African Renaissance

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1 Bibliography
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

The African Renaissance is a concept popularized by South African President Thabo Mbeki in which the African people and nations are called upon to solve the many problems troubling the African continent. It reached its height in the late 1990s but continues to be a key part of the post-apartheid intellectual agenda.

The phrase was first used in 1994 in South Africa following the first democratic election after the end of apartheid, and was clarified with then-Deputy President Mbeki's famous "I am an African" speech in May 1996 following the adoption of a new constitution:

I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines [...] Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines. [...] Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.^[1]

In April 1997, Mbeki listed the elements that would eventually be seen to comprise the African Renaissance: social cohesion, democracy, economic rebuilding and growth, and the establishment of Africa as a significant player in geo-political affairs.

In June 1997 an advisor to Mbeki, Vusi Maviembela, wrote that the African Renaissance was the "third moment" in post-colonial Africa, following decolonization and the outbreak of democracy across the continent during the early 1990s. Deputy President Mbeki himself melded the various reforms he had discussed to a tone of optimism under the rubric "African Renaissance" in a speech in August 1998^[2]

On September 28-29th, 1998 there was a conference on this theme in Johannesburg. This was attended by some 470 participants. A book was published in 1999 with this title. Thabo Mbeki, keynote speaker at the opening plenary session, wrote the book's prologue. The volume's thirty essays are arranged under general topics largely corresponding to those of the conference's breakaway sessions: "culture and education, economic transformation, science and technology, transport and energy, moral renewal and African values, and media and telecommunications." (p. ii)

Among other things the African Renaissance is a philosophical and political movement to end the violence, elitism, corruption and poverty that seem to plague the African continent, and replace them with a more just and equitable order. Mbeki proposes doing this by, among other things, encouraging education and the reversal of the "brain drain" of African intellectuals. He also urges Africans (led by African intellectuals) to take pride in their heritage, and to take charge of their lives.

Other individuals seen as being the "new generation of African leaders" that would accomplish the goals of the African Renaissance were President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda.

However it has drawn criticism^{[citation needed]} as a form of Africanist utopianism, especially given the various armed conflicts that continue in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere. Others have viewed it as an attempt by South Africa to foist a new form of colonialism, nicknamed Pax Praetoriana (after Pax Romana), upon the continent.^{[citation needed]}

Others argue that the analogy between the Renaissance and the "African Renaissance" is tenuous for a number of reasons, among them that the Renaissance existed in the context of the fall of a great empire, and the subsequent descent into the Dark Ages. They lend weight to claims that the term is anachronistic and misconceived (Farred 2003). These historical misconceptions, in turn, undermine the intellectual connotations. They further state that "African Renaissance" is a misnomer and should be seen as no more than rhetoric, and that the continued upheaval and disunity in Africa do not bode well for the aspirations of the "African Renaissance".

If the term "African Renaissance" appears to have lost some of its credibility, it remains in frequent use. This is the case especially in South Africa, where the African National Congress has adopted it as part of its ideology and where the phrase is sometimes used in advertising.

One direct response (a mirror response in a sense) to Mbeki's call on artists and thinkers to take up his utopian vision, was offered by Andre Venter who published I Ching for the 'African Renaissance' in 2006. Before its publication a proof of concept work for the artists' book was exhibited at the Aardklop cultural festival and later at the University of Johannesburg. The exhibition curated by David Paton was entitled "Navigating the Bookscape". The work's position takes "renaissance" to mean: a radical change in "systems of thinking". Venter's comment through the "I Ching for the 'African Renaissance'" was complex (both aimed at material and symbolic practices), but it illustrated (in an empirical sense) how unlikely it was that radical change could occur in our "systems of thinking" in South Africa at the time of its publication. Venter showed - through this "limit-experience" - that to allow chance to play a role in the transformation of "govern-mentality" in South Africa was near impossible. The work posits chance as the only escape from a "system of thinking" which limits our ability to imagine alternatives to how we have come to think of ourselves as Africans. He did so by presenting President Mbeki's office with a leather bound, hand made copy of the artists' book - "I Ching for the 'African Renaissance' - and waits for a response. The soft cover (first edition) is out of print, but a digital version is available through the Internet Archive. An uncommon attribute of the publication is that it makes no claim to an Author. This strategy led both Wits University and the University of Johannesburg libraries to use derivatives of the publisher's name, as the author name, in order to classify the book.

[edit] Bibliography

Malegapuru William Makgoba, ed., African Renaissance, Mafube and Tafelberg, Sandton and Cape Town, 1999
---, I Ching for the 'African Renaissance', Nomadic Exploration Press, Johannesburg, 2006