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nationalism
George Padmore commemorated with plaque in London
Cameron Duodu
2011-06-30, Issue 537
© WikimediaWith ‘father of African liberation’ George Padmore commemorated with a plaque in London this week, Cameron Duodu reflects on Padmore’s enormous influence on the anti-colonial movement and his experiences in Trinidad, the US, the USSR, the UK and across Africa.
Nyerere’s nationalist legacy
Issa G Shivji
2009-12-03, Issue 460
Issa G. Shivji writes of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's conceptions of nationalism in Africa, ideas which encompassed both the political through liberatory principles and the universal through transcending narrow identities. Debates around the economic success of his policies notwithstanding, Nyerere's greatest legacy, Shivji writes, was his sweeping vision of African unity.
Does Tanzania need dual citizenship?
Chambi Chachage
2009-07-16, Issue 442
cc flickr.comChachage explores whether nationals of a country ought to have the option of dual citizenship, in the third and final part of a series of three articles exploring the idea of dual citizenship with reference to Tanzania. Despite positive arguments in favour of dual citizenship made mostly by communities living in the diaspora, Chachage concludes that a government that cannot even fully grant single citizenship to the ‘majority’ should not be putting resources into granting dual citizenship to a ‘minority’. This, Chachage argues, would allow the growth of first and second class citizenship, which is what independence movements fought to eliminate.
When do ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’ become ‘citizens’?
Chambi Chachage
2009-07-02, Issue 440
cc ChadicaChambi Chachage explores when and how ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’ become ‘citizens’, in the first of a series of three articles exploring the idea of dual citizenship with reference to Tanzania. Definitions of citizenship in modern nation-states in ‘societies other than Euro-American ones’ were influenced by how the notion developed in Euro-America and how it was ‘selectively applied in the Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America in the context(s) of colonialism, imperialism and developmentalism,’ Chachage argues. ‘It is this colouring that we need to unpack as we trace the historical and political trajectories and implications of the idea and praxis/practice of citizenship in Africa,’ says Chacage.
Nkrumah: Model challenge for Ghana’s rulers
Yao Graham
2009-06-18, Issue 438
cc wikimedia.orgKwame Nkrumah brought the Convention People's Party into power within two years of its formation, creating independent Ghana, writes Yao Graham. An overwhelming electoral victory gave Nkrumah a platform for mass anti-colonial mobilisation around Africa. Accra became a staging point for the African anti-colonial movement with the All-African People's Conference, drawing delegates from 62 nationalist organisations, including future ruling parties and post-colonial leaders, who were urged to 'fight for independence now'. Post-colonial construction, however, was different from bringing down colonialism and Nkrumah struggled to generate resources for steady improvement in the living standards of people with expectations fuelled by independence and his own visionary pronouncements. Today Ghana is seen as a development icon, but the challenges Nkrumah grappled with have not been overcome, argues Graham. Reliant on a few commodities for export earnings and aid for public investment, it is far from the independent structurally transformed model Nkrumah wanted to establish as a ‘black star’ for Africa.
Pan-Africanism in Mwalimu Nyerere’s thought
Being both king and philosopher
Issa G Shivji
2009-05-07, Issue 431
cc WikimediaOutlining the essential differences between the respective approaches of Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, Issa G. Shivji discusses the gradualist and radical positions of two pillars of the Pan-Africanist movement. Underlining the notion of an independent African state as a ‘national liberation movement in power’ as being at the very core of the movement, Shivji stresses that genuine African nationalism can only ever be Pan-Africanism. As both a head of state and leading Pan-Africanist intellectual, Nyerere found himself supporting contradictory ideas around contesting the imposition of colonial borders while emphasising the centrality of states' sovereignty, Shivji notes. While admitting that he is without a complete answer to the question of what intellectuals' role will be in the development of a new Pan-Africanism for today, Shivji stresses that the challenge will be to push forward a 'new nationalist insurrection', one which perhaps ultimately recognises African unity as a dream rather than a vision.
Nyerere, liberation and unity
Message from Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies
Issa G Shivji
2009-04-09, Issue 427
cc WikimediaWith Dar es Salaam on the verge of hosting the Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week from Monday 13 April, Issa G. Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan-African Studies at the city's university, offers his reflections on the pan-African struggle. Though Africa has undoubtedly suffered from the neoliberal onslaught of the past two decades, Pan-Africanism as a progressive ideology is now firmly back on the historical agenda, Shivji states, uniting in the process the continent's dual quest for unity and liberation.
Nkrumah at 100: Lessons for African leadership
Yao Graham
2009-04-09, Issue 427
© Africa WithinWhile many African leaders have aspired to inherit Nkrumah’s mantle as the visionary and driver of Pan-Africanism and continental unity, writes Yao Graham, a gaping political leadership vacuum remains at the heart of the continent’s collective expression. From an age when there were a number of outstanding African leaders, among whom Nkrumah was preeminent, Graham argues that the African Union’s election of Gaddafi as its leader is a statement of a collective failure of leadership and underlines the crisis in which the Pan-African project is currently mired at the inter-state level. Where, asks Graham, are the African leaders who see opportunities for change in the current crisis, and who are ‘ready to dare and look beyond guaranteeing the sanctity of aid flows?’
Press statement by Paul Muite on threats to his life over extrajudicial executions
Paul Muite
2009-04-09, Issue 427
Having been credibly informed that his life could well be in danger, Paul Muite considers the implications of his willingness to speak out against the Kenyan government's involvement in the assassinations of Oscar Kamau King'ara and Paul Oulu. With the Kenyan authorities themselves at the forefront of extrajudicial killings and threats, Muite highlights the Kenyan citizenry's complete lack of confidence in the government or police to protect people's rights.
The politics of fear and the fear of politics
Michael Neocosmos
2008-06-12, Issue 380
Reflecting on the causes of the recent xenophobic pogroms in the country, it is striking how most commentators have stressed poverty and deprivation as the underlying causes of the events, writes Michael Neocosmos. Yet it requires little effort to see that economic factors, however real, cannot possibly account for why it was those deemed to be non-South Africans who bore the brunt of the vicious attacks. Poverty can be and has historically been the foundation for the whole range of political ideologies, from communism to fascism and anything in between. In actual fact, poverty can only account for the powerlessness, frustration and desperation of the perpetrators, but not for their target. After all why were not Whites or the rich or for that matter White foreigners in South Africa targeted instead? Of course it is a common occurrence that the powerless regularly take out their frustrations on the weakest: women, children, the elderly... and outsiders. Yet this will not suffice as an explanation.
The space for post liberation politics
Onyekachi Wambu
2008-05-22, Issue 373
Onyekachi Wambu looks at post-liberation South Africa and the contradictions of promise and reality and duly warns that the ANC government might very well be condemning South Africa to repeat Zimbabwe's mistakes.
Class and Kinship in Kenya's Killing Fields
Oduor Ong'wen
2008-02-12, Issue 344
It is easy – indeed tempting – to dismiss the violence that has engulfed Kenya in the last one month as an unfortunate, though not totally unexpected, resurgence of African atavist ontological disposition. Many analysts, particularly in the West, hav...