• ISSUE NUMBER THRE ft FOUR • 1998 • Manufacturing African Studies Wole Ogundele Paul Tiyambe Zcleza. MANUFACTURING AFRICAN STUDIES AND CRISES, Codestria, Dakar, 1997, 612pp. PAUL Tiyambe Zeleza, the author of this book, is a historian by academic training. But he is a polymath and almost an intellectual bionic boy: he is an award-winning novelist, a short story writer, a social scientist, philosopher and lit- erary critic. Manufacturing African Studies and Crises (henceforth abbreviated as MAS&C) is a very interesting and provocative book whose argu- ments and overall tone and style never flag. I say provocative not simply because he takes on all branches of Africanist scholarship and demolishes most of their cherished orthodox- ies. This is also because his own ideas do actu- ally provoke response and further thoughts from the reader, be it in agreement or disagree- ment. It is also provocative in one original sense: it is very rarely that the crises that have beset Africa since colonial times are ever joined to the 'studies' of the continent. After all, 'study' of a particular phenomenon or subject is sup- posed to increase our knowledge of it, and therefore enhance our ability to solve problems emanating from it. But Zeleza shows very con- vincingly in this book that 'studies' of Africa, from colonial times to the present, plus the solutions arising therefrom, have in fact con- tributed their own fair share to those crises- that not a few of the crises, be they man-made or natural, were in fact manufactured by the studies. All these, plus the extensive and highly useful bibliography (all 71 pages of it) make MAS&C a book almost encylopedic in propor- tion, if not in ambition. That it is not a work of original research is in fact its strength, for that makes it extremely informative and up to date on the writings and state of research in virtu- ally all the fields that it covers. MAS&C is a big book, 612 pages long (mi- nus index), but both the overall groundplan and that of each chapter facilitate its reading. There are five parts, each of which deals with a clus- ter of related subjects. The chapters in each part are on different aspects of each subject cluster. For example, part four, the longest, deals with democracy in Africa. It has six chap- Glendori Books Supplement 16 ters, all with intriguing titles like: 'Africa's Bumpy Road to Democracy,' or 'Rewriting In- dependence.' All the chapters in all the five parts follow the same procedure: a summary of the situation, then a review of the relevant literature, followed by clinical diagnosis of the problems attendant on that particular subject and its Africanist study, followed by progno- sis, and then solution, all rounded off with a conclusion. This structure is followed pains- takingly throughout the book. Perhaps also mindful of its intimidating size, the author through the larger plan encourages the reader to take each section as a self-contained unit which can be read separately- in other words, nothing is lost if the book is read at long inter- vals. Both these macro and micro plans are reflected in the first and last chapters of the book: the first a narrative of the studying of Africa, the last of solving her problems. All these make ap otherwise dauntingly bulky book easy to follow. MAS&C is as much about all the assorted crises that have been the continent's lot since independence as it is about what have been written on these crises, who writes them, where, and from what perspectives. In other words, it is as much a quarrel with Africanist studies of Africa as it is a study of the nature, character, genesis of, and solutions to those crises. Curiously enough for a thorough-going scholarly book, but also appropriate, MAS&C starts with a polemical short story and ends with two. The opening one is a satirical por- trait of a western Africanist (by 'Africanist', Zeleza means 'the entire intellectual enter- prise of producing knowledge based on a west- ern epistemological order in which both edu- cated Africans and non-Africans are engaged') who, at the end of a distinguished career re- ceives, not praises from his former African stu- dents but fulminations and vituperations. The closing two are about a future pan-Africanist Africa, a united Africa that is also home to diasporic Africans. This is the end to which all of Zeleza's arguments in-between and throughout the book have been tending. • ISSUE NUMBBt THRff & FOUR • 1988 • Zeleza states his aim succinctly in the pref- ace (p.iii): 'an interrogation of African studies, its formulations and fetishes, theories and trends, possibilities and pitfalls.' But he does more than a demolition job, he also attempts reconstruction and to show the way towards the development of 'organic intellectuals' on the continent. If by 'organic intellectuals' he means intellectuals who produce knowledge based on African epistemological categories, then this is a tall order indeed. Not that it is impossible, but that it requires a complete re- thinking and overhauling of the aims, ideol- ogy and practice of so-called modern educa- tion as it presently exists in Africa. But right now, Africa is too besotted with western edu- cation as brought to the continent and left behind by the colonialists to even begin ques- tioning it. Moreover, nowhere in the book does Zeleza identify that education as the root- =« Faculty of Arts building, University of Zimbabwe, Mt Pleasant. Harare cause of the Africanist scholarship that per- vades the continent, nor does he suggest any- where how to replace it with organic knowl- edge, or what that organic knowledge actually consists of. This is a pity, for I too believe that current education on the continent is inor- ganic, imitative, and its products doomed to permanent derivativeness. But Zeleza. being essentially a structuralist (even though he has no good word for all the faddish 'posts'), he cannot allow room for decisions that depend mainly on human agencies-for human beings as free agents acting to create their own sys- tems. The four remaining chapters in part one Glendtri Bilks Supplement 17 examine the situation of the contemporary Af- rican intellectual, of which he identifies two types: the resident or home-based intellectual and the migrant one. Both types receive short shrift from Zeleza's satirical pen, though he does reserve some sympathy for the latter type, which includes those who have migrated to the North (i.e., Europe and North America). In the next chapter he examines the structural, cul- tural, social and political situations of African social scientists working at home, their advan- tages and disadvantages. The major disadvan- tage, he sees, is the gradual and inexorable curtailing of academic freedom due to the fact that state, as their employer plays 'a pivotal role in the social production of intellectuals in Africa' (p.25). But the process of curtailment includes a significant dose of subtle-censorship. Zeleza also examines the role of foreign donors in the production of social science knowledge because their research is geared almost exclusively toward 'devel- opment'. Similarly, even when they provide money for African researchers, it is this kind of re- search, not basic research, that they directly or indirectly pro- mote-the kind of research a col- league once called the 'problems and prospect' kind. In chapter four he examines the publishing situation and, again, the picture is bleak. First he looks at the built-in bias, with copious statis- tical data in support, against Af- rican scholars in general, and against women in particular even where the subject is women's studies, in European and North American journals. This is particularly pathetic, for most appointments and promo- tions committees in African uni- versities privilege publication in foreign journals over local ones. Zeleza also srutinises the book famine that has been raging on the continent since IMF/World Bank's bitter pill of Structural Adjustment was forced down Africa's throat in the mid-1980s. Part Two of MAS&C is devoted to African historiographies, Zeleza's own academic turf. Although he has few kind words for Afrocentrism, the counter-narrative to Eurocentric historiography on Africa, he some- times falls into its mental mould, as part of his pan-Africanist dream. After discussing nationalist historiography and its illusions, omissions and bankruptcies, which did not begin to become clear until long after independence, Zeleza goes back in time • ISSUE NUMBffl THRE & FOUR • 1988 • to cover imperialist historiography and the various pet theories (including that of pov- erty) that guide their writing, from the earli- est colonial times to the present. Also fully engaged in this section are issues like 'Gen- der Biases in African Historiography' and 'Representing African Women' in history. Along the way, he surveys scholarly books on African history by both African and non-Afri- can historians, and textbooks for secondary schools. In keeping with his deconstructive approach, Zeleza of course begins by interro- gating the definitions and limits of history as it is conventionally understood and practiced as an academic discipline. For example, he makes the very cogent point that nationalist historiography, as instituted in African uni- versities from colonial times to the present, actually helped to undermine 'the prospects of decolonising African history' (pp..146-7). Having cleared much space for himself, he can bring in history as remembered and trans- mitted by oral performers as legitimate his- torical source. This of course is not new, and I raise it here simply because Zeleza has fallen into the error common to most academics and intellectuals who value pre-colonial Africa cultural/artistic productions: they tend to view such productions as 'sources' for their own now 'modern' and literary essays. In other words, the tendency to see such pre-colonial productions through the Eurocentric prism which they castigate, rather than fully achieved and autonomous, remains, though sometimes inadvertent. Fur- thermore, since Zeleza tends to see the past as mainly the history of various kinds of struggle 'over the organisations of the economy, politics and culture,' (p. 145), one wonders how useful the songs of the griots can be, even as source material, for this kind of history. Along the line, he also argues for the inclusion of North African history in all sub-Saharan textbooks. This of course is pre- paratory to his main historiographical agenda: the writing of pan-African history. In the next two chapters, Zeleza emphasises the fact that women remained invisible in Afri- can historiography during the colonial time, but that is a situation now being urgently redressed. Zeleza goes deep into why his was so. I recommend Oyeronke Oyeewumi's The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) to anybody more interested in this subject. Zeleza's intellectual anger blazes forth in Part Three, aptly titled 'Encountering Devel- opment.' Using the" term 'developmentalism' pejoratively, he traces its archaeology in Af- rica back to the inter-war years in the West. Sleiliri Bilks SipplraMt 18 Contrary to the humanitarian/philanthropic shine which was put on 'developing' colonial territories, the colonialists embarked on that project to aid their own recovery after the de- struction of first, the first world war, and then the second. Any wonder, then, that develop- ment in colonial Africa mostly amounted to no more than drafting, through sometimes violent means, African farmers into cultivating cash crops for European factories. In the process, production of food crops fell; societies that were self-sufficient in food production became inter- mittent victims of famine and continous ris- ing food costs. Thus, along with consumer de- sire for European goods, hunger was also cul- tivated. 'Colonial agriculture,' in his words, '...marginalised food production, mined the soil, and degraded the environment. It also intro- duced patterns of land ownership and social relations of production which gravely under- mined coherent social responses to famine and other crisis' 9.258). Built on these gross dis- tortions, any wonder then that most developmentalist projects in post-indepen- dence Africa have failed? Zeleza also shows, with formidable analyti- cal power, and in telling details, how IMF/ World Bank's Structural Adjustment medicine has about succeeded in killing off its African patients. This programme is, incidentally, per- haps the latest global instance of how theories and knowledge developed in the West and spe- cifically for the West have manufactured cri- ses in Africa. Zeleza tries to show, again with figures and charts, that many of the crisis of the 1970s were, in the main, 'a manifestation and an outcome of the world economic crises that erupted' at the beginning of that decade (p.276). Chapter fourteen, the next and last chap- ter in this part, is devoted to how African labour was progressively devalued, in various ways, from colonial times to the present. Part Four (chapters fifteen to twenty) is devoted to 'imagining democracy' in Africa. Here, especially in chapter fifteen, Zeleza lives up to his deconstructive aim and almost be- comes an iconoclast. He shows that not even in the West have the realities of democratic governance caught up with its aims and ide- als. But here, one can accuse Zeleza of indulg- ing in the favourite pastime of non-western academics: West-bashing. Judging by his comments on the various models of pre-colonial African state formations that several historians have written, Zeleza does not have much admiration for any of them and he concludes the chapter by saying that the only "blueprint for democracy in Africa, therefore, lies in the struggles themselves' (p.388). This is almost a banal truth, not helped ISSUE NUMBBt THRE & FOUR • 1998 at all by his next seemingly profound insight that 'The future is open to numerous possi- bilities.' This is a surprising statement com- ing from a historian, for what it amounts to, in effect, is that the future and the past have no connections whatsoever; the struggle is completely free to make the future as it wants. We have seen what happened to societies that believed and acted likewise. Chapter sixteen is on Banda and the Malawi of his deranged imagination. A Malawian himself, Zeleza's account is intimate and harrowing, gaining power to move us by its studied understatement. He devotes the next three chapters to praising Europhone (mainly Anglophone) Af- rican writing for its articulation of the struggles for democratisation on the continent. African writers, he says, had almost from the beginning been dissatisfied with post-indepen- dence politics on the continent: with writers like Achebe, Soyinka, Armah, and Ngugi, 'po- tential disillusionment turned into actual dis- enchantment' (p.431). He also discusses the two main ways Europhone African literature has been political-one being the 'political na- ture of the subjects, the banning, exiling, im- prisoning and even killing of the writers by despotic regimes being the other. Chapter nineteen starts with an academic discussion of democracy in Africa before going on to ex- amine it 'in practice'-as it were, in a novel each by Nurudeen Farah, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Bessie Head. Chapter twenty, titled 'Cycles of Rebirth,' is given over to four West African nov- elists (Aidoo, Armah, Emecheta and Okri) in whose works he examines the very large sub- ject of 'the complex clashes, contentions and conversions of cultures in colonial and post- colonial anglophone West Africa' (p.465). The last chapter of this last part, as said earlier, consists of excerpts from Zeleza's own two short stories on pan-Africanism, prefaced by a rather lengthy disquisition on that sub- ject. Clearly, the unity of all Africans (Black, Arab, White) and all other peoples of African descent in the new world is a subject dear to his heart: to him, it is the only way forward for the continent. MAS&C is a very engaging book written by a passionately engaged intellectual with for- midable knowledge and great analytical power, by a creative writer with a wry sense of humour. It is a 'political' book - i.e. a book meant to con- cretely intervene in African studies and cri- sis-the full value of which can only be realised if also politically engaged by the reader, espe- cially the African reader. So, read, it is a book with all the potentials of causing drastic revi- sions in the study of Africa. Ogundele, currently an independent researcher, taught literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University until recently. A gathering of voices Dapo Adeniyi Nduba Otiono, VOICES IN THE RAINBOW, Oracle Boobs. Yaba. Lagos, 1997, 70pp. I would dare, right from the outset, to suggest that the lone explanation for my election to render the following re- view is to bear witness to the plenitude of voices contained not merely in this book's title but also in the chorus that forms the bulk of the poetry collection. To identify pos- sibly the lenders of every single voice, even if their whole contribution to our symphony is no more than a few syllables. And possibly also, to call them by their names. Unless we put our emphasis on that one word - VOICES - we are not likely to fully appreciate the collection's peculiar experi- mentation with style, prominent among which is the reportorial slant in sections by which topical identifiable elements such as shared national experience for example bouy up, often times thinly veiled, at other times with no veil at all. Voices therefore offer a clue to Nduka Otiono's textual strategy, to the switching of points of view, to the call- and-response mode by which more voices than one participate. Voices in the Rainbow opens with the de- scription of a journey undertaken across a desert. This represents the first of seven phases or movements, but we observe that the spirit of these opening lines impresses upon the succeeding sections significantly even if this was not so intended. For the poet's Sahel hike has its anguish, even its angst, but also its joy at both mid-journey - as when he comes by flourishing health-trees and oa- ses and when his ultimate destination is sighted. Even so, the poet's journey through the length of the collection is marked by re- Gluitra Bilks Supplement 19