African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development (review)

This book grew out of papers presented at the thirtieth anniversary of CODESRIA, a Pan-African institution that continues to play a vital role in the sustenance and promotion of intellectual activities in Africa. Despite talk of democratization and renaissance, the great majority of Africans remain mired in poverty and development continues to elude Africa. The continent's economic and political marginalization in world affairs appears to be more extreme than at any stage since the 1960s. The proliferation of recent conflicts undermines the organs of civil society, infrastructures, systems of exchange, and the state itself across broad swathes of the continent. While the idea of an African Renaissance is not really new, it has lately picked up momentum. However, for an African Renaissance to succeed, the emerging educated elite will have to be its bearers. An analysis of African intellectuals' roles, if any, in the new Africa is what African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development has attempted.

In the face of high rates of Africa's brain drain, African Intellectuals sets out to explore the nature and extent of the emigration of Africa's intelligentsia, the indigenous language of African intellectuals, women intellectuals, and the role of the expanding African academic diaspora. It takes as its starting point the uniquely difficult circumstances confronting intellectuals: regimes intolerant of independent debate, economies in sharp decline, societies wracked by violent conflict, and official languages different from people's mother tongues.

Because of the intertwined nature of literature, politics, and society, African literature remains a legitimate expression of political ideas and valid descriptions of both society and politics. As reflections of the human condition in Africa, works of literature provide valuable insights into both the past and the present by sketching the African reaction to colonialism, racism, and independence. Until the very foundations of colonialism were shattered by African writers, the political debate in Africa had effectively been set—with varying degrees of foresight and responsiveness—by European powers.

Several specialists in African political studies have identified the importance of the works of intellectuals in the African revolution. After a short-lived honeymoon between African leaders and writers, the latter began articulating themes of disenchantment and disillusionment. While some intellectuals joined the ruling elite, most postindependence writers reevaluated the objectives and deeds of their nations' ruling classes and criticized the political, social, and economic structures through which elites operated. By alienating themselves from the political leaders, African writers were viewed as a stimulus to popular discontent: although from the earliest days of independence African intellectuals clamored for autonomous spaces for their thinking, few such spaces were permitted by the various repressive regimes. In another case for autonomous spaces, Mkandawire and the contributors examine the relationships, both symbiotic and fraught, among nationalism, pan-Africanism, and African intellectuals.

African Intellectuals makes a compelling case that constructing a democratic, developmental, and socially inclusive social order has become a moral imperative and a question of survival in Africa. However, engaging African intellectuals' collective moral and material strength also depends on the willingness of political leaders to invite intellectuals to the table. When academics and academic institutions are harassed by governments, when intellectuals are beaten, threatened, or dismissed from institutions of higher learning, even the most attractive incentives will fail to prevent a brain drain. Education is not yet a top priority for many African leaders who prefer to spend more money on security than on educational institutions because the former ensures their continued existence in office. The reality is that quietly and without fanfare, Africans are going back to their continent to teach during sabbatical leaves from academia, to set up businesses, to participate in government, and to make a contribution of some sort. However, until there is good governance and respect for education, a guarantee of respect for equality and human rights, and support for teaching and research, the brain drain is likely to continue and it will be difficult...