KwaZulu-Natal African Renaissance and African Intellectuality Summit
23 May 2006
Greetings
It is with great pleasure that I stand here this morning to open the first
ever KwaZulu-Natal African Renaissance and African Intellectuality Summit. The
summit is part of the eighth edition of the KwaZulu Natal African Renaissance
Festival.
As a concept, the African Renaissance implies a deliberate action to
re-engineer the continent of Africa. Further more, as an idea, African
intellectuality refers to the African method of creating knowledge and
re-sourcing the continent and its people. The African Renaissance and African
Intellectuality Summit is, therefore, a deliberate action of engaging the
African intellectuals, irrespective of race, colour, sex, creed and religion to
create knowledge and information that is based on the resources indigenous to
Africa.
It is important as we create a new environment for Africa's revival that we
constantly and consciously remove any notion that an African identity is a
racial identity. This is more so because Africa is the cradle of all human
kind, as evident in the cradle of Mankind Heritage Site in Sterkfontein,
Gauteng. Palaeontology, a branch of science that deals with the origins of all
human kind has established this fact. This piece of knowledge should make us
all proud.
History has it that some of the world's earlier civilisations and knowledge
systems evolved in Africa. Imhotep, now regarded as the first modern type
medical doctor and who lived some 2500 years BC, was an Egyptian. Africa has
contributed to the advancement of mathematics and physics. Some of the world's
earlier universities were in the continent of Africa. Some of the world's
earlier systems of writing were invented in Africa. All these historical facts
make our continent rich in heritage.
In 1906, Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme, an African scholar and one of the founder
members of the African National Congress (ANC) had this to say about the future
of Africa:
âThe African already recognised his anomalous position and desired a change.
The brighter day is rising upon Africa. Already I seem to see her chains
dissolved her desert plain red with harvest, her Abyssinia and her Zululand the
seats of science and religion, reflecting the glory of the rising sun from the
spires of their churches and universities. Her Congo and her Gamba whitened
with commerce, her crowded cities sending forth the hum of business and all her
sons employed in advancing the stories of peace, greater and more abiding than
the spoils of war.â
In the decades since then Africa has produced numerous luminaries including
but not limited to Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela. Today with some of the
most important World Heritage sites, New Partnership for Africaâs Development
(NEPAD), the African Renaissance and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the
continent is taking charge of its own future.
As an important part of the continent, South Africa is host to the African
Parliament. Since 1963 the new liberated Africa has been meeting under the
auspices of firstly Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and now the African
Union (AU) to share views, knowledge and ideas on how to best position the
continent in relation to the fast tracking of the liberation process and
introduction of democracy throughout the continent.
In the course of democracy and development, Africa has been able to educate
its people. Today African scholars, thinkers and artists are found all over the
world, mostly in the Western capitals. Their success abroad is often not
matched by success at developing the continent we have not yet been able to
create conditions for our scholars, thinkers and artists to flourish at
home.
On the other hand the absence of our intellectuals has been noted. Some have
argued elsewhere that African intellectuals are playing a minimalist role if
any in the public discourse. Here in South Africa, the President of the
country, honourable TM Mbeki remarked in 2004 as follows:
"Another matter is that there is a level of timidity among the black
intellectuals which is extremely unhealthy. They seem to have excluded
themselves from public discussion about where South Africa is today and where
should South Africa be tomorrow. You can go through the newspaper and see who
the commentators are or look at the public broadcaster and see whom they are
inviting to their studios to comment about some issues or other and you can see
that there are many, many people in our country who are not contributing their
ideas publicly as to where the country is today and where it ought to be
tomorrow.â
âI think it is important to challenge this section of our population to
think, to speak, to write and to lose its timidity," President Thabo Mbeki
said.
So while others have equally argued even more by saying that African
intellectuals have become characterised by timidity, self resignation, and
self-censure and fear on the other hand the intellectuals have argued
vehemently that they are being marginalised by Africa's governments and
powerful leaders. They even say that the reasons for their leaving the
continent to work and conduct research in the Western capitals are based on
their being unaccepted and devalued at home.
The colonial missionary and apartheid education systems did create problems
of cultural displacement for those who did go to school. While the colonial and
missionary education emphasised a wholesale adoption of Western cultural and
religious value systems by the educated, the apartheid system emphasised
de-educating people in every respect. The apartheid system emphasised taking
away every aspect of your value system and giving you nothing in return.
Mis-education, de-education and imposition of foreign cultural and religious
value systems, combined with general hostility towards the alternative view,
ensured that Africans became educated to be distant from self and own. This
problem is creating huge human resources problems for the continent. We have
educated people but we have a shortage of skills and under-employment of
available human resources. We have educated people but we rely on Western
consultants to plan our developments. Some even say are unable to manage our
own heritage resources.
The summit today and tomorrow has been conceptualised as a forum for
government, the intellectuals and others active in civil society to engage each
other. We have assembled to identify means and ways in which our intellectuals
can participate in development programs of the province. We have assembled to
lay the foundation for participative African scholarship and intellectuality in
the province.
We have assembled to say: for our renaissance to be meaningful there needs
to be massive intellectual inputs and outputs in the public discourse of the
province. We are assembled to say to our intellectuals, let us talk. What are
your problems? What would you like us to do in order to make you feel a part of
the future of the province? We are assembled today to say to our intellectuals,
help us grow this province together with you.
That's why we have decided to engage you on the issues of the day:
(1) New heritage development in KwaZulu-Natal. We ask how can we work with
you to preserve, develop, promote and manage our heritage in such a way that it
defines all of us and gives us a sense of identity? What do you see as your
role in all of this?
(2) On NEPAD, Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (PGDS), Accelerated
and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA), African Peer Review
(APR), again we ask:
Are you aware of the massive opportunities that these issues present? What
are you going to do with them? We ask similar questions in the case of the rest
of the issues: skills, intellectuals in community structures, FIFA World Cup
2010 and others. We are confident that at the end of the day tomorrow it should
be possible to come out with resolutions which will solidify our new found
partnership.
This is not a time to point fingers and to express grudges. Yes, we have not
structurally worked together in the past. Yes, we might have ignored you in the
past. Yes, you might have given up on us in the past. But this is why we are
assembled here today and tomorrow, to correct this wrong and forge a new
partnership for the development of the province. Our engaging each other such
as we are going to do today and tomorrow should make Ghandi, Luthuli, Bhambatha
ka Mancinza, King Cetshwayo, King Shaka, and Allan Paton proud.
The Heritage Renewal Project and even a Museum of Peace, the Statue of King
Shaka, the Opinion Makers' Forum, as well as answers to the questions of where
Africans of African origin are placed in the economy of this province are some
of the issues which should emerge from your discussions in the commissions.
Even if we do not implement the resolutions of the summit by Thursday, I can
assure you that we are going to spend the next twelve months looking very
closely at them. We will do so working with you, as individuals, as task teams,
and as researchers.
It is my firm belief that the future of this province lies in all of us
working together. We must work together because the alternative is too ghastly
to contemplate.
In conclusion, I am confident that this new partnership between government,
communities and intellectuals will result in the restoration of the dignity of
the intellectuals and intellectuality. Gone are the times when intellectuals
will be humiliated by those in power with the view of creating the state of
fear around them. South Africa is a free country today and that freedom should
be experienced by all who live in it.
Masisukume sakhe!
Ngiyabonga!
Issued by: Office of the Premier, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
23 May 2006
Source: SAPA
