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[5] http://www.african]http://www.african</a> bookscollective.com </p> <p>This is the year that UK leader Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa will finalise a report detailing Africa’s problems and how <span>...<a href=
[6] http://www.african]http://www.african</a> bookscollective.com </p> <p>This is the year that UK leader Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa will finalise a report detailing Africa’s problems and how to respond to what Blair himself has described “as a scar on the conscience of the world”. The Commission has steamed ahead despite many pointing out that Africa’s problems are obvious to all and have been known for a very long time. Critics slam the Commission as meaningless while the UK and other powerful Western governments refuse to cancel third world debt, push deregulation and privatisation and fail to regulate the predatory activities of multinational companies.</p> <p>Tony Blair should sit down for an afternoon with Mukoma wa Ngugi and listen carefully to the author of ‘Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change’. Judging by the contents of this book it might be that Ngugi would have a fundamental objection to granting an audience to Blair, but lets pretend that Ngugi does indeed arrive at the big black door of 11 Downing Street for an audience with the greying Blair. </p> <p>Probably the first thing that Ngugi would want to make clear to Blair - and the basis for which the afternoon’s conversation over tea would progress - is that Blair is an oppressor. From this basis, Ngugi would be able to enlighten Blair as to the true motives for his Commission for Africa. Ngugi would explain to Blair that the Commission was part of Western rituals needed as a cleansing process after the “evil” visited on the oppressed.</p> <p>“Because the oppressing culture can never acknowledge that strand of reality that could save them, that the oppressed are its livelihood, that without the oppressed neither the railways, the skyscrapers nor the gold would exist, that its original sin is the exploitation of another, the attempts by the oppressing culture to stand pious before God are a fallacy and a lie. But it is a lie that allows the oppressing culture to send missionaries, Peace Corp volunteers, foreign aid, all agents that in reality further this relationship without facing the fundamental relationship of exploiter and exploited.”</p> <p>The fictitious meeting between Ngugi and Blair is misleading, otherwise Ngugi would have called his book ‘Conversing with Blair: Politics of Oppression’. Ngugi’s intention is not to inform the oppressor of its role in the lives of the exploited, but is rather intended as a manuscript of radical dialogue that ends with the sentence: “There is no other conceivable recourse except by revolution!” Ngugi maintains that Africa has to converse with Africa if the hand of history is to be forged into something positive. This he believes will push history on the defensive because “our words” and “our conversations” will be of a people demanding a humane existence and their rightful place in humanity (Last two sentences from back cover).</p> <p>Drawing heavily on icons like Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah and Steve Biko, Ngugi critiques Africa’s relationship to history, the relationship between the oppressed and oppressor and the role of Africa’s intellectuals, while also addressing issues of nationalism, Pan-Africanism and revolutionary theory. The issues dealt with in the seven chapters are not separate essays, however, and all contribute towards a central argument that can be read as a contribution towards the understanding of Africa’s relationship towards an oppressive system and the debate over how to overcome it.</p> <p>Some of the points that Ngugi makes, which hint at the arguments developed, include:</p> <p>- Solutions towards Africa’s problems that are put forward but fail to tackle the fundamental relationship between exploited versus exploiter will fail. “And so what we need is new ways to learn old truths, innovative solutions to a relationship that had remained fundamentally the same,” writes Ngugi.</p> <p>- Colonialism and its legacy are well understood, he argues, but the debate needs to move from what Europe has done to Africa, to what Africa can do to move towards a situation that will be conducive to change. To do this, lessons have to be taken from history. He writes: “To heal we need to use history to act on the present in order to change our future. History is at its best when used as a tool of emancipation.”</p> <p>- In moving towards an understanding of oppression, the oppressed need to develop in their consciousness an understanding of the system that keeps them oppressed in terms of understanding the links between the local and the global and visa versa. “We have questioned specific injustices, but not oppression itself,” he states.</p> <p>- Throughout, Ngugi demonstrates a healthy scepticism for elites and their structures and is scathing of the African Union. He sees this as part of a Pan African nationalist mythology that “needs to be debunked” and states that the AU will have to “die with the structures of neo-colonialism and dictatorships”. </p> <p>- This is not to say that Pan-Africanism is not a desirable end. He writes: “As long as there is not a socialist Pan-Africanist consciousness throughout the continent, one that understands that this freedom we seek can only be achieved and sustained within a socialist Pan-Africanist paradigm, then all attempts at freedom will fail having been blinded by lack of vision.”</p> <p>These brief and random extracts don’t do justice to Ngugi’s arguments, but the intention is to serve as an insight into the book and to wet the appetite for those who might be interested.</p> <p>This book aims to contribute towards the debate about Africa’s future and in a subtle sense it will form part of the thousands of cogs that may eventually contribute to change. In criticism, it sometimes feels like complex arguments and academic references serve not to make points but to obscure them. In this sense, the criticism is that conversing with Africa might be furthered by a more accessible text with more practical references and examples. What is valuable, however, is that Ngugi cuts straight to the heart of the matter in exposing the oppressive relationship between Africa and the West.</p> <p>Reviewed by Patrick Burnett, Fahamu</p> <p>* For orders, please contact African Books Collective.</p> <p>>>>>>Recent reviews in Pambazuka News:<br /> (Click on the link and then visit the Books and Arts section)</p> <p>* Blind Moon by Chenjerai Hove<br /> <a href=
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