Africanism: Common Sense for Beginners

By Issah H. Tikumah

—Two hundred and sixty pages of serious thoughts presented in the form of standard comedy
—A deceptively thoughtful reflection on current affairs affecting African development and identity
—There is no other single volume as panoramic and down-to-earth on the African situation
—A must for anyone who cares about Africa

Tikumah provides an opportunity for everyone in Africa (or outside) to become president without combat or struggle; all you have to do is read this book, and you will be president. Thus, this modest work should bring all crazy scrambles for political power in Africa to a halt!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Apr 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504377836

Issah H. Tikumah

Born in Tamale, in northern Ghana, Issah Hassan Tikumah read philosophy and political science to obtain a B.A. degree from Australian National University in 1996. He received both his PGDE (2007) and M.Ed. (2009) from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, where he has taught. He now teaches at the University of Cape Verde. As a writer, Tikumah has published more than a dozen books, including novels and essays. Refugees’ Rebellion (2015) and Baptism of Orphanhood (2013) are among his latest novels.

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Copyright © 2017 Issah H. Tikumah.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-7782-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7783-6 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 03/31/2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

PART I

UNIVERSITY FOR DOGS

1. University for Dogs

PART II

SOCIO-CULTURAL ISSUES

2. Who Is Older?

3. Agism in Communalland

4. Sizeism in Communalland

5. Boxing in Lennox House

6. Inverted-Sizeism in Oyinboland

7. Squabbles in Commulland

8. Domestic Colonization

9. Holy War or Holy Politics?

10. Corruption: an African Necessity

PART III

EDUCATIONAL ISSUES

11. Barking Up The Wrong Tree At School

12. The Communalist University

13. The Communalist Students Association

PART IV

MORAL ISSUES AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

14 .The Blind Leading the Blind

15. Anarchical Democracy

16. The Sanctity of the Death Penalty

17. The Policy of Closed Continent

18. Lingoism in Communalland

19. Ethical Colonization

20. Whose Fault?

PART V

THE SEALING POINT

21. Mutual Respect

22. Mutual Tolerance

23. The Nonsense of Tribalism

24. The Most Important Ministry

References

Notes

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The world’s libraries are replete with books on the African situation. However, most of these books seem to be inclined towards elitism i.e. they are written in such complex, intimidating grammar that can only be comprehended by the narrow circle of academic elite. Against this background, the primary target of this book is the African grass-roots readership from the junior secondary school level down. In determining the choice of literary style and approach in this book, priority is given to the need to touch the typical African mind effectively. I may have to borrow a sentence from an African prophet to enable me to make my point:

The purpose has been to try and reach Africans who wish to explore further the nature of their exploitation, rather than to satisfy the ‘standards’ set by our oppressors and their spokesmen in the academic world.

(Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 1972)

DEDICATION

In salute of

Shetu-b’la

and

Alassan-sana,

to whom I owe my

proud Ghanaianness

and my inalienable

Africanness.

May they rest in peace.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first edition of this book was first published (in Nigeria, in 2003) with the title The African God. The word ‘God’ in this title referred not to God the Almighty, but to the ideal of respect in the African’s idolatrous conception of it. However, experienced readers were unanimous on two particular suggestions: (1) That the title was misleading, for it gave the false impression that the book was about religion; (2) that the book was several-books-in-one and needed to be split up for easy reading. It is in response to these laudable suggestions from my dear readers that Africanism – Common sense for Beginners has now been carved out from The African God. In this regard, I owe the greatest intellectual debt to the following three distinguished scholars for their lucid comments and criticism: Prof Isaac A. Olaofe of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; Prof Sule Bello, Director of Africa Research and Development Agency, Kano; and Prof Wariz O. Alli, Dean of Postgraduate School of the University of Jos. My indebtedness is extended fully to Prof Sule Mohammed, Head of the Department of History at the Ahmadu Bello University, for all the sacrifices he made to provide me with some of the essential literature referenced in this book. Indeed, over the years, Prof Sule Mohammed has proven to me that true friendship still exists.

My British friend, Dr William John Candler, and my Cape Verdean friend, Dr Júlio César Freire, have been too kind to me for too long, and now, by taking the pains to proofread the manuscript of this book, they have provided me with the much-needed opportunity to document their immeasurable kindness.

For the cover design, Mr Wilson Gomes Tavares, an exceptionally talented student of mine at the University of Cape Verde, deserves special praise.

I have to renew my thanks to Ms. Brigid A. Ballard, ex-Head of the Study Skills Centre at the Australian National University, for her strenuous editorial work on the first edition (i.e. The African God) of this book. I must also mention Mr. A.B.A Fuseini of the Graphic Corporation, Accra, and Mr. L.D. Ado of the News Agency of Nigeria: Both of them read the manuscript of The African God and offered useful editorial advice too.

Last but not the least, I want to express my profound gratitude to my wifely wife, Sharifah, and my children —Isma’eel, Iss’haq, Ya’aqub and Khadijah. For without their empathetic fortitude and loving inspiration I probably would not have been able to endure the daunting travail of my writings over the last couple of decades.

PREFACE

Dear reader, this is a book¹ of comparison and contrast between the developed world and the underdeveloped² world from a socio-cultural point of view. The writing of this book gradually but imperceptibly occurred to me during my stay in Australia as a student from 1993 to 1996. When I arrived in Australia in February 1993, I was terribly shocked: being the first time ever for me to land in a developed country, I found that the socio-politico-economic developmental gap between the developed world and its underdeveloped counterpart (Africa) is prohibitively wide, while the situation of the latter seems to be getting worse by the hour. So I began to investigate the causes of Africa’s backwardness and underdevelopment –or should I say ‘maldevelopment’?³–: why is the politico-economic system so corrupt? Why is the society so tense, with an extremely high level of interpersonal rivalry, enmity and antagonism, ethnic and tribal conflicts all the time, internecine civil wars, and so on? Ultimately, I observed that the causes of Africa’s socio-politico-economic problems could all be summarised in one simple phrase, namely, a wrong conception of ‘respect’ by the African. Perhaps the simplest way one can express the African’s wrong conception of ‘respect’ is by saying that Africans worship one another in the name of respect; instead of living together as all humans they tend to relate to one another rather like creators and their creatures or as gods and their worshippers.

This book is intended to discuss how the African has misconceived the ideal of respect and how that misconception is responsible for the woes of Africa.

As far as the deathly extent of the shattering gravity and daunting prospects of our situation are concerned, Chinweizu has indeed summarised it all in his seminal treatise:

In summary, the impact of five centuries of European contact and expansion into Africa has been to make Africa a ravaged satellite of Europe. As a consequence, African culture has lost its autonomous centers, lost its independent bearings and become eccentric. In its decay it was wrenched off its trajectory and dragged into a devastating orbit around Europe. It still is in that disorientating orbit. For post-colonial Africa the major bequests from half a millennium’s satellization to Europe have included extensive social fragmentation, lack of cultural cohesion, the entrenchment of ignorance, an agrarian technology that went to sleep five centuries ago, rudiments of an industrial economy implanted during the first half of the twentieth century but rudiments that are however diseased vehicles for maldevelopment, as well as a pervasive colonial mentality –that rag bag of complexes that hobble African initiative.⁴

Nevertheless, grave and daunting as it is, with open minds and sincere determination we have the potential to reverse the situation – there is no sensible reason to believe otherwise.

Although this book is said to be a comparison and contrast between the developed world and the underdeveloped one, I am proposing Australia and Ghana as (respectively the) paradigm cases. Much as I observed that the situation in Ghana is either the same or very similar to that in other underdeveloped societies, so did I also discover (from various sources and means) that the situation in Australia is either very similar to or the same in other so-called developed societies. So I am using Australia as a model of the so-called developed world, while Ghana stands as a case-study of the so-called underdeveloped world.

I flatter myself that this book is as relevant to the underdeveloped nations of Asia as it is to Africa. It is of equal importance to the progressive nations of Asia in the sense that a sensible vanguard has a lesson to learn from the failure of the vanquished as much as the vanquished has to learn from the victory of the vanguard.

This is a book of practical discussion. The African’s misconception of respect as noted is analysed within the context of my personal, practical life experience. The dramatic appearance of some of the stories narrated in the book, as we will soon discover, may seem to portray them as fiction. However, on the contrary, the stories narrated in this book contain no fiction or imagination. All the stories narrated are wholly true and authentic. Perhaps the only fiction in any given story may be the style and manner of its presentation: Generally, the presentation is characterized by drama/comedy, metaphor and hyperbole - one important thing to note about exaggeration is that sometimes it becomes a necessity in order for a point to be made clear.

Some of my fellow Africans may feel a bit uncomfortable with this book because: (1) it is my strong belief that blaming one’s own problems on somebody other than oneself can be a most formidable obstacle to finding a solution to one’s problems. Therefore, in a complete departure from the customary tendency of Africans to blame all their problems on the strategic conspiracy and national selfishness of the developed world, this book simply tells Africa to clean up its own backyard: in other words, Africa is its own worst enemy, so the solution to Africa’s problems lies in Africa’s own hands. (2) matters in this book have been presented in the most vivid manner and extent as well as in somewhat strong language. However, sincerely speaking, the vivid presentation and the strong language are not intended to offend; instead, they are intended to convey the message in the clearest possible manner. (3) it is my philosophy that a person who obstinately refuses to insult him/herself is ever bound to be insulted. For instance, consider a friend who after sleeping all night wakes up in the morning and then insults himself by thinking my mouth stinks!, so he takes a toothbrush and brushes away the terrible smell of his mouth. When he meets you in the office two hours later, you all chatter happily together. If he had obstinately refused to insult himself by pretending that his mouth didn’t smell and so failed to clean it before coming to the office, he would have found you turning your back on him when he tried to talk to you. Similarly, it is high time we Africans began to insult ourselves in order to stop being insulted; otherwise, we will continue to be insulted forever. After all, we are already being insulted in the most disgusting possible manner. We have to stop degrading ourselves, we have to stop degrading Africa, by eschewing the negative behaviors that deny us peace at home and respect abroad. All I am trying to echo hereby is Abiola Irele’s passionate call:

… But it is time to shove off dejection and all the other disabling emotions, and begin to work diligently to put our house in order. We must look around us and take to heart the sneers, the put downs, the insults, the condescension and the contempt of our detractors, respond to them as spurs to renewed commitment to the welfare of our continent…⁵

I remember causing an outrage in my class at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria back in 2009. I was known for my uncompromising opposition to the practice of face veiling (done by some Muslim women) in the classroom; I refused to admit face-covered students into my lecture hall.⁶ One day, while driving out a face-veiled student from my lecture hall, I remarked contemptuously: What’s there in your face that I desire to see? I have lived in different places around the world: Western societies, Asian societies, Arab societies … not all these beautiful women could tempt me. Where’s beauty in a black woman that I’d be tempted by her! Of course I knew perfectly that I was saying something most offensive. However, my audience did not know that the offence in my remark was intentional. As such, amid an apparently shocked crowd, a certain woman rose up in visible anger: Excuse me sir, is your wife a white lady? she asked. Then the whole class burst into a song of protest: Black is beautiful; black is beautiful; black is beautiful… When the shouts had died down, I replied, I am a black man, but I use my intelligence and not my sentiment. How many black women are there that do not bleach their skins in order to look white? You the one asking me whether my wife is a white woman, you are trying to tell me that you are proud of yourself as an African – I am not. However, please tell me; just what is African about you, as you are standing here. Your clothes are not African; your hair is not African; worst of all, your bleached skin is not African. Then, apart from the English language, which I am speaking as a bitter pill, tell me what is non-African about me as you see me standing here right now. The classical philosopher, Ibn Khaldun, tells us that imitation is an acknowledgement of inferiority. Have you ever seen a white woman painting her skin black? Why not? It is precisely because she believes that her white skin is beautiful that she is not seeking to change it. You are seeking to change your black skin because you do not really believe that it is beautiful. So what precisely are you protesting when I say that the black woman is not beautiful? It is this type of hypocrisy that makes me sometimes hate Africans, including myself. Well, to answer your question, my wife is completely black but absolutely beautiful – because she does not bleach her dark skin. It only unfortunate that Africa is a ship without a rudder; otherwise, skin bleaching – the epitome of the inferiorization of Africa by Africans themselves, far more dehumanizing to the black race than the trans-Atlantic slave trade - should be criminalized as an act of treason here in Africa. Blushing with shame, the entire class became quiet like dead people. Then I went further to ask some pertinent questions: … We the black people, is it the white-man that degrades us, or is it we that degrade ourselves? Because even in our native languages black stands for vice while white symbolizes virtue. And these are expressions used by our own ancestors centuries before any contact with the white-man. We need to sit down and think out answers to certain basic existential questions.

Well, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has made a clever attempt to balance the equation with the following words:

Racism will never end as long as white cars are still using black tires. Racism will never end as long as we still wash first white clothes, then other colors later. Racism will never end if people still use black to symbolize bad luck and white for peace. Racism will never end if people still wear white clothes at weddings and black clothes at funerals. Racism will never end as long as those who don’t pay their bills are blacklisted not white listed. Even when playing the pool (snooker), you haven’t won until you sink the black ball, and the white ball must remain on the field. BUT I don’t CARE, SO LONG AS I’M STILL USING THE WHITE TOILET PAPER TO WIPE MY BLACK BUTT, I’M STILL FINE!⁷

It was on January 23, 2016, during a class discussion at the University of Cape Verde, when a student of mine, Fábio Varela, opened his smart phone and read out President Mugabe’s words as quoted above. The whole class, blacks and whites together, laughed and laughed well at Mugabe’s funny, apparently thoughtful and intelligent expressions. Then I asked Fábio to forward the text to me. The next day I opened my email box and started reading and laughing again. However, this time round my laughing ended with tears as I sighted Mugabe’s picture right below the text. The eldest statesman of Africa was proudly dressed in a classic European suit – not a native costume of Zimbabwe; maybe his ancestors were walking naked prior to the arrival of colonization. To wit, it was all a typical illustration of the African’s state of unconscious consciousness at the very highest level. The white-man would simply burst into a laugh of racial triumph upon seeing Mugabe in European dress beneath his words of nationalistic pride.

That is the usual problem with Africans: our empty rhetoric of self-assertion is always contradicted by our negative practices. What was even more disturbing was that the so-called African analysts, apparently unable to notice the betrayal of unconscious consciousness that Mugabe’s classic European suit represented, praised his words as the speech of the year. It is a logical dictum: Actions speak louder than words. Mugabe’s speech obviously needed this afterthought: RACISM WILL NOT END SO LONG AS THE BLACK-MAN REMAINS A COPYCAT OF THE WHITE-MAN.

I find it necessary to underscore the need to guard against certain misconceptions from the outset. The reader will bear the following clarifications in mind:

(1) I am not in the least degree attempting to suggest to Africa a blind imitation of so-called developed world. Instead, the suggestion is that while it is obvious that the developed world is far better than Africa, each of the two is fraught with serious problems hinting at an alarming future. Africa’s problem is deficiency while the problem of the developed world is excess: if, for instance, Africa’s problem is under-freedom (lack of adequate freedom), then that of the developed world is over-freedom (unguarded freedom). However, much as our battle against the cultural cancer of western influence must be fought tooth-and-nail, the positive aspects of the culture of the developed world are worth emulating. Amilcar Cabral, the father of Cape Verdean and Guinean nationalism, and standard-bearer of the African Revolution, warned us against bigotry in our nationalist struggle; he exhorted us to fight relentlessly for our political liberation and cultural freedom without underestimating the importance of positive contributions from the oppressor’s culture and other cultures.⁸ Chinweizu, Jemie and Madubuike might put Cabral’s point in another way:

This cultural task demands a deliberate and calculated process of syncretism: one which, above all, emphasizes valuable continuities with our pre-colonial culture, welcomes vitalizing contributions from other cultures, and exercises inventive genius in making a healthy and distinguished synthesis from them all.⁹

Perhaps only a few observers would disagree with Chris Uroh¹⁰ that the African crisis is by-and-large cultural in character and dimension; the cultural amnesia suffered by Africans as a consequence of the rape of the African continent and the dehumanization of its people by Euro-American forces of imperialism has plunged Africa into a state of identity confusion. However, the discussion has largely been one-sided and rather chauvinistic, accentuating the damage done to African culture by foreign influence while paying little attention to the inherent deficiencies of African culture in the quest for human progress – rather as if the African way of life was all perfect until the point of European intrusion on the continent. This book seeks to balance the equation. I propose to classify current analysts of African culture into three disparate schools: The School of Chauvinism (blind assertion of retention of African culture), the School of Mimicry (blind imitation of Euro-America) and the School of Refinement (rational selection and blending of the best of Africa and the best of Euro-America). I am hereby positing the School of Refinement as a new starting point for Africa.

(2) I am not asserting that every single point made about Africa in this book is true about every individual person, community or country in Africa; in other words, I am not advocating what Vambe and Zegeye might term as ‘an undifferentiated understanding of Afro-centricity.’¹¹ It should be emphasized that Africa is a vast continent, too heterogeneous to be reduced to a simple generalization in a socio-cultural sense. Without actually attempting to give a definite, affirmative answer to Mzamane’s question What are Africa’s unique characteristics, which are identical from one African country to the next and are not replicated elsewhere in the world?¹² all I am trying to do in this book is to present what I believe to be predominantly applicable to Africa in a general sense. In his foreword to Richard Dowden’s Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (2009), the father of African literature, Chinua Achebe, aptly described Africa as a continent with intimidating complexity. Dowden himself proceeded to capture the point, quite tersely, in this passage:

Africa’s social systems, beliefs and culture are as diverse as its peoples, and as disparate as its climates. West Africa feels quite different from East Africa, and even within West Africa you could never mistake Nigeria for Senegal. And neither of them seems on the same planet as Mali. Every time you say ‘Africa is …’ the words crumble and break. From every generalization you must exclude at least five countries. And just as you think you have nailed down a certainty, a defining characteristic, you find the opposite is true in other places. Africa is full of surprises.¹³

Nevertheless, as Achebe himself asserted, the intimidating mystery of Africa can be resolved by recognizing the humanity of African people. Yet —I am inclined to believe— it is this very shared sense of humanity among the African peoples, the very logical thread that runs through the cultural mosaic of Africa, that gives birth to some common traits of socio-cultural shortcomings that form the forage of this book. Indeed, ‘every rose has its thorns.’ A typical example for illustrating the shared sense of humanity of Africans is that reverence for the elderly is a cardinal value in all traditional African societies – from all my reading and contacts, I am not aware of a single African culture that is an exception in this case. Unfortunately, however, this reverence for the elderly, by definition, means that the elderly -if they are not actually infallible- are above reproach, and that is a major bane for the intellectual and spiritual progress of the African people.

The above note on diversity equally applies in my use of Australia as a case study of the developed world, for the so-called developed world is just as diverse as Africa is.

In another sense, like every other social setting, African culture has its strengths and weaknesses. However, as my purpose is a quest for progress and development, this book only focuses on the weaknesses of African culture, i.e. those aspects of African culture that (in my opinion) tend to hinder political transformation and progress. A non-African reader should not therefore get the impression that African culture or way of life is all negative and counter-developmental. Furthermore, when I attribute one kind of weakness or another to the African society, that does not really mean that that particular kind of weakness is totally absent in the developed societies; it may only mean that a particular kind of weakness is more pronounced in African society than in the developed world.

(3) The word oyinbo is an exotic term (from the Yoruba Language) commonly used in Nigeria to refer to ‘the white-man’. Oyinboland means ‘the white-man’s land’. However, in this book I have used the term Oyinboland to refer to the so-called developed world. I have used these two words Oyinboland and oyinbo interchangeably with the term ‘colonial master’ to refer to Euro-America in order to signify that we are still under colonization, we have not yet attained independence, our so-called ‘independence’ is nothing but a legal subterfuge, a semantic alibi for the colonialists.

(4) In reflecting on the African’s positive tendency for communal life, the terms ‘African’ and ‘the communalist’, ‘Africa’ and ‘Communalland’, have been used interchangeably as synonyms in this book.

Issah Hassan Tikumah

Praia, March 2017

PART I

UNIVERSITY FOR DOGS

1

UNIVERSITY FOR DOGS

President Reader, Your Excellency, this is a book I never intended to write. It was entirely by accident that I found myself writing it. The story is as follows:

I started my colonial education, properly speaking, in 1984. I continued my education vigorously and consistently without ever pausing for a rest until Thursday 29 November 1995 when I successfully completed all requirements and examinations for my Bachelor Of Arts Degree at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. It had been my ambition not to pause in my educational endeavours until I obtained my PhD. However, when I completed my B.A [on 29 November] my mind suddenly became obsessed with a proverb I had heard Headteacher quote very often: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So I decided that after eleven years (1984-1995) of intensive studies I must play for one or two years before I continued my education.

Having no previous sporting experience or affiliation, the question now arose: How do I play? After days of pondering over what mode of play? I finally settled on this question: Why not put my play into writing?

The question then arose: What do I play about? The best way of playing, in my understanding, is to jest about serious matters. So let me caricature the calamities of father Africa, a subject that has been bugging my mind since my arrival in Australia three years ago. Hence my embarking on the writing of this book.

Let’s imagine a situation whereby a person was born as the most ugly