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How academia and intellectuals mobilised change in East Africa

[ Posted On: 2007-01-24 ]

In post-colonial Africa, academics and intellectuals have been major agents of political change, but relatively minor agents of economic change. The golden age of African nationalism of the post-colonial variety was from the 1930s to the 1970s. African academics and intellectuals helped to mobilise the masses against the colonial order.

African liberation was much faster than generally realised. Kenya became a British colony after Jomo Kenyatta was born. The colonial era was so brief that Kenyatta lived right through it and came to rule Kenya for 15 years after the British had left.

Uganda’s earliest manifestations of anti-colonial nationalism took the form of defending Uganda from white settler-dominated Kenya. Many Ugandans recoiled from Britain’s desire to unite Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda into a union, a kind of pre-independence East African Federation.

When Uganda’s Kabaka Mutesa II articulated opposition to the proposed East African union, he was partly resisting encroachment of white settler power from Kenya into Uganda.

The Kabaka was sent into exile in Britain by the Governor of Uganda. Many of Kabaka’s male subjects vowed not to shave their beards until the British returned their king. When Kabaka finally returned to Uganda in the 1950s, his subjects shaved their beards at Entebbe Airport in celebration.

The momentum of Buganda’s defiance spread to other parts of Uganda. Within a few years, Uganda became independent in 1962.

Makerere University’s contribution to this anti-colonial movement included graduates who at times defied the British for ethno-cultural reasons and sometimes for genuine Pan-Uganda patriotic reasons.

Among the Pan-Ugandan nationalists was Apollo Obote, who adopted the additional name of ‘Milton’ out of sheer admiration for John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost. Obote was inspired by Satan’s immortal line in Milton’s poem: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

Another immortal East African product of Makerere was Julius Nyerere who created the Tanganyika African National Union in the 1950s. Tanganyika was the least developed of the three East African states, but it was the first to become independent in 1961. On the other hand, Kenya was the most economically developed of the three, but it was the last to win independence in December 1963. Uganda was caught in between, winning its independence in 1962.

The speed of political decolonisation of the three East African countries was spectacular but the second phase of nation-building was truly in fits and starts. Precisely because African intellectuals and academics could not come to grips with viable strategies of economic development, nation building was difficult to sustain in the post-colonial era.

Our intellectuals and academics thought that they could become effective agents of economic change ideologically.

In the 1960s and 1970s, socialism, and even Marxism were popular on many campuses in Africa. Marxism played three roles: ideology of development, an ethic of distribution and a methodology of analysis.

Addiction to Marxism and socialism was at its height on the campuses of the University of Dar es Salaam and Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa. The University of Nairobi was next in leftist orientation, with prominent figures like Ngugi wa Thiong’o as the vanguard. The Makerere campus was the least intoxicated by socialism and Marxism.

In Kenya, political intellectuals, like Tom Mboya and Mwai Kibaki, were at variance with the academic intellectuals, like Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo. The campus intellectuals were to the left of the political intelligentsia.

Uganda under Obote also witnessed an ideological divergence between political intellectuals who were pushing for Obote’s move to the Left and the campus intellectuals who were sceptical of leftist leanings. Apart from a handful of political scientists on campus, academic intellectuals in Uganda were to the right of political intellectuals under Obote I. In Kenya, campus intellectuals were to the left of political intellectuals under Kenyatta and early Moi.

At the University of Dar es Salaam radical leftist academics were disproportionately non-Tanzanians. These included Walter Rodney of Guyana, Mahmood Mamdani of Uganda, John Saul of Canada and Lionel Cliffe of the United Kingdom.

Issa Shivji, the author of The Silent Class Struggle in Tanzania, was the only prominent Tanzanian who was also truly leftist.

In Nyerere’s Tanzania, both the campus intellectuals and the political intellectuals were leftist, but the academicians were more leftist than Nyerere.

Marxism as an ethic of distribution has continued to be attractive to those who are appalled by the gross inequities between the Haves and Have-nots in post-colonial Africa.

For African elites who chose to pursue the capitalist path of development, many of their economic strategies were similarly out of focus in their capitalism.

Their strategies stimulated urbanisation without industrialisation; they aroused capitalist greed without capitalist discipline; they activated Western consumption patterns without Western production techniques; they whetted Western tastes without cultivating Western skills.

Idi Amin’s expulsion of Uganda Asians was a particularly bizarre route towards Africanized capitalism. Amin sought to replace Asian dukawallas with African duka-warriors. Once again, the result was capitalist greed without capitalist discipline; Western-style consumption patterns without Western-style production techniques.

Of the major East African leaders, Yoweri Museveni is the only one who has traversed the whole ideological spectrum from a profound distrust of capitalism to a restored faith in market forces. Museveni insists that his current faith in the market forces is not a quest for profit but a quest for technology and development.

Meanwhile, Museveni’s pragmatism in power has paid off in the capital city of Kampala. The city was decaying when Museveni came to power in 1986. Today, Kampala has the look of a dynamic metropolis.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Prof. Ali Mazrui is Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, Kenya.

| View Profile & All Articles By: Ali A. Mazrui |

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