Conversing with Africa

The narrative of this book is an effort to engage the past from the present, to stand witness to present times, and to communicate the need to restore a radical dialogue in Africa. The author speaks to a new generation of activists who are trying to answer Fanon's call of 'Each generation must out of relative obscurity find its mission - fulfil it or betray it'. He reflects on ways to approach this statement today, arguing for example that it is important to situate African struggles in the context of other struggles especially those of Latin America. He examines the Chinese, Russian, Grenadian, and the Haitian revolutions; the examples of Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara; the ANC of South Africa, the negotiated political settlement and how the South African example falls far from the ideal of revolutionary democracy. The book further addresses the twin question of history and the role of the intellectual in society; African intellectuals and Western Africanists; African philosophy as a tool of liberation, the consciousness of the oppressor and the oppressed, the complicity of the Africans in their own unfortunate history; and the future of a radical pan-Africanism.

The very title of Kenyan author Mukoma wa Ngugi's book makes the case for dialogue. Conversing with Africa is a wide-ranging investigation of Africa's dilemmas and his analysis is bleak; abject poverty, despotism, coups, ethnic cleansings all under the rubric of neo-colonialism, all structured under the debilitating conditions of the World Bank and the IMF continue to ravage the continent. Ngugi's aim is polemical and he has approached his task in the spirit of Walter Rodney's groundbreaking How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. His aim is to convince the reader of the imperative need for action; for Africans to become their own agents of change. Conversing with Africa is a plea for unity; Ngugi is proposing nothing less than a Pan-African solution to the ills of the continent and although his argument is stronger on passion than pragmatism, he could justifiably point to what pragmatism has produced.