Mazrui’s conceptual categories are not just new words or common words combined in a new way, but they are the encapsulation of newly formulated ideas. They are ideas in words. Ali Mazrui had been criticized for not pausing to reflect on many of his generalizations and for reaching stimulating conclusions based on inadequate evidence. As Chaly Sawere (1998: 272) put it: ‘Scattered in [Ali Mazrui’s] works are some of the most brilliant ideas to have come out of Africa in the twentieth century; but the author has neglected his own mental “children” because of his compulsion to procreate more and more.’ This is certainly true. Mazrui did indeed feel comfortable, as circumstances dictate, with swiftly changing the direction of his intellectual gaze. However, if it had not been for Mazrui’s quickly shifting focus, he could not have left us a ‘supermarket of ideas’, literally, including the large set of his stimulating paradoxes and his conceptually rich, analytical categories, systematically assembled in the two mega-chapters of this book, Chaps. 8 and 9. Mazrui seemed to be challenging us to test and verify them. Indeed, they are worth testing and verifying from a variety of disciplinary angles, not least because many of them speak to some of the burning issues of our own time, and others may even become durable, as they deal with the interactions among different cultures and societies. The materials in Part IV are culled from Mazrui’s published and unpublished writings (including his books, articles, conference papers, and lecture notes), from his documentaries, from his media interviews, and from his class lectures of the entire semester at Binghamton University, which I personally recorded in the fall of 2011. The first criterion I used for including the paradoxes and concepts in this book is linked to their potential utility as the building blocks of the

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theory of postcolonial constructivism or as the foundation for a deeper understanding of intercultural relations from a perspective of the Global South. Secondly, they must arise out of Mazrui’s paradigm. And, finally, the selection should, in my view, help the reader to get a glimpse of the richness of Mazrui’s vast intellectual outputs. Part V, Chap. 10, chronicles different aspects of Mazrui’s life and scholarship on the basis of his own subjective judgment and the judgment of those who knew him. The chapter mainly records some of the individuals, including historical figures and dignitaries, Mazrui had met and interacted with, in some cases for an extended period of time, as well as what he had to say about (his interactions with) them. Let me say now a few words about the sources used in preparing Chap. 10. Mazrui loved not only to write, and write about fairly everything, but he was also good at keeping the record of what, as he would put it, occurred to his mind, his being. The sources utilized for Chap. 10 are therefore mainly Mazrui’s own newsletters and his other publications and a portion of the large collection of published and unpublished materials he gave to me in February 2012—with copies, too, to some of his sons and relatives. I only wish I could include excerpts from the nicest things Mazrui had to say about some of his long-time personal friends and professional acquaintances. I do hope that in the not too distant future, Mazrui’s correspondence with African heads of state and government, some deceased and others still alive, will also see the light of day. In any case, after reading Chap. 10, the reader may rightly conclude that in terms of the number of historical figures he had encountered, Mazrui could easily be described as Africa’s Forrest Gump. On Ali Mazrui and his intellectualism, many analytical and celebratory books have been published, and deservedly so, both before and after he died. Those published after he died alone include Mazrui and Kaba (2016), Mazrui and Wiafe-Amoako (2016), Njogu and Adem (2017), Wachanga (2017), Adem, Adibe, Bangura and Bemath (2016), Adem and Njogu (2018a), Adem and Njogu (2018b), and Bemath (2019) which, incidentally, is the sequel to Bemath (1998) and Bemath (2005). Upon further reflection, however, one inadvertent omission in these publications struck me—the omission of Mazrui’s record as a trailblazer. The Appendix takes a modest step to fill this gap, drawing partly on the details supplied by Mazrui himself in 2013, but verified, edited, expanded, and updated by me. The Appendix attempts to demonstrate that Mazrui was able to embark on a great and successful career globally, that he was a

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leader in pursuit of excellence, and that he was, quite simply, a trailblazer. The Mazrui story becomes all the more inspirational when we realize that he had faced and overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges early on (see Chap. 2). Now about the distinctiveness of this book: the book is distinct in the sense, firstly, that it reflects Mazrui’s approach and the structure of his analytical exposition. Like Mazrui’s own body of work, this book is caught up between the formal theory and the causal observation; the abstract philosophy and the concrete statements; the personal stories and the seemingly detached analysis. Some of Mazrui’s deeply insightful observations are found as much in his personal newsletters as in his academic writings. The book is distinct, secondly, because of what it does not include. Sources and references for further reading, especially in Part IV, are not included. There is little doubt that the book would have become further enriched, and more enriching, if I was able to provide additional information in this regard. The effort to do so was nevertheless constrained by how this manuscript came into being, as a product of notes taken at different places over a long period of time, more than twenty years depending on how it is counted. Different portions of the book were never intended initially for publication and for sharing with others. At first, it never occurred to me, for instance, that one day I would meet the inventor of the concepts I had been collecting and work with him for nearly a decade, exponentially growing my inventory as the result. What came out of my sustained effort is therefore a book that is distinct in this sense as well. It could even turn out to be innovative, and if so, it should be only fitting that the book is about someone who can easily be described as one of postcolonial Africa’s most innovative scholars. The lack of detailed footnotes in a portion of the book is, it can be said, also a blessing in disguise, for it has enabled me to cast my net wider, and flexibly, ensuring in the process that there will be something in the book for a wide range of readership. An added advantage has been the possibility this opened for showing, without much distraction to the reader, Mazrui’s gift of elegant intelligibility—the accessibility of his language and style to the wider intellectual community, and not just to academics. The somewhat open-ended style of the book has also enabled the presentation of Mazrui’s witticism amply, but in short digestible forms that are suitable both for browsing and for reference. In its totality, this is, in fact, where the ambition of the book—reaching a wider audience—can be fulfilled by its distinctiveness.

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In the spirit of Mazruiphilia, finally, I wish to hope that the publication of this book would inspire a more systematic examination of MAZRUIANA—the large body of knowledge Ali Mazrui had passed on to us.

References Acharya, A., and B. Buzan. 2019. The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at Its Centenary. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Adem, S., and K. Njogu, eds. 2018a. The American African: Essays on the Life and Scholarship of Ali A. Mazrui. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ———, eds. 2018b. Black Orwell: Essays on the Scholarship of Ali A.  Mazrui. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Adem, S., W.  Mutunga, and Alamin Mazrui, eds. 2013. Black Orientalism and Pan-African Thought: Mazrui and His Critics. Vol. III. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Adem, S., J. Adibe, A.K. Bangura, and A.S. Bemath, eds. 2016. A Giant Tree Has Fallen. Tributes to Ali A.  Mazrui. Johannesburg: African Perspectives Publishing. Bemath, A.S. 1998. The Mazruiana Collection. A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of the Published Works of Ali A. Mazrui, 1962–1997. Johannesburg, South Africa: Foundation for Global Dialogue. ———. 2005. The Mazruiana Collection Revisited. Ali A. Mazrui Debating the African Condition. An Annotated and Select Thematic Bibliography, 1962–2003. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. ———. 2019. Ali A. Mazrui: An Annotated and Select Bibliography, 2003–2018. Johannesburg: Otterley Press. Burchill, S., and A.  Linklater. 2005. Introduction. In Theories of International Relations, ed. S. Burchill et al. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Carr, E.H. 1990. What Is History? London: Penguin Books. ———. 2001. The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. New York: Palgrave. Emerson, R. 1967. Book Review: Towards a Pax Africana. Mawazo 1: 56–57. Grieve, M. 1980. Review of ‘Africa’s International Relations by Ali A.  Mazrui. Canadian Journal of African Studies 13: 501–503. Jayman, J. 2018. Ali A.  Mazrui (and E.  H. Carr): Radical Understandings of Justice as a Precondition for Sustained Global Order. In The American African: Essays on the Life and Scholarship of Ali A. Mazrui, ed. S. Adem and K. Njogu. Trenton, NJ: Africa world Press. Kerry, J. 1986. US Congressional Record. No. 1444. (Part III) 17 October.

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Kokole, O. 1998. The Master Essayist. In The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui, ed. Omari Kokole. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Leys, C. 1967. Inter Alia-or Tanzaphilia and All That. Transition (34): 51–53. Mazrui, A.A. 1974. The Trial of Christopher Okigbo. In Writers in East Africa: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the University of Nairobi. June 1971, ed. A.  Gurr and A.  Calder. Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau. ———. 1976. A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1985. Uncle Sam’s Hearing Aid. In Estrangement: America and the World, ed. S.J. Ungar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1989. Mazrui Newsletter 1989, No. X. ———. 1990. Cultural Forces in World Politics. London: James Currey. ———. 1996. Mazrui Newsletter 1996, No. 20. ———. 2000. Mazrui Newsletter 2000, No. 24. ———. 2001. Mazrui Newsletter 2001, No. 25. Mazrui, A.A., and A.J. Kaba. 2016. The African Intelligentsia: Domestic Decline and Global Ascent. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Mazrui, A.A., and W.  Mutunga. 2003. Ali A.  Mazrui and His Critics Vol. I. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ———. 2004. Ali A.  Mazrui and His Critics Vol. II. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Mazrui, A.A., and F.  Wiafe-Amoako. 2016. African Institutions: Challenges to Political, Social and Economic Foundations of Africa’s Development. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Mittelman, J. 2014. Dialogues with Ali A.  Mazrui: A Better Intellectual Community Is Possible. African Studies Review 57: 153–170. Mohan, J. 1968. A Whig Interpretation of African Nationalism. Journal of Modern African Studies 6: 389–409. Mphahlele, E. 2006. A Giant Among Intellectuals and a Concourse of Cultures. Pretoria News [Online]. http://www.pretorianews.co.za. Accessed 18 March 2010. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.J. 2018. Ali Mazrui: An Encyclopedic Scholar and Intellectual Pluralist. In The American African: Essays on the Life and Scholarship of Ali A. Mazrui, ed. S. Adem and K. Njogu. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Njogu, K., and S. Adem, eds. 2017. Perspectives on Culture and Globalization: The Intellectual Legacy of Ali A. Mazrui. Nairobi, Kenya: Twaweza Communications. Sawere, C. 1998. The Multiple Mazrui: Scholar, Ideologue, Philosopher and Artist. In The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui, ed. Omari Kokole. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Soyinka, S. 2015. Remembering Ali Mazrui. Transition 117: 193.

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Strange, S. 1988. States and Markets. London: Pinter Publishers. ———. 1992. Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis. International Organization 36: 479–497. Wachanga, D.N., ed. 2017. Growing Up in a Shrinking World: How Politics, Culture and the Nuclear Age Defined the Biography of Ali A. Mazrui. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Wai, D. 1998. Mazruiphilia, Mazuiphobia: Democracy, Governance and Development. In The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui, ed. Omari Kokole. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

PART II

Ali Mazrui and the Study of International Relations (IR)

CHAPTER 2

The Birth of a Scholar

Ali Mazrui was born in 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya. He came to the world of scholarship with a whimper rather than a bang. He almost failed the Cambridge High School Certificate Examination in 1949, as he earned a third class, with straight C’s in the subjects he took: English Language, History, Geography, and Swahili. He was disappointed to learn that his grade was not good enough for admission to the Makerere College in Uganda. But he never gave up. For more than five years, he relentlessly sought to find other opportunities (Mazrui 1989: 471–475; Sawere 1998: 270–271). And, finally, the British colonial officers in Kenya at the time, Governor Philip Mitchell specifically, discovered by accident that Mazrui had more potential than the result of the examination suggested and sent him in 1955 to Huddersfield, Britain, to complete high school (The New York Times, October 20, 2014). Thus began Mazrui’s long and eventful intellectual journey—in which he was not only about to excel in his field against all odds but was even about to lead the way (see also Appendix).

Manchester, Columbia, and Oxford (1957–1963) Ali Mazrui was admitted to the University of Manchester in 1957 and received a BA degree, with Distinction, in 1960. He was also awarded the Elizabeth Wegner Prize (1958) and the Fleure Prize (1960). The courses

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Mazrui took at the University of Manchester were English, Ancient History-Arabia, Philosophy-Logic, Arabic, Political Institutions, Political Philosophy, Modern Political Thought, Government, Ethics, and Political theory and Political Practice in Britain. Mazrui seemed determined not to repeat his near-disastrous high school performance of 1948–1949. Apart from his early education in Kenya, Mazrui was therefore partly educated at the canter of what used to be the largest colonial empire in human history—the British Empire. For his second degree, Mazrui proceeded to what he did not realize at the time was also a country on its way toward becoming a superpower in historical scale, the US. When he was contemplating pursuing further studies in the US, he applied to two American institutions—Columbia University and the University of Chicago. Mazrui was offered admission to both universities in 1960, with full financial support. The Columbia offer was more generous because of the involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation in Mazrui’s support. But what influenced Mazrui the most to turn down Chicago in favour of Columbia was the proximity of the UN Headquarters to Columbia at a time when more and more African countries were becoming UN members for the first time. Mazrui defended his MA thesis titled ‘The Congo: Capacity for Self-Government and Some Problems of Legitimacy’ and completed his studies for the MA degree at Columbia in June 1961—in just nine months! The courses Mazrui took at Columbia were International Social Forces, Comparative Politics, Political Institutions of the Near and Middle East, Contemporary Political and Administrative Developments in Africa, Basic Factors in World Politics, the Legitimation of Power and Privilege, Social Change in Underdeveloped Countries, and Political and Social Theory in the Context of European Institutions. In 1961, Mazrui went to Oxford University for his doctoral degree. Among his academic advisors at Oxford University were John Plamenatz, one of the leading philosophers in England, and Dame Margery Perham, one of the leading Africanist historians and the biographer of Lord Lugard, the colonial Governor of Nigeria. There was no rank order for doctoral graduates from Oxford University, which is comparable, for instance, to similar graduates from American universities. It is thus difficult to compare Mazrui’s performance at Oxford in more objective and evidential terms. Mazrui’s overall performance among doctoral graduates in the year

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of his graduation is therefore less obvious. But there is another way of evaluating Mazrui’s years at Oxford which would make his achievement even more remarkable. Ali Mazrui published during his years at Oxford in top professional journals of political science managed and run by professional social scientists, often of long experience and high distinction. During his Oxford years as a student (1961–1963), Mazrui published an article in the American Political Science Review (1963a: 88–97), the most prestigious and most competitive political science journal in the US; in Political Studies (1963b: 36–55), the most prestigious political science journal in Britain and in the British Commonwealth; and in International Affairs (1963c: 24–36), the highly regarded foreign policy journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, UK. Also as a graduate student at Oxford, Mazrui published an article in a journal based at the time at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor— Comparative Studies in Society and History. It is clear that Mazrui had outperformed his student peers in his school in his particular area of endeavour. Two additional areas of accomplishment by Mazrui occurred during his years as a student at Oxford. The Times of London was, in the 1960s, one of the most prestigious and influential newspapers in the entire English-­ speaking world. And getting a full-scale op-ed article published in The Times was the dream of many members of the British cultural, political, and intellectual elite. In 1963, Mazrui succeeded in getting an op-ed article published in The Times. And the BBC in the 1960s had a celebrated elite radio channel called The Third Programme. It was the sort of channel which broadcast Shakespearean plays, discussions about Beethoven and Mozart, and intellectual debates about public policy or philosophical issues. The Third Programme invited Oxford student Ali Mazrui to deliver two radio lectures about whether the emerging independence of Africa constituted ‘the end of Africa’s innocence’. Those two lectures had long-term positive consequences for Mazrui’s relationship with the BBC. Mazrui’s involvement with the BBC’s international program (world service) also began during his Oxford years. As Mazrui (1980: vii–ix) related the story, ‘My girl-friend lived in London. Unknowingly, the BBC

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kept the “betrothal” warm by paying for my transportation to London once or twice every week. The Corporation invited me to give a virtually regular news commentary in both English and Swahili on the BBC African Service. The commuting between Oxford and London on BBC business constitutes part of the background to my subsequent marriage to Molly [Vickerman].’

The Makerere Years (1963–1973) The same Makerere College, later named Makerere University, in Uganda, that refused to admit Ali Mazrui as a student appointed him full professor in 1965. This took place within less than two years after he was appointed lecturer and before he had completed his doctorate at Oxford. Such a rate of promotion had never happened before at Makerere, but, as indicated above, by 1965 Mazrui had already published in some of the most competitive and most prestigious peer-review journals in the field of political science. By a committee headed by the Chief Executive of Makerere University (Y. K. Lule, who later became Uganda’s Head of State), Ali Mazrui was thus made full professor without ever having to pass through the intermediate stages of senior lecturer, reader, or associate professor. After his professorial promotion in 1965, Mazrui was given a year and a half leave, partly to be spent at the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science, teaching a joint course with Professor Aristide Zolberg. This was Mazrui’s first appointment as a professor at an American university. Among the political science stars who were at the University of Chicago at the time were Hans Morgenthau, author of the highly influential book Politics Among Nations (1962), and David Easton, a towering empirical political theorist at the time. Mazrui spent many hours with them as well as with Zolberg. It was also in 1965 that Mazrui moved for a year from a teaching visiting professorship at the University of Chicago to a research visiting appointment at Harvard University. In 1966, Mazrui defended his doctoral thesis at Oxford, and as destiny would have it, the thesis was later published by University of Chicago Press (Mazrui 1967). Of all Mazrui’s early publications, I think, it was ‘On the Concept of “We are All Africans”,’ the article that was published in the American

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Political Science Review in 1963, which became an important landmark in his evolution as a scholar. The article was one of the first major writings in that journal about postcolonial Africa written by a postcolonial African scholar. As American political scientist Herbert J.  Spiro (1967: 91) had noted, ‘Mazrui’s article identified him as a perceptive and original student of African political thought’. By publishing in the journal, Mazrui declared that he was ready to engage intellectually one of the most vibrant communities of scholars in his field. It was also significant that the article should be published in an influential journal of political science based in an increasingly influential country in the world—the US. Another significance of the article had to do with what it was about: identity formation in the postcolonial African context. It may be recalled that theorizing about identity was far less fashionable in the mainstream American political science in those days. This meant that Mazrui was not only swimming against the tide but was also breaking a new theoretical ground. These intellectual traits were to become the hallmarks of Mazrui’s scholarship for the next half a century.

The Michigan Years (1974–1989) In 1973 Ali Mazrui reluctantly resigned his professorship at Makerere University and sought refuge in the US. This was after Idi Amin captured power in Uganda and it became clear to Mazrui that his style of political science, which he had taught for ten years at Makerere, would not be welcomed in Amin’s Uganda. Mazrui was subsequently appointed a Fellow of the prestigious Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences in Palo Alto (1972–1973) and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford (1973–1974) in California. He then accepted a tenured professorship in 1974 and moved to the University of Michigan where he remained until 1989. Mazrui’s relationship with the BBC also culminated in the 1970s when he was invited to deliver the Reith Lectures. The lectures were truly the pinnacle of the BBC’s intellectual honors at the time. Mazrui gave six radio lectures in all in 1979, each half-an-hour, for broadcast not only in Britain but also worldwide. It was the first time Mazrui’s oral lectures reached an international audience of millions of people. Mazrui’s Reith Lectures were entitled The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis (1979) and were published under the same title the following year by Cambridge University Press in New  York and Heinemann Educational Books in London.

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Another major accomplishment of Mazrui during his Michigan years was The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986), the nine-hour TV series which was sponsored by the BBC, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of the US, and the Nigerian Television Authority. When the documentary was shown in the US and Britain, it triggered a great deal of debate and controversy. ‘No television series in history has been identified with a wider range of conflicting ideologies than The Africans,’ Mazrui (2001) later wrote. The series was produced in sixteen African countries and has been shown in five continents and translated into a number of languages, including German and Arabic. (The TV series is available on YouTube in its entirety.) In general, Mazrui lists as his main intellectual influences Edward W. Blyden and Kwame Nkrumah as precursors of his concept of ‘the triple heritage’; his father, Sheikh al-Amin bin Ali Abdallah bin Nafi al-Mazrui, for ideas on Islam; Dorothy Emmet (Manchester) and John Plamenatz (Oxford) as his formal instructors in Western political philosophy; and Swahili and English poetry as parallel worldviews. Two years after he received his DPhil, Ali Mazrui (1968: 69–83) published a major article in one of the flagship journals of mainstream IR in North America, World Politics. The article, titled ‘From Social Darwinism to Current Theories of Modernization,’ (re-)introduced  a cultural element into the academic discourse, problematizing what was at the time the most popular and mainstream theory about developing countries. But the publication of the article was also indicative of how relatively more receptive the discipline had been not only to issues affecting the Global South but also to different perspectives that informed them. I shall argue in the next chapter that the discipline steadily became less open in the ensuing decades, with major implications for Mazrui’s intellectual trajectories as well.

References Mazrui, A.A. 1963a. On the Concept of “We are all Africans”. American Political Science Review 57: 88–97. ———. 1963b. Consent, Colonialism and Sovereignty. Political Studies 11: 36–55. ———. 1963c. African Attitudes to the European Economic Community. International Affairs 1: 24–36. ———. 1967. Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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———. 1980. The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1989. Growing Up in a Shrinking World: A Private Vantage Point. In Journeys Through World Politics: Autobiographical Reflections of Thirty-Four Academic Travelers, ed. J.K.  Kruzel and J.N.  Rosenau. Lexington: Lexington Books. ———. 2001. The Place of Documentary Films in Africana Studies: The Case of ‘The Africans: A Triple Heritage’. Unpublished Paper, IGCS, Binghamton University, NY. Mazrui, Ali A. 1968. From Social Darwinism to Current Theories of Modernization: A Tradition of Analysis. World Politics 21 (1): 69–83. Sawere, C. 1998. The Multiple Mazrui: Scholar, Ideologue, Philosopher, Artist. In The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui, ed. Omari Kokole. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Spiro, H.J., ed. 1967. Patterns of African Development: Five Comparisons. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

CHAPTER 3

Mazrui’s Rise and Decline in IR

When Ali Mazrui arrived in the world of scholarship in the 1960s, postcolonial Africa was coming into being, the Third World was attracting special attention from the superpowers, and  from IR—and other disciplines— were also beginning to seriously engage the concerns of the Third World, including Africa. One of the prominent scholars with whom Mazrui debated the issue of international justice versus international order was Hedley Bull. Bull was one of the most highly admired key figures that had shaped the development of the discipline in the second half of the twentieth century (Hoffmann 1986: 195). The Bull–Mazrui intellectual engagement indeed fluctuated over time, arguably reflecting also how the mainstream discipline had, at various points in its history, been relatively more or less receptive to a discourse on North–South issues and a different perspective that informed it. By centering it around the changing relationship between Bull and Mazrui, this chapter attempts to tell a story of the rise and fall of Mazrui in IR.

Mazrui’s Rise Shortly after he published his influential book The Anarchical Society in 1977, Hedley Bull (1978) wrote: Ali Mazrui is not only the most distinguished writer to have emerged from independent Black Africa, and the most penetrating and discriminating expos© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_3

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itor of the ideology of the Third World, but he is also a most illuminating interpreter of the drift of world politics … [t]he issues that interest [Mazrui], the audience to whom he addresses himself, even the values he embraces, are not simply black or African or Third World, but global. (Italics added)

By this time Mazrui (1976) had already published his most ambitious book, A World Federation of Cultures, articulating the core ideas of what is called in this book a theory of intercultural relations (see Chap. 7). The theory was basically about how maximization of welfare, minimization of violence, and optimization of social justice can be pursued on a global scale. Hedley Bull’s observation about the ‘global’ orientation of Mazrui’s scholarship was valid and weighty because of Bull’s familiarity with Mazrui’s early scholarship and Bull’s own standing in the discipline. While Mazrui and Bull shared adherence to certain intellectual traditions, they also seemed to have found in each other a worthy intellectual adversary (Bull 1977: 83–85; Miller 1990: 65; Williams 2006: 22). Despite their occasional disagreement, Bull (1977: 74) was still ready to openly acknowledge that ‘Professor Mazrui [was] one of the few contemporary writers on international relations to have thought deeply about [the question of justice and order in the world community]’. Although Mazrui’s focus, as Bull said, was both Third World and global, Mazrui’s perspective was bottom-up. And yet the mainstream IR, of which Hedley Bull was a part, picked up Mazrui and engaged him because there was at this time a concerted effort and genuine commitment to understand international relations in all its complexities, including by explaining or evaluating what Donald Puchala (1998: 150) later described as ‘the significance of the embittered tone, the complex motivations, the mythological underpinnings, or the historical dynamics of North-South relations’. Needless to say, the desire to know about the Third World was also partly engendered by the wider geo-strategic interest of the superpowers. The relationship between Bull and Mazrui was not nevertheless a one-­ way street. According to J. D. B. Miller (1990: 65), Mazrui, too, was a positive influence on Bull: ‘Hedley Bull’s contact with stimulating people like Ali Mazrui caused him to ask questions about the direction in which the Third World might be heading …’ But how did Bull and Mazrui discover each other in the first place?

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How It All Began It is not clear when Hedley Bull started taking an interest in Mazrui’s work, but their lives touched more seriously when Bull was Research Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs from 1968 to 1973. Bull recommended Mazrui for Australia’s most distinguished political lecture series, the Dyason lectures. Mazrui received in 1970 at Makerere University in Uganda the invitation to deliver these lectures, which included a lecture tour of about half a dozen of Australia’s major cities (details accessed at Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, August 2019). Both Mazrui and Bull toured Australia in 1972, with extensive media coverage. These lectures were so distinguished that the first person who gave them was the noted British philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell; other Dyason lecturers before Mazrui included the famed historian Arnold Toynbee. But although the first substantial impact which Hedley Bull had on Mazrui was in connection with the Dyason lectures, they had previously met in Great Britain after Bull took an interest in a group of world order reformers in what was known as the World Order Models Project (WOMP). Mazrui was a WOMP member from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. In addition to Mazrui, Bull knew personally other high-profile WOMP members—such as Richard Falk of the US, Johan Galtung of Norway, Yoshikazu Sakamoto of Japan, and Rajni Kothari of India. Hedley Bull and Mazrui also shared teachers at Oxford—including John Plamenatz, Mazrui’s main DPhil supervisor. Other teachers whom Bull and Mazrui shared at Oxford was Norman Chester, the Warden of Nuffield College, who had a lot to do with Mazrui’s admission to Nuffield College; and Isaiah Berlin, the most influential political philosopher at Oxford at the time.

Mazrui’s Decline In the 1980s, Ali Mazrui and IR almost completely ignored one another. One reason for this had to do with his bottom-up perspective. The external manifestation of how Mazrui’s relationship with Hedley Bull itself eventually soured nicely captures the way in which this dynamic unfolded. Mazrui thus reminisced: Hedley Bull thought that I carried my anti-­imperialism too far at a conference in Britain, which addressed international issues in connection with

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American hostages held in revolutionary Iran in the late 1970s. In my speech I argued that it was a change that Americans were hostages. Most of the time the US held much of the world hostage to what Americans regarded as their national interest. I spoke with passion and, at one stage, I stopped speaking in a struggle to hold back my tears and prevent a breakdown. After question and answer session, Hedley Bull came to the front and said to me with a twinkle in his eye, “You are quite mad!” (author’s correspondence with Mazrui, January 29, 2010)

Similarly, a few years prior to the above encounter with Hedley Bull, Mazrui (1977: 7–9) was likening the international system to a caste system: Social mobility does not only mean more ability to improve the lot of the poorer section of a particular society; it must also mean the possibility of narrowing the gap of affluence between the poorest and the richest … To the extent that the gap between the richer and the poorer countries of the world is widening rather than narrowing, it can be argued that the international system lacks the kind of social mobility necessary to make it a class system rather than a caste structure.

Another reason for Mazrui’s decline in IR had, ironically, to do in part with his adherence to Hedley Bull’s (1966: 361) ‘classical approach’. In the mainstream discipline, the ‘scientific’ approach, the opposite number of the ‘classical approach’, was becoming the order of the day, placing positivism on a solid ground as the dominant method of research. This was the beginning of what Peter Katzenstein (2018: 376) recently called ‘the de-Europeanization of American IR theory’. A related factor in Mazrui’s marginalization is his rejection of the idea of a ‘value-free political science’. Consequently, Mazrui began to be seen as the methodological ‘Other’ by, in Mazrui’s (1974: 67–71) own words, ‘the different shades of behavioralists in the Western world … who believe that political science ought not to include normative and value preoccupations’. One of the enduring consequences of the triumph of behavioralism was the fact/value dichotomy and the steady marginalization of culture more than ever as an important variable in IR. But Mazrui continued to insist that it was impossible for the study of world politics to be acultural just as it was impossible for politics to be value free. Mazrui thus refused to change his approach as he also kept relative distance from the theoretical exchanges in IR which characterized the 1970s and particularly the 1980s.

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In addition, in the late 1970s and 1980s, a general consensus was emerging among realist and liberal IR scholars that the Third World required a different set of theories. Mainstream theory was redefining its identity as a discipline designed for ‘the study of great power behavior’ or of those states that have what A. I. Johnston (2019: 23) has called ‘normative agency’. The discipline thus effectively closed itself off to Mazrui’s concerns. This was certainly not the kind of IR Mazrui (1989: 469–487) had in mind when he wrote: ‘I experienced international relations as a person before I studied it professionally.’ With the study of international relations thus redefined, it was less surprising that the stars of Third World intellectuals like Mazrui should begin to dim in the discipline. But when all is said and done, it was Mazrui’s adherence to the bottom­up perspective about the Third World, a perspective which, to adapt a phrase from Philip Darby (1997: 11–32), not only articulates Third World dissatisfaction with its lot but also attempts to change it, that eventually led to the disciplinary marginalization of Mazrui in the 1980s—disciplinary in both senses of the term. It is therefore fair to conclude that Mazrui’s decline in IR was related to the growing predominance of top-bottom view in the academic discipline (Waever 1997: 4, 1998: 687–727). Hedley Bull died prematurely in 1985 at the age of 53. He was only one year older than Ali Mazrui. Mazrui died twenty-nine years after Bull, in 2014. He was 81. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that one of the most meaningful intellectual bonds Mazrui was able to forge was with Bull, meaningful not in spite of the fact that the relationship fluctuated over time but  also because of this very fact. The waxing and waning of their relationship also dovetailed, the changing emphases in the North American IR. The fluctuations similarly reflected Mazrui’s changing fortunes in the discipline—which, as we shall see in the next chapter, was set to change once again.

References Bull, H. 1966. International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach. World Politics 18: 361–377. ———. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1978. Times Literary Supplement, London, December 1, in Ali A. Mazrui (Undated), Extracts from Reviews of Writings. Unpublished Manuscript, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, New York.

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Darby, P. 1997. Postcolonialism. In At the Edge of International Relations: Postcolonialism, Gender and Dependency, ed. P.  Darby. London and New York: Pinter. Hoffmann, S. 1986. Hedley Bull and His Contribution to International Relations. International Affairs 62: 179–195. Johnston, A.I. 2019. China in a World of Orders. Rethinking Compliance and Challenge in Beijing’s International Relations. International Security 44: 9–60. Katzenstein, P. 2018. The Second Coming? Reflections on a Global Theory of International Relations. The Chinese Journal of International Politics 11: 374–390. Mazrui, A.A. 1974. Africa, My Conscience and I. Transition 46: 67–71. ———. 1976. A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1977. Africa’s International Relations: The Diplomacy of Dependency and Change. Boulder: Westview Press. ———. 1989. Growing Up in a Shrinking World: A Private Vantage Point. In Journeys Through World Politics: Autobiographical Reflections of Thirty-Four Academic Travelers, ed. J.K.  Kruzel and J.N.  Rosenau. Lexington, MA and Toronto: Lexington Books. Miller, J.D.B. 1990. The Third World. In Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations, ed. J.D.  Bruce Miller and R.J.  Vincent. New  York: Oxford University Press. Puchala, D. 1998. Third World Thinking and Contemporary International Relations. In International Relations Theory and the Third World, ed. S.G. Neuman. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Waever, O. 1997. Figures of International Thought: Introducing Persons Instead of Paradigms. In The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making, ed. I.B. Neumann and O. Waever. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 1998. The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations. International Organization 52: 687–727. Williams, J. 2006. Order and Society. In The Anarchical Society in the Globalized World, ed. R. Little and J. Williams. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 4

Mazrui’s Revival in IR

If Ali Mazrui’s star dimmed in IR in the 1980s, it began to shine again in the 1990s and beyond. Given that the 1990s also saw reduced geopolitical and strategic significance of the Third World, however, one cannot help but wonder why he became relevant again. The answer, at least in part, would have to relate to the return of culture to IR.  After largely closing itself off from issues of culture and identity, the discipline somewhat began to open itself to these issues as a legitimate area of inquiry. The shift occurred as a result of the sudden collapse of communism and the proliferation of separatist nationalisms (Lapid 1996: 3-20). Or, as Darby and Paolini (2014: 61) observed more broadly: ‘Faced with the explosion of such cultural phenomena … international relations has had to concede the importance of the internal to an understanding of international politics. Culture can no longer be wept under the carpet, nor can the traditional lines of analysis be adhered to with the same confidence.’

The Cultural Approach Ever since his Oxford years, Mazrui (1963: 88–97) espoused the idea that culture is an important variable for understanding global affairs. Mazrui (1980) continued to insist that culture has become less explicit in defining international behavior but has not become any less important. World politics has never outgrown culture. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_4

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As elaborated more fully in Chap. 7, culture for Mazrui is a multifaceted concept. It is a cause for political change, a result of changing political configurations and a context within which the future can be seen and understood; it is a system of inter-related values and social perspectives, active enough to condition the behavior of its adherents (Mazrui 1976a: 2). Mazrui’s (1986a, 1986b) ‘triple heritage’ systematically articulated his cultural approach to the study of African politics and society. He demonstrated how Islam, Christianity, and Western culture interacted to produce postcolonial Africa. Mazrui (1976a) had previously articulated a more comprehensive cultural framework for analyzing global affairs. Mazrui’s comparative analyses of the Baganda and the Japanese (1976b), Meiji Japan and the legacy of [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk (2001a), and the Bolsheviks and the Bantu (1976c), among many others, exemplified his gift of identifying linkages between otherwise disparate elements. They also demonstrated how he continued to eschew the pervasive state-centric paradigms of the discipline of IR.

The Binghamton Years (1989–2014) In 1989, Mazrui moved from the University of Michigan, where he had been based since he fled Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1973, to Binghamton University in New York, where he made his home base for the rest of his life as the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities, until he formally retired in September 2014. Mazrui created and began to teach one of the most popular courses at Binghamton University as a whole—‘Cultural Forces in World Politics’. It was a clear sign of Mazrui’s rising fortunes that his arrival in Binghamton, New  York, should also be accompanied ‘with a lot of fanfare, resources and a large reputation’ (Davenport 2008: 447; Leslie 1990: 60). ‘Governor Mario Cuomo of New York telephoned my home in Ann Arbor (Michigan) to persuade me to accept the Chair,’ Mazrui (1989 Newsletter) also wrote at the time. Ali Mazrui sharpened his focus on cultural forces in the 1990s. In this regard, the publication of his Cultural Forces in World Politics (1990) could not have been timelier, as it came out shortly before Samuel Huntington (1993: 22–49) formulated his influential ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ thesis in an article published in Foreign Affairs. Huntington (1993: 49) argued: ‘The fundamental source of conflict in the new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.’ Mazrui was also invited by Foreign Affairs to contribute an

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article on a related theme; ‘Islamic and Western Values’ by Ali Mazrui (1997: 118–132) appeared in the journal subsequently. In an internal memo, Mazrui (2006b) had in fact claimed: ‘I was researching and publishing about “clash of civilizations” long before Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University discovered it in the 1990s. (Huntington has acknowledged my earlier work.)’ It is indeed true that on various pages of his The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington (1996) does cite Mazrui, sometimes favorably. Mazrui and Huntington, who knew each other personally in the 1960s, subsequently debated the issue, including at Princeton University in May 1995. Whereas both Mazrui and Huntington dealt with issues of cultures and civilizations, their perspectives could not have nevertheless been more different. Mazrui (2008a: 395–403) identified three types of fallacies in Huntington’s thesis: factual, conceptual, and temporal: Firstly … it may not be factually true that the main lines of conflict of the future following the Cold War will be lines of clash among civilizations … Secondly, can what [Huntington] identifies as civilization be something else? Could it be a new stage of racial conflict in world history rather than clash of civilizations? And, thirdly, does Huntington’s thesis suffer from a temporal fallacy? Even if we do have to be concerned about clashes of civilizations, are we talking about what is coming, or what was in the past, or what has always been there?

Consistent with his logic of reasoning suggested above, Mazrui (2006a: 70–72) had earlier elaborated the different phases of the clash of civilizations  in the ‘modern’ period, namely genocidal, enslaving, imperial, and hegemonic. From Mazrui’s perspective, the current phase of the clash of civilizations, the phase of hegemonic homogenization, is constituted by economic globalization under American dominion, information globalization under American influence, and a unipolar security system (see Chap. 7).

Growing Interest in Mazrui Ali Mazrui began to receive renewed attention from his peers in the discipline in the 1990s. National and international demand dramatically increased for his lectures. It was in 1999 that Mazrui published an article titled ‘Identity Politics and the Nation-State Under Siege’ in which he continued to highlight the

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retreat of state. In that article, Mazrui (1999: 5–25) observed that on the eve of the twenty-first century at least five profound changes were occurring which challenge the Westphalian state: the supra-nationalization of state, the micro-tribalization of state, the androgynization of state, the re-sacralization of state, and the re-racialization of state. This observation, in my view, is significant for at least two reasons. For one, it validates Hedley Bull’s 1978 account (mentioned in Chap. 3) that Mazrui was a most illuminating interpreter of the drift in world politics, and, secondly, the global trends Mazrui had detected, as he articulated them in the article, appear to be in the process of being fulfilled at the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Also in 1999, Mazrui received ISA’s Distinguished Senior Scholar Award, and in 2007, he was invited to speak at the ISA special panel on ‘Race and International Relations’. The telling title of his presentation at the panel, a rhetorical question, was itself worth noting: ‘Is the Study of World Politics Lagging Behind World Politics?’ Mazrui was also recognized by the mainstream discipline for his pioneering cultural analyses that has expanded IR to non-Western and ‘third-world’ contexts (Waever and Tickner 2009: 3). And in 2012, Mazrui received the Distinguished Scholar Award from ISA’s Global South Caucus. The issues Mazrui addressed had thus made him more relevant again to the academic and public discourse in the last two decades of his life, but his perspective, divergent as it was from the dominant view, continued to marginalize him to a certain extent. His ‘classical’ or ‘traditional’ approach (see Chap. 3), which sometimes allowed him to ‘embed’ himself in the stories he told (see Chaps. 5 and 10), had failed also to endear him to many of his more ‘scientifically oriented’ colleagues. Others, including some ‘postcolonial’ scholars (see Chap. 5), saw Mazrui’s proximity to the corridors of power (see Chap. 10) as the Achilles’ heel of his scholarship.

Mazrui, the Islamicist In the first half of his career, it can be argued, Mazrui was an articulator of the ideology of the Global South, with particular focus on Africa, but he became more of a defender of Islam in the second. Donald Puchala (2000: 134) has observed that with Edward Said, Mazrui was at the forefront in the effort to articulate the enduring challenges to the enlightenment project coming from the Islamic world. Mazrui’s Islamic sensitivity reached an acute level in the 2000s, after America’s invasion and occupation of two

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Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. His public position on this issue drew sharp critiques, particularly as they were later expounded more systematically in his book Islam: Between Counter-terrorism and Globalization (Mazrui 2006a). In an open letter directly addressed to President George W.  Bush, Mazrui wrote on April 7, 2003: ‘Your historic administration keeps on emphasizing that it is not against Islam or the Muslim world. But we have had wars against two Muslim countries so far (Afghanistan and Iraq) and two other Muslim countries have been threatened by members of your administration (Syria and Iran).’ Subsequently, Mazrui (2006b) concluded: ‘The future of the world may depend on how the US relates to other civilizations.’ But how could we explain Mazrui’s transformation into an Islamicist? An Islamicist for Mazrui is a scholar who studies Islam; an Islamist is a person to whom Islam is not just a religion but is a radical political ideology too. I make the same distinction. The shift in Mazrui’s emphasis from Africa to Islam was neither unexpected nor sudden. Firstly, Mazrui’s TV documentary, The Africans, had played a part in the shift. As Mazrui explained: ‘When the BBC invited me in about 1980–1982 to do a television series with them about Africa, what they had in mind was a story about “Africa and the West.” Instead, I insisted that the TV series be about what I called “Africa’s Triple Heritage – Africanity, Islam and the West”. In the TV series, I drew attention to Islam as a major part of the African condition. This became a major turning point in my career. Instead of my being viewed exclusively as an Africanist and political scientist, I began to be viewed also as someone who had important and distinctive things to say about Islam. Before long I was receiving an avalanche of invitations to speak about Islam or to play other roles in Islamic institutions’ (author’s interview with Mazrui, February 15, 2007). Mazrui (2008b: 15) was convinced during his Binghamton years that in contemporary history ‘Islamo-phobia’ has increased, rendering the culture line rather than the color line more salient and he had sensed ‘the vibration of racism in retreat’ and ‘the rumbling of cultural forces on the ascendancy’. Although his thought along these lines was formulated earlier, he believed he had found additional affirmation of his theory in the election in 2008 (and re-election in 2012) of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the US. Secondly, and even more importantly, the shift from Mazrui the Africanist to Mazrui the Islamicist coincided with and was perhaps part and parcel of what some scholars have called Mazrui’s ‘midlife ideological

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crisis’ which, in the words of Richard Falk (2016: 120), entailed ‘a turn away from the West, an embrace of Islam as his empowering cultural foundation, and a fierce civilizational nationalism that bespoke his African identity, although coupled with his belief that Africa might serve as a stepping stone for the emergence of a genuinely global culture’. Incidentally, it is important to note, Mazrui’s deep loyalty to Islam was married to a secular lifestyle. Indeed, Mazrui (2001b: 29) had summed up his approach to Islam as follows: ‘I can be ecumenical and a Muslim at the same time; I can be an African cultural bridge-builder and loyal to my own Muslim upbringing. I recognize borders but I do not regard them as impenetrable.’ Let me close this chapter by returning to its major theme: Mazrui’s revival. In the last decade of his life, few mainstream IR scholars had begun to see insights in some of Mazrui’s writings. But, ironically, the scholars who were seeking to recover, if not reclaim, Mazrui and were cautiously approaching his scholarship, specially concerning his ‘unconventional’ observations about North–South and cross-cultural interactions, were empirical theorists (such as Singer 2008). One would expect Mazrui’s interest in such issues as norms, culture, and identity, as well as in matters affecting the Global South in general and his commitment to the marginalized in particular, would make him a natural ally of postcolonial IR scholars and social constructivists. But that never happened, as we explore in the next two chapters.

References Darby, P., and A.J.  Paolini. 2014. Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism. In Critical International Relations, ed. J. Edkins. New York: Routledge. Davenport, C. 2008. The Dark Side of International Studies. International Studies Perspectives 9: 445–449. Falk, R. 2016. Remembering Ali Mazrui. In A Giant Tree Has Fallen: Tributes to Ali A. Al’amin Mazrui, ed. S. Adem et al. Johannesburg: African Perspectives Publishing. Huntington, S. 1993. The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72: 22–49. ———. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lapid, Y. 1996. Culture’s Ship: Returns and Departures in International Relations Theory. In The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, ed. Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Leslie, C. 1990. Let’s Buy a Physicist or Two. Newsweek, 12 February.

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Mazrui, A.A. 1963. On the Concept of “We Are All Africans”. American Political Science Review 57: 88–97. ———. 1976a. A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1976b. The Baganda and the Japanese: Comparative Response to Modernization. Kenya Historical Review 4: 167–186. ———. 1976c. The Bolsheviks and the Bantu: From the October Revolution to the Angolan Civil War. Survey 22: 288–306. ———. 1980. The Cultural Meaning of the Twentieth Century: A Global Perspective. Unpublished Memo/A Conference Proposal. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, p.  8. Accessed 13 Aug 2019. ———. 1986a The Africans: A Triple Heritage. BBC/PBS. ———. 1986b. The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. ———. 1989. Annual Mazrui Newsletter. No. X. ———. 1990. Cultural Forces in World Politics. London: James Currey. ———. 1999. Identity Politics and the Nation-State Under Siege: Towards a Theory of Reverse Evolution. Social Dynamics 25: 5–25. ———. 1997. Islamic and Western Values. Foreign Affairs 76: 118–132. ———. 2001a. Africa Between the Meiji Restoration and the Legacy of Ataturk: Comparative Dilemmas of Modernization. In Contending Issues in African Development: Advances, Challenges, and the Future, ed. O.M.  Iheduru. Westport and London: Greenwood Press. ———. 2001b. Annual Mazrui Newsletter. No. 25. ———. 2006a. Islam between Globalization and Counterterrorism. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ———. 2006b. Untitled Memo. Institute of Global Cultural Studies. New  York: Binghamton University. ———. 2008a. Orientalism and Clash of Civilizations: Between Edward Said and Samuel Huntington. In Globalization and Civilization: Are They Forces in Conflict? ed. A.A.  Mazrui, P.M.  Dikirr, and S.  Kafrawi. New  York: Global Scholarly Publications. ———. 2008b. The Black Atlantic from Othello to Obama: In Search for a Post-­ racial Society. Paper Presented at Center for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town: University of Cape Town, South Africa, September 11–13. Puchala, D. 2000. Making a Weberian Moment: Our Discipline Looks Ahead. International Studies Perspective 1: 133–144. Singer, J.D. 2008. Nuclear Proliferation and the Geocultural Divide: The March of Folly. In North and South in the World Political Economy, ed. R. Reuveny and W.R. Thomson. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Waever, O., and A.B. Tickener. 2009. Introduction: Geocultural Epistemologies. In International Relations Scholarship around the World, ed. O.  Waever and A.B. Tickener. London: Routledge.

PART III

Ali Mazrui’s Postcolonial Constructivism

CHAPTER 5

Postcolonialism

Ali Mazrui had said and written relatively little about metatheory. The very notion of an all-encompassing theory was anathema to him. For him social reality was a unity of opposites. It is all too easy, therefore, to dismiss Mazrui as theoretically incoherent and mistake the contradictions he highlights in social reality for theoretical contradictions in his scholarship. Surely, the relative uniqueness of his style of scholarship as well as its volume and breadth make theoretically interpreting him a daunting task. I will nevertheless attempt in this chapter to situate Mazrui within the intellectual landscape of postcolonial theory, or postcolonialism, and explain his invisibility within it.

On Postcolonialism Philip Darby (1997: 14) has succinctly summed up the major aspects of postcolonial endeavors as including emphasis on subjectivity, a critique of modernity, a challenge to positivism and a rejection of European universalism, a prising open of the nation-state, and a commitment to the marginal. Framed in this way, it is next to impossible to point to a single work in Ali Mazrui’s vast scholarly outputs in which he was not engaged in some type of such postcolonial undertakings.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_5

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However, postcolonial theory has for the most part neither embraced nor engaged Mazrui. This neglect is all the more puzzling because of Edward Said who was one of the founding figures of postcolonial studies and its fountainhead (Guhin and Wyrtzen 2013: 231; Varadarajan 2009: 293; Acharya and Buzan 2019: 169). Edward Said (1994: 239) had asserted that ‘it is no longer possible to ignore the work of … Ali Mazrui in even a cursory survey of African history, politics and philosophy’. Similarly, Said had come forward to defend Mazrui when Mazrui’s (1986) TV series, The Africans, came under attack shortly after it was aired in the US. In his critical intervention to explain why the TV series elicited such intensely negative reaction in the West, Said (1994: 39) wrote: ‘Here at last was [Ali Mazrui], an African on prime-time television, in the West, daring to accuse the West of what it had done, thus reopening a file considered closed.’ It must be said that there was therefore no legitimate intellectual reason for postcolonialism not to engage with Mazrui’s scholarship by either confirming or disconfirming its claims. If elements in Mazrui’s discourse did not mesh with specific claims or particular readings of some of aspect of the postcolonial experience, one would assume that that made engagement with him all the more intellectually enriching. Mazrui’s obscurity in postcolonial theory is ironic, given also that some of the same scholars who had ignored him have occasionally expressed concerns that the mainstream IR does not engage them. The point that Mazrui took the role of culture in the study of human behaviour seriously, and too seriously according to some scholars, has already been made. And this was an additional reason why Mazrui should have easily found a place in postcolonialism. As Darby and Paolini (2014: 62) have noted: ‘Where international relations has ignored culture, or at most begrudgingly conceded it a minor role, postcolonialism has elevated culture to an extraordinary degree.’ The question thus becomes: If Mazrui was a postcolonial theorist par excellence, why was his scholarship overlooked in postcolonialism? Why was Mazrui’s role in challenging Eurocentrism barely recognized in postcolonial writings, including in those produced by Africanists, and particularly by scholars of color? The reasons for this must be many and varied, but I will seek to highlight below only those which pertain to the nature of postcolonial theory itself and to Mazrui’s relationship with the African left.

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Nature of Postcolonialism Ali Mazrui was not keen on using excessive abstraction in his writings. In fact, Mazrui saw the jargon so common in much of postcolonial writing as less stimulating, and even cumbersome. He was instead steeped in the tradition of analysis that anchors itself in the historical method, eschews fetishism in numbers, and accepts permissiveness of normative bias in social inquiry (see Chaps. 2, 6, and 7). But that postcolonial theory is abstract or is often written in inaccessible language is not surprising since it is heavily influenced by poststructuralism and postmodernism, paradigms that draw heavily on abstract philosophical concepts (see Darby 1997: 14). What is more remarkable is the suggestion that a discourse is not relevant to postcolonial theory unless it is expressed in the postcolonial jargon. In any case, the difference in postcolonialism’s style of presentation should feature as a factor that hindered mutual dialogue between Mazrui and postcolonialism. What irritated other postcolonial scholars was Mazrui’s readiness to move swiftly from one issue to another, quickly changing his themes, if not his tunes. Mazrui indeed felt comfortable with changing the direction of his intellectual gaze as circumstances dictated. ‘As a matter of principle’, Mazrui had said, ‘I seek to identify a public issue that was capable of generating debate and relate that issue to my own convictions’ (author’s correspondence with Mazrui, January 29, 2010). It is therefore fair to say that Mazrui’s impatience to pause, too, has played a role in his marginalization in postcolonial theory. Another factor that complicated Mazrui’s relations with some postcolonial scholars was perhaps his reluctance to be quiet about Africa’s own ills: ‘We shall never understand ourselves, or help others to understand us,’ Mazrui wrote, ‘if we are not willing to take an occasional peep under the carpet’ (author’s correspondence with Mazrui, December 15, 2011). Some scholars have nevertheless lauded Mazrui’s critical approach. N’Dri T. Assie-Lumumba has, for instance, noted, ‘Mazrui’s most insightful, and sometimes provocative but much needed, perspective on education in Africa can contribute to the current search for relevant paradigms for renewal and social progress …’ (Adem and Njogu 2018: 79).

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Mazrui’s ‘transactional’ methodology, most notably the semi-­ autobiographical nature of many of his writings, is another reason why some postcolonial scholars were less eager to engage his work. Mazrui was fond of writing and talking about himself in the context of the issue under discussion. But the  semi-autobiographical style of writing does not just casually sneak itself into Mazrui’s scholarship (see Chap. 10). ‘Because political consciousness is so intricately bound up with growth of a person’s general awareness’, Mazrui (1973: 101) had argued, ‘political scientists should perhaps devote more time to using their own lives as data for the study of the growth of political consciousness.’ Autobiography and semi-­ autobiography was thus an important facet of Mazrui’s approach to scholarship which reflected his methodological orientation. Because of his long and colorful professional journey, Mazrui also always had something relevant and interesting to say about himself or his experience. He did embed himself in his scholarship, as his critics claimed, but this embeddedness was itself grounded in a methodological orientation which he had espoused for a long time. But, again, why should semi-autobiography and postcolonialism be natural enemies? Is it not the case that the semi-autobiographical approach to theory-building is itself a form of methodological challenge to positivism? Even if his fusion of style, tone, and method were driven by egotism, why should that human limitation prevent us from judging his insights and contributions separately? A related factor that inhibited Mazrui’s relationship with postcolonial theory was his proximity to Africa’s leaders and other persons of power (see Chap. 10). Some of these leaders were known to violate the human rights of their fellow citizens. Critics of Mazrui say that he was very close to those people and that he even fraternized with them. Mazrui had indeed cultivated close relationships with many African leaders and other men and women of power. However, it is wrong to suggest that his relationships with these leaders had always been cordial. Mazrui himself had said, for instance, ‘[President] Obote was sometimes tempted to detain me or expel me [from Uganda]; [President]Idi Amin [of Uganda] eventually wished he had eliminated me; and [President] Julius Nyerere [of Tanzania] was in recurrent debates with me. [President] Moi [of Kenya] does not know what to do with me’ (Adem et al. 2013: 209). Mazrui (1992) had also said the following in relation, for instance, to the military government of the Sudan: ‘I regard the Sudanese regime of General el Bashir as repressive, but I am prepared to keep the doors of dialogue open.’

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It is legitimate, of course, to ask: How was Mazrui able to combine this level of political connections with high intellectual integrity? How did he mange to overcome, or at least minimize, the adverse effects of the situation George Orwell (2001: 37) had thus described: ‘[t]o understand a political movement, one has got to be involved in it, and as soon as one is involved, one becomes a propagandist’? On the question of how Mazrui resolved the Orwellian dilemma, if he did, I wonder if we could get some clues from the following anecdote. As I indicated already, Mazrui’s (1995) favorite quotation was from a book by his mentor at Oxford, John Plamenatz (1960): ‘The vices of the strong acquire some of the prestige of strength.’ He used different variations of this quote more frequently than any other in his writings. In my view, the fact that this was so meant at least three things: it meant that Mazrui understood well the nature of power; it meant that he had gradually become skillful in navigating comfortably through the corridors of power; and it meant that he therefore did not have to distort facts for political purpose. It was perhaps such deep awareness about the nature of power which enabled him to be both a confidant and critic of some of Africa’s postcolonial leaders. In any case, my interpretation is consistent with a position Mazrui himself had formulated even much earlier: I believe that no African leader, no matter how obviously good, should be protected from criticism. Similarly, no African leader, no matter how blatantly bad, should be denied occasional dispassionate evaluation. Just as Africa cannot afford undiluted admiration of its heroes, it cannot afford undiluted condemnation of its villains. Both inclinations amount to a suspension of judgement, a kind of abdication of the mind. (Mazrui Unpublished Meo, April 1975)

Mazrui had also said that the maximum access he enjoyed in the corridors of power in Africa and elsewhere was desirable from the point of view of the transactional methodology of teaching and research he used. An incident in Florida that was reported in The Washington Post illustrates this point. Suspecting that he had met Yaseen Abubakar, a controversial Muslim leader in Trinidad and Tobago, the FBI briefly detained Mazrui in Miami when he was returning from that nation in September 2003, after a mission which, according to Mazrui, had nothing to do with religion. Asked at the airport if he had indeed met the radical Islamist leader in Trinidad and Tobago, Mazrui told the FBI interrogators: ‘I did not, but I did try to meet him … It is my business to know about Muslims because I teach that’ (Murphy 2003).

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Mazrui’s Perceived Ideology Ideologically, the roots of Ali Mazrui’s invisibility in postcolonial theory may be partly traceable to his break with Africa’s left. Ever since Mazrui (1966) published ‘Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar’, arguing that Kwame Nkrumah exhibited both ‘monarchist’ and ‘socialist’ styles of leadership, the African left, some of whom had viewed Nkrumah as their icon, were displeased with Mazrui. In the wake of the publication of that article, some in the leftist ideological camp described Mazrui as a ‘neo-colonial scholar’ (Mazrui and Mutunga 2003: 54–59). And yet Nkrumah himself seemed reluctant to label Mazrui in that way; Nkrumah saw admirable ‘literary effort’ in Mazrui’s sharp critique of his policies (Mazrui and Mutunga 2003: 38). But it is clear that no single piece of writing maligned Mazrui more as an alleged ‘right-winger’ than his evaluation of Nkrumah in that article. It turned him into a kind of the ideological ‘Other’ in the eyes of the African left. In response, Mazrui went on to insist as follows: ‘Political commitment should never be confused with political conformity. The intellectual who dissents may sometimes be more deeply committed than the intellectual who takes the easy way out and toes the party line’ (author’s correspondence with Mazrui, September 25, 2012). Although Nkrumah was revered much more as a prophet of pan-­ Africanism than as a socialist thinker, he was highly ranked among the heroes in the struggle against imperialism. By appearing to make fun of Nkrumah as the ‘Leninist Czar’, Mazrui alienated himself from the African left. In spite of Mazrui’s troubles with the African left in the 1960s, his most serious writings of that period were solidly in the tradition of anti-­ imperialism. Indeed, he coined the term neo-dependency in his Oxford thesis and used the concept in his first book (Mazrui 1967), long before dependency theories became popular with the African left. So, if Mazrui was as anti-imperialist as his writings of the 1960s imply, what else was the cause of his alienation from the left? The partial answer lies in Mazrui’s mode of thinking, which cantered on paradox (see Chap. 8). While Mazrui in his early writings was strongly anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, he was only mildly anti-capitalist. Mazrui portrayed capitalism not only as the mother of imperialism (of which he disapproved) but also as the foundation of liberal democracy, in the sense of pluralism, the open society, and civil liberties (of which he approved). However,

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Mazrui had mixed feelings about liberal democracy as a whole. Furthermore, Mazrui saw Marxism in Africa as a threat to Africa’s intellectual authenticity. Since historical materialism was a whole system of thought rather than simply a guide to social policies, Marxism itself, in Mazrui’s view, was a form of intellectual dependency among Westernized Africans (Mazrui 1974; also see Mazrui 2001). To the outrage of Africa’s left, Mazrui argued that African Marxism represented ‘dual Westernization’ since it was a sociolinguistic impossibility for an African to be a sophisticated Marxist without being at the same time very highly Westernized. An African Marxist is not a rebel against Western intellectual hegemony but rather a victim of that hegemony. For the same reason, Mazrui (1974: 70) was critical of those who ‘equate love for Africa with an obsession with [Marxism]’. But what does the African left have to do with postcolonial theory? The short answer is that while not all postcolonial theorists are leftists, postcolonialism has historically showed a great deal of ideological sympathy for the left. It is thus only logical to conclude that the left’s perception of Mazrui’s ideological orientation was not totally irrelevant to his obscurity in postcolonial theory. But, in my view, Mazrui has been, and will remain, the postcolonial scholar par excellence, who spoke the postcolonial language with a distinctly constructivist accent—a subject treated briefly in the next chapter.

References Acharya, A., and B. Buzan. 2019. The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at Its Centenary. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Adem, S., W.  Mutunga, and Alamin Mazrui, eds. 2013. Black Orientalism and Pan-African Thought: Mazrui and His Critics. Vol. 3. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ———, eds. 2018. Black Orwell: Essays on the Scholarship of Ali A.  Mazrui. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Darby, P. 1997. Postcolonialism. In At the Edge of International Relations: Postcolonialism, Gender and Dependency, ed. P.  Darby. London and New York: Pinter. Darby, P., and A.  J. Paolini. 2014. Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism. In Critical International Relations, ed. J. Edkins. New York: Routledge.

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Guhin, J., and J.  Wyrtzen. 2013. The Violence of Knowledge: Edward Said, Sociology, and Post-Orientalist Reflexivity. In Postcolonial Sociology, ed. J. Go. London: Emerald. Mazrui, A.A. 1966. Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar. Transition 6: 9–17. ———. 1967. Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1973. The Making of an African Political Scientist. International Social Science Journal 25: 101–116. ———. 1974. Africa, My Conscience and I. Transition 46: 67–71. ———. 1986. The Africans: A Triple Heritage. BBC/PBS TV Documentary. ———. 1992. Mazrui Under Fire. Unpublished Paper, IGCS, Binghamton University, NY. ———. 1995. Islam and the West: The Tensions of Cultural Globalization. Keynote Address at the international conference on ‘The Globalization of Culture: Implications for the Islamic World and the West.’ Oxford University, 29 September–1 October. ———. 2001. Ideology and African Political Culture. In Exploration in African Political Thought: Identity, Community, Ethics, ed. T. Kiros. London: Routledge. Mazrui, A.A., and W.  Mutunga. 2003. Ali A.  Mazrui and His Critics Vol. I. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Orwell, G. 2001. In Orwell and Politics, ed. P. Davison. London: Penguin Books. Murphy, C. 2003. Intense Airport Scrutiny Angers Muslim Travelers. The Washington Post. 14 September. Plamenatz, J. 1960. On Alien Rule and Self-Government. London: Longman. Said, E. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Varadarajan, L. 2009. Edward Said. In Critical Theorists and International Relations, ed. J.  Edkins and N.  Vaughan-Williams. London and New  York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 6

Constructivism

Apart from postcolonialism, Ali Mazrui’s voluminous scholarship exhibits some of the attributes of social constructivism, or constructivism for short. It is less clear at first glance, however, how social constructivism, a theory that emerged in the West for dealing with issues primarily affecting the West, could be invoked in connection with Mazrui’s works. We can approach this issue at least in two ways. First, such an exercise itself is in Mazrui’s analytical tradition. Mazrui was in favor of adapting European ideas for postcolonial Africa. He did not reject ideas out of hand only because they have a European root. Instead, he often sought to indigenize or domesticate those ideas and use them for deepening our understanding about the African condition. Mazrui (2012) maintained that the best way for Africa to minimize the negative consequences of some Western ideas, values, and institutions is to make them more relevant to Africa’s needs: ‘I demonstrated how Edmund Burke, J. J. Rousseau, and V. I. Lenin could be made more relevant … I applied Burke’s philosophy to an African situation … I also used in an African context J. J. Rousseau’s philosophical concept of the general will. All these were efforts to make Western ideas relevant to Africa.’ However, Mazrui (1976: 14) was also ready to admit that some kind of tension would continue to exist between his ‘political Afro-centrism’ and his ‘intellectual Euro-centrism’.

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In seeking to Africanize constructivism, I am also following Mazrui’s own teaching in another sense. Writing about what he called the methodology of theorizing in an essay aptly titled ‘Edmond Burke and Reflections on the Revolution in the Congo’, Mazrui (1963: 122) had argued: We could tear a theory out of its historical context, and bring the logic of all or some of its ideas to bear on specific situation in perhaps our own time— the object of the exercise being to determine whether the ideas scattered within the theory help in the understanding of the situation, on the one hand, and on the other, whether the situation could lend a new depth to the theory or perhaps expose an old shallowness in it.

Moreover, Mazrui sometimes downplayed the European-ness of some ‘European’ ideas; he also took issue with the (sometimes presumed) universality of some of them. In this way, Mazrui not only sought to offer an alternative reading about Africa that was fresh but also enriched the borrowed idea by adding new dimensions to them, and he did so without adulterating the Pan-­ Africanism of his perspective in the process (for a related point, see Henderson 2015: 253–255).

On Constructivism There are a variety of constructivisms (for instance, see Ruggie 1998: 881–882; Zehfuss 2002: 8; Hurd 2008: 298–305; Acharya 2018: 38–42). For my purpose here, however, I define constructivism in terms of the two basic tenets of the theory succinctly described by Wendt (1999: 1): (1) structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than given by nature, and (2) the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather than given by nature. Constructivism rejects the notion that exogenously given, objective reality exists in the social world. It claims instead that social reality is often constructed. Similarly, Mazrui (1975a: 1–37; 1976: 399) had occasionally grappled with the issue of inter-subjectivity and shared knowledge or, as he put it, shared image. The constructivist emphasis on the instrumentality of ideas for social change and the fluidity of identity and interest also underpinned the bulk of Mazrui’s scholarship.

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On language, constructivism emphasizes its constitutive role—language is not merely a tool through which we tell stories but is also a means of creating meaning. Such perspectives on language issues pervade Mazrui’s intellectual outputs, too (for instance, see Mazrui 1975b; Mazrui 1985; Mazrui and Mazrui 1998; Mazrui and Mazrui 1999; Mazrui 2008). Some constructivists maintain that we should be committed to normative positions. With the spread of the appropriate concepts, norms, and identities, constructivists believe, world politics itself can be transformed. Mazrui (1976: 1) had espoused a similar position: ‘Purposeful world reform is a quest for the realization of new values through defining new moral preferences …’ Mazrui shared with (postpositivist) constructivists an openness about the permissiveness of normative bias in social inquiry. He held the view that if the object of our study is society, of which we are necessarily a part, we cannot be ‘objective’ no matter what ‘scientific’ tools we use. As Mazrui (1973: 101) put it: ‘political consciousness in the political scientist is prior to his acquisition of either the ethos of scholarship or the specialized skills of his discipline. A political scientist had first to be a politically conscious animal before he could move in the direction of acquiring the necessary equipment from his discipline.’ From Mazrui’s perspective, objective social science is therefore not only impossible but undesirable too. In the social world, there is no absolute truth, but ‘received truth’, subjective interpretations, and understandings, and we should therefore view the data we receive through our senses with an air of skepticism. More specifically, Mazrui (1979) categorized the problems confronting what he called the study of current history into six: subjectivism, domestic political sensitivity, international diplomatic sensitivity, rapid historical change, access to sources, and comparative methodology. After concisely analyzing the relevant issues, Mazrui concluded: ‘The study of current history becomes part and parcel of the realities of current history in its wider ramifications’ (Italics in the original). By so doing, Mazrui in effect echoed, thirty years in advance, the postpositivist view, summed up by Hurd (2008: 307): ‘In social life data are not fully objectifiable, observers cannot be fully autonomous of the subject under study, and social relationships cannot be separated into discrete “causes” and “effects”.’

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In short, Mazrui shared the basic assumptions held by constructivists about the nature of social reality, about the relationship between the knower and what is to be known, and about the best way of acquiring knowledge. Mazrui had also occasionally articulated (or anticipated) quite a few of the major constructivist postulates in a language strikingly similar to that of constructivists (see, for example, Adem 2017: 243–259). Two examples will further illustrate further the constructivist instinct in Ali Mazrui. First, the famed constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt (1995: 73) thus wrote in relation to the role ideas play vis-à-vis distribution of capabilities in the international system: ‘500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than 5 North Korean nuclear weapons, because the British are friends of the United States and the Koreans are not.’ About five years earlier, Mazrui (1989: 162) put the same notion in this way: ‘Although Brazil is much larger than Iraq, Brazil’s nuclear capability would be less of a global shock than Iraqi nuclear weapons.’ With regard to the theoretical significance of Wendt’s observation quoted above, Hurd (2008: 298) has stated: The basic insight behind the constructivist approach can be understood by unpacking [the] quick observation made by Alexander Wendt [quoted above]; in this little observation are found traces of the features that distinguish constructivism from other approaches to international relations, including its critique of materialism, its emphasis on the social construction of interest, its relationship between structure and agents, and its multiple logics of anarchy.

This is quite a profound statement in its implications for the claims made by Wendt, and before him by Mazrui, as Theys’ (2017: 38) more recent usage of the same example also suggests. The second example that links Mazrui to constructivism relates to his preoccupation with ‘world culture’ (discussed also in the next chapter). For Mazrui, world culture is not an end in itself but a means toward the ultimate goal of ‘world government’. However, Mazrui (1975a: 4-5) argued that we are further away from world government today than in the pre-World War I period, and yet we are nearer to world culture today than any time before. Wendt (2005: 595) has proposed, after a deeper philosophical analysis of ‘why a world state is inevitable’, that ‘a day will come when, if we are to be rational, we shall have “no choice” but to abandon territorial sovereignty for a world state’.

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Clearly, there is significant overlap, too, between the ‘big questions’ that drew the attention of Mazrui and some constructivists. Their answers were also broadly similar or in tune with one another.

Typology of Mazrui’s Constructivism That substantial part of Mazrui’s works could be described as constructivist has been made. But there are four things one should keep in mind about Mazrui’s constructivism: to the extent he was a constructivist, firstly, he was so almost by default; secondly, he never said he was a constructivist; thirdly, his constructivism predated the emergence of this school of thought as a major paradigm in IR; and, finally, his constructivism had, as noted already, a postcolonial flavor. Mazrui’s constructivism is of a rich variety. In order to show this richness, I will rely on Ian Hacking’s (2000: 19–20) useful categorization. It must be noted that Hacking is not himself a constructivist; he is not even an IR scholar. He is a political philosopher. But his categorization is quite helpful for my purpose. Hacking categorized social constructivism into six groups: historical, unmasking, ironic, reformist, rebellious, and revolutionary. I would argue that these categories also mirror the distinct phases in the evolution of Mazrui’s constructivist scholarship. Historical constructivism is an explicitly non-evaluative narrative about its object. A fine example of this is Mazrui’s (1984: 465–486) ‘Africa Entrapped: Between the Protestant Ethic and the Legacy of Westphalia’. In that essay, Mazrui narrated the historical evolution and the predicaments of the African state in a seemingly detached way. Mazrui (1984: 467) then concluded: ‘The state system of Westphalia is excessively national and “sovereign”. Capitalism, on the other hand, is compulsively transnational and increasingly corporate. Africa has been entrapped between the territoriality of statehood and the supra-territoriality of capitalism.’ The second category, unmasking constructivism, deconstructs a dominant narrative. The deconstruction could be designed to refute a hegemonic idea and undermine its authority by exposing the function it serves. ‘Ancient Greece in African Political Thought’ by Ali Mazrui (1967: 25) represents this form of constructivism, in which he sought to demonstrate that ‘it is easier to prove that ancient Egypt was “African” than to prove that ancient Greece was “European”’. In the same vein, in his ‘From

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Social Darwinism to Current Theories of Modernization’, Mazrui (1969b: 92) expounded how ‘Darwinism was debiologized in modern theories of modernization’. Thirdly, we have ironic constructivism, which not only narrates the historical object but also suggests that the object would have been different if it was conceptualized differently. In this vein, Mazrui once asked: ‘What is Africa?’ Mazrui’s (1986: 28) elaborate answer included the following: ‘although the scholarship has paid greater attention to the artificiality of the borders of African states, the borders of the continent themselves were not much less artificial.’ He then went on to contest the notion that ‘Yemen, which is separated from the African landmass by a “stone’s throw,” was regarded not part of Africa while Madagascar or Mauritius with their respective distance of 250 and 1200 miles from Africa’s coastline qualified as parts of Africa’. Mazrui (1986: 105) continued: ‘How much of this Euro-centrism of geography is reversible?’ And his answer was, ‘Much of the Euro-centrism of contemporary geographical knowledge is beyond repair.’ He was saying, in other words, that we were stuck with it. Mazrui (1969a: 661-676) used a similar line of reasoning, but with greater subtlety, when he analyzed the dilemma of African nationalists between ‘the insult of being unknown’ and ‘the dignity of being unfamiliar’, and their ambivalence about ‘whether to be pleased that the European explorers “revealed” so much, or to be insulted at the presumption that there had been so much to “reveal”’. Reformist constructivism similarly perceives the existing state of affairs as a product of social, cultural, and political forces, but also states, usually implicitly, that something needed to be done about it (Mazrui 1980: 84–87). There is then rebellious constructivism which actively maintains that the constructed ‘reality’ is not only undesirable but also unacceptable. Many of Mazrui’s writings in the early 2000s (for instance, see Mazrui 2001, 2005, 2006), especially those dealing with US foreign policy under President George W. Bush, seem to reflect revolutionary constructivism, which represents a move from the level of ideas to that of action in order to actually undermine or demolish the received truth. In general, much of Mazrui’s intellectual outputs in the first half of his active professional life shows historical, unmasking, and reformist orientation; in the second half, Mazrui truly became ‘resistance theorist’, as Philip Darby (1997: 18) has described him, with an increasingly rebellious and even revolutionary tendencies. Mazrui’s effort in the first half of his career

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was geared toward the ‘representation’ of reality and, in the second half, toward changing it in a desirable way. But Mazrui’s writings were purpose-­ oriented all along, purpose in both normative and political sense. An alternative approach for classifying Mazrui’s constructivist writings would be to adapt Mazrui’s (1970: 1185-1196) own schema which he used for categorizing the major acts of protest in Africa: protests of conservation, protests of restoration, protests of transformation, and protests of corrective measure. Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2019: 246) have recently observed: ‘Postcolonialism provided both a critique of core IR and, in various ways, a bridge across IR divide between core and periphery.’ In my view, Ali Mazrui’s theory of postcolonial constructivism, discussed in the next chapter, could be seen in the same sense as a form of critique and bridge, across the discipline—both at the same time.

References Acharya, A. 2018. Constructing Global Order: Agency and Change in World Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Acharya, A., and B. Buzan. 2019. The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at Its Centenary. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Adem, S. 2017. Was Mazrui Ahead of His Time? In Perspectives on Culture and Globalization: The Intellectual Legacy of Ali A.  Mazrui, ed. K.  Njogu and S. Adem. Nairobi, Kenya: Twaweza Communications. Darby, P. 1997. Postcolonialism. In At the Edge of International Relations. Postcolonialism, Gender and Dependency, ed. P.  Darby. London and New York: Pinter. Hacking, I. 2000. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Henderson, E.A. 2015. African Realism? International Relations Theory and Africa’s Wars in the Postcolonial Era. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Hurd, I. 2008. Constructivism. In The Oxford Handbook of International Relation, ed. C. Reus-Smit and D. Snidal. New York: Oxford University Press. Mazrui, A.A. 1963. Edmond Burke and Reflections on the Revolution in the Congo. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5: 121–133. ———. 1967. Ancient Greece in African Political Thought. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House. ———. 1969a. European Exploration and Africa’s Self-Discovery. The Journal of Modern African Studies 7: 661–676.

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———. 1969b. Violence and Thought: Essays on Social Tensions in Africa. London: Longman. ———. 1970. Postlude: Towards a Theory of Protest. In Protest and Power in Black Africa, ed. R.I.  Rotberg and A.A.  Mazrui. New  York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1973. The Making of an African Political Scientist. International Social Science Journal 25: 101–116. ———. 1975a. World Culture and the Search for Human Consensus. In On the Creation of a Just World Order. Preferred Worlds of the 1990’s, ed. S.H. Mendlovitz. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1975b. The Political Sociology of the English Language: An African Perspective. The Hague: Mouton. ———. 1976. A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1979. The Study of Current History: Political, Psychological and Methodological. Unpublished Paper. IGCS. Binghamton University, NY. ———. 1980. Beyond Dependency in the Black World: Five Strategies for Decolonization. In Decolonization and Dependency: Problems of Development of African Societies, ed. A.Y. Yansane. Westport: Greenwood Press. ———. 1984. Africa Entrapped: Between the Protestant Ethic and the Legacy of Westphalia. In The Expansion of International Society, ed. H.  Bull and A. Watson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1985. Religion and Political Culture in Africa. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53: 817–839. ———. 1986. The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown & Co. ———. 1989. The Political Culture of War and Nuclear Proliferation: A Third World Perspective. In The Study of International Relations: The State of the Art, ed. M.C. Dyer and L. Mangasarian. London: Macmillan. ———. 2001. Pretender to Universalism: Western Culture in a Globalizing Age. In Unpacking Europe, ed. S. Hassan and I. Dadi. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers. ———. 2005. Has a Clash of Civilizations Begun? Islam and the West. Paper Presented at the Gannett Lecture Series, Rochester Institute of Technology, College of Liberal Arts, 24 March. ———. 2006. From Eurocentrism to Americo-Centrism. Unpublished Paper. Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, New York. ———. 2008. The Power of Language and the Politics of Religion. The Roundtable 97: 79–77. ———. 2012. Acceptance Speech. Distinguished Senior Scholar Award. International Studies Association, Global South Caucus. San Diego, California, April.

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Mazrui, A.A., and Alamin A.  Mazrui. 1998. The Power of Babel: Language and Governance in the African Experience. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1999. The Political Culture of Language: Swahili, Society and the State. New York: Global Scholarly Publications. Ruggie, J. 1998. What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge. International Organization 52: 855–885. Theys, S. 2017. Constructivism. In International Relations Theory, ed. S. McGlimchey, R. Walters, and C. Scheinpflug. Bristol, UK: E-IR Publishing. Wendt, A. 1995. Constructing International Politics. International Security 20: 70–81. ———. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. New  York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. Agency, Teleology and the World State: A Reply to Shannon. European Journal of International Relations 11: 589–598. Zehfuss, M. 2002. Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality. New York: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Postcolonial Constructivism

‘In apprehending Ali Mazrui’s approach’, Richard Falk (2016: 122) has wisely reminded us, ‘we should realize that it is rather complex and sophisticated, and difficult to apprehend all at once.’ Another factor that compounds the task of apprehending Mazrui’s ‘approach’ is this. He tended to explain things rather than explaining about which explanations were more suitable for explaining things and why. And yet, although Mazrui might be less self-conscious about it, a reader could readily feel the presence of an organizing ‘theoretical’ principle in his scholarship too. I have argued in the last two chapters that Mazrui’s approach has affinity with postcolonialism and constructivism. What emerges from the synthesis of Mazrui’s postcolonialism and his constructivism, it is argued in this chapter, is the distinct paradigm I would call postcolonial constructivism. Mazrui’s postcolonial constructivism is based on two major premises. One is its anti-positivist philosophical foundation—it accommodates ethical considerations by integrating questions of justice, legitimacy, and moral credibility into its concepts, and merges empirical theory (observation) with value theory (moral judgment). No such a thing exists as a value-free political science from the point of view of postcolonial constructivism, and the very advocacy of a value-free political science is itself not value free. Mazrui’s anti-positivism can be inferred from the fact that he did not believe that a knowable social reality existed out there which was driven by

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immutable laws and mechanisms, he did not believe that inquiry took place through a one-way mirror in which values could be prevented from influencing outcomes, and he did not believe that manipulative and experimental approach to inquiry was the ultimate path to knowledge. Mazrui’s theory could therefore be interpreted as anti-positivist, or even postpositivist, body of knowledge as are some constructivist and much of postcolonial scholarship. On the other hand, and more crucially, Mazrui’s theory is premised on the view that culture is the key variable and should be given greater explanatory significance in explaining relations among groups of peoples. Before I expound the substantive elements of postcolonial constructivism as it relates to intercultural relations, however, I should further clarify its philosophical foundation.

The Foundation of Postcolonial Constructivism Postcolonial constructivism is the systematic interrogation of power and modernity. Its basic counter-hegemonic instinct is revealed in the form of discursive challenge of dominant narratives that frame, enable, and sustain unequal relationship. Apart from its normative orientation, postcolonial constructivism pays attention to the unity of the ideational and the material, the objective and the subjective, as well as the local and the universal. It allows the pursuit of disciplined inquiry without disciplinary restrictions, enables the expression of unity of opposites without a hint of analytical contradictions, and accommodates divergent issues and conflicting claims. It neither privileges coherence nor weeds out deviations; rather, paradoxes are actively sought and pointed out. Postcolonial constructivism thus provides a healthy antidote to the limitations of rationalism in the study of intercultural relations. More specifically, it seeks to overcome two rationalist limitations, the cohesion bias (the generality and parsimony requirements) and quantitative bias. Rationalism is less congenial for or less tolerant of contradictions, or seeming contradictions, in socio-political reality. Cohesion of narratives is the name of the game in rationalism. But how could postcolonial constructivism successfully relate contradictions in social reality without introducing outright inconsistencies to its narratives? It accomplishes this complex task through several inter-related,

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and sometimes overlapping, strategies that include paradoxical propositions (Chap. 8), classification, or perceptive typologies (Chap. 9) which is bound up with comparative imagery, the focus on qualitative data, eclecticism, and macro-history. Mazrui used paradoxical formulations in order to elaborate his oxymoronic concepts. Some of these were exemplified in his perceptive typologies with skillfully selected historical illustrations. The paradoxical formulations in some cases became his perceptive typologies writ large, and the latter, the condensed paradoxes that were reduced into mere headwords and their modifiers. Both served as the means of transforming a complicated issue into a fairly clear picture. The paradoxes and classifications were therefore an integral part of his approach. The use of classification, or perceptive typologies, as a heuristic device also eliminates the need to screen out deviant cases, offering a distinct analytical advantage that opens the door for the accommodation of conflicting observations. But what is or should be the role of classification in social inquiry in the first place? Rationalist method is premised on classification and categorization. It is said, and rightly so, that sciences always carry with themselves the project, however remote it may be, of an exhaustive ordering of the world. If classification occupies such a central place in the rationalist project, and if postcolonial constructivism is anti-rationalist, then how do we reconcile this contradiction? The crucial difference here is that rationalism employs classification as a tool for explanation, which is ultimately bound up, in turn, with prediction. But postcolonial constructivism employs classification as a tool for understanding and as a means of reflecting on the contradictions that make up social reality. Explanation and prediction are predicated on the assumption of determinacy of human behavior; understanding eschews such a commitment. A related rhetorical device used in Ali Mazrui’s writings, indicated below only by their year of publication, is comparative imagery or analogical reasoning. Almost every time one came across Mazrui’s comparative analysis, with its telling title, the immediate reaction of the reader would be, what do these two (events, people, and processes) have in common? This in turn arouses the interest of a potential reader, triggering the anticipatory desire in her, to read the material through. Who would suspect, for instance, that Nkrumah shared a striking similarity with Czar and Lenin

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(Mazrui 1966)? Other compelling examples include the postulated link between the impeachment of Warren Hastings and the Nuremberg Trials (Mazrui  1993); David Livingstone, Albert Schweitzer, and Rudyard Kipling (Mazrui 1991); Malcolm X and Ras Tafari (Mazrui 1990b); the Meiji Restoration and the legacy of Ataturk (Mazrui 2001d); the African state and a political refugee (Mazrui  1995); Boxer Muhammad Ali and Soldier Idi Amin (Mazrui  1977); the Baganda and the Japanese (Mazrui 1976); and the Bolsheviks and the Bantu (Mazrui 1976). The use of such imageries, combined with the other elements of Mazrui’s approach, has arguably far-reaching methodological implications. With its emphasis on qualitative and historical method and with no a priori commitment to quantitative measurement and operationalization, postcolonial constructivism is less constrained about the range of concepts it could use or the domain of data it could target. Mazrui relied most minimally on ‘quantitative’ data, if at all, and his writings usually had no tables or graphs. But rationalism puts a premium on numbers, and this is what we have called above the quantitative bias. Rationalist approaches thus introduce selection bias by dictating the determination as to where to look for data. This, in turn, often leads to the search for the confirming evidence in order to prove the ‘core hypothesis’ around which social inquiry is organized. The researcher is also conditioned to favor the usage of concepts which are operationalizable even though concepts which are so operationalizable are not always the most relevant, and vice versa. In other words, as it is sometimes said, the operationalizable concept is not always the most useful and the most useful is not always operationalizable. What this also means is that rationalism tends to favor as its  subject of study issues and areas for which ‘empirical’ data exist or can be easily collected. Postcolonial constructivism is not only accommodative of concepts which may not be operationalizable, but it also rejects the notion that the data which is useful and reliable should come solely from empirical observation (Mazrui 2001b: 99). In this sense, Mazrui is a ‘transfactualist’, to borrow a useful term from Patrick Jackson (2010: 6-7), who ‘holds out the possibility of going beyond the facts to grasp the deeper processes and factors that generate those facts’. What is suggested here may also have some affinity with ‘reflexive’ sociology, the methodology attributed to Pierre Bourdieu (Leander 2009: 11–27).

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Another orientation which makes postcolonial constructivism permissive to diversity and contradictions stems from its reliance on eclecticism. It is widely recognized that Mazrui was eclectic in his disciplinary orientation, in the methodologies he used, and in the role he played. Such eclecticism had enabled him to approach social reality from a variety of angles and to have room in his scholarship for a great degree of pluralism. We can in fact say that postcolonial constructivism stands on the twin pillars of methodological eclecticism and, as it will be elaborated in the next section, cultural eclecticism. Postcolonial constructivism also deploys macro-history in its search for broad patterns in social processes. Such an orientation in research makes the endeavor more sensitive to contrasts in social reality than what a microhistorical perspective is able to allow, since the former presupposes broader knowledge and does not easily let its practitioner fall prey to absolute positions or universalistic claims. Metaphors and proverbs, too, have undoubtedly added to the aesthetic quality of postcolonial constructivism; this is of course conspicuously lacking in contemporary rationalist social science. But proverbs serve even a greater purpose by echoing voices which would not be heard otherwise. As indicated in the preceding section, Mazrui neither advocated objectivity nor pretended to be its practitioner. He was an unabashedly normative. To this effect, Mazrui (1969: 179) once asked himself: ‘Can this story-teller disentangle himself from the story?’ And his answer was, ‘This author has not too sharply separated the participant from the observer in himself.’ Political analysis must be combined with political activism. In other words, from postcolonial constructivism’s perspective, normative concerns should inform both the method and the scope of social research. One such concern of the theory of postcolonial constructivism pertained, as discussed below, to the need to understand and respond to the challenges of intercultural relations.

Toward a Theory of Intercultural Relations Ali Mazrui used the concept of culture in its sociological sense—as the values and institutions of a society—rather than in its aesthetic and anthropological sense—as works of beauty and creativity like music, paintings, and poetry. His functional definition of culture is even more comprehensive: a lens of perception, a source of motivation, a standard of judgment,

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a badge of identity, a basis of stratification, and a mode of production and consumption (1990a: 7–8). The purpose of the theory of intercultural relations is thus to examine the role of these variables within cultural groups and among them. A major proposition of the theory of intercultural relations, as Mazrui (1976: 53–67) expounded it, is the desirability and achievability of a global order that is characterized by maximum economic welfare, minimum violence, and optimum social justice. According to Mazrui, social justice as an ideal is more relativistic and more culture bound than either economic welfare or a reduction of violence. And it is world culture rather than world government that would lead us toward such a global order because, firstly, we are already closer to the former than the latter. We are closer today to world culture due to the trend toward cultural dissemination and increasing homogenization of political sensibilities at the global level: ‘The spread of literacy, the role of technology in affecting life-styles, the acceleration and facilitation of international travel … have all combined to introduce the beginnings of shared values, shared tastes, and shared images’ (Mazrui 1975: 5). Secondly, we are further away today from world government because of the disintegration of empires and the multiplication of sovereignties. It is true that the UN had come into being after the end of World War II. But, over the decades, the expansion of UN membership was unfortunately accompanied by the decline of its power as well as the reduction of its effectiveness. The most promising approach toward the goal of creating an ideal global order is therefore to augment these shared values, shared tastes, and shared images with internalized controls emerging from new human inclinations (Mazrui 1975: 4). It is worth noting that the theory of intercultural relations derives its logic from the experience of stateless societies. As Mazrui (1976: 5) elaborated: ‘The stateless societies, by having shared cultural universe, have created an infrastructure for consensus. They have found a basis of agreement and cooperation even in the face of periodic eruptions of feuds. A shared culture mitigates some of the harsh consequences of not having a shared government. Cultural convergence in the international system should also evolve into an infrastructure for consensus.’ The world order that Mazrui envisaged is based on the combination of a pool of shared values globally and pools of distinctive traditions. They

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are the kind of values that were identified by Acharya (2014) as constituting the idea of Global IR: pluralistic universalism and recognition of multiple forms of agency. As Mazrui (1976: 66) further noted: It would be unlikely that consensus would be obtained on a world scale behind a system of gross inequalities between nations, states, races, and cultures. Cultural convergence globally must therefore carry the seeds of human equalization … Cultural hierarchy converts one culture into the dominant culture of the world, and yet the culture is primarily drawn from a specific sub-section of the human race. The great change which needs to be made in the days ahead is to establish the principle of cultural ecumenicalism.

Mazrui’s theory of intercultural relations aspired in this way to see a world in which pluralistic distinctiveness coexists with a growing pool of shared values and ideas. In the context of intercultural relations, parity of (cultural) esteem at least as an aspiration is more important than balance of (military) power. It must also be pointed out that this theory is consistent with and perhaps even derives from Mazrui’s flagship concept of ‘Africa’s triple heritage’ (1986). Ali Mazrui (1976: 53–54) categorized the stages of interactions among cultures into seven: coexistence, contact, contest, cooperation or conflict, compromise or conquest, convergence, and coalescence. The relationship between cultural groups begins with coexistence when two groups who hardly know each other nevertheless exist contemporaneously. The second stage of contact gets under way when one group stumbles upon another. After any two cultural groups have established contact, their relationship may evolve into either cooperation or conflict, or what began as a cooperative relationship may degenerate into one of recurrent conflict. The third intermediate stage is therefore that of contest which is followed in the fourth stage by either cooperation or conflict. Compromise or conquest constitutes the fifth stage in this process. Compromise after conflict often initiates a new basis of cooperation between the two sides and may even lead to the forging of a ‘shared framework of social reasoning and social calculations’ (Mazrui 1975: 4). Between the fifth stage of compromise and the seventh stage of coalescence comes another intermediate stage in which the process of convergence begins. This is when ‘a growing sector of shared tastes, emotions, images and values are either created or discovered’ (Mazrui 1975: 8). Conflict

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could also be followed by conquest in which case the vanquished would be put under the effective control of the victor. The seventh stage in the relationship between different cultures and civilizations is that of coalescence. If the group’s conquest happens to be final and permanent, the process of coalescence will then follow, through the processes of acculturation and miscegenation, with wider implications for social structure and social stratification—both within and across cultures. But it must be noted that what coalesces at this stage is identity rather than interest: The diversity of interests continues. Indeed, should the society get technically complex and functionally differentiated at the same time as it is getting culturally integrated, the diversity of interest would increase as the distinctiveness of group identities becomes blurred. Capacity for compromise would still be needed at the stage of coalescence. But the conflict of interest is no longer a conflict between total identities or autonomous cultural systems but between identities that have gone far in the process of inter-penetration. (Mazrui 1975: 8)

With regard to the variable effects of the process of integration, Mazrui (1976: 55) made the distinction between ethnic groups and nation-­states: ‘Whereas in relations within a single country it is indeed the stage between contact and compromise which has a high potentiality for conflict between ethnic groups that are compatriots, in relations between nation-­states, it is very often the stage between compromise and coalescence.’ With the help of two examples, from Africa and Europe, Mazrui (1976: 5) illustrated the major points as follows: Africa … has had its own examples of cultural convergence accompanied by violent tensions. The two most convulsive social revolutions in Africa took place in the two relatively homogenous little states of Zanzibar and Rwanda. There was perhaps a greater degree of brutalization in both Rwanda and Zanzibar than that experienced anywhere else in modern Africa. And yet these two countries were also culturally among the most deeply integrated of all the new states on the continent. The two communities had experienced biocultural assimilation.

In relation to Europe, Mazrui (1976: 55) observed:

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It is not without significance that the two most ghastly wars experienced by the human race so far started off as European wars. Of the three older continents of the world—Africa, Asia and Europe—Europe is indeed the most deeply integrated, more so than Latin America, in spite of the greater diversity of languages in Europe than in Latin America. And yet it is from within the tensions of this very integrated continent that major conflagration has erupted.

Mazrui (1976: 58) went on to explain the phenomena of conflict and cultural integration in reference to the inherent contradiction between racial privilege and cultural integration: ‘The cultural integration simply accentuated the violence … Because the people were so much alike, they were the more brutal against each other.’ Specially, in the case of Zanzibar, Mazrui (1976: 66) noted: ‘The rebellion was in part a rebellion against a system of inadequate social justice and asymmetrical economic welfare.’ What is it that sets the process of interactions among cultures in motion in the first place? What are the historical initiators of contacts between cultural groups or civilizations? Because culture, like civilization, is a concept that is intimately linked to globalization, let us therefore broaden the concept. Mazrui (1999: 98) defined globalization as a process that leads toward global interdependence and the increasing rapidity of exchange across vast distances. Four major engines of globalization, often acting in tandem and reinforcing one another, have been identified across time: empire, religion, economy, and technology (Mazrui 2001a: 1–2). Firstly, the Roman Empire was responsible for the spread of the Roman law and the Latin language in parts of Europe. Subsequent European empires were responsible for the spread of European cultures and values even more widely throughout the world. The second engine of globalization has been religion, more particularly, the global expansion of the two Abrahamic religions. The conversion of Emperor Constantine I of Rome in the fourth century heralded the Christianization of Europe and other parts of the world. The globalization of Islam began when it conquered different empires beginning in the seventh century. Conflict also characterized the relationship between the two religions at different phases of their development or interactions.

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The third engine of globalization is economy, when production, consumption, and distribution became more subject to the global division of labor, leading to the integration of economic activities. The fourth engine of globalization is technology. From the first industrial revolution to the fourth information revolution, technology has been at the center as the engine of globalization. This includes the technology of production, communication, and violence (Mazrui 1980: 67). Another way of approaching the study of globalization from Mazrui’s perspective is to pay attention to its economic, cultural, and political dimensions, corresponding, respectively, to economic interdependence across vast distances, the spread of Western languages and religions in non-Western societies, and the global extension of the Westphalian system. Empire, religion, economy, and technology have converged to produce comprehensive globalization, characterized by the phenomenon of hegemonic homogenization (see Table  7.1 below) that has brought us closer to world culture, but not necessarily to world government (Mazrui 1976: 2–5).

Table 7.1  Hegemonic homogenization in the twenty-first century Homogenization (Expanding homogeneity)

Hegemonization (Making one of us boss)

1. Increasing similarities among world societies 2. People dress more and more alike 3. The human race is closer to having world languages 4. We are closer to having a world economy 5. The Internet has given us instant access to information and mutual communication across long distance 6. The educational systems are getting more and more similar across the world 7. The ideological systems of the world are converging

Increasing world domination by specific civilization The dress code is overwhelmingly Western The prospective world languages are disproportionately European The powers who control that economy are disproportionately Western The nerve center of the global Internet system is located in the US

Source: Adapted from Mazrui (1999)

The shared academic ranks, semester systems, and scholarly paradigms are disproportionately drawn from the US and Western Europe The people who are enforcing Euro-liberal capitalism are Western economic gurus, supported by the by the IMF and World Bank

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Mazrui (2001c) has also argued: The West’s triumph in the last four centuries has led to the claim that Western civilization has universal validity. Such a claim faces three challenges—cultural relativism (what is valid in one society in the West was not valid in another); historical relativism (what was valid in the West at the beginning of the 20th century was not valid in the West at the beginning of the 21st); and empirical relativism (the West often failed to live up to its own standards, and occasionally those standards were better met by other societies).

In the same vein, Mazrui (1997: 127) noted: ‘Cultures should be judged not merely by the heights of achievement to which they have ascended but by the depth of brutality to which they have descended. The measure of culture is not only their virtues but also their vices.’ At least the following generalizations could be drawn from the foregoing analysis. For the emerging world culture to acquire a measure of legitimacy, firstly, the Eurocentric elements in it need to be further diluted. A genuine normative convergence presupposes some minimal mutual borrowing between cultures. And, secondly, the ‘global village’ must live up to its name. As Mazrui (1976: 66) put it: ‘[I]s the globalized Planet really a global village? The world may be globalized – but what makes it villagized? There is something missing – the compassion of the village has yet to be globalized. Planet Earth will never really become a global village until the contraction of distance is accompanied by the expansion of empathy.’ It must be reiterated in closing that Mazrui did not make extravagant theoretical claims, but he consistently articulated the major concerns of the Global South and analyzed intercultural relations more broadly. And the principal issues he sought to address pertained to identity, representation, and power as well as inter-subjectively shared ideas, norms, and values. At the macro level, Mazrui believed that the ideal world order is one which is based on maximum economic welfare, minimum political violence, and optimum social justice. He was also convinced that such an order is attainable through the process of cultural engineering. In theoretical terms, I can therefore say, Mazrui spoke a postcolonial language with a constructivist accent—or vice versa. Whatever label is attached to Mazrui’s conceptual innovations, one thing is clear. We would gain a great deal from a more sustained intellectual engagement with his scholarship; it is both pertinent to our time and so delightfully stimulating, as the next four chapters powerfully illustrate.

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References Acharya, A. 2014. Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds. A New Agenda. International Studies Quarterly 58: 647–659. Falk, R. 2016. Remembering Ali Mazrui (1933-2014). In A Giant Tree Has Fallen: Tributes to Ali Al’Amin Mazrui, ed. S. Adem, J. Adibe, A.K. Bangura, and A.S. Bemath. Johannesburg: African Perspectives Publishing. Jackson, P.T. 2010. Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Leander, A. 2009. Thinking Tools. In Qualitative Methods in International Relations. A Pluralist Guide, ed. A. Klotz and D. Prakash. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mazrui, A.A. 1966. Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar. Transition 6: 9–17. ———. 1969. Political Science and Political Futurology: Problems of Prediction. In Proceedings of the University of East Africa Social Science Council Conference. Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. ———. 1975. World Culture and the Search for Huma Consensus. In On the Creation of a Just World Order: Preferred World of the 1990’s, ed. S.H. Mendlovitz. New York: The free Press. ———. 1976. A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective. New York: The Free Press. ———. 1977. Boxer Mohammad Ali and Soldier Idi Amin as International Political Symbols: The Bioeconomics of Sport and War. Comparative Studies in Society and History 19: 189–215. ———. 1980. Technology, International Stratification and the Politics of Growth. International Political Science Review 1: 63–79. ———. 1986. The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. ———. 1990a. Cultural Forces in World Politics. London: James Currey. ———. 1990b. Religious Alternatives in the Black Diaspora: From Malcolm X to the Ras Tafari. Caribbean Affairs 3: 157–160. ———. 1991. Dr. Schweitzer’s Racism. Transition 53: 96–102. ———. 1993. Human Obligation and Global Accountability: From the Impeachment of Warren Hastings to the Legacy of Nuremberg. In The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace: Logic and Tinkering, ed. R.A. Falk, R.C. Johansen, and S.S. Kim. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ———. 1995. The African State as a Political Refugee. In African Conflict Resolution: The US Role in Peace-making, ed. David R.  Smock and Chester A. Crocker. Washington, DC: USIP. ———. 1997. Islamic and Western Values. Foreign Affairs 76: 118–132. ———. 1999. Globalization and Cross-Cultural Values: The Politics of Identity and Judgment. Arab Studies Quarterly 21: 97–109.

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———. 2001a. ‘Globalization: Origin and Scope.’ The Center for Humanities and Arts. Globalization and Global Understanding Series. Athens, GA: University of Georgia. ———. 2001b. Ideology and African Political Culture. In Exploration in African Political Thought: Identity, Community Ethics, ed. T. Kiros. London: Routledge. ———. 2001c. Civilization between Dominance and Dialogue: In Search of a Balance. Paper presented at a conference on ‘Dialogue of Civilizations’. Cambridge University, England 3 February. ———. 2001d. Africa Between the Meiji Restoration and the Legacy of Ataturk: Comparative Dilemmas of Modernization. In Contending Issues in African Development: Advances, Challenges, and the Future, ed. Obioma M. Iheduru. Westport and London: Greenwood Press.

PART IV

The Vocabulary of Ali Mazrui’s Discourse

CHAPTER 8

Paradoxical Propositions

The Paradox of Academic Egalitarianism An American departure from the European model was greater academic egalitarianism. Normally higher education is an exercise in elite formation. Then, what happens when elite formation comes into contact with an egalitarian culture with enormous pressure to make higher education available to as many Americans as possible but where not every American can get into the likes of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton? The result is the American system of higher education which is the most diverse in the world not only in terms of types of institutions but also in terms of quality of institutions. When American egalitarianism clashed with academic elitism, one consequence was diversification of standards.

The Paradox of Africa’s Acculturation African societies are not the closest to the West culturally but have been experiencing the most rapid pace of Westernization. The continent is controlled disproportionately by Westernized Africans. Christianity has spread faster in Africa than in any other continent. Acceptance of European languages for national business is greater in Africa than in Asia. African educational institutions continue to be mechanisms for further Westernization. Africans are caught up between rebellion against the West and imitation of the West.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_8

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The Paradox of Africa’s Artificial Borders It is one of Africa’s glories that in spite of artificial borders which have split ethnic groups, there have been very few border clashes or military confrontation between African countries. But it is also a terrible fact to acknowledge that one of the tragedies of the African state is that there has not been enough tension and conflict between states.

The Paradox of Africa’s Fatal Borders While most African conflicts are partly caused by borders, those conflicts are not themselves about borders. The conflicts are partly caused by borders because those were created by colonial powers to enclose groups with no traditions of shared authority or shared systems of settling disputes. The human chemistry between those groups has not necessarily had time to become congenial. African governments have tended to be possessive about colonial borders and have discouraged challenging them. The borders generate conflicts within them but have not been encouraged to generate conflict across them.

The Paradox of Africa’s Fragmentation Africa is not the smallest of the continents but it is the most fragmented. It is fragmented along ethnic, linguistic, religious, ideological, and class lines. In addition, a continent of less than 3 billion people is split up into more than fifty states, many of them tiny. This fragmentation is a handicap in Africa’s struggle for social and material improvement.

The Paradox of Africa’s Habitability Africa is the first habitat of man but is the last to be made truly habitable. The crisis of habitability in recent history ranges from the difficulties in physical communications and transportation to the challenges of political instability. If Africa was Adam’s birthplace, the Garden of Eden is in serious disrepair. What is wrong? The minimum livable conditions could be divided into three kinds. To begin with, there are the ecological conditions such as climate and the nature of the terrain. How suitable for relatively comfortable human life is the physical environment in Africa? Then there are the technical conditions of habitation, with special reference to

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minimum technological mastery over nature. How easily available are the technological skills of survival in Africa? Thirdly, there are the socio-­ political conditions and the degree to which these make a place congenial to relatively peaceful human existence? Have present-day Africans made such a mess of their social and political arrangements that the place has become less suitable for civilized existence?

The Paradox of Africa’s Retardation Africa is not the poorest of the regions of the world in resources but it is the least developed of the inhabited continents. Immense mineral wealth and agricultural potential coexist with some of the lowest standards of living in the world. Africa has become a continent well endowed in mineral wealth and agricultural potential; it is at the same time a continent of the countries which the UN has calculated to be the poorest in the world. Part of the problem lies in the nature of the economic change which Western colonialism fostered in Africa. African economies were distorted to serve Western needs. The coming economic struggle in Africa includes a search for ways to correct this distortion and overcome dependence.

The Paradox of Africa’s Westernization without Modernization The four consequences or manifestations of the paradox of Africa’s Westernization without modernization are (a) urbanization without industrialization: in Western Europe urbanization gained momentum because industrialization was well underway or large-scale agrarian plantation was forcing peasants into wage labor. In Africa, there was no agrarian revolution forcing subsistence farmers into wage labor. The sons of farmers moved to the cities for drastically different reasons; (b) secularization without scientification: the Western impact fostered the ideology of scientism, a religious belief in the supremacy of science. In the African context the anomaly arose out of the paradoxical role of Christian missionaries. On the one hand, the Christian missionaries were in Africa to propagate a new gospel, asking Africans to exchange old beliefs and traditional religions for the Bible. On the other hand, the same Christian missionaries helped to build schools where Isaac Newton was taught, where mathematics competed with Shakespeare for attention. Out of this paradox of missionary

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school propagating a scientific culture emerged the deeper paradox of converting Africans to the ideology of scientism while at the same time trying to capture their souls for an alternative religious order. The outcome of it all was precisely the process of secularization of African attitudes and values without their scientification; (c) education without training: much of the education which was transmitted in African colonial schools was a process of transmitting values without transmitting skills, acculturation without training; (d) capitalism without entrepreneurship: the profit motive and the quest for maximization of returns are indeed vigorous and widespread in African societies. But genuine entrepreneurship, commitment to risktaking for the sake of psychic performance, is still relatively rare.

The Paradox of the African American Male The African American male is at once the better placed Black gender for ultimate upward social mobility in America and the most damaged sector of the national underclass in America. The Black male is the better placed than the Black female for penetrating the ultimate pinnacles of economic and political power in the US. But the male is also the ultimate casualty of American racism. The African American male is both a great potential victor and a great actual victim.

The Paradox of African Nationalism In the Anglo-Saxon version of the liberal ethic, democracy is oriented toward individual freedom. The principle of self-determination is usually oriented toward the freedom of the group. The paradox of the African experience is that nationalism in Africa derived its original intellectual stimulation from an ethic of individualism. The result was that the rhetoric of African nationalism, at least in British Africa, was not, in fact, filled with repetitions of the word ‘self-determination’ as might have been expected. What was more common in the language of nationalism were terms like ‘individual freedom’, ‘one-man, one-vote’, and ‘majority rule’.

The Paradox of African Political Economy Politically, World War II weakened imperial control and prepared the way for the disintegration of the empires of France and Great Britain. But economically the war helped to integrate the colonies more firmly into the

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global capitalist system as the economies of the periphery were made to serve more systematically the war needs of the center. While the war was thus undermining the political control of the old empires, it was also increasing temporarily Europe’s need for the products of the colonies.

The Paradox of the African State The basic tension between moral equality from acephalous societies in Africa and political hierarchy from monarchical societies in Africa has been one of the central divisive elements in the postcolonial experience. The new postcolonial state was supposed to be as egalitarian as the Masai and the Tiv and as centralized as the Baganda, the Ashanti, and the Hausa-Fulani.

The Paradox of the African University One paradox of the African university is that it is a champion of academic freedom but a transmitter of intellectual dependency. Can there be academic freedom without intellectual independence? The African university was born as a subsidiary of a cultural transnational corporation—the Western academic establishment. Colleges like Makerere, Legon, and Ibadan were literally cultural subsidiaries of a British academic multinational corporation called the University of London. The African university was conceived primarily as a transmission belt for Western high culture rather than a workshop for the transfer of Western high skills. African universities became nurseries for nurturing a Westernized Black intellectual aristocracy. Graduates of Ibadan, Dakar, and Makerere acquired Western social tastes more readily than Western organizational skills. Those graduates became steeped in Western consumption patterns rather than Western productive techniques. We became verb-smiths—and often despised blacksmiths!

The Paradox of African Woman Rules of interaction between the sexes in Africa have been in the process of modification as a result of Western education. Specially striking is the status of African women with university degrees. Women’s liberation in Africa, as in most other parts of the world, is at best an aspiration rather than an accomplished fact. But among the factors which are facilitating it

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is the emergence of women graduates from African universities, asserting a greater independence than they might have done had they not received higher education in the Western idiom. In this instance, the cultural dependency which has come with the Western impact on Africa is having the paradoxical side-effect of facilitating greater independence for African women.

The Alex Haley’s Paradox Alex Haley [in Roots] was merely romanticizing when he says, ‘Every Black American can trace his ancestry back through slavery to an African village’. The impact of Roots was due to precisely the fact that hardly any Black Americans could so trace their ancestry.

The Ali Mazrui-William Blyden Paradox Although Ali Mazrui as a Muslim believes that Islam is the right religion for himself, it was William Blyden who came closer to saying that Islam was the right religion for Africa. Blyden was far more forthright than Mazrui in praising Islam as compared with either African traditional religion or Christian practices.

The Paradox of America’s Imperial Role Unlike Western Europe, the US did not try hard to acquire territory and establish direct political control over lands and societies far from its shores. Americans, on the contrary, often abhorred territorial annexation. It is true that the US did rule the Philippines. It is also true that Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ partly to encourage Americans to accept what Kipling regarded as the shared destiny of all White people to rule non-Whites. But on the whole it was European imperialism which became intimate, establishing governments and institutions in large parts of Africa and Asia and beyond. European imperialism was far from casual—it was involved in the day-to-day administration of colonies and constant accountability in policy making. By contrast, American imperialism was casual and irresponsible in not accepting direct legal accountability. Much of Latin America was

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ostensibly independent, but the US retained the right to intervene wherever it suited its interests. Sometimes the US has not even had to intervene—simply manipulating local forces through less direct means.

The Paradox of the American Condition America is effective as a communicator but inattentive as a listener. The world is getting Americanized while America is refusing to be humanized. American democracy was born out of religious toleration and racial intolerance. In other words, America’s relative religious enlightenment coexisted from the outset with a measure of relative racial intolerance. The US has been religiously liberal but racially bigoted. This has affected American reaction to Marxism and Islam as Uncle Sam’s biggest challenges. What should be remembered is that Uncle Sam regards Marxism as an East-­ West divide involving relations between White and White; while Islam emerges as a North-South confrontation between Whites and non-Whites.

The Paradox of American Multiculturalism The multicultural movement in America seems to believe that while the US has been the greatest asylum for diverse peoples, it has not been the greatest refuge for diverse cultures.

The Paradox of American Woman The gender paradox provides us with an America in which women are among the most liberated in the world but not among the most empowered. Countries like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Turkey have had women prime ministers long before there is any sign of a woman president in the US.

The Paradox of Anti-colonial Hegemony Although the US was the inventor of modern anti-colonialism, it has now become the embodiment of global hegemony. Thirteen obscure colonies in North America rebelling against George III in 1776 have now become the mightiest hegemonic power in human history.

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The Anglo-French Paradox French language was intended by France to be disseminated across the globe. The English people were possessive about the English language. The British who did not want their language to become a universal language were doomed to precisely that fate, while the French were embarked on a determined attempt to stop French from receding in importance through the French assimilationist policy and the tendency to accord French rights to those who absorbed French culture.

The Paradox of the Arab Image Although most Arab governments are friendly to the West, the Arabs as a people are perceived as hostile to the West. Arab governments are often eager to avoid offending the West, especially Washington. Yet the image of Arabs as ‘terrorists’ persists in popular opinion in the West.

The Baganda-Japanese Paradox Underlying it all has been the fascinating miracle connecting the two communal entities. The simple and familiar miracle continues to lie in their historical record as societies at once profoundly traditionalist and squarely in the vanguard of modernization, at once arrogant and deferential, credulous and rational, primordial and secular. The miracle of Japan and Buganda was the miracle of innovative paradox in historical change.

The Paradox of the Bigamy Leopold Senghor, founder president of Senegal, created the supreme irony of being a prophet of negritude and the husband of a White woman— the paradox of his ‘bigamy’ (married to a philosophy of Blackness and to a partnership with a Whiteness).

The Bill Clinton Paradox While the administration of Bill Clinton has been more pro-Israel than any other US administration since Lyndon Johnson, this same Clinton administration has domestically made more friendly gestures toward US Muslims

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than any previous administration. This president has sent greetings to Muslims during the fast of Ramadhan in 1996. The First Lady hosted a celebration of Idd el Fitr (the Festival of the End of Ramadhan) in the White House in the same year.

The Bismarckian Paradox It is one of the ironies of the great German leader Otto von Bismarck that he helped to unify Germany in the nineteenth century and initiated the division of Africa soon after. The unification of Germany led to the emergence of one of the most powerful Western countries in the twentieth century. The partition of Africa resulted in some of the most vulnerable societies in modern world history.

The Paradox of Black-Brown Relations In international affairs, Asians and Africans have had moments of solidarity. There is no doubt that Africa was partly apprenticed to India in the arts of nationalist agitation before independence (Gandhi) and the arts of diplomacy afterwards (Nehru). But in August 1972 General Idi Amin Dada, president of Uganda, staggered the world with a series of measures designed to remove or drastically reduce the Asian presence in Uganda. The Black man and the brown man had formed an alliance to fight the arrogance of the White man. And yet why could they not live together?

The Paradox of Bondage To the extent that the Black man had more to be angry about than other men, he would need greater self-discipline than others to be ‘passive’ in his resistance. But by the same token, to the extent that the Black man in the last four centuries had suffered more than any other, passive but purposeful self-sacrifice for the cause should come easier to him. And to the extent that the Black man had more to forgive the rest of the world for, that forgiveness when it came should be all the weightier.

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The Brain-Brawn Paradox The US is the magnet of the brain drain from distant lands while being a magnet of unskilled migrant workers from neighboring countries. It gets some of the most skilled from Africa and some of the least skilled from nearby Mexico.

The Paradoxes of a Broken Home A major precondition of Barack Obama’s preparation for the American presidency was his being abandoned by his African father. His parent’s divorce is probably destined to be counted by historians as one of the most significant matrimonial breakups in history. Why? Had Barack Obama, Sr. remained married to younger Barack’s mother, and had the boy been brought up by both parents, the boy would have become more of an African and less of a full-blooded American. His credentials for becoming an attractive candidate for the presidency would have been drastically reduced. If the breakup of his parents turns out to have been presidential blessing in disguise, that divorce stands a chance of being among the most historic. If young Barack had been brought up by his dad, and become a member of the Black Diaspora of postcoloniality, he would have been a case of another African sending remittances home to Kenya.

The Christopher Okigbo Paradox In his art Christopher Okigbo might have been the most universalist of all the postcolonial poets Africa had produced. In his life and personal behavior, Okigbo might have been one of the most parochial and tribalist of Africa’s poets. Is this the case of heroic universalism and parochial martyrdom, or intellectual universalism and parochial allegiance?

The Paradox of Civilian-Military Rule Islam in military uniform in Africa is more repressive than average; Islam in civilian robes in Africa is more tolerant than average. Militarized Islam in Africa is extra-dictatorial; civilian Islam in Africa is extra-tolerant. Of course, the term ‘Islam’ is used here metaphorically to mean followers of the religion rather than the pristine doctrines of the religion necessarily. Somalia before it got militarized was one of the most democratic countries

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not only in Africa but almost anywhere in the world. Somalia after 1969 once again demonstrated that Muslim political authority in Africa in uniform was often more repressive than average.

The Paradox of Civilian Supremacy There was genuine civilian supremacy in Uganda under Milton Obote, but paradoxically that supremacy had to make considerable concessions to the military in order to survive effectively.

The Paradox of Colonized Islam European colonialism protected Muslims but arrested the spread of Islam. The cornerstone of British colonial policy in Africa became Lord Lugard’s doctrine of Indirect Rule, a strategy of ruling subject people primarily through their own native authorities and institutions. In its application in Africa, Indirect Rule favored Islam in those areas which were already Islamized before the British came, but favored Christianity in areas where traditional African religion still prevailed.

The Paradox of Commercialized Islam Islam in Africa’s experience has been pro-trade but anti-capitalism. Long-­ distance trade in both East and West Africa is inseparable from the history of Islam. But if Muslims had such a major start in commercial activity, why were they left behind in the economic game of capitalism in the latter half of the twentieth century?

The Commonwealth Paradox Although the Commonwealth includes about a third of the Muslim population of the world, the Commonwealth does not include a single Arab country.

The Control-Anatomy Paradox This takes a variety of forms—from issues of human rights in a liberal perspective to issues of imperialism and dependency in a radical perspective. The twentieth century has witnessed both vast empires and fast

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processes of decolonization. It has witnessed both fascism and socialism at their most ambitious—and observed the fascist empires collapse while socialist ones rise. Towering above both has been the industrial might of liberal capitalism with its own persistent tensions between autonomy and control. What is the final equation between the two in the twenty-first century?

The Paradox of Converging Principles and Diverging Tolerance When the Ottoman Empire was collapsing in the 1920s, the US was more similar to a Muslim society than it is today, but the US was at that time far less hospitable to Islam and Muslims than it is today. In the years between the two World Wars, the social and sexual mores of the US were much closer to those of a Muslim society than they are today. But the US at that time was less tolerant of other religions and less culturally accommodating than it is today. America had more in common with Islam in that period, but it was less tolerant toward Muslims at the same time.

The Paradox of Counter-Penetration Africa’s cultural receptivity to its Arab conquerors has now tilted the demographic balance and changed the Arab cultural equation. The majority of the Arabs are now in Africa—and the African side of the Arab world has become the most innovative in art and science.

The Paradox of the Cracked Melting Pot The US may be a melting pot of races. But the majority of Blacks and the majority of Whites still live largely separately. New cultures melt and largely evaporate, but racial differences persist.

The Paradox of the Crisis of Territoriality This is the nature of responsiveness of precolonial state to land. Precolonial statehood had a kind of mystical deference to land, an obsession with esthetics and religiosity of the soil. The grand compact between ancestors, the living, and the unborn found an area of fulfillment in the religiosity of

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the land. The principle of modern nation-states includes a high sensitivity to territoriality. Political communities under the new doctrine of the sovereign state became increasingly definable in terms of boundaries between one state and another. Sovereignty was subject to territoriality; power was land-bound. Thus emerged the tension between the high degree of land reverence of the precolonial African state and the high sensitivity of postcolonial state to territoriality. It is a tension between land worship of the old and territorial worship of the new.

The Culture-Structure Paradox This tension takes a variety of forms. Sometimes it is the old debate between Hegelian idealism and Marxist materialism. Sometimes it is the tension between political values and political institutions. There are also occasions when it is a slinging match between believers in the primacy of culture and champions of economic determinism. What does the history of the twentieth century have to say about this perennial tension between cultural processes and evolving structures? Where are we today?

The Paradox of Cultural Convergence Recent African political experience, in societies small enough to offer opportunities of discerning the dynamics of human relations, have in fact revealed the tension-generating tendencies of cultural integration. It sometimes follows a combination of acculturation and inter-mating between races. The two most convulsive social revolutions in Africa took place in the two relatively homogeneous little states of Zanzibar and Rwanda. There was perhaps a greater degree of brutalization in both Rwanda and Zanzibar than that experienced anywhere else in modern Africa. And yet these two countries were also culturally among the most deeply integrated of all the new states on the continent. Arab and Africans in Zanzibar shared a language (Swahili), a religion (Islam), and other aspects of culture. They had also intermarried considerably. The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda also shared a language, a religion, and other important aspects of culture. They too had intermarried. They too had difficulty quite often in drawing a line between where a Hutu ancestry ended and a Tutsi descent began. Because the peoples were so much alike, they were the more brutal against each other.

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The Paradox of Cultural Nakedness One of Ali Mazrui’s earlier lessons in the triple heritage of dress culture took place in Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education where Mazrui was working as a junior clerk. He was told off by a European senior staff member of the Institute for wearing pajamas in the school’s dining hall. The European was in shorts. According to Islamic rules of dress in East Africa, the European with his exposed knees was more naked than Mazrui was in long pajama pants. Nevertheless, Mazrui’s alleged ‘lapse’ was reported to higher authorities. Mazrui had thus his first lesson in culture conflict at the level of dress.

The Culture-Economy Paradox Cultural globalization had indeed substantially co-opted most of Africa to its ranks. Christianized Africa especially has demonstrated remarkable receptivity to the forces of cultural globalization through Westernization. Although Christianity arrived in India several centuries before it arrived in West Africa, the population of Christians in India is still little more than two percent, whereas the population of Christians in West Africa is over thirty-five percent. In one century Christianity has made more headway in West Africa than it has done in India in nearly two thousand years. Although Africa seemed to be Westernizing faster than Asia, Africa was slower in economic modernization. Higher cultural Westernization in Africa has not necessarily meant higher economic and development returns.

The Paradox of Democratization A more fundamental paradox of the 1990s was that Africa was getting democratized at home at just about the time when it was getting marginalized abroad. Within African countries the people were trying to assert greater control over their governments—at exactly the time when African governments were losing influence on world events.

The Paradox of Detached Participation The American political system has more elected offices than any other democracy in history. Even dogcatchers sometimes need to be elected. Yet the actual percentage of Americans who bother to vote is one of the lowest

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in the democratic world. The society wanted political participation so much that more of it became less of it. Too many elections resulted in too few voters.

The Paradox of Dignity in Islam We need to distinguish between cultures in which the paramount political value is liberty from cultures in which the paramount political value is dignity. Such cultural differences need not lead to a clash of civilizations, but they can do so if either liberty is collectively denied to those who glorify it or dignity is collectively denied to those who worship it. In those cases where Muslims are in rebellion against the status quo, a substantial cultural reason for the rebellion is perceived collective indignity. This is true of rebellions of Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine, Macedonia, Kashmir, Kosovo, and even Nigeria.

The Paradox of Disorder in the Midst of Brilliance Nigeria is a society which is full of talented people, but where very little works. The other facet is that those talented people who may have their skills relatively dormant at home rediscover their skills in exile. It is amazing how many talented people there are in that remarkable country; it is not just the best novelists and the best playwrights; there is talent in science as well as the arts. And yet what was even more amazing was that a country so full of talented people should at the same time be so chaotic that so few things really work.

The Paradox of Divisive Arabic and Unifying Islam While Arabic is one of the main factors that seems to separate North Africa from the rest of the continent, Islam is one of the main factors that North African share with millions of Black people south of the Sahara.

The Paradox of Divisive Peace Asian and African countries were greatest allies when they perceived shared dangers or common enemies. They were united against Western racism, for instance, when the West was essentially bigoted (Afro-Asian pigmentational solidarity). They were united in defense of non-Western civilizations

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when the West demeaned them (Afro-Asian cultural solidarity). Asian and African countries were also against the risks and dangers of the Cold War before it ended. The Afro-Asian movement got weaker and weaker as the struggle against direct racism and imperialism receded into history. The end of the Cold War and the triumph of market ideologies have turned Africa and Asia away from the old political solidarities and more and more toward new economic rivalries.

The Du Bois Paradox W. E. B. Du Bois was a man whose family name was French, whose actual physical appearance was virtually White, but whose allegiance was indisputably African. He was the reverse of William Blake’s poem about the African child. For Blake (1757–1827) the child was Black, but Oh good Lord, his soul was White. For W. E. B. Du Bois one could proclaim the reverse—that this man was White, but Oh good Lord, his soul was Black. Du Bois’s actual skin color defied his real cultural allegiance. What the Du Bois paradox taught us was that ‘Blackness’ could be a cultural identity rather than a physical appearance.

The Paradox of Economic Aid Many African nationalist leaders had often confronted two assumptions which are—or can be—mutually contradictory. One assumption is that real political independence is impossible without economic independence. The other assumption underlies the demand that aid to small countries should come with no strings attached.

The Paradox of Ecumenical Islam Although in Africa Islam faces a more intense competition with Christianity than anywhere else in the world, the two religions have sometimes coexisted more creatively in Africa than anywhere else in the world. Africa is at once the arena of the greatest rivalry and the platform of the greatest ecumenicalism between those two Abrahamic religions.

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The Paradox of Elitist Universalism In his art [the Nigerian] Christopher Okigbo might have been the most universalist of all the postcolonial poets Africa had produced. In his life and personal behavior, Okigbo might have been one of the most parochial and tribalist of Africa’s poets. While Okigbo’s art was indeed universalist in orientation, it was elitist in articulation. Part of the elitism was Okigbo’s own emphasis that he read his poetry only to fellow poets. Okigbo’s universalism was also involved in the contradiction that his art was in the English language. If he had written his poetry in the Igbo language, the art would have indeed been less elitist, but unfortunately it would also have become less universalist.

The Paradox of the English Language The English language has both enriched and stultified many indigenous languages. English has enriched them by being a major source of loan words—ranging from more universal words like radio, socialism, and democracy to words of family relationship like cousin, nephew, and niece. In some cases, English has played a part in turning oral languages into written languages—transferring its borrowed Roman/Latin alphabet to languages like Luganda, Igbo, and Kikuyu as well as to previously Arabized literary languages like Hausa and Kiswahili. The written tradition is more stabilizing for languages than the oral tradition. Indirectly English has helped stabilize some indigenous languages by helping them become written traditions. But English has also stultified and weakened indigenous languages by marginalizing most of them in national life and in the education system.

The Paradox of Ethnicity In spite of what has happened in Somalia and Rwanda, a major paradox of the mid-1990s in Africa was that there is declining militarization of ethnicity—accompanied by a rising politicization of ethnicity. The militarization of ethnicity is when ethnic groups take up arms against each other in a

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sustained fashion-resulting in ethnic armies facing each other. The politicization of ethnic groups is when ethnic consciousness is aroused to high levels of political competitiveness but without resort to armies for the time being.

The Ethnicity-Religion Paradox A novel portraying a religion negatively is sometimes more offensive to believers if the novelist originally belonged to that religion. But a novel portraying an ethnic group negatively is often less offensive if the novelist is of the ethnic group he or she criticizes.

The Paradox of Ethnicized Religion In Africa religious intolerance is in general a consequence of ethnic tension rather than doctrinal difference. Religion is divisive only if it reinforces pre-existent ethnic or regional tensions. In Nigeria the imported religions of Christianity and Islam sometimes aggravate the pre-existent ethnic differences. Almost all Hausa are Muslims; almost all Igbo are Christians; and Yoruba are split in between Islam and Christianity. The two Abrahamic religions reinforce ethnic differences. Religion becomes an ally of the divisiveness of ethnicity. In the Sudan, Islam and Christianity reinforce older pre-existent differences in culture between North and South. But where religious differences do not coincide with lingo-ethnic differences, Africa demonstrates a remarkable spirit of ‘pray and let pray’, ‘live and let live’. Individual families can be multi-religious—the father a Muslim, the mother a traditionalist, and the children Presbyterians and Ahmadiyya.

The Paradox of Ethnocentric Universalism The choice of the West as the role model or ideal society is ethnocentric, while the idea that all societies are evolving toward the same destinations is universalist. The concept of progress is therefore a dialectic between the universalism of a process and the ethnocentrism of destination.

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The Paradox of Euro-Christianity in Africa It is an irony of African history that Christianity, so often identified with European imperialism, should at the same time have produced so many African nationalists. The struggle against imperialism, as well as the struggle for imperialism, owes a good deal to the Christian impact upon Africa. Christianity has been both an ally of colonization and a partner in liberation. The revolt of Christianity against Western imperialism was ironic because Christianity had arrived in Africa in partnership with European colonialism. The missionary schools helped to promote not just Christian spiritual ideas but also Western secular ideologies, including that of radical nationalism and self-determination. African radical nationalists who emerged from Christian missionary schools included such towering figures as Julius Nyerere, Tom Mboya, Robert Mugabe, Leopold Sedar Senghor, and Kwame Nkrumah.

The Paradox of the Executive Legislature A parliament which does not check the executive becomes an extension of the executive. This is what happens when a rubber stamp become a robber’s stamp. This is what happens when parliament does not scrutinize the executive branch, and the executive branch allows itself to steal and exploit parliament.

The Paradox of French Colonial Policy The French colonial authorities had put great emphasis on the policy of assimilation. At its most ambitious French colonialism sought to turn Africans into Black French men and Black French women. And since for most of their history the French people had not been Muslim, the assimilation policy was implicitly a rejection of Islam—and a declaration of cultural war on indigenous traditions. However, outside North Africa, French assimilationist policy hurt indigenous cultures more deeply than it hurt Islam. Assimilationist policies weakened indigenous resistance to Islamization—and therefore helped the spread of Islam in

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West Africa. Islam therefore continued to thrive even in such longestablished French colonies as Senegal, which the French regarded as their own cultural showpiece, and part of which they had colonized for well over a century. Other Muslim countries in French West Africa included Western Soudan (now Mali), Niger, Guinea (Conakry), parts of the Ivory Coast, and Mauritania in the north-west. In all of them, Islam survived French assimilationist policy and was sometimes even inadvertently helped by it.

The Paradox of Gender Underlying the problem of power in relations between men and women is what might be called the paradox of gender—influencing politics, economics, and issues of war and peace. The paradox of gender consists of three propositions. First, among humans, the senior partner in the creation of new life is the female of the species (woman as mother); second, the senior partner in the destruction of life is the male of the species (man as warrior); third, it is the power of destruction which has given the male of the species dominion over the female (man as ruler). In other words, the origins of male dominance do not lie in economic specialization but in military specialization.

The Gandhian Paradox It is one of the curious things of history that, outside India itself, the torch of Gandhism came to be passed most prominently not to his fellow Asians, but to Blacks both in the New World and in Africa. It is not without significance that among the first non-White winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace were Ralph Bunche, Chief Albert Luthuli, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Neither Mahatma Gandhi himself nor any of his compatriots in India seemed to have been seriously considered for the Nobel Prize for Peace. Was this a case of African culture being empirically more Gandhian than Indian culture?

The Cultural Paradox of Greed Among the cultural casualties of the colonial experience was the underdeveloped nature of greed in Africa before the coming of the White man. Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, used to argue that civilization

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was born out of the pursuit of luxury. Before him Adam Smith, the Scottish political economist, had argued that the wealth of nations was born out of the pursuit of profit. And Karl Marx, the German revolutionary, had argued that the march of history was activated by the pursuit of surplus. Whatever Russell meant by ‘civilization’, old Africa did not pursue luxury enough. In the terms of Adam Smith, old Africa did not chase profit either. And in Marxist terms, old Africa was not driven by relentless pursuit of surplus. The structure of greed in precolonial Africa was simply underdeveloped. It takes a love of luxury, a pursuit of surplus, or a hunger for profit to produce a civilization of comparable monuments. It takes the exploitation of simpler people to build palaces, temples, and pyramids. Most precolonial African cultures were neither greedy enough nor exploitative enough.

The Paradox of High Charity and Low Aid Private philanthropy by individual Americans is second to none in the world. There are by far many more charitable foundations in the US than in most of the world added together. But foreign aid by the US to developing countries is becoming a disgrace.

The Human-Ecology Paradox If, as some have argued, concern for God is declining, is concern for nature rising? Are we forgetting God and re-discovering nature? We once made God the ultimate environment—he was everywhere. Are we now looking for ways of deifying nature? Is human survival at the root of both concerns? The claims of nature against human kind are looking for anew equilibrium in the twenty-first century?

The Identity-Resource Paradox While Black against White in Africa is a clash over resources, Black against Black is a clash of identities. The thesis here is that racial conflicts in Africa are ultimately economic, whereas tribal wars are ultimately cultural. White folks and Black folks fight each other about who owns what. Black folks and Black folks fight each other about who is who. Apartheid was ultimately an economic war. But Hutu against Tutsi is a culture conflict.

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The Idi Amin Paradox The corridors of time echo the applause and denunciations of yesteryears. Fused into the paradox of heroic evil was Idi Amin—at once a hero and a villain, at once a subject of both applause and denunciation. As a villain he was a symbol of tyranny. As a hero, Amin has four meanings for Africa and the Third World. Economically, he attempted to strike a blow against dependency and foreign control of his country’s economy. Culturally, he signified a reaffirmation of cultural authenticity. Politically, Amin was often in rebellion against the northern dominated power structure of the twentieth century. Morally, Amin signified a basic leverage between the liberal values of the Western world and the nationalistic concerns of much of the Third World.

The Paradox of Imperialism (I) One of the great ironies of the European era in Africa is that the Europeans colonized the African imperial state and, by so doing, dis-imperialized it. Thus, Buganda under British rule was indeed colonized, and after a while, Buganda’s capacity to imperialize the rest of Eastern Africa was blunted. British colonization of African empires reduced the imperial capacities of those empires.

The Paradox of Imperialism (II) While slavery did harm Africa’s potential for scientific innovation, imperialism later on helped to create a new infrastructure for potential inventiveness. After all imperialism, while it was indeed a form of humiliating political bondage, nevertheless proceeded then to reduce the spatial, cultural, and temporal isolation which had previously been part of Africa’s scientific marginality.

The Paradox of Imperialism (III) Imperialism in the Middle East provoked the worst levels of anti-Western terrorism after formal liberation from European colonial rule. But imperialism in Africa provoked the worst levels of anti-Western terrorism before

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formal liberation from European colonial rule: that is to say, before independence day.

The Paradox of the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution contributed to the narrowing of inequality in European societies themselves while at the same time creating the foundation for major international disparities between the West and the rest. In other words, it prepared the way for domestic equality within each country while at the same time establishing the basis of major international disparities between the Western world on the one hand and much of the rest of the world on the other.

The Paradox of Internal Conflict Internal conflict within a country is inherently disintegrative. Yet, paradoxically, no national integration is possible without internal conflict. The paradox arises because while conflict itself has a propensity to force a resolution, the resolution of conflict is an essential mechanism of integration. The whole experience of jointly looking for a way out of a crisis, of seeing your own mutual hostility subside to a level of mutual tolerance, of being intensely conscious of each other’s positions and yet sensing the need to bridge the gulf—these are experiences which, over a period of time, should help two groups of people move forward into a relationship of deeper integration.

The Paradox of Intra-State War Caused by Inter-State Peace While Africa should indeed celebrate that it has relatively few conflicts between states today, should Africa also lament that it did not have more such inter-state wars in the past? In Africa has the balance between external conflict and internal conflict tilted too far on the side of internal? And as human history has repeated time and time again, civil wars often leave deeper scars, are often more indiscriminate and more ruthless than are inter-state conflicts short of either a world war or a nuclear war.

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The Iranian Paradox The complexities of royalism, republicanism, and gender cry out for investigation. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran is that greater gender segregation has been accompanied by expansion of education for women. The proportion of women in Iranian universities may have doubled since the Islamic revolution.

The Paradox of Islam and Indigenous Languages On the issue of African languages and literature, Islam has played a more paradoxical role. On the one hand, Islam appears to be linguistically intolerant. Formal prayer has to be in the Arabic language. The Muezzin calls the believers to prayer in Arabic. On the other hand, Islam and the Arabic language have created whole new indigenous languages in Africa, or profoundly enriched indigenous tongues. Great poetry has been coming out of Afro-Islamic languages for centuries. Such Afro-Islamic languages include Kiswahili and Hausa, arguably the two most successful indigenous tongues of the continent. In the verbal arts of Africa, Islam has been a great creative stimulus.

The Paradox of Islam and the West Cultural Westernization of the Muslim world is one of the causes behind the subsequent demographic Islamization of the West. The cultural Westernization of Muslims contributed to the brain drain of Muslim professionals and experts from their homes in Muslim countries to jobs and educational institutions in North America and the EU. The old Western formal empires have now unleashed demographic counter-penetration. Some of the best-qualified Muslims in the world have been attracted to jobs and positions in Europe or North America.

The Paradox of Islamic Calligraphy Islamic calligraphy is, paradoxically, a celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s illiteracy. Muslims believe that the Prophet could neither read nor write. The powerful verses of the Qur’an were revealed to him by the Angel Gabriel, and the Prophet then articulated them orally. It was the Prophet’s disciples who wrote the verses down verbatim. The Qur’an later

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became the most widely read book in its original language in human history (the Bible is the most widely read book in translation). The non-­ literate Prophet of Arabia is at the center of the most widely read book in human history.

The Paradox of Islamic Centralism Islam, the religion which had produced a relatively centralized government, seemed to be unwilling to produce formal centralized missionaries. Christianity, the religion which had produced the underdog on the cross, the man who could pronounce neither temporal legislation nor temporal taxation, the man who was tried by the laws of others, could at the same time inspire a relatively centralized church and a hierarchical system of authority.

The Paradox of Islamic Expansion Among the five modes by which Islam had spread in Africa (conquest, migration, trade, missionary work, and revivalism) it was in Arab Africa that Islam spread by the sword (conquest). Sub-Saharan examples of Islamization by conquest are few and far between. Some conquests did take place—as in the case of the Almoravids’ devastating incursions into West Africa from 1052 to 1076.

The Paradox of Islamic Ritual It is one of the ironies of history that a religion born in the grandeur of the Arabian Desert in all its bareness should have prescribed so many ritual uses of water. Christianity seems to have the concept of a once-and-for-all baptism for each individual. In Islam baptism is, in a sense, a daily affair, covering five prayers and following every act of sexuality. When available, water in Islam is a continual ritual necessity.

The Islamo-Christian Paradox The most universalist of all religions were Semitic religions—especially Christianity and Islam. Precisely because Christianity and Islam wanted to convert every human being, they were the most militantly globalist of all

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cultures. It was the Semitic belief in the oneness of the human race which led to Christian crusades and Islamic jihads.

The Islamo-Military Paradox In Africa the Sudan has gone all the way toward establishing an Islamic theocracy, under General Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. In Algeria a general election in 1991 was on the verge of producing a government led by the Islamic Salvation Front. The military intervened to abort the election. While in the Sudan soldiers are the main architects of an Islamic theocracy, in Algeria soldiers have been among the leading saboteurs of an Islamic electoral victory.

The Isolationism-Globalism Paradox Ever since 1776 the US has included an isolationist tendency. And yet it regarded its own revolution as a revolution for all humankind. In the twentieth century the American tension between isolationism and globalism reached new proportions. The US became the first truly global power. And much of the world was being partly Americanized, either in dress (the jeans revolution) or in fast food (the hamburger revolution) or in soft drinks (the coca-colonization of the world) or in music (hip-hop and rap) or in technology (from arms to airplanes) or in weekly magazines (Time and Newsweek) or in educational systems. Yet many Americans are screaming, ‘Stop the world. I want to get off!’ Many want to concentrate on their own domestic mess—rather than help to deal with the mess of the human race as a whole.

The Jamaican Paradox A country which has produced the most distinguished Back-to-Africa activist in history is also a country which has exported millions of its sons and daughters to mother England, rather than mother Africa. Jamaica has found itself sitting on the horns of the Afro-Saxon dilemma. The land of Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari movement is also the land of unremitting migration to the lands of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain, and the US. The reasons are complex but ultimately understandable.

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The Jomo Kenyatta Paradox (I) Kenya was the first Black African country to follow the American example of waging a war of independence against British colonial rule. The Americans did it from 1776—the Kenyans did it from 1952. Paradoxically, Kenya’s ‘George Washington’—Jomo Kenyatta—waged the war from behind bars. The British locked him up at the very beginning of the rebellion after a sham trial. But Kenyatta behind bars was a more potent political force than Kenyatta at large.

The Jomo Kenyatta Paradox (II) The Head of State (Jomo Kenyatta) was the most pro-Kiswahili member of the government. His most powerful minister in the 1970s (Charles Njonjo) was the most pro-English member of the government. Kenyatta went as far as to order Parliament to switch overnight to Kiswahili as the only language of legislative debate. Out of the blue brilliant orators of English of yesterday became almost tongue-tied in Kiswahili today—and modest English speakers of last week promptly matured into Churchillian oratory in Kiswahili this week. After Kenyatta’s death there was an effort to have a parliamentary compromise with a bilingual parliament.

The Judeo-Ethiopian Paradox In Ethiopia it was not just the Falasha who had established their links with Jewish history. It was also the Royal Imperial House which lasted until the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 which overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. The Royal Line was based on the legend of the Solomonic legacy. Ethiopian Christianity was also substantially Judaic, encompassing some of the dietary rules of Judaism, including the ban on pork. Ethiopian Christianity also included the imperative of circumcision.

The Paradox of Karl Marx Although Karl Marx was himself German, his greatest influence in Western Europe has not been in the Germanic-speaking countries (i.e., Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Great Britain, etc.). Marx’s impact has been greater in Latin-speaking Western Europe (Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal).

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The Paradox of Kenya’s Political Geography Kenya is an Indian Ocean power which has been behaving as if it were an Atlantic power. Perhaps of all African countries Kenya evolved the most wide-ranging relationships with the leading countries of Western Europe and North America. For a while Kenya was the darling of the West, not only because of its tourist attractions but also because of its strategic importance. Ironically, Kenya’s strategic value to the West was precisely because Kenya was an Indian Ocean power. It was located along one of the great sea routes of the world and was also in close proximity to the oil reserves of the Middle East. It was a potential staging place for the rapid deployment of Western forces in a critical area of the globe. It was vital that Kenya remained pro-Western, while the West flirted with Kenya because of its location on the Indian Ocean. Western flirtations turned Kenya’s eyes away from the Indian Ocean. This country became excessively Western-oriented and inadequately attentive to its Asian neighbors. The West embraced Kenya partly because the West valued the Indian Ocean; Kenya embraced the West and turned its back on the Indian Ocean.

The Paradox of Kwame Nkrumah (I) By leading the country to independence, Kwame Nkrumah was a great Gold Coaster. By working hard to keep Pan-Africanism warm as a political ideal, Nkrumah was a great African. But by the tragedy of his domestic excesses after independence, Nkrumah fell short of becoming a great Ghanaian.

The Paradox of Kwame Nkrumah (II) While Kwame Nkrumah was backward in his policies toward Ghana (a dictatorial architect of a single party), he was at the same time ahead of his time in his policies toward Africa. He believed in continental Pan-­ Africanism and in Africa’s economic liberation when very few people took those goals seriously. But he also believed in treating Ghanaian people paternalistically and often unjustly. Nkrumah remains one of Africa’s greatest heroes as a continental thinker. But he was also the Adam and Eve

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of Black Africa’s experiment with the single-party system. He defended it in the name of postcolonial pragmatic realities, in the name of ideological rationalization, and in the name of African cultural continuities. Today many of us know better.

The Paradox of Kwame Nkrumah (III) The same Kwame Nkrumah who had struggled so hard to establish the right of Black people to organize themselves as nation-states and sovereign states became a passionate champion of a continent-wide federation of nation-states. The call for the independence of Ghana from British colonial rule was indeed the extension of the Westphalian system of sovereign states to include Black societies. But the call for a continent-wide unification of the whole of Africa in all its cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity was an entirely different kind of paradigm from the nation-state. Nkrumah was calling for a super-state of two thousand languages.

The Paradox of Language in East Africa Kenyan presidents do need to be trilingual to survive. Tanzanian presidents can survive by being bilingual in Kiswahili and English. Theoretically, Ugandan presidents could survive by being only unilingual in the imperial language—just as Hastings Banda in Malawi originally was when he first captured power in his country. Ugandan presidents need to belong to a local ethnic group but not necessarily to command a local ethnic language. They may need ethnic support but not necessarily ethno-linguistic proficiency. That was also precisely Hastings Banda’s trade-off. He had lost his ethnic language in exile, but still retained his ethnic identity. That political equation could work in Uganda too. But it cannot work in Tanzania where a bilingual executive is needed or in Kenya where a trilingual presidency is required. The same conditions which had made the Ugandan presidency almost unilingual made the Ugandan people the most multilingual. Because Uganda was the most linguistically fragmented of the three East African countries, and Kiswahili had less of a role as a lingua franca, Ugandans learnt each other’s Afro-ethnic languages more readily than did Tanzanians and Kenyans. The people of Uganda seemed to be the most impressively polyglottal of all East Africans.

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The Paradox of Law and Rebellion in Islam The Shari’a (Islamic Law) covers almost every aspect of life; a fatwa is a legal opinion based on the Shari’a. Devout Muslims constantly try to approximate legal righteousness. Yet in spite of this high legal culture, Muslim history is also a legacy of rebellious leadership and submissive following. The Prophet Muhammad was himself a rebel against the Jahiliyya culture of ancestral Arabia. Three of the first four Caliphs after Muhammad were assassinated. Islam also produced the Mahdiyya and Imam traditions (a series of revivalist leaders who commanded the allegiance of submissive followers).

The Paradox of Legis-Ration The term legis-ration combines legislation with liberation. The anti-­ colonial struggle in Kenya was a struggle for expanding representation in the Legislative Council under leaders like Tom Mboya; the postcolonial struggle is a struggle for expanding power in the legislature through voices like those of Anyang Nyong’o. The British increased African representation as Kenya’s independence approached; postcolonial governments decreased the powers of parliament after independence. The latest struggle is to restore the balance. Can Kenya’s Opposition parties help to restore the sovereignty of parliament?

The Paradox of Left-Wing Academia When we compare the histories of the Universities of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the paradox of left-wing academia in Africa emerges in full force. Dar es Salaam was an example of where left-wing academics were at one time among the villains who were hostile to academic pluralism. Nairobi was an example of where left-wing academics continued to be among the victims of governmental assaults on intellectual pluralism. Dar es Salaam had witnessed socialists denying academic freedom to others. Nairobi had seen socialists being denied even basic human rights by the government of the day. Student and university administrators have been absorbed into those contradictory politics in Tanzania and Kenya—sometimes suffering with the victims, occasionally celebrating with the villains.

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The Liberal-Realist Paradox Both the realist school of international analysis on the one hand, and the champions of world government on the other, accept to some extent the basic Hobbesian interpretation that sovereigns in their relations with each other are indeed in a state of potential war since they recognize no common superior with authority to settle disputes between themselves, and since they insist on at least a theoretical equality between one sovereign and another. But the Hobbesian element in the philosophy of world govermentalists is, curiously enough, more pessimistic than the Hobbesianism present in the realist school. The world govermentalists see the absence of government as a state of war in a more imminent sense. That is why they feel a sense of urgency about filling the international gap of anarchy with viable institutions of authority. On the other hand, the realist school of international analysis, as symbolized by Hans Morgenthau, while regarding the international ‘state of war’ as being a state of potential war, by no means considers it a state of imminent war or even unavoidable war. To some extent the realist school is an attempt to internationalize Adam Smith’s conception of the invisible hand. Just as in single countries the pursuit of self-interest by individual members of society is guided by an invisible hand toward the cumulative welfare of the society as a whole, so in the international system does the pursuit of the national interest by individual states permit a healthy system of inter-state relations and harmony between sovereign powers. Transgressions are indeed possible both domestically and internationally, but the realist school of international analysis would not regard that as a nullification of its belief in international harmony in spite of the pursuit of national interest.

The Paradox of Liberalized Islam Political pluralism survives best in those societies which have already successfully experimented with economic pluralism. Political liberation works best where economic liberation has already succeeded. Most Muslim societies in Africa and elsewhere have not yet achieved mature capitalism—and are therefore at a disadvantage in trying to forge mature liberal democracy. Even when infitah (open economy) arrives, it is accompanied by too much corruption, among both civilian politicians and the military elite.

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Historically, all liberal democracies have been capitalist countries, though not all capitalist countries have been successful democracies. (All liberal donkeys are capitalist animals, but not all capitalist animals are liberal donkeys.) Outside Africa and the Muslim world, we have seen Taiwan, Korea, and China as examples of economic liberalization before political liberalization. Does Islam favor economic liberalization while abhorring political liberalization?

The Paradox of Lord Lugard Lord Lugard was anti-Arab but often sympathetic to Islam. These two paradoxical positions sometimes got in each other’s way. His anti-­Arabness went back to his years in East Africa which included struggling against the Arab slave trade in that region of the continent. He was one of those who struggled hard to persuade Britain to be more interventionist in East Africa and even annex Uganda. His anti-Arabness persisted in his later years. Lugard’s attitude to Islam was more ambivalent—going back to his family’s attitude to Indian Muslims. Lugard was after all born in 1858, the year of the Indian mutiny. His subsequent years as High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria and later as Governor-General of the whole of Nigeria involved dealing with the Emirates and with large numbers of Hausa and Hausa-Fulani Muslims. And as an administrator he feared what we now call ‘Muslim fundamentalism’ which in his day was called ‘Muhammedan fanaticism’. Lugard insisted that British policy should keep this danger in check.

The Paradox of Male and Female If Islam proclaims that ‘Paradise lies at the feet of mothers’, why do women appear to be at a great disadvantage in Muslim societies? Has the dignity of motherhood compromised the freedom of the woman in Muslim lands?

The Mandela Paradox Nelson Mandela was a great cause of Pan-Africanism in others. His martyrdom aroused the shared anger of much of the world. Mandela became the focus of Black solidarity. But was Mandela himself a Pan-Africanist? Here comes the paradox. He was a globalist, on one side, and a South

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African patriot, on the other. But in action he was less of a Pan-Africanist than people like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, or Muammar Qaddafy.

The Mandela-Mbeki Paradox In Southern Africa we have seen Nelson Mandela as a major cause of Pan-­ Africanism in others but not himself a first-rank Pan-Africanist. But while Nelson Mandela is Southern Africa’s first political globalist, Thabo Mbeki is Southern Africa’s first global Pan-Africanist. More than other Southern African leaders, Thabo Mbeki has identified not just with fellow Africans on the African continent but also with people of African ancestry scattered from Haiti to Harlem and onward to Harare. Thabo Mbeki is global African incarnate. But there is another paradox about Thabo Mbeki which is more widely accepted among his critics in South Africa. Is Thabo Mbeki a man of the world but not necessarily a man of the people? The argument is that, first, Mr. Mbeki is too much of a technocrat to qualify as a man of the people. Second, although Mbeki is not as much of a globalist in ideological orientation as Nelson Mandela, Mbeki is even more worldly-wise than Mandela. While Mandela in prison was reflecting on the human condition, Thabo Mbeki in exile was learning the ropes of world affairs. It is arguable that Thabo Mbeki knows more about the world than does the average president of the US. Does this make Mbeki in touch with the world but not necessarily in touch with the people? The debate continues.

The Paradox of Marginalized Islam Pro-trade tendency pushed Islam forward geographically, anti-capitalist tendency pulled Islam backward economically. The same Hausa, who have excelled in trade across national boundaries in West Africa, have found themselves outclassed by the Igbo in the game of competitive capitalism in Northern Nigeria. Unequal capitalist skills can be devastating for ethnic relations within societies. Outside the Sudan, Muslims have repeatedly been caught on the less skilled side of a capitalist social equation.

The Marshall-Thomas Paradox Black member of the US Supreme Court—especially one who is sensitive to Black concerns like Thurgood Marshall—qualifies as relevant to issues of power-sharing. There is a problem with Justice Clarence Thomas.

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Genetically he is probably more purely African than Thurgood Marshall was. But ideologically Clarence Thomas is far less Africa-friendly than Marshall was.

The Paradox of the Masculinity of War The most persistent attribute of war has not been the consistency of motives—for men have fought for reasons which have ranged from greed to glory, from gold to god, from liberty to land, from sex to soccer. The motives have varied but war has continued. The most recurrent attributes of war have not been its technology—for we know that the technological range has been from the spear to the intercontinental missile. Nor has war been a peculiarity of certain climates—for men have fought under the blazing sun as well as in snow drifts. No, the most persistent attribute of war has not been its motivation, technology, organization, goals, or geographical context. It has in fact been its masculinity. In other words, the ultimate evil is man’s proclivity toward war—and not merely the weapon with which he has fought it. But with the coming of nuclear age, war has become too serious to be left only to men. The power system of the world does indeed need to be androgenized.

The Paradox of Mediocrity The same nationalism which is capable of acclaiming mediocre African works such as books simply because they are African finds itself deeply offended if the works are acclaimed by Westerners for the same reason. There is a conviction that indulgence by the foreigner is a form of indignity. What is not good enough by the canons of European writers when judging each other ought not to be permitted to be good enough when judging the performance of an African writer.

The Paradox of Modern Weapons and Pre-modern Armies While African wars are fought with modern weapons, African armies are not yet modern armies. One of the destabilizing forces which colonialism bequeathed to independent Africa was a standing army with Western weapons. One of the few African countries to consider whether to do

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without a standing army was Tanzania. In 1964 Nyerere even had the opportunity to disband his entire army and to consider whether to build an alternative one. He did disband the old one, but he did not follow Costa Rica’s example and do without. At independence the weapons were less modern but the armies more disciplined and professional. Now the weapons are more modern and the armies less disciplined and less professional.

The Paradox of Monarchical Republicanism The same country (Gold Coast) which was soon to declare itself a Republic had gone out of its way to name itself after an ancient empire (Ghana). This was the paradox of monarchical republicanism. When Ghana attained independence as a modest African republic, Kwame Nkrumah became the president. His equivalent of a quasi-monarchical title was the Osagyefo, or the redeemer.

The Paradox of Monotheism Monotheism is particularly dualistic, though not uniquely so. There is a tendency in monotheism to divide the human race between believers and unbelievers, between the virtuous and the sinful, between good and evil, between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

The Paradox of Moral Acculturation If Africa’s experience is anything to go by, people change their criteria of good and evil more readily than their standards of beautiful and ugly. One can therefore convert an African more easily to the values of St. Thomas Aquinas than to the music of Mozart and Beethoven.

The Mujahedeen-Muggers Paradox Against Western claims that Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ feeds terrorism, one powerful paradox of the twentieth century is often overlooked. While Islam may generate more political violence than Western culture, Western culture generates more street violence than Islam. If Islam produces a disproportionate share of mujahedeen, Western culture produces a disproportionate share of muggers.

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The Paradox of Nigeria’s Leaders One of Nigeria’s most fascinating paradoxes has been its capacity to produce relatively self-denying and often self-effacing heads of government and heads of state. This most flamboyant of all African countries has produced perhaps the most humble of all African heads of state—Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s equivalent of Abraham Lincoln. Gowon saved the union after the agony of a civil war (1967–1970). He showed immense magnanimity toward the defeated Biafran leaders after the war. It is true that although Gowon himself was not corrupt, he was too tolerant of corrupt subordinates. What is more significant from the point of view of his humility was what happened after he was overthrown by his fellow soldiers in 1975. This former Head of State of Africa’s most populous (and most flamboyant) country decided to go back to school as an undergraduate. The idea of their former leader standing in line in a college cafeteria so outraged many Nigerians that they regarded Gowon’s decision to go back to school in a provincial British university as an insult to the national dignity of Nigeria. But Yakubu Gowon persevered as an undergraduate when only a few years previously he was being honored by such a distinguished institution as Cambridge University in England with an honorary doctorate. Nor did Gowon stop at the bachelor’s degree. He struggled his way upwards toward a regular doctorate in political science from Warwick University. History may well decide that this modest Nigerian had two ‘finest hours’. The first was when, as head of state, he was magnanimous toward his defeated Igbo compatriots after the Nigerian civil war. Gowon’s second ‘finest hour’ was when, as a deposed head of state, he was humble enough to go back to school as an undergraduate. In Yakubu Gowon Africa’s prestige motive had found its most restrained and disciplined exponent. But Gowon was not the only self-effacing Head of State or Head of Government that independent Nigeria has had. The first Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was also a man of relative humility. The last civilian president—Al-Haji Shehu Shagari—was similarly a modest leader in that flamboyant society.

The Paradox of Nigerian English One of the ironies of the English language in Nigeria is that Southerners have better access to the English language than Northerners, but Northerners have better accents for the English language than Southerners.

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Southern access to English lies in better Western and Christian schools in the South and greater exposure to the English language in Southern cities. The smoother Northern accent when they speak English is because Hausa sounds are more compatible with English sounds than either Yoruba or Igbo sounds normally are. Nigeria’s first prime minister after independence—Abubaker Tafawa Balewa—was called ‘the Golden Voice of the North’ partly because of his impressive accent when speaking English.

The Paradox of Nigerian Islam After the end of British rule in 1960 the Sharia in Northern Nigeria began to decline in importance, but there was a new Muslim pre-eminence in the composition of the Federal Government of Nigeria for much of the first decades of Nigeria’s independence. The role of the Sharia at the State level was declining, but the impact of Muslims federally had deepened.

The Paradox of Normative Convergence Consensus behind much-needed world reforms is impossible without substantial cultural convergence on a global scale. And yet the cultural convergence which the world has so far attained carries with it the evil of dependency. A global stratification system is maintained partly because Europe and her extensions have created relationships of structural and cultural dependency with other sections of the human race.

The Paradox of Normative Egalitarianism The transition from the precolonial statehood to postcolonial statehood was bedeviled by the crisis of normative egalitarianism which arose because African city and empire states were, on the one hand, less egalitarian than African stateless societies (tracing their roots to hierarchy, privilege, and power) and, on the other hand, less egalitarian than the new evolving European nation-states.

The Paradox of Nuclear Weapons Nuclear weapons should be declared as illegitimate as germ warfare. Outlawing nuclear weapons might not mean the ending of nuclear weapons just like outlawing of murder has not meant the end of murder.

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Humanity needs to reexamine its standards of legitimate conflict— nuclear conflict should not be included within that domain of legitimacy. But how should one arrive at that situation of total exit from the possibilities of nuclear war? Paradoxically, only by a temporary entry into a nuclear capacity by more and more countries could there be enough conviction for the need for a total nuclear exit by all the countries. The culture shocks of more and more Third World countries wielding nuclear devices might at last induce even the US and Russia to sit around the table, with many other countries, seeking a viable system of total nuclear renunciation.

The Nyerere Paradox Two dialectical tendencies in military affairs have characterized the ethos of Tanzania under Julius Nyerere. One is a marked distrust of men professionally under arms at home. The other is a faith in military or quasi-­ military solutions to some of the external problems in Africa.

The Obote-Museveni Paradox Milton Obote, trained at Makerere and elsewhere, in liberal ideology and an admirer of John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, lived to author The Common Man’s Charter and attempted to move Uganda to the left in 1969–1970. Yoweri Museveni, trained in socialism and leftist anti-­ imperialism in Dar es Salaam, lived to become the most dedicated free-­ market idealist in Eastern Africa.

The Paradox of Open Secrecy In the West, medical expertise is open but the records of the patient are confidential. In traditional Africa the healer’s expertise is secret, but the ailments of the patient are an open book. Exactly the opposite scale of values from the West. But what if the patient is the political system as a whole? Should its ailments be as openly discussed as the maladies of a traditional African? Or should they be as confidential as the medical records of a Westerner? How confidential should the prescriptions be?

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The Paradox of Origins and Eternity in Islam Islam denies a trinity of God but is itself a triad of religions. The origins of Islam are a tale of three cities (Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem). The mission of Islam is a legend of three religions (Judaism, Christianity, and the Prophet Muhammad’s unique message). Jerusalem symbolizes Islam’s bonds with Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem was the earliest Kibla of Islam—the direction to which Muslims prayed.

The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (I) Pan-Africanism often flourished through the unifying force of European languages. Figures like W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey would never have become founding fathers of trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism without the mediation of the English language. Figures like Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor would not have become founding fathers of negritude without the role of the French language. Racism and apartheid in South Africa helped to consolidate the solidarity of Pan-Africanism. But a new contradiction emerged with the end of political apartheid. Governance in South Africa itself was more Africanized almost by definition as Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress assumed control. But across the African continent the end of political apartheid was an experience in dis-Pan-Africanization. A major stimulus of solidarity was diffused. Pan-­ Africanism was wounded by its own success.

The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (II) The strongest supporters of sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism were the less radical and more conservative African nationalist leaders (Obafemi Awolowo, Hastings Banda, Félix Houphouët-Boigny). The more radical African leaders preferred trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism (Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure).

The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (III) Although race consciousness was the original fountain of Pan-Africanism, it was neither the trans-Atlantic movement nor the sub-Saharan movement that found institutional fulfillment first. It was in fact trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism, in spite of the significant racial differences separating parts of North Africa from parts of Africa South of the Sahara.

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The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (IV) Historically one would have expected Pan-Africanism to start from the smaller units of the sub-continent South of the Sahara, and then move outward to encompass North Africa, and then ultimately reestablish contact with the African Diaspora. But what happened was different—Pan-­ Africanism started with the trans-Atlantic version before it focused more narrowly on the African continent itself.

The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (V) A basic dialectic to understand in Africa is that while the greatest friend of African nationalism is race consciousness (pigmentational solidarity), the greatest enemy of African nationhood is ethnic consciousness.

The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (VI) By fostering a greater sense of independence, the English language has helped to reduce the chances of effective Pan-Africanism in former British Africa. Paradoxically, Pan-Africanism as a closer relationship between African states themselves is inadequately realized by the very English speakers who launched Pan-Africanism onto the world stage in the first place.

The Paradox of Pan-Africanism (VII) Unlike the English language a shared affinity to the French language unites the Francophone African states both vertically with France and horizontally with each other. In some ways therefore Pan-Africanism is better served by the French language than by the English language. Yet, the Pan-­ Africanism which the French is helping to bring about is non-nationalistic Pan-Africanism, which is particularly not anti-colonialist.

The Paradox of the Particular and the Universal The world system has never had more culturally diverse actors than it has now. And yet, simultaneously, the world has never been nearer to a global culture than is now. There are many other derivative tensions—rooted in the perennial dialectic of particularism and universalism.

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The Paradox of Physical Nearness and Imperial Distance In geographical location Spain is the nearest European power to Africa. One can almost swim from North Africa to the Spanish mainland. None of the European powers that colonized Africa were geographically nearer to Africa than Spain, not even Portugal. Spain’s African possessions were limited to Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara. Why did Spain build such a tiny empire in Africa but a huge empire in Latin America? Additionally, considering Spain is so geographically near to Africa, the Spanish language should have been much more widespread in Africa than it is. And yet there are by far more speakers of English, French, Portuguese, and Afrikaans than there are speakers of the Spanish language. There are probably more speakers of Italian in the Horn of Africa and Libya. Speakers of German in Southern Africa may equal speakers of Spanish in North Africa. To deepen this paradox of all European languages, the Spanish language has been influenced the most by North African Islam and the Arabic language. And yet of all the major European languages Spanish has had very limited impact on Africa and its culture.

The Paradox of Political Chemistry It is one of the ironies of history that almost all Muslim monarchs from Brunei to Bahrain have been close friends of the US—perhaps the first successful and permanent anti-royalist revolution in Western history. The English in the Cromwellian era staged the first anti-royalist revolution— but it did not last. The monarchy was restored in England in 1660. The French Revolution of 1779 was more sweeping than the American Revolution—but the French kept on restoring emperors in the nineteenth century. Only the US was consistent in its internal republican arrangements from 1776 onward. And yet in the twentieth century the US has been a supreme friend of foreign kings, including Islamic monarchies. And yet the political chemistry between American republicanism and royalty in the Muslim world has tended to destroy the royalty. The US embrace of foreign kings has—when it has been too close—turned into a kiss of death throttling the monarchs. It is as if the American founding fathers were playing a supreme game of historical irony. The founding fathers intended the US to be a beacon of opposition to royal privileges. And yet the twentieth century leaders of the US have gone around trying to safeguard and

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strengthen Muslim kings. The additional irony comes when Uncle Sam’s embrace of Muslim kings in the twentieth century helps to create revolutionary conditions in those monarchies—and subsequently destroys the Royal Houses.

The Paradox of Politicized Riots Muslim cities in Africa are routinely less violent than non-Muslim cities— but from time to time Muslim cities are nevertheless more prone to politicized riots or demonstrations. Islam does not inspire mugging in the streets, but it often inspires fiery protest. Kano in Nigeria is much more of a Muslim city than Ibadan. On a day-to-day basis Kano’s streets are much safer than the streets of Ibadan from muggers and robbers. But Kano is competitive even with Lagos when it comes to politicized riots. Mombasa even in the 1990s is more of a Muslim city than Nairobi in Kenya. The streets of Mombasa are still, relatively speaking, safer than the streets of Nairobi. But Mombasa is beginning to be competitive with the capital city in politicized riots.

The Portuguese Paradox Has African experience entirely contradicted the older Marxist assumption that colonized peoples are most likely to attain their freedom when the proletariat in the imperialist metropolitan power themselves rise up against their own internal oppressors? In the case of the political liberation of much of French-speaking Africa and former British colonies, it certainly did not require a proletarian revolution in France or Britain to attain that result. The nearest vindication to the original Marxian and Leninist theory of colonial liberation seems to have come with the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. They attained independence after a major coup took place in Lisbon itself, and Portugal moved to the left. And yet, although this appears to be a vindication of the older Marxist version of the primacy of the proletariat in the imperialist countries, in effect the example of the Portuguese empire is a reversal of cause and effect. It was not a case of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola owing their liberation to a coup in Portugal. On the contrary, it was a case of the Portuguese coup being substantially caused by the colonial wars waged by African liberation fighters.

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The Presidential Paradox An American president can get away with killing a million foreigners but he takes a great gamble if he personally authorizes the murder of a single irritating American journalist at home. By contrast, an African president can get away with killing thousands of his compatriots but he still takes a gamble when he deliberately orders the murder of a single American journalist. Until the fall of Richard Nixon, American constitutional arrangements allowed large-scale slaughter abroad by presidential fiat but limited physical abuse of power at home. By contrast, Africa’s lack of constitutional arrangement allows considerable domestic brutality but limited capacity for the brutalization of foreigners in one’s own country, let alone in other lands. While Africa should not necessarily aspire to acquire the equivalent of America’s capacity for killing others in the name of national interest, she would do well to learn some of the constitutional devices by which Americans seek to limit their ruler’s capacity for domestic evil.

The Principle-Interest Paradox This denotes the tension between normative principle and pragmatic expediency, between what John Stuart Mill called the ‘self-regarding’ and the ‘other-regarding’ orientation. What reshuffling has taken place in the twentieth century between principle and interest? What re-definitions have taken place in the course of social and economic change?

The Pro-Westernism-Westernization Paradox In the Arab world, among the most pro-Western countries are those which are least Westernized. Being pro-Western is an attitude or a political allegiance. Being Westernized is a measure of cultural assimilation. The political elites in Syria are more Westernized than the political elites in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. But Syria is less pro-Western than Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

The Paradox of the Proletarian Aristocrat The distributive aspect of Islam is, of course, intimately related to its egalitarian aspects. The Prophet Muhammad himself was, in a sense, the paradox of a ‘proletarian aristocrat’. He was born of the noble tribe of the

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Quraysh but he came from a poor family and had worked in humble jobs. At first his modest upbringing, in spite of noble blood, was an impediment to his religious mission.

The Qaddafy Paradox Muammar Qaddafy was a good African but a bad Libyan. He regarded himself as an African first and an Arab second. He invested more in African projects than in Arab ones. He provided employment to many citizens of neighboring countries. He promoted and financed the pursuit of African unification. But Qaddafy was a bad Libyan because he was a dictator and intolerant of dissent. He also remained too long in power—more than four decades.

The Paradox of Quantitative Historiography On the one hand, quantification is a quest for precision. On the other hand, quantification is a retreat into narrowness. We may end up knowing more and more about less and less. What is not quantifiable becomes in some sense unknowable according to the more devout adherents of quantitative social science. The nature of our knowledge may therefore become more exact; the content of our knowledge on the other hand may become narrow and limited.

The Paradox of Qur’anic Inimitability It is a major principle of Islam that the Qur’an cannot be imitated. This is the doctrine of the Qur’anic inimitability. And yet, by a curious twist of fate, no book in human history has served as a greater model of imitation than the Qur’an has done to Arabic literature throughout the ages.

The Paradox of Racial Deficit In the second half of the twentieth century more people have died in Africa as a result of conflict between Black and Black than because of conflict between Black and White. While anti-colonial wars did cost a lot of lives (especially in places like Algeria where more than a million perished at the hands of the French) postcolonial wars have been even more ruthless. And yet the seeds of the postcolonial wars themselves lie in the

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sociological mess which colonialism created in Africa by destroying old methods of conflict resolution without creating effective substitute ones in their place. This applied as much to the relatively egalitarian traditional societies of Kenya as it did to some of the more monarchical systems of Uganda.

The Paradox of Racial Exclusivity It is one of the ironies of history that the most racially exclusive continent in the world (Europe) should have played a decisive role in ensuring that all continents of the world were racially mixed. European slave trade and European colonization exported Blacks to distant Western enclaves, on one side, and, on the other side, exported Europeans to regions previously untouched by the White man.

The Paradox of the Rebellious Progeny The White voluntary immigrants of North America were overwhelmingly people of European descent—although they subsequently imported millions of African captives and turned them into slaves. The pilgrim fathers and the Mayflower and the dominant culture which evolved were all of European stock. England’s role escalated in importance in North America, and colonies like Virginia and the Carolinas were named after British Queens. The English language was on its way toward becoming the dominant language in North America. And yet by the last quarter of the eighteenth century the British colonies were ready to rebel against King George III. There was the Boston Tea Party and then the American War of Independence. The American Declaration of Independence became one of the major defining documents of world history. July 4 every year has continued to be Independence Day for all US citizens down the ages. Here then was a dialectic being set—the US as a child of Europe and as a rebel against it.

The Religion-Language Paradox There is a sense in which language is more fundamental in human affairs than religion. Theoretically, a society can function without having any theistic religion, but no society can function without a language. And yet, religious differences continue to trigger deadlier passions than do linguistic quarrels.

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The Paradox of Reparation in a Conservative World The paradox of the struggle for reparations in a conservative world is that the case for reparations gets stronger, while the prospects for getting reparations are getting weaker. In a conservative world the damage to the Black and African people not only continues but gets worse. So the case for reparations is strengthened. We need to be compensated more than ever for that damage, which is here and now. But precisely because the world has got more conservative, the chances of compensation are in fact receding. The case for the plaintiff is getting stronger—but the chances of restitution are diminishing. The paradox of a conservative world is that it reveals more clearly than ever that Africans are a wounded race in history—but then goes on to deny their entitlement to reparations.

The Roots-Goals Paradox Every society seeks to develop two kinds of national myths—the myth of ancestry (to emphasize its heritage from the past) and the myth of purpose (to emphasize its reason for existence and its missions for the future). The myth of roots is tied to sense of history and identity. The myth of purpose is about sense of social direction. Societies which totally lose a sense of their past have a hard time realizing their future goals. Western imperialism undermined Africa’s own sense of ancestral heritage more seriously than it undermined Asia’s sense of its own glorious past.

The Paradox of Ruralization of Marxism For Mao Zedong the developed countries were the cities of the world, while the underdeveloped constituted the massive rural countryside. The revolt of the future was the revolt of the peasants in the countryside against the opulent luxury of the city. Here was a ruralization of Marxism, allocating the ultimate historic destiny to a rural revolutionary class rather than to an urban proletariat. This interpretation was to assume an ironic twist when China’s friends in Kenya were more among the urbanite Luo than the ruralite Kikuyu.

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The Paradox of Sacred Science in Islam Islam is one civilization which had its greatest scientific glories at the height of its religious power rather than during periods of secularization. Western civilization has been the reverse—rising in science as it has declined in outward religious expression. It is mostly unknown by the general public that Muslim thinkers like Ibn Rushd (Averroës, 1126–1198) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037) influenced Western thought and the Western Enlightenment. Aquinas quotes Ibn Sina directly. Islamic technology built such forts as Saladin’s Citadel in Cairo; such palaces as Al-Hambra in Spain; and many ships which traversed the world, traveling as far as China. The English word ‘admiral’ is derived from Arabic. Western technical concepts which come from Arabic include such words as zero, Algebra, tariff, cipher, and (paradoxically) alcohol. The numerals which the West now uses are called ‘Arabic numerals’ partly because Islamic civilization was at one time a transmission belt of mathematical equations from as far afield as India and a transmission belt of philosophical equations from such historic legacies as those of ancient Greece.

The Secularism-Libertarianism Paradox American secularism is good news for Muslims (separating church from state); American libertarianism is bad news for Islam (such as the American debate as to whether same-sex marriages should be legally recognized nationwide). The Democratic Party in the US is more insistent on separating church from state, including its opposition to prayer in schools. This draws African American Muslim parents even more toward the Democrats, since the Muslim parents do not want their kids to be under peer pressure to attend Christian prayers. More recent immigrant Muslims regard prayer in school as potentially more Islamic. These Muslims may be drawn to the Republicans. But the Republicans are stronger on traditional family values and are more opposed to sexual libertarianism. This draws many Muslims (especially immigrant Asians) to the Republican Party. Most Muslims share Republican concerns about abortion and gay rights.

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The Scientification-Secularization Paradox The Western impact fostered the ideology of scientism in Africa, a religious belief in the supremacy of science. In the African context an anomaly arose out of the paradoxical role of Christian missionaries. On the one hand, they were in Africa to propagate a new gospel, asking Africans to exchange old beliefs and traditional religions for the Bible. On the other hand, the same Christian missionaries helped to build schools where Isaac Newton was taught and where mathematics competed with Shakespeare for attention. Out of this paradox of missionary schools propagating a scientific culture emerged the deeper paradox of converting Africans to the ideology of scientism while at the same time capturing their souls for an alternative religious order. The outcome of it all was precisely the process of shallow scientification of African attitudes and values without their translation into technology.

The Paradox of Secular Ideology Although Western political pluralism was partly born out of theological pluralism, Western democracy decided to become more and more secular. The US constitution decided to be almost fanatical in separating Church from State. Prayer was not allowed in any school or even in a private school that received extensive funding from the government.

The Senghor Paradox In March 1979 Ali Mazrui had the privilege of interviewing for this Reith Lectures President Leopold Senghor, the philosopher, poet, and founding father of modern Senegal. Senghor was particularly famous for his philosophy of negritude, an affirmation of the validity and dignity of Africa’s own indigenous cultural heritage. But Senghor was also famous as a supreme product of French culture, a master of the nuances and power of the French language, a devout admirer of French civilization, and a dedicated friend of the French nation. We had here then the paradox of one of the most interesting political philosophers of twentieth-century Africa. On the one hand, Senghor sought to rescue African cultures and civilizations from the contemptuous arrogance of European perceptions. But on the other hand, Senghor is

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himself a profoundly Europeanized African—and one who is at the same time in love with the country which once possessed his own. We had in Leopold Senghor the perfect illustration of a fusion of philosophical rebellion and political collaboration, the quest for African cultural authenticity combined with the imperial legacy of Africa’s cultural emulation.

The Paradox of Slavery One of the most obscene and perverse ironies of the slave era is that emancipation did result in compensation—but for the slave-owners rather than for the slaves. In the British West Indies this was clear-cut. Those who had slaves were regarded as property-owners. The forceful loss of their property was regarded as worthy of compensation. Most slave-owners therefore received reparations. But ex-slaves were regarded as moving from a worse condition to a better condition—from bondage to emancipation. There were no major voices in Britain in favor of compensating Blacks for prior racial degradation, humiliation, and exploitation of their labor. Property was sacred, but labor apparently was not. Loss of property demanded compensation, but forced labor apparently did not. In the final analysis, there is therefore an unfulfilled moral debt yet to be paid to those whose labor had been plundered during slave days.

The Paradox of the South African Jew Relatively, the Jews in South Africa are more prosperous than the other Whites. They have had a much bigger share of the economic wealth of South Africa than the Afrikaners. But they have shown themselves to be among the most liberal of Whites. From among South Africa’s Jewry came many a voice of sanity and humane realism.

The Paradox of Stable International System The global system which confronts us today has more stability than might first appear—for better or worse. By contrast, almost each country in the Third World is in the throes of active, imminent, or latent instability within its own borders. This is the paradox of a stable international system combined with acute internal dislocations in individual Third World countries.

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The Paradox State Collapse The road to state collapse or state displacement could be either through having too many groups or, paradoxically, too few. Previous failures of the state in Uganda were partly due to the very ethnic richness of the society— the striking diversity of Bantu, Nilotic, Sudanic, and other groups, each of which was itself internally diverse. The political system was not yet ready to sustain the immense pressures of competing ethno-cultural claims. Lives were lost, thousands were displaced. Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam also drifted toward state-failure partly because the system was unable to accommodate its rich cultural and ethnic diversity. Mengistu’s tyranny did not foster free negotiations, or compromise, or coalition-building among ethnic groups. Lives were lost, thousands were again displaced. But how can a state fail or collapse because it had too few ethnic groups? At first glance it looks as if Somalia has been such a case. George Bernard Shaw used to say that the British and the Americans were a people divided by the same language. It may be truer and more poignant to say that the Somali are a people divided by the same culture. The culture legitimizes the clans which are among the central bases of discord. The culture legitimizes a macho response to inter-clan stalemates. The culture legitimizes interclan feuds. Inter-clan rivalries among the Somali would decline if the Somali themselves were confronting the competition of other ethnic groups within some kind of plural society. The Somali themselves would close ranks if they were facing the rivalry of the Amhara and the Tigre in a new plural society. It is in that sense that even a culturally homogenous society can have major areas of schism if wise answers are not found for them.

The State-Economy Paradox On the one hand, the state system of Westphalia is excessively national and ‘sovereign’. Capitalism, on the other hand, is compulsively transnational and increasingly corporate. Africa has been entrapped between the territoriality of statehood and the supra-territoriality of capitalism.

The Paradox of Strength Through Reduction Circumcision is masculine enhancement through phallic reduction. The male organ had to have a little bit of itself taken away, so that the male person could add something more to his status. Circumcision was the

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paradox of strength through reduction. It was also a form of physical undressing. By stripping it of the additional layer of skin, the organ was being undressed. It was therefore the less unready.

The Paradox of the Swahili Language Although the proportion of Muslims in the population of Tanzania is larger than the proportion of Muslims in Kenya’s population, the proportion of non-Muslim experts of Kiswahili in Tanzania is paradoxically also larger than the proportion of non-Muslim Swahilists in Kenya. Julius Nyerere, for example, is not a Muslim. But he also happened to be one of the most brilliant users of the Swahili language in Tanzania. He has even translated William Shakespeare into powerful Kiswahili. As compared with Tanzania, Kenya has a smaller percentage of Muslims. But for the enrichment of its national language, Kenya is in reality more dependent on Muslim Swahilists than Tanzania is. In Kenya to repress the Waswahili is to impoverish the Swahili language. In Kenya to repress the Muslims is also to detract from the special historicity of the Coast. For much of what is distinctive about the history of the Coast is the profound interaction between the African peoples and the Islamic culture. For more than a thousand years the Kenya Coast has been not only part of the history of Africa. It has simultaneously been part of the history of Islam worldwide.

The Paradox of Technological Change (I) It was neither America’s political rhetoric nor even a wider and older Christian morality which created conditions for the termination of slavery. It was, in fact, technological change. The rise of humanitarian concern in Europe was substantially stimulated by the emergence of new methods of production and general technological improvements. It was the teachings of neither John Locke nor Jesus Christ that ultimately created a responsive constituency for the abolitionists in Europe and the Americas. It was the discovery that prosperity no longer needed slavery in the old sense. Thus, it was the new technology, assisted to some extent by the new science, that helped the process of equalization.

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The Paradox of Technological Change (II) The same technology which helped to end the slave trade also helped to expand imperialism. The Black man’s status within the Americas attained a slight improvement after abolition, but the Black man’s status within the African continent was exposed to new levels of penetration and subjugation as a result of the Western world’s mastery of the new technology. The different powers of Europe carved out large chunks of the African continent, just as they had carved out substantial parts of the Asian continent. Human history entered its most elaborate stage of feudo-imperial relationships.

The Paradox of Technological Change (III) The industrial revolution in Europe prepared the way for domestic equality within each country, while at the same time establishing the basis of major international disparities between the Western world on the one hand and much of the rest of the world on the other. Technology within England and America from the eighteenth century onward was helping to lay the foundations of a more egalitarian England and an even more egalitarian America; yet that same technology, by increasing the inventive and productive capabilities of these societies way beyond those attained by others, initiated a process of massive disparities of income and power among the nations of the world.

The Teenocracy-Gerontocracy Paradox Africa is sometimes caught up between ‘teenocracy’ in the military and gerontocracy in state house. Civilian heads of state in postcolonial Africa in the 1980s were disproportionately gray-haired. African soldiers were disproportionately young—often below 17 years old. Soldiers who were too young were sometimes fighting for heads of state who were too old.

The Time-Change Paradox Although Africa was colonized for a shorter period than were the colonized parts of Asia, African societies were changed and disrupted more fundamentally than were societies in Asia. Disruptions came much faster for African cultures and values, in spite of the brevity of their colonial

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experience—in comparison to that of Asia. Within less a century, whole African societies were Christianized, whereas most Asian had resister Christianization.

The Time-Space Paradox Although Africa was colonized for a much shorter period than Asia, a much bigger percentage of African space was put under the colonial yoke than the percentage of Asian space. Of all the existing states in Africa, Ethiopia was the only country to remain out of Western colonial hands— apart from a brief period from 1935 to 1941. Europeans had established several coastal settlements and some kind of political dominance in various parts of Africa but, until 1815, European interests in Africa were limited to the exploitation of raw materials and slaves and as a way station en route to Asia. Less Asian territory was colonized but Asia was, on the whole, colonized for a longer period. Many parts of India had been under different degrees of British control for hundreds of years before India’s partition and independence in 1947 Indonesia had similarly been under Dutch control for centuries beginning from 1619.

The Paradox of Transnational Religion and Parochial Ethnicity At one level, Christianity and Islam are indeed universalistic religions, and this should therefore have the effect of transnationalizing the politics of its adherents in Africa. Muslims of one African country, for example, should find areas of political solidarity with Muslims in another African country. And ethnicity (in the sense of tribalism) appears to be a case of sub-national identity. It should therefore be a parochializing force rather than a transnationalizing tendency in Africa. But there are occasions in Africa’s experience when the roles of religion and ethnicity are reversed. In such situations it is ethnicity which becomes a transnational and Pan-African force, while Christianity and Islam became parochializing and fragmenting.

The Paradox of Tribal (African) Welfare System Within the kinship system, Africans know a level of human compassion and human obligation which is not even comprehensible to the Western mind. The idea of a tribal welfare system, within which voluntary service

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and hospitality are extended to the indigent, the disabled, and the aged, provides a striking model of the instinct of social fellowship in man. We Africans all know of distant relatives we support, distant cousins who have a share in our salaries, distant kinsmen who call upon us as guests in our houses for days, sometimes for weeks. And yet it seems as if the very fact that we have a highly developed sense of responsibility toward our own kinsmen, a much more developed sense than is discernible in Western society, has resulted in diluting our capacity to empathize with those that are much farther from us.

The Paradox of Tyranny: Anarchy Pendulum As in the case of Idi Amin’s Uganda when Ugandans experienced both too much government (tyranny) and too little government (anarchy), Africa swings between the two extremes of control and chaos. Kenya has experienced excessive control; Somalia has undergone excessive chaos. We need to find a middle ground.

The Ugandan Paradox This is the paradox of cultural nationalism without linguistic nationalism. Among East Africans, Ugandans are the most loyal to African cultures— but in policy Uganda has been the least loyal to African languages. Uganda has been Britain’s most successful case of Indirect Rule in Eastern Africa precisely because there had been real traditional institutions of governance on the ground. But while Ugandans as a people have been particularly loyal to African cultures in their history, they have not officially been loyal to African languages. Uganda’s educational system spends less time on African languages than does Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi. Since Idi Amin’s fall, Uganda has also given less political status to an African language than have Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi.

The Ujamaa Paradox Two factors in Tanzania had paradoxical roles—the ideology of Ujamaa (Tanzania’s version of socialism) and Nyerere’s one-party system. On the one hand, Ujamaa and the justification of the one-party state stimulated a

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considerable amount of intellectual rationalization and conceptualization. On the other hand, there was no escaping the fact that one-partyism was a discriminatory system of government, and the enthusiasm for socialism in Tanzania intimidated those who were against it. Ali Mazrui visited the campus of the University of Dar es Salaam many times in the 1960s and 1970s and witnessed some of the consequences of ideological intimidation in the name of socialism. What this means was that while in Kenya intellectualism died partly because of the Cold War’s opposition to socialism, in Tanzania intellectualism died partly because of excessive local enthusiasm for socialism.

The UN Paradox The UN became a liberating factor in practice as well as in principle. And it was involved in this process in two paradoxical capacities—in the capacity of a collective ‘imperialist’ with ‘trusteeship’ responsibilities of its own and in the capacity of the grand critic of imperialism at large. Indeed, as early as 1953 exasperated voices were already complaining that perhaps the term ‘self-determination’ should be dropped, now that the UN is called upon to do the determining.

The Paradox of Unipolarity The US is virtually the inventor of the concept of checks and balances in the domestic constitutional order. This doctrine sought to restrain central power and realize the ideal of limited government. When there was a second superpower, the global system did have checks and balances. The US and the Soviet Union check-mated each other on some issues on the world scene and in the UN. Now a world with only one superpower may be a global system without adequate checks and balances.

The Paradox of United Loyalties A legislator’s responsibility is to his constituency, his loyalty is to his party or cause, his sensitivity is to his ethnic group, his prayer is to his God, his obedience is to his Constitution, and his allegiance is to his country.

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The Paradox of Unity in Diversity in Islam Islam emphasizes the oneness of the ummah (worldwide Muslim community), but it has evolved into the most diverse single civilization in history. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Muslim population had become over 1 billion people. The Muslim range is concentrated in the two largest and ethnically most diverse continents of the world, Asia and Africa—from Senegal to Samarkand, from Lahore to Maputo. While nearly sixty-five percent of the Christian population of the world is either European or of European extraction (living mainly in Europe, North America, and South America), the Muslim population globally is racially and linguistically more diverse. Moreover, because Islam has no centralized structured priesthood, it has accommodated many pre-Islamic traditions and beliefs of different societies. Thus, while Islam in Java betrays accommodation with elements of Hindu and Javanese culture, Islam in Yorubaland reflects many indigenous Yoruba cultural continuities. And yet alongside this diversity is that theme of Islamic oneness which marks these people out as ‘Muslims’.

The Paradox of the Verb Although Africa invented language, it has yet to learn how to tolerate speech. Since the human species began in Africa (probably in Eastern Africa), it was in Africa that the first human institutions must have originated—including speech and the family. Yet the Third Christian millennium began without an adequate African tradition of freedom of speech and tolerance of the dissenting verb.

The Paradox of the West African Islam It is odd that West African Islam should be older than Islam in places such as Tanzania and Kenya, considering the much closer proximity of the latter to the birthplace of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Paradox of Western Culture Liberal thought is right in asserting that freedom implies choice—and choice needs options. It is partly from these premises that liberalism derives the doctrine of pluralism. The great paradox of Western culture at

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the global level is that it is at once the ideological champion of pluralism and the empirical destroyer of diversity. Other cultures in Africa, Asia, and among the indigenous peoples of the rest of the world have been feeling the corrosive power of Western civilization and Western capitalism. Pluralism is part of the credo of capitalism—yet capitalism tends to create cultural uniformity. Pluralism is part of the credo of Western democracy— yet the Westernization of the rest of the world is throttling cross-cultural differentiation.

The Paradox of World War II Politically, World War II weakened imperial control and prepared the way for the disintegration of the empires of France and Great Britain. But economically the war helped to integrate the colonies more firmly into the global capitalist system as the economies of the periphery were made to serve more systematically the war needs of the center. As for the cultural impact of the war, it broadened Africa’s exposure to alien influences and later resulted in the new imperialism of building higher educational institutions for the colonies. Militarily, the war initiated more firmly the idea of recruiting African soldiers and setting-up African armies equipped with modern weapons—with all the consequences that process has had for both military dependency and the tensions of civil-military relations in the former colonies.

CHAPTER 9

Analytical Categories

Active Instability Is characterized by rapid changes and severe political uncertainty. Institutions arise and collapse, men emerge and are then submerged, and policies fluctuate. The Congo (Zaire) was engulfed in severe active instability in the first four years of its independence. See also Imminent Instability, Latent Instability.

Acute Ethnocentrism Winter as a cold season created the need for walls of shelter. Keeping the ecological elements out created walled enclosures. It was not just the cold weather which was kept out. It was also neighbors. Social insularity was struggling to be born. Winter as a season also created the need for elaborate clothing for warmth. But what began as clothed protection against freezing weather became protection against natural sexuality. Any form of natural nudity was equated with sexual nakedness. A concept of ‘private parts’ came into being—accompanied by new sexual complexes and inhibitions. A combination of privacy for the body and insularity for the family helped promote acute ethnocentrism.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_9

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Aesthetic Dignitarianism It has helped to sponsor Pan-African festivals of arts and culture that have been held in Africa and in the Americas. These festivals had brought together Black poets, singers, dancers, painters, orators, and writers from Brazil, the US, the Caribbean, and Europe as well as Africa and elsewhere. These were artistic expressions of African dignity; esthetic manifestations of dignitarianism.

Aesthetic Revitalization By its commitment to the elimination of foreign rule and colonial administration, African nationalism in the 1940s and 1950s opened up many positions which could temporarily allay psychic restlessness. In French-­ speaking Africa the restlessness took the form of cultural creativity. Poetry, drama, novels, and philosophical formulations about society poured forth in impressive ways. The French policy of assimilation and its assumption about the cultural inadequacies of Africa helped to provoke such a creative response. Among esthetic rebellions in Francophone Africa was the old school of negritude and its commitment to cultural revivalism.

Afrabia By far the most ambitious idea floating in the new era of African-Arab relations is whether the whole of Africa and the whole of the Arab world are two regions in the process of merging into one. Out of this speculative discourse has emerged the concept of Afrabia.

Africa’s Triple Heritage Three civilizations have helped to shape contemporary Africa—Africa’s own rich inheritance, Islamic culture, and the impact of Western traditions and lifestyles. The interplay of these three civilizations is the essence of the continent’s triple heritage.

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African Americans The great majority of African Americans are a product of the Diaspora of Enslavement. The term ‘African Americans’ can be either hemispheric (meaning all descendants of enslavement in the Americas) or national (meaning all descendants of enslavement in the US). On the whole African Americans tend to be more race conscious in their political orientation than American Africans. See also American Africans.

Africans of the Blood Kofi Annan, the second African Secretary-General of the UN, was an African of the blood since he belongs to the Black race. He is also African of the soil since he belongs to the African continent. In reality African Americans are African of the blood but not African of the soil. See also Africans of the Soil.

Africans of the Soil Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the first African Secretary-General of the UN, was an African of the soil. North Africans like Boutros-Ghali belong to the African continent (the soil) but not to the Black race (the blood). See also Africans of the Blood.

Afro-Ethnic Language One of the four categories of languages in Africa which includes all those languages whose native speakers are almost predominantly African and which have only been minimally shaped, if at all, by the Arab-Islamic or Euro-Christian impact. This would include languages like Kalabari, Yoruba, and Ewe in West Africa; Lingala in Central Africa; Pokot, Luganda, and Orominya in Eastern Africa; and Ndebele, Nyanja, and Zulu in Southern Africa. See also Afro-Islamic Language, Afro-Western Language, Western Language.

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Afro-Conservative Tradition Is one of the four traditions of African political thought. Some of the characteristics of this tradition include its tendency to be either oral or tacit, have invisible authors without individual attributions, and be collectivist and ethnic-specific. It has also been influenced by some combinations of two of the following sub-traditions: elder tradition, sage tradition, warrior tradition, and monarchical tendencies. See also Afro-Leftist Tradition, Afro-Liberal Tradition, Afro-Nationalist Tradition.

Afro-Islamic Language A category of languages that is native to Africa in terms of the composition of their speakers. Unlike Afro-ethnic languages, Afro-Islamic languages have been heavily influenced by Islam due to centuries of the Islamic identity of their speakers and contact with the Arab-Islamic world. The cultures of these people have been heavily infused with Islamic ethos and traditions many of which are reflected in their languages. The most influential Afro-Islamic language is Arabic. Other Afro-Islamic languages would include Swahili, Somali, and Nubi in East Africa and Hausa, Fulfude, Mandinka, and others in West Africa. Afro-Islamic languages have their weakest presence in Central and Southern Africa. Expectedly, this linguistic map of Afro-Islamic languages coincides with the theater of Islam’s concentration in Africa. See also Afro-Ethnic Language, Afro-­ Western Language, Western Language.

Afro-Leftist Tradition Tends to be oral and written and have visible authors with such sub-themes as imperialism versus indigenous class struggle; peasant versus proletariat; bourgeoisie intelligentsia versus revolutionaries; Marx and the crisis of development. See also Afro-Conservative Tradition, Afro-Liberal Tradition, Afro-Nationalist Tradition.

Afro-Liberal Tradition This tradition tends to be more oral and tacit—and less literary than philosophical; has invisible authors; is less collectivist; and its sub-themes include individual and local self-reliance; Harambee; labor unions; private

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enterprise; debates on competition versus collectivism. See also Afro-­ Conservative, Afro-Leftist Tradition, Afro-Nationalist Tradition.

Afro-Nationalist Tradition Is particularly influenced by issues of racial or cultural vindications and tends to have all three modes of expression—oral, written, and behavioral; have both visible and invisible authors; be race or culture-specific—or in search of racial or cultural vindication. The sub-themes include romantic primitivism; negritude; romantic gloriana, emphasizing the glorious; Ganda nationalism; and Pan-Africanism. See also Afro-Conservative, Afro-Leftist Tradition, Afro-Liberal Tradition.

Afrostroika Is a derivative of Michael Gorbachev’s Perestroika and is applied to the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) to emphasize its fundamental focus on education, health, regional infrastructure, agriculture, market access, and preservation of the environment. But, unlike Gorbachev’s perestroika, the African Afrostroika envisaged considerable international participation in helping Africa pursue economic and social transformation. While the clarion call of the African Union (AU) was ‘Africans of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains’, NEPAD’s clarion call was ‘Friends of Africa unite, you have nothing to lose but your weak resolve’. While the AU was an agenda for Pan-African cooperation, NEPAD was supposed to be a global agenda of North-South cooperation.

Afro-Saxons Black people who speak English as a native language chronologically or Black people whose mother tongue is the English language. They include African Americans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Black Britons, and Black Canadians. Afro-Saxonism is a fusion of African biological ancestry with English cultural influence.

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Afro-Western Language Includes Kriyol of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde Islands, Pidgin (English) and Krio of Sierra Leone in West Africa, and Fanagaloo and Afrikaans in Southern Africa. Kriyol and Krio were, of course, born in Africa and their native speakers are predominantly African. There is also some evidence to suggest that the West African Pidgin is increasingly becoming creolized as more and more people from the younger generations of West Africans acquire it as a first language. See also Afro-Ethnic Language, Afro-­ Islamic Language, Western Language.

Ambivalent Miscegenation The Latin American model of miscegenation. In Brazil especially, the offspring of mating between a Black person and a White person produces a mulatto or mestizo who could either enjoy the same rights as the White person or the same handicaps as the Black person, depending partly on social class or on the actual color he or she inherits from the parents. See also Ascending Miscegenation, Descending Miscegenation, Divergent Miscegenation.

American Africans Products of the Diaspora of Colonization. They are usually first- or second-­generation immigrants from Africa to the Americas. They may be citizens or permanent residents of countries in the Western hemisphere. What is distinctive about American Africans is, first, that their mother tongue is still an African language. Second, American Africans usually still have immediate blood relatives in Africa. Third, they are likely to be still attached to the food culture of their African ancestry. Fourth, American Africans are still likely to bear African family names, although this is by no means universal, especially among Lusophone Africans, Liberians, and Sierra Leoneans. See also African Americans.

American Escapism In Africa the nearest thing to an American colony was Liberia. It was intended to be the home of freed slaves, established in the mid-nineteenth century. To some extent it was indeed an exercise in humanitarianism by

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many Americans. But, in other respects, it was also an exercise in escapism—exporting a portion of Black Americans in the hope that others would follow, attempting to ease the racial situation of the US by providing encouragement and inducement for voluntary Black repatriation.

Anarchic Privatization A form of privatization of the state in which the wealth and power of the state are dissipated in a free-for-all scramble for advantage. Nigeria under Shehu Shagari became a case of anarchic privatization, especially from 1981 until Shagari was overthrown at the end of 1983. See also Dynastic Privatization, Ethnic Privatization.

Anglo-Neutral Countries Countries which rely mainly on a world language other than English for their specialized activities. Most of the Francophone African countries belong to this category in which English is merely incidental. The Republic of Cameroon is one Francophone exception where a part of the country is Anglo-phone. See also Anglo-Political Countries, Anglo-Societal Countries, Anglo-Specialized Countries.

Anglo-Political Countries Countries where English is the language of the state but not of society. This applies to the majority of African members of the British Commonwealth, countries previously ruled by Britain and retained English as the main language of governmental and political business. This includes Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and some fifteen other African countries. Outside Africa, Anglo-political countries also include countries previously ruled by the US such as the Philippines or by Australia such as Papua New Guinea. See also Anglo-Neutral Countries, Anglo-Political Countries, Anglo-Societal Countries, Anglo-­ Specialized Countries.

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Anglo-Saxons In the (Charles) de Gaullist tradition, this means White nations whose mother tongue is the English language. It is a combination of pigmentational and linguistic criteria. Jamaicans are not Anglo-Saxons although their mother tongue is English. Cypriots are not Anglo-Saxons in this sense although their skin is White. But the people of the Falklands are indeed ‘Anglo-Saxons’ because they are both White and native speakers of English.

Anglo-Societal Countries Countries where English is the language of both society and the state. Such ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries in the Caribbean include Jamaica, Barbados, Afro-Trinidad, and Afro-Guyana. See also Anglo-Neutral Countries, Anglo-Political Countries, Anglo-Specialized Countries.

Anglo-Specialized Countries Countries in which English is the language of neither society nor the state. These countries need English in specialized vital areas of activity. Outside Africa, Japan needs English in major areas of commercial, industrial, and trade activity. Mexico needs English because of activities arising out of its proximity to the US. See also Anglo-Neutral Countries, Anglo-Political Countries, Anglo-Societal Countries.

Anthropological Negritude It is on the whole more directly related to concrete cultural behavior than literary negritude normally is. In its most literal form, anthropological negritude is a romanticized study of an African ‘tribal community’ by an African ethnologist. The book Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta even on its own would have been enough to make young Kenyatta a proponent of anthropological negritude. See also Literary Negritude.

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Anticipation It is a capacity to plan for the future in which case the anticipation can be sacred or secular. Cultures of secular anticipation can plan cities sensitive to the needs of the next generation and the one after that. New towns or new cities are also built in anticipation of new city-dwellers. Cultures of sacred anticipation invest in future salvation rather than future materiality. The Pharaohs of Egypt had some anticipatory themes when they built pyramids and internal comforts in anticipation of the hereafter. Sometimes they built to imitate God at His most flamboyant—grand temples, grand pyramids. See also Nostalgia, Presentism.

Anticipatory Levirate An extension of the custom of levirate which is widely practiced in Africa and according to which a widow is inherited by the brother of the deceased. The brother who inherits the wife and children of his deceased relative performs all the duties of the husband and father. In some societies in Africa if a son dies before he is married, the parents arrange for him to get married in absentia, so that the dead man is not cut off ‘from the chain of life’. Leaving children behind is the path to immortality, and procreating by proxy is feasible in some societies. All these factors concern a situation where a young man has already died. But occasionally one finds traces of anticipatory levirate whereby a husband permits his younger brother limited sexual privileges with his wife, simply in view of the fact that the younger brother might well inherit her eventually.

Anti-colonial Terrorism In the East African context, it occurred when colonized people are driven to armed rebellion and resort to the use of terror in their struggle. East Africa’s best example is the Mau Mau War in the 1950s when both the imperial power and Mau Mau fighters in Kenya used terrorist tactics.

Anti-Semitic Bias One of the seven biases of Islamophobia in the age of globalization. This bias deliberately obfuscates the fact that both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples, that Arabic and Hebrew are closely related, and that being

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anti-Zionist cannot possibly be the same as being anti-Jewish since there are many very devout and religiously militant Jews who are anti-Zionist or very critical of the Israeli state. See also Arabesque Bias, Exotica Bias, Harem Bias, Jihad Bias, Judicial Amputation Bias, Minaret Bias.

Arabesque Bias The word ‘Arabesque’ here is used not only in its artistic sense but also to refer to the image of Islam as if it was still the religion only of the Arabs. The Arabs ceased to be a majority of Muslims in the world at least ten centuries ago. But the temptation to present Islam completely in Arab dress is still very strong in Western education, literature, and the media. This tendency includes portraying Islam as a religion of the desert, or even of the camel—the most reductionist of all. See also Anti-Semitic Bias, Exotica Bias, Harem Bias, Jihad Bias, Judicial Amputation Bias, Minaret Bias.

Ascending/Ascendant Miscegenation The Arab model of miscegenation. With the Arabs the idea of ‘half-caste’ is relatively alien. If the father is Arab, the child is Arab without reservation. If we visualize an Arab marrying a Black Nilotic woman in the fourteenth century and visualize the son being born, the son would be Arab. If we imagine in turn that the son again married a Nilotic woman who bore a son—this son, too, would be an Arab. If we then assumed that the process is repeated, generation after generation, until a son is born in the second decade of the twenty-first century with only a drop of his blood still ostensibly of Arab derivation and the rest of his blood indubitably Nilotic, the twenty-first-century child is still an Arab. See also Ambivalent Miscegenation, Descending Miscegenation, Divergent Miscegenation.

Asymmetrical Acculturation A form of acculturation (a process of adapting the culture of another group) in which the politically dominant culture transmits itself to its subjects and captives but receives little in return or vice versa. One example is the French and the British influence in Africa. See also Symmetrical Acculturation.

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Asymmetrical Constitutionalism A system of government which is prepared to sacrifice legal symmetry in the constitution in deference to the realities of history and politics. The 1962 Uganda independence constitution was asymmetrical. It gave Buganda special status and greater autonomy as contrasted with other kingdoms and regions. Buganda was given neo-federal status. The United Kingdom virtually invented asymmetrical constitutional arrangements. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each has an entirely different constitutional status within the Union. Scotland has its own legal system, Northern Ireland has its own legislature, and Wales still has its own language.

Asymmetrical Miscegenation A lack of symmetry has been a continuing characteristic of cases where Black people have inter-married with non-Black people. In each case, the dominant ethnic group has produced many more husbands in the racial mixture than wives. There are four models of asymmetrical miscegenation—divergent, descending, ambivalent, and ascending, but the fate of the children varies in fundamental ways among these models in relation to the questions: do the children of a mixed marriage between a dominant race and an under-privileged race follow the father into the amenities of dominance, or do they follow the mother into the handicaps of under-­ privilege? Or do they in fact become a category apart? See also Symmetrical Miscegenation.

Authoritative Pan-Socialism Historically, China’s relations with Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania matured into a form of authoritative pan-socialism. The relationship in this case was not between the government of Communist China and an opposition in African country. It was between one government and another, both influenced in varying degrees by socialistic values and radical perspectives. See also Dissident Pan-Socialism.

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Autocentrism A persistent and pernicious tendency in man to see himself, or his tribe, or his nation, or his race, or his species, as the ultimate center of the universe. He even made God in his own image and then pretended that God had made him in His. It became worse when man destroyed man in the name of God. See also Homocentrism.

Benevolent Colonization A form of inter-African colonization when the intervening power stands more to lose than to gain from the intervention and when the short-run advantages of the country which is occupied are considerably greater. Tanzania’s intervention into Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1979 seemed to be, in the final analysis, benevolent—for it ended eight of the most brutal years in Uganda’s twentieth-century history. See also Benign Self-Colonization; Malignant Self-Colonization.

Benevolent Plagiarism This seeks to improve upon what has been borrowed. Often the borrower is a greater genius than the original. William Shakespeare plagiarized right, left, and center—and breathed genius into what he stole. See also Benign Plagiarism, Malignant Plagiarism.

Benevolent Sexism It is a form of discrimination which is protective, or generous, toward the otherwise under-privileged gender. Gallantry and chivalry in defense of a woman’s honor are a form of benevolent sexism. Is bride wealth a form of benevolent sexism, or is it a disguised bride price? Bride wealth (money from the groom to the bride) is certainly more benevolent than dowry (money from the bride to the groom). See also Benign Sexism, Malignant Sexism.

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Benign Plagiarism A form of pilferage—stealing a little, and borrowing a little, without intent to harm the original source. In this sense, the Romans plagiarized from the Greeks—and in so doing learnt from them. See also Benevolent Plagiarism, Malignant Plagiarism.

Benign Self-Colonization A type of inter-African colonization in which the moral case for and against intervention is about equally compelling. In such a situation the moral issues hang in the balance. See also Benevolent Self-Colonization, Malignant Self-Colonization.

Benign Sexism In this case, the dominant gender is not being gallant and chivalrous to the disadvantaged gender (as when women and children are rescued first from a sinking ship). In its purest form, benign sexism acknowledges gender differences without bestowing sexual advantage or inflicting a gender cost. Benign sexism is harmless sexism. See also Benevolent Sexism, Malignant Sexism.

Bio-cultural Assimilation A combination of acculturation and inter-mating between cultural groups. The two most convulsive social revolutions in Africa took place in the two relatively homogeneous little states of Zanzibar and Rwanda. There was perhaps a greater degree of brutalization in both Rwanda and Zanzibar than that experienced anywhere else in modern Africa. And yet these two countries were also culturally among the most deeply integrated of all the new states on the continent. Arabs and Africans in Zanzibar shared a language (Swahili), a religion (Islam), and other aspects of culture. They had also inter-married considerably. The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda also shared a language, a religion, and other important aspects of culture. They also had inter-married. They too had difficulty quite often in drawing a

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line between where a Hutu ancestry ended and a Tutsi descent began. The two communities had experienced bio-cultural assimilation. See also Symmetrical Acculturation, Symmetrical Miscegenation.

Bio-cultural Mobility The interchangeability of the roles in relation to the sexes. Fathers playing nurse-maids to little babies and feeding them at night while the mother sleeps; mothers competing in the job market, at least with other people’s husbands. The biological differences between male and female naturally remain as rigid as ever; but the cultural roles devised for the two sexes in different societies have been moving in the direction of growing interchangeability. The next step might well be a social acceptance of marriage between partners of the same sex. The concept of husband and wife is already a residue of bio-cultural differentiation between the sexes. But when society begins to accept solemn mating between members of the same sex, with automatic rights of inheritance should one die, and perhaps specified obligations attaching to a female husband or a male wife, bio-­ cultural mobility would have achieved its ultimate flexibility.

Biracial Slavery The Western Trans-Atlantic slave trade was biracial—targeted at producing a plantation civilization which had White masters and Black slaves. Western slave systems especially in North America and the Caribbean became the most racist of all forms of modern slavery. Basically two races confronted each other across the evil institutions of slavery. See also Mono-racial Slavery, Multiracial Slavery.

Black Anti-miscegenation There was an ethic in Black America which is a distrust of Black people who marry White people. It is basically a protest which is not inherent in the cultural values of the group but arises substantially out of a posture of militancy in a given period of time. See also Jewish Anti-miscegenation.

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Black Atlanticist Although both W. E. B. Du Bois and Barack Obama suffered from a crisis of identity in their earlier years, Du Bois identified himself with Black identity more passionately (than did Barack Obama). Indeed, Du Bois came to see himself as first and foremost an African, and he eventually naturalized as a citizen of Ghana. In terms of preferred policy, W. E. B. Du Bois was a Black Atlanticist. He dreamt of the unification of the African Diaspora in the Americas with Black Africa as a new racial Commonwealth in the world system. Relatedly, both W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey were Black Atlanticists. But while Du Bois aspired to send to Africa some members of ‘the Talented Tenth’ of the Black Diaspora to help develop and even ‘civilize’ Africa, Marcus Garvey believed in a kind of Black Zionism. To Garvey, all African peoples in the Diaspora were entitled to the right of returning to Africa.

Black Diplomacy The international experience of Black peoples, the rules and values which have conditioned that experience, and the emerging patterns of communication between Black peoples and the rest of the world.

Black Ecumenicalism In sub-Saharan Africaf, church and state are sometimes better separated than in the US. Our religious passions may sometimes be more balanced than those of most other societies and regions of the world, including the US. Africa had no religious wars before the coming of Christianity and Islam. That was because indigenous African religions did not aspire to convert others, did not claim to be universalist, and were not competitive.

Black Islamnesia Arises when Black Studies as a discipline refuses to come to terms with Africa’s Islamicity: that over 500 million Africans are Muslims; that there are more Muslims in Nigeria than in any Arab country; that the

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percentage of Muslims in Senegal, the land of the Goré pilgrimage, is higher than the percentage of Muslims in Egypt; that Cheikh anta Diop, the foremost African prophet of Afrocentrism, was first and foremost a Muslim; that Africa is the first continent in the world, and in history, to have a Muslim majority; and that Africa was the first asylum of Islam when Islam was being persecuted by pre-Islamic Arabs in Mecca.

Black Orientalism Edward Said made his mark when he published his book Orientalism, referring to the strange combination of cultural condescension, paternalistic possessiveness, and ulterior selectivity shown by certain Western scholars toward non-Western societies in Asia, ‘the Middle East’, and Africa. Indeed, the concept of the Middle East which is so Eurocentric was itself born out of Orientalism. Similarly, Black Orientalism is a new paradigm which combines cultural condescension with paternalistic possessiveness and ulterior selectivity

Black Zionism Although the Anglo-Saxons played a major role in commercializing racism and making money out of the humiliation of Africa, history also gave the Anglo-Saxons a leading role in the fight to abolish slavery. British ships rescued many slaves on the high seas. It was indeed the Anglo-Saxons who helped promote Black Zionism—the return of former Black slaves to their ancestral Africa. That is how Liberia, the oldest African republic, was born.

British Cultural Relativism It is the greater respect the British showed for ‘tribal’ cultures in Africa than was found in French colonial policy. The British idea of indirect rule was to rule colonies as far as possible through ‘native’ authorities and institutions. The strategy economized in cultural disruption, enabling colonized societies to adjust more gradually. See also British Ethnic Exclusivity.

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British Ethnic Exclusivity The British in their empire were more racially exclusive than the French. This racial exclusivity included greater obsession with the physical segregation of races in the colonies. Britain’s colonial policy in Africa led to the creation of ‘tribal’ reserves and a greater emphasis on ethnic segregation and the rudiments of ‘tribal’ homelands. British racism in this case helped to encourage African tribalism. See also British Cultural Relativism.

Calculus-Friendly Culture Some cultures in Asia are calculus-friendly—cultures in India or Korea which produce a disproportionate proficiency in mathematics. In this regard, African cultures differ from one ethnic group to another. Igbo and Yoruba cultures in Nigeria are more calculus-friendly than Hausa culture. Kikuyu culture in Kenya is more calculus-friendly than are the cultures of Kenya’s coastal peoples. Indeed, Luo culture in Kenya has produced more intellectuals and scholars than any other ethnic systems of values in that country.

Casual Imperialism Unlike Western Europe, the US did not try hard to acquire territory and establish direct political control over lands and societies far from its shores. Americans, on the contrary, often abhorred territorial annexation. It is true that the US did rule the Philippines. It is also true that Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem ‘The White Man’s Burden’ partly to encourage Americans to accept what Kipling regarded as the shared destiny of all White people to rule non-Whites. But on the whole it was European imperialism which established governments and institutions in large parts of Africa and Asia and beyond. European imperialism was far from causal— it involved day-to-day administration of colonies and constant accountability in policy making. By contrast, American imperialism was causal and irresponsible in not accepting direct legal accountability. Much of Latin America was ostensibly independent, but the US retained the right to intervene wherever it suited its interests. Sometimes the US has not even

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had to intervene—but simply manipulates local forces through less direct means. A colonial power (Great Britain) who claims sovereignty over another country, and has its own flag flying there, accepts legal responsibility when things go wrong in the colonies. But an imperial power like the US can engage in imperialistic activities with the relaxed casualness of an undisturbed conscience.

Chicken George Syndrome The obscenities of eugenic experiments under slavery included special inter-racial mating in order to produce lighter-skinned Blacks, who were preferred for certain domestic duties. Lighter-skinned women slaves were also preferred sexually by their White masters. But who were the White mates who engaged in cross-breeding with slaves in order to produce lighter-skinned human merchandize? Sometimes it was the White members of the slave-owning family themselves who mated with their bonded victims—and then sold their own ‘half-caste’ offspring. This is the chicken George syndrome. Alex Haley’s great grandfather was the product of mating between the master himself and one of his slave women. This did not stop the master from selling his own son to an overseas buyer resident in Scotland. George’s lighter skin was apparently an asset to his marketability.

Civic Violence Arises when citizens, out of a sense of outraged civic conscience, take the law into their own hands and inflict punishment on transgressors or suspected transgressors. The whole tradition of vigilantism in the US, the ugliness of lynching, the recurrent cases of outraged villagers beating suspects, sometimes to death—all these are instances of civic violence at work in society. See also Political Violence.

Collective Subjectivism Emanates from a scholar’s membership of a particular society or a particular cultural group. A Somali who finds it hard to be objective about any military ruler, whether in the Horn of Africa or elsewhere, is probably betraying subjective tastes and refinements of a personal kind, a private aversion to rulers in uniform. See also Personal Subjectivism.

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Colonialism by Consent A form of autocolonization, the most dramatic illustration of which was the 1958 referendum fostered by President Charles de Gaulle in the French empire in Africa. In the referendum, the colonies were given a choice to opt for sovereign independence or for continuing colonial association with France. All the colonies in sub-Saharan Africa except the more radical Muslim Guinea (Conakry) voted in favor of a continuing relationship with France. Only Guinea under Sekou Toure had the courage to vote for complete independence. See also Empire by Invitation, Protectorate, Self-Colonization.

Combative Martyrdom A form of martyrdom in which one can use one’s very disadvantage as a weapon of confrontation. See also Submissive Martyrdom.

Communalist Language A language which can be used to define a race or a tribe who speak the language as a mother tongue (or first language). The Oromo are those to whom Afaan Oromo is the first language. The Baganda are those to whom Luganda is the first language. Somalis are those to whom Somali is the first language. See also Ecumenical Language.

Comparative Hate Retention Cultures differ in hate retention. Some cultures preserve a grudge across centuries. The Irish of Northern Ireland quarrel every year about a Protestant victory of the Orange Order against Catholics more than four centuries ago. The Irish have a high hate-retention capacity. The Armenian massacres of 1915 by the Ottoman Empire are still remembered bitterly by Armenians—and from time to time this memory results in the assassination of a Turkish diplomat somewhere in the world. A major reason why Black Africa has not produced postcolonial violence against the West is Africa’s short memory of hate. Mahatma Gandhi used to prophesize that it would probably be through Black people that the unadulterated message of soul force satyagraha and passive resistance might be realized. If Gandhi was indeed right, this could be one more illustration of the

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differences among cultures in comparative hate retention. See also Comparative Martyrdom Complex.

Comparative Imperial Ethnicity While the British were racially more arrogant than the French, the French were culturally more arrogant than the British. By being less culturally bigoted, the British allowed for greater cultural diversity within the empire. Indirect rule was in part the product of that cultural relativism. And indirect rule helped state-formation, but decidedly hampered nation-building. French cultural arrogance assumed that Africa was a clean slate on which entirely new things could be written. There was a tendency to regard French culture as the only truly valid culture in human history. Bequeathing that culture to Africans was regarded by the French as a supreme favor to Africans.

Comparative Martyrdom Complex Among Muslims in the Middle East (both Arab and Iranian) there is a martyrdom complex in varying degrees. Historically it has been more developed among Shia Muslims than among Sunni. Suicide bombers against Israel and American troops in Lebanon started among Shiite Lebanese. The martyrdom complex among the Shia goes back to the suffering and martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. But anger against Israel and the US has now resulted in the extension of the martyrdom complex to the Sunni population of the Middle East. See also Comparative Hate Retention.

Compartmentalized Imperialism The Soviet Union’s consolidation of her influence over Cuba seemed at first to open up a new era of serious competitive struggle between the two superpowers in the Americas, but the Cuban missile crisis and its aftermath initiated a form of détente. One outcome of this was compartmentalized imperialism—with the Soviet Union exercising influence over the destiny of Cuba, while the US and its Latin American allies were spared any more harassment by Castro’s attempts to export revolution. Also see Competitive Imperialism, Monopolistic Imperialism.

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Compassionate Ecumenicalism It rests on a principle that allows for alternative visions of the Universal Man. Empathy can be simply defined as a capacity to identify with another. Compassionate ecumenicalism is prepared to coexist with other visions without abandoning its own. When the world reaches the stage of compassionate ecumenicalism, the moment of empathetic fulfillment would be at hand. See also Competitive Ecumenicalism.

Competitive Ecumenicalism Is a rivalry between two visions of the Universal Man, intensely held and tending toward intolerance. The crusades in the Middle Ages were an eruption of competitive ecumenicalism. The most important great religions from the point of view of the emergence of ecumenicalism have been Christianity and Islam. This is partly because these two religions went further than almost any other of the world religions in the direction of competitiveness. The two religions differed both from the multinational but noncompetitive religions like Hinduism and Confucianism and from the nationalistic religions like Judaism and Shintoism. They had a commitment to convert the world to their own image and became competitive precisely because of that desire. Belief in the oneness of God has, in the short run, led to behavior which militated against the principle of the oneness of man. Competitive ecumenicalism sometimes verges on being a crusade to destroy humanity in the name of humanity. See also Compassionate Ecumenicalism.

Competitive Imperialism There is a sense in which the Cold War between capitalist West and communist East had been a case of competitive imperialism. Two external power blocs competed for influence and control in regions like Africa. Sometimes that rivalry between the Warsaw Pact and NATO was very damaging to Africa—as when the superpowers fueled and prolonged civil wars in countries like Angola and Ethiopia. But there were other occasions when the Cold War was a liberating experience for Africa. Much of the emancipation of Southern Africa, for example, would have been delayed for another generation if socialist countries had not existed to arm liberation nationalist forces in places like Rhodesia, Mozambique, Angola,

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Namibia, and indeed South Africa. The whole process of decolonization in Africa was helped by the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the Western world. Also see Compartmentalized Imperialism, Monopolistic Imperialism.

Comprehensive Globalization A process which results from all the forces which are turning the world into a global village—compressing distance, homogenizing culture, accelerating mobility, and reducing the relevance of political borders. Globalization becomes the gradual villegization of the world. See also Economic Globalization, Informational Globalization.

Comprehensive Reparation A form of reparation that includes capital transfer, skill transfer, and power sharing based on global structural reform. It is significant that this idea of capital transfer is articulated in the form of a Marshall Plan whose economic benefits would be to the advantage of the Black World as well as the West at large. See also Cultural Reparation, Monetary Reparation, Territorial Reparation.

Continental Jurisdiction A principle which asserts that there are certain African problems which should only be solved by Africans themselves. This sounds like an African Monroe Doctrine, but there is an important difference. The Monroe Doctrine was not continental; it was hemispheric. It has given the colossus of North America jurisdiction over the affairs of South America and related islands. This principle of continental exclusiveness as enunciated in Africa is not intended to replace the principle of state sovereignty. But the analogy is with the Monroe Doctrine as it was intended to be, and not the Monroe Doctrine as it came to be, that is to legitimate intervention in Latin America by the US. Like the Monroe Doctrine itself, continental jurisdiction just introduces an additional dimension to the doctrine of non-intervention, but with a different unit of exclusiveness. In this scenario a Ghanaian interference in Nigerian affairs is less ‘external’ than, say, Chinese interference in Nigerian affairs. See also Racial Sovereignty.

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Counter-subjectivity This is analogous to Leopold Senghor’s concept of ‘anti-racism racism’, referring to situations where Black consciousness is aroused in rebuttal to White racism. In the case of counter-subjectivity, what is happening is a subjective historical response by one side to combat distortion perpetrated by another society. Thus, the form of European collective subjectivism which assumed that Africa’s history was one long spell of either collective slumber or perpetual barbarism has at times provoked counter-­subjectivism from Africans—asserting African glories of the past, emphasizing what was positive in Africa’s history, and under stressing or even ignoring what might at times have gone wrong in Africa’s past.

Coup-Prone Countries African countries with a propensity toward periodic military interventions in politics. Coup-prone countries in the first fifty years of Africa’s independence included Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, the two Congos (Kinshasa and Brazzaville), and the three Guineas (French, Portuguese, and Spanish). See also Coup-Proof Countries.

Coup-Proof Countries African countries which have armed forces which have respected the principle of civilian supremacy in politics. African countries which have been coup-proof in the last fifty years included Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. See also Coup-Prone Countries.

Creative Eclecticism Methodologically, this implies a genius for selectivity, for synthesizing disparate elements, and for ultimate independent growth in the intellectual field. Culturally, it is the fusion between indigenous culture and imported traditions.

Creative Synthesis Muslims were ready to learn new forms of architecture and literature from the Persians, translate philosophical texts from the ancient Greeks, learn astronomy from the ancient Egyptians, and dabble with mathematics

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alongside the cultures of India. The most famous English loan word borrowed from Kiswahili is the word safari. In English the word means ‘hunting trip in Africa’—though in Swahili usage safari refers to any kind of traveling. Kiswahili borrowed the word from Arabic and then loaned the word to the English language.

Crippled Capitalism The kind of capitalism introduced to Africa by British imperialism, with such characteristics as the borrowing of only certain sections of the Western ideology; the missing out of important balancing elements, which then reduce the efficacy of the borrowed mode. For example, Africans have been better at learning Europe’s consumption patterns than at learning its production techniques; better at learning European tastes than European capacities; better at inheriting the profit motive from capitalism than the entrepreneurial skills; and better at learning to be acquisitive without being disciplined. It is an inheritance which is lopsided. It may have been accidentally lopsided, or it may have been purposely lopsided. What is clear is that it is not working in a balanced form.

Crisis of Normative Egalitarianism The transition from the precolonial statehood to postcolonial statehood was bedeviled by two crises. One was the crisis of normative egalitarianism which arose because African city and empire states were, on the one hand, less egalitarian than African stateless societies (tracing their roots to hierarchy, privilege, and power) and, on the other hand, less egalitarian than the newly evolving European nation-states. See also Crisis of Territoriality.

Crisis of Territoriality Refers to the nature of responsiveness of precolonial state to land. Precolonial statehood had a kind of mystical deference to land, an obsession with esthetics and religiosity of the soil. The grand compact between ancestors, the living, and the unborn found an area of fulfillment in the religiosity of the land. But the principle of modern nation-states includes a high sensitivity to territoriality. Political communities under the new doctrine of the sovereign state became increasingly definable in terms of boundaries between one state and another. Sovereignty was subject to

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territoriality; power was land-bound. Thus emerged the tension between the high degree of land reverence of the precolonial African state and the high sensitivity of postcolonial state to territoriality. It is a tension between land worship of the old and territorial worship of the new. See also Crisis of Normative Egalitarianism.

Critical School of African Philosophy Like the ideological school, the critical school is a colonial and postcolonial phenomenon. Both schools also use primarily European languages and have been profoundly influenced by Western intellectual traditions. But while the ideological school is self-consciously political, the critical school is more narrowly academic. While the ideological school is preoccupied with liberation, the critical school aspires to be morally agnostic or value-free. While the ideological school is often nationalist, the critical school aspires to be strictly rationalist. The ambition of Africa’s critical philosophers is, in a sense, to make African philosophy more scientific, more disciplined, and more rigorous. See also Cultural School of African Philosophy, Ideological School of African Philosophy.

Cultural Anti-Americanism The reaction against the American brand of modernity, its mass culture, and its Texan cult of ‘the bigger, the better’. See also Political Anti-Americanism.

Cultural Autarky Many African cultures found themselves, either by conviction or necessity, self-sufficient. There was inadequate stimulation from any but the most contiguous cultures. This is one of the explanations for Black scientific marginality. See also Spatial Isolation, Temporal Isolation.

Cultural Dependency It affects two areas of human behavior, especially motivation and social stratification. What people aspire to in the Third World, what tastes they develop, what expectations they begin to have, and what aversions they manifest are all areas of response which are greatly conditioned by cultural

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variables. The nature of the elite’s ambitions, the directions of their aspirations, and the boundaries of their tastes and desires are important factors behind their entire behavior. See also Structural Dependency.

Cultural Ecumenicalism A world federation of cultures, with the constituent cultures coordinating their status and with the joint pool consisting of borrowing from a number of regional and racial cultural contributions. It could also mean Africa must take the lead in religious tolerance. All the major world religions have been born outside Africa. Africa did not need to prove herself by founding yet another world religion. She could best prove herself by being the continent where these other religions could find it possible to coexist in mutual tolerance. Africa could be the ecumenical continent par excellence.

Cultural Engineering The concept was born out of a successful inter-marriage of the ideas of cultural management and social engineering. It is the deliberate manipulation of cultural factors for purposes of deflecting human habit in the direction of new and perhaps constructive endeavors. Sometimes the effort consists in changing cultural patterns enough to make it possible for certain institutions to survive. At other times the purpose of cultural reform is basically attitudinal change. The principles of cultural engineering which are particularly relevant to identity formation in African states include indigenizing what is foreign, idealizing what is indigenous, nationalizing what is sectional, and emphasizing what is African. In the realm of world reform, cultural engineering would mean the promotion of the right values and consolidation of the right inhibitions in the behavioral orientation of human beings. The controls we should be aiming for are internalized controls based on new human inclinations rather than external control by organizational mechanisms. See also Social Engineering.

Cultural Relativism One of the forces which contradict Western claim to universalism. This is about differences in values between societies, and it is about cultural difference across space. Almost everywhere in the Western World except the

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US, capital punishment has been abolished. The US is increasing the number of capital offenses for the time being. This would be cultural relativism within the Western civilization. See also Empirical Relativism, Historical Relativism.

Cultural Reparation One of the forms reparations could take to peoples of African descent worldwide which seeks in particular the return of Africa’s stolen treasures. The effort also entails to get the laws which prevent the return of artifacts altered and to study the provisions of international law on the subject. See also Comprehensive Reparation, Monetary Reparation, Territorial Reparation.

Cultural Schizophrenia The tense ambivalence that arises out of the interplay between dependency and aggression in the process of acculturation. This is when attitudes toward the conquering culture produce a confusion among the recipients between fascination and repulsion, and emulation and defiance. At a certain stage of acculturation, dependency complex struggles with a longing for distinctiveness.

Cultural School of African Philosophy It could be a part of philosophy without philosophers—a body of philosophical thought which has accumulated across generations. It includes such concerns as relations between man and nature, between the living and the dead, between husband and wife, as well as between rulers and subjects in those African societies which did traditionally have distinct rulers. Although we must not confuse it with populism, cultural philosophy to some scholars is basically a philosophy of the masses. It consists of ideas which are essentially often intelligible to ordinary people. The philosophy is expressed in languages (indigenous African languages) which are meaningful to the average citizen. See also Critical School of African Philosophy, Ideological School of African Philosophy.

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Cultural Treason In Islam there is no sharp distinction between church and state. The concept of treason is often indistinguishable from apostasy. For his novel The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie was perceived by many Muslims as being guilty of cultural treason. Rushdie had neither merely rejected Islam nor merely disagreed with it. Almost unanimously Muslims who had read the book concluded that Rushdie had abused Islam.

Decentralized Brutality This is the act of individual soldiers ‘executing’ a man behind a dance hall in order to ‘inherit’ his girlfriend for the night or of civilian criminals wearing army uniforms on loan from real soldiers as a strategy of extorting money. On balance many more people must have died or been mutilated in Uganda (in the 1970s) as a result of decentralized violence than in response to purposeful brutality by the regime.

De Facto Sovereignty This virtually strips the concept of ‘sovereignty’ of moral considerations as such and equates it with effective power or control of an area. This view of sovereignty in terms of de facto control dismisses, from the international point of view, the concepts of legalistic, mandated, and electoral sovereignty since these refer to constitutional matters which may have no bearing at all on the ‘realities’ of a given situation. See also Electoral Sovereignty, Legalistic Sovereignty, Mandated Sovereignty.

Defensive Fanaticism Islam betrayed this in Sudan and Somalia, among other places, as a form of opposition to the encroachment of the European power and statecraft. While submissive fatalism might encourage acceptance and peaceful conformity, defensive fanaticism could generate rebellion. It was Muhammed Ahmed el-Mahdi who revealed his own potential in the realms of defensive fanaticism. He was the precursor of Sudanese nationalism, rallying religion behind nationalistic causes, marrying piety to patriotism. See also Submissive Fatalism.

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Democracy-Resistant Countries Include dual societies—countries where two rival ethnic groups account for the majority of the population. Burundi (with its Hutu/Tutsi rivalry) and Rwanda (with a similar dual configuration) are among such vulnerable countries. Another vulnerable category which may find democracy elusive is a country which has a long history of nomadic lifestyle and one which in precolonial times was a case of ordered anarchy. Another undemocratic category of countries is almost the opposite of ordered anarchy. These are countries which were already states in precolonial times and were often cases of ordered tyranny rather than ordered anarchy.

Descending Miscegenation One of the four models of relationship between blood mixture and social structure. Within this model, whenever there is mating between a White person and a Black person, the offspring is invariably ‘Black’. This is the North American model. See also Ambivalent Miscegenation, Ascending Miscegenation, Divergent Miscegenation.

Destabilization Phase It is one of the four phases of postcolonial political literature in Africa. Ethnic rivalry became a major challenge to political stability in this stage; another area of instability consisted civil-military relations. See also Innovation Phase, Political Collapse Phase, Post-conflict Phase.

Deviant Violence Violence committed as part of individual criminality or individual aggression and has no conscious societal or political purposes. A bank clerk killed in the course of a bank robbery, a woman poisoning her husband, an alcoholic killing himself, a reckless driver maiming a child, all these are instances of what is described as deviant violence. See also Social Violence.

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Diaspora of Colonialism These are the survivors of the partition of Africa and their descendants. They are causalities of the displacement caused either directly by colonialism or by the aftermath of colonial and postcolonial disruptions. See also Diaspora of Enslavement.

Diaspora of Enslavement This Diaspora consists of survivors of the Middle Passage and their descendants. As part of the Afro-Atlantic paradigm, this Diaspora has played a major role in shaping the culture and lifestyle of the Western hemisphere. See also Diaspora of Colonialism.

Dignified Assertiveness With the breakdown of the formal feudalistic arrangements which were implicit in imperial relations, dignified assertiveness has emerged among the lower strata of the international system. The quest for equality and self-reliance has been an important feature of the postcolonial ethos. But it would be a mistake to conclude that the dependency motive which arose out of imperial relationships has as yet disappeared.

Dignified Indigence It would still be pertinent to ask this question: How can Africa overcome its economic weakness without first going through the stage of economic dependence on others? This is the dilemma which will confront nationalists for a generation to come. A profound ambivalence will persist for years to come in Africa’s relations with those who are more powerful than it is. Perhaps there is something to be said for this ambivalence. To be in need of help and afraid of help might well be the essence of dignified indigence.

Dignitarianism It is that aspect of Africa’s sociocultural preoccupation which is concerned with race. This is a much more accurate term for it than ‘nationalism’ although many authors have often confused dignitarianism with nationalism. Nationalism is concerned with either the defense of or the quest for

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nationhood and its sociocultural attributes. Dignitarianism is a defense of collective dignity in the face of a hostile or condescending environment. It was out of dignitarianism that the earliest forms of Pan-Africanism were born.

Dissident Pan-Socialism Refers to an alliance between China and an opposition group. At some point in Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta, China extended moral and to some extent material aid to a group which was opposing Mr. Kenyatta’s policies. See also Authoritative Pan-Socialism.

Divergent Miscegenation In South Africa we see this model of miscegenation. Under the legacy of apartheid, the progeny of mixed marriages between Whites and Blacks are neither automatically Black, as they are in the US, nor are they necessarily entitled to upward mobility if physical features permit, as they are in Brazil. Even after apartheid, the South African model decrees that the progeny of a mixed marriage between White and Black belongs to a group apart. The group is that of Coloreds. See also Ambivalent Miscegenation, Ascending Miscegenation, Descending Miscegenation.

Divine Multiplicity Religions which insist on the oneness of God have, in the short run, been more intolerant than religions which have accepted divine multiplicity. In other words, religions that acknowledge the existence of many gods are not specially incensed when one more group comes along and claims gods of its own. When the world of divine kingdom is not monopolized by one candidate, the admitting of new candidates is more readily accommodated. Most African religions are either pantheistic or polytheistic.

Division of Control In Malaysia political power is overwhelmingly in the hands of the ethnic Malays while economic leverage is disproportionately in the hands of the ethnic Chinese. What was the de facto deal struck between Blacks and Whites in South Africa after Nelson Mandela’s release? In order to avert a

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racial war, the Whites said to the Black: ‘You take the crown, we shall keep the jewels’. The Whites retained the best businesses, the best mines, the best jobs, and the best shops in the major cities.

Documentary Deficit One of the two ways for approaching the question of archives in Africa. It is concerned with an apparent excess of silence in African historiography, a shortage of recognized documentation in the written and material fields. Materially, Africa has had relatively few stone monuments, few hard documents of the past. Among the great cultures of the world, African civilizations have had less written records than average. For a long time this literary deficit resulted in the assumption that Africa was a continent without history. Africa’s crisis of documentary deficit had a good deal to do with the origins of racism. Civilizations were often evaluated in terms of either concrete remains or written records. Most of Black Africa seemed to have neither. The crisis of documentary deficit had related implications for science and philosophy. The absence of the written word deprived much of Africa of the bounty of cumulative heresy. Africa’s oral tradition was a tradition which tended to transmit consensus rather than dissent, what was agreed upon rather than what was rejected by the establishment. See also Primordial Surplus.

Documentary Radicalism In modern times the sage tradition has often gone alongside documentary radicalism, a desire on the part of Africa’s political leaders to produce documents of reform or revolution. In Tanzania’s experience, such documentary radicalism has ranged from the Arusha Declaration to the Mwongzo, from the terms of reference that led to the setting up of a one party-state to Nyerere’s document Education for Self-Reliance.

Dual Diaspora The Diaspora of Enslavement concerns slaves and descendants of slaves in both the Western and Eastern hemisphere. The Diaspora of Colonialism concerns demographic dispersal as a result of colonialism. African Americans are in their majority part of the Diaspora of Enslavement. Recent Algerian immigrants into France are part of the Diaspora of

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Colonization. Jamaicans and Trinidadians in Britain are a Dual Diaspora, products of both enslavement and colonialism.

Dual Fertility The custody of earth has been part of a doctrine of dual fertility. Woman ensures the survival of this generation by maintaining a central role in cultivation—and preserving the fertility of the soil. Woman ensures the arrival of the next generation in her role as mother—the fertility of the womb. Dual fertility becomes an aspect of the custodial role of African womanhood, though always in partnership with the African man.

Dual Heritage Almost without realizing it, W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore subscribed to two converging civilizations. These Pan-Africanists were products of left-wing Western civilization, on the one hand, and left-wing Pan-Africanism, on the other. Here were two major Pan-African thinkers who were involved in the politics of Black identity and were at the same time drawn toward the ideas of an ethnic German Jew called Karl Marx. Padmore’s most influential book was indeed originally titled Pan-­ Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle in Africa. It was an illustration of a huge ideological ambivalence between the politics of Blackness, on the one hand, and left-wing Pan-Africanism, on the other. W. E. B. Du Bois was responsive to historical materialism.

Dual Plagiarism The Jews borrowed from the Greek language the word ‘Diaspora’, meaning dispersion. The Africans have since borrowed from the Jewish experience the word ‘Diaspora’ to describe a comparable condition of dispersal. This is the dual plagiarism in Jewish-Black verbal heritage.

Dual Racial Citizenship It may be conceivable in a situation where one race or ethnic group is patrilineal and the other is matrilineal. The matrilineal group might not mind its women crossing the border and marrying men from the other culture. The patrilineal group, in like manner, might permit the men to be

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exogeneous. But in such situations claims as to whether the mother or the father has priority in rearing the children, and how descent is to be determined, might become issues as soon as the married couple appear to be on the verge of separating. For as long as they are together, it is conceivable for a child to enjoy dual racial citizenship. Such is the case, for instance, if the father is a patrilineal Arab and the mother is a patrilineal Jew.

Dual Society It is normally one in which two ethnic groups add up to overwhelming majority of the population. A dual society can be either bi-national (as in the case of Czechs and Slovaks in the Czechoslovakia) or bi-ethnic (as in the case of the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda) or bi-sectarian (as in the case of the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq or Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland) or bi-regional (as in the case of the North and the South in the Sudan). See also Plural Society.

Dual Tyranny Intellectual freedom in Africa is up against dual tyranny. One—a domestic tyranny—the temptations of power facing those in authority at a particular stage of the history of our continent. This is the political tyranny of governments as yet insensitive to some of the needs of educational institutions. The other tyranny is to some extent external. It is the Eurocentrism of academic culture as we know it today, the degree to which the whole tradition of universities is so thoroughly saturated with European values, perspectives, and orientations.

Dynastic Privatization A form of privatization of the state in which the resources and symbols of the state are monopolized by an individual and his more immediate family. Bokassa in the Central African Republic literally attempted to create a dynasty. See also Anarchic Privatization, Ethnic Privatization.

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Ecological Concern This goes beyond mere fascination with ecology. It implies commitment to conserve and enrich. It also often requires a capacity in man to empathize with nature. It requires a readiness on the part of man to see a little of himself, and a little of his God, in his surroundings. It requires a totemic frame of reference. Africa’s record in ecological concern is more dazzling than that of Europe. See also Ecological Curiosity.

Ecological Curiosity That framework of intellectual agitation which seeks to explore and discover new factors about nature. The impulse behind ecological curiosity is, quite simply, the excitement of thirst for knowledge. It is an aspect of science in its quest for explanation and comprehension. Europe’s record in ecological curiosity is more dazzling than that of Africa. See also Ecological Concern.

Economic Culture It is one of the four dimensions of culture which defines the means of production, and livelihood in society, the technics of economic distribution and exchange, and the values and norms underlying and motivating economic behavior. In some societies the economic culture is much more closely tied to the kinship culture than in others. In all societies the economic culture is partly conditioned by the horizons of the intellectual culture already available. The system of thought and analysis, in relation to innovation and experimentation, can profoundly determine the pace and direction of economic change. How people produce their food, how they construct their shelter, how they manufacture their other requirements, and how they distribute them all can be determined by the balance between a people’s attitudes toward the past and their orientation toward the future. See also Intellectual Culture, Kinship Culture, Political Culture.

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Economic Domination It presupposes exploitative relationships and signifies that one group has exerted a degree of economic control over another which is fundamentally disadvantageous to the weaker party. In this case the indignity need not be manifested in racial gradations at all. There may be no areas of residence that are taboo to the exploited group, nor positions that are shut, nor clubs that are inaccessible. It is even conceivable that there are no special racial differences between the exploited and those who exploit. The difference could be basically class difference. There are of course occasions when the two forms of domination—economic and racial—reinforce one another. But what needs to be noted is that they can in fact be separate. See also Intellectual Domination, Racial Domination.

Economic Globalization Is a process which stems from all the forces that are transforming the global market and creating new economic interdependencies across vast distances. See also Comprehensive Globalization, Informational Globalization.

Economic Imperialism It is the exercise of power through economic means, and usually for economic ends. For quite a while China before the Communist revolution was a victim of economic imperialism, as major Western powers imposed on it a variety of conditions to safeguard Western economic interests, and yet no Western power actually annexed China in the political sense of making it part of its territorial dominion. See also Economics of Imperialism.

Economics of Imperialism This includes the costs and benefits of territorial annexation itself and the economic motives of building empires. Both the economic causes and consequences of territorial annexation have to be included in any comprehensive survey of the economics of the phenomenon at large. See also Economic Imperialism.

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Ecophilia An affectionate concern for nature and the environment, tending toward their preservation. Because of the massive dangers of pollution and dissipation of natural resources today, ecophilia has entered a new level of militancy. It is no longer satisfied with simply preserving the beauties of the countryside and conserving animal species that are endangered by the prospect of extinction. It is now concerned about the very survival of the human species if the present trend continues.

Ecumenical Language A language that is extra-communalist—that transcends the boundaries of race and ethnicity. An example could be the English language. A person did not become English merely by being English-speaking. In other words, the English language is less racially exclusive. See also Communalist Language.

Ecumenical State In this model there is neither a state religion nor is the state completely separate from religious activities. See also Religious State, Secular State.

Electoral Polygamy A system in which every parliamentary candidate is required to have more than one constituency—one primary one and other subsidiary ones. If the primary one was in one’s ethnic region, the subsidiary ones would be in other regions. Each candidate would need a plurality of votes in his or her primary constituency and a particular minimum percentage of votes in the three subsidiary constituencies. The idea was to force each parliamentary candidate to campaign for support from among northerners, southerners, westerners, as well as his or her primary easterners. The candidate has to learn how to court voters of divergent ethnic backgrounds.

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Electoral Sovereignty In terms of the norms of a democratic society, the moral source of sovereignty is, in fact, ‘the people’, which might be described as ‘electoral sovereignty’. The system as a whole then becomes one of ‘popular sovereignty’. See also De Facto Sovereignty, Legalistic Sovereignty, Mandated Sovereignty.

Elite Bias It is one of the seven biases of the media in the age of globalization. It rewards the famous with additional fame—and regards the powerful as newsworthy. See also Exotic Bias, Gender Bias, Generation Bias, Negativism Bias, Racial Bias, Urban Bias.

Empire by Invitation A form of autocolonization which has been used to refer to the American military presence in Western Europe and to the American economic penetration of Europe. In the Arab world, it can also be used to refer to the role of Syria in Lebanon after the Lebanese Civil War—a kind of Pax Syriana. See also Colonialism by Consent, Protectorate, Self-Colonization.

Empirical Relativism The cultural distance between the West, Africa, and Islam is narrower than often assumed. On the issue of free speech, for instance, the cultural difference between Western culture and Islamic culture may not be as wide as often assumed. In both civilizations only a few points of view have national access to the media and the publishing world. In both civilizations there is marginalization by exclusion from the center. But there is one big difference. Censorship in Muslim societies tends to be more centralized, often done by the state, though there are also restrictions on free speech imposed by Mullahs and Imams and militant religious movements. See also Cultural Relativism, Historical Relativism.

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Engaged Africana Studies A kind of Africana studies in which there is a link between the scholar and his or her subject matter. With Engaged Africana Studies, the emphasis is on scholarly self-reliance and Afro-autonomy. (With Inquisitive Africana Studies there may be more of a reaching out even to mainstream Western scholarship.) Engaged Africana Studies is predicated, firstly, on a sense of solidarity between the scholar and the African people whom the scholar is studying. It is also predicated, secondly, on as much paradigmatic self-­ reliance as possible, meaning the methods of study need to be as Afro-­ centric as feasible. See also Inquisitive Africana Studies.

Entrenched Values The problem which the students in Europe and America were facing in the late 1960s (when they demonstrated on university campuses) was the problem of entrenched values from the past which the students regard as no longer relevant for the modern world. See also Unsettled Values.

Epic School of African Historiography Argues that the impact of colonialism upon Africa has been of epic proportions. This effect of European imperialism has been both deep and wide-ranging, though not necessarily constituting a change for the better. It leans toward maximizing and exceptionalizing the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa. See also Episodic School of African Historiography.

Episodic School of African Historiography Argues that these last several decades illustrate how shallow the impact of European colonialism was. The imperial period in individual countries was often little more than an episode in relation to the millennia of African history. That is one reason why European institutions transplanted to Africa have not taken root. The argument starts from the premise that our generation is so close to the era of colonialism that European influence looms extra-large. Our proximity to the colonial age results in unjustified exaggeration of the colonial impact upon Africa. See also Epic School of African Historiography.

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Ethnic Dualism An ethnically dual society is one whose fatal cleavage is the majority ethnic group and the minority ethnic group. Rwanda is dual society in this sense divided between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi. So is Burundi, divided between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi. See also Regional Dualism.

Ethnic Privatization A form of privatization of the state in which ethnic representativeness is abandoned—and one particular ethnic group monopolizes or disproportionately controls the state. Examples include Nubi control of Uganda in the 1970s. See also Anarchic Privatization, Dynastic Privatization.

Ethnic Specialization Like the Ibo of Nigeria, the Luo of Kenya produced, initially, more academics in East Africa than any other single community. This was not a simple matter of size, as there are other ethnic groups of comparable magnitude. The simple fact that the Luos supplied a disproportionately large number of academics within the University of Nairobi in its first few years caused tension. The institution is still torn by ethnic factors, but it is not as acute as it must have been at the University of Ibadan before the first Nigerian coup when there was a disproportionate Ibo presence in most categories of staff. The experience of both Kenya and Nigeria shows that even the most highly detraditionalized of all Africans, the scholars, have been feeling the commanding pull of ethnic loyalties.

Ethnic Transnationalism President Yoweri Museveni wanted to help exiled Rwandans (Tutsis) to find their way back home. He, as a Ugandan ‘Tutsi’, helped to create Rwandan Patriotic Force which then captured power in Rwanda! The new configuration of the Rwanda-Uganda coalition helped the Tutsi of Zaire to start a rebellion which culminated in the overthrow of the thirty-two-­ year-old dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in faraway Kinshasa.

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Ethno-Capitalism Capitalism in Africa has a lot of difficulty freeing itself from sociocultural ideologies. Does African capitalism have a persistent tendency toward getting tribalized? Is it a case of a rugged ethnicity rather than rugged individualism? Do we have ethno-capitalism in countries like Kenya and Nigeria?

Ethnocracy A distributive system which allocates or divides political power primarily on the basis of ethnicity. The kinship polity is one type of ethnocracy. The kinship polity is normally a monopoly of power by people who see themselves as ethnic kinsmen. If the history of Uganda had hypothetically made it possible for political power to be monopolized by the Baganda almost entirely, Uganda would have become that kind of ethnocracy which is virtually identical with kinship polity. At the time of independence there was a Ganda predominance in the civil service, a Nilotic predominance in the armed forces, and an Asian predominance in fundamental parts of the economy. Such a situation was not a monopoly by any one of these three ethno-cultural groups, but a division of power among them.

Euro-Blame This is about the disparagement of other cultures and other countries from a Eurocentric perspective. This bias apportions disproportionate blame to the sins of others. While Islam has indeed suffered a lot of disparagement in Eurocentric history books, indigenous African cultures have suffered even more. Europeans had for a long time regarded indigenous African cultures as savage and primitive and have often exaggerated their weaknesses and ignored their strengths. See also Euro-Denial, Euro-­ Exclusivity, Euro-Heroism, Euro-Marginalization, Euro-Mitigation, Euro-Superimposition.

Euro-Denial A form of Eurocentric bias which is about the shortchanging of the achievements of other peoples and cultures. In discussing ancient Greece there is often little recognition of how much the Greeks might have owed

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to ancient Egyptians—a subject reactivated since the 1980s by Martin Bernal, with his multi-volume study of Black Athena. A Eurocentric history of great philosophers may mention Aristotle but not Avicenna; such a history of great historians may mention Edward Gibbon and Arnold Toynbee but not Ibn Khaldun; a Eurocentric history of letters may mention John Milton and William Wordsworth but not Muhammad Iqbal and Rabindranath Tagore. See also Euro-Blame, Euro-Exclusivity, EuroHeroism, Euro-Marginalization, Euro-Mitigation, Euro-Superimposition.

Euro-Exclusivity The tendency to give disproportionate space in textbooks to the Western side of world history—such as five chapters on the history of Europe through medieval times, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, as compared with one chapter on India and China. The BBC has done splendid television work. With Ali Mazrui as author and storyteller, the BBC did a nine-hour series on Africa (‘The Africans: A Triple Heritage’). With Akbar Ahmed, they did a six-hour television series on the Muslim world (‘Living Islam’). But the same BBC is capable of producing twelve-hour TV series on Ireland alone, or a multi-episode television drama on ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII’. See also Euro-Blame, Euro-Denial, Euro-Heroism, Euro-Marginalization, Euro-­ Mitigation, Euro-Superimposition.

Euro-Heroism The tendency toward giving disproportionate attention to European and Western achievements in the arts, philosophy, science, technology, and governance. In the ancient world there was no such thing as Europe. Europe incorporated ancient Greece into its own body politic, hijacking the achievements of ancient Greece, to define itself to incorporate the miracles of Athens and Sparta. See also Euro-Blame, Euro-Denial, Euro-­ Exclusivity, Euro-Marginalization, Euro-Mitigation, Euro-Superimposition.

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Euro-Marginalization Represents the sins of marginalizing the ‘Other’ cultures in the quantitative terms of space devoted to them in books, classrooms, and audio-video materials. This is the other side of the coin of Euro-Exclusivity or Exclusion. We may count in the number of hours in a school curriculum, or number of pages in a history book, devoted to other civilizations. If the space is limited, it still is a form of marginalization even if that limited space is used to emphasize a few non-Western achievements. Shortchanging other cultures is a qualitative sin; marginalizing other cultures is a quantitative sin (as to how much space or attention they get). Even if the qualitative sin is reduced by emphasizing the achievements of other cultures, the quantitative sin may remain if those cultures are not given enough space or enough hours. See also Euro-Blame, Euro-Denial, Euro-Exclusivity, Euro-­ Heroism, Euro-Mitigation, Euro-Superimposition.

Euro-Mitigation The tendency for some textbooks to underplay the sins perpetrated by Europeans and Westerners across the centuries. Thus, the story of the European settlement of the Americas is often told with little discussion about the huge human and cultural cost—the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans, the reckless destruction of such flourishing indigenous civilizations as that of the Incas, Aztecs, and the last days of the Mayas. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a traffic in humans which continued for several centuries. Yet some textbooks give it a brief mention and hurry up to deal with less guilt-ridden subjects. And very few textbooks not written by Black authors discuss the Middle Passage—the cruel method of transporting slaves across the Atlantic which cost so many lives en route. There is also some Euro-mitigation in the portrayal of European empires in Africa and Asia. See also Euro-Blame, Euro-Denial, Euro-­Exclusivity, Euro-Heroism, Euro-Marginalization, Euro-Superimposition.

Euro-Superimposition This is about looking at other societies within a Western paradigm or from a Western perspective. By fighting for their liberation from the Soviets in the 1980s, the Mujahiddeens in Afghanistan were helping to destroy the Soviet Union’s imperial will. Empires are maintained partly by the iron

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will of the imperial power. The Soviet imperial received a fatal blow in Afghanistan. The Afghans accomplished in the 1980s what Hungarians failed to do in 1956—the Afghans resisted Soviet tanks. The Afghans accomplished in the 1980s what the Czechs failed to do in 1968—the Afghans expelled a Soviet invasion. The end of the Cold War had many causes. Among the least acknowledged was the role of the Mujahiddeens in helping to destroy the Soviet will to hold on to Empire. A marginalized and technologically underdeveloped Muslim country like Afghanistan defeated a Superpower and helped to change the course of world history. The origins of the collapse of Soviet empires are partly to be traced to the streets of Kabul and the mountains of Afghanistan. Western historians are unlikely to acknowledge such an impact of the Mujahiddeens. See also Euro-Blame, Euro-Denial, Euro-Exclusivity, Euro-Heroism, Euro-­ Marginalization, Euro-Mitigation, Euro-Superimposition.

Externally Oriented Ideology An ideology which seeks to change a country’s relations with its neighbors or a country’s role in the world is externally focused. Pan-Africanism as an ideology is oriented toward relations with other African countries or with the rest of the world. Pan-Africanism is, in that sense, based on an exogenous vision. See also Internally Oriented Ideology.

Exotic Bias The attractions to and publicity of female circumcision rather than high-­ school graduation, African witchcraft rather than African brain surgeons. This, too, is a form of bias of the media in the age of globalization. See also Elite Bias, Gender Bias, Generation Bias, Negativism Bias, Racial Bias, Urban Bias.

Exotica Bias One of the seven biases of Islamophobia in the age of globalization. It overlaps with a number of other biases—but the central concern here is with the truly extraordinary about the Muslim experience, sometimes combined with the truly ‘cute’. How sensuous is the Muslim paradise? How many hours will a devout male have? Is it true that women have no soul in Islam? If so, why should women pray, or fast or go on pilgrimage?

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See also Anti-Semitic Bias, Arabesque Bias, Harem Bias, Jihad Bias, Judicial Amputation Bias, Minaret Bias.

Extractive Imperative A phase in the West’s relations with Africa that was concerned with the political economy of Africa’s minerals, many of which were quite fundamental to certain sectors of Western industry. There were periods when Africa represented ninety percent of the world’s cobalt, over eighty percent of the world’s reserves of chrome, half the world’s reserves of gold, and so on. See also Labor Imperative, Market Imperative, Territorial Imperative.

Evangelical Exploration A motive for exploration defined in terms of social purpose. This type of exploration is ‘pursued’ by either secular or religious missionaries and inspired by such goals as the spread of civilization, the suppression of the slave trade, or the propagation of a new creed. See also Exploitative Exploration, Scientific Exploration.

Exploitative Exploration An exploration often undertaken for reasons of commerce, for exploring new markets or possible new sources of raw materials. See also Evangelical Exploration, Scientific Exploration.

Factual Memory A kind of memory which is about the more familiar in our day-to-day lives—the retention in our minds of experiences, events, and facts of the past. Our factual memory could be short or long. See also Genetic Memory.

Feudo-Imperial Interdependence A stage of interdependence which combines some of the characteristics of feudalism and some of the attributes of imperialism. A central characteristic of this kind of interdependence is hierarchy, and hierarchy is of course

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founded on the premise of inequality. See also Mature Interdependence, Primitive Interdependence.

Formal Imperialism In much of the first half of the twentieth century, at least two-thirds of the Muslim World was lodged in the formal collective empire of the Western World. In the years of formal imperialism, and specially after the collapse of the Ottoman empire, Muslim countries were colonies and dependencies of such countries as Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Italy

Fractured Nation-State The African state is weak perhaps when class consciousness is weak. Conversely, the nation is weak when ethnic consciousness is strong. Weak class consciousness weakens the state, and strong ethnic consciousness weakens the nation. The colonial state, for some reason, did not create classes for themselves (as Marx would have put it) but did help to create so-called tribes for themselves. The postcolonial scramble for scarce resources is not therefore an inter-class struggle but an inter-ethnic struggle.

Frankenstein State Just as Frankenstein was destroyed by his own monster, so the sovereign state has enormous potential for destroying the human species that produced it. The state’s capacity for such annihilation is expanding with its own escalating energies of violence. Planet Earth lies in the shadow of the Frankenstein state.

Frozen Warfare A state of civil war in an economically divided country bears similarities with Thomas Hobbes’ ‘state of war’. For Hobbes the absence of government was inevitably a state of war, each man for himself. He did not mean that men necessarily fought as soon as government disappeared. What he did mean was that the situation was very favorable for the outbreak of a civil war or individual violence precisely because a system of authority was missing. To Lenin it is not the

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absence of a system of authority which creates a climate of suspended civil war. It is the absence of economic equity and social justice. But in Lenin as in Hobbes the state of war need not involve a war that has already broken out; it could be a civil war in suspended animation, awaiting the right signal to activate it. If a civil war can be frozen or be in suspended animation, so can an international war.

Futuristic Revolution The Ethiopian revolution of 1974 was futuristic—seeking to destroy an ancient imperial culture. The revolution was also committed to breaking the link between the Church and State. The Ethiopian revolution was an adventure in secularism. See also Nostalgic Revolution.

Gender Bias It focuses more on the achievements of men than of women. See also Elite Bias, Exotic Bias, Generation Bias, Negativism Bias, Racial Bias, Urban Bias.

Genealogical Afrabians Those Africans in whose veins there might flow the blood of both Arabs and Africans, for example, Anwar Sadat, Muhammad Neguib, and most of Swahili people of Kenya and Tanzania. See also Geographical Afrabians, Ideological Afrabians.

Generation Bias It pays more attention to older folks than to the young—unless the young are at the center of exceptional events. See also Exotic Bias, Elite Bias, Gender Bias, Negativism Bias, Racial Bias, Urban Bias.

Genetic Memory Genes are a form of memory across generations. We shall never be forgotten as long as our genes survive in our descendants. We can label this kind of ‘remembering’ the genetic memory in our nature. When politicized this genetic phenomenon becomes the genealogical memory—the conscious

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tracing of descent and ancestry for reasons of sentiment, status, or stratification. See also Factual Memory.

Geo-cultural Distance Is basically cultural divergence reinforced by geographical separation. If China and Japan had been a little nearer to Africa, or if the Chinese and the Japanese had settled in large numbers in Africa as the Indians and Europeans had done, the narrower geo-cultural distance thus caused could have transformed Black perspectives on the yellow races.

Geographical Afrabians Arabs and Berbers whose countries are members of both the AU and the Arab League. Some of the countries are overwhelmingly Arab, such as Egypt and Tunisia, while others are only marginally Arab, such as Mauritania, Somalia, and the Comoro Islands. See also Genealogical Afrabians, Ideological Afrabians.

Global Africa The people of our ancestral African continent plus all other people of African descent worldwide. Until the middle of the twentieth century, Global Africa meant the people of Africa itself combined with the African Diaspora in the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. What has been happening in the twentieth century is a more extensive globalization of Global Africa, making the African factor on earth more truly omnipresent and omni-directional. If Global Africa means people of African ancestry all over the world, the Black population of the US is a microcosm of Global Africa. Today this Black population includes people from literally every Black country in the world. If there is indeed a microcosm of Global Africa, it is to be found within the shores of the US—from Hutus to Haitians, from Baganda to Barbadians, and from natives of Afro-Muscat to residents of Afro-Mississippi. The Black experience has a new dialectic of diversity.

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Global Pan-Africanism Brings together all centers of Black presence in the world and adds the new Black enclaves in Britain, France, and other European countries, which have come partly from the Caribbean and partly from the African continent itself. See also Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism, Trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism, West Hemispheric Pan-Africanism.

Global (Transcontinental) Terrorism Has its origins in imperial injustices committed in the Middle East—pre-­ eminent among which are the policies of the state of Israel against Palestinians and the largely uncritical support Israel continues to receive from successive US governments.

Gloriana Afrocentricity A type of Afrocentricity which emphasizes the great and proud accomplishments of people of African ancestry—Africa at its most complex. Africa on a grand scale. The castle builders, those who built the walls of Zimbabwe or the castles of Gondar, or the sunken churches of Lalibela, and some would argue, those who built the pyramids of Egypt. See also Proletariana Afrocentricity.

Harem Bias Latter-day Shaharazade of the Arabian Nights, as she seeks to amuse the Sultan with stupendous tales night after night in order to save her life. There is a constant Western preoccupation with whether Islam is a particularly sexist culture. The Arabesque bias tends to reinforce the harem bias, since some of the most secluded women in the world are in the Arabian portions of the Muslim world. The harem bias sometimes claims that Islam favors sexual promiscuity for men. Muslim modernists argue that since the Qur’an permits polygamy only if a man can treat all his wives absolutely equally, and since this is humanly impossible, polygamy is in fact forbidden (rather than forgiven) by the Qur’an. No man can treat two women absolutely equally—and so he should not marry more than one. See also Anti-Semitic Bias, Arabesque Bias, Exotica Bias, Jihad Bias, Judicial Amputation Bias, Minaret Bias.

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Hegemonic Trans-Ethnic Language A dominant language with a large and powerful constituency of native speakers. Amharic in Ethiopia, and perhaps the Arabic language in Sudan, are hegemonic in this sense. See also Imperial Trans-Ethnic Language, Preponderant Trans-Ethnic Language.

Hemispherization The colonial polices of the imperial power had created North-South economic relationships rather than global relationships. Africa’s earlier involvement had started with the commodification of labor as slaves were captured, sold, and bought. Before Africa began exporting primary products, Africa had been forced to export primary producers. The abolition of slavery and the substitution of colonialism resulted in African economies which exported primary products at last. But the direction of exchange was still between the North and the South. It was Hemispherization rather than globalization, although Hemispherization (North-South) exchange was a stage toward globalization.

Heroic Evil The corridors of time echo the applause and denunciations of yesteryears. Fused into the paradox of heroic evil was Idi Amin—at once a hero and a villain, at once a subject both of applause and denunciation. As a villain he was a symbol of tyranny. As a hero, Amin had four meanings for Africa and the Third World. Economically he attempted to strike a blow against dependency and foreign control of his country’s economy. Culturally, he signified a reaffirmation of authenticity. Politically, Amin was often in rebellion against the northern dominated power structure of the twentieth century. Morally, Amin signified a basic leverage between the liberal values of the Western world and the nationalistic concerns of much of the Third World.

Heroic Failure There are widespread assumptions that African societies are corrupt because the leaders have not tried to be anything else. A lack of ‘political will’ has increasingly been blamed for the moral deterioration of postcolonial Africa. The case of Tanzania helps to demonstrate that political will

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and presidential determination are far from enough as agents of moral purification. The story of Tanzania is one of sustained presidential and legislative efforts to abort the emergence of class privilege and prevent the ethical decomposition of the body politic. Yet the effort has failed. Tanzania today has more bribery and corruption, less dedication to the work ethic, greater indifference to productivity, more cynicism about political leaders, and a more pronounced acquisitive drive. It is in this sense that the struggle against corruption in Tanzania is a case of heroic failure. The effort has been valiant, the outcome a tragic fiasco.

Heroic Terrorism It is of the kind whose aims are noble and may even be humane but whose means are morally ignoble and often physically cruel. See also Horrific Terrorism.

Heroic Universalism The Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo was, in his art, among the most universalist of all of Africa’s postcolonial poets. The most obvious aspect of his universalism was his refusal to be categorized as either an African poet or a Black one. He was indeed greatly influenced by Igbo imagery and European classics but he refused to have the work characterized as African, ethnic or racial. Okigbo’s test came in 1966 when he won the Langston Hughes Prize for African Poetry at the Festival of Black African Arts held in Dakar, Senegal, but he turned it down precisely on the grounds that his poetry did not have a national nor racial identity. See also Parochial Martyrdom.

Heterogeneous Society One in which no cultural group is close to fifty percent of the population. See also Heterogeneous Society, Preponderant Society.

Historic Amnesia When we consult models of governance, we almost never refer to how Africa was ruled before the Europeans came. Africa’s modern constitution-­ makers ask themselves ‘How do Canadians deal with this problem?’ They

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almost never ask themselves ‘How did the Baganda or the Kikuyu deal with this problem before colonial rule? What was a Luo response to this kind of challenge?’ We need to gain some insights from models of governance in Africa before the White man came.

Historical Relativism If under cultural relativism, cultures differ across space (from society to society), under historical relativism cultures differ across time—from epoch to epoch or age to age. In Western society pre-marital sex was strongly disapproved of until after World War II. In the nineteenth century it was even punishable. Today sex before marriage is widely practiced with parental consent. Also, what are regarded as medieval aspects of African culture or Islamic culture may have been shared by Western culture in relatively recent times. In other words, the historical distance between African and Islamic values, on one side, and Western values, on the other, may not be as great as many have assumed. See also Cultural Relativism, Empirical Relativism.

Homocentrism It is the concern with man as an immediate end in himself, a form of autocentrism. See also Autocentrism.

Homogeneous Society A society in which over eighty percent of the population are in the same cultural tradition. It has a minimum multiculturalism. See also Heterogeneous Society, Preponderant Society.

Horizontal Assimilation Relates to the attitude of different slave systems toward assimilation and integration. The indigenous slave system was more assimilationist and integrationist compared to the other Trans-Atlantic and Arab systems. That is to say that in terms of assimilation into the general populace, indigenous African culture was particularly hospitable to slaves. See also Vertical Social Mobility.

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Horizontal Brain Drain Occurs when Africa loses its skilled human power to other developing countries; it can also be intra-African as when Nigerians and Kenyans scramble for jobs in Southern Africa. Or it can be extra-African as when skilled Africans seek jobs in Kuwait, Dubai, or Southeast Asia.

Horizontal Cultural Integration The interaction and fusion of indigenous sub-cultures as, for instance, when the Baganda begin to borrow culturally from the Acholi and Langi, the Kikuyu from the Luo, the Hausa from the Ibo; and perhaps one day the Zanzibaris will borrow culturally across thousands of miles from the Yoruba in Nigeria. See also Vertical Cultural Integration.

Horizontal Miscegenation The mating of male and female across a racial divide. A culture may become eventually tolerant of vertical miscegenation (offspring of inter-­ racial marriage) and yet remain in disapproval of the original inter-racial sexual mating which produced the offspring. See also Vertical Miscegenation.

Horizontal Nuclear Proliferation Involves entirely new members of the nuclear club. The Nuclear Non-­ proliferation Treaty was in fact intended to deal with both the risks of vertical proliferation among the great powers and horizontal addition of new nuclear members. The vertical variety among the great powers has escalated faster than the horizontal addition of new members to the nuclear club. See also Vertical Nuclear Proliferation.

Horizontal Political Decay The type of political decay to which Africa had been exposed in the 1990s. This is not the decay of the efficacy of the state and the polity but the decay of the cohesiveness of the nation. The causes have included the reactivation of ethnic loyalties; the rekindling of the flames of sectarianism; and the impossibility of constructing an edifice of national pride in the face of one national disaster after another.

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Horrific Terrorism Lacks legitimacy at the level of both the goals being pursued and the means being employed. Both ends and means are ignoble. See also Heroic Terrorism.

Ideological Afrabians Africans who ideologically believe in the oneness of Africa (both Arab and Black Africa) like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana—those who believe that Arabs and Africans are two people who may already have become one. See also Geographical Afrabians, Genealogical Afrabians.

Ideological Conversion If Julius Nyerere had been ‘pro-Western’ instead of ‘Westernized’, this would have been something which could change overnight under the impact of powerful disenchantment. A pro-Western African could cease to be pro-Western tomorrow if he suddenly discovered something shockingly evil about a particular Western policy. Ideological conversion is a more superficial state of mind than intellectual acculturation. To be in favor of this country or that, to be attracted by this system of values rather than that, are all forms of ideological conversion. And under a strong stimulus one can change one’s creed. See also Intellectual Acculturation.

Ideological School of African Philosophy Ideological philosophy in colonial and postcolonial Africa raises the individual afresh as the fountain of ideas. African philosophy begins to be studied in terms of the ideas of individuals like Amilcar Cabral and Gamal Abdel Nasser rather than the philosophies of cultural units like the Kakwa or the Berbers. Here we use the narrow sense of ideology as a policy-­ oriented body of ideas, mainly designed to govern political action and define political goals. See also Cultural School of African Philosophy, Critical School of African Philosophy.

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Ideology of Knowledge Is concerned with the question of whether the first generations of postcolonial African historians were disproportionately nationalist, seeking to correct or repudiate the Eurocentric colonial paradigm of historiography. See also Sociology of Knowledge.

Imminent Instability When change and turbulence are expected at any time and yet no such change or disruption takes place. Many African countries have an air of imminent instability even when the regime in power appears to be in full control. The instability is imminent when one is not surprised to hear of a military coup or a similar upheaval from one day to the next, and yet the air of stability continues. See also Active Instability, Latent Instability.

Imperial Humanitarianism The Western individualist would be capable of rising to the occasion when news of a natural catastrophe in Pakistan or Chile reached him. With the African it is the reverse; he is much more moved by the day-to-day problems of a distant kinsman than by a dramatic upheaval in a remote part of the world. Qualifications need to be made here, especially in regard to the Western response to humanitarian appeal, which brings us to the imperial factor behind African suspicions of pure humanitarianism. The growth of individualism in Western Europe did indeed result in the rhetoric and sometimes even in the practice of humanitarianism. However, the humanitarian impulse in a liberal Europe took the form of imperial expansion and a racialistic assumption of responsibility for the colored races of the world. Rudyard Kipling’s concept of ‘the White man’s burden’ was, in the rhetoric in which it was formulated, a case of civilizing humanitarianism. It may indeed have been significant, from the point of view of studying the relationship between individualism and humanitarianism, that the growth of liberalism in Europe coincided with the expansion of imperialism.

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Imperial Language It begins from above as a language of power. English in East Africa started as the language of the rulers before it could gradually develop into the language of the people. English has also been a European language which has sought the allegiance of its African subjects. A characteristic of an imperial language is that its localization begins with elite-formation. English became the basis of an alternative African elite in East Africa. Competence in the imperial language became an avenue of upward social mobility for Africans. Another characteristic of an imperial language is that, at the colonial level, it has to be formally learnt. A related characteristic of an imperial language is that it comes across as part of a written civilization. As a result, command of English tends to be associated with being ‘literate’ and ‘educated’. Some of the most articulate of Swahili speakers may not be literate at all. While the majority of those who speak good English in East Africa are, almost by definition, part of the literata, the majority of those who speak good Kiswahili are not ‘men and women of letters’ at all. See also Hegemonic Language.

Imperial Lingo-Optimism Because the anti-colonial movement in most of Africa was led by men who first had to acquire fluency and even eloquence in the relevant imperial languages of their countries, European languages are allies of political liberation and facilitators of expanding intellectual horizons. The colonial impact might well have been the greatest liberating factor that the African mind had ever experienced, if by this we mean liberation from excessive subservience to ancestral ways. At the heart of this mental liberation was the world of new ideas. And this world was unveiled particularly well through the medium of languages that came with those ideas. See also Imperial Lingo-Pessimism.

Imperial Lingo-Pessimism A concern about protecting indigenous languages. The view that European languages have a potentially corrosive impact on indigenous legacies, creating new privileged elites, and even threatening the survival of some African languages. Colonial languages are more of liabilities than assets. See also Imperial Lingo-Optimism.

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Imperial Nationalism A desire to build an empire can itself be a goal of nationalism. Rudyard Kipling was an imperial nationalist who glorified empire-building by the White man. Kipling wrote his (in)famous poem partly as an appeal to American nationalism, encouraging White Americans to accept the burdens of an imperial power in the Philippines. Cecil Rhodes also often appealed to that side of British pride which was in effect imperial nationalism. See also Transnational Nationalism.

Imperial Reincarnation It is a perceived transmigration of the ‘soul’ of empire from one center to another emphatic center, usually a relative. The idea of a special relationship between Britain and the US has been cultivated, especially by London. Although the British have not given up all diplomatic independence in their dealings with Muslim world, for example, a cornerstone of British policy has been to support American goals as much as possible. The policy included pro-Iraqi policies during the Iran-Iraq war; anti-Iraqi policies in the 1990s; collaboration with US military and political decisions regarding Iraq subsequently. The two Anglo-Saxon powers have each used the UN to lend legitimacy to the reincarnation of Pax Britannica as Pax Americana. The globalization of empire that the British attempted in the formal sense has been carried further by the Americans in an informal manner—the imperial soul has transmigrated.

Imperial Trans-Ethnic Language A language which came with a dominant external power and has yet to develop a large enough of native speakers from the indigenous population. English in many African countries is, of course, still imperial. See also Hegemonic Trans-Ethnic Language, Preponderant Trans-Ethnic Language.

Imperialism of Penetration The old British moralistic position of Pax Britannica pointed an accusing finger at weaker societies, reprimanded them for being incapable of maintaining peace and law and order, and then imposed British presence upon them in pursuit of that alleged good. See also Imperialism of Withdrawal.

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Imperialism of Withdrawal The human rights crusades of the US President Jimmy Carter constituted not so much an imperialism of penetration but imperialism of withdrawal, threatening to disengage if the target country persists in its delinquency. Carter’s administration warned the Third World not to carry repression too far—or America will pull out of their development projects and cut off the supply of dollars. See also Imperialism of Penetration.

Impersonal Positive Ageism When a society impersonally arranges for certain benefits for a group based strictly on age and not on family ties—like reduced bus fares or taxi fares for senior citizens, or special recreation centers for the elderly. Or enhanced social security benefits. For impersonal positive ageism the West scores much higher than Africa where such facilities are in short supply anyhow. But for personalized positive ageism—younger generation helping older generation voluntarily—the West’s nuclear family has a lot to learn from Africa’s extended family. See also Personalized Positive Ageism.

Independent Thinker A hallmark of an independent thinker is that he/she has the capacity to arrive at a decidedly independent decision—even if it is at variance with the climate of opinion prevailing at the time. Malawi’s Kamuzu Banda was more of an independent thinker in this sense. There was not much of an abstract thinker in Banda. See also Original Thinker.

Indigenous Authenticity Colonialism constituted a major shift in the cultural paradigm of one African society after another. Traditional ideas about how crops grow and how babies are conceived have had to be re-examined, and in some cases, abandoned altogether, eroding indigenous authenticity in the process. See also Universal Rationalism.

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Indigenous Ecumenicalism Of the three principal religious legacies of Africa—indigenous, Islamic, and Christian—perhaps the most tolerant is the indigenous tradition. It is even arguable that Africa did not have religious wars before Christianity and Islam arrived. But indigenous African religions are basically communal rather than universalist. Like Hinduism and modern Judaism but unlike Christianity and Islam, indigenous African traditions have not sought to convert the whole of human kind. By not being universalist in that sense, the African traditions have not been in competition with each other for the soul of other people. See also Semitic Competitiveness.

Informal Imperialism In much of the second half of the twentieth century, most of the Muslim world has existed within the informal collective empire of the West. In the more recent years of informal imperialism, the US has assumed a pre-­ eminent hegemonic position, supported by two or three of the major European powers. It is the US informal empire rather than the formal empire of the British that much more closely approaches real global scale. But the US does not act alone. It is a global imperial power with sub-­ imperial lieutenants: Britain and France in global political affairs, and Germany and Japan in global economic affairs.

Informational Globalization A process which results from all the forces which are exploding into the information superhighway—expanding access to data, mobilizing the computer and the Internet into global communication. See also Comprehensive Globalization, Economic Globalization.

Innovation Phase The first years of Africa’s independence were accompanied by relative self-­ confidence. The first generation of African decision-makers were opening new doors and seeking new horizons. A particularly ambitious experiment was that of Julius K. Nyerere’s African Socialism. See also Destabilization Phase, Political Collapse Phase, Post-conflict Phase.

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Innovative Radicalism The two most militant challenges to Western hegemony are indeed Marxism on the one side and Islam on the other. Marxism is innovative radicalism—seeking to forge an entirely new global order. See also Revivalist Radicalism.

Inquisitive Africana Studies A form of Africana studies in which the main impulse is scholarly curiosity rather than social commitment. It seeks to find out rather than to go in. It is more exploratory than empathetic. It seeks to comprehend the Black experience rather than to participate in it. Practitioners of Inquisitive Africana Studies are multiracial in composition. See also Engaged Africana Studies.

Institutional Democracy Its concerns include promoting the right to vote, the holding of free elections, the championing of political pluralism, and the presumed link between political liberalism and economic liberalism. See also Normative Democracy.

Integrated Cleavage The disturbing anomaly concerning the tensions of social nearness in horizontal relationships. It can be illustrated with reference to the tension between an Arab population in Zanzibar which had acquired Swahili as its mother tongue and become substantially Africanized in certain aspects of culture, on one side, and on the other, the Africans of Zanzibar who also spoke Swahili as their mother tongue, who also accepted Islam as their religion, and who had acquired certain aspects of the Arab lifestyle, but who still considered themselves as a group apart.

Integrative Violence It represents violence in the evolution of nationhood and the enlargement of social empathy through a process which takes several generations. At one level of argument it may indeed be true that internal conflict within a

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country is inherently disintegrative. Yet, paradoxically, no national integration is possible without internal conflict. The paradox arises because while conflict itself has a capacity to force a dissolution, the resolution of conflict is an essential mechanism of integration. Jointly looking for a way out of a crisis, seeing your mutual hostility subside to a level of mutual tolerance, being intensely conscious of each other’s positions and yet sensing the need to bridge the gulf—these are experiences which, over a period of time, should help two groups of people move forward into a relationship of deeper integration. Conflict-resolution might not be a sufficient condition for national integration, but it is certainly a necessary one. See also Transformative Violence.

Intellectual Acculturation Julius Nyerere was perhaps the most Anglicized of all Heads of State in East and Central Africa. ‘Anglicized’ does not mean ‘Anglophile’. It means that Julius Nyerere had an intellectual turn of mind which was unmistakably a product of the Western system of education and that Nyerere would have been a different kind of person if he had been educated in, say, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, or Communist China. It is much more difficult to change the process of reasoning which one acquires from one’s total educational background. No amount of radicalism in a Western-trained person can eliminate the Western style of analysis which he acquires. See also Ideological Conversion.

Intellectual Culture Provides the framework of reasoning, the presuppositions of inference and deduction, the basic ideas of intellectual discourse, and the boundaries of analytical capability and abstract thought. It will be seen from this definition that the intellectual culture of a people has to determine and define areas of artistic creativity, scientific innovation, and the orientation of the society in relation to the past, the present, and the future. The degree to which a society approves or disapproves of change, promotes experimentation, and facilitates enlargement of empathy, are all deeply rooted in the intellectual culture of that people. See also Economic Culture, Kinship Culture, Political Culture.

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Intellectual Dependency An excessive reliance on an alien reference-group for ideas and analytical guidelines. A disproportionate number of African intellectuals in the twentieth century have been products of Western or Western-derived educational institutions. Consequently, their universe of ideas has in turn been primarily Western derived.

Intellectual Domination This can sometimes be connected with racial issues, but the essential nature of intellectual domination is an assertion of intellectual superiority by one group and an imposition of some of its ideas and values on others. The others may accept these ideas and values after a while and may even internalize them completely and make them their own. The element of intellectual domination might remain if there persists an edge of superiority enjoyed by the intellectual donors over the intellectual recipients. See also Economic Domination, Racial Domination.

Internally Oriented Ideology An ideology which is focused on transforming the mode of production or system of government within an African country. Julius K. Nyerere’s Ujamaa was an ideology which aspired to transform the nature of Tanzanian society. To that extent Ujamaa was an endogenous and domestically focused ideology. See also Externally Oriented Ideology.

International Caste System Just as in the case of a single society, a caste system perpetuates itself by relating gradation to unchangeable hereditary factors, so in the international system gradation is rigidified by trying to base economic specialization on unchangeable climatic and geophysical factors. This is indeed a system of interdependence, with specialization of roles, but included within that specialization is a clear hierarchy of advantage. See also International Class System.

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International Class System Consists primarily of differences in per capita income. Nations become graded on a scale which moves from indigence to affluence. Potentialities for mobility within the system, that is, the capacity to increase per capita income and perhaps even close the gap between this or that country, are within the bounds of possibility. See also International Caste System.

International Sub-dependency Arises in a situation where one part of the Third World is disproportionately reliant upon another or disproportionately influenced by another. There is, for example, some risk of sub-dependency arising out of relations between Africa and the oil-producing Arab states. There is also a risk of sub-dependency in relations between Brazil and much of Latin America in the years ahead.

Intimidatory Leader A leader who relies primarily on fear and on instruments of coercion to assert his authority. All leaders have to use some degree of force but the intimidatory leader specializes in it. See also Mobilization Leader, Patriarchal Leader, Reconciliation Leader.

Inverse Dependency It is possible to argue that Africans who seek to change their own vocabulary in order to make it respectable to Europeans are caught in the dialectic of inverse dependency. It should be mentioned that such Africans included Ali Mazrui, torn as he was between a desire to proclaim his independence of European prejudices and a desire to appear respectable by European standards.

Inverse International Sub-dependency Arises either when the bigger country is dependent on the smaller or the richer is dependent upon the poorer. The situation in which it is Africa that is dependent upon the Caribbean for fundamental areas of its liberation would be clearly a case in point. See also Natural International Sub-dependency.

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Inverse Secession In May 1966 Buganda attempted what might be called an inverse secession. Instead of saying ‘we were pulling out’, as the Ibos had done in Nigeria, the Kabaka’s government in the Buganda region said to the central government of Uganda, ‘You get off Buganda soil’. As Kampala, the national capital, was surrounded by Buganda and was itself ostensibly on Buganda soil, this was separatism with a difference. It was an attempted expulsion of the nation from the region instead of an attempted withdrawal of region from a nation.

Jewish Anti-miscegenation A culturally sanctioned protest against Jews who marry non-Jews. The Jews owe their survival in part to their endogamy. It has enabled them to survive as a culturally distinct entity in spite of generations of intermingling with other groups in different parts of the world. See also Black Anti-miscegenation.

Jihad Bias A part of the crusade complex in the European psyche—in search of Salahuddin Saladin and Richard the Lion Heart. Did Islam spread by the sword? Sometimes it spread by conquest, as it did in Egypt and Persia. At other times it spread by trade, as it did in most of sub-Saharan Africa. In any case, did Christianity not conquer by force of arms much of the New World, much of Africa, and parts of Asia? Was the spread of Christianity in Europe not itself originally due to newly converted Roman conquerors, beginning with Constantine the Great? The jihad bias in the second half of the twentieth century sometimes portrays Islam as a religion of terrorism. See also Anti-Semitic Bias, Arabesque Bias, Exotica Bias, Harem Bias, Judicial Amputation Bias, Minaret Bias.

Jihad Tradition African resistance to imperial penetration was sometimes inspired by Jihad tradition which is based on Islam. This was the case in Nigeria, Eastern Sudan, Somalia, and Algeria, among other places. See also Non-violent Political Mobilization, Strategy of Armed Liberation, Tradition of Radical Christianity, Warrior Tradition.

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Judicial Amputation Bias This bias emphasizes the enormous severity of punishment imposed by the Shari’a, including amputation of the hand of the thief and capital punishment for adultery. In fact, the rules of evidence which are demanded by the Shari’a before such punishments can be imposed are even more severe than the punishments themselves. In the case of adultery, the rules require four reliable witnesses who actually saw sexual penetration by the male into the female. Unless lovers were enjoying themselves in the marketplace for all to see, it is most unlikely that their sexual activity would be physically witnessed by four such observers. In the case of the amputation of the hand of the thief, it would have to be demonstrated that the theft was an act of pure greed and not of understandable need—and the entire economy of the country would have to be under the Shari’a before a single thief can lose a limb. In any case, these Muslim laws were originally pronounced when Christian nations were executing thieves rather than merely amputating their hands—and long before Henry VIII of England executed his wives on suspicion of adultery, and at the same time he inaugurated the Church of England in rebellion against the Church of Rome. See also Anti-Semitic Bias, Arabesque Bias, Exotica Bias, Harem Bias, Jihad Bias, Minaret Bias.

Kinship Culture A dimension of culture that is concerned with issues of descent, marriage, succession, kinship loyalties, obligations, and entitlements. Whether or not a people is capable of responding to humanitarian considerations, whether or not they disapprove of ‘miscegenation’, and whether or not politics and sex interact centrally in a given system are questions which are substantially determined by the texture of the kinship cultures involved in a given situation. But kinship culture tends to be defiantly parochial. See also Economic Culture, Intellectual Culture, Political Culture.

Labor Imperative A phase in the West’s relations with Africa when the West was interested primarily in African labor—and was prepared to promote slave raids, the Middle Passage, and slave plantations to ensure that kind of exploitation of African labor. The industrial revolution in England was partly

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stimulated by the triangular trade between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. See also Extractive Imperative, Market Imperative, Territorial Imperative.

Latent Instability At first glance latent instability looks very similar to imminent instability, and yet there are fundamental differences. While one would not have been surprised if the ruler of Zanzibar had been overthrown the week after he came to power, one would indeed be surprised if the Communist Party of China crumbled suddenly. In Zanzibar instability was imminent in that it could have happened at almost any time, even if it did not happen for quite a while. But in the Chinese communist system the instability is latent, and could be delayed for many decades, and yet inherently within the system there may be the seeds of its own transformation. See also Active Instability, Imminent Instability.

Legalistic Sovereignty Philosophically, ‘limited sovereignty’ is probably a contradiction in terms. And yet the King of the Belgians is at once a ‘Sovereign’ and a ‘limited’ monarch. This then could not be sovereignty in the philosophical sense. It might be described as Legalistic Sovereignty by virtue of the fact that it is the Law of the Land which confers it upon him theoretically. See also De Facto Sovereignty, Electoral Sovereignty, Mandated Sovereignty.

Liberal Islam A school of Islam which is less concerned with updating Islam scientifically and more concerned with updating Islam ethically. The Liberal Muslim is less worried about whether Iblis exists physically or only figuratively. Islamic liberalism is anxious that Muslim women be treated as equals; that slavery be declared haram under any circumstances; that the amputation of hands of thieves be relegated totally to history; and that the death penalty be either abolished completely or be limited to such egregious offenses as first-degree murder (and never be imposed on adulterers). To liberal Muslims, Allah is a God of Compassion. See also Modernist Islam, Orthodox Islam.

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Linguistic Apartheid What was unique about Francophonie until the 1990s was that it was the only international and intergovernmental club based on linguistic apartheid. In concept, Francophonie was based on a vision that the world consisted of two kinds of nations—French-speaking and the ‘outer aliens’. No other community of nations was conceived in such stark linguistic terms.

Linguistic Ecumenicalism It is religious differences that continue to trigger deadlier passions than do linguistic quarrels. One solution for multilingual countries has been a kind of linguistic ecumenicalism, as exemplified by India’s policy of accommodating its diverse languages at state level, while promoting Hindi as a national language. South Africa is also experimenting with linguistic ecumenicalism by recognizing eleven official languages, alongside English as the official language for the country as a whole. See also Religious Ecumenicalism.

Linguistic Fatalism English has stultified and weakened Africa’s indigenous languages by marginalizing most of them in national life and in the educational system. The huge imperial prestige enjoyed by the English language distorted the educational priorities, diverted resources from indigenous cultures toward giving English pre-eminence, and diluted the esteem in which indigenous African languages were held. The psychological damage to the colonized Africans was also immense. Most Africans not only seemed to accept that their own languages were fundamentally inferior to the English language; they became convinced that it was not worth doing anything about it. Linguistic fatalism is still part of the postcolonial condition in Africa.

Linguistic Nationalism Nationalism is sometimes a combination of culture as identity and culture as communication. When the nationalism and the language are either completely or substantially fused, what we get is linguistic nationalism. The focus of the nationalism is substantially pride in one’s language. But here one may have to distinguish between direct linguistic nationalism and

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derivative linguistic nationalism. Direct linguistic nationalism is when the central focus of the nationalism is the issue of language in relation to identity. Separatism in Quebec is a case of direct linguistic nationalism. Derivative linguistic nationalism is when the pride in language is part of a wider cultural pride. It is arguable that the French are primarily cultural nationalists—and their linguistic nationalism is part of the wider cultural patriotism, which covers pride in French literature, French role in history, French cuisine, French civilization. The Arabs are also great linguistic nationalists—but in the derivative sense. They are proud of the Arabic language partly because they are proud of the Arab role in world history, the Arab impact on world religions, Arab civilization through time, and the Arabs as the ultimate custodians of the religion of Islam.

Lingo-Legal Convergence The Rule of Law in African countries has sometimes gained from the lingo-legal convergence. The shared legal traditions and shared legal language have sometimes enabled lawyers from one part of Africa or the Commonwealth to help defend dissidents in another part. The convergence of linguistic and legal traditions has also enabled African lawyers to construct networks of solidarity with other ‘jurists’ internationally. See also Lingo-Legal Divergence.

Lingo-Legal Divergence Relates to the persistent anomaly that virtually all African constitutions South of the Sahara are in European languages—languages spoken by very few of the citizens governed by those constitutions. The linguistic gap between the constitution and the citizenry deepens the remoteness of the constitution and may become a contributory factor to the perceived irrelevance of the constitutional order in most African countries. It is extremely rare that African constitutions are translated into African languages (even if the official version of the constitution remained the original European one). This lingo-legal divergence has created a conceptual void in the intellectual universe of the average citizen. See also Lingo-Legal Convergence.

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Literary Negritude This would include not only creative literature but also certain approaches in African historiography. An African historian who succumbs to methodological romanticism in his study of ancient African empires like Songhai and Mali is, in this sense, within the stream of literary negritude. See also Anthropological Negritude.

Locational Centralism A part of Islam’s cultural globalization lies in locational centralism, focusing on the spiritual significance of places rather than the authority of individuals. The paramount significance of Mecca in Islamic doctrine and ritual is a prime illustration of how Islam has used the permanence of place rather than the mortality of individuals as a focus of its cultural globalization. See also Personified Centralism.

Lumpen Militariat An army which is under-professionalized; a collection of soldiers that are relatively disorganized and are recruited from some of the least sophisticated sectors of society. It is a class of semi-organized, rugged, and semi-­ literate soldiery which had begun to claim a share of power and influence in what would otherwise have become a heavily privileged meritocracy of the educated. An internalization of professional norms, and adherence to a professional ethic, a readiness to submit with pride to a professional discipline—these are qualities still underdeveloped in the lumpen militariat. In such a situation, the assumption of political power carries the risk of the further de-professionalization of the army.

Macro-apartheid In the second half of the twentieth century, racism in South Africa became more structured, more elaborate, more ideological, and more formalized. There were laws about separate group areas, laws against inter-racial sexual mating and inter-racial marriages, about separate Bantu education, about segregated trade unions, and eventually about racial and tribally distinct homelands. See also Micro-apartheid.

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Macro-dependency Dependency between one country in the Northern hemisphere and another or between one industrial state and another. This involves variations in power within the upper stratum of the world system. Also see Micro-dependency.

Macro-integration The absorption of whole societies into each other or the readiness of the metropolitan center to regard distant colonies as part and parcel of the metropolitan heartland. This was the case, for instance, with the French colonial policy of assimilation. See also Micro-integration.

Macro-nonalignment An effort by a major power to serve as a balancing force between two superpowers. In this vein, Charles de Gaulle took France out of the military institutions of NATO, virtually ending participation in the military alliance though still maintaining a sense of involvement in NATO as a political community.

Macro-plagiarism A massive borrowing by one civilization from another in a manner which deliberately obscures origins and denies acknowledgment and attribution. The problem of macro-plagiarism arises mainly at the stage of disproportionate borrowing by one system of values from another/others. The book Black Athena by Martin Bernal accuses nineteenth-century Europe of having perpetrated a deception, which amounted to a deliberate denial of credit to Egyptians and Semites for the cultural miracle of ancient Greece. In our terms, Bernal has leveled the serious charge of macro-­ plagiarism on twentieth-century Western civilization itself. Bernal’s thesis is not that ancient Greece plagiarized from other Mediterranean cultures and deliberately withheld attribution. Bernal’s argument is that the failure of attribution is much more recent—going back to the first half of the nineteenth century AD. See also Micro-plagiarism.

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Macro-retribalization A primordial retribalization that have re-emerged after the end of the Cold War. For instance, Western Europe showed strides in regional integration despite some hiccups. Regional integration can be Macro-­ retribalization if it is race conscious. Macro-retribalization can be the solidarity of White people, such as that seen in Western Europe, a pan-­ Europeanism greater in ambition than anything seen since the Holy Roman Empire. The decline of socialist ideology throughout Eastern Europe is accompanied by a resurgence of primordial culture. Marxism has either died or been de-Leninized but a pan-European identity is reasserting itself. See also Micro-tribalization.

Macro-segregation Is the creation of separate mono-racial and uni-cultural ‘homelands’ for different groups. See also Micro-segregation.

Malignant Plagiarism A type of plagiarism which does not only claim credit to the borrower— but actively and maliciously seeks to deny credit to the inventor or originator. See also Benevolent Plagiarism, Benign Plagiarism.

Malignant Self-Colonization A form of inter-African colonization which is very damaging to the weaker country and usually perpetrated entirely in the interest of the powerful country. See also Benevolent Colonization; Benign Colonization.

Malignant Sexism The most pervasive and most insidious type of sexism. In most societies, it subjects women to economic manipulation, sexual exploitation, and political marginalization. See also Benevolent Sexism, Benign Sexism.

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Mandated Sovereignty In practical politics, the ministers (in Belgium) who exercise sovereignty (because the Belgian King is a ‘sovereign’ and they are His Majesty’s Minsters) are answerable to Parliament. Admittedly, this is provided for by the Law of the Land, but it is not merely legalistic since it is closer to political reality. See also De Facto Sovereignty, Electoral Sovereignty, Legalistic Sovereignty.

Mandelaism Because Nelson Mandela was a man of compassion rather than a man of ideology, the phenomenon of Mandelaism was slow in revealing itself. Mandela becomes relevant in those situations where people have historical reasons for hating each other but are inspired to transcend the hate and rediscover hope. Another facet of Mandelaism is leadership by personal example rather than simply by verbal eloquence. A third facet is gratitude to friends while forgiving enemies. Upon his release from prison he tried his best to visit a number of those countries which had supported his cause when he was down. And he refused to denounce old supporters (like Yassir Arafat) simply because Arafat was at the time unpopular in the West. He also refused to denounce Libya when urged to do so by some Western voices. It is not enough to forgive old racist enemies. Mandelaism requires that one also respects old friends.

Market Imperative The current phase in Africa’s relations with the West when it served as a market for Western goods and arms. See also Extractive Imperative, Labor Imperative, Territorial Imperative.

Martial Counter-terrorism Involves use of weapons and confrontational politics. In the US, George W.  Bush symbolized martial counter-terrorism especially against religiously inspired terror. See also Moral Counter-terrorism.

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Martyrdom Complex In Jewish experience, it has had varied manifestations across the centuries, going back to the myth of the exodus from Egypt. But the martyrdom complex found a more compelling expression after the ghastly genocidal horrors and obscenities of Hitler’s concentration camps. The horrors he perpetrated resulted in a great boost for the Zionist movement. Western Jews who had previously had reservations about the movement were now more firmly converted.

Mature Interdependence A stage of interdependence which combines sophistication with symmetry. The sophistication comes from enhanced technological capabilities and expanded social and intellectual awareness; the symmetry emerges out of a new egalitarian morality combined with a more balanced capacity for mutual harm. The different parties must not only need each other but their different needs ought to be on a scale which makes possible serious mutual dislocations in case of conflict. The combination of an egalitarian ethic and reciprocal vulnerability, within the framework of wider technological and intellectual frontiers, provides the essence of mature interdependence. See also Feudo-Imperial Interdependence, Primitive Interdependence.

‘Me-Neither’ Syndrome The notion that whatever was lacking in Europe in modern times must have been lacking in Africa as well. If Europeans had managed to abolish their tribes, so had Africans. If Europeans had ceased to be polytheistic, so had Africans. If Europeans were no longer animists, so were Africans. Whatever Europeans had ceased to manifest in their being was regarded to have also ceased in the African experience. Hence the opposition to terms like ‘tribe’ and ‘animist’—simply because these terms among Europeans were not respectable. See also ‘Me-Too’ Syndrome.

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‘Me-Too’ Syndrome The notion that whatever achievements Europe can claim were also accomplished by Africans. Included here are those cultural nationalists who seek to insist that Africans had kings comparable to Europeans; that we had empires comparable to European ones; and that we had written literature before Europeans came. The ‘Me-Too’ syndrome is an important aspect of certain schools of African cultural nationalism. See also ‘Me-Neither’ Syndrome.

Micro-apartheid In the first half of the twentieth century the majority of South Africans were its victims in an unstructured and informal manner. There was racial prejudice between White and Black. This included separate toilets, separate drinking fountains, and separate entrances. See also Macro-apartheid.

Micro-dependency Concerns variations of technical development among the underdeveloped, or relative influence among the weak, or degrees of power among those that are basically exploited. The dependency of some West African countries upon Nigeria, or some of the Gulf states upon Iran or Saudi Arabia, are cases of micro-dependency. See also Macro-dependency.

Micro-integration Among ethnic groups micro-integration concerns intermingling within the same society or even within a single city or suburbs. See also Macro-segregation.

Micro-plagiarism A borrowing—but by one individual from another. In the ethics of the contemporary world, plagiarism is more than stealing of the words of another—or the stealing of the ideas of another. Hijacking ideas is almost the name of the game in the ethics of Western scholarship! See also Macro-plagiarism.

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Micro-retribalization A form of retribalization which re-emerged in Europe in the post-Cold War period. It is particularly strong in Eastern Europe. Micro-retribalization is concerned with micro-ethnicity, involving such conflicts as Serbians versus Croats, Russians versus Ukrainians, and Czechs versus Slovaks. In other words, micro-retribalization in Eastern Europe included the breakup of the Soviet Union, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the breakup of Czechoslovakia. See also Macro-tribalization.

Military-Agrarian Complex A fragile alliance between the soldiers and their kinsmen in the countryside in Africa. But a major problem confronting the viability of such an alliance is the simple fact that the army has been ethnically unrepresentative, recruited overwhelmingly from a narrow segment of the society, and has a tradition of high ethnic consciousness and ethnocratic tendencies in the political system.

Military Ambition A straight desire to inflate the role of the soldiers in national affairs. This is a factor that could lead to military coups in Africa. But this risk could be kept in check precisely by their professional sense of mission. An additional safeguard against an excessive realization of military ambition lay in devising countervailing force, either internal or external, to break the local soldiers’ monopoly of military skills. See also Military Anomie.

Military Anomie A sense of purposelessness and functional redundancy among soldiers. This factor could lead to the soldiers’ takeover of governments. The risks of military anomie and military ambition are inter-related since a feeling of functional redundancy among idle soldiers in the barracks could weaken those restraints which kept military ambition in check. The soldiers, bereft of a sense of military mission, might let their broader aspirations prevail— and challenge the civilian authorities. See also Military Ambition.

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Military Democracy Signifies a system of conflict management in the precolonial/pre-­ independent Africa. With the coming of the rifle in the colonial Africa, and the tank in Africa, military elitism assumed sharper differentiation. The old days of military democracy, when everyone passed through the warrior stage, and the weapons were simple ones capable of being manufactured by the warrior himself, were now replaced by the era of military professional specialists, with weapons requiring high technological skill to manufacture and some specialized training to use.

Military Democratization Nuclear proliferation is a process of military democratization. It seeks to break the monopolies in weaponry in the hands of the northern warlords. It also seeks to break secret societies based on forbidden secret technology under the control of the major powers. But ultimately the best moral case for nuclear democratization is whether this democratization will in turn ultimately lead to the drastic reduction in large-scale warfare in human affairs.

Militarily Inspired Military Coup Concerned with questions of internal military organization or relations between those that have issues with military policy and decision making. It is also more likely to be concerned with issues of who makes military decisions on recruitment, strategy, or deployment. See also Politically Inspired Military Coup.

Military Theocracy Uganda under Idi Amin had re-entered the era of puritanism and fear of God as principles of statecraft. If Max Weber’s state was one which would successfully claim a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force, Amin’s state went on to claim a monopoly of the legitimate use of spiritual sanctions as well. The government under Amin has aspired to create a devout society and to participate in transmitting the gift of religious leadership. Against the background of state sponsorship of religious ceremonies, the banning of mini-skirts, newly imposed drinking hours, a ban on

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certain forms of ‘teenage dancing’, and the enforcement of religious unity, several questions have arisen concerning the Second Republic of Uganda under Idi Amin. Had Uganda under him been evolving into a military theocracy?

Minaret Bias This bias reduces Islam to a system of worship only. It overlooks the fact that Islam is also a body of accumulated philosophy and ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and esthetics, and a system of laws and precepts affecting matters which range from the basis of political obligation to laws of inheritance. Nor does it recognize Islam as a style of living encompassing literature, architecture, calligraphy, and the arts. Islam is of course also a basis of relationships between men and women, parents and children, intimates and strangers, Muslims and non-Muslims. The minaret bias is in danger of over-dramatizing the five prayers, very important as those are. Even among the pillars of Islam all the prayers constitute only one pillar out of five pillars. See also Anti-Semitic Bias, Arabesque Bias, Exotica Bias, Harem Bias, Jihad Bias, Judicial Amputation Bias.

Mission-Driven Foreign Policy A foreign policy that seeks to improve the human condition, however defined. Of course, some American presidents have had mission-driven domestic policies even if they had at the same time monster-driven foreign policies. Lyndon Johnson had a superb mission of civil rights domestically—but in foreign policy he escalated the Vietnam War even after he knew it was a war the US could not win. See also Monster-Driven Foreign Policy.

Mobilization Leader Tends to be activated more by ideological factors than do the other three kinds of leader, needing personal charismatic qualities more than do the other types, though these other kinds of leaders may combine charisma with their other qualities. See also Intimidatory Leader, Patriarchal Leader, Reconciliation Leader.

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Modernist Islam One of the three schools of Islam that seeks to bring Islamic beliefs closer to modern science, technology, and the expansion of human knowledge. Modernist Muslims put less emphasis on Islamic rituals and more emphasis on Islamic rationalism. Beliefs about Satan, jinn, devils, and spirits are interpreted metaphorically rather than literally. Even angels are seen as figurative manifestations of God. The modernist Allah is a God of Enlightenment. See also Liberal Islam, Orthodox Islam.

Modernization Is change in the direction which is compatible with the present stage of human knowledge and which does justice to the human person as an innovative social being. If a society does not want to take into account present-­ day levels of knowledge, science, and scholarship, that society is pre-modern. If a society suppresses innovativeness and insists on doing things according only to traditions, that society is pre-modern. If modernity is defined according to these three basic principles of responsiveness to the highest levels of knowledge, encouragement of innovation, and enlargement of social sympathies, there are clearly different roads to modernity.

Monarchical Republicanism The same country, Gold Coast, which was soon to declare itself a Republic had gone out of its way to name itself after an ancient empire, Ghana. When Ghana attained independence as a modest African republic, Kwame Nkrumah became the president. His equivalent of a quasi-monarchical title was the Osagyefo, or the redeemer.

Monetary Reparation A form of reparation demanded by Black people. It is the most predominant and most persistent form. In the US some reparationists put a dollar value to their demands. These reparationists recognized several Black disadvantages resulting from slavery and segregation in a number of important domains, including the power equation, economic opportunities,

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information control, and knowledge and skills. See also Comprehensive Reparation, Cultural Reparation, Territorial Reparation.

Monogamous Extremism According to the suttee custom of India, which the British banned in1829, after a husband’s death, the woman attained sainthood by burning herself with his corpse. By so doing, she also helped to cleanse her own family and the family of her husband of evil. Suttee is an extreme form of custom which is still deeply embedded in Indian psychology—that a wife was not inherited, that widow could not remarry. The idea of a second marriage for widows is slowly gaining acceptance, though not as yet respectability. But the ghost of suttee continues to exert its influence on the matrimonial and social values of Indian society.

Monopolistic Imperialism A situation where only one imperial power has succeeded in establishing hegemony. The Monroe Doctrine helped to establish exclusive hegemony exercised by the US in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine thus became the basis of monopolistic American imperialism in the Western hemisphere. See also Compartmentalized Imperialism, Competitive Imperialism.

Mono-racial Slavery Indigenous slave systems in Africa tended to be uni-racial or mono-racial. The masters were of the same race as the slaves. It follows therefore that indigenous slave systems in Africa were, by definition, the least racist in orientation and attitudes between victors and victims. See also Biracial Slavery, Multiracial Slavery.

Monotheistic Dualism The history of the international system has revolved around a moving frontier of cultural exclusivity. Originating under monotheism, the cultural frontier has been characterized by a persistent ‘us/them’ dichotomy. Civilizations which anthropomorphized God in monarchical terms tended to divide the world between the God-fearing and the sinner. This

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tendency was reinforced by the culture of politics which differentiated supporters from adversaries. Both were embodied in early international law such that a system of rules for civilized nations did not apply to ‘them’—the rest of the world, thus opening the door to imperialism. The inter-­relationship between major cultural themes in today’s world, coupled with a developmental system of stratification which is based on technical know-­how, suggests that important but hidden problems of a cultural nature were contained in the world order agenda.

Monster-Driven Foreign Policy It is a foreign policy which is inspired by the pursuit of a demon—the need for an enemy as an organizing principle. Since the US emerged from its policy of isolationism—and especially since World War I—American foreign policy has been primarily demon-driven. There has been such a dichotomizing quality in US policy-formation which has tended to divide the world between believers (on the side of the US) and unbelievers (usually associated with either evil personified like Saddam Hussein or Fidel Castro or evil ideologized like communism or so-called Islamic fundamentalism). It is not clear whether this demonizing tendency in American foreign policy goes back to the frontier culture between friends and foes or between cowboys and Indians. But the tendency has been obstinate in American foreign policy for at least a century. The image of the monster is used in legitimizing war. See also Mission-Driven Foreign Policy.

Moral Acculturation At a certain level, speedier than a transformation in standards of taste. If Africa’s experience is anything to go by, people change their criteria of good and evil more readily than their standards of beautiful and ugly. One can therefore convert an African more easily to the values of St. Thomas Aquinas than to the music of Mozart and Beethoven.

Moral Counter-terrorism It involves passive resistance and ethical struggle. Martin Luther King Jr. represented moral counter-terrorism, especially against racial terror. Moral counter-terrorism is what Mahatma Gandhi called satyagraha (soul force) in the face of violence verging on terror. Among Gandhi’s most

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distinguished non-Indian disciples was, of course, Martin Luther King Jr., who mobilized ‘soul force’ against the legacy of the KKK and against officially sanctioned segregation in the southern states of the US. Moral counter-­terrorism has often relied on passive resistance and appeal to a higher moral order. See also Martial Counter-terrorism.

Mosaic Imperative A martyrdom complex in Jewish experience which had varied manifestations across the centuries, going back to the myth of Moses’ exodus from Egypt. Moses as a symbol of nationalism has been important both to Africans in Southern Africa and to Black Americans in the US. Marcus Garvey, the great Jamaican leader of the back-to-Africa movement in the US early in the twentieth century, has been designated a Black Moses. The whole concept of ‘Black Zionism’ as a desire by Black peoples in the Western hemisphere to find their way back to the ancestral soil has borrowed considerably from the liberation imagery of Jewish history. Albert Luthuli, the first winner from Africa of the Nobel Prize for Peace, entitled his book Let My People Go, echoing the Mosaic imperative.

Multiracial Slavery Slavery as practiced in the Muslim world, both the masters and the slaves could almost be of any race. An Arab master could own slaves who came from Africa, Europe, or Asia. Indeed, the Arab master could at one time also own Arab slaves. Although slavery as practiced by Muslims often included prejudice against this or that ethnic group or caste, skin color was not the central divide between masters and slaves. There was no theory which characterized one race as natural slaves and another as natural masters. See also Biracial Slavery, Mono-racial Slavery.

Multilateral Dependency The original colonial dependency in education in Africa was essentially bilateral—between each colony and its colonial master. The nature of Africa’s colonial dependency has changed since then. Africa’s dependency has indeed become multilateral. But being dependent on many benefactors is not more enslaving than being dependent on only one benefactor. Multilateral dependency may be less constricting than bilateral dependency.

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Nationalistic Evangelism The re-moralization of world politics with the rise of the US. Here was a country that became quite early, moralistic in its political rhetoric, and deeply influenced both by moral bombast and by puritanic self-­ righteousness. The American phenomenon was not a simple case of an internationalist ideology; it was a case of a power steeped in the idiom of pioneering fervor. The Russians regarded themselves as missionaries not because they were Russians but because they were communists. But Americans regarded themselves as missionaries not because they were liberals but because they were Americans. Their evangelism was nationalistic first and foremost, rather than derived from the liberal tradition which they shared with Western Europe. Within the nationalistic evangelism of the US was a genuine charitable streak. With a naive belief that every man was a potential American if only he were given the opportunity went a readiness to expand the opportunities of others. The US has probably more charitable institutions and foundations than any other country in history; it has sent more to other nations and societies than is likely to be done by any other country for generations to come.

Nationalist Muslim Nationalist African American Muslims in America are led by Louis Farrakhan. The nationalists are more Afrocentric in their interpretation of Islam and more race conscious in their attitudes to the White world. The nationalists also regard it as artificial and meaningless to fight Zionism without confronting world Jewry. Their anti-Zionism therefore comes pretty close to being anti-Semitism. The nationalists are also more active in self-regarding jihad. They have done more than any other group to help Black neighborhoods in the US fight off drug peddlers and control alcoholism and the traffic in guns. They have done this to Black neighborhoods regardless of whether those neighborhoods included Muslim residents or not. Was the solidarity religious or racial? The nationalist Muslims operate at both levels equally strongly—perhaps with an edge for racial solidarity. See also Universalist Muslim.

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Natural Hero Includes regular human heroes who walk instead of flying and who exist in the lives of their societies. The children may know them by name. They may be their own parents or heads of state. African children who grew up during the struggle for independence lived in an age of super-heroes. As adversaries, European empires seemed huge and all-encompassing— African nationalists challenging those empires appeared like courageous Davids confronting imperial Goliaths. See also Super-Natural Hero, Trans-Natural Hero.

Natural International Sub-dependency Arises where a much larger country, or a much richer Third World country, exercises undue influence over a smaller or poorer neighbor. When Brazil begins to exercise greater influence on Uruguay, for example, there would be in that relationship a natural dynamic. When Nigeria exercises disproportionate influence on Niger, that again is a case of natural hegemony and dependency. Thus, the situation in which the Caribbean becomes dependent on the African continent in order to realize liberation from American hegemony would be a case of natural international sub-­ dependency. See also Inverse International Sub-dependency.

Negativism Bias This almost always ensures that the bad news is bigger news than happy news tends to be. It is one of the biases of the media in the age of globalization. See also Elite Bias, Exotic Bias, Gender Bias, Generation Bias, Racial Bias, Urban Bias.

Negative Globalization Globalization is negative when it allows itself to be a handmaiden to ruthless capitalism, increases the danger of warfare by remote control, deepens the divide between the haves and have-nots, and accelerates damage to our environment. See also Positive Globalization.

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Negative Post-democracy This is when an advanced political system does indeed relapse normatively or decay institutionally. We do know that fully mature and well-established democracies are subject to relapses and even potential reversals. Even if positive post-democracy (entailing an improved social order) has not yet arrived, we know that negative post-democracy (a declining ability to maintain modern democratic standards) is already at hand. Indeed, the Supreme Court of the US is in danger of becoming a post-democracy institution. Political decay in advanced countries is also more often caused by excesses of those in power rather than by civil society as a whole. But while the Western world may be drifting toward a post-democracy era, most of Africa is still in a pre-democracy stage. See also Positive Post-democracy.

Negritude The cultural essence of Black civilization. Leopold Senghor, the chief spokesman of negritude in Africa, had argued that there is a fundamental difference between the White man’s tools of intellectual analysis on the one hand and the Black man’s approach to intellectual perception on the other. Senghor had said that European reasoning is analytical, discursive by utilization; African reasoning is intuitive by participation. In other words, no European or White scholar can hope to understand fully the inner meaning of a Black man’s behavior. According to Leopold Senghor, negritude is the whole complex set of values—cultural, economic, social, and political—which characterize the Black peoples. All these values are essentially informed by intuitive reason. The sense of communion, the gift of myth making, the gift of rhythm, such are the essential elements of negritude, which you will find indelibly stamped on all the works and activities of the Black man. But negritude is also not just a description of the norms of traditional Africa—it is the capacity to be proud of those values even in the very process of abandoning them.

Neo-dependency An end of colonial rule is not synonymous with independence. In other words, there are degrees of independence. If so, the question which also arises is whether there are gradations of colonial states as well. Is the

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condition of being a ‘dependency’ relative? Is there such a thing as a state of neo-dependency, a status below the level of meaningful sovereign initiative but disguised as something higher?

Nobel Schizophrenia It is a mental condition that arises from either an overactive imagination or poetic hallucination.

Non-violent Political Mobilization Between 1906 and 1908, a civil disobedience campaign was launched in South Africa under the leadership of Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi directed against laws in the Transvaal which required Indians to carry registration certificates. K. Nkrumah had also been fascinated by the ideas of Gandhi. His strategy of positive action for greater freedom in the Gold Coast was directly inspired by Gandhian strategies of Satyagraha. Also self-conscious disciple of Gandhi during the colonial period was Kenneth Kaunda. Kaunda insisted on the need for passive resistance and civil disobedience. See also Jihad Tradition, Strategy of Armed Liberation, Tradition of Radical Christianity, Warrior Tradition.

Normative Arrogance Mutual respect is the high watermark of a slope which begins at the bottom with mutual toleration. And mutual toleration between peoples that are different from each other has to include a basic toleration of each other’s values, that is, their cultures. The entire colonial experience started from a premise of cultural arrogance on the part of the colonizer. The belief that non-White peoples were fair game for colonial exploitation was derived from a web of normative arrogance. If colonialism did succeed in reducing violence and enhancing economic welfare, it also succeeded in perpetrating a variety of forms of social injustice. Racial groups were subjugated, cultural values were violated, indigenous religions were suppressed, and colonized peoples were exploited in the wake of the colonial experience. See also Normative Convergence.

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Normative Convergence If we look at the phenomena of cultural dissemination and internalized cultural constraints we are much nearer to world culture: the increased spread of literacy; the effect of technology on lifestyles; the acceleration and facilitation of international travel; the internationalization of books, newspapers, television programs and films; the impact of the radio; and the consolidation of external broadcasting services to other parts of the world as an aspect of foreign policy have all combined to introduce the beginnings of shared values, shared tastes, and shared images among the peoples of this planet. See also Normative Arrogance.

Normative Democracy It concerns itself with issues like human rights and freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial. Non-governmental American promotion of democracy in Africa is highly normative. See also Institutional Democracy.

Nostalgia It is the balance between the idealized continuities of history. Cultures of nostalgia have a high sensitivity to tradition and custom, and their built-­ forms show strong continuities of style, a persistent conservatism. Such cultures also lean toward ancestor-reverence and a special interpretation of the meaning of immortality. Cultures of nostalgia also have a strong elder tradition—conferring respect and authority on the elderly and presuming wisdom from the accumulation of experience. See also Anticipation, Presentism.

Nostalgic Revolution The Iranian revolution of 1979 was nostalgic revolution—seeking to restore an ancient culture, the Islamic civilization of Persia after the seventh century of the Christian era. The revolution in Iran soon revealed its most dominant personality. The struggle against the Shah derived inspiration partly from the sacred charisma of the Ayatollah Khomeini. See also Futuristic Revolution.

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Nuclear Castration The arrival of the nuclear age in the twentieth century coincided with the disappearance of the Islamic Caliphate in the world system for the first time in centuries. The Ottoman Empire had disintegrated after World War I.  Almost the entire Muslim world was under Euro-Christian domination—from Egypt to Indonesia, from Senegal to Malaya, from the Gulf states to Northern India. Never before was the Muslim world so convincingly humbled. See also Nuclear Macho.

Nuclear Macho The most persistent attribute of war has not been the consistency of motives—for men have fought for reasons which have ranged from greed to glory, from gold to god, from liberty to land, from sex to soccer. The motives have varied but war has continued. The most recurrent attributes of war have not been its technology either—for we know that the technological range has been from the spear to the intercontinental missile. Nor has war been a peculiarity of certain climates—for men have fought under the blazing sun as well as in snow drifts. No, the most persistent attribute of war has not been its motivation, technology, organization, goals, or geographical context. It has in fact been its masculinity. The ultimate evil is man’s proclivity toward war—and not merely the weapon with which he has fought it. But with the coming of nuclear age, war has become too serious to be left only to men. The power system of the world does indeed need to be androgenized. The most poignant of all paradoxes amounts to the following imperative: if man is to survive, woman has to bear arms. See also Nuclear Castration.

Ordered Anarchy A form of governance which relies more on consensus than on state coercion and relies on rules rather than rulers. The best illustration of a precolonial ordered anarchy was Somalia. But a combination of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial factors has made Somalia the worst example of a failed state. See also Ordered Tyranny.

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Ordered Tyranny The undemocratic category of countries which is almost the opposite of ordered anarchy. These are countries which were already states in precolonial times and were often cases of ordered tyranny, rather than ordered anarchy. African countries of today which are mentioned by the same names as those they bear in the Old Testament are Ethiopia, Egypt, and Libya—countries with a history of indigenous dictatorship before European colonial rule. In the postcolonial era it is almost certain that the pharaonic legacy of Egypt and the dynastic legacy of Ethiopia will slow down the democratization of these Old Testament states. See also Ordered Anarchy.

Organic Solidarity Concerns the aspiration to promote greater integration among Third World economies. It is about South-South linkages designed to increase mutual help between and among Third World countries themselves. See also Strategic Solidarity.

Original Thinker Julius K. Neyere’s ideas have, on the whole, been safe ideas. The policies they have advocated are widely advocated throughout the continent. The originality of Nyerere consists not in the policies advocated but in the arguments advanced in their defense. Originality of thought at this level does require some capacity for abstract analysis. See also Independent Thinker.

Orthodox Islam A school of Islam which is literalist in its interpretation of the Qur’an and the Sunna, ritualistic in its observances, traditionalist in gender relations, with an emphasis on a God of Justice. On the whole, such Orthodox Muslims are far less receptive to other cultures. See also Liberal Islam, Modernist Islam.

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Other-Regarding Jihad It is a declaration of hostilities against outsiders who perpetrate injustices on others. Other-regarding jihad is, by definition, primarily a struggle against the enemy without. See also Self-Regarding Jihad.

Pan-Africanism of Integration A type of Pan-Africanism which has sought regional integration, at least a free trade area, or perhaps a development alliance, or an economic union or economic community. It has been dismal failure; Africans are better at uniting for freedom than at uniting for development. See also Pan-­ Africanism of Liberation.

Pan-Africanism of Liberation In the second half of the twentieth century, Pan-Africanism of liberation has been triumphant. It is the solidarity of Africans who fought against colonialism, confronted racism, and struggled against apartheid. Those struggles of the second half of the twentieth century have been impressively victorious to a considerable extent. See also Pan-Africanism of Integration.

Pan-Pigmentationalism Afro-Asianism had been a solidarity of a shared humiliation as colored people. Colonialism was only one form which this humiliation took. The participants at Bandung conference of non-aligned nations were not all former colonies. China was no more a former colony of a Western power than Guatemala was a former colony of the US. The credentials for participation at Bandung were therefore not a shared experience of colonial annexation but a shared quality being ‘Afro-Asian’. And the ultimate bond between Asians and Africans was, at least in the political climate of that time, the quality of being non-White.

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Pan-Tutsism President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda wanted to help exiled Rwanda (Tutsis) to find their way back home. He, as a Ugandan ‘Tutsi’, helped to create Rwandan Patriotic Force which then captured power in Rwanda! The new configuration of the Rwanda-Uganda coalition helped the Tutsi of Zaire to start a rebellion which culminated in the overthrow of the thirty-two-year-old dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in faraway Kinshasa.

Parochial Martyrdom In what sense is Christopher Okigbo, the most universalist of all African poets in his art, simultaneously the most tribalist in his life? Poetry is universal, ethnic loyalty is parochial. By exposing himself to death in an inter-­ ethnic war, did Christopher Okigbo sacrifice the universalism of his poetry in pursuit of the parochialism of an ethnic homeland? It is assumed that Okigbo subordinated the vision of a united Nigeria to the Biafran ideal; he betrayed his art by acting as an Igbo first and a poet last. See also Heroic Universalism.

Passive Resistance A form of African resistance to colonialism and imperialism, which was inspired by Mohandas Gandhi. See also Primary Resistance, Revolutionary Resistance.

Patriarchal Leader This type of leader may be interventionist or permissive and is one who commands neo-filial reverence, a real father-figure. The permissive patriarchal leader prefers to withdraw from involvement in the affairs of the nation and dominate the scene from a god-like position in the background rather than as a participating politician. There may be occasions when he/ she has to intervene actively in determining the direction of national change, but in general his/her style is that of delegation to his lesser colleagues who carry out the day-to-day business of guiding the nation. Such a patriarchal leader intervenes only when his colleagues are unequal to a particular emergency or crisis or when the ‘younger’ members of his national family are quarreling among themselves. Patriarchal leadership

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can be profoundly African when it becomes intertwined with African reverence for age and elderly wisdom. See also Intimidatory Leader, Mobilization Leader, Reconciliation Leader.

Pax-Africana Africa’s search for a capacity to pacify itself. Perhaps the most crucial aspect of the ethic of self-government in Africa lies in the ambition of the African to be his own policeman. The following question has often been asked in the last few years: now that the imperial order is coming to an end, who is going to keep the peace in Africa? It is considerations such as these which make Africa’s freedom itself sometimes depend on an African capacity for self-pacification or self-colonization. This is what the concept of Pax-­ Africana is all about.

Pax-Nigeriana Almost from independence Nigeria’s exceptionalism included a potential leadership role to help keep the peace in West Africa, a kind of Pax-­ Nigeriana. For better or for worse, Nigeria’s regional rival in this peace-­ keeping role has not been another West African country. It has in fact been France. It has been France, combined with Nigeria’s own internal problems, which have prevented Pax-Nigeriana from fulfilling its regional mission to the full.

Pax-Humana It sometimes seems that if Africa has any effect on the stability of the world, it is a disturbing effect; it has also been edging the world toward a concept of Pax-Humana. More generally, Africa’s effects can be categorized into three. There is, first, Africa’s impact on the development of international law. Then there is African involvement in the evolution of international instruments of coercion under the UN. And third—perhaps the most paradoxical of all—there is Africa’s role in the erosion of the principle of ‘national sovereignty’ as the basis of international relations.

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Peace Criminal We are familiar with the concept of war criminal. However, is there room for a concept like ‘peace criminal’—someone who hoodwinks the world into a false sense of security and peace while many lives are lost? Was Neville Chamberlain on the eve of World War II a ‘peace criminal’ in that special sense of delaying our recognition of the evil scale of Adolf Hitler? Is Lord David Owen the pre-eminent ‘peace criminal’ of Bosnia—coming up with one peace plan after another favoring the aggressors, just in time to give the European Union a fig leaf for doing nothing? Most of the peace plans formulated by Owen have been of the kind which were bound to be accepted by the aggressive Serbs—and rejected by the besieged Bosnian government. The latter could therefore be portrayed as stubborn rejectionists.

Personal Subjectivism The problem of subjectivism is not peculiar to current history. Historians can be very partisan when looking at episodes far from their own times. In personal subjectivism, personal elements may be connected with the scholar’s tastes, or subconscious preferences, or private prejudices. See also Collective Subjectivism.

Personalization of Authority An element of the monarchical style of politics in Africa. On its own this factor could be just another type of personality cult. But when combined with the quest for aristocratic effect, or with other elements of style, it takes a turn toward monarchism. Sometimes the personalization goes to the extent of inventing a special title for the leader—and occasionally the title is almost literally royal. See also Quest for Aristocratic Effect, Quest for Royal Historical Identity, Sacrilization of Authority.

Personalized Positive Ageism A situation in which the protection of an age group is built into the kinship structure and family ethics of the society. In the West obligations between parents and their children tend to be a one-way street: strong parental obligations toward children but weak obligations on the part of

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grown-up children toward their aging parents. In the West therefore personalized positive support for the elderly is weak. Africans have a continuing obligation toward their parents. See also Impersonal Positive Ageism.

Personified Centralism As part of its cultural globalization, the Roman Catholic Church evolved doctrines of personified centralism focusing on the Pope as an official rather than the Vatican as a place. The Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and even Anglican/Episcopalian Churches developed their own personified authoritative centralism, with specific fountains of authority in high-­ ranking individuals. See also Locational Centralism.

Pigmentational Self-determination Some collective identity had to be present if it was to be ‘nationalism’ at all. The group identity at the beginning of African nationalism was the identity of Blackness racially, a sense of ‘self-determination’ that has been present in African nationalism all along—a kind of implied pigmentational self-determination. Kwame Nkrumah once framed the case in the following terms: ‘the problem of Africa, looked at as the whole, is a wide and diversified one. But its true solution lies in the application of one principle, namely, the right of people to rule themselves.’ But what is people? Nkrumah does not seem interested in a precise definition. For him there is at least one kind of situation where foreign rule is conspicuous—and that is when the rulers are White and the ruled are evidently a different color.

Plural Society Countries like Kenya, India, and the US are ethnically plural societies, with many different groups and diverse possibilities of coalitions and political alliances. Unlike in a dual society, the danger of polarization is not great in a plural society if the two ethnic groups do not get along well together. There are intermediate groups to hold the balance of power, and there is a possibility of forming coalitions or political marriages of convenience with third groups. The tragedy of Rwanda is that it was reduced to such a stark dualism between the Hutu and the Tutsi. See also Dual Society.

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Political Annuation A special case of occupational transferability which may involve changing jobs between, say, diplomacy and academic life or between the legal profession and manufacturing enterprise. But political superannuation is a process by which those who hold public office are permitted to save, invest, or create alternative occupational cushioning should they be thrown out of office in the days ahead. Political superannuation is an insurance policy against the political rainy day.

Political Amnesia Amnesia is, quite simply, a loss of memory. Political amnesia is that part of the political memory which neutralized itself, either willingly or under pressure, and plunged the inner recesses of the mind into political oblivion.

Political Anti-Americanism The great majority of left-wing radicals in the world—including African radicals—had in their temperament an inherent anti-American bias. There was a sense in which it was almost a logical contradiction to be left-wing and pro-American at the same time. Part of radical disapproval of the US is concerned with the image of America as a bastion of laissez faire capitalism and a center of plutocratic arrogance and racial bigotry. The other aspect of radical disapproval concerned the nature of America’s omnipresence in the world as a whole and the foreign policies involved in that presence. See also Cultural Anti-Americanism.

Political Collapse Phase This postcolonial stage can mean a civil war in an African country. Tyranny means too much government—whereas anarchy means too little government. In Idi Amin’s Uganda there was both tyranny and anarchy. When anarchy or tyranny goes too far we have a failed state. See also Destabilization Phase, Innovation Phase, Post-conflict Phase.

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Political Culture A dimension of culture which denotes, quite simply, the values, prejudices, inhibitions, and ideas which condition political behavior in a given society and help to determine the nature of political institutions and the direction of political change. Again, kinship culture can be profoundly relevant for political culture in one society and less so in another. But economic culture and political culture are invariably inter-related in any society partly because politics is to a considerable extent concerned with the distribution of economic resources (the proverbial ‘who gets what, when, how’). In some cases, violence as an outcome of deficiencies in the economic arrangements is precisely the connecting arm between economics and politics. See also Economic Culture, Intellectual Culture, Kinship Culture.

Political Hygiene A process by which politics as an activity is kept clean. Techniques and devices are evolved by which politics is purged of some of the less savory aspects of intrigue, plotting and mudslinging. When a developed state insists that a candidate for election to a public office ought to publicize his expenses in the campaign, or when a law of that state insists that the successful candidate should resign critical directorships in certain business firms, or renounce certain compromising commercial positions, the law of that state is involved in a quest for political hygiene.

Political Metrology A scientific attempt to discern the interaction between social forces in specific societies and the resultant trend in the political atmosphere. The vocabulary of political prediction and discernment of direction can itself bear a good deal of metrological metaphor. A discussion of socio-political trends at the popular level has already been envisaged by already borrowing from atmospheric science. The range of popular usage is from the ‘wind of change’ to ‘research climate’.

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Political Puritanism Demands for moral rectitude extending beyond the family circle and into the public domain. In some instances, youth-wingers, or other over-­ enthusiastic groups ostensibly acting for the public conscience, have molested women in mini-skirts or taken similar measures to express moral disapproval. The Masai of Tanzania got the message from the Tanzanian Government that their exposed buttocks were no longer politically tolerable in the ethos of the modernizing state.

Political Sex Sex is a vital part of the life of an individual. Politics is often a vital aspect of the life of a society. Society consists of individuals. To what extent does the sex-life of the individual, and his ideas about sex, intrude into the politics of his society?

Political Violence Is directed not at suspected thieves and other presumed social transgressors but concerns the nature of political arrangements under which a society is governed and organized. Sometimes the issues which give rise to political violence maybe issues relating to an ad hoc policy by a regime in power. Political violence at its most dangerous is to be found in situations of fragile nationhood. See also Civic Violence.

Politically Inspired Military Coup Is one where issues of rivalry or reform is connected with wider issues of policy concerning the political system and principles of government as they impinge upon relations between participants. This coup tends to include an ideological component even if the dominant motives are concerned with the rivalry for power. See also Militarily Inspired Military Coup.

Polycultural Illiteracy Coexistence with ignorance about other civilizations. It is not only a lack of relevant inter-cultural knowledge; it is also a lack of will to permit inter-­ cultural inputs into assessments of political and economic situations.

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Polycultural illiteracy leads on to the acculturation of decision making— with distorting consequences. In a global power, polycultural illiteracy is the lack of will to be instructed by other cultures. But what are the dynamics of this ‘lack of American will’ to be polyculturally literate? Part of the explanation is the old story of the arrogance of power. The strong are less likely to learn the cultural ways of the weak than the other way round. Indeed, even the bad ways of the strong acquire stature in the eyes of many of the weak. But within the US power is also unevenly distributed among ethno-cultural groups. Some powerful ethnic groups in the country have sometimes imposed censorship on cultural information concerning their rivals. Greeks and Armenians have campaigned against sympathetic programs about the Turks in the media; Jews have campaigned against sympathetic treatment of Palestinians on television. The rich ethnic diversity of the US has so far not been enough to save its political establishment from being dangerously ignorant about other cultures. If ethnic diversity were all that was needed to promote a nation’s polycultural literacy, the US would truly have been well endowed. But even if ethnic diversity were a necessary condition for polycultural illiteracy, it is not a sufficient condition. In a system of uneven distribution of ethnic power, wealthier and more influential ethnic groups could help perpetuate ignorance about their rivals in the national cognitive pool.

Positive Globalization When globalization enhances human communication, improves levels of human productivity, increases our awareness of being inhabitants of a fragile planet, and facilitates empathy between societies across vast distances. See also Negative Globalization.

Positive Post-democracy Arrives when there are signs of innovative governance superior in ethics and performance to liberal democracy as we have known it so far. It could also be a new moral stride superior to social democracy, indeed as we have known it so far.

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Post-conflict Phase The search continues for directions and sharing power. As Africa continues the search for building stronger and trustworthy societies and states, developing institutions that support human security are in the right direction. See also Destabilization Phase, Innovation Phase, Political Collapse Phase.

Preponderant Language Begins as a language of the people before it becomes the language of its rulers. As Kiswahili evolved into a preponderant language, it was linked to the forces of proletarianization and urbanization. It became the language of the labor force, the trade union, and the market place. Both Kiswahili and English were more slow in capturing the peasantry of East Africa, but Kiswahili is much faster in capturing the emerging proletariat and wage-­ laborer than English has been. Even in Uganda Kiswahili has been a major factor in proletarianization; English has continued to be a major factor in elite-formation and embourgeoisement in all three countries. See also Imperial Language.

Preponderant Trans-Ethnic Language A triumphant language but whose native speakers are not necessarily so, an indigenous tongue which is very widespread as a second language but whose native speakers are not numerous enough or otherwise powerful enough in society to be politically threatening. Kiswahili in Kenya and Tanzania is a preponderant language. See also Imperial Trans-Ethnic Language, Hegemonic Trans-Ethnic Language.

Preponderant Society A society in which over fifty percent—not eighty percent, but just over fifty percent—belong to the same cultural tradition. See also Heterogeneous Society, Homogeneous Society.

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Presentism Cultures driven by values of the here and now. It is the compelling pressures of the moment. Such cultures are ‘modern’ in some of the worst senses of the term—often characterized by a reckless disregard of long-­ term environmental damage in exchange for short-term economic gain. Western versions of cultures of presentism have an abiding faith in market forces. They also have a deep distrust of long-term planning. In reality Western presentism has drifted toward consumerism, including environmentally costly built-forms. Among the Westernized elites of formerly colonized countries, the culture of presentism has also manifested in ostentatious consumption, including extravagantly constructed homes. A reckless indifference to the depletion of both national and natural resources has been all too evident. See also Anticipation, Nostalgia.

Pre-Darwinian Social Darwinist Theories of evolutionary change culminating in the pre-eminence of a single nation had major philosophers of the West among their disciples. Not least among these philosophers was Hegel, for whom the entire process of change in the universe had for its ultimate human culmination the emergence of the Prussian state and the Germanic genius. Hegel was, in a sense, a pre-Darwinian Social Darwinist, both in his notion of a creative tension between thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis and in his notion of a purposeful evolution toward the emergence of a high species.

Primary Abolitionists Africans within Africa who tried to abort the evil transactions which carried away so many African captives across the seas. These primary African abolitionists included Affonso of Congo who tried to sabotage the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Slave rebellions were not necessarily abolitionist if the primary purpose was just to free the particular captives rather than to end the system as a whole. A slave revolution can be abolitionist if the aim is to free all slaves and terminate the trade. In that regard, the Haitian revolution of 1804 may therefore be regarded as abolitionist in intention and not merely a rebellion. See also Secondary Abolitionists.

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Primary Resistance Historians have used this concept chronologically, applying it to the earliest times of confrontation between the indigenous fighter and the foreign intruder. But it is at least as defensible to use the term in a cultural rather than a chronological sense. In this cultural meaning, primary resistance could be taking place today—provided it is a form of resistance which draws its ‘primary inspiration’ from indigenous symbols and values. The Mau Mau insurrection was, therefore, partly a case of primary resistance in this cultural sense—although, chronologically, it took place almost on the eve of Kenya’s independence. If we accept this cultural sense of ‘primary’, we may then relate the warrior tradition to primary resistance, the Gandhian tradition to passive resistance, and the Marxist tradition to revolutionary resistance. It should also be noted that primary resistance is connected with masculinity, passive resistance with feminine technics, and revolutionary resistance with both. The warrior tradition once again asserts its manliness, Mahatma Gandhi displays feminine virtues, and Karl Marx becomes a prophet of androgyny or sexual parity. See also Passive Resistance, Revolutionary Resistance.

Primary (Political) Violence When one group is so resolutely opposed to another that it resents having to share the same frontiers, political cleavage is at its most profound. This concerns the very territorial survival of the state. It affects not only explicitly integrative issues, but also raises the question of whether a ruler chosen from one particular ethnic community has a right to exercise authority over any other. Problem of integration and political legitimacy become intertwined, although the initial cause of the cleavage is a fracture in the integrative section. In short, primary violence is violence concerning the boundaries of a given political community. See also Secondary (Political) Violence.

Primitive Interdependence A stage of interdependence which can be defined as the cooperative relationship that exists in conditions of rudimentary technology and limited social horizons. See also Feudo-Imperial Interdependence, Mature Interdependence.

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Primordial Loyalty Unless the boundaries of an ethnically homogeneous society from which he comes and those of the state he leads are one and the same, the African president comes from one tribe in the state of multiple tribes. This is the source of what has been termed the crisis of political legitimacy in Africa; those who claim to speak and act on behalf of the whole country are still very tribally identifiable. This is why it has been said that prior to the crisis of legitimacy, there is more telling one: the crisis of identity. People tend to identify too closely with their own tribes, not enough with the nation-in-creation.

Primordial Surplus The surplus of allegiance to primordial identities, a commitment to ethnicity or religious sectarianism. The question which arises in this century is whether raw human memory is a case of surplus primordial documentation! Is there too much raw documentation? Are ordinary Africans remembering too much of their origins and their past? Is the past too present among us? Is the present refusing to be transient and temporary? Since the second half of the twentieth century the most obstinate aspect of primordial surplus in Africa has been the resilience of ethnic identity. The great majority of Africans refuse to forget their primordial origins. This situation has had repercussions in the postcolonial period. See also Documentary Surplus.

Proletarian Afrocentricity Emphasizes the sweat of Africa’s brow, the captured African as a co-builder of modern civilization. The enslaved as creator, the slave as innovator. Slave labor building or helping to build the Industrial Revolution in the Western world. Slave labor for better or for worse, helping to fuel the capitalist transformation in the Northern hemisphere. The colonized peoples, both as victims and as builders of the industrialized modern world. The resources of Africa, the minerals of Africa, extracted from beneath our feet, have been used for factories which have transformed the nature of the twenty-first century. Without those minerals this century would have been vastly different. Proletarian Afrocentricty is a story of victim as Creator. The primitivist version of negritude celebrates Africa’s simplicity rather than Africa’s complexity. See also Gloriana Afrocentricity.

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Proletarian Aristocrat The distributive aspect of Islam is, of course, intimately related to its egalitarianism. The Prophet Muhammad himself was, in a sense, the paradox of a proletarian aristocrat. He was born of the noble tribe of the Quraysh but he came from a poor family and had worked in humble jobs. At first his modest upbringing, in spite of noble blood, was an impediment to his religious mission.

Protectorate A form of autocolonization in which a weaker state seeks or is forced to accept the ‘protective’ umbrella of a particular hegemonic power. Sometimes this resulted in a change in hegemony. In the nineteenth century, Mildania and Waladia were in revolt against the Ottoman Empire and became protectorates of the Russians in 1829. They fell under wider international protection in 1856 and were united to constitute the sovereign state of Romania in 1878. See also Colonialism by Consent, Empire by Invitation, Self-Colonization.

Protests of Conservation Those acts or movements which are aroused by a sense of impending peril to a system of values dear to the participants. The reaction is a defensive action to conserve that system of values. These protests tend to include a high component of fear because the instinct to conserve carries with it anxieties and protectiveness. See also Protests of Corrective Measures, Protests of Restoration, Protests of Transformation.

Protests of Corrective Measures Is not about a whole system of values. It is an ad hoc demand for a particular modification in the system. Unlike in the other categories of protest, here the censure is the primary motive of the protest. The whole system is not at stake, and the protests are not directed toward determining the fortunes of the system. See also Protests of Conservation, Protests of Restoration, Protests of Transformation.

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Protests of Restoration Refers to a nostalgic seeking to restore a past which has already been disrupted or destroyed. The ambition gets sustenance from deep nostalgia and the aspiration to bring back what has passed away. See also Protests of Conservation, Protests of Corrective Measures, Protests of Transformation.

Protests of Transformation A manifestation of a profound disaffection with an existing system of values or system of rewards and penalties. The great impetus is a commitment to radical change. If protests of conservation and restoration are oriented toward the past and its preservation or revival, protests of transformation are oriented toward the future and its reformulations. These protests are a commitment to innovative goals. There is also a conviction that new directions are feasible. See also Protests of Conservation, Protests of Corrective Measures, Protests of Restoration.

Quest for Aristocratic Effect An element of the monarchical style of politics in Africa. This takes the form of social ostentation. More specifically, it means a partiality for splendid attire, for large expensive cars, for palatial accommodations, and for other forms of conspicuous consumption. See also Personalization of Authority, Quest for a Royal Historical Identity, Sacrilization of Authority.

Quest for Royal Historical Identity Arises out of a vague feeling that national dignity is incomplete without a splendid past. And the glory of the past is then conceived in terms of ancient kingly achievement. See also Personalization of Authority, Quest for Aristocratic Effect, Sacrilization of Authority.

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Racial Bias Tends to ensure that a train accident which kills four White folks is a bigger story than an overturned bus which kills twenty Africans. It is one of the biases of the media in the age of globalization. See also Elite Bias, Exotic Bias, Gender Bias, Generation Bias, Negativism Bias, Urban Bias.

Racial Domination A kind of exercise of power that reduces the dignity of one race in its relations with another. The race whose dignity is compromised does not necessarily have to be poor or exploited. It need not, in other words, be economically as well as racially dominated. In the economic sphere it could be prosperous and influential. But if there are important social clubs a man cannot enter because of his race, then the dignity of the group as a whole is compromised even if the group does not suffer economic indigence or exploitation. See also Economic Domination, Intellectual Domination.

Racially Inspired Terrorism This has ranged from the acts of terrorism perpetrated by the KKK in America to apartheid in South Africa. See also Religiously Inspired Terrorism.

Racial Jihad Malcolm X’s bark was more ferocious than his bite. Philosophically he believed that people should fight for their legitimate rights ‘by any means necessary’. He was prepared to accept violence and perhaps even terrorism, provided the cause was morally right. After all, the American Revolution itself was a revolution of violence and war. Malcolm was Muslim by religious affiliation and an African by descent. Was it his Muslim side which embraced the doctrine ‘by any means necessary’? Did Malcolm envisage a kind of racial jihad?

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Racial Mobility The capacity of an individual to change his racial affinity is possible in societies with a high rate of inter-marriage or in societies where racial differences are allowed to persist in spite of cultural homogenization. Pre-­ revolutionary Zanzibar, for example, was a society with a high rate of inter-marriage. It was therefore conceivable for a family to be African in one generation and become Arab in the next. In the years since independence a reverse trend is of course discernible—families which previously designated themselves as Arab are now becoming African.

Racialistic Nepotism In East Africa after independence (especially in Kenya) bribery is at times an antidote to racialism. Indian traders competing with Africans for licenses or other commercial favors have sometimes to atone with cash for their racial handicap. Racialist nepotism would give priority to Africans. But bribery from the Indian trader might sometimes tip the scale back into a position of fair competition.

Racial Sovereignty Although we are forced at times to talk about ‘self-government’ as if it was a single principle, we should only do so in the awareness that there are at least five concepts of self-government involved in the politics of anti-­ colonialism. There is, first, self-government as an absence of colonial rule; second, self-government as sovereign independence, with all its ramifications in relations with other countries; third, self-government as an internal management of internal affairs, including the maintenance of law and order, a matter which may have serious implications externally; fourth, self-government in the liberal democratic sense as government supported by the will of the nation, substantially declared; and fifth, self-government as government by rulers manifestly belonging to the same race as the ruled. Ethnicity as a basis of legitimation in African nationalistic thought cannot be over-emphasized. All the five concepts of self-government converge on it. It is this central point of contact between all the five concepts of self-government that is the principle of racial sovereignty. See also Continental Jurisdiction.

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Radical Pragmatism Normally ‘radicalism’ is supposed to be almost the anti-thesis of ‘pragmatism’. But in some cases, it is possible to argue that many recommended policies could turn out to be illustrations of the paradox of radical pragmatism, examples of recognizing African realities while constructing a radical response to those realities. For instance, it has been argued that Nigeria swings between near-tyranny under military rule and near-anarchy under civilian rule. A system of power sharing between soldiers and civilians may reduce these extreme swings between tyranny (too much government) and anarchy (too little). It may also reduce the risk of periodic military coups in Nigeria.

Reciprocal Dependence What makes conflict-resolution possible? Sometimes it is the cumulative power of precedent—of having overcome other crises before. Experience of previous clashes sharpens the capacity to discover areas of mutual compatibility on subsequent occasions of tension. Another factor which makes conflict-resolution possible is awareness of reciprocal dependence/reciprocal vulnerability. A third factor which might ease conflict-resolution in a given society is a shared ideology. And the most basic ideology for national integration is the ideology of nationalism itself.

Reconciliation Leader A type of leader who relies for his/her effectiveness on qualities of tactical accommodation and a capacity to discover areas of compromise between otherwise antagonistic viewpoints. He/she remains in control for as long as he is successful in the politics of compromise and synthesis. The reconciliation is quite often between antagonistic ‘interest’ groups. See also Intimidatory Leader, Mobilization Leader, Patriarchal Leader.

Regional Dualism Sudan is a regional dual society, divided between a more Arabized northern Sudan and a Christian-led South Sudan. But although the Sudan is regionally dual, it is ethnically plural. Both Northern and South Sudan are culturally diverse within themselves. Cyprus is both regionally and

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ethnically dual between Greeks and Turks. Ethnic duality without regional duality is a most risky situation. See also Ethnic Dualism.

Religious State Where church and state institutions are interlocked. Ethiopia before 1974 represented a Christian theocracy in this sense. Sudan represented Islamic theocracy in a similar sense. See also Ecumenical State, Secular State.

Religious Ecumenicalism Without changing their constitution, Tanzanians have de facto adopted a religiously rotating presidency. The first president, Julius K. Nyerere, was a Christian, followed by Ali Hassan Mwinyi, a Muslim, who was in turn followed by Benjamin Mkampa, a Christian, followed by Jakaya Kikwete, a Muslim, and now John Magufuli, a Christian. Where else but in Africa can one find the ecumenical spirit at the pinnacle of power? See also Linguistic Ecumenicalism.

Religiously Stimulated Terrorism Includes Sikh terrorism in India, Al-Qaeda from the Muslim world, the Irish Republican Army’s role in the ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland, and Zionist terrorism before and after the creation of the state of Israel. See also Racially Inspired Terrorism.

Republican Islam Republican Islam is the version of Islam witnessed in those societies which are no longer monarchical (like Iran) or have never been monarchies (like Somalia). It is identified with leadership ideally based on an electoral college. And it can be either conservative or militant. Republican Islam is certainly politically radicalizable and sometimes regards Western culture as the greatest threat to Islamic values. When radicalized, republican Islam is often strongly anti-imperialist and profoundly suspicious of the West. Republican Islam is sometimes inspired by revolutionary nostalgia—with a deep revivalist yearning, a desire to create the Islam of yesteryears at its most glorious. Republican Islam can sometimes be a profoundly frustrated force and therefore prone to political anger and cultural indignation. It

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could either be continuously in tense relationship with the Western world (like Nasser’s Egypt, or Qaddafy’s Libya, or the Islamic Republic of Iran) or Republican Islam could be friendly with the West (as in the case of Tunisia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Mali, and Indonesia). See also Royalist Islam.

Restorative Nostalgia Arises almost by definition from an idealization of the political past. When political nostalgia is restorative, it has not given up the past as well and truly over. It still clings to the idea that the idealized picture of years gone by is something which can be restored to life. It is a feeling that destiny has not ruled out a repetition of history.

Revivalist Radicalism The two most militant challenges to Western hegemony have been indeed Marxism on the one side and Islam on the other. Islam for the time being is, when militant, a case of revivalist radicalism—seeking to regain its ancient vigor and distinctiveness. Islam’s cultural exit from the West is a case of moving backward. See also Innovative Radicalism.

Revolutionary Resistance A form of African resistance to colonialism and imperialism which was embodied in the Marxist tradition. See also Passive Resistance, Primary Resistance.

Romantic Ethnology The very idiom of anthropology was not designed to endear itself to African nationalistic thought. The distaste of words like ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’ became extended to the word ‘anthropology’ itself, not least because its very definition was often put forward as ‘the study of primitive society’. Writing in a journal of anthropology in 1934, Margery Perham suggested that ‘the newly self-conscious African’ was quick to suspect the academic mind which called a study of the African ‘anthropology’ and of the White man ‘sociology’. Seemingly vindicating Perham’s words nearly thirty years later President Kwame Nkrumah suggested to the Congress of Africanists in Ghana in 1962 that African studies from now on should, in

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his words, ‘change its course from anthropology to sociology’. But if this is the conflict between anthropology and nationalism, why should Jomo Kenyatta’s anthropological study be deemed a contribution to the nationalistic concept of negritude? The reason is precisely because the concept of ‘negritude’ is the meeting point between nationalism and anthropology. Negritude is often an exercise in romantic ethnology.

Romantic Gloriana A form of African cultural nationalism which advocates pride in the complex civilizations of ancient Africa. It celebrates Africa’s more complex achievements. It salutes the pyramids of Egypt, the towering structure of Axum, and the sunken churches of Lalibela. It is a tribute to Africa’s empires and kingdoms, and Africa’s inventors and discoverers. It is a form of cultural nationalism which glorifies national history. In a sense this is also Africa’s response to Europe’s intellectual arrogance—the response of saying to Europe ‘Our achievements were very similar to yours, in the grand scale’. See also Romantic Primitivism.

Romantic Primitivism A form of African cultural nationalism which advocates pride in the simplicity of rural African village life. It celebrates what is simple about Africa. It salutes the cattle-herder rather than the castle-builder. This, too, is a response to Europe’s intellectual arrogance: ‘Of course we had no tower, no cathedral, neither gun powder nor the compass, neither gas nor electricity—Thank God for that!’ See also Romantic Gloriana.

Royalist Islam Is based on hereditary leadership and was consolidated with the advent of Ummayad Dynasty (AD 661–750), with its headquarters in Damascus and was later succeeded by the Abbasid Dynasty (AD 750–1258), based in Baghdad. By the twentieth century royalist Islam had acquired certain special characteristics both doctrinally and politically. Royalist Islam in the twentieth century has, on the whole, had a political record of reconciliation with the Western world. Indeed, in the second half of the twentieth century, all Muslim monarchs virtually to a man have been pro-Western in foreign policy. These have included King Feisal of Iraq before the 1958

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revolution, King Farouk of Egypt, the Shah of Iran, the King of Saudi Arabia, the Emirs of the Gulf, the King of Morocco, the King of Jordan and the Sultan of Brunei. What is it in the combination of monarchism and Islam in the twentieth century which has led to a Euro-Islamic reconciliation? Islam under Muslim monarchies tended to be ritually pious and socially and politically conservative. The political conservatism of royalist Islam has tended to give it a pro-Western orientation. See also Republican Islam.

Sacrilization of Authority Sometimes linked to the process of personalizing authority, but it need not be. The glorification of a leader could be in non-religious terms. Also, what is being sacrilized need not be a person but could be an office or institution. The institutional form of sacred authority is, however, rare in new states. Indeed, the personality of the leader might be glorified precisely because the office lacks the awe of its own legitimacy. See also Personalization of Authority, Quest for Aristocratic Effect, Quest for a Royal Historical Identity.

Scientific Exploration A form of exploration that is often sponsored by learned societies and inspired by the scientific ideal of pushing the curtain of darkness further and further back. See also Exploitative Exploration, Evangelical Exploration.

Secondary Abolitionists These are drawn from the ‘master’ race. John Brown of the US and William Wilberforce in Britain were, in that sense, dedicated secondary abolitionists. In the case of Wilberforce, he illustrated a secondary abolitionist from the ‘master’ race can have a greater impact than multiple primary abolitionists struggling to resist in Africa. See also Primary Abolitionists.

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Secondary (Political) Violence Does not threaten the integrity of the state, but arises from conflict over its internal organization, the formulation of public policy, or the distribution of public goods. It is concerned not with the boundaries of political community but with its purposes. One of the greatest dangers confronting Africa is that cleavage over secondary policy issue is very often ethnic in origin and involves fundamental questions of group identity. This means that, once secondary violence occurs, it frequently has primary implications as well, although these need not necessarily lead to the dissolution of the state. Dissatisfaction with the workings of the political system may very rapidly create separatist tendencies which, in turn, may lead to secessionism, if the realities of economic and political geography favor such a radical solution. See also Primary (Political) Violence.

Secondary Resistance In a cultural (but not chronological) sense is resistance substantially rooted in the values and techniques of the colonizer. In Africa this means resistance by Westernized Africans using Western ideologies, rhetoric, techniques, and sometimes methods of warfare. See also Passive Resistance. Primary Resistance, Revolutionary Resistance.

Secular State In a secular state politics and religion have no connection whatsoever. The great majority of secular states do sometimes try to accommodate what may be called ethnic arithmetic (which is a quantified balance between ethnic groups). See also Ecumenical State, Religious State.

Secularization of Identity The secularization of allegiance (to the state rather than to the Church) after the Treaty of Westphalia led to secularization of identity. Nations and races became visible more as secular categories than as religious communities. Out of this parallel development emerged new theories of racial gradation and ethnic stratification. But, in the ultimate analysis, the great divide was between the civilized and the uncivilized, defined both in terms of a pecking order of cultures and a pecking order of pigmentation. Even

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such a devout Western lover of liberty as John Stuart Mill could argue that ‘barbarians’ had no rights except the right to be converted intonations as rapidly as possible.

Segregated Diversity Has Islam become too successful for real Muslim unity? Has the Muslim world become so large that even a global Khilafa is no longer possible? The ummah has spread so widely that the sun never sets on the followers of Muhammad (PBUH). Diversity is triumphant—but unity is more elusive than ever. But diversity can be segregated or integrated. We can have a variety of races and ethnic groups in a single country—and yet they do not mingle. That would be segregated diversity.

Self-Colonization A form of autocolonization which is a South-South phenomenon—the periphery colonizing the periphery. In Southeast Asia, this could include Indonesia’s previous annexation of East Timor. In Muslim Africa, it could include not only Morocco’s attempted annexation of Western Sahara, but also the absorption of Zanzibar into the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964. To all intents and purposes, Zanzibar was annexed by Tanganyika to create Tanzania. See also Colonialism by Consent, Empire by Invitation, Protectorate.

Self-Regarding Jihad It is a struggle against the enemy within. In the American context, it must include unrelenting efforts to help those devastated or compromised by drug abuse, alcohol abuse, irresponsible sexuality, and readily available guns. See also Other-Regarding Jihad.

Semitic Competitiveness Precisely because Christianity and Islam were universalistic in aspiration, seeking to convert the whole of humankind, they were inherently competitive. In Africa, Christianity and Islam have often been in competition for the soul of the continent. Rivalry has sometimes resulted in conflict. See also Indigenous Ecumenicalism.

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Sexonomy The interplay between the forces of economic production and biological reproduction. Out of the economic domain, social classes and class conflict have indeed emerged throughout much of history; but equally true is that out of the reproductive symbolism, other loyalties and antagonisms have helped to shape history at times in defiance of economic considerations.

Sexual Egalitarianism A phenomenon that is most directly correlated with changes of hair styles in Europe. When the differentiation between the sexes was at its sharpest in Europe, men grew beard and women had long hair. The beard became less and less common in the male population of the West, and long hair became less and less characteristic of Western femininity, precisely when the relations between the sexes themselves were also becoming less sharply differentiated. More recently among the younger generation in the Western world hair as an aspect of unisexuality has taken a different direction. It is no longer a question of women shortening their hair to a length comparable with that of men, but of men letting their hair grow to length comparable with that of women.

Sexual Hedonism Perhaps the most hygienic use of water prescribed by Islam concerns sex. Between copulation and the believer’s next prayer, a thorough wash of the body (a thorough shower) is needed. Every inch of the body needs washing—including the hair. Those who need to have sex every night are therefore enjoined to have a thorough shower every night—after the sex. For by the time of the dawn prayer the next morning, the believer should have got rid of his janaba, his unholy condition of sexual hedonism.

Sexual Heteroraciality The primeval sin of colonialism was sex between Black and White, sexual heteroraciality. The taboo was broken by Seretse Khama, Jomo Kenyatta, Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Bernard Chidzero, and Ali Mazrui, among others. See also Sexual Homoraciality.

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Sexual Homoraciality Colonialism and Westernization have solved some problems—and created others. The colonial order discouraged homosexuality but encouraged sexual homoraciality that enforced racial endogamy, love making within the same racial group—Blacks make love to Blacks, Whites fornicate with Whites. See also Sexual Heteroraciality.

Sexual Possessiveness Winter as a season also created the need for elaborate clothing for warmth. But what began as clothed protection against freezing weather became protection against natural sexuality. Any form of natural nudity was equated with sexual nakedness. A concept of ‘private parts’ came into being—accompanied by new sexual complexes and inhibitions. The culture of elaborate clothing in the Northern hemisphere helped to re-define the concept of ‘privacy’. This narrower definition of privacy was evolving alongside the walls of insularity. A combination of privacy for the body and insularity for the family helped promote acute ethnocentrism. The stage was being set for racism, including sexual possessiveness. See also Social Insularity.

Sexual Puritanism The Christianization of sexual relations in Africa which arose out of the widespread belief among the early missionaries that the world of sex in African societies was a little too loose, that inadequate discipline was exercised over sexual appetites. The missionaries were bringing the Gospel to ‘heathen communities’ steeped not only in superstition but also in sinful desires. The first behavioral imperative therefore was to control those areas of African life which helped to whet those appetites and desires. Primitiveness became partly defined in terms of sexual laxity. The White man’s burden as understood by missionaries included the ambition to tame the sexual appetites of ‘less civilized people’. The fact that many White immigrants into Africa were at least as promiscuous as their native subjects did not make the White man humbler.

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Sexual Self-Denial As an attribute of ‘true warriorhood’, sexual self-denial has been an influential school of thought in more than one society. Shaka, the great Zulu, emperor in Southern Africa of two centuries ago, introduced in his society the principle of celibacy as a basis of warriorhood rather than priesthood. He not only forbade his warriors to marry but also to have sexual relations at all with women until he gave them permission to do so upon retirement from active military service. Shaka sometimes deliberately tested his warriors stripping them naked in drill formations and then exposing them to the sight of naked maidens dancing before them. Those who showed signs of sexual excitement were ruthlessly punished. It is fairly certain that Shaka the Zulu had never read Plato’s Republic. Nor did he believe in equality between the sexes in spite of his fanatical devotion to his mother. But he did conceive of warriorhood partly in terms of sexual discipline just like Plato.

Sins of Commission One of the biases of Islamophobia in the age of globalization. These are distortions of Muslim doctrine, Muslim practice, or Muslim history—particularly distortions which cause religious hostility and intolerance. Sometimes those distortions are the result of ignorance rather than malice, but the consequences could still generate religious suspicions and antagonisms. How sexist is Islam? An important sin of commission concerns the portrayal of Muslim women in many books and films. See also Sins of Omission.

Sins of Omission Sins of omission concern fundamental facts about Islam which are left out of Western accounts of it and whose omission seriously impedes Western understanding of Islam. One serious sin of omission in Western portrayal of Islam is omitting the simple fact that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sister-religions which are closely related to each other. The three of them are what is now called ‘the Abrahamic religions’. Very few Westerners know that in some matters Islam is closer to Christianity than Judaism is; in some other matters Islam is closer to Judaism than Christianity is. In other words, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sister-religions. Like any

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three sisters, the question of which one is closer to which may vary according to which aspects of their relationship are being examined. Judaism and Islam are in some respects closer to each other than either is to Christianity. In some other respects, Islam has more in common with Christianity than Judaism has. What Christianity has in common with Judaism is more familiar to Westerners. The Western rhetoric is full of references to ‘the Judeo-Christian’ tradition. The real sin of omission is to forget mentioning that the Abrahamic legacy has three legs instead of just two. The missing leg in Western accounts has been the leg of Islam. See also Sins of Commission.

Social Engineering It was derived from the belief of some sociologists that the social sciences could be applied sciences as well as academic disciplines. It followed, therefore, that a social technology, designed to improve human institutions, could be developed. See also Cultural Engineering.

Social Insularity Was the retreat of the sun in winter in Europe a contributing factor to the birth of European racism? Winter in the Northern hemisphere helped to develop the culture of privacy, and privacy, in turn, helped to develop collective insularity. Winter as a cold season created the need for walls of shelter. Keeping the ecological elements out created walled enclosures. It was not just the cold weather which was kept out. It was also neighbors. Social insularity was struggling to be born. See also Sexual Possessiveness.

Social Violence This concerns issues of conscious societal implications. An assassination, a riot in protest against hunger, intercommunal strife in a given country, political insurrection, civil war, are all instances of social violence. The word ‘social’ in this instance encompasses political phenomena within individual societies. Indeed, social violence is, as a rule, highly politicized and virtually indistinguishable from political violence at the domestic level. Social violence tends to limit itself to the domestic, national dimension— tribal clashes, military coups, demonstrations against specific government policies. See also Deviant Violence.

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Socio-Literature The use of creative literature as a source of social analysis as well as the investigation of the ways in which early anti-colonial nationalists used quotations from European creative literature virtually as the functional equivalent of African proverbs.

Sociology of Knowledge Do certain ethnic groups capture the high ground in scholarship in the first phase of the postcolonial academy? Were the Luo, for instance, the vanguard of academic life in Kenya in the first postcolonial generation? This is the sociology of knowledge. See also Ideology of Knowledge.

Sovereignty of Self-Alienation Said to be effectual when the African is given the right to surrender all his rights to someone else. This is the sort of reasoning which led to the myth of negotiation between a colonial power and the African chief who was just about to be dispossessed. Solemn treaties were sometimes drawn up between Queen Victoria and tribal potentates—and the doctrine of ‘colonialism by consent’ was born.

Spatial Isolation One of the explanation of Black scientific marginality. Africa is at once the most central of the ancient continents physically and the most peripheral in terms of cultural interaction. We are in this case referring to the ancient continent of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Apart from the coastal areas, the interior of Africa had less interaction with external cultures than Europe and Asia experienced. See also Cultural Autarky, Temporal Isolation.

Strategy of Armed Liberation Exactly a year after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, the age of the full armed liberation struggle had arrived in Southern Africa as well as in the other parts of Africa. This is the most international of all strategies of decolonization in Africa. The external forces which were involved in

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different forms in this phase included the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. See also Jihad Tradition, Non-violent Political Mobilization, Warrior Tradition.

Strategic Solidarity Concerns cooperation among Third World countries in their struggle to extract concessions from the industrialized Northern world. Aspiration is to decrease the South’s dependent integration into Northern economies. The focus is either a North-South divorce, a new marriage settlement, or a new social contract between North and South. See also Organic Solidarity.

Structural Dependency Concerns the organizational aspects of political, economic, and technological imbalance. A lack of symmetry in power relations, captured in an institutional framework, lies at the heart of structural dependency. The phenomenon of multinational corporations constitutes one of the latest structures of dominance emanating from the Western world and operating elsewhere. Financial institutions, certain types of technological transfers, as well as large-scale military alliances involving major powers, are all forms of dependency structurally defined. See also Cultural Dependency.

Structure of Damnation A pillar of colonialism which used the sanctions of religious experience as part of the process of obtaining obedience and submission. The fear of God and the wrath of God could be used in the task of ‘pacifying the natives’. See also Structure of Domination.

Structure of Domination A pillar of colonialism which included the whole machinery of colonial control, ranging from the Colonial Office in London to the governor in the main city of the colony and from investors in London to the local company in an African township or African mine. The structure of domination was one of direct control. See also Structure of Damnation.

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Structural Revolution Is one that brings about major transformations within a given system without fundamentally changing either the main outlines of the system or the power relations on which the system rests. A structural revolution can entail rapid urbanization in society, important new trends in belief systems, a fast rate of industrialization and the growth of new social groups and classes, and a rapid rise in the standard of living and swift changes in the style of living, while the main outlies of the socio-political system remain relatively constant. The rapid industrialization of Japan after the Meiji Restoration is a case in point. It is true that in this period Japanese political and social institutions were changing in spite of apparent continuities. But the Japanese social system remained substantially neo-feudalistic, while the internal structural content of the system was changing rapidly with industrialization and modernization. The highly structured class system of the Japanese was transferred to the work relations of the factory. In some ways feudalism in Japan was modernized without being abandoned during the Meiji period. See also Systemic Revolution.

Subjectivism Current issues are sometimes issues in which people are still emotionally involved. They may have taken positions in favor of this or that party in a dispute, or in favor of a controversial interpretation of a particular event, or in defense of a political leader or political ideology. Such partisan positions could interfere with a scholar’s capacity to be objective on a given issue. This is the problem of subjectivism.

Sub-imperialism Is the exercise of undue manipulative power by one Third World country upon another. At its most blatant it could take the form of actual military intervention.

Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism A dimension of Pan-Africanism that limits itself to the unity of Black people or Black countries South of the Sahara. See also Global Pan-­ Africanism, Trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism, Trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism, West Hemispheric Pan-Africanism.

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Submissive Fatalism Obedience to those who exercise authority provided they do not violate Islamic principles. It is a Hobbesian concept in Islamic statecraft—encouraging obedience to those who exercise authority, provided they do no violence to the principles that Muhammed advocated, and God willed. Submissive fatalism might encourage acceptance and peaceful conformity; it also represents a readiness to accept the inevitable. See also Defensive Fanaticism.

Submissive Martyrdom A form of martyrdom in which one accepts what comes, resigns oneself to it, even bravely, without resistance. Sometimes you can do it submissively as a mission. Some have interpreted Jesus’ passion as a form of submission. That Jesus carried the cross on which He was to be crucified and that He did not resist. See also Combative Martyrdom.

Super-Natural Hero Comes into play when we have heroes whom we have never witnessed on earth—like gods at war or angels at prayer. Super-natural heroes are products of either the imagination or faith. Grown-ups draw their supernatural mainly from religion; children mainly from the imagination. See also Natural Hero, Trans-Natural Hero.

Symmetrical Acculturation Arises when a dominant group not only passes on its culture to the groups it dominates but is also significantly receptive to the cultural influence of its subjects or its captives. Symmetrical acculturation is arrived at when cultural transmission is a two-way affair. Complete symmetry is impossible to achieve and, even if achieved, would be impossible to measure. What needs to be approximated is a significant reciprocal influence. See also Asymmetrical Acculturation.

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Symmetrical Miscegenation A situation where two racial communities inter-marry and produce a comparable number of both men and women who crossed the racial boundary to seek partners from another community. In very isolated circumstances, and even there with some qualifications, such symmetry is conceivable. It may be conceivable in a situation where one race or ethnic group is patrilineal and the other is matrilineal. See also Asymmetrical Miscegenation.

Systemic Revolution Entails a renunciation of old institutions and a transformation of values. Examples include the Russian, Chinese, Egyptian, and Cuban revolutions. See also Structural Revolution.

Techno-Cultural Gap A profound incongruence lay at the heart of the imported educational system in Africa. The wrong Western values were being provided as an infrastructure for the set of Western skills introduced. It is a gap between norms and techniques. A major reason for the gap in the field of education lies in the paradoxical role of the missionary school in Africa. On the one hand, the missionary school was supposed to be the principal medium for the promotion of ‘modern civilization’ in Africa. On the other hand, Western civilization on its home ground in Europe had been going increasingly secular. In the colonies the missionaries were propagating a concept of Christian religiosity which was already anachronistic in the West.

Technic of Simultaneity Are economic modernization and development the real foundations of political development? Certainly, in the 1990s the debate had warmed up as to whether economic liberalization should precede political liberalization. Mikhail Gorbachev is perceived as having attempted the technic of simultaneity—the pursuit of both political and economic liberalization at the same time. The result was catastrophe for the Soviet Union—the country disintegrated into different republics and economic descent. The People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, is seen as having rejected the technique of simultaneity in liberalization—having decided to pursue

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only economic liberalization and without its political equivalent. The result has been one of the most spectacular growth rates of the last years of the twentieth century.

Technocratic Approach Europeans have helped to change the world through technology and science—a technocratic approach to cultural universalism. See also Theocratic Approach.

Technological Amnesia Africa’s educational policies should seek to overcome technological amnesia. There is a need for including Africa’s technological achievements in syllabuses. Few African children outside Ethiopia know of the sunken churches of Lalibela as an engineering achievement. Great Zimbabwe is a standing achievement of brick without mortar. As for the pyramids, was not ancient Egypt an African civilization? Christopher Columbus or Bakari II of ancient Mali? Colonial schools in Africa induced amnesia in order to induce a deep-seated technological inferiority complex. Colonialism initially discouraged native innovation and encouraged imitation—partly as a law-and-order strategy. In colonial Africa universities did not begin until after World War II. But even at university level technological amnesia has persisted—alas!

Technological Gradualism Tanzania under Julius Nyerere’s leadership has been attempting a combination of ideological revolution and technological gradualism. In ideology the commitment is to the creation and maintenance of a revolutionary egalitarian ethic, seeking to create social accord and economic development without creating social and economic inequalities. Combined with this revolutionary egalitarian quest is a belief in technological pragmatism, a reluctance to undergo rapid technological change in spite of the commitment to rapid social transformation. To some extent, it is almost as if Nyerere was aware that the relationship between technology and egalitarianism is a tense one. The most egalitarian African societies have been the least technologically advanced.

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Technological Self-Determination The search for appropriate technology and cultural parity is a quest for liberation. It should be seen as part of a global struggle for technological self-determination, permitting each society to resume control over its own technological destiny. But more fundamental than them all is the quest for a truly equitable interdependence among all countries, combining the dignity of national distinctiveness, the imperative of individual fulfillment, and the fairness of genuine international reciprocity.

Temporal Isolation A possible explanation for Black scientific marginality. This is the sense of being seriously cut off from important aspects of one’s own past. In the absence of the written word in many African cultures, many tentative innovations or experiments of a previous era were not transmitted to the next generation. The trouble with an oral tradition is that it transmits mainly what is accepted and respected. It does not normally transmit heresies of the previous age. A single African individual in the nineteenth century who might have put across important new ideas among the Nuer of the Sudan, but whose ideas were rejected by the consensus of his own age, is unlikely to be remembered today. Oral tradition is a tradition of conformity, rather than heresy; a transmission of consensus rather than dissidence. See also Cultural Autarky, Spatial Isolation.

Temporal Socialization Absence of real winter in Africa produced a weak culture of planning. African cultures are slow in ‘making hay while the sun shines’. The winter-­ gap in Africa resulted in a weak culture of shelter, underdeveloped textiles, and inadequate exploitation of fire. ‘Abundance is the mother of inertia.’ Hence Africa’s weak culture of anticipation. How do we develop a culture fully subject to the discipline of the clock? African schools are regimented by the clock but the African workplace is not.

Territorial Cannibalism Europe’s appetite for foreign territory was sublimated in Hitler’s appetite for European territory. A new territorial cannibalism was unleashed upon Europe by the very capital (Berlin) which had once presided over the

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partition of Africa way back in 1885. Hitler taught Europe to eat itself— just as Europe had once territorially eaten Africa. This kind of annexation was beginning to lose legitimacy in Africa precisely because of the lessons of imperial annexation within the European continent itself. The Golden Rule was beginning to assert itself in the domain of European imperialism: ‘Do not do unto others that you would not that others do unto you!’

Territorial Imperative The era of colonization, when Africans lost their lands as well as their labor. Almost the entire continent fell under European imperial rule. Europeans created agricultural economies in Africa almost entirely designed to serve the appetites of Europe. See also Extractive Imperative, Labor Imperative, Market Imperative, Territorial Imperative.

Territorial Reparation One of the earliest forms of reparation demanded by Black people. This demand was quite understandable since land, in addition to freedom, was among the first fundamental dispossessions that enslaved Africans had to suffer. See also Comprehensive Reparation, Cultural Reparation, Monetary Reparation.

Terror of Gunfire It lay in the superior military technology which Western man brought with him as an argument in the quest for allegiance and annexation in the African continent. Gunfire was demonstrated to those as yet unconvinced of their own vulnerability. See also Terror of Hellfire.

Terror of Hellfire In the colonies the fear of hellfire accompanied the dread of gunfire. The fear of hellfire was in part a ritualization of terror. The use of supernatural symbols under European Christianity consolidated the readiness to submit which had been exacted by the new military technology. In the case of the Catholic Church, the threat of excommunication was an additional invocation of hellfire as an accompaniment to gunfire. See also Terror of Gunfire.

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Theocratic Approach The Semitic peoples (especially Jews and Arabs) helped to change the world through religion—a theocratic approach to cultural universalism. See also Technocratic Approach.

Tradition of Radical Christianity Many African radical nationalists such as Nkrumah and Nyerere were relatively secular figures arising out of a religious womb. But Christianity in Africa produced not only secular African rebels; it also produced African religious rebels against the Euro-Christian order. In other words, the Christian contribution to decolonization was not limited to secular products of missionary schools (like Nkrumah and Robert Mugabe); some mainstream Western churches also joined the struggle against racism and imperialism. Africa’s first Nobel laureates were devout Christians in revolt against racism: Chief Albert Luthuli and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. See also Jihad Tradition, Non-violent Political Mobilization, Strategy of Armed Liberation, Warrior Tradition.

Trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism It encompasses the peoples of the Black Diaspora in the Americas as well as of the African continent. Another sub-category of this level of Pan-­ Africanism encompasses a solidarity between people in North Africa and Black people in sub-Saharan Africa and across the Atlantic. See also Global Pan-Africanism, Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism, Trans-Saharan Pan-­ Africanism, West Hemispheric Pan-Africanism.

Trans-Class Man A concept that emerged out of dissatisfaction with the theories of class analysis which have tended to underestimate possibilities of dual or multiple class affiliation in the same person. It means a person who is compelled to belong to more than one class in a situation of great structural fluidity.

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Trans-Ethnic Constituencies Can be used interchangeably with the concept of electoral polygamy in two senses: one metaphorical and the other literal. In the metaphorical sense, ‘electoral polygamy’ would be the idea of marrying each member of parliament to four constituencies, with the concomitant implications for loyalty and obligations which such an arrangement would have. However, it can also be used in a literal sense, suggesting that a future reform of a similar kind could encourage inter-regional political marriage as a way of consolidating political support. How could members of parliament enjoy the trust and confidence of the nation broadly rather than merely that of their ethnic compatriots? The solution was not proportional representation but trans-ethnic constituencies. See also Electoral Polygamy.

Transformative Violence Helps bring about sudden or rapid systemic change. It is this function which has produced a tendency to equate political or social violence with revolution. See also Integrative Violence.

Transnational Nationalism The full internationalization of modern nationalism did not occur until the ideas and sensitivities manifested themselves in Asia and Africa under colonial domination. In the Arab world nationalism was often combined with transnational Pan-Arabism. In Africa the anti-colonial struggle gave birth to both localized nationalisms and Pan-African movements. For a while Japanese nationalism attempted to rally the rest of Asia with slogans like ‘Co-Prosperity’ and demands like ‘Quit Asia’ addressed to Western imperialists and colonizers. Pan-movements are usually a case of transnational nationalism. See also Imperial Nationalism.

Transnational Universalism While the first industrial revolution of capitalist production and the Christian reformation became allied to the new forces of nationalism in the new Western world, the third industrial revolution and any Islamic reformation will be increasingly hostile to the insularity of nationalism of the state. The new technology can give Islam a chance to realize its

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original aim of transnational universalism. In other words, Islam and the information revolution will be allies in breaking down the barriers of competing national sovereignties. The Internet and the World Wide Web could in part become the Islamic super highway.

Trans-Natural Hero Depending upon their age, children have heroes who traverse more than one branch of nature. The imaginary hero can combine the characteristic of a cat with the attributes of a human being. A lion who speaks fluent Kikuyu language or a bull in command of Maasai proverbs. Of course Lions do not speak human languages, nor do human beings pounce like lions on their prey. But both lions and humans exist. What Disney and children’s imaginations do is to crisscross the attributes. All this is trans-­ natural. See also Natural Hero, Super-Natural Hero.

Trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism It extends solidarity to those who share the African continent across the Sahara Desert—the Arabs and the Berbers of the North. This form of Pan-­ Africanism emphasizes the quality of having been jointly colonized. See also Global Pan-Africanism, Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism, Trans-­ Atlantic Pan-Africanism, West Hemispheric Pan-Africanism.

Triad of Acculturation Concerns three civilizations—Western civilization, Islamic civilization, and the inter-related cultures and civilizations of Africa South of the Sahara. Africa is religiously heterogeneous. The continent has not only its own indigenous traditional religions; it has also accommodated different versions of both Christianity and Islam.

Triad of Allegiance In Africa there is a good deal of ideological fluidity, partly because of the impact of European idea. Government and the intelligentsia are, on the one hand, sensitive to the need for authenticity and autonomy and, on the other, responsive to the spell of Western-derived systems of thought—specially liberal capitalism, socialism, and nationalism. Underlying the

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ideological fluidity in Africa and the Arab world are the dynamics of three forms of loyalty—to the individual, to the group, and to the nation. Royalty to the individual created predisposition toward liberalism. Loyalty to the nation can sometimes become a form of nationalism. As for group loyalties, these range from ethnicity to class solidarity. The African response to European colonialism included elements of all three forms of loyalty— individual loyalty, group solidarity, and national allegiance. Particularly potent as a force against colonialism was African nationalism.

Triad of Location At the structural level there was a trinity as the basis of Africa’s geography—the Tropic of Capricorn, the Equator, and the Tropic of Cancer. Of all the continents of the world only Africa was central enough to be traversed by all the three basic latitudes. The Equator almost cut the African continent into two halves—such was the centrality of Africa in the global scheme of things.

Triad of Pigmentation A triad which is concerned with issues of race and color in relations between Europe, Africa, and the Arab world. Technically the Arabs are part of the Semitic races, the Europeans part of the Caucasian, and the Black Africans are deemed to be Negroid. Three ‘racial stocks’ seem to be involved in the triangle of Africa, Europe, and the Arab world.

Triad of Stratification Issues of race and racism in our world would have included questions of rank and the pecking order. In the modern period partly because of their technological power, the Europeans have successfully managed to lay claim to the highest positions in the international ranking. Africans on the whole have usually been condemned to the bottom position—while the Arabs have sometimes been almost White in the privileges they have enjoyed and sometimes been almost Black in the exploitation and humiliation to which they have been subjected. But stratification is not simply a question of race; it is more often a question of class and status.

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Tribal Conservatism The manifestation of the tribal tradition in African political culture is either through the oral tradition or through the political behavior of African societies. The preference for kinship solidarity as against ideology has manifested itself behaviorally in many African elections. The preference of the electorate in many countries in Africa for concrete kinship solidarity as against ideology as well as a preference for shared sacred ancestry as against commitment to radical change is clear. The conservative tradition in Africa is thus manifested and expressed behaviorally, rather than in written texts. Because African tribal conservatism is captured cumulatively, it is almost by definition collectivist. It is a body of thought resting on a cumulative consensus, linking the past with the present and the future.

Tribal Interdependence Tanzania has idealized the concept of self-reliance. Perhaps self-reliance deserves to be so idealized, provided the idea does not drift into one of autarky and isolation. But, from the point of view of the integrative process, there is little worse than tribal self-reliance. When each tribe is called upon to depend only on itself for its needs, the society is not allowing itself the opportunity to foster tribal interdependence, which is achieved when groups from one community find that they have to exchange with groups from another.

Tribal Welfare System Within the kinship system, Africans know a level of human compassion and human obligation which is not even comprehensible to the Western mind. The idea of a tribal welfare system, within which voluntary service and hospitality are extended to the indigent, the disabled, and the aged, provides a striking model of the instinct of social fellowship in man. We Africans all know of distant relatives we support, distant cousins who have a share in our salaries, and distant kinsmen who call upon us as guests in our houses for days, sometimes for weeks. And yet it seems as if the very fact that we have a highly developed sense of responsibility toward our own kinsmen, a much more developed sense than is discernible in Western society, has resulted in diluting our capacity to empathize with those that are much further from us.

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Universal Nation The US has now become the most diverse nation in the world. The composition of the population of the US includes people who have come from every country in the world, every corner of planet earth. The American population now has absorbed almost every race on earth and is on its way toward incorporating members of almost every tribe. The US has become the Universal Nation by being multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-­religious, and multi-ideological.

Universal Rationalism It is important to note the differences between the Westernization of Africa and the modernization of Japan after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Japan’s original modernization involved considerable selectivity on the part of the Japanese themselves. The whole purpose of selective Japanese Westernization was to protect Japan against the West, rather than merely to submit to Western cultural attractions. The emphasis in Japan was therefore on the technics and technologies of the West rather than on literary and verbal culture. Japan’s technological Westernization was designed to reduce the danger of other forms of cultural dependency. See also Indigenous Authenticity.

Universalist Muslim In the American context, Universalist Muslims belong to mainstream Islamic denominations, especially Sunni and Shia. Paradoxically such universalist Muslims include the sons of the late Elijah Muhammad, the co-­ founder of the Nation of Islam, the ultimate nationalist denomination. See also Nationalist Muslim.

Unsettled Values The problem in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s (and perhaps even today) was not of entrenched values, but of unsettled values still seeking a solid foundation to rest on. Where values are entrenched as in Europe and America, student power maybe be used in demonstrations. But in Africa where values are unsettled student power should be utilized not in demonstration but in debate. Major social issues should be subjected to critical

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examination. If we are looking for a new political culture, we must be sure that every aspect of the new culture is examined before it is adopted and internalized. A search for new values must of necessity include a readiness to ask questions about every proposition. See also Entrenched Values.

Urban Bias Attracts reporters to cities and urban centers—and pays far less attention to rural folks. It is one of the biases of the media in the age of globalization. See also Elite Bias, Exotic Bias, Gender Bias, Generation Bias, Negativism Bias, Racial Bias.

Vertical Brain Drain The exodus of skills from Africa to the technologically advanced world of North America, Western Europe, or Japan. The Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in New York hired in 2006 an Ethiopian professor from a Japanese university. Seifudein Adem was a case of Vertical Brain Drain—Oriental. Now that the Ethiopian scholar is hired at this American university, he is a case of Vertical Brain Drain—Occidental. See also Horizontal Brain Drain.

Vertical Cultural Integration A mobility of African values into world culture as well as an African receptivity to the influences of the global heritage. See also Horizontal Cultural Integration.

Vertical Miscegenation The production of a child of mixed race. According to one school of thought, Barack Obama as US presidential candidate, was fortunate that it was his mother and not his wife who was White. The American electorate was probably less ready to accept a Black president with a White wife than a Black president with a White mother. See also Horizontal Miscegenation.

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Vertical Nuclear Proliferation Involves greater sophistication and diversification of nuclear options and nuclear technology in the arsenals of the great powers. The same nuclear powers increase and diversify their destructive capabilities. See also Horizontal Nuclear Proliferation.

Vertical Social Mobility Is the degree to which indigenous slavery was the readiest to permit the assimilation of slaves into ‘the extended family’ of their masters. Of the three slave systems (Western Trans-Atlantic, Islamic, and Indigenous), the Islamic tradition displayed the most astonishing capacity of upward/vertical social mobility. Slaves under Islam were capable of becoming sultans— not just briefly but for long dynastic periods. In other words, in terms of vertical social mobility to the pinnacles of control and the commanding heights of the economy, it was Islamic civilization which opened the doors to power to some of its slaves. Indigenous cultures opened the doors of shared identity; Islam opened the doors of shared empowerment. See also Horizontal Assimilation.

Warrior Tradition The Mau Mau freedom fighters challenged the British as late as the 1950s were based on Kikuyu values of warriorhood and related beliefs, with all the symbolism of indigenous combat cultures, including elaborate oathing ceremonies. A similar kind of primordial symbolism was discernible in the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, including in Zimbabwe. See also Jihad Tradition, Non-violent Political Mobilization, Strategy of Armed Liberation, Tradition of Radical Christianity.

West Hemispheric Pan-Africanism Encompasses West Indian Black Americans, Black Brazilians, and other Black people of the Western hemisphere and finds solidarity in having been jointly enslaved. See also Global Pan-Africanism, Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism, Trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism, West Hemispheric Pan-Africanism.

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Western Language Languages whose native speakers are located predominantly in Europe and the Americas and their presence in Africa is linked directly to the colonial experience. In this category, we may include English, French, Portuguese, Italian, and (less widely spread) Spanish and German. Western languages are spoken primarily as additional languages throughout the continent but they are weakest in North Africa as well as in East Africa where Afro-Islamic languages (as in Somalia and Tanzania), and Afro-­ ethnic languages (Amharic in Ethiopia) prevail. See also Afro-Ethnic Language, Afro-Islamic Language, Afro-Western Language.

PART V

Semi-autobiographical Data

CHAPTER 10

Mazrui’s Interactions with Others

The African leader who influenced me most positively was Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, although I met him face-to-face only a couple of times. I had far less personal contact with him than I have had with at least a dozen other African leaders. —Ali Mazrui (2008: 2)

Sani Abacha (1943–1998) President of Nigeria, 1993–1998 When I visited Nigeria in September 1994 as a guest of the Yakubu Gowon Center for the Promotion of National Unity and International Cooperation, I was granted an audience by the Head of State, General Sani Abacha in Abuja, Nigeria. General Yakubu Gowon, himself a former Head of State of Nigeria, was the one who took me to General Abacha and introduced me to his fellow General. When Chief Moshood Abiola was imprisoned, I came to see President Sani Abacha and appealed for Chief Abiola’s release. General Abacha was gracious to me but unbending in his attitude toward Abiola. When General Obasanjo was detained, I knew better than to expect much clemency from General Abacha. Instead, I contributed chapters to two books titled Letters to General Olusegun Obasanjo. I knew about the General’s abiding interest in the issue of leadership in Africa. In the first book of Letters to General Obasanjo, I tackled precisely that issue of leadership. In the second book, which was addressed © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0_10

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to General Obasanjo, I turned to the role of the African university in comparative perspective. Chief Moshood Abiola (1937–1998) Nigerian Businessman and Politician I last spoke to Chief Abiola on the phone in 1994. He was in the US briefly and called my home. My wife referred him to Lincoln University where I was. Chief Abiola said, ‘I am going to Nigeria to assume the Presidency.’ I exclaimed, ‘What’s happening, Chief?’ He replied, ‘I will see you at the Inauguration!’ He called a rally to claim the Presidency when he got to Nigeria. The rest is history. Omar al-Bashir (1944– President of Sudan, 1989–2019 I was delighted that President al-Bashir [of Sudan] gave me [in 1989] an extended audience in October. Actually, I had two separate sessions with him, covering a wide range of subjects about Sudan. I also added my voice to the appeals both for peace and for the release or fair trial of political prisoners, including the former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. The president gave me a patient and gracious hearing. Some detainees were later released, but other forms of repression persisted. I also had the opportunity to discuss the second Sudanese civil war (which started in 1983) with President al-Bashir. Like other Sudanese governments in the first half-century of independence, General al-Bashir was still stubbornly protective of the territorial integrity of his country. It was not until 2005 that the solution of a referendum in the South could at last be accepted by Khartoum. Hasan Abdullah al-Turabi (1932–2016) Sudan’s Islamist Political Leader In January 2006, I was in Khartoum to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Sudan’s independence. On one evening, in Khartoum, I was the personal dinner guest of Dr. Hasan Abdullah al-Turabi, the controversial but distinguished philosopher-activist of Sudanese politics. He had been in and out of jail, as well as in and out of government and parliament. Over the years, he has been closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. As scholars, he and I exchanged gifts of books and discussed both African politics and Islam in world affairs. Sheikh Sultan Bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi (1939– Ruler of Sharjah, 1972– My visit to the UAE [in 1992] was less of a pilgrimage since I had been there before. But I got more media coverage in the UAE than in Oman [in the same year] and was entertained to lunch by the Emir of Sharjah,

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His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammad Al-Qasimi, Member of the UAE Supreme Council. Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) American Boxer and Civil Rights Activist [I spent] about six or seven hours [in 1992 in Philadelphia] in the company of the most exciting boxer of all time. Since Muhammad Ali was one of instant recognition, we attracted a lot of attention in the streets of Philadelphia and at the railway station. On one occasion in the hotel lobby, I was standing alone with the great boxer. Other hotel guests assumed that I was either Ali’s uncle or secretary or agent or bodyguard! They came to me to ask for permission to be photographed with Ali. I consulted Ali— and then I gave permission with all the authority of Ali’s uncle or agent! Hundreds of photographs were taken of Ali and with Ali that evening! Idi Amin (1925–2003) President of Uganda, 1971–1979. President (Idi) Amin and I were sitting together on a couch late in 1971 when I quietly raised the issue of religion. ‘Is it true, General, that you intend to bring up two of your children as Roman Catholics and prepare them for the priesthood?’ I asked. The news had been announced publicly by Amin’s Chief Justice at the time, Justice Kiwanuka, who was himself a Roman Catholic. When I raised the issue with General Amin a few days after the announcement, my voice must have betrayed some surprise. It was as difficult to imagine a relatively devout Muslim committing himself to bring up a child of his as a Roman Catholic as it would have been to hear a Roman Catholic planning to have his eldest son converted to Islam and trained as a mullah. General Amin turned to look at me and began saying rather defensively, ‘It was the Chief Justice …!’ He never finished the sentence. He suddenly remembered that we were not alone. There were some Roman Catholic citizens within hearing distance in the same room. The General lowered his voice further and said: ‘We shall talk about this some other time.’ There was another irony in my relationship with Idi Amin. Precisely by his being a brutal dictator, he changed my life more fundamentally than did any other African leader. When I fell out of favor with him, my life was at risk. Idi Amin forced me to leave Africa for the US. This semi-exile was virtually for the rest of my life, though there were continuing links with different African countries. Sometimes evil has a bigger impact on its victims than goodness has on it beneficiaries. Kofi Annan (1938–2018) Secretary-General of the UN, 1997–2006.

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In 2004 I was a guest of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a private lunch at the UN and then participated under his Chairmanship on a panel on ‘Who is Afraid of Human Rights?’ [Professor Mazrui is a wonderful illustration of how Africa thrives as a complex and fascinating place. His works in developing the concepts of ‘Global Africa’ and ‘Africa’s triple heritage’ have not only helped reshape the perception of Africa by the rest of the world but among Africans themselves. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN, July 2000.] Eleazar Emeka Anyaoku (1933– Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations (1990–2000) I was on a flight from Paris to Dakar in May 1992 when the Secretary-­ General of the Commonwealth Chief Eleazar Emeka Anyaoku left his seat to come to mine. Basically he came to introduce himself. I was delighted to shake his hand at last. In the course of the flight, I reciprocated the courtesy and visited his airplane seat to chat with him. Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) Chairman of Palestinian Liberation Organization, 1969–2004. I met Yasir Arafat in 1992 when we were both attending a summit meeting of African leaders in Dakar, Senegal. To many intellectuals from developing countries (including myself), Yasir Arafat was a freedom fighter and a hero. He and his people were fighting a regional superpower (Israel) and a global superpower (the US) simultaneously and against all odds. My brief conversation with Yasir Arafat in Dakar was precisely on this subject of comparative reparations for past injustices. I raised the question of whether the State of Israel and the Jewish people would one day find the political and moral will to pay reparations to the Palestinian people for lost territory and pained displacement—in the same spirit in which the Jewish people received compensation from the Germans. I raised the scenario half in jest since it seemed so improbable. But Yasir Arafat did not laugh or smile. He responded seriously: ‘The best compensation for Palestinians is land, land, land—and our freedom.’ It was difficult to quarrel with such a scale of priorities. Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996) President of Nigeria, 1960–1966 The first of all Nigerian presidents was Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik). In 1994, he was ninety years old—and yet strong enough to travel from Nigeria to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania for one of his son’s graduation. Since Lincoln University was also Zik’s alma mater, the University decided to honor him not only with an honorary degree but also with a colloquium about his works and contributions to Nigeria and the world. I was deeply flattered when President Niara Sudarkasa of Lincoln University invited me

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to be the keynote speaker on ‘Zik of Africa, Zik in History’. The old man was in attendance throughout the whole-day colloquium. What is more, he was alert. I was privileged to have participated in that celebration. Ibrahim Babangida (1941– President of Nigeria, 1985–1993. In 1985, I was introduced to the new President and Commander-in-­ Chief of Nigeria, Major-General Ibrahim Babangida. He was very gracious when we met. I was particularly impressed by the president’s taste in political literature—since he confessed to having read some of my works! We wish him wisdom and effectiveness as he confronts Nigeria’s formidable problems. I am not sure how much of my TV series President Babangida has seen. [Another occasion.] What do you do when you are invited to pay homage to a Head of State whom you admire but at a time when his government is in a bitter dispute with the entire academic community of his country? That is the dilemma I faced when I was invited to a special ceremony in Abuja, Nigeria, intended to pay tribute to President Ibrahim Babangida in August 1992. I wrote back to say that while I greatly admired many of the tough decisions which President Babangida had to make since he became Head of State, it would not be appropriate for me to participate in a special event to pay tribute to him at a time when his government was virtually at war with the academic community in Nigeria. I did hope that President Babangida would understand. Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) Secretary-General of the UN, 1992–1996. It was very pleasant to meet Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali [in Egypt] then a minister in the Egyptian cabinet—but previously an academic. (I personally saw Boutros-Ghali on other occasions abroad before President Anwar Sadat appointed him a minister of foreign affairs and took him on that momentous journey to Jerusalem.) I was so pleased that in 1991 an African—Boutros Boutros-Ghali—was elected Secretary-General of the UN. As fellow academic Africanists, Boutros-Ghali and I had known each other since the 1960s. And when I was doing my television series, ‘The Africans’, in the 1980s, Boutros-Ghali gave me an extensive interview as Egypt’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. It was not until the summit meeting in Senegal of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1992 that I was able to congratulate Boutros-­ Ghali personally on his election as UN Secretary-General. I also congratulated him on looking so young when he was some ten years older than me. He put his finger vertically on his mouth to command that I kept his secret!! We both laughed! Lakhdar Brahimi (1934–

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Foreign Minister of Algeria, 1991–1993 In 1992, on a flight from Paris to Dakar, Senegal, I sat next to the Foreign Minister of Algeria. Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi was going to Dakar to represent his Head of State at the twenty-eighth annual summit conference of the OAU. Two days later, I extended to Mr. Brahimi within the large hall of the summit meeting my hand of condolences. His president had just been assassinated back home in Algeria. Gro Harlem Brundtland (1939– Prime Minister of Norway, 1981, 1986–1989, 1990–1996 In December 1991, I was privileged to meet the Prime Minister of Norway, Ms. Gro Harlem Brundtland. Although diplomatic relations between Norway and Kenya were indeed broken, she emphasized to me that it was Nairobi which had decided on the diplomatic break. Norway believes in a democratic Kenya, she said, not in isolating Kenya. President Daniel arap Moi had just capitulated to international and domestic pressures—and accepted the principle of multiparty politics. Horace Campbell (1945– American Academic [I want to salute the courage and humanism of Ali Mazrui. By humanism, I mean the philosophical and ethical stance that he took which emphasized the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively. Importantly, this humanism of Mazrui was based on the dignity of all human beings regardless of race, religion, region, sexuality, or gender. The humanism of Mazrui was linked to the quest for reparative justice, peace, self-determination, the rights of women, secularism, and prosperity for all. See Adem et al. (2016: 255).] Frederick Chiluba (1943– President of Zambia, 1991–2002 When I was at the Summit Meeting of the OAU in Dakar, Senegal, in June 1992, I was privileged to be introduced to the new President of Zambia, Frederick Chiluba. Within a year he had learnt a lot. One lesson for democracy was not only to be a good loser but also to be a gracious winner. At first Chiluba’s party was unable to grasp that point. The party seemed determined to humiliate former President Kenneth Kaunda. This seemed to be the surest way of sending a message to all presidential incumbents in the rest of Africa not to make ‘the same mistake as that made by Kenneth Kaunda’—that is, give in to democratic pressures! Bill Clinton (1946– President of the US, 1993–2001

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Under Bill Clinton’s administration, the US military at last had recognized Muslim Imams. And the president received at the White House leaders of the American Arab community to discuss issues of concern to Arabs and Muslims. I noted all this in my speech at the conference organized by the American Muslim Council. I wonder if that is why I was subsequently invited to President Clinton’s Inauguration on January 20, 1997. Was there a cause and effect relationship? Who knows? Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) Governor of New York, 1983–1994 When Governor Mario Cuomo of New York telephoned my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1989 to persuade me to accept the Albert Schweitzer Chair at SUNY-Binghamton, Maureen Kiberu picked up the phone. When the Governor introduced himself, Maureen laughed and said, ‘Hello Kim!’ She was sure the whole thing was a joke by my youngest son. When the telephone receiver was at last passed on to me, the Governor asked: ‘Who is this Kim who is mistaken for a Governor?’ I replied, ‘Kim is my youngest born who is capable of introducing himself on the phone as the Maharajah of Jaipur.’ The Governor laughed—and confessed that he had a similar offspring. Then Cuomo proceeded to persuade me … If this man, Cuomo, one day becomes president of the US, I for one will not be surprised! He is an eloquent persuader on the telephone, for one thing! I greatly appreciated Governor Cuomo’s initiative. The national press heard about the governor’s phone call, and several newspapers and magazines carried the story. Richard M. Daley (1942– Mayor of Chicago, Illinois (1989–2011) [During the course of your long and distinguished career, (Ali Mazrui) have worked tirelessly to promote a greater understanding of international political relations and focused on the importance of the African experience. Through your prolific writings and accomplished scholarship, you continue to offer new insight and perspective on global peace and political change in countries throughout the world. I commend your hard work and knowledge of international relations … (From a letter dated February 23, 2001, and addressed to Mazrui)] Ahmet Davutoglu (1959– Prime Minister of Turkey (2014–2016) [Ali Mazrui’s efforts towards overcoming current problems, especially on the African continent, will always be remembered with appreciation. Mazrui was a personality who prospered our intellectual world with his ideas and

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works, and who had a high sensitivity towards resolving the problems encountered by humanity today. See a tribute to Ali Mazrui by Ahmet Davutoglu in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 271).] John Dean (1938– White House Counsel in the Nixon Administration, 1970–1973 On this issue of leadership and moral considerations, I should mention John Dean of Watergate fame who once in 1977 came to visit me about the theme of flawed leaders. John Dean wanted to discuss ‘Comparative Presidential Flaws’. Why me? Well, mainly because he knew I had been in one way or another associated with Idi Amin. Idi Amin had been a dictator in Uganda in the 1970s and was one of the main reasons why I had to leave Africa and move to the US. Why was John Dean interested in flawed leaders? Well, not just for curiosity. I think he was doing radio programs at that time on flawed leaders in a comparative dimension. The series of radio broadcast was going to be launched nationwide in January 1978, bearing the name ‘The Right to Know’. Presumably, when he decided to expose President Nixon’s activities, it was because John Dean believed that the American people had a right to know. Dean was interested in Mazrui’s experience with President Amin; Mazrui was in turn curious about Dean’s relationship with President Nixon. Cheikh Anta Diop (1923–1986) Senegalese Historian Cheikh Anta Diop was particularly insightful in an interview I had with him in Dakar in March 1979. He argued that World War I had eliminated Germany from Africa but reinforced a basic Eurafrican partnership as France and Britain triumphed together. But World War II for a while seemed to be on the verge of destroying the myth of invincibility of both Britain (after Dunkirk) and France (after the collapse of Magenot line). Cheikh Anta Diop and I met either in Africa or in France almost every year in the last ten years of his life. He was a great renaissance figure—philosopher, historian, physicist, and general man of letters. Cheikh Anta had an enormous capacity to make us proud of our past. On one occasion, after a lecture at the University of Kinshasa, the students in the audience were so ecstatic in proud enthusiasm that they carried Cheikh Anta (a big man) shoulder high!! Sheer exhilaration! One of my deepest regrets of 1986 was that I did not call on Cheikh Anta Diop when I was in Senegal earlier in the year. I was in Dakar attending a meeting of the UNESCO Project on the Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind. Cheikh Anta did not himself attend the meeting, but

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he sent me a personal message of greetings. I sent a warm reciprocal message back. If I had known he would be dead a few weeks later, I would have made it a point to call on Cheikh Anta personally to pay my respects. Alas, a missed opportunity to say farewell to a great man! However, I must still be grateful for the fact that Cheikh Anta Diop and I met either in Africa or in France almost every year in the last ten years of his life. He was a great renaissance figure—philosopher, historian, physicist, and general man of letters. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American Pan-Africanist In 1963 I arrived in Accra as one of the young scholars invited to Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Willie Abraham to discuss the proposed project of launching an Encyclopedia Africana. Nkrumah did not last long enough in power to see the project through, but a real start has now at last been made toward that old visionary goal. The OAU has also given its blessing to the project. The baby is in the process of being born. J. Isawa Elaigwu (1948– Nigerian Academic [I have had quite a number of friends in my life but I have never met anyone as generous as Ali Mazrui. In fact, another mutual friend of ours, the late Dr. Omari Kokole, and I believed that if Ali Mazrui managed his resources by himself, he would be broke in three months. A very empathetic human being, he easily identified with the down-trodden and the less privileged. Like a typical African, he believed in the maintenance of an extended family and his wards also become members if the family. See Adem and Njogu, eds. (2018a: 70).] Elizabeth II (1926– Queen of the UK and Other Commonwealth Realms since 1952 Did you know that Queen Elizabeth II of England first became queen on Kenyan soil? This was because she was in Kenya when her father, George VI, died in February 1952. She became queen immediately. Well, this particular Kenyan, Ali Mazrui, did not meet Her Majesty until 1999! I was in London as the guest of the London School of Economics. There was no plan to introduce me to the Queen. It just so happened that she was paying an official visit to London House, where I was accommodated during my visit. Queen Elizabeth and I exchanged a few words of greetings. We referred to Kenya, where I was born and where her reign began!

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In a more official capacity, I had met her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, much earlier in my life. Richard Falk (1930– Professor-Emeritus of International Law, Princeton University [When I first met Ali, he was a brilliant product of an Oxford education with an outlook and elocution that might be associated with latter day disciples of John Stuart Mill and other liberal notables of the nineteenth century. He spoke eloquently, yet with a certain detached intellectuality. I never remember Ali being at a loss for words or ideas, but also, not in these early years, engaged socially and politically beyond his passionate commitment to maintain academic freedom, enabling the work of the mind to go forward, unimpeded along with an instinctive distaste for the sort of dictatorial ruling style that he was then encountering in Uganda. See ‘Remembering Ali Mazrui, 1933–2014,’ by Richard Falk, in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 120).] Toyin Falola (1953– African Historian [Ali Mazrui was a scholar with flamboyance and depth, but he made his exit without fanfare, a hallmark of a great leader and a true public intellectual! Ali Mazrui was larger than life! He was also the most prodigious scholar of African politics, coupled with his multiple talents as well as combined creative work in elegant prose and poetry, laced with polemics. A teacher, orator, journalist, filmmaker, and public intellectual, he was arguably the most connected and best-known African scholar for over half a century. See a tribute to Mazrui by Toyin Falola in Adem et  al., eds. (2016: 112).] Louis Farrakhan (1933– Leader of the Nation of Islam and Activist I spent five hours with Minister Louis Farrakhan at his home in Chicago, Illinois, in January 1996. This was of course after the Million Man March of October 1995. Did the Million Man March have foreign policy implications? Minister Farrakhan told us that soon after the march he had received congratulations from Muamar Qaddafy, the Head of State of Libya. Qaddafy was most impressed by the success of the march. Farrakhan also told us about his plans to tour both the Muslim world and Africa. He started the tour the following month—stirring much debate in the US when he was reported to have visited Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, which were regarded with particular hostility by the US government. When Libyan sources reported that Muammar Qaddafy had offered Louis Farrakhan one billion dollars for his movement, and Farrakhan confirmed

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this on his return to the US, there were demands in Congress that Farrakhan be compelled to register as a ‘foreign agent’. Farrakhan retorted that he would be prepared to discuss such a possibility if several members of Congress would similarly register as agents of the State of Israel. In any case, Qaddafy’s proposed one billion dollars to the Nation of Islam was for schools, clinics, and social services and not for political lobbying or political activism, Farrakhan insisted. Johan Galtung (1930– Norwegian Sociologist My 1996 lecture at George Mason University was a bonus in terms of the fee I was paid but basically a disaster in terms of the audience! A large hall had relatively few people in it. The most unexpected member of the audience was Johan Galtung, the distinguished Norwegian peace studies scholar and analyst of imperialism. It was great to see him and his Japanese wife again. Their prestige helped to fill the emptiness of the lecture hall. Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) Prime Minister of India, 1984–1989 In 1990, I was invited by the former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, to a special meeting in India to examine the problems of the twenty-first century, bringing together what the Indira Gandhi Trust regarded as some of the finest minds of the nineteenth century. I accepted the invitation. He was going to be my first high-profile host since coming to Binghamton. Within weeks Mr. Gandhi was assassinated in a bomb explosion. I saluted him and his family for their distinguished contribution to the Third World. Sonia Gandhi (1946– President of the Indian National Congress, 1998–2017 Mrs. Sonia Gandhi hosted us in New Delhi. Because 1997 was the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence, the theme for the conference was ‘Post-colonial World: Independence and Identities’. I was called upon to give the keynote address at the very beginning of the conference, under the Chairmanship of Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia. The most heated exchange in my session was between myself and Robert McNamara, former president of the World Bank and former Defense Secretary of the US. Although heated, the exchange was civilized. The differences between us were not ideological but methodological. Newt Gingrich (1943– Speaker of the US House of Representatives, 1995–1999

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I was among the people who attended the 1998 World Economic Forum, chaired one of the sessions and participated in a few of the others. At one session, I had a short but heated exchange with US House of Representative Speaker Newt Gingrich on the issue of Iraq. He had taken a militantly hawkish position about bombing Iraq into compliance over its alleged weapons of mass destruction. My verbal exchange with Speaker Gingrich was later shown on US television. Mikhail Gorbachev (1931– President of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991 In the year 2000, I did meet at long last the man who had disengaged the old Soviet Union from its military involvement in Afghanistan. In Atlanta, Georgia, I met Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union and the man who had inadvertently caused the disintegration of the USSR. What Gorbachev had done resulted in the end of the Cold War between the Warsaw Pact and the NATO. For that and for related contributions to the betterment of the Western world, Gorbachev has received many awards in the West, though he has had a hard time even winning a local election in his own country. He is not popular in Russia. In 2001, Mikhail Gorbachev received the Delta Prize for Global Understanding, awarded through the University of Georgia in the US, and financed by an endowment from Delta Airlines. I serve on the Board in Georgia, which makes the final selection for the Delta Prize. In the past we had awarded the prize to former President Jimmy Carter and his wife. Yakubu Gowon (1934– Head of State of Nigeria (1966–1975) The Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS) has many friends abroad. Among them is a former African Head of State—General Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria. This former Head of State has visited this Institute twice with his wife, the former First Lady of Nigeria, Mrs. Victoria Gowon. In 2002, they came to attend the IGCS conference on the theme, ‘Is Globalization a Dialogue of Civilizations?’ In 2003, the Gowons returned to Binghamton to join the celebration of the seventieth birthday of Ali A. Mazrui. [Author’s Note: General Gowon was also in Binghamton in 2013 for Mazrui’s eightieth birthday.] Haile Selassie I (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia, 1930–1974 I first met Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia at Makerere in the 1960s. He was in the company of Kabaka Mutesa II of Buganda. These were two kings whose sudden deaths later in history were to be steeped in mystery.

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I was privileged to meet the Emperor one more time in Addis Ababa in 1973 on the eve of the Ethiopian revolution which led to his downfall. I welcomed him to the meeting of the International Congress of African Studies which he was officially opening on that day. Of course, none of us realized that a dynasty which was thousands of years old was about to come to an end the following year. Anatoly Gromyko (1932–2017) Soviet/Russian Scientist and Diplomat The Head of the Institute of African Studies in the [former] USSR was Professor Anatoly Gromyko, the son of the Soviet president who retired in 1988. The younger Gromyko and I have met at international conferences in both Europe and Africa. A colleague at the University of Michigan who was a specialist on the Soviet Union told me in 1987 that Anatoly Gromyko had criticized me in Pravda (official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), apparently because I seemed to treat the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the US, with equal suspicion. Desmond Hoyte (1929–2002) Prime Minister of Guyana, 1984–1985; President of Guyana, 1988–1992 In 1988, the Commonwealth Caribbean celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of effective emancipation from slavery. The Republic of Guyana in South America invited me to give the keynote address in the presence of the Head of State, President Desmond Hoyte. Also in attendance was General Yakubu Gowon, the former Head of State of Nigeria. Anwar Ibrahim (1947– Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, 1993–1998 I met Sister Amina Wadud for the second time in 1994  in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we were both major speakers at a conference which was opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. In our short conversation with the prime minister of Malaysia, I congratulated him on his winning the battle of wills with the Sunday Times newspaper in London. The newspaper had accused the prime minister of having accepted a particular bribe. It was good to be back in Malaysia in 1997. I owed the visit to a triangle of sponsors including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, His Excellency Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim. On my first day on the main campus of the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, nobody had warned me in advance that I was expected to address the whole faculty! I suddenly saw myself facing the academic staff, and being introduced as a speaker! I

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did my best to improvise, but it was not a proud performance! I did much better in the question and answers session. [A towering figure in the academic world, Dr. Ali Mazrui was a dear friend whom I had the honor and privilege of knowing since the early days of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Washington, DC. I have particularly fond memories of long discussions with this intellectual giant during my fellowship at Georgetown University … I first got to know Dr. Mazrui when I was an undergraduate studying at the University of Malaya. See a tribute to Mazrui by Anwar Ibrahim in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 298).] Jesse Jackson, Sr. (1941– American Civil Rights Activist In 1986, soon after the showing of the last episode of ‘The Africans’, Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Afro-American leader, phoned me at home: ‘Ali, you did it, man! Great program! You did it, Buddy!’ He was calling from Washington and was leaving for Japan not long afterward. I was flattered by his enthusiasm—and by the fact that he found time to call in the midst of preparing for a long trip! Bon Voyage! Janet Jagan (1920–2009) President of Guyana, 1997–1999 Guyana is the only English-speaking country in South America. Guyana is also the only country in the Western hemisphere with a woman president. She is Mrs. Janet Jagan. In my capacity as Walter Rodney Professor, she received me twice in her offices in 1998 and graced one of the receptions in my honor. The Walter Rodney Chair was created by her husband, the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan, when he was president of Guyana. Dahir Rayale Kahin (1952– President of Somaliland, 2002–2010 For about two years, the Republic of Somaliland had been trying to get me to visit their part of the Somali nation. In the year 2005, I finally agreed to go, especially after the precedent set by the visit of former President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. It was finally agreed that my own visit to Hargeisa would occur in March 2006. What I had not expected was the high level of protocol accorded to my visit. I was received almost like a Head of State!! Four senior members met me on the tarmac as I descended from the plane. There was a guard of honor, consisting of women, singing praise songs. I inspected the guard of honor, accompanied by the foreign minister, a distinguished woman called Edna Adan Ismail. I was also expected to address a joint session of the two Houses of

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Parliament the next day, followed by a dinner with the Head of State, President Dahir Rayale Kahin. Maulana Karenga (1941– African American Activist and Scholar In 1993, I gave a lecture at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on ‘Afrocentricity versus Multiculturalism: Are they Rival Paradigms?’ Among those in attendance was Maulana Karenga, one of the founding fathers of the Afrocentricity movement in the US and the architect of the Kwanza festival in the African American calendar. Maulana (an African American) and I had a conversation in Kiswahili before my public lecture on Afrocentricity. We discovered that we had more in common with each other than many observers might still assume. Kenneth Kaunda (1924– President of Zambia, 1964–1991 One of the highlights of 1979 for me was my interview of President Léopold Sédar Senghor and President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. The two presidents were very gracious. In August 1988, I was in Lusaka, Zambia, to give a keynote address. President Kenneth Kaunda officiated at the opening ceremony and was the Guest of Honor. Later on at State House, the president paid me the supreme compliment of my life—he thanked God for ‘giving Africa Ali Mazrui’. The tribute was televised. Jomo Kenyatta (1891–1978) President of Kenya, 1964–1978 Although Jomo Kenyatta was my own president, I was first introduced to him by the president of a neighboring country. It was Milton Obote of Uganda who took me by the arm prior to a graduation ceremony at the University of Nairobi and introduced me to Mzee Kenyatta. I had previously been in a line at reception and shook Kenyatta’s hand, but my first real introduction was through the auspices of a Ugandan Head of State. This was in the 1960s. Kenya had already experienced more than five years of independence under Kenyatta’s rule. Once again, the thing which struck me most in Kenyatta’s presence was his eyes. Perhaps they still remain the most powerful eyes I have ever looked into. They had a commanding luster, a quality which demanded attention. I had encountered charismatic personalities before, but these were the first charismatic pair of eyes to have captured my instinctive deference. Uhuru Kenyatta (1961– President of Kenya, 2013–

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For once in May 2007, I visited Kenya without going to Mombasa! I chatted with the Mombasa extended family over the phone. The main reason why I decided to omit Mombasa in May was because I was returning to Kenya in July to preside over the annual graduation of Jomo Kenyatta University. I would go to Mombasa then. Talking of the name Kenyatta, I was waiting for my plane in the British Airways lounge in Nairobi on a Saturday when I noticed the legs of a man standing over me. Then I heard a voice saying, ‘Habari gani, Profesa?’ [Kiswahili for, how are you, Professor?] I looked up to see Jomo Kenyatta’s son, Uhuru Kenyatta, who was once again running for president in Kenya this year. He had lost the previous election. It is almost certain that Uhuru Kenyatta stands a chance of becoming president of Kenya one day. He and I later traveled together, first class, on British Airways to London. He was accompanied by one of his own sons—probably five years old. [Professor Ali Mazrui was one of the greatest scholars Kenya and the continent of Africa have ever produced. His brilliance raised him to the apex of scholarly distinction and earned him respect and following among his peers globally. His literary works, debates and relentless cultivation of global view of Africa have helped to tell the continent’s story. See a tribute by Uhuru Kenyatta in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 317).] Mwai Kibaki (1931– President of Kenya, 2002–2013 It was earlier in 1963 that I started my career at Makerere College in Uganda. Also appointed at Makerere was another young Kenyan social scientist, Mwai Kibaki. It was predicted at that time that I would become the first African full professor in political science in Eastern Africa, and Mwai Kibaki would become the first African professor of economics in our part of the continent. The prediction about me did come true—I became the first Black professor in the social sciences in Anglophone Africa. But the prediction about Mwai Kibaki did not come true. He left Makerere and entered Kenyan politics. He lived to become a minister in independent Kenya, then vice president, then leader of an opposition party, and was finally elected president of Kenya by popular vote in 2002. President Mwai Kibaki restored my national credentials and appointed me in 2003 Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. President Mwai Kibaki had graciously honored me in 2005 with the national title of Commander of the Order of the Burning Spear (C. B. S.), First Class, which is the Kenyan equivalent of a British Knighthood.

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Angus King (1944– Governor of the State of Maine, 1995–2003, and US Senator, 2013– One of my earliest lectures about September 11 was delivered in January 2002 to mark Martin Luther King Day in Maine. I was the keynote speaker at the annual M.  L. K.  Breakfast of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Portland, Maine. My topic was ‘The Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Nightmare of September 11: From the Klan to the Qaeda’. It was a huge star-studded breakfast. In attendance was the Governor of the State of Maine, Angus King, the Mayor of Portland, the Chief of Police, and a thousand other distinguished guests of the state. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American Civil Rights Activist I met Martin Luther King, Jr. in New York City in 1961. I was a mere graduate student at Columbia University. We discussed Kenya—including Kenya’s most celebrated leader at the time after Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya. King was already sensitive to issues beyond the American shores. Mboya and King were about the same age. It later pained me deeply that both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tom Mboya were killed by an assassin’s bullets. John Agyekum Kufuor (1938– President of Ghana, 2001–2009 During my second visit to Ghana in August 2001, it may be a measure of my impartiality in Ghanaian politics that I was most graciously received by both President J.  A. Kufuor, the then Head of State of Ghana, and President Jerry Rawlings, the previous Head of State. Indeed, Jerry Rawlings came with his wife and children to visit me at my hotel in Accra. God bless all Ghanaians of all political persuasions. Amen. In March 2007, Ghana celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of her independence. My own contribution to the Golden Jubilee took a variety of forms. I had written a foreword to the official biography of the then Head of State of Ghana, President John Agyekum Kufuor. By a happy coincidence, the book was launched by Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, in Accra, Ghana. Anthony Lake (1939– US National Security Advisor, 1993–1997 In 1995, I was delighted to learn from Anthony Lake (the National Security Advisor to President Bill Clinton) that he had seen my television series, ‘The Africans’. So had Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, and Ben Chavis, the former director of the National Association for

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the Advancement of Colored People. We met with Ben Chavis in December 1995 and with Farrakhan in January 1996. The TV series has earned me more name-recognition and more face-recognition than anything else I have ever done. We also met with Imam Warith Deen Mohammed in Chicago, leader of mainstream African American Islam. Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan Political Activist ‘Some are born to be kings; others are born to be king-makers.’ In the year 2004, I was privileged to be ‘king-maker’—or more correctly—‘queenmaker’. I played a part in honoring a very distinguished woman. In the final weeks of the selection process for the Nobel Prize for Peace, Wangari Maathai of Kenya was in the shortlist. I heard from the Nobel Committee and Nobel Foundation in Oslo inviting me for an evaluation of Wangari Maathai for the Prize. I got the impression that the decision was hanging in the balance as the final shortlist was being assessed. In my response to the Nobel Prize selection judges, I had, among other things, the following to say: I am truly excited that Dr. Maathai has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace. It is an imaginative and worthy nomination. I sincerely hope her nomination moves forward towards eventual success … Africa has a painful shortage of activists in defense of the environment. In Eastern Africa, Wangari Maathai is almost unique in her readiness to risk her freedom and even her life in defense of forests and the heritage of nature. She has struggled hard to convince Kenyans that their habitat is at risk, and they may bequeath to their children a more damaged and less beautiful country than they found … Wangari Maathai is a woman of her convictions. She has spoken truth to power, has suffered imprisonment and even physical assaults. This is a woman of extraordinary courage …

The Nobel Prize for Peace was indeed awarded to Wangari Maathai in October 2004; I was deeply humbled to have played a part in the process. Alhaji Aliu Mahama (1946–2012) Vice President of Ghana, 2001–2009. In 2007, I was entertained to lunch by the Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama of Ghana at his official residence, and I conversed on the phone with the Head of State, President John Kufuor. Mahmood Mamdani (1946– Ugandan Academic [I first met Mazrui at Makerere University in 1972. I was a teaching fellow and had just embarked on my doctoral thesis. Mazrui was the professor.

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We came from two different generations. His was the last in the battle against colonialism. Mine was the first to enjoy the fruits of independence. It was a time of intoxications for both of us … The single most impressive aspect of Mazrui at Makerere was that, though he was a beneficiary of nationalism, he was not dazzled by it. He was, indeed, among the first to recognize the Janus-­ faced power of nationalism, in particular its tendency to ride roughshod over both minorities--ethnic and religious--and dissidents in the majority. See a tribute to Mazrui by Mahmood Mamdani in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 96).] Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, 1994–1999 In 1995 I was a guest of the Foundation for Global Dialogue in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was invited to launch the Foundation. I presented at the event the comparison of O. J. Simpson with Othello at the socially glittering gathering event. Later I received an autographed copy of Nelson Mandela’s book, Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela said the following about me in the inscription: ‘To Prof. Ali Mazrui, Compliments & best wishes to an outstanding educationist & freedom fighter.’ Nelson Mandela’s love of books was enhanced rather than diminished in prison. I personally discovered in an unusual way how Mandela had continued to read widely even in jail. It was the occasion when we first met. Mr. Mandela was attending his first summit meeting of the OAU, but before he himself was Head of State. This was in Dakar, Senegal, in 1992. I met Nelson Mandela in the corridor, one-on-one. I said, ‘Mr. Mandela, my name is Mazrui.’ He cut me short and completed my name, ‘Professor Ali Mazrui?’ Now why should Mr. Mandela in 1992—when he had only recently been released after twenty-seven years in prison—have heard my name at all? After all, when he went to jail, I was a nonentity. The only explanation I could think of was that even in prison Mandela’s reading was so wide-ranging that he had even read Ali Mazrui. I was flattered for myself, but more important, I was impressed by Nelson Mandela as a true lover of books. Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the US, 1967–1991 Makerere witnessed an astonishing array of visitors from all walks of life from most parts of the world. I remember welcoming Thurgood Marshall [when I was in Makerere in Uganda]. By his role in the US Supreme Court case of Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954, this man had had a bigger impact on nineteenth-century American history than most

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presidents manage to have. He was a great luminary even among the star-­ studded visitors to Makerere. Thabo Mbeki (1942– President of South Africa, 1999–2008 In July 2002, I had a brief encounter with President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria, South Africa. We had known each other during the days of the struggle against apartheid, but 2002 was the first time I had met him since he became president of South Africa. I was delighted to be able to pay my respects to President Mbeki in July 2002. I also addressed a special meeting of the African National Congress (ANC) at their headquarters in Johannesburg about the impact of September 11 on Africa. The meeting was sponsored by both the ANC and the Institute of Global Dialogue in Johannesburg. Most countries have annual national honors and medals for their own heroic citizens, but only a few countries have annual honors and medals for heroic performance by non-citizens. Post-Apartheid South Africa is among the latter. That is why I qualified for possible elevation to the Order of the Grand Companions of Oliver Tambo. In April 2007, the new Oliver Tambo companions included the former Secretary-General of the British Commonwealth of Nations, Sir Shridath Ramphal. It was great for me to share the stage with Sonny Ramphal as we were decorated by President Thabo Mbeki. On our own day of being honored in Pretoria, we also attended a big celebratory luncheon hosted by President Thabo Mbeki. I took advantage of the presidential luncheon to present to Thabo Mbeki my latest book, A Tale of Two Africas: Nigeria and South Africa as Contrasting Visions (London: Adonis Abbey, 2006). President Mbeki and I held the book ostentatiously for the photographs to mark the occasion. Subsequently, I enjoyed forty-five minutes of conversation with the Head of State in his office, one-on-one. Our conversation particularly focused not only on civil rights but also on cultural rights in postcolonial South Africa. I was particularly intrigued by South Africa’s new language policy of eleven official languages. [When a great mind like Professor Ali Mazrui passed on, we have to stop and ponder over what we shall do together to fill the immeasurable void that inevitably arises. The starting point is that we, especially our youth, must critically read and re-read everything Ali Mazrui wrote. See a tribute by Thabo Mbeki in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 363).] Tom Mboya (1930–1969) Kenyan Political Leader and Pan-Africanist

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Tom Mboya and I first met in England in 1955. He was already a rising political star even in international terms, and I was at the Huddersfield College of Technology doing my General Certificate of Education. I thought of Tom Mboya as a possible future president of postcolonial Kenya. Impediments in Tom Mboya’s way were, firstly, the British—who still colonized Kenya. In those early years I also thought of Jomo Kenyatta as a probable future rival to Tom Mboya. Tom Mboya’s skills helped to remove the British impediments to Kenya’s independence. On the international and diplomatic front of Kenya’s struggle for uhuru, Tom Mboya played a bigger role than Mzee Kenyatta. Jomo Kenyatta was, after all, behind bars during most of the final decade of British colonial rule. Tom Mboya fought hard for Kenyatta’s release, as well as for Kenya’s independence. Contrary to my youthful expectation that Mboya and Kenyatta would become rivals for the office of president or prime minister after independence, the two leaders became partners. The real divisive issue was the prospect of political succession after Kenyatta’s death or retirement. In 1967, Tom had occasion to tell me off. He accused me of not writing enough for the local audience and paying much more attention to an international readership. I defended myself, arguing that I was indeed heavily involved in local publications as well as in international ones. The last time he was at Makerere to give a public lecture was early in 1968. I introduced him. He had hardly any notes at all. In my judgment that last performance of his in the Main Hall at Makerere was perhaps the best speaking achievement I myself had ever seen him accomplish. He spoke on development with a sophistication compatible with the highest tradition of a university public lecture. Mr. Mboya was not a trained economist or any other kind of social scientist, but there was an ease of conceptualization in his analysis and a familiarity with terrain of developmental argument, which made his speech impressive. On July 5, 1969, Tom Mboya was shot dead in Nairobi, Kenya. James Mittelman (1944– American Scholar and Author [Ali Mazrui and I first met in 1967 when I enrolled in the M.A. program in African Studies at Makerere University: at the time, a part of the University of East Africa, a regional institution with campuses in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Then, as now, he boosted many young academics. I should know. As Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Mazrui created the position of special tutor, enabling me to return to Uganda in 1970. I have

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never forgotten this good fortune. Ever since our Makerere days, Mazrui has been an esteemed colleague, and we have enjoyed many fruitful exchanges. See Adem and Njogu, eds. (2018a: 86).] Benjamin Mkapa (1938– President of Tanzania, 1995–2005 My most recent Dar es Salaam memories go back to the eightieth birthday of Julius K. Nyerere in 2002, after his death. For that event I was well received by President Benjamin Mkapa, the third Head of State of Tanzania. I was one of the keynote speakers on Nyerere’s birthday. On that occasion, I also presented to President Mkapa my small book entitled The Titan of Tanzania: The Legacy of Julius K. Nyerere. The Head of State, President Mkapa, also made it a point to attend my evening lecture. Daniel arap Moi (1924–2020) President of Kenya, 1978–2002 Paradoxically, there were rumors that I was in disfavor with my government. In 1987, there were even rumors that I would be detained if I arrived in Kenya. But President Daniel arap Moi gave a categorical assurance in 1987 that there was no substance to the rumors. I went to Kenya twice in 1987, and nothing untoward happened. Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) Zimbabwean Leader, 1980–2017 After the first two years of independence, Zimbabwe seemed to me at that stage closer to being another Kenya than to being another Mozambique. But Prime Minster Robert Mugabe disagreed with my conclusion—he saw the new Zimbabwe simply as another Zimbabwe. When I met President Mugabe in August 2000, I reminded him of a conversation he and I had in the 1980s. In those earlier years of Zimbabwe’s independence, White racism was still overt. In major restaurants in Harare, it was not uncommon to hear White customers abuse Black waiters in racist terms. I therefore had occasion to say to President Mugabe in the 1980s: ‘I have heard more racist remarks in Harare in one week than I normally hear in the US in a year. Why do you permit it?’ The Robert Mugabe of the 1980s answered as follows: ‘There are two ways of improving the behavior of people short of using force. One way is by constructive persuasion; the other is by positive example. In the new Zimbabwe, we shall try those two methods first.’ By the year 2000, had Robert Mugabe changed his mind? Yes! President Robert Mugabe spoke forcefully. I was moved by his eloquence, but I was not convinced. Micere Githae Mugo (1942–

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Kenyan Academic [In his scholarly work, Ali Mazrui utilizes a combination of African literary and orate techniques to explore serious political concerns and to advance inventive critical theoretical formulations. In fact … to fully appreciate Mazrui’s scholarship and innovative genius, we have to move beyond his written canon and analyze his output as an orator as well as a composer of spoken texts … Mazrui seems to deliberately steer clear of post-modern jargon—fashionably used in mainstream academia to display intellectual prowess to the extent that it becomes alienating to the uninitiated. In contrast, Mazrui’s writing is characterized by a conversational, dialogical style (orature-type) that succeeds in engaging his audience even as he is theorizing and advancing highly complex intellectual arguments. See Adem and Njogu (2018b: 17)]. Yoweri Museveni (1944– President of Uganda, 1986– President Yoweri Museveni was most gracious in 1988 when I went to State House in Entebbe to have supper with him and the First Lady. I had very stimulating conversation with the Musevenis on a wide range of issues. Although Museveni was probably the best speaker of Kiswahili of all the presidents of Uganda had had, he was less committed to the promotion of Kiswahili in Uganda than Idi Amin had been. One memorable event at the 1998 World Economic Forum was an informal dinner with President Museveni at his table. It was the first time I had actually dined with him since he and his wife graciously entertained me to a private dinner at State House in Entebbe, Uganda, years earlier. It was at the dinner in Entebbe that the president said to me: ‘Professor, I hear you have moved to the left ideologically.’ I smiled and replied: ‘Mr. President, I have heard a different rumor—that you had moved to the right!’ At the 1998 dinner in Davos, I got more evidence that Yoweri Museveni is a more pro-market ideologue. In 2006, I gave one lecture on campus of Makerere and another lecture under the auspices of the Bank of Uganda. But 2006 was also the nineteenth year since Yoweri Museveni captured power in Uganda and became the Head of State. I personally believe Museveni’s capture of power in 1986 was worthy of being celebrated as a positive anniversary in 2006. However, his continuation in power twenty years later may now verge on being a negative anniversary. Nevertheless, it was a privilege to have had a prolonged conversation with President Museveni. The Head of State and I ranged over a variety of topics. In August 2009, President Museveni

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recognized me as one more intellectual son of the Nile who had participated in the narrative of civilization. He said: ‘I take this opportunity to welcome Professor Mazrui back home to his intellectual cradle. Intellectuals worldwide have benefitted from your tremendous contribution to world civilization.’ Willy Mutunga (1947– Chief Justice and President of the Supreme Court of Kenya (Ret.) [I first met Ali Mazrui in 1969 while a student at the Far Salaam University College. Teaching at Makerere University he was on Dar to attend a conference. In those days academic conferences took place on a regular basis under the auspices of the then University of East Africa. I attended many of them when Mjomba Ali presented papers. Needless to say, I saw and heard the great academic, scholar, wordsmith, intellectual, nationalist, and Pan-­ Africanist, and radical-liberal at his brilliant best. See a tribute to Mazrui by Willy Mutunga in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 158).] Ali Hassan Mwinyi (1925– President of Tanzania, 1985–1995 It was a privilege to have met Julius K. Nyerere’s successor, Ndugu Ali Hassan Mwinyi. I was doubly flattered when I heard him refer to some of my books. His own wealth of experience is of course a much richer book. Jaafar Nimeiri (1930–2009) President of Sudan, 1971–1985 I had a political accident in 1985. Sudan’s Minister of Information at the time introduced me to President Nimeiri after one of Nimeiri’s press conferences. The president and I started walking toward his garden and continued to chat as we walked. The world press—which had been present at the press conference—followed Nimeiri and me as we chatted across the garden. The American television crew on behalf of one of the major networks in the US used their footage on American television in the week before Nimeiri was overthrown! Being seen in the company of Nimeiri just before he was overthrown was not one of my best planned sequences! I was privileged to discuss the first Sudanese Civil War (1956–1972) with President Jaafar Nimeiri before he was overthrown. Joshua Nkomo (1917–1999) Zimbabwean Vice President, 1987–1999 I raised several issues about Zimbabwe in my conversations with Joshua Nkomo, who insisted he was not ‘Mugabe’s chicken’ but had a ‘big neck’ (presumably not easily wringable!) These two Africans are both

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remarkable personalities, yet so startlingly different in style and demeanor. It was a privilege to chat with him. Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Leader of Ghana, 1957–1966 I was a graduate student at Columbia University when I first met Kwame Nkrumah in New York. He had come to address the UN in 1960, and I was invited to one of the parties in his honor. As a young African my encounter with him captured the very euphoria of the end of colonialism—in spite of the fact that independence for Kenya at that time was still at least two or three years away. In later years, I did meet Nkrumah in Ghana as well, but it was nothing to compare with the historic Pan-African excitement of 1960 when over fifteen new African countries became members of the UN. Ghana had set the grand precedent of Black African independence. It was the end of April 1972. I was stepping out of a hotel in Washington, D.C. A Russian friend of mine, also visiting the US, approached and asked: ‘Have you heard?’ ‘Heard what?’ ‘Kwame Nkrumah is dead.’ I was deeply moved. I was moved by the death of Kwame Nkrumah and by the situation in which the news was broken to me. Here was a Soviet national, informing an African that another African had died. Nkrumah had died in Romania; the Russian was telling me this in the capital city of the US. I had far less personal contact with Nkrumah than I have had with at least a dozen other African leaders. So in what sense was Nkrumah such an influence on me? The impact was intellectual and political rather than personal. My doctoral thesis at Oxford University was partly influenced by his ideas on Pan-Africanism. Kwame Nkrumah also stimulated my vision of Africa as a convergence of three civilizations—Africanity, Islam, and Western culture. Nkrumah called that convergence ‘Consciencism’. I later called it ‘Africa’s Triple Heritage’. I was able to elaborate on my own concept in a BBC/PBS television series titled ‘The Africans: A Triple Heritage’ (1986). Apollo Nsibambi (1940–2019) Prime Minister of Uganda, 1999–2011 In 2002 the Civil Aviation Authority in Uganda invited me to travel from Binghamton to Kampala to give a major address. The Prime Minister of Uganda, Professor Apollo Nsibambi, was in attendance. In the course of my brief stay in Uganda, Prime Minister Nsibambi took me to his Makerere residence for lunch. He had lost his wife Bada a few months before. Apollo was still shaken by the bereavement. I had known them

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both ever since my own Makerere years. Nsibambi and I discussed the old days—as well as the future. Julius K. Nyerere (1922–1999) Leader of Tanzania, 1961–1985 It is one of the ironies of my life that Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere and I first met neither in his country (Tanzania) nor in mine (Kenya) but in Uganda. I first met Mwalimu Nyerere in 1969 at what was then Makerere University College in Uganda. He had done his homework before coming to the campus. I was at the time regarded as one of the rising stars of East Africa’s academia. As soon as Nyerere and I were introduced in English, he switched into Kiswahili and said, ‘Tunasikia sifa tu!’ [Until today we were only hearing your praise!]. He made my day! Long before I became a professor at Makerere, Nyerere had himself been a student at Makerere. He later went to the University of Edinburgh for his master’s degree. Makerere and Edinburgh prepared him for the title of Mwalimu (meaning ‘teacher’) which he was subsequently to carry for the rest of his life. Young Julius entered the gates of Edinburgh University in October 1949. In 1984 I was in the audience in Moshi (Tanzania) on the mainland awaiting the speech by President Julius Nyerere. The president arrived and sat down. As he was being introduced, his roving eye caught mine. I was surprised that he recognized me at once in spite of my grey hair (he had not seen me for more than a decade). Later on, at another ceremony, he interrupted what he was doing and rose to come and say hello. It was very pleasant to chat with him again. I heard then Nyerere give one of the most eloquent speeches I have ever heard in Kiswahili. He had no notes. Over the years, Julius Nyerere and I met many times. I last saw the Mwalimu late in May 1999  in Abuja on the eve of the inauguration of President Olusegun Obasanjo as the new president of Nigeria. Surrounded by Nigerians, Nyerere and I gossiped for a little while in Kiswahili. He looked well—deceptively well, considering his illness. He and I were keynote speakers at a workshop to inaugurate Nigeria to a new era of democracy in 1999. We were voices from East Africa at a major West African event. We were voices of Pan-Africanism on the eve of the new millennium. Nyerere’s voice was one of the most eloquent voices of the twentieth century. It was a privilege for me to stand side-by-side with such a person to mark a momentous event in no less a country than our beloved Nigeria. With Julius Nyerere and I, it was a bond of genuine ups and downs. Nyerere was once angry with me because I had written a citation for an

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honorary doctorate which was too long. The honorary doctorate was for an elderly American academic, and Nyerere was awarding the degree as Chancellor of the University of East Africa (which at that time consisted of the campuses of Makerere, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam). As University orator I had written the citation, and I was reading it as the elderly gentleman was kneeling before Nyerere. My oration was indeed too long. Nyerere did not speak to me that evening after the ceremony. He deliberately snubbed me. He had been disturbed that the elderly recipient of the honorary degree had to kneel for so long while I delivered the oration praising him. I had not struck the right balance. I felt truly chastised by the Mwalimu. I admired Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania higher than most politicians anywhere in the world. Nyerere and I also met more often over the years from 1967 to 1997 approximately. Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o (1945– Kenyan Politician and Academic [I first met Ali Mazrui when I entered Makerere University College, Kampala, in June 1968 … What was unique about Mazrui was that he was always bubbling with new ideas which he tested on the students, his colleagues and the public in general whether in the lecture hall, the Main hall, academic journals or the columns of the Ugandan newspapers. A week never passed without some cyclostyled papers making their rounds in the halls of residence with Mazrui’s latest essay or speech given somewhere. See a tribute to Mazrui by Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 408).] Olusegun Obasanjo (1937– President of Nigeria, 1999–2007 Throughout my few days in Khartoum, Sudan, in January 2006, I kept hearing that I was expected to address Africa’s Heads of States scheduled to meet in the city the following week. But I kept telling people that I had received no such invitation, and I could not force myself on Africa’s Heads of State. It turned out that my office in Binghamton, New York, had received such an invitation from Olusegun Obasanjo, the Chair of the African Union, and had put it in my ‘Pending’ tray, awaiting my return from Khartoum! We now know that my schedule coordinator, Nancy Levis, was more seriously ill than she realized. She was no longer at the peak of her professional performance. She did not realize she was depriving me of the opportunity of addressing some fifty Heads of State on my favorite topic—‘culture and the African condition’. I was in the same city

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as the African Heads of State and could have remained in Khartoum an extra three days to address them. [I remember Ali Mazrui for at least three things. First, he was immensely soaked in the history of Africa and could extrapolate the future growth and development of the region with uncanny accuracy and positivism. Second, he was down-to-earth and not a lover of material things, freeing his mind for wider exploration of things which affect humanity, especially his African ancestry. The third thing I remember about Professor Ali Mazrui for is his being a prominent critic of the current world order … The intellectual finesse of Ali Mazrui, the versatility of his thinking and his grandeur approach to presenting the African continent to the rest of the world will forever remain an exemplary legacy for all. See a tribute to Mazrui by Olusegun Obasanjo in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 412–413)] Milton Obote (1925–2005) Leader of Uganda 1962–1971, 1981–1985 In June 1979, I spent about ten hours with Milton Obote, the former president of Uganda. This was at Dr. Obote’s residence in Dar es Salaam. Obote and I discussed Idi Amin much more often than we discussed Julius Nyerere. It was good to see him, his wife, and children. Milton Obote was one of the formative influences of my early life, in spite of our tumultuous relationship. In 1981, I was in Uganda, spending my first New Year’s day in the country since I scrambled for safety from Idi Amin, seven years previously. I celebrated the New Year’s Eve with President Obote at the presidential suite at the Nile Mansions in Kampala. Oginga Odinga (1911–1994) Vice President of Kenya, 1964–1966 Kenya as the land of my birth would not hire me as a professor because of my reputation as a political risk-taker. Indeed, when I called upon Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi to step down from power in 1992, Oginga Odinga (the father of Raila Odinga) came personally and in public to my hotel to congratulate me on my courage. Since he was the leader of the opposition, his public embrace of me was a mixed blessing. It was widely believed that President Daniel arap Moi was on the verge of ordering my detention. A Nilotic leader of the opposition had embraced me in Nairobi—at about the time when a much younger Nilotic, Barack Obama, was completing his studies at Harvard Law School, magna cum laude. Raila Odinga (1945– Prime Minister of Kenya, 2008–2013

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I first met Raila Odinga in his new capacity as prime minister not in our mother country, Kenya, but in Barack Obama’s country of birth, the US. It was in the year 2013. In the speech at a luncheon in his honor in Washington, D.C., Odinga drew the attention of the large audience to my presence in their midst. I stood up to a thunderous applause. He then referred to my historic question as to which country would be the first to elect a Luo President: Kenya or the US? Prime Minister Odinga gave his own witty reply with a broad smile: ‘The question has actually been answered in Kenya’s favor. Kenya has a Luo President who has not been sworn in.’ The huge luncheon audience burst into laughter and applause. [I join the people of Africa and the international community in mourning Professor Ali Mazrui. We take solace in the knowledge that in passing on, Mazrui leaves behind a body of significant works that will forever stand to his credit and assure him of a lasting place of honor among the world’s greatest scholars, particularly of African history and politics. See a tribute to Mazrui by Raila Odinga in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 419)] Bethwell A. Ogot (1929– Kenyan Historian While intelligence in Kenya was evenly distributed among the different ethnic groups, intellectualism was probably more ethnic-specific. An intellectual is a person who has the capacity to be fascinated by ideas and has acquired the skills to handle some of them effectively. Did the Luo produce more intellectuals than average? And did a sizable percentage choose to become scholars and academics? It was in this context of relating ethnicity to academic performance that I found myself traveling on the same flight with Bethwell Allan Ogot in 1955. We were on our way to Great Britain. At that stage of my career I did not know that I was going to be a scholar and an academic. My initial goal in going to Britain was to complete my secondary education and take the General Certificate of Education (Advanced Level) in Huddersfield. With Allan Ogot, a scholarly career was already started at Makerere College in Uganda. He was on his way to Britain to pursue tertiary qualifications. He was destined to join the Luo vanguard in academia. Sidney Poitier (1927– Hollywood Film Star I was introduced to Sidney Poitier in Kampala during his visit. I remember the Hollywood film star, Sidney Poitier, expressing surprise that there were so many male homosexuals in Uganda. When I asked him what gave him that idea, he referred to so many men in the streets holding hands. I

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laughed. I told him: ‘In this culture holding hands is a sign of friendliness and good will. It is not a sign of sex. This is a culture of innocent touch.’ I was later invited to interview him on Uganda television. It was during our hours together that I might have contributed to the cultural education of Sidney Poitier. I explained to him that homosexuality among Ugandans was minimal, and certainly far less than in an average city in the Western world. What he had mistaken as evidence of male homosexuality was evidence of empathy through touching. The culture was profoundly informed by reciprocal touching between members of the same gender. That touching was supposed to be innocent of any suggestion of sexuality. However, it was holding hands between members of opposite genders which could be regarded as sexually suggestive. In the television discussion Sidney Poitier was fascinated by these cultural differences. He sometimes forgot that I was supposed to be interviewing him instead of the other way around. He asked me almost as many questions as I had the chance to ask him! He seemed eager to be culturally educated about Africa. Muammer Qaddafy (1942–2011) Leader of Libya, 1969–2011 When I was in Libya in October 2000 as a guest of the African Center for Applied Research, I was told that there was a possibility that the Libyan leader, Muammer Qaddafy, would give me an audience. But the leader went further than that. He invited me to dinner at his famous tent. His other guest for that evening was a minister of defense from a Francophone West African country. Three languages were in use in the course of the dinner—the Libyan leader used Arabic, the West African minister used French, and I used English. There were two interpreters by the side of the dining table. The food was excellent, and the flow of the conversation smoother than one might expect. The whole visit to the tent lasted some three hours. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi (1939– Ruler of Sharjah, UAE, 1972– I met His Highness Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi in 1976 on the occasion of the symposium on African–Arab relations. The feast on the last day of the Symposium was a memorable occasion. His highness also presented to me a dagger in gold as a gift. Jerry Rawlings (1947– President of Ghana, 1981–2001 I had an amicable exchange with President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana at a session of the World Economic Forum in 1998. President Rawlings

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complained angrily about the brain drain from Africa, especially after such expensive training in Africa as that of a doctor. Why should an African trained by the taxpayer in his country be allowed to pack his bag and go for bigger incomes in Europe or the US as soon as he or she qualifies? President Jerry Rawlings gave me some kind of counter-response and then graciously invited me to resume debate at his home when I next visited Ghana. I was flattered to learn that he had been anxious to meet with me ever since he saw my BBC/PBS television series. Najib Razak (1953– Prime Minister of Malaysia (2009–2018) [I am pleased that the speaker for the inaugural lecture is Professor Dr. Ali Al’Amin Mazrui, a world-renowned Muslim intellect. He is well respected in both the Western world and Muslim communities, having toured the international speaking circuit and written more than 30 books. Understanding the need to bridge the different observations and views on Islam for the benefit of inter-religious relations, Dr. Mazrui will share his thoughts and perspectives on Muslims, post September 11. In his lecture, Dr. Mazrui will highlight the realities of Islam, illustrating how Islamization is not about conservative revivalism—rather it is the way for Muslims to become more progressive in today’s borderless world of globalized economies, ICT, liberalizations, and modernity. While we have always championed the principles and values of Islam in Malaysia, we are ready to take Islam to the next level—that of a progressive Islam. An Islam that ensures political stability, national prosperity and a knowledgeable society built on the foundation of openness, fairness and equality for all. From Opening Speech, Annual Distinguished Lecture, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, May 18, 2010.] Edward Rendell (1944– Governor of Pennsylvania, 2003–2011 What happened in the last twelve months of 2004 which captured my personification of global forces in myself? There was the experience of my receiving an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. Such a sacred salute was neither from a Muslim institution such as Al-Azhar nor from a non-­ Muslim institution located in the Muslim world such as the American University of Cairo. I was honored specifically in Divinity by Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, which was founded on Christian Presbyterian principles. I was also invited to give a sermon before the graduation ceremony. My sermon was on the following topic: ‘God and Globalization: Religion in the Global Village’. What was equally significant was the fact that my award of an honorary degree in divinity by a White Christian

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institution happened in the official presence of the Governor of Pennsylvania: Edward Rendell. Cyril Ramaphosa (1952– President of South Africa (2018– I got the news of the arrival of my granddaughter on the eve of my receiving my honorary degree in African Studies from the University of Venda in 2006. It was but natural that I would dedicate my new doctorate in African Studies to my granddaughter. My commencement lecture at the University of Venda played with the letter V (as in Venda). I argued that South Africa in much of the twentieth century was a VICTIM, which soon provoked VALIANT resistance, which culminated in a VICTORIOUS triumph over apartheid. But South Africa as a regional superpower then became a VANGUARD. Its power and influence in the rest of Africa threatened to produce a VILLAIN. South Africa needed VISION and VIRTUE to fulfill its destiny as one of Africa’s leading and progressive countries. South Africa must also avoid becoming a VILLAIN. The whole event was chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa, Chancellor of the University of Venda, who was widely regarded as a potential future president of South Africa. While I was playing around with the letter V, the Chancellor secretly invited his advisors around him to propose names for girls in Venda culture beginning with the letter V. Chancellor Ramaphosa received multiple Venda names from his Advisors—beginning with the letter V. In his final speech to the graduation multitude he said, ‘By the authority conferred upon me as Chancellor and presiding officer at this distinguished event, I have chosen the Venda name, Vele, to enrich the identity of Nicole Molly Mazrui, the grandchild of Venda’s new doctoral graduate, Professor Ali Mazrui.’ Both when I first announced the birth of my granddaughter, and when the Chancellor gave her a Venda name, there was thunderous applause and shrieks of approval. Walter Rodney (1942–1980) Guyanese Historian and Activist Walter Rodney was one of Guyana’s leading intellectual luminaries and political activists. I knew him when he was a senior lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and I was based in Uganda. We were colleagues at the University of East Africa—he in Dar es Salaam and I at Makerere. In those days he and I were regarded as ideological adversaries. We had a number of highly publicized academic and ideological clashes—I from the liberal center, he from the socialist left. I was a ‘liberal’

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(pro-human rights) and he was a ‘radical socialist’ (pro-workers’ rights). We often debated on the campus of the University of Dar es Salaam. One debate on my own campus in Uganda (Makerere University) was broadcast live. Later on, when we both moved to the Americas, Rodney and I became friends. Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American Astronomer My association with Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, began in 1987. Different parts of the university have regarded me as a resource person. I also had dinner with Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan at their elegant home—and compared notes about the state of the world and of film-­ making with them. A great evening! A death which shook me in 1996 was that of Carl Sagan, the Cornell astronomer who became world figure with his television series ‘Cosmos’. Why did Carl’s death shake me? Because of what happened in 1986 when my own more modest television series, ‘The Africans’, came out. My series was under attack from Reaganites and other right-wing forces in the US. I was based in Michigan; then Carl dropped me a line of support and asked me to look him up when I was at Cornell! Until then I did not know he knew me. But he was capable of identifying a kindred spirit and extending a hand. Salim Ahmed Salim (1942– Secretary-General of the OAU, 1989–2001; Prime Minister of Tanzania, 1984–1985 Dar es Salaam in 1982 is memorable because of the lectures I was unexpectedly asked to give at the Institute of Diplomacy for Mozambique and Tanzania and at the University of Dar es salaam. I also greatly enjoyed my subsequent conversation with Foreign Minister Salim A. Salim. In 1984, I got into trouble at parliament building in Dar es Salaam when I tried to say hello to Prime Minister Salim Salim without clearance from security. The fact that he was an old friend did not make any difference! I should have known better! Anyhow, it was all cleared up in the end, and the prime minister and I were able to meet with the blessing of security! [For close to half a century this distinguished professor has developed a genre of intellectual discourse about Africa and the world as a whole that has almost become a paradigm of its own standing. For many, the very name— Ali Al’amin Mazrui—triggers an intellectual enthusiasm and an intense desire for a deeper insight of the world and an understanding of how its many

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parts interconnect. See a tribute to Mazrui by Salim Ahmed Salim in Adem et al., eds. (2016: ix).] Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the US, 1986–2016 A special session was organized for a group of Muslims and Justice Anthony Scalia at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. I was invited to this session. Justice Scalia’s address to us was mainly a tribute to the greatness of the US constitution. At question time I argued that the US constitution did not start great; it became great as it evolved out of its original pro-slavery, pro-racist, and pro-sexist format. Justice Scalia is judicially conservative and inclined in favor of the original framers of the constitution rather than supporting daring re-interpretation by the Supreme Court. He and I clashed on those issues within the Supreme Court!! Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) President of Senegal, 1960–1980 In early October 1976, I was in Dakar, Senegal, attending the celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of President Senghor’s birth. It was an exciting week. It consisted of an international colloquium on the subject of ‘culture and development’ as well as a variety of artistic and sporting activities in honor of the president. In the course of our stay in Senegal, I got an opportunity to present President Senghor with my latest book entitled A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective. The subject matter just happened to be right on the mainstream of Léopold Senghor’s intellectual preoccupations. In my speech to the president, I addressed him as ‘Professor Senghor’, and I said to him, ‘This book owes more to you than it acknowledges!’ In March 1979, I had the privilege of interviewing for the Reith Lectures President Léopold Sédar Senghor, the philosopher, poet, and founding father of modern Senegal. Senghor is particularly famous for his philosophy of negritude, an affirmation of the validity and dignity of Africa’s own indigenous cultural heritage. But Senghor is also famous as a supreme product of French culture, a master of the nuances and power of the French language, a devout admirer of French civilization, and a dedicated friend of the French nation. Mobutu Sese Seko (1930–1997) President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1965–1997 A number of old friends and relatives passed away during 1997. Mobutu Sese Seko, former president of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) also died. I had met him more than once when he was president including

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at the seventieth birthday anniversary of President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal in Dakar in the 1970s. He ruled Zaire for far too long (since 1965)! Shehu Shagari (1925–2018) President of Nigeria, 1979–1983 I was privileged in August 1982 to meet and chat in Lagos with Nigeria’s Head of State, President Shehu Shagari. We discussed mainly two subjects—the crisis within the OAU and problem of stability in East Africa. Timothy M. Shaw (1945– British-Canadian Scholar of International Relations [I am proud to have sat at the feet of Mwalimu Mazrui at Makerere in the late 1960s as he returned to East Africa with his new D. Phil from Oxford. But I did not appreciate then how prescient he was in his concern with ‘transnational’ communities, cultures identities, languages, literature and religions as well as the orthodox foci of political science (PS)/international relations (IR), such as national security (right), national development/ democracy (center/mainstream) and class and/or race/ethnic/genders dialectics (left). Similarly, I was all too dismissive of the then-innovative approach of and East African-informed Joseph Nye on the transnational, yet now, in my ‘twilight days’, I have come to appreciate how Mazrui was, as so often, ahead of his time both then … and today, as the post-post-bipolar era brings us back to the realities of myriad possibly intractable ‘differences’. See Adem and Njogu, eds. (2018b: 126).] Manmohan Singh (1932– Prime Minister of India, 2004–2014 It was wonderful reuniting in 1997 with Manmohan Singh, the former Finance Minister who had opened the doors of the economic liberalization of India. We were contemporaries as graduate students at Nuffield College, Oxford, and Manmohan had later become a prominent figure in India’s economic history. Barack Obama considered ways of promoting peace between India and Pakistan and floated the idea of appointing someone like Bill Clinton to be the US special envoy on Kashmir. Since the Indians regarded Kashmir as already part of India and therefore none of the business of the US, they were outraged by Obama’s proposal of a special envoy. After Obama had been elected president, I had occasion in 2008 to have an informal conversation with the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh at his official home in New Delhi over a cup of tea. I asked the prime minister if

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India was still offended by the new president of the US over his proposal concerning Kashmir. Dr. Singh assured me that the problem had been sorted out after Barack Obama had telephoned him and had a long conversation with him. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1938– Kenyan Writer [We leave it to political scientists to assess Mazrui’s intellectual legacy. But for me, taking his output as a whole, he more than lived up to the description of the global African. He made Kenya and Africa visible in the highest echelons of intellectual production. It was very much like heaven to see Ali Mazrui on the platform, quoting from poets and philosophers alike in support of his arguments, was to witness a master intellectual performer. He dined and wined and argued with Kings, Presidents, and Generals but he never lost his common touch, attentive to the voice of the student with the same respect that he gave to the Mighty. See a tribute to Mazrui by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Adem et al., eds. (2016: 480)] Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) President of Yugoslavia, 1953–1980 My first trip to the US was by the old Queen Elizabeth, a luxury liner. I was coming to the US to become a graduate student at Columbia University for my master’s degree. On board the ship on his way to the UN in New York was Marshall Josip Tito, a symbol of non-alignment. It was my first brush with Yugoslavia. A few years later, I was finishing my doctorate at Oxford University in England. My supervisor was a distinguished professor of political philosophy at Oxford. He knew very little about Africa but knew a lot about nationalism. His name was John Plamenatz, from Montenegro, my second major brush with Yugoslavia. I met a lot of Yugoslavs and visited Yugoslavia. Desmond Tutu (1931– Anglican Cleric and Anti-apartheid Activist In 1993, I lectured about Islam when I was in South Africa and had a conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu about the risk of religious bigotry replacing racial bigotry in that deeply divided society. I continue to marvel at the humility and easy accessibility of Archbishop Tutu, the Nobel Prize winner for Peace. He was not popular with Christian fundamentalists when he suggested that ‘Christ was not a Christian’. This seemed even more shocking than the older argument in left-wing circles that ‘Marx was not a Marxist’. Ali Akbar Velayati (1945–

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Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1981–1997 In 1993, I was in Iran to learn more about Iranian society and to make a small contribution toward global cultural studies in Iran. I was particularly flattered when I was invited to address Friday prayers. Because the congregation was so large, the Friday prayers were held in an open field at the University of Tehran. When I later met the Foreign Minister of Iran, Ali Akbar Velayati, I discovered that he had not been at the congregation but had heard me on the radio. Jackie Vaughn III (1917–2006) Member of the Michigan Senate (1979–2002) [Let it be known, that we are richly blessed with men and women of extraordinary abilities. One of the finest of these is Dr. Ali A.  Mazrui, writer and presenter of ‘The Africans,’ a major series about Africa produced by WETA/Washington, DC, and the BBC … The Africans is the most comprehensive television study of Africa ever compiled … IN SPECIAL TRIBUTE, therefore, this document is signed and dedicated in commendation and recognition of Dr. Ali A. Mazrui, author, professor, historian and television presenter extraordinaire.] Kurt Waldheim (1918–2007) Secretary-General of the UN, 1972–1981 In 1981, I attended a special meeting in New York to honor Raul Prebisch. This Latin American economic architect has sought to produce a design for a new world economic order. I managed to introduce my son at the ceremony to some of the dignitaries on the platform—including the Secretary-General of the UN, Kurt Waldheim, and the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Shridath Ramphal. Harold Washington (1922–1987) Mayor of Chicago, 1983–1987 In Chicago, in 1986, Mayor Harold Washington declared October 6, 1986, ‘The day of The Africans’. He saluted me at a special celebration of my TV series in Chicago. He also provided me with a special police escort to accompany me to O’Hare Airport. I was greatly honored, not least because Chicago was my first base as a professor in America. (I was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1965.) Edward Whitlam (1916–2014) Prime Minister of Australia, 1972–1975 A prominent participant at our symposium in India in 1989 was the former Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Whitlam. In a private conversation, I was amazed by how much he knew about the UNESCO General

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History of Africa. It was nice to see Mr. Whitlam again. He had once chaired a presentation I made in Australia on the subject of ‘Australia and the Third World’. It seemed like ages ago. Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Prime Minister of the UK, 1964–1970; 1974–1976 I once chaired radio discussion on British Foreign Policy with Harold Wilson, leader of the Labor Party and later UK prime minister from 1974 to 1976, BBC Overseas Service. The year was 1962, and I was a graduate student. Girma Woldeghiorgis (1924–2018) President of Ethiopia, 2001–2013 In the year 2004, there was a replay of Ethiopia’s ecumenical conciliation between Christianity and Islam. There is now a national university of Ethiopia called Addis Ababa University (previously named Haile Selassie I University). Although the University has been secular since the reign of Haile Selassie, it has, in composition, been overwhelmingly Christian. In 2004, this national university awarded for the first time an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters to a Muslim from outside the country. The award was conferred upon me by the Head of State of Ethiopia, President Girma Woldeghiorgis. My acceptance speech included a verse from the Qur’an in both Arabic and English, recited aloud before the graduation crowd. Stevie Wonder (1950– American Musician, Singer and Song-Writer I know that some of you think I know very little about contemporary Western popular music. That may be so. Nevertheless, I was called upon in 1996 to be Stevie Wonder’s praise singer at a Special Peace Award Presentation to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the International Peace Academy. Stevie was in great spirits, and I enjoyed being with him at dinner before the presentation. Malcolm X (1925–1965) American Human Rights Activist A diaspora martyr who touched my life briefly was Malcolm X. I met him in New York in 1961; we discussed religion and race. Since I had myself been brought up a Muslim, I was fascinated by Malcolm’s creed. I disagreed with his racial approach to Islam at that stage of his life, but I was thrilled by his political militancy. He also had a magnetic personal presence. Did he know that an assassin’s bullet awaited him? He was a charismatic figure.

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Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) Chinese Communist Leader My visit to Beijing in China in 1987 had nothing to do with my television series. I was taking part in a massive international conference in the Great Hall of the People. I was among those chosen to be introduced to the Chinese leader—a war hero in the struggle against the Japanese.

References Adem, S., J. Adibe, A.K. Bangura, and A.S. Bemath, eds. 2016. A Giant Tree Has Fallen. Tributes to Ali A.  Mazrui. Johannesburg: African Perspectives Publishing. Adem, S., and K. Njogu, eds. 2018a. The American African: Essays on the Life and Scholarship of Ali A. Mazrui. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ———, eds. 2018b. Black Orwell: Essays on the Scholarship of Ali A.  Mazrui. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Mazrui, A. A. 2008. Witness to History? IGCS Newsletter 7: 1–24.



Appendix: When Mazrui Led the Way

I have critics as well as fans; I have faults as well as talents. But the most compelling lesson which my academic life illustrates is quite simple. It is the old adage ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again!’ I had vindicated it. —Ali Mazrui (2008: 8)

Based on available evidence, Mazrui’s highlights without precedent include the following. * * * 1. The first African scholar to occupy each of the following positions: (a) full professor in any of the humanities in any university in East Africa— beginning in 1965 at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; (b) full professor of Political Science in any university in East Africa—beginning in 1965 at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; and (c) Dean of Social Sciences in any of the universities in East Africa—from 1966 to 1968 at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. * * *

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2. The first African graduate student to publish full-scale scholarly articles in the following professional journals: (a) The American Political Science Review (1963); (b) Comparative Studies in Society and History (1963); (c) Political Studies (1963); (d) International Affairs (1963); and (e) International Organization (1964). These journals remain to this day the most prestigious journals of political science and international relations in the English-speaking world. * * * 3. The first African graduate student to be given access to the following high-profile British media: (a) The Times (1962); (b) BBC Domestic Service 1963; and (c) BBC Overseas Service, 1962 (chairing radio discussion on British foreign policy with Harold Wilson, leader of the Labor Party and later UK prime minister from 1974 to 1976). * * * 4. The first African scholar to publish three books within a single year following ­successful defense of his doctoral thesis at Oxford: (a) Towards a Pax Africana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); (b) On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship (London: Longman, 1967); and (c) The Anglo-African Commonwealth (Oxford: Pergamon, 1967). * * * 5. The first African to be invited to Australia to give the Dyason Memorial Lectures and tour the Australian continent. This was Australia’s most distinguished political lecture series which consisted of a lecture tour with extensive media coverage to about half a dozen of Australia’s main cities. The lectures were annual at that time and were administered by the Australian Institute of International Affairs (Sydney and Melbourne). The first Dyason Memorial Lecturer in this distinguished lecture series was the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Mazrui delivered the lectures in 1972. * * * 6. The first African scholar to be appointed both as Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in consecutive years. The two appointments were in two consecutive academic

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years, 1972–1974. During the same period, Mazrui was appointed Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science, Stanford University. Mazrui used his two years in Northern California to complete the following books: (a) World Culture and the Black Experience (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974); (b) Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda (Sage Publications, 1975); and (c) The Political Sociology of the English Language (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1974). * * * 7. The senior representative for Africa within the international team of researchers known as the World Order Models Project, 1970–1977. The members of the group met every year in different parts of the world to compare notes about global trends, identify which trends were positive and which negative, and respond with policy recommendations accordingly. Each member of the group was assigned the task of drafting a book which viewed the world from the perspective of his or her own region. Separate books were published that viewed the world from an Indian, Latin American, Middle Eastern, US, European, Japanese, as well as African perspectives. Ali Mazrui’s volume was entitled: A World Federation of Cultures (New York: Macmillan/Free Press, 1977). This 508-page volume is Ali Mazrui’s most ambitious book. * * * 8. The editor of the final volume (Volume VIII) of the massive historical project, the UNESCO General History of Africa, whose headquarters was located in Paris, France. The 1190-page volume edited by Mazrui was authored by more than a dozen distinguished scholars and took nearly a decade to complete. Ali Mazrui was the only political scientist entrusted with the editing of one of the volumes. Mazrui’s own massive volume was entitled, quite simply, Africa Since 1935 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993). * * * 9. The first African scholar to be elected vice president, International Political Science Association (Headquarters in Paris, France, at the time) from 1968 to 1971. * * *

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10. The first African and the first Muslim to be invited by the BBC to deliver the highly prestigious annual radio lectures, the Reith Lectures. Mazrui’s six lectures were entitled The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis. A companion book under the same title was published by Cambridge University Press in New York and by Heinemann Educational Books in London, UK. The African Condition was first broadcast in 1979. Other historic personalities who gave the BBC Reith Lectures included economist John Kenneth Galbraith, historian Niall Ferguson, sociologist Anthony Giddens, and theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer. * * * 11. The first African Director of the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1978–1981). * * * 12. The first African to make and narrate a major international television series. The Mazrui television series was sponsored and financed by both the BBC and the PBS. The title of the TV series was The Africans: A Triple Heritage. The series was first televised in 1986 in Britain. Since then The Africans has been shown in dozens of countries, translated into several languages, and utilized in classrooms on campuses across the Englishspeaking world. The Africans was filmed in about twenty countries in Africa and in France, Great Britain, and the US.  The TV project cost about four million US dollars in all. The theme was that contemporary Africa was a convergence and synthesis of three civilizations—Africanity, Islam, and the West. * * * 13. The first African and the first Muslim Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities in the State of New York. This Chair, New York’s most prestigious academic award (The New York Times, 13 December 1970), was established in 1964 by the late Governor of New  York, Nelson Rockefeller, in honor of the Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer. The Chair was awarded by the Department of Education in Albany competitively to one university within the State of New York which could provide additional research support for the successful candidate. Mazrui was personally encouraged by many

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people, including by the then Governor of New  York, Mario Cuomo, to leave the University of Michigan to accept the Schweitzer Chair at Binghamton University, after the Binghamton campus of the State University of New York made a bid for the Chair with Ali Mazrui as their candidate. In support of the Schweitzer Chair, Binghamton created the Institute of Global Cultural Studies in 1991, with Ali Mazrui as its Director. The first Albert Schweitzer Chair was the renowned American historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Another holder of the Chair was the famed Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. The immediate predecessor of Mazrui as the holder of Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities was Toni Morrison, the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. * * * 14. The book The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986) by Ali A. Mazrui was the first book by an African to have made it to the Sunday Times (UK) best-seller’s list for many weeks. * * * 15. The first Black person to be appointed Andrew D. White Professor-at-­ Large at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The appointment is honorific and it is occupied for six years. (Andrew D. White was founder and first president of Cornell.) The person appointed was at that time expected to visit Cornell once every semester, deliver two or more public lectures, and be accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students. The professor would then return to his or her regular university until the following semester when he or she was due to make another visit to Cornell. The recommendation to the Trustees from the Andrew D. White Committee for the appointment was a unanimous nomination. Other Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large included journalist Raymond Aaron, economist Kenneth Boulding, philosopher Jacques Derrida, historian Eric Hobsbawm, Islamicist Bernard Lewis, novelist Toni Morrison, social anthropologist Chie Nakane, economist Amartya Sen and political scientist Theda Skocpol. Ali Mazrui’s Andrew D. White Professorship-at-Large lasted from 1986 to 1992. When it ended, Mazrui became the first Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large to be made emeritus. Cornell also appointed him Senior Scholar in Africana Studies with effect from 1992. He continued at Cornell in that capacity until 2012. Mazrui often acknowledged the

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facilitating role played by his Cornell colleague and long-standing friend Locksley Edmondson in Mazrui’s appointment as the A.  D. White Professor-at-Large. * * * 16. The first African to be appointed Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large, in the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, in Leesburg, Virginia (1996–2000). * * * 17. The first Walter Rodney Distinguished Professor at the University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana. The Chair was created by the Head of State of Guyana in memory of the late Walter Rodney, a distinguished Guyanese historian, who was assassinated about a decade earlier. Mazrui was approached by the Office of the Head of State Cheddi Jagan. By the time Mazrui went to Guyana it was Janet Jagan, the widow, who had become Head of State. Mazrui gave public lectures not just on campus in Georgetown, but also to other audiences in the country as a whole. He was also honored by both the president of the country and the prime minister. * * * 18. The first Muslim president of the African Studies Association (ASA) of the US, and one of the first Africans to lead this organization. He was ASA president from 1979 to 1980. ASA is the most important Africanist organization in the US and the largest association of Africanists in the world, whose annual meetings are attended by hundreds of scholars working on Africa. It publishes scholarly journals and awards annual prizes for excellence in African studies. As a former president, Ali Mazrui subsequently managed to raise $50,000 for ASA from the Nigerian Chief Moshood Abiola. This became part of an endowment which launched an annual distinguished lecture of the association, named after Chief Abiola. Ali Mazrui was invited by ASA to deliver the very first Moshood Abiola Lecture. Chief Abiola himself was elected president of Nigeria but was prevented by the military from assuming office. * * *

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19. The first Chairman of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, based in Washington, DC.  This organization was designed to promote lectures, conferences, and research on the relationship between ancient Islamic values and modern democratic principles. The Center tried to promote such concerns not just in the US but also in the Muslim world. The latter effort was mainly through conferences or lectures held in major Muslim cities. Mazrui presided over the Center for first two years, from 1999 to 2000. * * * 20. The first Chancellor of a public university in Kenya who was not simultaneously the Head of State. The Head of State of Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki, appointed Ali Mazrui in 2003 as chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), located in Thika and Nairobi, Kenya. The chancellor’s role was previously played by President Mwai Kibaki himself, and before him, by President Daniel arap Moi. Mazrui served as the Chancellor of JKUAT from 2004 to 2010. * * * 21. The founding father of a project to identify the 100 greatest African books of the twentieth century. The final list was announced in February of 2002. Mazrui had originally proposed the concept of 100 greatest African books of the twentieth century at a Book Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe. Many publishers were in attendance, and they decided to implement Mazrui’s proposal. Committees were created to survey the entire corpus of African literature and evaluate winners in relevant languages. As inventor of the concept, Mazrui’s own books were disqualified. But he was given a special role in awarding Prizes to others, including honoring Nelson Mandela for the book he wrote in prison, Long Walk to Freedom (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1994). The grand ceremony took place in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2003. * * *

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22. The only African to have made it to the list of David Horowitz’s 2007 nationally controversial book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Others in the list included Noam Chomsky of MIT, Richard Falk of Princeton University, Mulana Karenga of California State University, and Amiri Baraka of Rutgers University. * * * 23. The very first prime ministerial special annual distinguished lecturer in the capital city of Malaysia in 2010. Ali Mazrui and his wife, Pauline Mazrui, were received in Malaysia by the then Prime Minister, Najib Razak, and by the preceding Premier, Mahathir Mohamad. Mazrui had been assigned the topic A Muslim Century: Myth or Reality? by the prime minister’s office. Mazrui was to choose the relevant century and write about it. He was to submit the text in advance so that it could be printed for distribution immediately after the delivery. Ali Mazrui fulfilled all the conditions. * * * 24. The first person to receive ISA’s Global South Caucus Distinguished Scholar Award in 2012. The award was presented to Mazrui by Jacqueline Anne Braveboy-Wagner of the City University of New York. Established in 1959, ISA is a ‘prestigious’ society of academics of political science and international relations in North America (The New York Times, 15 February 2014). The recipients of this ISA award after Mazrui included Jomo Sundaram, Bahgat Korany, Amitav Acharya, Diana Tussie, and Siba N. Grovogui. * * * 25. The first Muslim to deliver the Distinguished Commonwealth Lecture. His topic was ‘The Power of Language and the Politics of Religion’. The lecture was subsequently published in the Oxford-based journal, The Round Table Vol. 97, No. 394, 2008. Mazrui’s lecture was delivered in 2007 at Marlborough House in London, UK, and was chaired by the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

Reference Mazrui, A. A. 2008. Witness to History? IGCS Newsletter 7: 1–24.

Index

A Aaron, Raymond, 315 Abacha, Sani, 271–272 Abdel Nasser, Gamal, 188 Abiola, Chief Mashood, 271, 272, 316 Abubakar, Yaseen, 47 Abuja, 271, 275, 296 Academic egalitarianism, 77 Accra, 279, 287 Acharya, Amitav, 5, 44, 52, 57, 67, 318 Acholi, 187 Active instability, 135, 189, 200 Acute ethnocentrism, 135, 248 Addis Ababa, 283 Addis Ababa University, 308 Afghanistan, 37, 177, 178, 195 Afrabia, 136 Africa acculturation, 77 artificial borders, 78 fatal border, 78 fragmentation, 78 habitability, 78–79

retardation, 79 triple heritage, 136 westernization without modernization, 79–80 African American male, 80 African Americans, 137, 139, 140, 166 African National Congress (ANC), 290 African nationalism, 80, 116 African political economy, 80–81 African state, 78, 81, 89, 116 African Studies Association (ASA), 316 African university, 81 African woman, 81–82 Africans of the Blood, 137 Africans of the Soil, 137 Afrikaans, 140 Afro-conservative tradition, 138 Afro-ethnic language, 137, 138, 140, 267 Afro-Islamic language, 137, 138, 140, 267 Afro-leftist tradition, 138, 139 Afro-liberal tradition, 138–139

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Adem, Postcolonial Constructivism, Global Political Thinkers, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60581-0

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INDEX

Afro-nationalist tradition, 138, 139 Afro-Saxons, 139 Afrostroika, 139 Afro-Western language, 137, 138, 140, 267 Alex Haley’s paradox, 82 Algeria, 102, 120, 198 Ali Mazrui–William Blyden paradox, 82 Ali, Muhammad, 64, 272 Ali, Muhammed, 273 Ambivalent miscegenation, 140, 144, 163, 165 American Africans, 137, 140 American condition, 83 American escapism, 140–141 American multiculturalism, 83 American woman, 83 America’s imperial role, 82–83 Amin, Idi, 46, 64, 85, 98, 130, 146, 184, 210, 211, 228, 273, 278, 293, 298 Anarchic privatization, 141, 168, 174 Anglo-French, 84 Anglo-neutral countries, 141, 142 Anglo-political countries, 141, 142 Anglo-Saxons, 142, 150, 191 Anglo-societal countries, 141, 142 Anglo-specialized countries, 141, 142 Angola, 118, 155 Annan, Kofi, 137, 274 Ann Arbor, 21 Anthropological negritude, 142, 203 Anticipation, 143, 220, 233, 257 Anticipatory levirate, 143 Anti-colonial hegemony, 83 Anti-colonial terrorism, 143 Anti-semitic bias, 143–144, 179, 183, 198, 199, 211 Anyaoku, Eleazar Emeka, 274 Aquinas, Thomas, 111, 123, 214 Arab image, 84

Arab League, 182 Arabesque bias, 144, 179, 183, 198, 199, 211 Arafat, Yasir, 206, 274 Arap Moi, Daniel, 276, 292, 298, 317 Aristotle, 176 Ascending/ascendant miscegenation, 140, 144, 163, 165 Ashanti, 81 Asia, 150, 151, 177, 198, 215, 251, 260 Assie-Lumumba, N’Dri T., 45 Asymmetrical acculturation, 144, 254 Asymmetrical constitutionalism, 145 Asymmetrical miscegenation, 145, 255 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 34 Atlanta, 282 Australia, 141, 307, 308 Austria, 103 Authoritative pan-socialism, 145, 165 Autocentrism, 146, 186 Avicenna, 176 Awolowo, Obafemi, 115 Aztecs, 177 B Babangida, Ibrahim, 275 Baganda, 64, 153, 175, 182, 186, 187 Baganda-Japanese, 84 Bahrain, 117, 119 Baldwin, James, 6 Balewa, Tafawa, 112, 113 Banda, Hastings, 105, 115 Banda, Kamuzu, 192 Bandung, 223 Bangladesh, 83, 242 Bantu, 34, 64 Baraka, Amiri, 318 Barbados, 142 Barvinchak, Jamie, vi Al-Bashir, Hassan Ahmad, 102

 INDEX 

Al-Bashir, Omar, 272 BBC, 21–24, 295, 301, 307, 308, 314 Beethoven, 111, 214 Beijing, 309 Bemath, Abdul Samed, 11 Benevolent colonization, 146, 205 Benevolent plagiarism, 146, 147, 205 Benevolent sexism, 146, 147, 205 Benign plagiarism, 146, 147, 205 Benign self-colonization, 146, 147 Benign sexism, 146, 147, 205 Berlin, Isaiah, 29 Bernal, Martin, 176, 204 Bi-gamy, 84 Binghamton, 281, 282, 295, 297 Binghamton University, 10 Bio-cultural assimilation, 147–148 Bio-cultural mobility, 148 Bismarck, Otto von, 85 Black anti-miscegenation, 148, 198 Black Atlanticist, 149 Black-Brown relations, 85 Black diplomacy, 149 Black ecumenicalism, 149 Black Islamnesia, 149–150 Black Orientalism, 150 Black Zionism, 149, 150, 215 Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 24 Blyden, William, 82 Bolsheviks, 34, 64 Bondage, 85, 98, 125 Bosnia, 226 Boulding, Kenneth, 315 Bourdieu, Pierre, 64 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 137, 275 Brahimi, Lakhdar, 276 Brain-brawn, 86 Braveboy-Wagner, Jacqueline Anne, 318 Brazil, 54, 136, 140, 165, 197, 217

321

Brazzaville, 157 Britain, 141, 151, 167, 180, 183, 191, 193, 244, 314 British cultural relativism, 150, 151 British Empire, 20 British ethnic exclusivity, 150, 151 Broken home, 86 Brown, John, 244 Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 276 Brunei, 244 Buganda, 84, 98, 282 Bull, Hedley, 29–31 Bunche, Ralph, 96 Burke, Edmond, 51, 52 Burundi, 130, 163, 174 Bush, George W., 37 Buzan, Barry, 5, 44, 57 C Cabral, Amilcar, 188 Calculus-friendly culture, 151 California, 23 Cameroon, 141 Campbell, Horace, 276 Cape Town, 317 Cape Verde Islands, 140 Carr, E. H., 6, 7 Carter, Jimmy, 192, 282 Castro, Fidel, 154, 214 Casual imperialism, 151–152 Central Africa, 137, 195 Central African Republic, 168 Cesaire, Aime, 115 Chamberlain, Neville, 226 Chechnya, 91 Chester, Norman, 29 Chicago, 277, 280, 288, 307 Chicken George syndrome, 152 Chidzero, Bernard, 247 Chile, 189 Chiluba, Frederick, 276

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INDEX

China, 108, 122, 123, 145, 165, 170, 176, 182, 195, 200, 223, 252, 255, 309 Chomsky, Noam, 318 Christopher-Okigbo, 86 Civic violence, 152, 230 Civilian-military rule, 86–87 Civilian supremacy, 87 Clinton, Bill, 84–85, 277, 287, 305 Cold War, 155, 178, 205 Collective subjectivism, 152, 157, 226 Colonialism by consent, 153, 172, 236, 246, 251 Colonized Islam, 87 Columbia University, 20, 287, 295, 306 Columbus, Christopher, 256 Combative martyrdom, 153, 254 Commercialized Islam, 87 Commonwealth, 87 Communalist language, 153, 171 Comoro Islands, 182 Comparative hate retention, 153–154 Comparative imperial ethnicity, 154 Comparative martyrdom complex, 154 Compassionate ecumenicalism, 155 Competitive ecumenicalism, 155 Competitive imperialism, 154–156 Comprehensive globalization, 156, 170, 193 Comprehensive reparation, 156, 161, 213, 258 Conakry, 153 Confucianism, 155 Congo, 20, 52, 135, 157, 233 Continental jurisdiction, 156, 239 Control-autonomy, 88 Converging principles and diverging tolerance, 88 Cornell University, 315 Costa Rica, 111 Cote d’Ivore, see Ivory Coast Counter-penetration, 88, 100

Counter-subjectivity, 157 Coup-prone countries, 157 Coup-proof countries, 157 COVID 19, vi Cracked melting pot, 88 Creative eclecticism, 157 Creative synthesis, 157–158 Crippled capitalism, 158 Crisis of normative egalitarianism, 158, 159 Crisis of territoriality, 88–89, 158–159 Critical School of African Philosophy, 159, 161, 188 Cuba, 154, 252 Cultural anti-Americanism, 159, 228 Cultural autarky, 159, 251, 257 Cultural convergence, 89, 113 Cultural dependency, 159–160, 252, 264 Cultural ecumenicalism, 67, 160 Cultural engineering, 160, 250 Cultural nakedness, 90 Cultural relativism, 154, 160–161, 172, 186 Cultural reparation, 156, 161, 213, 258 Cultural schizophrenia, 161 Cultural School of African Philosophy, 159, 161, 188 Cultural treason, 162 Culture, 161 Culture-economy, 90 Culture-structure, 89 Cuomo, Mario, 34, 277, 315 Cyprus, 240 Czar, 63 Czechoslovakia, 168, 209 D Dakar, 81, 185, 274, 276, 278, 289, 304, 305 Daley, Richard M., 277

 INDEX 

Dar es Salaam, 106, 114, 131, 292, 297, 298, 302, 303 Darby, Philip, 28, 31, 33, 43–45, 56 Davenport, Christian, 34 Davutoglu, Ahmet, 277–278 De Facto sovereignty, 162, 172, 200, 206 De Gaulle, Charles, 153, 204 Dean, John, 278 Decentralized brutality, 162 Defensive fanaticism, 162 Democracy-resistant countries, 163 Democratization, 90 Deng Xiaoping, 309 Derrida, Jacques, 315 Descending miscegenation, 140, 144, 163, 165 Destabilization phase, 163, 193, 228, 232 Detached participation, 90–91 Deviant violence, 163, 250 Diaspora of colonialism, 164, 166 Diaspora of Enslavement, 137, 164, 166 Dignified assertiveness, 164 Dignified indigence, 164 Dignitarianism, 136, 164–165 Dignity in Islam, 91 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 150, 278–279 Disorder in the midst of brilliance, 91 Dissident pan-socialism, 145, 165 Divergent miscegenation, 140, 144, 163, 165 Divine multiplicity, 165 Division of control, 165–166 Divisive Arabic and unifying Islam, 91 Divisive peace, 91–92 Documentary deficit, 166 Documentary radicalism, 166 Doshisha University, vi Du Bois, W. E. B., 6, 92, 149, 167, 279 Dual Diaspora, 166–167

323

Dual fertility, 167 Dual heritage, 167 Dual plagiarism, 167 Dual racial citizenship, 167–168 Dual society, 168, 174, 227, 240, 250 Dual tyranny, 168 Dubai, 187 Dynastic privatization, 141, 168, 174 E East Africa, 138, 143, 174, 190, 232, 239, 267, 291, 294, 296, 297, 302, 305, 311 Eastern Africa, 137 Eastern Europe, 205, 209 Easton, David, 22 Ecological concern, 169 Ecological curiosity, 169 Economic aid, 92 Economic culture, 169, 195, 199, 229 Economic domination, 170, 196, 238 Economic globalization, 156, 170, 193 Economic imperialism, 170 Economics of imperialism, 170 Ecophilia, 171 Ecumenical Islam, 92 Ecumenical language, 153, 171 Ecumenical state, 171, 241, 245 Edinburgh University, 296 Edmondson, Locksley, 316 Egypt, 55, 143, 150, 182, 183, 198, 207, 215, 221, 222, 242–244, 256, 275 Elaigwu, Isawa, 279 Electoral polygamy, 171, 260 Electoral sovereignty, 162, 172, 200, 206 Elite bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Elitist universalism, 93 Emerson, Rupert, 4

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INDEX

Emmet, Dorothy, 24 Emperor Constantine I, 69 Empire by invitation, 153, 172, 236, 246 Empirical relativism, 161, 172, 186 Engaged Africana Studies, 173, 194 England, 145, 199, 279, 291, 306 English language, 84, 93, 112, 113, 115, 116, 121 Entebbe, 293 Entrenched values, 173, 264, 265 Epic School of African Historiography, 173 Episodic School of African Historiography, 173 Equatorial Guinea, 117 Esthetic dignitarianism, 136 Esthetic revitalization, 136 Ethiopia, 103, 126, 129, 130, 155, 184, 222, 241, 256, 267 Ethnicity, 93, 94, 129 Ethnicity-religion, 94 Ethnicized religion, 94 Ethnic privatization, 141, 168, 174 Ethnic specialization, 174 Ethnic transnationalism, 174 Ethno-capitalism, 175 Ethnocentric universalism, 94 Ethnocracy, 175 Euro-blame, 175–178 Eurocentrism, 168 Euro-Christianity, 95 Euro-denial, 175–178 Euro-exclusivity, 175–178 Euro-heroism, 175–178 Euro-marginalization, 175–178 Euro-mitigation, 175–178 Europe, 68, 69, 81, 100, 113, 121, 127, 128, 132, 136, 158, 169, 172, 173, 176, 189, 198, 200, 204, 207–209, 215, 243, 247, 250, 251, 255, 257, 258, 262, 264, 267, 283, 301

Euro-superimposition, 175–178 Evangelical exploration, 179, 244 Ewe, 137 Executive legislature, 95 Exotica bias, 144, 178–179, 183, 198, 199, 211 Exotic bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Exploitative exploration, 179, 244 Externally oriented ideology, 178 Extractive imperative, 179, 200, 206, 258 F Factual memory, 179, 182 Falk, Richard, 5, 29, 38, 61, 280, 318 Falola, Toyin, 280 Fanagaloo, 140 Farrakhan, Louis, 216, 280–281, 287, 288 FBI, 47 Ferguson, Niall, 314 Feudo-imperial interdependence, 179–180, 207, 234 Florida, 47 Formal imperialism, 180 Forrest Gump, 11 Fractured nation-state, 180 France, 80, 84, 103, 116, 118, 153, 166, 180, 183, 193, 204, 225, 313, 314 Frankenstein state, 180 Frankfurt, vi French colonial policy, 95–96 French Revolution, 117 Frozen warfare, 180–181 Fulfude, 138 Futuristic revolution, 181, 220 G Galtung, Johan, 29 Galtung, Yohan, 281

 INDEX 

Gandhi, Indira, 281 Gandhi, Mahatma, 85, 96, 153, 214, 219, 224, 234 Gandhi, Rajiv, 281 Gandhi, Sonia, 281 Garden of Eden, 78 Garvey, Marcus, 102, 115, 149, 215 Gender, 80, 83, 96, 100 Gender bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Genealogical Afrabians, 181, 182, 188 Generation bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Genetic memory, 179, 181–182 Geo-cultural distance, 182 Geographical Afrabians, 181, 182, 188 George III, 83, 121 George Mason University, 281 George VI, 279 Georgia, 282 Germany, 85, 103 Ghana, 104, 105, 111, 141, 149, 157, 188, 212, 242, 279, 287, 288, 295, 300, 301 Gibbon, Edward, 176 Giddens, Anthiny, 314 Gingrich, Newt, 282 Girma Woldeghiorgis, 308 Global Africa, 182 Global Pan-Africanism, 183, 253, 259, 261, 266 Global South, 71 Global (transcontinental) terrorism, 183 Gloriana Afrocentricity, 183, 235 Gold Coast, 111, 212, 219 Gorbachev, Mikhail/Gorbachev, Michael, 139, 255, 282 Gowon, Victoria, 282 Gowon, Yakubu, 112, 271, 282, 283 Great Britain, 80, 103, 299, 314 Greece, 55, 123, 175, 176, 204 Greed, 96–97, 110

325

Grieve, M., 4 Gromyko, Anatoly, 283 Grovogui, Siba N., 318 Guhin, Jeffrey, 44 Guinea, 96, 117, 118, 140, 153, 157 Guyana, 283, 284, 302 H Hacking, Ian, 55 Haile Selassie, 103, 282, 308 Haile Selassie I, 282–283, 308 Haiti, 109 Haitian revolution, 233 Haley, Alex, 82, 152 Hall, Nancy, vi Harambee, 138 Harare, 109, 317 Harem bias, 144, 179, 183, 198, 199, 211 Harlem, 109 Harvard University, 22, 77 Hastings, Warren, 64 Hausa, 93, 94, 100, 108, 109, 113, 138, 151, 187 Hausa-Fulani, 81, 108 Hegel, G. W. F., 233 Hegemonic homogenization, 70 Hegemonic trans-ethnic language, 184, 191, 232 Hemispherization, 184 Henderson, Errol A., 52 Henry VIII, 176, 199 Herndon, vi Heroic evil, 184 Heroic failure, 184–185 Heroic terrorism, 185, 188 Heroic universalism, 185, 224 Heterogeneous society, 185, 186, 232 High charity and low aid, 97 Hindi, 201 Hindu, 132 Hinduism, 155, 193

326 

INDEX

Historical relativism, 161, 172, 186 Historic amnesia, 185–186 Hitler, Adolf, 207, 226, 257, 258 Hobbes, Thomas, 180, 181 Hobsbawm, Eric, 315 Hoffmann, Stanley, 27 Hollywood, 299 Holy Roman Empire, 205 Homocentrism, 146, 186 Homogeneous society, 186, 232, 235 Hong Kong, vi Hopkins, Gloria, vi Horizontal assimilation, 186, 266 Horizontal brain drain, 187, 265 Horizontal cultural integration, 187, 265 Horizontal miscegenation, 187, 265 Horizontal nuclear proliferation, 187, 266 Horizontal political decay, 187 Horn of Africa, 117, 152 Horowitz, David, 318 Horrific terrorism, 185, 188 Houphouët-Boigny, Felix, 115 Hoyte, Desmond, 283 Huddersfield, 19, 299 Hughes, Langston, 185 Huntington, Samuel, 34, 35 Hurd, Ian, 52–54 Hussein, Imam, 154 Hussein, Saddam, 214 Hutu, 89, 97, 147, 148, 163, 168, 174, 182, 227 I Ibadan, 81, 118 Ibn Khaldun, 176 Ibn Rushd, 123 Ibn Sina, 123 Ibo, 174, 187, 198 See also Igbo

Ibrahim, Anwar, 283–284 Identity-resource, 97 Ideological Afrabians, 181, 182, 188 Ideological conversion, 188, 195 Ideological School of African Philosophy, 159, 161, 188 Ideology of knowledge, 189, 251 Igbo, 93, 94, 109, 112, 113, 151, 185, 224 See also Ibo Imminent instability, 135, 189, 200 Imperial humanitarianism, 189 Imperialism, 82, 87, 92, 95, 98–99, 122, 128, 131 of penetration, 191, 192 of withdrawal, 191, 192 Imperial language, 190, 232 Imperial lingo-optimism, 190 Imperial lingo-pessimism, 190 Imperial nationalism, 191, 260 Imperial trans-ethnic language, 184, 191, 232 Impersonal positive ageism, 192, 227 Incas, 177 Independent thinker, 192, 222 India, 83, 85, 90, 96, 123, 129, 151, 158, 176, 201, 213, 227, 241, 281, 305–307 Indian Ocean, 104 Indigenous authenticity, 192, 264 Indigenous ecumenicalism, 193, 246 Indonesia, 221, 242, 246 Industrial Revolution, 99, 128 Informal imperialism, 193 Informational globalization, 156, 170, 193 Innovation phase, 163, 193, 228, 232 Innovative radicalism, 194, 242 Inquisitive Africana Studies, 173, 194 Institutional democracy, 194, 220 Integrated cleavage, 194 Integrative violence, 194–195, 260

 INDEX 

Intellectual acculturation, 188, 195 Intellectual culture, 169, 195, 199, 229 Intellectual dependency, 196 Intellectual domination, 170, 196, 238 Internal conflict, 99 Internally-oriented ideology, 178, 196 International caste system, 196, 197 International class system, 196, 197 International sub-dependency, 197 Intimidatory leader, 197, 211, 225, 240 Intra-state war caused by inter-state peace, 99 Inverse dependency, 197 Inverse international sub-dependency, 197, 217 Inverse secession, 198 Iqbal, Muhammad, 176 Iran, 37, 100, 191, 208, 220, 241, 242, 244, 280, 307 Iraq, 37 Islam and indigenous languages, 100 and the west, 100 Islamic calligraphy, 100–101 Islamic centralism, 101 Islamic expansion, 101 Islamic ritual, 101 Islamo-Christian, 101–102 Islamo-military, 102 Ismail, Edna Adam, 284 Isolationism-globalism, 102 Israel, 154, 183, 241 Italy, 103, 180 Ithaca, 315 Ivory Coast, 96 J Jackson, Jesse, 284 Jackson, Patrick T., 64

327

Jagan, Cheddi, 284, 316 Jagan, Janet, 284, 316 Jamaica, 102, 142 James, C. L. R., 6 Japan, 142, 182, 193, 253, 264, 265 Java, 132 Jerusalem, 115 Jesus Christ, 127 Jewish anti-miscegenation, 148, 198 Jihad bias, 144, 179, 183, 198, 199, 211 Jihad tradition, 198, 219, 252, 259, 266 Johannesburg, 289, 290 Johnson, Lyndon, 84, 211 Johnston, A. I., 31 Jordan, 244 Judaism, 155, 193, 249, 250 Judeo-Ethiopian, 103 Judicial amputation bias, 144, 179, 183, 198, 199, 211 K Kaba, Amadu Jacky, 11 Kabul, 178 Kahin, Dahir Rayale, 284–285 Kampala, 295, 297–299, 311 Kano, 118 Karenga, Maulana, 285, 318 Kashmir, 91, 305, 306 Katzenstein, Peter, 30 Kaunda, Kenneth, 5, 219, 276, 281, 284, 285 Kennan, George, v Kenneth Galbraith, John, 314 Kenya, 19, 20, 86, 103–106, 118, 121, 122, 127, 130–132, 141, 143, 151, 165, 174, 175, 181, 227, 232, 234, 239, 251, 276, 279, 285–288, 291, 292, 294–296, 298, 299, 306, 317

328 

INDEX

Kenya’s political geography, 104 Kenyatta, Jomo, 103, 142, 165, 243, 247, 285–287, 291, 317 Kenyatta, Uhuru, 286 Kerry, John, 4 Khama, Seretse, 247 Khartoum, 272, 297, 298 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 220 Kibaki, Mwai, 286, 317 Kiberu, Maureen, 277 Kikuyu, 93, 122, 151, 186, 187, 261, 266 Kikwete, Jakaya, 241 King, Angus, 287 King, Martin Luther, 96, 214, 215, 287 Kinshasa, 157, 174, 224 Kinship culture, 169, 195, 199, 229 Kipling, Rudyard, 82, 151, 189, 191 Kiswahili, 93, 100, 103, 105, 127, 158, 190, 232, 285, 286, 293, 296 Kokole, Omari, 4 Korany, Bahgat, 318 Korea, 108, 151 Kosovo, 91 Kothari, Rajni, 29 Krio, 140 Kriyol, 140 Kuala Lumpur, 283, 301 Kufuor, John Agyekum, 287, 288 Kuwait, 187 Kwanza, 285 Kyoto, vi L Labor imperative, 179, 199–200, 206, 258 Lahore, 132 Lake, Anthony, 287–288 Langi, 187

Language in East Africa, 105 Language-power, 124 Lapid, Yosef, 33 Latent instability, 135, 189, 200 Latin America, 151, 156, 197, 213 Law and rebellion in Islam, 106 Leander, A., 64 Lebanon, 154, 172 Leesburg, 316 Left-wing academia, 106 Legalistic sovereignty, 162, 172, 200, 206 Legis-ration, 106 Legon, 81 Lenin, 63 Leslie, C., 34 Levis, Nancy, vi Lewis, Bernard, 315 Leys, Colin, 4 Liberal Islam, 200, 212, 222 Liberalized Islam, 107–108 Liberia, 140, 150 Libya, 117, 206, 222, 242, 280, 300 Lincoln, Abraham, 112 Lincoln University, 272, 274 Lingala, 137 Lingo-legal convergence, 202 Lingo-legal divergence, 202 Linguistic apartheid, 201 Linguistic ecumenicalism, 201, 241 Linguistic fatalism, 201 Linguistic nationalism, 201–202 Literary negritude, 142, 203 Livingstone, David, 64 Locational centralism, 203, 227 Locke, John, 127 London, 21–23, 191, 252, 279, 283, 286, 290 Luganda, 93, 137, 153 Lugard, Lord, 20, 87, 108 Lule, Y. K., 22 Lumpen militariat, 203

 INDEX 

Luo, 151, 174, 186, 187, 251, 299 Lusaka, 285 Luthuli, Albert, 96, 215, 259 M Maathai, Wangari, 288 Macedonia, 91 Macro-apartheid, 203, 208 Macro-dependency, 204, 208 Macro-integration, 204 Macro-nonalignment, 204 Macro-plagiarism, 204, 208 Macro-retribalization, 205 Macro-segregation, 205, 208 Magufuli, John, 241 Mahama, Alhaji Aliu, 288 al-Mahdi, Sadiq, 272 el-Mahdi, Muhammed Ahmed, 162 Makerere College, 19, 22, 81, 114 Makerere University, 22, 23, 288, 291, 294, 296, 297, 303, 311 Malawi, 105, 157, 192 Malaya, 221 Malaysia, 283, 301, 318 Malcolm X, 238, 308 Male and female, 108 Mali, 96, 203, 242, 256 Malignant plagiarism, 146, 147, 205 Malignant self-colonization, 146, 147, 205 Malignant sexism, 146, 147, 205 Mamdani, Mahmood, 288–289 Mandated sovereignty, 162, 172, 200, 206 Mandela, Nelson, 108–109, 115, 165, 206, 289, 317 Mandelaism, 206 Mandela-Mbeki, 109 Mandinka, 138 Maputo, 132 Marginalized Islam, 109

329

Market imperative, 179, 200, 206, 258 Marshall, Thurgood, 289–290 Marshall-Thomas paradox, 109–110 Martial counter-terrorism, 206, 215 Martyrdom complex, 154, 207, 215 Marx, Karl, 97, 103, 138, 167, 180, 234, 306 Marxism, 49 Masai, 230 Masculinity of war, 110 Mature interdependence, 180, 207, 234 Mauritania, 96, 182 Mauritius, 56 Mayas, 177 Mazrui, Alamin, 3–13 Mazrui, Nicole Molly, 302 Mazrui, Pauline, 318 Mbeki, Thabo, 109, 290 Mboya, Tom, 95, 106, 287, 291 McLuhan, Marshall, 315 McNamara, Robert, 281 Mecca, 115, 150, 203 Medina, 115 Mediocrity, 110 Meiji Restoration, 64 Melbourne, 312 Me-Neither syndrome, 207, 208 Mengistu Haile Mariam, 126 Me-Too syndrome, 207, 208 Mexico, 86, 142 Michigan, 23–24, 277, 283, 303, 307 Micro-apartheid, 203, 208 Micro-dependency, 204, 208 Micro-integration, 204, 208 Micro-plagiarism, 204, 208 Micro-retribalization, 209 Middle Ages, 155 Middle East, 20, 98, 104, 150, 154, 182, 183

330 

INDEX

Militarily inspired military coup, 210, 230 Military-agrarian complex, 209 Military ambition, 209 Military anomie, 209 Military democratization, 210 Military theocracy, 210–211 Mill, John Stuart, 246, 280 Miller, J. D. B., 28 Milton, John, 176 Minaret bias, 144, 179, 183, 198, 199, 211 Mission-driven foreign policy, 211, 214 Mittelman, James, 4, 291–292 Mkampa, Benjamin, 241 Mkapa, Benjamin, 292 Mobilization leader, 197, 211, 225, 240 Modernist Islam, 200, 212, 222 Modern weapons and pre-modern armies, 110–111 Mohamad, Mahathir, 283, 318 Mohammed, Warithu Deen, 288 Mohan, Jitendra, 4 Moi, Daniel arap, 46 Mombasa, 19, 90, 118, 286 Monarchical republicanism, 111, 212 Monetary reparation, 156, 161, 212–213, 258 Monogamous extremism, 213 Monopolistic imperialism, 154, 156, 213 Mono-racial slavery, 148, 213, 215 Monotheism, 111 Monotheistic dualism, 213–214 Monroe Doctrine, 156, 213 Monster-driven foreign policy, 211, 214 Moral acculturation, 214 Moral counter-terrorism, 206, 214–215

Morgenthau, Hans J., 22, 107 Morocco, 244, 246 Morrison, Toni, 315 Mosaic imperative, 215 Mozambique, 155, 292, 303 Mozart, 111, 214 Mphahlele, Es’kia, 4 Mugabe, Robert, 95, 259, 292, 294 Mugo, Micere Githae, 293 Muhammad, Elijah, 264 Mujahedeen-muggers, 111 Multilateral dependency, 215 Multiracial slavery, 148, 213, 215 Murphy, Caryle, 47 Museveni, Yoweri, 114, 174, 224, 293–294 Muslim Brotherhood, 272 Mutunga, Willy, 5, 48, 294 Mwinyi, Ali Hassan, 241, 294 N Nairobi, 106, 118, 276, 285, 286, 291, 297, 298, 317 Nakane, Chie, 315 Namibia, 156 Narizzano-Bronson, Ravenna, vi Nationalistic evangelism, 216 Nationalist Muslim, 216, 264 NATO, 204, 282 Natural hero, 217, 254, 261 Natural international sub-dependency, 197, 217 Ndebele, 137 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J., 4 Negative globalization, 217, 231 Negative post-democracy, 218 Negativism bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Negritude, 136, 139, 142, 218, 235, 243 Neguib, Muhammad, 181

 INDEX 

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 85 Neo-dependency, 218–219 Netherlands, 103, 180 New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), 139 Newton, Isaac, 79, 124 New York, 277, 287, 295, 297, 303, 306–308 Niger, 96, 217 Nigeria, 20, 91, 94, 108, 109, 112, 113, 118, 141, 149, 151, 157, 174, 175, 187, 198, 208, 217, 224, 225, 240, 271, 272, 274, 275, 282, 283, 290, 296, 297, 305, 316 leaders, 112 Nigerian English, 80 Nigerian Islam, 113 Nimeiri, Gaafar, 294 Nixon, Richard, 119 Njogu, Kimani, 11 Njonjo, Charles, 103 Nkomo, Joshua, 294–295 Nkrumah, Kwame, 24, 48, 95, 104–105, 109, 111, 115, 188, 212, 219, 227, 242, 247, 259, 279, 295 Nobel Schizophrenia, 219 Non-violent political mobilization, 198, 219, 252, 259, 266 Normative arrogance, 219, 220 Normative convergence, 113, 219, 220 Normative democracy, 194, 220 Normative egalitarianism, 113 North America, 83, 100, 104, 121, 132, 148, 156, 265 Northern Ireland, 145, 153, 168, 241 Nostalgia, 143, 220, 233, 237, 241, 242 Nostalgic revolution, 181, 220

331

Nsibambi, Apollo, 295–296 Nubi, 138, 174 Nuclear castration, 221 Nuclear macho, 221 Nuclear weapon, 113–114 Nuffield College, 29, 305 Nyanja, 137 Nyerere, J. K., 46, 95, 109, 111, 114, 127, 130, 145, 166, 188, 193, 195, 196, 222, 241, 256, 259, 292, 294, 296–298 Nyong’o, P. Anyang, 106, 297 O Obama, Barack, 6, 37, 86, 149, 265, 298, 299, 305, 306 Obasanjo, Olusegun, 271, 272, 296–298 Obote, Milton, 87, 114, 285, 298 Obote-Museveni paradox, 114 Odinga, Oginga, 298 Odinga, Raila, 298, 299 Ogot, Bethwell A., 299 Okigbo, Christopher, 86, 93, 185, 224 Open secrecy, 114 Oppenheimer, Robert, 314 Ordered anarchy, 163, 221, 222 Ordered tyranny, 163, 221, 222 Organic solidarity, 222, 252 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 275, 276, 279, 289, 303, 305 Original thinker, 192, 222 Origins and eternity in Islam, 115 Orominya, 137 Oromo, 153 Orthodox Islam, 200, 212, 222 Orwell, George, 6, 47 Othello, 289 Other-regarding jihad, 223, 246

332 

INDEX

Ottoman Empire, 88, 153, 180, 221, 236 Owen, David, 226 Oxford University, 20, 295, 306 P Padmore, George, 167 Pakistan, 83, 189, 305 Palestine, 91 Palo Alto, 312 Palombaro, AnnaMarie, vi Pan-Africanism, 104, 108, 109, 115–116 of integration, 223 of liberation, 223 Pan-pigmentationalism, 223 Pan-socialism, 145 Pan-tutsism, 224 Paolini, A. J., 33 Papua New Guinea, 141 Paris, 313 Parochial martyrdom, 185, 224 Particular and universal, 116 Passive resistance, 153, 214, 215, 219, 224, 234, 242, 245 Patriarchal leader, 197, 211, 224–225, 240 Pax-Africana, 225 Pax-Humana, 225 Pax-Nigeriana, 225 Peace criminal, 226 Pennsylvania, 274, 301, 302 Perham, Margery, 20, 242 Persia, 198, 220 Personalization of authority, 226, 237, 244 Personalized positive ageism, 192, 226–227 Personal subjectivism, 152, 226 Personified centralism, 203, 227 Philadelphia, 273 Philippines, 82, 83, 141, 151, 191

Physical nearness and imperial distance, 117 Pidgin, 140 Pierce, Anne, vi Pigmentational self-determination, 227 Plamenatz, John, 20, 24, 29, 47, 306 Plural society, 168, 227 Poitier, Sidney, 299–300 Pokot, 137 Political amnesia, 228 Political annuation, 228 Political anti-Americanism, 159, 228 Political chemistry, 117–118 Political collapse phase, 163, 193, 228, 232 Political culture, 169, 195, 199, 229, 263, 265 Political hygiene, 229 Political metrology, 229 Political puritanism, 230 Political sex, 230 Political violence, 152, 230, 250 Politically inspired military coup, 210, 230 Politicized riots, 118 Polycultural illiteracy, 230–231 Portugal, 103, 117, 118 Positive globalization, 217, 231 Positive post-democracy, 218, 231 Post-conflict phase, 163, 193, 228, 232 Pravda, 283 Prebisch, Raul, 307 Pre-Darwinian Social Darwinist, 233 Preponderant language, 232 Preponderant society, 185, 186, 232 Preponderant trans-ethnic language, 184, 191, 232 Presentism, 143, 220, 233 Pretoria, 290 Primary abolitionists, 233, 244 Primary resistance, 224, 234, 242, 245 Primary (political) violence, 234, 245

 INDEX 

Primitive interdependence, 180, 207, 234 Primordial loyalty, 235 Primordial surplus, 166, 235 Princeton University, 77, 280, 318 Principle-interest, 119 Proletarian Afrocentricity, 235 Proletarian aristocrat, 119–120, 236 Prophet Muhammad, 100, 106, 115, 119, 154, 236, 246 Protectorate, 153, 172, 236, 246 Protests of conservation, 236, 237 of corrective measures, 236, 237 of restoration, 236, 237 of transformation, 236, 237 Pro-Westernism-Westernization, 119 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 24 Puchala, Donald, 28, 36 Q Al-Qasimi, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammad, 272–273, 300 Qaddafy, Muammar, 109, 120, 280, 281, 300 Quantitative historiography, 120 Quebec, 202 Queen Elizabeth, 279, 306 Queen Elizabeth II, 279–280 Queen Victoria, 251 Quest for aristocratic effect, 226, 237, 244 Quest for royal historical identity, 226, 237 Qur’anic inimitability, 120 R Racial bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Racial deficit, 120–121 Racial domination, 170, 196, 238

333

Racial exclusivity, 121 Racialistic nepotism, 239 Racial jihad, 238 Racially-inspired terrorism, 238, 241 Racial mobility, 239 Racial sovereignty, 156, 239 Radical pragmatism, 240 Ramaphosa, Cyril, 302 Ramphal, Shridath, 290, 307 Rawlings, Jerry, 287, 300–301 Razak, Najib, 301, 318 Rebellious progeny, 121 Reciprocal dependence, 240 Reconciliation leader, 197, 211, 225, 240 Regional dualism, 174, 240–241 Reith Lectures, v, 124 Religion-language, 121 Religious ecumenicalism, 201, 241 Religiously-stimulated terrorism, 241 Religious state, 171, 241, 245 Rendell, Edward, 301–302 Reparation in a conservative world, 122 Republican Islam, 241–242, 244 Restorative nostalgia, 242 Retardation, 79 Revivalist radicalism, 194, 242 Revolutionary resistance, 224, 234, 242, 245 Rhodes, Cecile, 191 Rhodesia, 155 Rockefeller, Nelson, 314 Rodney, Walter, 284, 302–303, 316 Roman Empire, 69 Romania, 295 Romantic ethnology, 242–243 Romantic gloriana, 139, 243 Romantic primitivism, 139, 243 Rome, 199 Roots-goals, 122 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 51 Royalist Islam, 242–244

334 

INDEX

Ruggie, John, 52 Ruralization of Marxism, 122 Rushdie, Salman, 162 Russell, Bertrand, 96, 97, 312 Rutgers University, 318 Rwanda, 89, 93, 130, 147, 163, 168, 174, 224, 227 S Sacred science in Islam, 123 Sacrilization of authority, 226, 237, 244 Sadat, Anwar, 181 Sagan, Carl, 303 Said, Edward, v, 44 Sakamoto, Yoshikazu, 29 Saladin, Salahuddin, 198 Salim, Ahmed Salim, 5 Salim, Salim Ahmed, 303–304 Samarkand, 132 Saudi Arabia, 119, 195, 208, 244 Sawere, Chaly, 6, 10, 19 Scalia, Antonin, 304 Schlesinger, Arthur M., 315 Schweitzer, Albert, 277, 314, 315 Scientific exploration, 179, 244 Scientification-secularization, 124 Scotland, 145, 152 Searle, John, v Secondary abolitionists, 233, 244 Secondary resistance, 245 Secondary (political) violence, 234, 245 Secular ideology, 124 Secularism-libertarianism, 123 Secularization of identity, 245–246 Secular state, 171, 241, 245 Segregated diversity, 246 Self-colonization, 153, 172, 225, 236, 246

Self-regarding jihad, 216, 223, 246 Semitic competitiveness, 193, 246 Sen, Amartya, 315 Senegal, 84, 96, 124, 132, 150, 157, 185, 221, 242, 274–276, 278, 289, 304, 305 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 84, 95, 115, 124–125, 157, 218, 247, 285, 304, 305 Sese Seko, Mobutu, 174, 224, 304–305 Sexual egalitarianism, 247 Sexual hedonism, 247 Sexual heteroraciality, 247, 248 Sexual homoraciality, 247, 248 Sexual possessiveness, 248, 250 Sexual puritanism, 248 Sexual self-denial, 249 Shagari, Shehu, 305 Shakespeare, William, 79, 124, 127, 146 Shaw, George Bernard, 126 Shintoism, 155 Sierra Leone, 140 Simpson, O. J., 289 Singer, J. David, 38 Singh, Manmohan, 305–306 Sins of commission, 249, 250 Sins of omission, 249–250 Skocpol, Theda, 315 Slavery, 82, 98, 125 Smith, Adam, 97, 107 Social engineering, 160, 250 Social insularity, 135, 248, 250 Social violence, 163, 250, 260 Socio-literature, 251 Sociology of knowledge, 189, 251 Somali, 138, 152, 153 Somalia, 86, 87, 93, 126, 130, 162, 182, 198, 221, 241, 267 Somaliland, 284 Songhai, 203

 INDEX 

South Africa, 109, 115, 125, 141, 156, 157, 165, 201, 203, 219, 238, 289, 290, 302, 306, 317 South African Jew, 125 South America, 132, 283, 284 Southeast Asia, 187, 246 Southern Africa, 137, 138, 140, 155, 187, 215, 249, 251, 266 Sovereignty of self-alienation, 251 Soviet Union, 131, 154, 156, 177, 209, 252, 255, 282, 283 Soyinka, Wole, 5, 287 Spain, 103, 117, 123 Spatial isolation, 159, 251, 257 Spiro, Herbert J., 23 Sri Lanka, 83 Stable international system, 125 State collapse, 126 State-economy, 126 Strange, Susan, 6–8 Strategic solidarity, 222, 252 Strategy of armed liberation, 198, 219, 251–252, 259, 266 Strength through reduction, 127 Structural dependency, 160, 252 Structural revolution, 253, 255 Structure of damnation, 252 Structure of domination, 252 Sub-imperialism, 253 Subjectivism, 157, 226, 253 Submissive fatalism, 162, 254 Submissive martyrdom, 153, 254 Sub-Saharan Pan-Africanism, 183, 253, 259, 261, 266 Sudan, 94, 102, 109, 162, 168, 184, 198, 240, 241, 257 Sundaram, Jomo, 318 Super-natural hero, 217, 254, 261 Swahili, 138, 147, 158, 181, 190, 194 See also Kiswahili Swahili language, 127 Sydney, 312

335

Symmetrical acculturation, 144, 148, 254 Symmetrical miscegenation, 145, 148, 255 Syria, 119, 172 Systemic revolution, 253, 255 T Tafari, Ras, 64 Tagore, Rabindranath, 176 Taiwan, 108 Tambo, Oliver, 290 Tanzania, 105, 106, 111, 114, 127, 130–132, 141, 145, 146, 157, 166, 181, 184, 185, 230, 232, 246, 256, 263, 267, 291, 292, 294, 296, 297, 302, 303 Technic of simultaneity, 255–256 Technocratic approach, 256, 259 Techno-cultural gap, 255 Technological amnesia, 256 Technological change, 127–128 Technological gradualism, 256 Technological self-determination, 257 Teenocracy-gerontocracy, 128 Temporal isolation, 159, 251, 257 Temporal socialization, 257 Territorial cannibalism, 257–258 Territorial imperative, 179, 200, 206, 258 Territorial reparation, 156, 161, 213, 258 Terror of gunfire, 258 Terror of hellfire, 258 Theocratic approach, 256, 259 Theys, Sarina, 54 Thika, 317 Thiong’o, Ngugi wa, 306 Thomas, Clarence, 109, 110 Tierno, Barbara, vi Time-change, 128–129

336 

INDEX

Time-space, 129 Tito, Josip, 306 Toure, Sekou, 115, 153 Toynbee, Arnold, 176 Tradition of radical Christianity, 198, 219, 259, 266 Trans-Atlantic Pan-Africanism, 183, 253, 259, 261, 266 Trans-class man, 259 Trans-ethnic constituencies, 260 Transformative violence, 195, 260 Transnational nationalism, 191, 260 Trans-national religion and parochial ethnicity, 129 Transnational universalism, 260–261 Trans-natural hero, 217, 254, 261 Trans-Saharan Pan-Africanism, 253, 259, 261 Triad of acculturation, 261 Triad of allegiance, 261–262 Triad of location, 262 Triad of pigmentation, 262 Triad of stratification, 262 Tribal conservatism, 263 Tribal interdependence, 263 Tribal (African) welfare system, 129–130, 263 Trinidad and Tobago, 47 Tunisia, 182, 242 Al-Turabi, Hassan Abdullah, 272 Turkey, 83, 277 Tussie, Diana, 318 Tutsi, 89, 97, 147, 148, 163, 168, 174, 224, 227 Tutu, Desmond, 96, 259, 306 Tyranny–anarchy pendulum, 130 U UAE, 272, 273, 300 Uganda, 19, 22, 23, 46, 85, 87, 105, 108, 114, 121, 126, 130, 146, 162, 174, 175,

198, 210, 211, 224, 228, 232, 273, 278, 280, 285, 286, 289, 291, 293, 295, 296, 298–300, 302, 303, 311 Ujamaa, 130–131, 196 UN, 20, 79, 131, 137, 191, 225, 273–275, 295, 306, 307 UNESCO, 278, 307 Unipolarity, 131 United Kingdom (UK), 21, 145, 279, 308 United loyalties, 131 United States (US), 20, 21, 23, 24, 80, 82, 83, 86, 88, 97, 102, 109, 114, 117, 121, 123, 124, 131, 136, 137, 141, 142, 149, 151, 152, 154, 156, 161, 165, 182, 183, 191–193, 206, 211–216, 218, 223, 227, 228, 231, 244, 264, 265, 272–274, 276–278, 280–283, 285, 287, 289, 292, 294, 295, 299, 301, 303–306 Unity in diversity in Islam, 132 Universal Nation, 264 Universal rationalism, 192, 264 Universalist Muslim, 216, 264 University of Chicago, 20, 22, 307 University of Dar es Salaam, 131, 302, 303 University of Guyana, 316 University of Ibadan, 174 University of Michigan, 21, 23, 314, 315 University of Nairobi, 106, 174 University of Tehran, 307 University of Venda, 302 Unsettled values, 173, 264–265 Urban bias, 172, 178, 181, 217, 238, 265 Uruguay, 217 USSR, 282, 283

 INDEX 

V Varadarajan, Latha, 44 Vatican, 227 Vaughn III, Jackie, 307 Velayati, Ali Akbar, 307 Vertical brain drain, 265 Vertical cultural integration, 187, 265 Vertical miscegenation, 187, 265 Vertical nuclear proliferation, 187, 266 Vertical social mobility, 186, 266 Vestal, vi Vickerman, Molly, 22 Virginia, 316 W Wachanga, David Ndirangu, 11 Wadud, Amina, 283 Waever, Ole, 31, 36 Wai, Dunstan, 3, 9 Waldheim, Kurt, 307 Wales, 145 Warrior tradition, 138, 198, 219, 234, 252, 259, 266 Warsaw Pact, 155 Washington, DC, 284, 295, 299, 304, 307 Washington, George, 103 Washington, Harold, 307 Weber, Max, 210 Wendt, Alexander, 52, 54 West Africa, 137, 138, 140, 225 West African Islam, 132 Western culture, 111, 132–133 Western Europe, 79, 82, 103, 104, 151, 172, 189, 205, 216, 265

337

Western language, 137, 138, 267 West hemispheric pan-Africanism, 183, 253, 259, 261, 266 Westphalia, 55 White, Andrew D., 315, 316 Whitlam, Edward, 307–308 Wiafe-Amoako, Francis, 11 Wilberforce, William, 244 Williams, John, 28 Wilson, Harold, 308, 312 Winans, Jennifer, vi Wonder, Stevie, 308 Wordsworth, William, 176 World War I, 278 World War II, 80, 186, 226, 256 Wyrtzen, Jonathan, 44 Y Yale University, 77 Yemen, 56 Yoruba, 94, 113, 132, 137, 151, 187 Yorubaland, 132 Yugoslavia, 209, 306 Z Zaire, 130, 135, 174, 224 Zambia, 5, 276, 281, 284, 285 Zanzibar, 68, 69, 89, 147, 194, 200, 239, 246 Zehfuss, Maja, 52 Zimbabwe, 157, 183, 256, 266, 292, 294, 317 Zolberg, Aristide, 22 Zulu, Shaka, 137, 249