By Sango Omojola
Being text of a speech delivered at a symposium organized by Socialist Workers League on August 22nd, 2020
I will like to approach the topic from a Pan-Africanist perspective. I will not define pan Africanism as that will be another topic but will note that I come from the perspective of revolutionary pan Africanism, not cultural pan Africanism. Revolutionary pan Africanism aims for socialism in the countries of Africa but adds the necessity of taking account of our historical context under imperialism to be an important part of the struggle and the societies that we build. Marxism itself is a theory that emphasizes the importance of context whereas liberal logic will exclude context. According to Marxism, history is perhaps the most important context for human beings, the history of class struggle and societal development.
The revolutionary Pan Africanist perspective is an important ingredient in understanding the crises and in the possibility of a new world born through struggle.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti already explained to us in Big Blind Country that we are like the egungun in Obesere’s Egungun Be Careful. We are the blind people who cannot see where they are going and if we do not heed the warning, moto go jam us. Well, e don happen, moto don jam us.
Coronavirus has emphasized the importance of socialist policies in solving societal problems. A Public Health system that is properly funded is essential in coping with its effects. A well-funded educational system is important in coping with its effects. Jobs for all are essential as are social safety nets.
Coronavirus has shown the world the necessity of taking care of all in order to feel safe and comfortable yourself. Even countries that hate socialism like the US are taking measures such as paying all citizens an amount for them to get through the crisis. A vaccine for Coronavirus will be developed. Yet, hunger and poverty have been given no vaccine; in so far as it does not threaten the wealthy, they are fine. In countries that adopt more socialist policies such as in Europe, strong national health care systems enable them to cope better. They are able to absorb stoppages of work and move to home-based working and so on.
This saying of John Donne is as true now as it has ever been: ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
In reality, the Western world is still dealing with the effects of the 2008 recession which was a crisis of capitalism. The capitalist class bailed out the banks and left the working people in a mess. Obama’s policies led to the erosion of the wealth of black people in the United States, as they lost wealth invested in homes they had borrowed to buy. Now coronavirus is hitting the black population of the world hard, at least in the sense that we are less able to cope with its effects. (Asides from its disproportionality on the black population of the West).
And this points to the never-ending crisis for capitalism, the crisis of racism. Capitalism was given birth to in fact by chattel slavery, the slavery of Africans, and colonialism. Without slavery and colonialism, capitalism would have been unfeasible. Capitalism is directly tied to it. Capitalism bred globalisation, hence imperialism, but the effects of globalization on its own people (who enjoy superior lifestyles compared to us, the so-called third world) has led to a strident defence of racism. Thereby there is a continued belief that Black Lives Do Not Matter (despite the rhetoric), not in their countries, and not in the “shithole” continent that they came from originally. The western world continues to exploit us, as it ever did. Its direct colonisation of our continent and continuing colonization through the in-direct system of neo-colonialism has left our continent in absolute squalor. Socialism cannot be won without fighting racism and imperialism. Not for us, not for the West. And it is impossible to build socialism in our continent without African unity.
There is no escape for Africa, no escape for Nigeria unless we adopt what are basically commonsense policies. Everyone agrees that the country is sinking. Everyone agrees that corruption is killing us, but what is at the root of it? Everyone accepts that we need to industrialize, but how do we under the system we practice? The people of this country are not so blind as to not know that the right steps to take are a complete overhaul of our so-called democratic system. That the proper funding of the education system will provide enlightened citizens who can engage their governments critically and who can develop scientific solutions to societal problems. Or does anybody believe that a privatized health system such as we are basically practicing now, in reality, will allow us to have healthy, resourceful, citizens?
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.” – Karl Marx
I say our history was disturbed and nearly aborted. Amilcar Cabral called it ‘the negation of the historical process of the dominated people.’ Our future cannot do without our past. Our people have been made to believe that nothing great is possible, there is no certainty of self. There is only doubt: we are not capable of doing what the white man can do. When you believe you are limited, will you believe that another world is possible?
Yet, the ingenuity of our ancestors supplies us with the evidence, even as the world has modernized. If we were proud of our communal traditions that fast disappear under the weight of borrowed traditions and wealth worship will things not be different now? Had we learned to build modern homes suitable for our climatic conditions based on the traditions passed down by our ancestors who learned to survive the harsh environment, will we be suffocating under the weight of expensive cement structures completely unsuitable to our hot climate? Had we pride in our vast stock of herbal medical knowledge, applying modern science to it, won’t we advance health-wise? We can go on and on. Even the Western world has learned that, in the overexploitation of the earth and drive for ever more and more production, sustainability is necessary. Although capitalism will not allow for a new model.
Another world is necessary, but to imply its possibility, self-pride, and ingenuity that comes with it must be an important ingredient. Where we have got lost in the deranged world of consume, consume, consume, we still have a tie to the greatness built by our communal-based societies. That is the future, the only world that can save us. A society that creates goods as needed and distributes to all on the basis of equality. That ensures equality in education so as to enable the talent of the people to be manifested; that no one is superior to another, so there is no need for an extreme of wealth held by a few while the masses die in penury. Our working people know this in their hearts of hearts, but we must bring out this truth by our creative action, to engage with them to see that the world put at them is a mere lie, that they can imagine and then build another world.
Our mis-rulers like to lie to us, that many things are not possible, that there is no money for this or that (they never imagine this possibility for themselves). But with Toni Morrison, we answer, “Don’t let anybody, anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be.”
As a revolutionary pan Africanist, I’m not interested in tradition or the past as something I want to go back to, the good old days. The good old days are gone, but that does not mean in my own context where my history was disrupted, reimagining a new world based on what worked for me is counter-revolutionary. Rather,
“The past is not dead, it’s not even past”, said William Faulkner. “Tradition is not to preserve the ashes but to pass on the flame” (a proverb).
The medium in which the present is connected to all lost struggles of those who literally and metaphorically lost their histories is called the “tradition of the oppressed.”
In the Sudanese uprising, among the most popular chants by protesters were those invoking the Kushite era of past millennia: “My grandfather is Tirhaka! My grandmother is a Kandake!”
According to one participant, rediscovering the country’s ancient roots helped fuel the calls for change. “The people were frustrated with the present, so they started looking into their past. That was the moment of revolution.”
Covid-19 is a crisis, but when we look at the history of the oppressed, we understand that this ‘state of emergency’ it brings is not the exception, but the rule of the capitalist world (borrowing from Walter Benjamin, a European Marxist philosopher).
Crisis is the norm of the world given to us, but when we look to our past, we see that the world can be different, and with that knowledge, we will build a new world. But, as Amilcar Cabral said, our objectives are a popular culture based on positive indigenous cultural values, a culture of the working people, a scientific culture, solidarity, and humanism, etc, all of which are possible because, “the struggle for liberation in the conditions of life of African peoples, confronted with the imperialist challenge, is an act of insemination upon history – the major expression of our culture and of our African essence. In the moment of victory, it must be translated into a significant leap forward of the culture of the people who are liberating themselves.” That must happen, or our struggle will be in vain.