African Gangs, Cliques and Tribalist Groups

23 Apr

The theme of the Canadian Association of African Studies conference that will hold between May 4 and May 7 reads:

Striving for community is at the heart of ubuntu, the African philosophy that stresses mutual obligations and responsibility. From far-flung kinship networks, artisan guilds and women’s informal associations to regional or pan-African political movements, Africans across the ages have looked to communities to give meaning to their lives and to resolve conflict or find protection. Community is also close to the heart of Africanist scholars and activists outside of Africa who seek to support each other and to express solidarity with African colleagues. Yet dysfunctional communities such as gangs, cliques, and tribalist groups have been a bane to efforts to develop and democratize. New media are rapidly changing the ways that communities cohere and the ways that scholars and activists relate and research them.

This is wrong on so many levels that I do not even know where to begin to write about it. Do I start by asking when Africa ? all 53 countries of it ? adopted Ubuntu as their philosophy, or by asking whose paternalistic point of view this is? Do I ask what the writer means by tribes? Or do I simply ignore that and ask what they mean by the sentence ?Yet dysfunctional communities such as gangs, cliques, and tribalist groups have been a bane to efforts to develop and democratize?? This statement in itself is full of so many presumptions ? for instance about development and democracy ? that to begin to unpack it would require an entire essay.

One would think that an association of people who study Africa(ns) would at least be a lot more sensitive than this, if not rid of these kinds of attitude. The sting becomes even more biting when one imagines that the writer could be advising some government agencies or development organizations. Is anyone then surprised that Africa is a country, that Africans live on trees, and that they are dying of starvation and/or AIDS?

The only consolation at this moment is that there is currently an on-going discussion on the listserv of the association.

  • http://alarob.wordpress.com/ Alarob

    It really is shocking to see that kind of fairy-tale Africa portrayed in an invitation to an African Studies conference!

    Maybe one way to approach this, as something other than a catastrophic failure of academic standards, is to consider the role that imaginary Africas have played in North American cultures, especially among African Americans. Cut off from any contact with Africa, yet also denied naturalization as Americans, African Americans are still to an extent aliens in their native land. (Notice how often commentators on the present-day version of “the Negro question” make comparisons between African Americans and immigrant groups.)

    So it’s not hard to see why African Americans would often be motivated to come up with a useable idea of Africa, the homeland from which they were exiled. And this had to be done in the absence of any meaningful contact with Africa. No wonder it usually turns out as a levelled-out land of kings and queens, pure ideals, and epochal tragedy.

    Pardon me if this is all familiar ground.

  • http://alarob.wordpress.com/ Alarob

    It really is shocking to see that kind of fairy-tale Africa portrayed in an invitation to an African Studies conference!

    Maybe one way to approach this, as something other than a catastrophic failure of academic standards, is to consider the role that imaginary Africas have played in North American cultures, especially among African Americans. Cut off from any contact with Africa, yet also denied naturalization as Americans, African Americans are still to an extent aliens in their native land. (Notice how often commentators on the present-day version of “the Negro question” make comparisons between African Americans and immigrant groups.)

    So it’s not hard to see why African Americans would often be motivated to come up with a useable idea of Africa, the homeland from which they were exiled. And this had to be done in the absence of any meaningful contact with Africa. No wonder it usually turns out as a levelled-out land of kings and queens, pure ideals, and epochal tragedy.

    Pardon me if this is all familiar ground.