African personality

When I first read Okot P'Bitek's "Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol", I was in a school library at Malosa Secondary School in Zomba in 1991. It is one book of poetry that I can truly claim was a conscientising journey for me. I cannot claim that at the time my level of analyis was advanced -- not that I claim so now -- but I thought then that the book appealed easily to any reader of conscience, and one who wanted to understand exactly what was happening to the African psyche and personality under colonialism.

Even at the time, I thought P'Bitek had placed the beginning of African revolution at the heart of African Personality. For the poem examines how colonialism distorted African thinking by condemning and demonising everything that Africans ever revered, or what they had been about -- our culture, spirituality, emotions, worldview, our relationships with ourselves and with the continent that gave birth to us, and with other people around the world.

Even then, the poem was carrying two messages: 1) We have to reclaim and develop African Personality, and 2) Have African Personality drive the African Revolution. Quite a conundrum if you ask me, but something to think about.

What is African Personality
If I were to define it, then, I would venture to say, African Personality is the idea that Africans should recall their history and develop a character with the aim of reclaiming their dignity and cultural prowess through a revolution that would count them as humans with other members of the human race. Quite a mouthful, but I am sure that -- as I said above -- a fuller meaning will be acquired as the revolution develops. For, as I think of that revolution, the concept will have its completeness and meaning once Africans have reached the goal of having united, and had embarked on the ultimate objective of being one with the human race.

Fighting Slavery
Thus, the journey was supposed to start with reclaiming dignity. Both slavery and colonialism dehumanised Africans to a point of them losing their self-worth. They were enslaved and belittled because both the slave master and the colonist -- two sides of the same coin -- saw the African as some animal, a sub-human. Those who had some civilisation saw Africans as boys and girls, but who still had to work for the master and madam!

It is against this background that some who saw the injustice started to fight. Hence the Haitian uprising that toppled the slave machinery and established a government. The first government ever to be formed by people who had been captive slaves on that island. This in many ways was the first step to reclaiming personhood -- the realisation that Africans were not the subhumans the European enslavers wanted them to be.

Another claimant was Harriet Tubman, who rescued many of her fellow enslaved Africans through the Underground Railroad. It must have taken a strong person with great character to execute such a daring act. Indeed the fight for freedom is a daring action. Had she been of a weak character she surely wouldn't have pulled off this job. As an empowered person, she strived to empower others, and others, until slavery as it was known then was abolished.

Then started another form (of slavery) in the manner of colonialism. We must recall that in the interim -- the transition between slavery and colonialism, another strong character in Marcus Garvey was born. With it, the movement for Africans to go back to the motherland was formed, which instilled in the recovering African the idea of self-reliance. The building of the African personality was taking shape gradually, but needed to have a universality which could only be developed on the continent.

Confronting Colonialism
Meanwhile, anti-colonial sentiments were also growing African Personality as resistance to colonialism grew. Then, with that also came the realisation that the African battles across the oceans were related. Something which gave birth to Pan-Africanism, an idea Henry Sylvester-Williams married to Blyden's African Personality. Other people who gave shape to these character-building ideas are, among others, WEB Du Bois and George Padmore.

The commonality shared by Africans on the continent and those in the diaspora was itself a foundation rock that propelled the African revolution. Kwame Nkrumah saw this connection through Pan-Africanism as a guide giving direction "towards specific and definite goals." He said that Pan-Africanism was centered around "the belief that Africans share common bonds and objectives and advocates unity" of all Africans.

African Personality, as a concept on which Pan-Africanism hinges, is at the same time a vehicle to ferry it. Once the anti-colonial wars intensified, it was because of the determined characters who realised that they could not lose their personhood, hence their Africanhood. And that it was only through fighting that they could restore those characteristics.

As Nkrumah pointed out, African Personality could be put in motion by African genius, in characters who valued Africa and being African. For him African Personality could be developed once the African could meet and defend four objectives: 1) consolidation of political independence; 2) Eradication ofracialism and colonialism in Africa (and everwhere); 3) development of the economy; and a foreign policy which promoted Pan-Africanism. Thus, the new African of which he spoke, would fight for these objectives, which would ultimately restore the dignity of Africa, and reclaim her culture including her languages and history. It was his desire for this 'new African' to be proud and independent in thought, free of influences outside of principles that build African society. He had determined quite early that Africans had serious problems with 'self-confidence', which deficit is responsible for the feeling of inferiority.

African Personality does not have room for inferiority-superiority complex. In fact, it wants to exterminate such complexes. One person who managed to do that was Malcom X. According to Ossie Davis, who eulogised him in 1965 when he was buried, Malcolm X "kept snatching our lives away. He kept shouting the painful truth we did not want to hear from the housetops. And he would not stop for love nor money." Davis said that Malcolm X stood for freedom in the US not only for his African brothers and sisters, "but for everybody." One of the haunting questions he left us with was: "Who taught you to hate yourself?" And perhaps he wouldn't have cared whether we answered it, because he knew very well what the answer was.

While we may think that Malcolm X was a daring personality for speaking his mind to power, we equally had a strong personality in Ossie Davis. Indeed, it took a strong character to speak fearlessly about Malcolm X in the America of the time. But also, no weak character could admit as Davis did, that "Malcolm X was our manhood... This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves..."

African Personality Has no Apology
It is not in vain, therefore, that we seek examples of these characters who personify African Personality. Nkrumah despised those that could not defend Africa at any stage. For instance, he said African Personality was distinct from (Leopold Senghor's) negritude, which wad apologetical. He despised the "vague brotherhood based on a criterion of colour, or on the idea that Africans have no reasoning but only sensitivity." He said African genius meant something positive.

I would like to believe that such apologetical attitudes are still present with us. In South Africa, long before Nkrumah's pronouncements on the African genius, Mangaliso Sobukwe, following on the footsteps of Anton Lembede, had already spoken to the concept of African Personality. This after the Africanists had pointed out the flaws in the relationship of the African National Congress (ANC) and the congress alliance. The sell-out Charter document was giving away the African land by claiming it belonged to all, oppressor and oppressed. This was defeating the African revolution as pronounced in Pan-Africanism, and given character in the African Personality.

Hence, the Pan-African character which was infused by Pixley Ka Seme in the ANC diminished, never to recover. It does not even seem that Thabo Mbeki's later perception of the African Renaissance could rescue it.

It was the Status Campaign which revealed the character of personality that Sobukwe and his party, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania sought to inject. They made it clear that the cap-in-hand apologetic politics, once the trademark of ANC, had come to an end. Sharpeville, part of the positive action campaign (the PAC of the PAC), was actioning that Status Campaign, thus showing that the apartheid government was not dealing with boys and girls, and were not apologetic about it. It was Sobukwe who said, in not so many words, that African Personality can be achieved when one had "a consuming love for African people" and the continent at large.

Other strong characters of the revolution in South Africa included Abram Tiro and Steve Biko who dared the regime that eventually killed them because they wouldn't yield for anything. We also give reverence to people like Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, Robert Mugabe and others who fought and stood against the adversity of the colonial oppressor. We thank them for showing us how character is built toward developing African Personality.

Forces of Doom Still in Our Midst
We are still experiencing those apologetical tendencies in the current crop of African leaders, who in their indecisiveness are progressively yielding Africa to colonists. Many of these have become agents for colonialism in all its stripes. They would rather enjoy crumbs from the European and American and now Chinese masters, while the majority of Africans die of hunger and want. These are the forces of doom, trying to hold back the march toward freedom.

From these, we cannot learn and teach our children how character for the African personality, and hence African liberation is built. These are spineless, characterless, mis-leaders that dim beacons of hope.

Yet, the revolution cannot be halted for their sake. More strong men and women must rise who must develop that vital ingredient for African liberation -- African Personality!

Wole Soyinka summed up the current condition in Africa in his drama, "The Lion and The Jewel", showing that it is a long way from the cries of B'Tek's Lawino and Ocol.