Abstract
In African Political Thought, Guy Martin seeks to fill a void in the literature on Africa by providing in a single volume a history of African political ideas ‘from the ancient period (Kush, sixth century BCE) to the present’ (p. 1). He defines African political thought as ‘the original ideas, values, and blueprints for a better Africa that inform African political systems and institutions… [It] also refers to political theories and ideologies developed by various African scholars and statesmen…’ (p. 1). This is therefore an ambitious endeavor; in reality, however, the book concentrates more on ideas that crystallized during the colonial and post-colonial era.
While chapters 1 and 2 deal with indigenous African political institutions, and the spread of Islam from the 10th to 19th century, respectively, they offer little about theory per se. Martin discusses Ibn Khaldûn’s work, Muqaddimah, and quotes approvingly Arnold Toynbee’s description of it as ‘undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place’ (p. 34), but Martin’s analysis is exceedingly short. Martin deals more extensively with the organization of ancient African systems of governance and the diffusion of Islamic values and ways of life. He provides a short summary of these systems as essentially democratic, based on kinship and ancestry, with a leadership that was both secular and religious. He argues that, through their village assemblies in which ordinary people could influence decision-makers, these traditional modes of governing were representative of popular will. He maintains also that women ‘played a key role’ in politics and society. Finally, he stresses that the process of Islamization was fraught with tensions but resulted in the Africanization of Islam. In fact, the spread of Islam was successful insofar as Africans appropriated it and Africanized it.
This theme of Africanizing things foreign, and renewing African traditions and cultures, is critical to Martin’s theoretical analysis. Firmly rooted in Pan-Africanism, African Political Thought covers the development of different strands of African intellectual discourse in the colonial and post-colonial era. What unites these otherwise distinctive ideas is their shared belief that Africans have their own unique history and identity, without which efforts at transforming the continent into a democratic and prosperous region are doomed to fail. For the majority of statesmen and theorists covered in African Political Thought, a critical and indispensable factor in this hoped-for transformation is the creation of a united Africa, whether through a federation of regional units or through a more centralized framework of power.
Borrowing from Crawford Young’s typology, Martin regroups these modern African thinkers into three major families: the ‘socialist-populist,’ ‘the ‘populist-socialist,’ and the ‘Africanist-populist.’ The first body of thought is strongly but not exclusively influenced by Marxism-Leninism (pp. 71–72) and includes figures such as Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel, and Patrice Lumumba, among others. While these figures had ‘the best interest of their people at heart’ (p. 72) they had very limited years in power and were not able to render their vision a reality. This vision was based on seven major themes: (1) the necessity of developing an ideology to guide the development of a new society; (2) the close linkage between theory and practice; (3) the ‘primacy of the political;’ (4) the emphasis on a ‘return to the source’ to renew African traditions and culture; (5) placing the people as the central agent and beneficiary of the struggle for development and democracy; (6) implanting popular democracy through decentralized assemblies; and (7) achieving self-reliant development.
Martin argues that there is a sub-group in the socialist-populist camp that has ‘used the socialist-populist ideology as an instrument of control and coercion and sometimes – as in the case of Guinea’s Sékou Touré – even as an instrument of terror’ (p. 85). In this sub-group, however, Martin includes leaders such as Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, and Modibo Keita whose respective rule varied significantly on the democratic authoritarian spectrum. In truth, these leaders’ differences go beyond the type of governance they adopted; they espoused distinct forms of socialism. So, for instance, while Nkrumah developed ‘consciencism’ as a humanist ideology based on indigenous African values and socialist thinking, Nyerere formulated his agrarian vision of African socialism grounded in Ujamaa or familyhood. It is not clear why Martin chose to lump together such distinct ideologies and leaders as socialist-populist; the label generates more confusion than clarity.
The second major family of African thought – ‘the populist-socialist’ – is distinctively populist in the sense that it emphasizes people’s power and participation rather than class, and it is socialist because it has anti-capitalist biases in spite of not adhering and even rejecting Marxism (p. 125). In addition, it stresses the ‘re-education’ of the population so that it can be imbued with African values instead of mimicking neo-colonial modes of thinking, organizing, and consuming. In this group, Martin includes rulers and theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Thomas Sankara, and Muammar Qaddafi. While all these figures share the Pan-Africanist dream of a united and self-reliant Africa, it is not altogether clear why they are grouped together with Qaddafi whose vision of the state as articulated in his Third Universal Theory is based on ‘natural law’ (p. 116).
Finally, Martin identifies ‘an emerging African scholarship’ which represents ‘Africanist-populist’ thinking. Exemplified in the work of Daniel Osabu-Kle, Claude Ake, Godfrey Mwakikagile, Mueni wa Muiu, and Martin himself, this scholarship offers an ‘alterative path to Western liberal democracy and capitalist development’ (p. 149). It calls for the reconfiguration of Africa’s cartography into a single federal or unified Africa, and for the crystallization of a new ‘African consciousness.’ Moreover, Africanist-populist thinkers ground their analysis in the conviction that it is only Africans, armed with their own homegrown solutions, who can extricate the continent from its current predicament.
These recommendations are well taken, although it is not clear who will ultimately decide what constitutes the true ‘African consciousness’ in such a vast and diverse continent. Moreover, while the bold political thinking of African Political Thought should be welcome, it is difficult to see how it can be realized in the current neo-liberal order of a balkanized Africa. For if Claude Ake was right in asserting that ‘political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development’ (p. 137), the question becomes what can be done to change these conditions? Moreover, if such change is ‘predicated on the emergence of a new African elite’ (p. 132) how will current rulers be removed, and who will remove them? This is not to devalue the power of ideas, but to stress that the Pan-African and anti-capitalist vision of African Political Thought is by no means new, and yet, after more than half a century of independence, the transformation Pan-Africanism calls for is as distant as it has ever been.
Perhaps in a future volume Guy Martin will offer a map of how theory can ultimately become practical politics. How and why, for instance, will current national leaders cede their privileged place to genuinely democratic agents of change? Finally, while it is impossible to include every notable thinker or statesman in a concise analytical survey such as African Political Thought, it is puzzling that Martin tends to be silent on major figures like Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, and omits contemporary thinkers like Samir Amin, Achille Mbembe, or Mahmood Mamdani. Despite the reservations expressed above, African Political Thought is a useful textbook for introductory courses on Africa. In fact, it is the only available volume covering la longue durée of the continent’s political thinking and as such it stands alone in the existing Africanist literature. Guy Martin has thus performed a real service for anyone who teaches African politics and is looking for a concise survey of the intellectual pronouncements of key African statesmen and thinkers.