Edward Wilmot Blyden. The African Personality and Early Intellectual Work in the Gold Coast (Ghana)

There is a commonly held view that African nationalism took shape out of contacts of African intellectuals with twentieth century Pan-African leaders. Yet, this interpretation lacked concrete evidence, as many of these intellectuals owed their ideological formulation to Nineteenth century teachings of Edward Wilmot Blyden. In his writings, Blyden articulated a thorough understanding of African’s strengths and weaknesses. For Blyden, Western civilization intended to make the African a caricature of European society. As a result, the situation of the African became one of chaos as he lived in strict psychological conflicts. A revival of the African personality rested as a solution to the distorted manhood of the African and a path to his future progress. This article examines Blyden’s theory of the African personality as revealed in early intellectual work in the Gold Coast (Ghana). Drawing on Blyden’s African personality theory, the article revealed that these intellectuals begun a vigorous campaign to oppose Europeanization of the African system of life and took an uncompromising stand against ideas of black “inferiority” and “backwardness”.

Erasing the Nation

The story of conqueror South African historiography relies on the ebbs and flows of narrative clichés and tropes. The main narrative arcs relate to historiographies that frame the understanding and analysis of conqueror South Africa. These historiographies interpret history as forming part of an epistemological paradigm of conqueror South Africa: a historiography that does not question the ethical right to conquest. This article focuses on the interpretations of African Nationalism by proponents of the liberal and Marxist historiographic traditions and critiques the way in which these historiographies depict and characterise African Nationalism. This historical characterisation bears an influence in current political and social discourse in conqueror South Africa: African Nationalism is relegated to a misguided moment in history, something to be reflected upon from a distance, an irrelevant phase in the long walk to a multiracial and cosmopolitan South Africa.

The 1951–52 Benin City Catholic Church Crisis: Irish Catholic Clergy versus African Nationalism

This paper draws attention to the neglected episode of a crisis that engulfed the Benin City Roman Catholic Station from 1951 to 1952. It examines how a disagreement between an Irish priest and an African catechist degenerated into a crisis that pitted the majority of the African laity against the Irish clergy. This crisis was not only reported in national newspapers and taken up by nationalist agitators, but also attracted the concern of Roman Catholics outside the diocese as well as the Vatican. This paper contends that the disagreement became a crisis because of the Irish clergy’s upholding of their policy of gradual incorporation of the African laity into participation in the administration of the diocese, and the African laity’s determination to pursue their aspirations of full and unhindered participation in the administration on their own terms. The crisis was also fueled by African nationalist ferment of the period, which prolonged the issue. The argument is supported with archival sources, newspaper reports and oral interviews with participants and members of the diocese.

FRATERNAL FRIENDS: SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNISTS AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA, 1945–89

Czechoslovak ‘people's democracy’ supplied a model for the development of a South African notion of a ‘national democratic’ revolution as well as providing key skills and resources. Czechoslovak support for this project in the 1960s and 1970s was both a source of confidence and fragility for South African Communists, boosting morale but confirming their subordinate status in their partnership with African nationalism. Drawing upon Czech archival materials as well as memoirs and interviews, this paper explores encounters and connections between South African Communists and the Czechs against the backdrop of the broader strategic concerns that shaped Soviet and Eastern European support for South African liberatory politics.

Voyaging Out

This chapter takes the reader through the months immediately preceding the departure to South Africa of the three protagonists of the book, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mary Kingsley, in, respectively, January, February and March 1900. We see Rudyard and Carrie Kipling enduring their first Christmas without their daughter Josephine, and Kipling’s belief in the necessity and the good of war in South Africa, despite the military reversals of its early months; we see Conan Doyle throwing himself into war preparations and being inoculated against typhoid during the voyage; we see Mary Kingsley giving her last lecture in London at the Imperial Institute, and, on board ship, writing a critique of Christianity and a plea in favor of African nationalism, stressing the link between African land ownership and freedom from Western interference.

Julius Nyerere: from a Territorial Nationalist to a Pan African Nationalist

Africa has largely experienced two types of nationalism namely territorial nationalism and Pan Africanism. Both territorial and Pan African nationalism were anti-imperialists but the former’s mission was limited to attainment of independence from colonialism. Few nationalist leaders who led their countries to independence transcended territorial nationalism; one of them was Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. Nyerere was a Pan African nationalist although he began as a nationalist concerned with the liberation of his country Tanganyika. He spent most of his political life championing for African Unity believing that it was the only instrument to totally liberate Africa. How did his ideas and practices which initially placed him in the ranks of territorial nationalists advance into Pan Africanism? This article examines this question and explores Nyerere’s aspects of Pan Africanism.