West Africa Review (2001)

ISSN: 1525-4488

TO OUR READERS

Olufemi Taiwo

It is with great enthusiasm that I, on behalf of the editors of West Africa Review (W.A.R.), present this latest issue of the journal. The articles that follow in this issue epitomize some of the journal’s founding objectives.

The first piece, “Choosing a Legal Theory on Cultural Grounds: An African Case for Legal Positivism”, by Jare Oladosu, is a welcome and very timely intervention in debates that occur in the philosophy of law but are relevant in legal practice and political experience. Many who are familiar with the debates concerning the state of legal theory and practice in many parts of Africa already know that we cannot say of most African countries that they Rule of Law countries. Not only that, restricting ourselves to the situation in English- speaking African countries alone, given that their history is a sad mixture of military and civilian misrule, it is reasonable to suggest that their populations have not been beneficiaries of the protections afforded by the modern legal system. We refer especially to the superlative protection for the dignity of the human person and the rights attached thereto, the impartiality of the judiciary and the requisite institutional independence to make this impartiality a reality, the respect for the sovereignty of the individual, and the like. There is no doubt that a centerpiece of the institutional complex that is the modern state and one which is charged with the responsibility of interposing itself between the all-powerful state and the miserably weak individual is the judiciary. Hence, it is no surprise that the failure of the African judiciary in its institutional role of being the impartial arbiter between the citizen and the state has been frequently remarked upon by scholars. Scholars have been preoccupied with explaining this failure of the African judiciary. Much has been made of the roguish behaviour of the African executive that often manifests itself in repeated subversion of the law and, not infrequently, sheer lawlessness. Others have remarked the supine proclivities of African judges in the face of executive overreaching. One interesting line of explanation has focused on the alleged incompatibility of the dominant jurisprudent or legal theory that supposedly undergirds the legal system in Africa and what is generally called ‘the African legal tradition’. The legal philosophy in question is Legal Positivism. In the first article in this edition Oladosu weighs in with his objection to the thesis that the failure of the judiciary in Africa is best explained by the incompatibility between the African legal tradition and legal positivism. He makes the case for legal positivism by showing that, contrary to what the critics say, embracing legal positivism might actually have yielded a more salubrious history for the modern legal system. It is a very important paper that raises the level of the debate over the operation of the modern legal system in Africa.

The second article by Honest Prosper Ngowi titled, “Can Africa Increase its Global Share of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)?”, is no less topical. It should by now be beyond controversy that Africa has been a marginal participant, if participant at all, in the global movement of investment capital, especially as the latter has exploded in the last two decades or so. Ngowi does not intend the question contained in the essay’s title to be a rhetorical one. The author, with serious analysis supported by relevant statistics, explores the various impediments to Africa attracting an increasing share of FDI. Needless to say, unlike the lingering skepticism that still greets the role of international capital in the economic fortunes of African countries, the author proceeds from the basic realization that the possibility of autarkic development is nil and that the only issue that calls for comment turns on how and on what terms Africa can increase its share of global FDI. In this, the author follows the lead of one of Africa’s preeminent political philosophers in one of his last speeches of his illustrious career. In a speech to the ‘Scotland-Africa ‘97’ Campaign at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1997, the late Julius Nyerere had similarly explored the factors that militate against the flow of foreign direct investment to Africa. He suggested that “the necessary conditions for attracting FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT are simply not there yet in most African countries.” That although foreign direct investment cannot by itself lift African countries out of their economic doldrums, it must be part of an effective development strategy. An analysis like Ngowi’s must contribute to our understanding of the role of FDI in African economies.

In the third essay, “Returning to the African Core: Cabral and the Erasure of the Colonized Elite”, Charles Peterson explores what lessons we can learn from the prognostications of Amilcar Cabral concerning the possible evolution of the political class that led various African countries to independence. Peterson’s article reminds us that many of the political afflictions from which Africa has suffered in the post- independence period had been anticipated in their consequences and theoretically prefigured by Cabral in some of his writings based on insights derived from the peculiar terrain of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Cabral had argued that the elite that led Africa to independence must critically engage its African past and creatively retrieve from it models which can be suited for the exigencies of modern multination- states in the post-independence era. Such models are to be extracted from the return to the masses who embody the elements for the making of new cultural forms that will combine the best of Africa and of the detour through colonialism. To do this it must erase itself as a colonized elite class. Although it is easy for some cynically to look at what has since happened in Guinea Bissau since independence including its break-up into two countries—Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau—and use it as evidence that Cabral’s ideas are passé. The fact that we are publishing the essay is an index of our belief in the continuing relevance of Cabral’s political sociology to scholarly understanding of Africa’s experience and the development of political theory generally. It is hoped that some of our readers would find it worthwhile to rejoin Peterson’s arguments and expand the boundaries of Cabral scholarship.

One of the aims of WAR is to serve as a journal of record. To this end, we promised at our inauguration to make available to our readership works that have been published elsewhere but the wider circulation of which, we are convinced, will enrich our readership. We present one such piece as part of this issue. This was an essay titled “The Future of Subject Peoples” written by William Esuman-Gwira Sekyi (also known as Kobina Sekyi) and published in The Africa Times and Orient Review of October-December 1917 and later included in the invaluable collection titled Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa: 1856-1970, ably edited by J. Ayo Langley (London: Rex Collings, 1979). The version reprinted here is from Langley’s anthology. Why is it important to make this text more widely available?

Sekyi was writing at a time when Africans who had been socialized into modernity through Christianity and Western education were fashioning nationalist arguments against British colonialism and racism. The reader will find Sekyi anticipating some of the arguments that African nationalists in our own time continue to deploy against contemporary anti-African racism. But the relevance of the essay is magnified by the fact that Sekyi’s main thrust is at variance with some nationalist views that continue to enjoy attention even now. I am referring to that valorization of the African genius whose genesis is traceable to Leopold Sedar Senghor’s affirmation of the Hellenicity of Reason and the Africanity of Emotion. Although Senghor has been much vilified for his aphorism and I happen to know that many who cite him on that score often quote him out of context and completely shorn of the sensitivity and complexity with which Senghor developed his thesis, there are those who continue to oppose “Western logocentrism” as being, in essence, unafrican. Indeed, one might find hints of this idea in the debate regarding the choice of legal theories in African countries. Meanwhile, many who valorize the emotion of the African are hardly ever aware that as far back as 1917, equally motivated to elicit the genius of the African, Sekyi had affirmed the exact opposite of Senghor’s famous aphorism.

A new section debuts in this issue. It will present materials that do not fit into our penchant in the academy for neat, even if unhelpful, categorization. Contributors to this section are encouraged to send us materials that take full advantage of the electronic medium that we use and treat of topical issues that are calculated to expand our educational horizon. Such is the piece titled “Biafra” by Azuka Nzegwu in this edition. The piece allows us to encounter some of the women who lived through the horrors of the Nigerian Civil War which lasted from 1967 to 1970 and whose voices might never have been heard in traditional formats demanded by the academy. It is material that rivets our attention precisely because it goes against the grain of convention.

The issue concludes with a review of Tunde Adeleke’s UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission. It is written by Corey D. B. Walker. The book treats of a very important theme that is often broached but hardly ever discussed: that of the views of Africa held by some of Africa’s sons and daughters who, principally through the institution of the Atlantic Slave Trade and New World Slavery, had become part of the civilization fashioned on this side of the Atlantic and who were caught in a cruel dilemma. They needed Africa for the construction of their collective identity in the face of a hostile racist culture; simultaneously they could not embrace Africa without qualification because they shared the negative views of the continent and its peoples prevalent in nineteenth century America. How they resolved this dilemma and what sense they made of Africa is the object of Adeleke’s book. How well he accomplished his task is what Walker assesses in his review.

Thank you.

Citation Format

Taiwo, Olufemi (2001). TO OUR READERS. West Africa Review: 2, 2 [iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.2.2.5]