Paraphrasing Assignment: Lara Marie

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In African Religions and Philosophy (1969), John Mbiti systematically studies traditional African religious and philosophical ideas. In the field of philosophy – that was predominantly ruled by Western explanations because of the Western way of thinking that philosophical ideas could not origin elsewhere – he sheds light on the rational African religions and philosophies. He argues that the African system of thought has not been patronized by Western ideas, but that it has its own identity: “We shall use the singular, ‘philosophy’ to refer to the philosophical understanding of African peoples concerning different issues of life” (1969: 2). Mbiti delves into fundamental topics, such as religion, philosophy, or concepts of time in African culture in order to estimate religious and philosophical views. He alleges African tribal cultures – Kikamba and Gikuyu – as the central example of the whole African thought and thereby generalizes the African thought. The ruling principle of African philosophy, according to Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy, William Abraham’s The Mind of Africa, and Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy is the religious framework that encapsulates all other socio-political, spiritual, and cultural concepts. Focusing on the religious construction as well as focusing on the sense of community could then only reprocess the theft of African identity and philosophy: “I am because we are and since we are therefore I am” (1969: 108).

A similar focus on different tribal cultures to be sharing the same cultural concepts and political concepts can be found in William Abraham’s The Mind of Africa (1962), in which Ghana’s Akan serve as the lead center. It becomes apparent that Abraham uses the same way to explain a reprocessing of Africa’s theft of identity as Tempels and Mbiti do. In his findings, he accentuates that Africa’s philosophy is grounded in Africa’s culture, and Africa’s culture in turn is anchored in native African religious concepts: “An essentialist interpretation of African culture” (Hallen, 2002: 15).

Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor, and Julius Nyerere use a different socio-economic and socio-political approach to achieve a restoration and reconstruction of Africa’s various nation-states’ social and cultural principles, being led by the issue of “What system of economic and social engineering will suit us and project our true identity?” The colonial repression – even though its wielders were no longer present – still existed and true African identity had to be found in order to break free on a complete level. African socialism is presented as one option to achieve this goal. Nkrumah explains that this socialism in Africa will merge all cultural traits and the consequential social and economical policies, structures, and ideologies while basing on Africa’s originating and traditional principles – as Hallen finds. He aims to reconstruct African society within the structures of socialism and to reconsider African society in such a manner that the humanism, morality, and policy of traditional African life is will be anchored in the present – as Mbiti finds. Nkrumah further argues that the basic organization of native African societies manifested communalism, and that this socially strong built organization must be revived so that a modern identity is to be found. Some of his works include, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (1961), Africa Must Unite (1970), and Consciencism (1954).

Another work takes its place alongside Nkrumah’s statements and findings about the African sense of community – that contrasts European individualism – on which Africa’s culture bases on. In Negritude et Humanisme (1964) and Negritude and the Germans (1967), Senegalese author Leopold Sedar Senghor follows Nkrumah, Mbiti, Abraham, and Temples, and argues that Africa’s very own identity is constituted of those cultural traits that were aimed to be annihilated by European colonialism and that this identity offers the breeding grounds to rebuild African society.

Corresponding with the approach to retrace African culture by means of basing the post-colonial newly built economical and political African identity upon the traditional community sense, goes Tanzanian Julius Nyerere in his works Uhuru na Ujamaa: Freedom and Socialism (1964) and Ujamaa: The Basis of African Socialism (1968). He as well alleges the necessity to break free from former colonial repression (Uhuru) by bethinking of the African society’s native basic framework and rebuilding this framework. Nyerere, too, specifies the necessity to abandon the individualistic approach and to go back to the communal concept, calling it Ujamaa, “being-with” or “we” in place of “I-spirit” (Okoro 2004: 96). To quote Hallen, “Nyerere argued that there was a form of life and system of values indigenous to the culture of pre-colonial Africa, Tanzania in particular, that was distinctive if not unique and that had survived the onslaughts of colonialism sufficiently intact to be regenerated as the basis for an African polity” (2002: 74). Nyerere, alongside Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Amilcar Cabral, Janheinz Jahn and Marcel Griaule, shows a vehement opposition against individualism at the expense of the community and that individualistic ideas could not be reconciled with African values.