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THE COUNTER RENAISSANCE A publication by and for
African Youth Issue 1: January 2001 “Colonialism imposed its control on the social
production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But
its most important area of domination, was the mental universe of the colonized, the
control, through culture, of how perceived themselves and their relationship to the world.” -Ngugi wa Thiong’o Why Counter Renaissance ?
The African Renaissance holds a great deal of promise for many of us. It presents a rare opportunity for Africans to finally confront colonizing frameworks and also create new meanings, symbols, languages and understandings that are relevant to our environments and heritages. In going about this, it is crucial that the presence of
colonialism and the colonizing dispositions in African society is fully acknowledged.
Furthermore, any ‘remedies’ that seek to redress these perversions must
necessarily centralize the question of African Identity. Unfortunately, the African Renaissance has
been simplified and even distorted! It remains ambiguous on the question of African
Identity and in many cases explicitly endorses Western manufactured frameworks as panaceas
to the challenges that the African society is faced with. The entire history of
oppression, servitude and murder is drowned in mass cheers of Scientific Progress,
Economic Development and Modern Rationality. Those who engaged in the
‘lucrative’ slave trade and those who colonized African society also used the
same ‘moral’ bases of the European Renaissance to justify their violent actions. This publication is for those who wish to
launch a Counter Renaissance. What it seeks to counter are those colonizing assumptions
that still serve to maintain our status as beggars (of Western ideas and money) and which
continue to asphyxiate unique spaces, languages, and wisdoms for the generation and
expression of liberating frameworks. The Counter Renaissance will work around the three
parallel strategies of 1.Decolonization; 2. Resistance; 3.Regeneration. In terms of Decolonization, this publication sees
that after several centuries of being dominated and brutalized by White Masters, African
society still has residual aspects and institutions from the colonial experience within
it. Meaningful and sustainable ‘solutions’ to current ‘problems’ can
emerge only if we sever these colonial strings. By Resisting, the Counter Renaissance openly
rejects those seductive assumptions, plastic language and deficit-thoughts that eternalize
the yoke of colonialism by continuing to convince us of our backwardness, savagery and
helplessness and that only the West must save us. Through Regeneration, perhaps the most
significant of the three strategies spelt out, the Counter Renaissance wants to create and
nurture new realities. The spectacular failure of destructive Western paradigms now leaves
Africa with the challenging task of redefining and creating its own Identity. To
Regenerate, the Counter Renaissance conceives of the recovery and creation of spaces
(currently taken over by Dominant voices) for genuine dialogue, reflection and
questioning. This publication is a safe learning community for young people – to open
themselves up to exploring their feelings, hidden talents and voices (in expressions they
can connect with) and to sharing their conceptions about their Identity, their views on
Dominant paradigms, and their past experiences and future dreams. For too long, our society has been
suffocated with the notion that ‘experts know-it-all’ and that ‘top ranking
personalities’ hold the key to a ‘developed world’. Such grossly simplistic
assumptions have had debilitating effects on African society in two ways — as arrows
and as shields. As arrows, they viciously attack fresh thought that emanates from the
margins of ‘high society’ (read: the youth, the ‘powerless’, the
‘poor’, the ‘illiterate’). As shields, they stubbornly prevent
questioning and stunt spiritual, intellectual and societal growth! The Counter Renaissance
seeks to do away with these arrows and shields because they have fortified the colonial
setting in Africa. The Counter Renaissance aims to break this stranglehold and monopoly on
thought. It necessarily enlivens our spirits, challenges our creativities, and connects
with the dignity in each of us. The State/Market-sponsored discussion about
African Renaissance addresses these three fundamental aspects very superficially. In fact
on the final aspect – Regeneration — it draws a resounding blank. This
publication is open to diverse opinions and voices because this diversity provides the
only way for meaningful learning. Today, a rabidly greedy culture is placing society
within a vortex of highly intolerant assumptions and ‘truths’. Despite all of
its hype about ‘choices’, the Market culture actually eliminates alternatives to
itself by convincing us that a bright future lies only in increased slavery to
consumption. The Counter Renaissance aims to help us unlearn such cancerous lies and
create self-organizing alternatives. This issue has two excerpts from Steve
Biko’s I WRITE WHAT I LIKE (Randburg: South Africa, 1996 ed). With refreshing
unambiguity, the writer delves deep into the essence of Identity and its dimensions. The
setting is apartheid South Africa. The message however is relevant unmistakably universal,
questioning the premises upon which modern institutions draw their very legitimacy and
relevance, as well their role in furthering neo-apartheid. In the first excerpt “We Blacks”,
Biko talks about how the System -itself a ‘white’ creation -- manufactures a
poverty more deadly than material poverty: spiritual poverty. Biko expresses the paramount
need for African people to define themselves in their own terms, and to remind themselves
of “(their) complicity in the crime of allowing themselves to be misused...” In
the second excerpt “The Definition of Black Consciousness”, Biko lays out the
roots and essence of Black Consciousness.
- Isaac Ochien’g, Editor
Excerpted from “WE BLACKS” “Born shortly before 1948*, I have lived all my
conscious life in the framework of institutionalized separate development. My
friendships, my love, my education, my thinking and every other facet of my life have
been carved and shaped within the context of separate development. In stages during my
life I have managed to outgrow some of the things the system taught me. Hopefully what I
propose to do now is to take a look at those who participate in opposition to the system
— not from a detached point of view but from the point of view of a black man,
conscious of the urgent need for an understanding of what is involved in the new approach – ‘black consciousness’. One
needs to understand the basics before setting up a remedy.
A number of organizations now currently fighting against ‘apartheid’ are
working on an oversimplified premise. They have taken a brief look at what is, and have
diagnosed the problem incorrectly. They have almost completely forgotten about the side
effects and have not even considered the root cause. Hence whatever is improvised as a
remedy will hardly cure the condition. Apartheid
— both petty and grand — is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant
assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority.
Hence even carried out faithfully and fairly, the policy of apartheid would merit
condemnation and vigorous opposition from the indigenous peoples as well as those who see
the problem in its correct perspective. The fact that apartheid has been tied up with
white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and deliberate oppression makes the problem
much more complex. Material want is bad enough but coupled with spiritual poverty it
kills. And this latter effect is probably the one that creates mountains of obstacles in
the normal course of emancipation of the black people. One
should not waste time here dealing with manifestations of material want of the black people. A vast literature has
been written on this problem. Possibly a little should be said about spiritual poverty.
What makes the black man fail to tick? Is he convinced of his own accord of his
inabilities? Does he lack in his genetic make-up that rare quality that makes a man
willing to die for the realization of his aspirations? Or is he simply a defeated person?
The answer to this is not a clear cut one. It is, however, nearer to the last suggestion
than anything else. The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the
subservient role in this country. Not so long ago this used to be freely said in
parliament even about the educational system of the black people. It is still said even
today, although in a much more sophisticated language. To a large extent the evil-doers
have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is
man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has
advanced... In the
home-bound bus or train [the Black man] joins the chorus that roundly condemns the white
man but is first to praise the government in the presence of the police or his employers.
His heart yearns for the comfort of white society and makes him blame himself for not
having been ‘educated’ enough to warrant such luxury. Celebrated achievements by
whites in the field of science — which he understands only hazily — serve to
make him rather convinced of the futility of resistance and to throw away any hope that
change may ever come. All in all the black man has become a shell, a shadow of man,
completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of
oppression with sheepish timidity... One
writer makes the point that in an effort to destroy completely the structures that had
been built up in the African Society and to impose their imperialism with an unnerving
totality. The colonialists were not satisfied merely with holding a people in their grip
and emptying the Native’s brain of all form and content, they turned to the past of
the oppressed people and distorted, disfigured and destroyed it. No longer was reference
made to African culture, it became barbarism. Africa was the ‘dark continent’.
Religious practices and customs were referred to as superstition. The history of African
Society was reduced to tribal battles and internecine wars. There was no conscious
migration by the people from one place of abode to another. No, it was always flight from
one tyrant who wanted to defeat the tribe not for any positive reason but merely to wipe
them out of the face of this earth. No
wonder the African child learns to hate his heritage in his days at school. So negative is
the image presented to him that he finds solace only in close identification white
society. No doubt, therefore, part of the approach envisaged in bringing about ‘black
consciousness’ has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the
black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the African background. To
the extent that a vast literature about Gandhi in South Africa is accumulating it can be
said that the Indian community already has started in this direction. But only scant
reference is made to African heroes. A people without a positive history are like a
vehicle without an engine. Their emotions cannot be easily controlled and channeled in a
recognizable direction. They always live in the shadow of a more successful society. Hence
in a country like ours they are forced to celebrate holidays like Paul Kruger’s day.
Heroes’ day, Republic day etc., — all of which are occasions during which the
humiliation of defeat is at once revived. Then
too one can extract from our indigenous cultures a lot of positive virtues which should
teach the Westerner a lesson or two. The oneness of community for instance is at the heart
of our culture. The easiness with which Africans communicate with each other is not forced
by authority but is inherent in the make-up of African people. Thus whereas the white
family can stay in an area without knowing its neighbours, Africans develop a sense of
belonging to the community within a short time of coming together. Many a hospital
official has been confounded by the practice of Indians who bring gifts and presents to
patients whose names they can hardly recall. Again this is a manifestation of the
interrelationship between man and man in the black world as opposed to the highly
impersonal world in which Whitey lives. These are characteristics we must not allow
ourselves to lose. Their value can only be appreciated by those of us who have not as yet
been made slaves to technology and the machine. One can quote a myriad of other examples.
Here again ‘black consciousness’ seeks to show the black people the value of
their own standards and outlook. It urges black people to judge themselves according to
these standards and not to be fooled by white society who have white-washed themselves and
made white standards the yardstick by which even black people judge each other. It is probably necessary at this stage to warn all and sundry about the limits of endurance of the human mind. This is particularly necessary in the case of the African people. Ground for a revolution is always fertile in the presence of absolute destitution. At some stage one can foresee a situation where black people will feel they have nothing to live for and will shout unto their God ‘Thy will be done.’ Indeed His will shall be done but it shall not appeal equally to all mortals for indeed we have different versions of His will. If the white God has been doing the talking all along, at some stage the black God will have to raise His voice and make Himself heard over and above noises from His counterpart. What happens at that stage depends largely on what happens in the intervening period. ‘Black consciousness’ therefore seeks to give positivity in the outlook of the black people to their problems. It works on the knowledge that ‘white hatred’ is negative though understandable and leads to precipitate and shot-gun methods which may be disastrous to blacks and whites alike. It seeks to channel the pent-up forces of black masses to meaningful and directional opposition basing its entire struggle on realities of the situation. It wants to ensure clarity of purpose in the minds of the black people and possible total involvement of the masses in a struggle essentially theirs...”
Interrogating Identity Over the centuries, the West, through the
setting up of imperial frameworks has sought to simplify, distort or else uproot and blot
out core aspects of our histories and therefore identities. Without genuine reference points or symbols
(“tools”) with which to reconstruct our own visions and understandings of who we
are, the concept of Identity has been totally misconceived and in many instances even
trivialized. For example Identity is consistently presented to us a Nationality issue, a
Racial issue or as an Ethnic issue. The imposition and continued existence of colonizing
institutions has been particularly harmful in our efforts to build an African Identity
since we seem unable to unshackle ourselves from the psychological limits foreordained by
them. An illustration is the woefully misplaced assumption that the mere existence of
political parties and periodic elections is a prerequisite for democracy, or that only through a (now fatal) Western commodity culture
can we demonstrate the extent our ‘development’! It will therefore be as well to make clear,
first, what identity is not! Africans have
lived under the yoke of imperialism for centuries. The period of the slave trade saw
imperialism at its brutal best. For those who profited immensely from this diabolic act
one thing became clear. That they could indeed Dominate and exert the limits of brutality
to any extent they pleased. In fact, taking a cue from the unqualified success of the
slave trade, and their appetites having been whetted by its lucrative results, the white
masters embarked on a new mission. Fuelled by the ideological and philosophical
assumptions of the European Renaissance, imperial powers saw the conquest of non-Western lands as ideal petry dishes in which
the experimentation of these assumptions could be carried out. The scramble and partition
of Africa, and the subsequent creation of modern African nation states, however
‘historic’ this process was, was therefore just a sign post on the long road of
imperialism that started with the slave trade and which is today given a deceptively human
face (user friendly) called colonialism. Within the structures of these colonial
nation states, have emerged formal institutions/systems that have tended to strengthen and
justify the existence of the State. Formal Economic, Socio-Cultural and Political Systems
with their highly centralizing/homogenizing tendencies, kill our sense of self identity.
This is dehumanizing because, like products on a factory assembly line, we are forced to
fit into pre- defined goals of the State. The ideals of Nationalism and Patriotism, often
evoking war-like spirits across entire nations are used to manufacture loyalties around
exclusionary and artificial Identities. Today, the absurdity of African Nations held
captive by Market dominating powers is further complicating our search for and assertion
Identity. Ultimately, endeavours to make sense of the world around us, to relate with
numerous other aspects of our humanity get frustrated. The search for an African Renaissance is
more than anything else a search for an African Identity. By buying into the assumptions
of the European Renaissance such as the Enlightenment, Scientific Progress and
Rationality, the African Renaissance, effectively loses its own vision and Identity. It becomes little more than reactionary drivel, a
seductive word that seeks to tighten the yoke of ‘Modernity’ (and other Western
manufactured constructs) upon the colonized. I am an African who refuses to glorify the
‘victories’ against slavery or celebrate the ‘dethronement’ of formal
colonial rule because Slavery and Colonial Rule still continue, albeit by other more
subtle and sophisticated means. Throughout my
life, I have been both a ‘beneficiary’ and victim of colonizing processes. In
school, I went through the dehumanizing effects of colonial (couched as modern)
‘education’. Like everybody else, I was made to rote ‘learn’
meaningless material that had absolutely no connection with my environment or heritage .
In an endless succession of contests called tests, I had the privilege of being branded
intelligent or unintelligent depending on what tests I passed. In fact, for me life became
precisely that-Competition! It mattered little to me that my less ‘intelligent’
friends who constituted well over the four- fifths of the student population were to be
condemned to a life of drudgery and degradation upon leaving school. The element of
Competition came to characterize every aspect of life I engaged with. The fear of failure
became an obsession. The streak of selfishness, hatred, and bitterness towards the Other
was ‘inevitable’ because of the inherent requirement, that for me to succeed,
Others had to fail. Most damaging however was the fact that in an environment of
institutionalized competition, I lost sight of my Identity, my humanness, my social self
and the ability to interrogate Life. Even as I graduated from school and college,
I never felt the need to take the initiative and do something that was of my own creation
and that mattered to me personally. The underlying rationale for going to school was to
get high marks and land a ‘great job’. But what if there was no job? What if I
lost my job because the government/organization had to restructure (sack) unwanted
employees? Did I have any creativities to fall back on? What vision did I have of myself?
Did I have any chance of attaining an envisioned self? Throughout almost twenty years of
schooling, what vision do I have for my community and society? Is the government, having
existed for numerous decades, the panacea for the inadequacies in society? How can we
unlearn our ‘beggar syndrome’ towards the government and formal institutions?
Today, to what extent are we responsible for our own fate and destiny? Should my entire life revolve around a
‘client’ orientation? Must my identity, as indeed my entire view of life stay
within narrow, ritualized (System constructed) patterns of perception. To this day, I wonder what ‘real’
learning opportunities existed in school. I had the experience of working (and learning)
with African college students in Udaipur, India on self-sponsored publication titled 21st Century Africa. In it, were articles from the
students themselves expressing what visions they had for a future Africa. It was amazing
that despite almost twenty years of social conditioning (in school and college),
resistance towards Dominant paradigms was so strong. The students had the opportunity to
express what they understood by phrases such as Development, Democracy, Power, Progress. Rarely did anyone ascribe to the uni-linear vision
that Schooling associates these terms with. In this I also saw an attempt at constructing
own senses of Identity. A sense of Identity is not necessarily articulated through mass
movements and high sounding political rhetoric. It can happen, as it did via this small
publication, within communities sharing some common objects, dreams, ideals. Formal systems of education, by thriving on
competition, make us ever more apprehensive and fearful of the world around us.
Consciously or otherwise, ‘learners’ ingest this spirit and this apprehension
and fear gets reinforced by other equally oppressive colonial frameworks in society. For
example, exploitative economic systems create economic classes/entities fighting for
larger shares of an ever dwindling pie. The result is that in this rat race, we lose track
of who we really are and what connects us as human beings. Even when we do try to connect
with our identity, it is often done for us by external authority. But I am seeking to connect with and
establish my identity. Identity, for me,
would include those thoughts, actions, statements, assumptions, ideas that would help me
recognize my “being”. Identity would help me break through artificial
institutional identifiers. Most importantly,
it would foster the spirit of conscientious learning in me, never ascribing to rabid
exclusionary tendencies. I refuse to let formal institutions shape my conceptions of
identity because they do not only disempower me and thereby limit my understanding of
Identity, but they also legitimize the debauchery and brutality that took place at
different times in history. By perpetuating
the oppressive tendencies of existing neo-colonial frameworks, formal institutions lay the
ground for further conflict and violence. Through this publication and through
constant dialogues with people, I intend to resist colonizing assumptions, explore fresh
initiatives and build visions that are free of decadent colonial jargon. It is a magazine
that intends to resist the colonizing assumptions of the Dominant language, the language
of Power, Development, Progress, Success, Economics. This Dominant language has not only
mystified reality but has also alienated us from “our” environment and from
ourselves. Is this The Language that we must construct our Identity from? A new language
that emerges from personal reflections, experiences, statements and conscious learning is
the need of the moment. This new language must seek to break the monopoly by default given
to the Dominant language as well as express our need and efforts to regenerate new
frameworks, understandings and meanings. Why it is crucial for Africa that we
interrogate Identity? As long as long the lives of ordinary people the 99% of us who do
not wield formal power) remain captive to colonial constructs, and as long the social
fabric of “our” society continues to define itself via exclusive identities, any
initiatives that intend to redress the imbalances in society are likely to remain weak and
very vulnerable. A Counter Renaissance (the theme this magazine works around) is crucial
in our efforts to liberating identities. - Isaac Excerpted
“The Definition of Black Consciousness” “We
have in our policy manifesto defined blacks as those who are by law or tradition
politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South
African society and identifying themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the
realization of their aspirations. This definition illustrates to us a number of things: (most
important) being black is not a matter of pigmentation — being black is a reflection
of a mental attitude and by describing yourself as black you have started on a road
towards emancipation. From
the above observations therefore, we can see that the term black is not necessarily
all-inclusive; i.e., the fact we are all not white does
not necessarily mean that we are all black. Non-whites
do exist and will continue to exist for quite a long time. Blacks
no longer seek to reform the system because so doing implies acceptance of the major
points around which the system revolves. Blacks are out to completely transform the system
and to make of it what they wish. Such a major undertaking can only be realized in an
atmosphere where people are convinced of the truth inherent in their stand. Liberation
therefore is of paramount importance in the concept of Black Consciousness, for we cannot
be conscious of ourselves and yet remain in bondage.... The
surge towards Black Consciousness is a phenomenon that has manifested itself through out
the so-called Third World. There is no doubt that discrimination against the black man the
world over fetches its origin from the exploitative attitude of the white man. It is true
that the history of weaker nations is shaped by bigger nations, but nowhere in the world
today do we see whites exploiting whites on a scale even remotely similar to what is
happening in South Africa. Hence, one is forced to conclude that it is not coincidence
that black people are exploited. It was a deliberate plan which has culminated in even
so called black independent countries not attaining any real independence.... It
should therefore be accepted that an analysis of our situation in terms of one’s
colour at once takes care of the greatest single determinant for political action —
i.e. colour — while also validly describing the blacks as the only real workers in
South Africa. It immediately kills all suggestions that there could ever be effective
rapport between the real workers, i.e. blacks, and the privileged white workers since we
have shown that the latter are the greatest supporters of the system. In
terms of the Black Consciousness approach we recognize the existence of one major force in
South Africa. This is White Racism. It works with unnerving totality, featuring both on
the offensive and in our defence. Its greatest ally to date has been the refusal by us to
club together as blacks because we are told to do so would be racialist. So, while we
progressively lose ourselves in a world of colourlessness and amorphous common humanity,
whites are deriving pleasure and security in entrenching white racism and further
exploiting the minds and bodies of the unsuspecting black masses. Their agents are ever
present amongst us, telling us that it is immoral to withdraw into a cocoon, that dialogue
is the answer to our problem and that it is unfortunate that there is white racism in
some quarters but you must understand that things are changing. These in fact are the
greatest racists for they refuse to credit us with any intelligence to know what we want.
Their intentions are obvious; they want to be barometers by which the rest of the white
society can measure feelings in the black world. This then is what makes us believe that
white power presents its self as a totality not only provoking us but also controlling
our response to the provocation. This is an important point to note because it is often
missed by those who believe that there are a few good whites. Sure there are a few good
whites just as much as there are a few bad blacks. One must immediately dispel the thought that Black
Consciousness is merely a methodology or a means towards an end. What Black
Consciousness seeks to do is to produce at the output end of the process real black people
who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. This truth cannot be
reversed. We do not need to apologize for this because it is true that the white systems
have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are
people. Our adherence to values that we set for ourselves can also not be reversed because
it will always be a lie to accept white values as necessarily the best. The fact that a
synthesis may be attained only relates to adherence to power politics. Some one somewhere
along the line will be forced to accept the truth...The importance of black solidarity to
the various segments of the black community must not be understated. There have been in
the past a lot of suggestions that there can be no viable unity amongst blacks because
they hold each other in contempt. Coloureds despise Africans because they, (the former) by
their proximity to the Africans, may lose the chances of assimilation into the white
world. Africans despise the Coloureds and Indians for a variety of reasons. Indians not
only despise Africans but in many instances also exploit the Africans in job and shop
situations. All these stereotype attitudes have led to mountainous inter-group suspicions
amongst the blacks. What we should at all times look at is the fact that: 1. We
are all oppressed by the same system. 2.
That we are oppressed to varying degrees is a deliberate design to stratify us not only
socially but also in terms of aspirations... 3.
That we should go on with our programme, attracting to it only committed people and not
just those eager to see an equitable distribution of groups amongst our ranks. This is a
game common amongst liberals. The one criterion that must govern all our action is
commitment. Further implications of Black Consciousness are to do with correcting false images of ourselves in terms of Culture, Education, Religion, Economics. The importance of this also must not be understated. There is always an interplay between the history of a people i.e. the past, and their faith in themselves and hope for their future. We are aware of the terrible role played by our education and religion in creating amongst us a false understanding of ourselves. We must therefore work out schemes not only to correct this, but further to be our own authorities rather than wait to be interpreted by others. Whites can only see us from the outside and as such can never extract and analyse the ethos in the black community...” |
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