Two political ideologies describe my political orientation: social democracy and African nationalism. In an earlier blog, ‘Why Nations Fail?‘, I set out the meaning of my brand of social democracy with particular reference to views on the economy drawn from the book from which I drew the title. In this blog I want to consider the ideology of African nationalism with particular reference to the thought of Anton Lembede.
Anton Muziwakhe Lembede was born in 1914 in the then Natal. A talented student, Lembede obtained a B.A. in Philosophy and Roman law, a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and finally a M.A degree in philosophy. As a result of his intellectual proclivities Lembede became the preeminent political thinker of his generation. No mean achievement considering this generation included the likes of Oliver Tambo, Walther Sisulu, A.P. Mda and Nelson Mandela among many others.
It was Lembede who best articulated the frustration felt by younger members of the African National Congress (ANC) at the then leadership’s respectful, pleading and gradualist method of demanding black people’s rights. Lembede was also foremost responsible for unpacking the ideological and intellectual structure of Africanism in South Africa. Lembede’s political thought was influenced heavily by the context of decolonisation in which nationalism and Marxism were often inspirations of revolution.
Lembede served as the ANC Youth League’s first president. The tone of the ANC Youth League was very different to that of the mother body. They no longer held the confidence in the good intentions of the government that the ANC mother body then had. The Youth League’s focus was on mobilizing the black majority to, peacefully at that stage, overthrow the white run government and attain political rights. The youth league rejected trusteeship. Trusteeship is the concept that the civilized nations of the world that possessed colonies were carrying out a duty to civilize previously barbarous people in Africa and around the world. Inherent to this notion is the superiority of western culture and the inferiority of indigenous cultures. Black elites in the period before the Youth league had subscribed to the belief that Western Civilization was superior and that their people needed trusteeship in order to civilize them. Lembede’s generation did not entirely let go of the concept of civilization and the necessity of its attainment but they rejected the notion of trusteeship recognising it for what it was, an instrument of oppression rather than liberation.
Upon rejecting the ANC’s supplicatory stance, the Africanists of the ANCYL countered with an appeal to the concept of the nation by attempting to shift the conception of the ANC as being an African parliament and turning it into a “national liberation movement”. This was the first attempt to shift the ANC’s elitist background, wherein it was led by chiefs and the upper economic echelon of black society, to a mass organisation that could energise the people by bringing in “capable men, whatever their status in society”. Lembede went even further and championed the concept of the ANC as a movement of the African people across the continent. The youth league proclaimed, “We believe in the unity of all Africans from the Mediterranean Sea in the North to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans in the South…and that Africans must speak with one voice”. This is one of the earliest articulations of Lembede’s Africanism which is underpinned by pan Africanism, the attempt to draw the black peoples of the continent into one nation.
The rejection of trusteeship, the rejection of petitioning white authority and the attempt to emphasis a different agent of change, the African people, would come to be important underpinnings of Lembede’s Africanism. This Africanism tapped into the expanding well of discontent that demands for the overthrow of colonial power had created. Lembede used Africanism as a philosophical basis for a new politics that would legitimate the struggle of black people and unite and inspire Africans to fight for their freedom and eventually rival western civilization. Lembede understood nationalism to be a powerful historical motive force. Lembede wanted to nurture the nascent nationalism of Africans in the hope that it would galvanise his people. While placing a special focus on the agency of African people, Lembede’s Africanism is a riposte to the western concept of civilization. So while Lembede attempts to articulate the existence of a distinctive African civilization he accepts the belief held by previous ANC leaders of the current superiority of Western culture. In order to further define African civilization Lembede appeals to an idealized version of Africa’s past calling for a post-colonial Africa to emulate the achievements of precolonial Africa and ancient Bantu society. For Lembede, in order to unite Africans and prove the existence of African civilization, he makes appeals to an idealized version of Africa’s past. This is important in order to give legitimacy to African nationalism and its special pan Africanist intent.
Finally, Lembede’s Africanism attempts to create a modern conception of leadership that is based on self-sacrifice. African leaders are therefore supposed to combat “moral disintegration among Africans by maintaining and upholding high ethical standards ourselves.” Therefore self-sacrifice is to be expected rather than the pursuit of self-advancement. This conception became central to the ANC’s political culture even after Lembede’s death among Mandela and Sisulu. It feed, and still feeds, into the concept of the revolutionary, someone who is ideological driven and is willing to sacrifice everything in the pursuit of his ideals.
Lembede’s Africanism, supplemented by Biko’s articulation of black consciousness, undergirds much of my African nationalism. African nationalism, put simply, recognises the recent history of African underdevelopment and subjugation by foreign powers. Angry at our sad history and concerned with the present state of socio-economic development of the African people, African nationalism demands the rectification of our dire state of affairs. African civilization must catch up to the developed world. We must achieve comparable levels of prosperity and global political-economic clout. Pan-Africanism is central to African nationalism as to achieve all we envision we Africans must, united by our shared history of suffering and struggle, work together. African nationalism, as espoused so brilliantly by Lembede, sets out important requirements for we Africans who want to participate in the African cause: we must maintain the highest levels of ethical behaviour in our personal and public lives and we must continually exhibit a willingness to sacrifice for the greater good of the African people. This is the African nationalism I subscribe too. It encompasses all my hope and determination for the future of Africa.