For those who haven't seen this interesting piece,,
REality Ausetkmt
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"Live Patiently in the world; know that those who hate you
are more numerous than those who love you" {african proverb}
----- Original Message -----
From: Art McGee <amcgee@igc.org>
To: <brc-news@igc.org>
Sent: Friday, April 23, 1999 1:17 AM
Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Ali Mazrui: From Slave Ship to Space Ship
> http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i4a2.htm
>
> African Studies Quarterly: Volume 2, Issue 4
>
> FROM SLAVE SHIP TO SPACE SHIP:
> AFRICA BETWEEN MARGINALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION
>
> by Ali Mazrui
>
> When we formulated the title "From Slave Ship to Space-Ship", we did not
> have Senator John Glenn's 1998 space odyssey in mind. By coincidence this
> odyssey was happening at the same time as this panel in November 1998. We
> did have in mind a link between the slave ship and the subsequent Western
> capacity to launch space ships or space shuttles.
>
> Africa and the African people made a far bigger contribution to the
> technological revolution of the West than the West did to industrial
> change in Africa. Walter Rodney was concerned about how Europe retarded
> Africa's development. But is there not another big story--the story of how
> Africa accelerated Europe's development? Did not Rodney also contribute to
> this second debate? Especially in Chapters III and V of his book, How
> Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
>
> How Africa Developed the West
>
> Each step in Africa's contribution to the development of the West was
> itself a stage in the history of globalization. I referred to these stages
> in my M.K.O. Abiola Lecture for the African Studies Association of the
> United States in 1994. The era of the labor imperative was when the labor
> of Africa's sons and daughters was what the West needed for its industrial
> take-off. The slave ship helped to export millions to the Americas to help
> in the agrarian revolution in the Americas and the industrial revolution
> in Europe simultaneously. The enforced dispersal of Black people to serve
> Western capitalism was itself part of the emerging globalization.
>
> In the era of the territorial imperative, the West docked the slave ships
> away forever and launched the gunboats in their place. This was the era of
> imperialism and gunboat diplomacy.
>
> Whatever happens, we have got
> the maxim and they have not!
>
> The West stopped exporting Africa's sons and daughters and colonized
> Africa itself. Imperialism and gunboat diplomacy were part of the ugly
> side of globalization. Raw materials for Western manufacturing industries
> became a major temptation.
>
> Then came the era of the extractive imperative. Africa's minerals became
> the next major contributor not only to Western economies but also to
> Western technology. Uranium from the Belgian Congo was part of the
> original Manhattan project which produced the first atomic bombs. Other
> minerals, like cobalt, became indispensable for jet engines. There were
> times when Africa had 90 percent of the world's known reserves of cobalt,
> over 80 percent of the global reserves of chrome, and a hefty share of
> platinum and industrial diamonds.
>
> Africa's impact on the West's technological history in this phase was
> heavily based on Africa's industrial minerals. The space ship was slowly
> in the making. As we have reminded ourselves at this conference, Walter
> Rodney's most popular book looked at how Europe underdeveloped Africa (the
> slave ship syndrome). The other side of the story is how Africa developed
> Europe (the space ship potential).
>
> Rodney is better known for the negative consequences. We need also to
> investigate the positive consequences of Africa's impact upon Europe from
> economic production to space communication and how Walter Rodney
> contributed to this other debate. Also relevant was Eric Williams's
> examination of the interplay between capitalism and slavery.
>
> We now come to areas of metaphor. Walter Rodney's stay in Tanzania
> coincided with the promulgation and aftermath of the "Arusha Declaration
> on Socialism and Self-Reliance". Arusha is the name of the town where the
> Declaration occurred in 1967. But what does the word "Arusha" literally
> mean? It means: "He makes fly (into the skies)." In standard Kiswahili the
> word is anarusha. In other dialects it is simply arusha: "He makes fly
> into the skies." Who makes fly? Ancestrally it was God. In 1967, the year
> of the Arusha Declaration, it was Julius K. Nyerere. He made socialism and
> self-reliance (ujamaa na kujitegemea) fly. In the space age it could be an
> astronaut or a cosmonaut who makes a space ship fly.
>
> Why is Arusha town called "He makes fly into the skies"? Because the town
> is located close to Mt. Kilimanjaro, whose pinnacle is the highest point
> on the African continent. Kilimanjaro is the roof of Africa--from whence
> God makes things "fly into the skies."
>
> It has been alleged that Walter Rodney's inadequate command of Kiswahili
> was no handicap for his communication with rural Tanzanians. I beg to
> disagree.
>
> We must not trivialize the relevance of language in human communication;
> otherwise we might sound like the song:
>
> You don't have to know the language -- With a girl in your arms
> and the moon up above,
> you don't have to know the language!
>
> Of course Walter Rodney could relate in friendly terms with rural
> Tanzanians. But being friendly is different from being Socialist, let
> alone being Marxist. He could not convey his socialism linguistically to
> the Tanzanian peasant.
>
> In Africa in the 1960s and the 1970s one could not be a Marxist without
> being substantially Westernized through a European language. Walter Rodney
> could not reach rural Tanzanians as a socialist or as a Marxist. He could
> only reach them as a friendly man. In reality a friendly man could belong
> to any ideology.
>
> A dialectic faced Walter Rodney in relation to the twin policies of Julius
> Nyerere's Tanzania. Under the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere's policy of
> socialism brought the national ideology of Tanzania closer to Walter
> Rodney's own leftist paradigm.
>
> On the other hand, Nyerere's simultaneous language policy of greater
> Swahilization made Tanzania less and less accessible to Walter Rodney's
> ideo-cultural skills. Nyerere's socialist policies were opening up
> ideological doors to Walter Rodney, while Nyerere's Swahilization policies
> were closing down cultural doors to Walter Rodney.
>
> Every stage of Africa's contribution to globalization was also a stage in
> its own marginalization. Rodney was all too aware that African captives
> who were turned into slaves entered the emerging world of international
> capitalism. But those captives were simultaneously a symbol of the
> marginalization of the African peoples.
>
> Imperialism and gunboat diplomacy made colonized Africa part of world-wide
> empires. But colonized people are inevitably marginalized people. The
> extractive imperative made African minerals fuel the world economy.
> African minerals enriched other economies rather than Africa's own.
>
> The space ship was also born out of the rivalries of the Cold War between
> the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.
> Sputnik in the firmament in 1958 put the Soviet Union first into orbit.
> The Soviets borrowed a lot from Western technology, but carried it
> further. The process of "Arusha" had been sparked out. Soviet Yuri Gagarin
> was also the first man in space. The West was temporarily beaten at its
> own game. The "Arusha" space enterprise had been accomplished.
>
> A resurgence of American resolve under John F. Kennedy inspired the U.S.
> space program and enabled the United States first to circle the earth
> (John Glenn) and later to land the first man on the moon.
>
> The Cold War: Globalizing or Marginalizing?
>
> Africa's involvement in the Cold War was another globalizing experience,
> but in this case marginalization was temporarily suspended. The rivalries
> between the two super powers temporarily increased Africa's global
> strategic value and enhanced Africa's influence in the United Nations,
> UNESCO, the Commonwealth, and a number of other international forums. It
> was the end of the Cold War which reactivated Africa's marginalization.
> The end of the Cold War was a kind of "dis-globalizing" experience.
>
> Part of the dis-globalization was good news. The end of the Cold War has
> initiated the second phase of the French decolonization of Africa. This is
> the gradual reduction of the French informal empire in Africa. Rolling
> back French neo-colonialism from Africa is partly the result of the
> decline of the strategic value of Africa and partly due to the rise of
> French economic aspirations for the newly liberated former members of the
> Warsaw Pact.
>
> The good news is that the end of the Cold War has helped to initiate the
> second phase of decolonization in Francophone Africa, although there is
> still a long way to go before real independence for any part of Africa is
> achieved. The sad news is that while Phase II of French decolonization in
> Africa is part of the happier story of progress towards African
> independence, French decolonization is simultaneously part of a more
> sorrowful story about the end of the Cold War and that is the wider
> marginalization of Africa in the world. Indeed, perhaps the worst news
> about the end of the Cold War for Africa is that Africa has been
> marginalized even more deeply in the following ways:
>
> (a) Most of Africa has lost its strategic value which motivated the
> Big Powers to take it seriously;
>
> (b) Africa has lost its socialist friends in world affairs and in
> the UN; the former members of the Warsaw Pact are now more eager to please
> the West than to support Third World causes;
>
> (c) Africa has lost its one third numerical advantage in the United
> Nations. Some twenty new members have been admitted to the UN since 1990,
> only two of which are African (Namibia and Eritrea). The others are former
> Republics of the USSR, collapsed Yugoslavia, and divided Czechoslovakia;
>
> (d) The end of the Cold War has turned the West's old adversaries
> into Africa's rivals for the West's resources. Aid and investment will
> increasingly give greater priority to former members of the Warsaw Pact
> than to Africa;
>
> (e) The triumph of "market Marxism" in China and Vietnam have
> turned those countries into new magnets for Western resources, partly at
> the expense of old African friends of the West;
>
> (f) The collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War have
> contributed to the renewed liberalization of India which in turn is
> developing into a new magnet for additional Western investment and aid,
> inevitably at the partial expense of Africa;
>
> (g) The end of the Cold War has undermined part of the old Western
> rationale for foreign aid as "enlightened self-interest" and so Western
> legislatures are allocating less and less money for foreign aid. There is
> less motivation for foreign aid in the absence of rivalry with the USSR;
>
> (h) The end of the Cold War has reduced the internationalization of
> African education. The golden days of diverse scholarships for African
> students to study in Moscow, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, and Belgrade seem
> to be almost over and rival scholarships to study in Western countries
> have been drastically reduced;
>
> (i) The golden days of Czech, Hungarian, and Polish professors
> teaching at African universities are almost over and resources for Western
> visiting professors have been drastically reduced.
>
> (j) Just as the end of the Cold War has deprived the West of a
> cornerstone of its foreign policy, it has also deprived Africa of a
> cornerstone of its own foreign orientation. Although the nonaligned
> movement is still alive and well in the post Cold War era, yet is the word
> "nonalignment" relevant any longer for African policy after the Cold War?
>
> (k) While the West's triumph over Nazism and fascism in World War
> II helped left wing parties immediately after the war, the West's triumph
> over communism has helped right wing parties which are less
> internationalist and less compassionate towards either the domestic poor
> or poor countries abroad. And such old left wing parties as Labour in
> Britain have moved to the right.
>
> (l) Finally, the end of the Cold War is eroding French commitment
> to Africa and reducing the level of France's financial contributions to
> its former colonies.
>
> The debate between Europeanists and Africanists continues in France; that
> a US president could visit in 1998 a former French colony (Senegal) is a
> sign of French withdrawal.
>
> Is there anything that the international community can do to help Africa?
> At the moment the flesh is weak and the spirit is not even willing. But we
> need to set goals.
>
> Apart from bilateral aid to individual African countries for economic
> development, the three long term African oriented goals to be supported
> should be:
>
> Interim Reparation
>
> (a) Establishing or strengthening region-wide African institutions
> and promoting regional integration for greater African self-reliance.
>
> (b) Encouraging and helping to institutionalize national trends
> towards democratization in Africa, with resources for building democratic
> foundations (free press, election monitors).
>
> (c) Strengthening truly global coalitions for Africa including new
> funding actors like Japan, Taiwan, China, and South Korea, as well as
> traditional Western friends of Africa (partners as well as
> reparationists).
>
> The international community can also help in the long term solution of the
> problem of Rwanda and Burundi which will require immense resources.
>
> (a) The genocidal behavior of the Hutu and the Tutsi toward each
> other can only be contained in the context of wider regional integration.
>
> (b) Therefore, persuade Rwanda and Burundi to federate with
> Tanzania, thus disarming Hutu and Tutsi armies. In the new wider society,
> the Hutu and the Tutsi would rediscover what they have in common. In the
> political process of the greater Tanzania, Hutu and Tutsi might even form
> political coalitions against other Tanzanians in the democartic process.
>
> (c) But what would make today's Tanzania accept federation with
> Rwanda and Burundi? The international community would have to make it
> worth Tanzania's while with large injections of funding for development
> and resettlement in all three countries.
>
> It should also be remembered that all three countries once constituted
> German East Africa, and all three countries have been substantially
> Swahilized. In any case, as matters now stand, Tanzania is constantly
> forced to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees from Burundi and Rwanda
> every time there is a blow up in those two countries. Disarming the Hutu
> and Tutsi and making them part of a much larger country under Tanzania's
> own control might be worth the risk.
>
> A final word as to the choice of title "From Slave Ship to Space Ship".
> While the slave ship can be regarded as the beginning of globalization,
> the spaceship is, by definition, a symbol of post- globalization.
>
> The space ship takes us beyond the globe. Do we really want to go beyond
> the globe? Senator John Glenn has a wander-lust into space. Indeed, do we
> really want to be globalized ? "To globalize or not to globalize." That is
> the question for us and for Arusha, a town in Tanzania steeped in
> symbolism.
>
> APPENDIX: HEGEMONIC GLOBALIZATION
>
> Globalization carries two inter-related consequences whose English words
> sound similar--homogenization (making all of us look similar) and
> hegemonization (making one of us the boss).
>
> Homogenization Hegemonization
> (expanding Homogeneity) (emergence of Hegemonic centre)
>
>
> Increasing similarities Increasing world domination
> among world societies. by a specific power or
> civilization.
>
>
> At the end of the 20th
> century people dress more
> the same all over the But the dress which is the
> world than they did at same is overwhelmingly
> the end of the 19th Western dress code.
> century.
>
>
> At the end of the 20th
> century the human race is
> closer to having world
> languages than it was in
> the nineteenth century - But those world languages at
> if by a world language we the end of the 20th century
> mean one which has at are disproportionately
> least 300 million European - especially
> speakers, has been English and French -
> adopted by at least 10 although Arabic is putting
> countries as a national forward a strong challenge
> language, has spread to as a world language in a
> more than one continent, different sense.
> and is widely used in
> four continents for
> special purposes.
>
>
> At the end of the 20th But the powers who control
> century we are closer to that economy are
> a world economy than we disproportionately Western -
> have ever been in human especially the G-7 (USA,
> history. A sneeze in Hong Germany, Japan Britain,
> Kong or Tokyo can send France, Canada and Italy in
> shock waves around the that order of economic
> globe. muscle).
>
>
> At the end of the 20th But the nerve center of the
> century the internet has global internet system is
> given us instant access still located in the United
> to both information and States and has residual
> mutual communication links with the US Federal
> across huge distances. Government.
>
>
> The educational systems
> at the end of the 20th
> century are getting more But those shared academic
> and more similar across ranks, semesters and
> the world - with concepts scholarly paradigms are
> of "associate disproportionately drawn
> professorships" and from the United States and
> "twosemester" years; and Western Europe.
> with paradigms shared
> across the globe.
>
>
> The people who are
> The ideological systems orchestrating and sometimes
> of the world at the end enforcing marketization,
> of the 20th century are liberalization and
> converging. Market privatization are Western
> economies are triumphant. economic gurus - reinforced
> Liberalization is being by the power of the USA, the
> embraced or enforced. World Bank, the IMF and the
> Even China has adopted European Union. Indeed,
> market Marxism. Egypt is Europe is the mother of all
> pushing the frontiers of modern ideologies--good and
> Intifada. India is bad--Liberalims, Capitalism,
> liberalizing. Marxism, Fascism, and
> Nazism. The most triumphant
> is Euro-liberal Capitalism.
>
>
> (c) 1999 Board of Regents of the State of Florida
>
> African Studies Quarterly is a publication of the Center for African
> Studies at the University of Florida. All materials contained within the
> journal are expressly copyrighted by the Board of Regents of the State of
> Florida. Permission is hereby granted for individuals to download articles
> from the journal for their own personal use, as long as this statement
> accompanies all materials. Opinions herein are those of the authors solely
> and do not reflect the views of ASQ, the University of Florida, or the
> Board of Regents of the State University System.
>
>
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