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Drusilla (f)
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PAN-AFRICANISM, DEMOCRACY AND LEADERSHIP IN AFRICA:
THE CONTINUING LEGACY FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
by Ali A. Mazrui
Pan-Africanism, development, and democracy in global Africa for the new millennium demands exceptional leadership. In this essay, I examine the typology of leadership in global Africa and trace the challenges for future leadership in global Africa. The emergence of a new style of leadership is critical not only for global Africans, but also for a world confronting globalization and complexity on an unparalled scale.1
A Typology of Leadership
The history of leadership in Africa has stood on eight pillars.2 Were they eight styles of command or eight categories of commanders? At the time of independence there was a lot of discussion about charismatic leadership. This discourse was greatly influenced by the man who led the first Black African country to independence - Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. He himself was a charismatic leader with considerable personal magnetism.3 I first met him in New York in 1960 and fell under his spell. Nnamdi Azikiwe was also a charismatic personality, but his magnetism waned after the civil war in Nigeria (just as Winston Churchill's charisma waned after World War II for different reasons).
I also happen to think that Idi Amin Dada of Uganda had a lot of charisma, which enabled him to survive in power for eight years until a foreign army (Tanzanian) forced him out.4 Idi Amin (whom I knew well) was a brutal ruler who nevertheless captivated a substantial following, both at home and abroad. A more positive charismatic figure was Malcolm X (Malik El-Shabazz) of the African Diaspora. I met him in New York in 1961.
A mobilization leader is another category. Nkrumah tried to use his charisma for mobilization, but in reality Nkrumah was not a particularly successful mobilization leader in Ghana after independence. On the other hand, Julius K. Nyerere in Tanzania was both charismatic and mobilizational. He succeeded in arousing the masses to many of his causes. Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt was also both charismatic and mobilizational from the Suez crisis in 1956 until his death in 1970. The most impressive mobilization leader in the history of Black America was first Marcus Garvey and secondly Martin Luther King Jr. Louis Farrakhan astonished the world by mobilizing the Million-Man march.5
A reconciliation leader seeks areas of compromise and consensus from among disparate points of views. Nigeria is a difficult country to govern. So far mobilization has not worked for long. Reconciliation as a style of leadership is often essential. Both General Yakubu Gowon (who led the Federal side during the civil war) and General Abdulsalami Abubakar (who provided a transition between tyranny and redemocratization) were reconciliation leaders. They attempted to find areas of compromise in widely divergent Nigerian points of view. Both Jesse Jackson and Jimmy Carter are reconciliation leaders in world affairs. Domestically Jesse Jackson has promoted a rainbow coalition less spectacularly.6
A housekeeping style of political power is minimalist in sense of purpose. There is more governance and less genuine leadership, more verbosity and less vision. The Kenyan political elite since the late 1980s has been at best a housekeeping elite – governing without leading, maintenance without movement.
An African military head of state, Murtala Muhammad, was the best approximation to a disciplinarian leader that Nigeria has had. He was assassinated within months of capturing power from Gowon. Muhammad Buhari was also a disciplinarian Nigerian head of state. But it is not certain that a disciplinarian style is what Nigeria's ethnic and sectarian realities can really sustain for very long.7 But this option should at least be carefully considered. Was W.E.B. DuBois a disciplinarian leader - an austere "no-nonsense" figure?
A patriarchal system is one in which a father figure emerges, using the symbolism of the elder and the patriarch. Jomo Kenyatta was already about sixty years old when he emerged from a colonial prison in Kenya to assume the reins of power. He carried the title of Mzee, meaning both "the Elder" and "the Old Man". He ruled Kenya from 1963 until he died in 1978.8 Félix Houphouët-Boigny of the Côte d'Ivoire was also a patriarchal leader who presided over the destiny of independent Côte d'Ivoire from 1960 until his death in 1993. Among 20th century American presidents Dwight Eisenhower was a patriarchal figure in this sense of "father-figure".
Nelson Mandela was both a reconciliation leader and a patriarchal figure. His long martyrdom in prison (1964-1990) and his advancing years gave him the credentials of the patriarch. His moral style in his old age was a search for legitimate compromises. The latter was a style of reconciliation. Was Nelson Mandela also a charismatic figure? Or, was he only a hero in history? That is a more open question.
Ibrahim Babangida played a patriarchal role in his transition program, but he was too young for such a role. Babangida's constitutional transition could have made him Nigeria's Charles de Gaulle, but the experiment collapsed when Moshood Abiola's election as president was not acknowledged by the military.
Has Africa really produced technocratic political leadership? The answer is yes - but rarely at the level of the presidency. Some vice-presidents have been technocrats or potential technocrats. Kenya has had a series of quasi-technocratic vice-presidents, some of whom got "debased" in office. They include Vice-Presidents Mwai Kibaki (distinguished economist), Josephat Karanja (former University Vice-Chancellor) and George Saitoti (former professor). Are Thabo Mbeki and Yoweri Museveni essentially technocratic leaders? Ghana's Jerry Rawlings was part disciplinarian and part technocratic.
Personalistic political style in Africa is sometimes indistinguishable from monarchical political style in our sense. Both entail the personification of power. But the monarchical tendency goes further and sacralizes authority while simultaneously seeking to create an aristocratic impact. Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was definitely a personalistic political leader, demanding unquestioning political allegiance. But was he also a pseudo-monarch, seeking to give his authority a semblance of sacredness? Marcus Garvey in US. history combined mobilization effectiveness with monarchical tendencies. Richard Nixon was an imperial president of the United States while he lasted.
More literally Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic tried to create a new monarchical and imperial dynasty, with himself as the first Emperor. He even renamed his country "the Central African Empire". He held an astonishingly lavish coronation that was supposed to be paradoxically Napoleonic.9
A new aspect of the monarchical tendency which is emerging is the dynastic trend in succession. Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been succeeded by his son Josef Kabila. In Zanzibar Abeid Karume has produced a successor in his son. In Egypt Husni Mubarak may be grooming his son to succeed him. In Kenya Raila Odinga is trying to follow the nyayo (footprints) of his famous father, Oginga Odinga. And in the United States, George W. Bush as President has succeeded George Herbert Walker Bush.
In addition to these nine types and styles of leadership there have been a number of pre-colonial cultural traditions which affected those types and styles. The most obvious was the elder tradition in pre-colonial African culture, which has probably conditioned the patriarchal style after independence. The reverence of Jomo Kenyatta as Mzee (the Elder) in Kenya was substantially the outcome of the precolonial elder tradition still alive and well. Nelson Mandela by the time of his release was also a heroic Mzee. Was Ronald Reagan held in affection by the American people partly because he was perceived as an elder?10
Also obvious as a continuing tradition from precolonial times was an older version of the monarchical tendency. Even African societies which were not themselves monarchical were influenced by the royal paradigm. Kwame Nkrumah attempted to create a monarchical tradition in independent Ghana by declaring himself life-president, by sacralizing his authority with the title of Osagyefo (Redeemer), by surrounding himself with a class of ostentatious consumers passing themselves off as Ghana's new political aristocracy, and by increasingly regarding political opposition to the president as the equivalent of treason (a monarchical version of intolerance).
Less obvious as a precolonial conditional factor was the sage tradition. This involved respect for wisdom and expertise. In the modern period the sage tradition was rapidly modernized to include the new products of western-style high schools, and later western-style colleges and universities. In Black America history W.E.B. Dubois was the supreme sage of the twentieth century.11
The sage tradition from the post-colonial period has sometimes resulted in promoting among Africans ostentatious display of Western learning.
Tapping on modernized versions of the sage tradition a number of founding fathers of independent Africa tried to become philosopher-kings. They attempted to philosophize about man and society and about Africa's place in the global scheme of things. Kwame Nkrumah wrote books and became the most prolific head of state anywhere in the world. Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal was a more original political philosopher and poet.12
Some leaders attempted to establish whole new ideologies. Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania inaugurated ujamaa, intended to be indigenously authentic African socialism. Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia initiated what was called "humanism". Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had previously written The Philosophy of the Revolution and subsequently attempted the implementation of "Arab socialism". Muammar Qaddafy of Libya has the Green Book championing the third way.
The modernized version of the Western tradition also popularized the use of honorary doctorates as regular titles of Heads of State. Thus the president of Uganda became "Dr. Milton Obote", the president of Zambia became "Dr. Kenneth Kaunda" - just as the president of Ghana before them had become "Dr. Kwame Nkrumah". These had been conferred as honorary doctorates, but they became regular titles used in referring to these heads of state. The sage tradition was attempting to realize itself in a modern veneer. African presidents were trying to become philosopher-kings. After his presidency, Yakubu Gowon took the more difficult route and studied for his PhD at Warwick University, England.
Finally, there was the precolonial warrior tradition, emphasizing skills of combat, self-defence and manhood.13 Did this survive into the colonial period and onwards into independence? The Mau Mau fighters in colonial Kenya in the 1950s were greatly influenced by traditional warrior virtues, especially those of he Kikuyu. Even liberation fighters in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe two decades later, who were using much more modern weapons, were mainly recruited from the countryside and were deeply influenced by traditional concepts of the warrior.
But were African soldiers in regular African state armies part of the continuities of the warrior tradition? Were the Abdulsalami Abubakars fundamentally still old warriors? It largely depends upon how much of the old African cultural values are still part of their attitudes to combat, self-defence and manhood. General Abubakar himself maintained high standards of integrity. But sometimes those old warrior values go awry in a modern military ruler. The warrior tradition went wrong when personified in Idi Amin Dada of Uganda. Idi Amin was a warrior-soldier who was mis-cast as head of state in the modern world. He fluctuated between brute, buffoon and genuinely heroic figure. He courageously took on some of the most powerful forces in the world - and yet pitilessly victimized some of the most powerless individuals in his own country from 1971 to 1979. In Idi Amin the warrior tradition had gone temporarily mad.
Nine types of political leadership and four precolonial traditions of political culture have helped to shape post-colonial Africa and Black America in the twentieth century. The question which now arises is whether the 21st century will either reveal totally new styles of leadership or create new combinations of the old styles and traditions and produce better results than Africa and its Diaspora have accomplished so far.
Here we must turn from styles of leadership to goals of leadership. We know that the twentieth century produced very effective leaders of liberation. Nationalists like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Sekou Toure of Guinea fought against great odds to gain us independence. There were many other brilliant liberation fighters all over the continent who helped Africa end its colonial bondage.
But leaders of liberation were not necessarily leaders of development. One African leader after another let Africa down in the struggle to improve the material well-being of the African people. Only a few African leaders since independence have demonstrated skills of development on the ground. Considering what a terribly damaged country he had inherited, Yoweri Museveni deserves some credit for bringing up Uganda from the depths of despair to one of the main regional actors in the Great Lakes region.14 It is to be hoped that the coming African Renaissance will produce more and more leaders skilled in the arts of development. In Black America Louis Farrakhan has been a leader of development as well as liberation. His effort to combat drugs and crime and promote economic self-reliance are cases in point.
In addition to leaders of liberation (like Mugabe, Sekou Toure, Samora Machel, Zik and Nkrumah), and leaders of development (like Yoweri Museveni, Louis Farrakhan, and Habib Bourguiba), has global Africa produced leaders of democracy? This is a much tougher agenda. The Diaspora has produced civil rights leaders. South Africa has the most liberal constitution in the world, and has ended political apartheid. But the wealth of the society is still maldistributed along racial lines. The mines, the best jobs, the best businesses, are still disproportionately owned by non-Black people. Leaders like Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki have presided over substantial political democratization, but they have also had to tolerate substantial economic injustice.
In Nigeria Abdulsalami Abubakar provided a smooth transition from the tyranny of Sani Abacha to a Nigerian return to democracy and civilian rule. In that democratic return Olusegun Obasanjo was elected the first Nigerian president of the new millennium. It was a very promising choice. After all, in 1979 Olusegun Obasanjo became the first African military ruler to hand over power voluntarily to a freely elected government. In 1979 Obasanjo had also been the first Nigerian military ruler to let political power slip from his own ethnic group without attempting to subvert the process.
However, Olusegun Obasanjo in the new millennium is still being tested. He is confronted with Shariacracy in some Northern states, with Yoruba nationalism in some Western states, and with demands for confederation among some of the Ibgo nationalists. In style will Obasanjo emerge as a gifted reconciliation leader? In normative Africanity is he a warrior or a sage? And in ultimate goals for Nigeria, does Olusegun Obasanjo stand a chance of emerging as a successful leader of genuine democratization?
We know that Africa has been served well by leaders of liberation. We are concerned that we have not produced enough leaders of development. In Nigeria and elsewhere we are also looking for leaders of democracy. Perhaps Abdulsalami Abubakar should in the future entrust his political fate to the Nigerian electorate. They may well elect him to a fuller term as Head of State. His humility is one of his greatest assets. So was his readiness to relinquish power voluntarily in 1999.
What about leaders of Pan-Africanism and wider transnational solidarity? Clearly this is a fourth goal on top of liberation, development and democracy.
In the new millennium all those four goals (liberation, development, democracy and Pan-Africanism) may have to be examined in the context of globalization. Let us now turn to these dimensions.
What, for example, is the impact of globalization on relations between Africans and African Americans? Is globalization bringing them closer together or pulling them farther apart? Let us first define "globalization" itself. Some analysts have seen it mainly through the expanding world markets and deepening interdependence within the world economy. Other analysts have seen "globalization" through the information superhighway and the Internet revolution. But it is possible to take an even more comprehensive view of globalization - regarding it as consisting of all the forces which are leading the world towards a global village. Globalization is thus the villagization of the world.15
But for people of African ancestry is there a globalization within the globalization? Is there a globalization of the black race within the globalization of the world? I first coined the term "Global Africa" for the final episode in my television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC/PBS, 1986).16 By it I meant the experience of people of African descent world-wide. 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, Europe, 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 omnidirectional. Let us explore those forces which have been further globalizing the phenomenon of Global Africa.
Globalizing the Dual Diaspora
A major factor has been the dualization of the African Diaspora. There has been the new migration of Africans to the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Australia and elsewhere - the new Bantu migration on a global scale. In a sense this process has been creating two African Diasporas - the new Diaspora of colonialism alongside the older Diaspora of Enslavement.
The Diaspora of Enslavement consists of survivors of the Middle Passage and their descendants. The Diaspora of Colonization are the survivors of the partition of Africa in exile and their descendants. The Diaspora of Colonialism are casualties of the displacement caused either directly by colonialism or by the aftermath of colonial and post-colonial disruptions.17
As part of the Afro-Atlantic paradigm, the Diaspora of Enslavement has played a major role in shaping the culture and lifestyle of the Western hemisphere. Perhaps never in history has a people in bondage exerted a greater influence on the culture of their masters.
In the case of the United States, it is arguable that whatever is uniquely American in the United States' culture and lifestyle has been due to two very different forces -- the impact of the frontier and the impact of the Black presence in the American experience. As Isidore Okpewho has said:
European influences were a "given". Thomas Jefferson and the founding father looked to such European thinkers as John Locke and Montesagne. Euro-Americans liked to think of themselves as heirs to Greece and Rome. But where was the American personality?18
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932) provided one answer -- the significance of the frontier in American history. He argued that the American character was decisively shaped by conditions of the frontier, which evoked such qualities as "coarseness and strength, acuteness and inquisitiveness, that practical turn of mind , restless, nervous energy , that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom , ".19 He argued that what was uniquely American in her institutions was not the Mayflower, but boundless land, and the spirit of taming the rugged frontier. But Frederick Jackson Turner forgot one thing -- what was uniquely American was also the Black presence alongside the Frontier. This is the presence which nurtured American capitalism in its infancy and nurtured American democracy in its maturation.
In its infancy, American capitalism needed Black labour. This is the link between America and the imperative of labour. In its maturation in the twentieth century American democracy needed the civil rights movement and deracialization to realize its original concept that "all men are created equal." It was Blacks who held American democracy accountable to its own ultimate ideals. The echoes were heard all over Africa in the new Afro-World Wide Web. The Afro-Atlantic paradigm was at work again. The civil rights movement fed into the feminist movement.
Young capitalism often needed young black labour; but more mature US. democracy needed more mature Black stimulation. The World Wide Web has forged US. links. The African presence in America has also deeply influenced music, literature, food culture, sports and the performing arts.
The distinction between the Diaspora of Slavery and the Diaspora of Colonialism gets more complicated with the distinction between (a) African Americans (Americans is the noun and African the adjective) and (b) American Africans (Africans is the noun). 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 United States).
American Africans (or Americo-Africans) on the other hand, are 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 Western hemisphere countries.20
What is distinctive about American Africans is that their mother tongue is still an African language. (In the case of Americo-Liberians, they could still speak Liberian English.) Secondly, American Africans usually still have immediate blood relatives in Africa. Thirdly, they are likely to be still attached to the food culture of their African ancestry. Fourthly, 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.
On the whole African Americans tend to be more race-conscious in their political orientation than American Africans. On the other hand, American Africans might still be more fundamentally "tribal" when the chips are down.
When does an American African family evolve into an African American family? When it loses its ancestral language. The umbilical chord is language. The children of Professor Nkiru Nzegwu of Binghamton University are still American Africans (hemispherically) because the children still speak fluent Igbo. On the other hand, my children are now more African Americans -- their linguistic umbilical chord has been cut.
But when American Africans become African Americans, it does not mean other ties with Africa are cut. Relatives in Africa still abound. Concern for Africa is often still intact. And the internet is now providing a new network of Afro-Atlanticism, a new language.
Let me repeat that in the case of African Americans the noun is "Americans". What kind of Americans? African Americans. In the case of American Africans, the noun is "Africans", the adjective is American. What kind of Africans? American Africans!
Between African Americans and American Africans
We must focus not just with relations between African Americans and Africans but also between African Americans and Africa as a continent. Do African Americans empathize with Africa? If so, how much? Indeed it is worth examining relations within the United States between American Africans and African Americans. There are areas of solidarity in those relations; and there are areas of tension.
When Amadou Diallo was overkilled by four white policemen in New York City, pouring forty-one bullets into him, it sent shock waves in the Big City not just among immigrant Africans but also among African Americans, Latinos and other disadvantaged groups. Being fellow victims of white racism and police brutality is an area of solidarity.
And yet many African Americans feel that Africans generally are not concerned with race enough because of vastly different historical experiences. Among African Americans many give race 60% relevance in their lives while Africans give it only 35% relevance. This difference in racial preoccupation can be a cause of stress.
The majority of Africans (or American Africans) and African Americans are in support of affirmative action. This is an area of solidarity. But who precisely gets the jobs or the educational opportunities?
In reality the greatest beneficiaries are probably white women, but there is sometimes rivalry between African Americans and American Africans over jobs, business opportunities, and other scarce resources. This area of professional and occupational competition can be a source of stress.
Until recently the great majority of Africans in the United States were college graduates or in the process of acquiring college degrees. Many Africans who came to the USA. came for educational purposes or got their visas and green cards on the basis of special qualifications. The majority of African Americans, on the other hand, did not have college degrees. This introduced a partial class factor between the two groups.
This class factor is now eroding for two reasons. There are more Africans in the United States who do not have a college degree and are not seeking one. Secondly, there are more and more African Americans who are exceptionally well trained and educated.21 So this difference is evening out between African Americans and American Africans.
Many African American heroes are also African heroes. This includes the late Martin Luther King, Jr., the boxer Muhammad Ali, the basket-ball player Michael Jordan, the novelist Toni Morrison, and many African American singers. This is an area of solidarity. Even controversial Louis Farrakhan has millions of African admirers. On the other hand, African heroes are seldom well-known in black America apart from Nelson Mandela. Only the staunchest Pan-Africanists among African Americans have ever heard of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Touré, Julius Nyerere or Wole Soyinka.
African-American lack of familiarity with African heroes is not really a cause of stress. It just represents a missed opportunity for further solidarity.
Expanding globalization may restore the balance. In any case African American heroes get much more global publicity because they are citizens of a super-power. It has therefore been easier for Africans in Africa to know about them than for African Americans in the United States to hear of Julius Nyerere or Kofi Annan.
Globalization has also witnessed the rise of Africans to positions of leadership in global organizations. But here it may be worth distinguishing between Africans of the soil and Africans of the blood. Boutros Boutros-Ghali , the first African Secretary General of the United Nations, was an African of the soil. Kofi Annan, the second African Secretary General is an African of the blood. North Africans like Boutros-Ghali belong to the African continent (the soil) but not to the Black race (the blood). On the other hand, African Americans are Africans of the blood (the Black race) but not of the soil (the African continent). Sub-Saharan Africans like Kofi Annan are in reality both Africans of the soil (the continent) and of the blood (the race). Globalization has given Africans of the soil and of the blood new opportunities for leadership at the global level itself.
Even before the two African Secretaries-General of the United Nations, Africa had already produced a black Director-General for UNESCO in Paris (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). He was Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, an African of the blood from Senegal. His openly pro-Third World policies infuriated the United States, which finally withdrew from UNESCO in 1985 followed by its compliant ally, the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom returned to UNESCO in 1997 after the sweeping victory of the Labour Party in the 1996 elections.
With regard to the United Nations itself, Africa is the only region of the world apart from Europe to have produced more than one Secretary-General for the world body in the twentieth century. Europe has produced three Secretaries-General, Africa two, and the other regions of the world have produced either one each or none so far.
The International Court of Justice at the Hague elected in 1994 an African of the soil for its President - Mohammed Bedjauni of Algeria. The World Bank since the 1990s has had two African Vice-Presidents - Callisto Madivo, an African of the blood from Zimbabwe, and Ismail Serageldin, an African of the soil from Egypt. In 1999, Serageldin was also a serious candidate to become the first UNESCO Director-General of the new millennium.
The Commonwealth (what used to be called the British Commonwealth) has fifty-four members. Its Secretariat is at Marlborough House in London. Throughout the 1990s the Commonwealth had Chief Eleazar Emeka Anyouku as its Secretary-General. The Chief is an African of the blood from Nigeria. The largest member of the Commonwealth in population is India; the most industrialized include Canada, Great Britain and Australia; and the largest black member of the Commonwealth is of course Nigeria.
Globalization has also permitted the emergence of Black and African moral leadership on a world scale. It began with the Nobel Prize winners for peace. Over the years these have included Ralph Bunche (1950), Albert Luthuli (1960), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964), Anwar Sadat (1978), Desmond Tutu (1984), Nelson Mandela (1994), and F.W. de Klerk (1994).
Ralph Bunche and Martin Luther King, Jr. were of course African Americans and therefore Africans of the blood in our sense, but not of the soil. Anwar Sadat and F.W. de Klerk were Africans of the soil but not of the blood. Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were Africans of both the soil and the blood. All three were South Africans, as was F.W. de Klerk. But we should note that F.W. de Klerk is an "African of the soil" by adoption rather than by indigenous roots to the continent. Most North Africans, on the other hand, are indigenous to the continent, although there has been considerable racial mixture with immigrants over the centuries.
As the twentieth century was coming to a close Nelson Mandela achieved a unique status. He became the first truly universal Black moral leader in the world in his own lifetime. Martin Luther King, Jr. achieved universal status after his death. When Dr. King was alive half of mainstream America rejected him and regarded him as a troublemaker. Mandela was fortunate to have achieved universal moral admiration without having to undergo an assassination beforehand. No other Black man in history has pulled off such a "pre-humous" accomplishment (as distinct from a posthumous elegy). In the recognition of Mandela the human race may have taken one more step forward in the search for universalized ethical sensibilities.
As for Abdulsalami Abubakar, he played the role of midwife to the rebirth of Nigeria's democracy. He is a Nigerian of distinction and an African of historical dimensions. But he is also a MUSLIM. Let us now turn to Islam in the Black experience.
Between the Global Ummah and Global Africa
Globalization has also forged new links between Islam and Global Africa, and provided opportunities for African Muslims to play a bigger role in both the global ummah and among countries in Global Africa.
When Mahtar M'Bow was the Director-General of UNESCO he was the highest ranking Muslim of any race in the United Nations system. Professor M'Bow was an African of the blood from Senegal, as we indicated.
Ismael Serageldin, as one of the Vice Presidents of the World Bank in the 1990s, has been one of the highest ranking Muslims in this International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Serageldin is, as we indicated, an African of the soil from Egypt.
Another African Muslim of the soil became head of the World Court at the Hague when Justice Mohammed Bejaouni of Algeria was elected President of the International Court of Justice in 1994.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - with its headquarters in Vienna, Austria - has four African members. These are Nigeria and Gabon (Africans of the blood) and Algeria and Libya (Africans of the soil). From time to time these African countries have provided Secretaries-General and other OPEC leaders, often Muslim.
And of course the Organization of African Unity, the most important continent-wide organization in Africa, has had a Muslim Secretary-General throughout the 1990s into the new millennium. Salim Ahmed Salim is an African of the blood from Tanzania.
There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world - but the only continent which has a Muslim majority is Africa. The total population of Africa is over 700 million of whom over half are now Muslim.
Nigeria has more Muslims than any Arab country. When Nigeria is combined with Ethiopia, Egypt and Congo (Kinshasa) - the four most populous African countries - the Muslim population is over 180 million.
There is now a significant number of Muslims in the United States. The population of Muslims in the United States has begun to outstrip the population of Jews. Of the 6 to 7 million Muslims in the USA 42% are black.22 The Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan is part of that 42% but only a fraction of it. However, a highly visible fraction.
Between Lugardization and Globalization
The coming of the Nobel Prize to Nigeria in 1986 was a symptom of yet another major force—the force of cultural globalization, which has recently coincided with the digital revolution. We said that globalization consists of the forces which are leading the human race towards a global village. But since the 1990s globalization has also carried the seeds of cultural revivalism – ranging from ethnic resurgence to religious revival. In Northern Nigeria globalization has converged with the legacy of Lord Lugard, the British unifier of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914, and the author of the colonial policy of Indirect Rule.23
Nigeria is the largest concentration of Muslims on the African continent. It has more Muslims than any Arab country, including Egypt. Since Olusegun Obasanjo became President in May 1999, some predominantly Muslim states in the Nigerian federation have taken steps towards implementing the Sharia in their own states, although the country as a whole is supposed to be a secular republic. This has caused consternation among non-Muslim Nigerians. Indeed, in Lord Lugard’s own Kaduna state, this Christian consternation exploded into inter-communal riots which cost hundreds of lives early in the year 2000. But the momentum for SHARIACRACY still continues. Is Shariacracy an inevitable part of the legacy of Lord Lugard's Indirect Rule in the North?24
Many different reasons have been advanced for the rise of Sharia advocacy and Sharia implementation in Northern Nigeria. One explanation is that the Nigerian federation is getting more decentralized, and part of the decentralization is taking the form of cultural self-determination. In Yorubaland this cultural self-determination is taking the form of Yoruba nationalism. In Igboland it is taking the form of new demands for confederation. In the Muslim North cultural self-determination is taking the form of SHARIACRACY. Did Lord Lugard’s Indirect Rule lay the foundations of Shariacracy in the year 2000?
Another explanation for the rise of Sharia militancy is to regard it as political bargaining chip. As the North is losing political influence in the Nigerian federation, it is asserting new forms of autonomy in preparation for a new national compact among the contending forces which Indirect Rule helped to demarcate.25
What has not been discussed is whether the rise of Sharia militancy is itself a consequence of globalization. One of the repercussions of globalization worldwide has been to arouse cultural insecurity and uncertainty about identities. Indeed, the paradox of globalization is that it both promotes enlargement of economic scale and stimulates fragmentation of ethnic and cultural scale. The enlargement of economic scale is illustrated by the rise of the European Union, and by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The fragmentation of cultural and ethnic scale is illustrated by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the collapse of Czechoslovakia into two countries, the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India and Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan, the collapse of Somalia as a state after penetration by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the reactivation of genocidal behavior among the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi.
Because globalization is a special scale of Westernization, it has triggered off identity crises from Uzbekistan to Somalia, from Afghanistan to Northern Nigeria. Fragile ethnic identities and endangered cultures are forced into new forms of resistance. Resisting Westernization becomes indistinguishable from resisting globalization.26 In Nigeria the South is part of the vanguard of Westernization and therefore the first to respond to globalization. When, in addition, the South appears to be politically triumphant within Nigeria under Obasanjo’s presidency, alarm bells are sounded in parts of the North. This may not necessarily be Northern distrust of Yoruba or Igbo cultures. It may be Northern distrust of Westernization. Is Southern Nigeria a Trojan horse for globalization? And is globalization in turn a Trojan horse for Westernization? Paradoxically a Westerner called Lord Lugard had helped to nurse Northern distrust of cultural Westernization.
The Sharia under this paradigm becomes a form of Northern resistance—not to Southern Nigeria, but to the forces of globalization and to their Westernizing consequences. Even the policy of privatization of public enterprises is probably an aspect of the new globalizing ideology. Privatization in Nigeria may either lead to new transnational corporations establishing their roots or to private Southern entrepreneurs outsmarting Northerners and deepening the economic divide between North and South. Again the Sharia may be a Northern gut response to these looming clouds of globalization.
In Nigeria the Sharia is caught between the forces of domestic democratization and the forces of wider globalization. On the one hand, Lord Lugard had helped to protect Islam in Northern Nigeria—and Islam had been an earlier form of cultural globalization within a worldwide community of believers. On the other hand, the legacy of Lord Lugard had helped to heighten Hausa-Fulani identity, and was therefore a particularizing force. Both Globalization and Lugardization in Northern Nigeria had therefore contributed to the rise of Shariacracy.
Islam and Global Africa: In Search of Partnership
Beyond Nigeria and even Africa, why has there been a Black fascination with Islam? Why is the Muslim population in Global Africa still expanding?
Among African Americans there have been push-out factors in the mainstream culture, and pull-in factors in the cultural and ethical attraction of Islam. The push-out factors in the wider American society have made African Americans feel excluded or rejected at some levels. The pull-in factors in Islam and Islamic culture have made some African Americans feel welcome and intrigued. The push-out factors in the wider American society are rooted in centuries of racial experience and the sociology of racial exclusion.
The pull-in factors in Islamic culture offer a paradoxical alternative - both cultural autonomy and religious universalism for African Americans. Sobriety and prohibition of alcohol in the Islamic ethos have also fascinated sections of the Black Diaspora that have been decimated by drug abuse and alcoholism.27
Africa is not only the first continent to have a majority of Muslims; it is also witness to the largest continuing expansion of Islam. Conversions to Islam are faster in the Black world than in other sections of humanity.
Natural population growth among Muslims in Africa and in the world is faster than among most non-Muslims. Indeed, the Muslim world as a whole is expected to become 25% of the human race in the course of the 21st century.
The largest country in population in Africa is Nigeria - which as a country probably has a majority of Muslims. The second largest country in population on the African continent is Egypt - which is of course an Islamic leader.
The largest African country in territory is Sudan - which is about two-thirds Muslim. Almost half the members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (a world-wide 53 member inter-governmental Islamic fraternity) are African. Its Secretaries-General have ranged from the African of the blood Hamid Algabid (Niger) to the African of the soil Azzedine Larak (Morocco).
Should African Muslims establish links with Global Africa as a whole? African-Americans are of course a large African descended population lodged in the most powerful nation on earth. Perhaps Muslims of all races in the United States should join forces with African Americans of all faiths in a joint struggle for both racial justice and cultural dignity. The American Muslim Council in 2001 held its first joint consultations with the NAACP in Washington, D.C. The Nation of Islam and other Muslim groups in the country have also sometimes adopted that coalition principle as a cornerstone of their national agenda.
There are now at least as many Muslims as Jews in the USA and probably more - though the Muslims are more subdued and far less powerful than the Jews.28 And yet, numerically there are more African Americans than there are Jews in the whole world added together. What Black and Muslim people can learn from the Jews include the following:
(A) Solidarity in a common cause
(B) Organization and mobilization
(C) Purposeful Manipulation of the political process
(D) Creative Tapping of the guilt complexes of former oppressors
(E) Turning martyrdom into a political resource
This is where the crusade for Black reparations looms into relevance. Jews have received partial compensation for the horrors of the Holocaust under the Nazis in Europe (1933-1945). From the 1990s Swiss Banks have been held accountable for illegitimate gains they might have made from Jewish victims of genocide during World War II. Also, from the 1990s German manufacturing corporations were being forced to set aside billions of dollars to compensate those who had worked under slave-labour conditions during the Third Reich. A relatively few Jewish activist organizations have been able to hold powerful economic giants in Europe liable for compensation for exploited and victimized Jews. What about compensation for hundreds of years of Black enslavement? Or is that a cruel joke?
In Search of Historic Reparations
Globalization has reawakened the crusade for Jewish reparations. Also getting globalized is the reparations movement to compensate Black people for hundreds of years of enslavement and exploitation. The fighters for the abolition of slavery became known as "abolitionists"; the new crusaders for Black compensation are the reparationists.29
In 1992, I and eleven others were sworn in before the Presidents of Africa. We were to constitute the Group of Eminent Persons to pursue and to explore the modalities and logistics of campaigning for such reparations. The "swearing in" occurred in Dakar, Senegal. Reverend Jesse Jackson came to meet with our Committee to give us moral support. So did Nelson Mandela, who was at the time newly liberated, but not yet elected President of South Africa.
We elected Chief Moshood Abiola as Chairman of our group of 12 Eminent Persons. Abiola was a Nigerian philanthropist and publisher. He ran for the Presidency of Nigeria - and won in June 1993. However, he was not allowed to take office. The army in Nigeria aborted the final election announcement. When he called a rally and declared himself President of Nigeria, he was arrested and charged with treason.
In 1996 I saw General Sani Abacha, the Military Head of State of Nigeria at the time. I asked him to continue Nigeria's support for the reparations movement and to release our Chairman of the Reparations Group, Chief Abiola. President Abacha was gracious to me, but unbending on the issue of Abiola.
Chief Abiola was still in prison when General Abacha died suddenly in June 1998. Prospects for Abiola's release improved. Unfortunately Abiola too was suddenly taken ill and died unexpectedly on the eve of his being released from prison. The reparations movement received a severe blow because Abiola had been a man of means committed to the cause. Nigeria lost a gifted leader.
There is a distinct reparations movement in the United States - including a brave attempt in Congress by Representative John Conyers to get a bill passed to appoint a commission to go into the feasibility of reparations.30 Other figures in the United States include TransAfrica’s Randall Robinson, who wrote a book on the topic in 2000.31 There is also a reparations movement in the United Kingdom. It had one champion in the House of Commons (the late Bernie Grant ) and one champion in the House of Lords. Reparations has also been a topic on talk-shows in the Caribbean. Globalization has given reparations a new momentum, but just as the abolitionist movement took generations, so will the reparationist crusade.
Also relevant was President Bill Clinton's tour of African in 1998 - the first US. President to go to so many African countries, meet so many African leaders in Africa, and come so near to apologizing for the wrongs that America had done to the Africans across the centuries.32 Of course Clinton did not offer compensation - nor was he asked for it. But the next best thing to compensation is an apology for the sins of one's forebears. Clinton in Africa came near to expressing deep regret, though not a formal apology.
Under the administration of George W. Bush can the appointment of an African-American be counted as a form of reparation if the social mobility is high enough? Is a Secretary of State of African descent (Colin Powell) a form of reparation? If Powell one day became the first American President of African descent could that be counted as a form of reparation? Reparation needs to be multifaceted. When a descendant of a former slave governs descendants of former slave-owners, is that a particularly poetic form of reparation?
Conclusion
The National Summit on Africa is a movement led by distinguished African Americans like Leonard Robinson, Herschelle Challenor, C. Payne Lucas, and Andrew Young. The movement seeks to draw greater attention to African problems in the United States, help to find solutions to those problems, and strengthen the economic, trade and cultural ties between the peoples of Africa and those of the United States.
A literal national summit of leaders of opinion took place in Washington, D.C. in February of 2000. Meanwhile, members of the movement are in support of the African Growth and Opportunity Act which went before Congress in 1998 and 1999 - seeking new linkages between American investors and African opportunities, and a new equilibrium between where aid ends and trade begins. Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan has an even more progressive concept, which aspires to have the African debt cancelled. Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has been even more radical in his sympathies for Africa.
Meanwhile, the physical African presence in the world is expanding demographically. But the leadership of Africa’s crusade is beginning to come from sons and daughters of the continent and Africa's descendants in the Diaspora. In 1996, I was in Australia as a guest of Australian organizations. My last two days were reserved for the African community of Melbourne. I addressed them in the hundreds about their ancestral continent. When I first visited Australia more than a quarter of a century earlier, such a thing would not have happened. There would not have been much of an African presence in Melbourne.
In 1997, I was in Sweden as a guest of the Nobel Foundation. My official hosts were therefore Swedes. But on my first night in Stockholm guess who entertained me to dinner? Afro-Swedes! Africans who are now Swedish citizens. Also in 1997, I was in Malaysia. At the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur there were male and female African students from different parts of the continent. The students asked the University for a special African session with Ali Mazrui, and they got it. I was also stopped once or twice in the streets of Kuala Lumpur by other Africans (complete strangers) who recognized me from my television series. In the 1950s there would not have been much of an African presence in Kuala Lumpur.
What does all this experience tell us? It tells us that the demographic African presence in the world is expanding. There are more countries with Black people in their populations today than there have ever been in history. The black skin is becoming less and less exotic as a sight in the streets of the major cities of the world. The globalization of Africanity is at hand.
As we have indicated elsewhere, Secretse Khama did live to become President of Botswana with Ruth as the white First Lady after independence. Africa has had other Heads of State with white first ladies -- such as Léopold Senghor of Senegal. And Jerry Rawlings, President of Ghana for two decades, had a Scottish father. Africa leads the way in racial tolerance. It leads the way in religious ecumenicalism. Africa has had leaders of liberation. It now needs leaders of development and democracy. Abdulsalami Abubakar played his part as a mid-husband to the rebirth of democracy in Nigeria.
The African Diaspora continues to expand with or without conspiracy theories. The globalization of the African peoples is struggling to come home. People of African descent continue to multiply in the most unexpected parts of the world. Pan-Africanism has yet to catch up with them. To paraphrase the words of "Global Africa", the final episode of The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC/PBS, 1986):
""We are a people of the day before yesterday and a people of the day after tomorrow. Long before slave days we lived in one huge village called Africa. And then strangers came and took some of us away, scattering us in all directions of the globe. Before the strangers came our village was the world; we knew no other. But now we are scattered so widely that the sun never sets on the descendants of Africa. The world is our village, and we plan to make it more human between now and the day after tomorrow.""
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