Reading Class Struggle in Africa
Reading Class Struggle in Africa
Kwame Nkrumah’s writing reads like a text book designed to inform any learner of African studies. Whether the learners are the African workers and peasants to whom the book is dedicated, African pupils or international scholars such as Spelman ADW undergraduates they gain a clear understanding of class struggle in Africa relevant to the time period when the book was published as well as the contemporary context. Much in keeping with the concept of fact making discussed last semester in ADW 111, given the myths and fabrication designed by so-called scholars who embrace a Eurocentric point of view Nkrumah the Ghanaian griot sets out to “write a tale of hunting that glorify not the hunter but the lions and lionesses.” (African Diaspora 4)
Chief among the untruths propagated that Nkrumah is bent on dispelling is the notion that compared to the rest of the world Africa is a stand-alone entity. She had no history prior to colonialism in light of which principles that apply to other nations does not apply to her. On page 10 Nkrumah states:
For too long, social and political commentators have talked and written as though Africa lies outside the main stream of world historical development-a separate entity to which the social, economic and political pattern of the world does not apply. Myths such as “African socialism” and “pragmatic socialism”, implying the existence of a brand or brands of socialism applicable to Africa alone, have been propagated; and much of our history has been written in terms of socio-anthropological and historical theories as though Africa had no history prior to the colonial period. One of these distortions has been the suggestion that the class structures which exist in other parts of the world do not exist in Africa Therefore, scholars have denied the existence of class struggle in Africa. Nkrumah sees one chief reason to this state of affairs. He says: “class divisions in modern African society became
Kwame Nkrumah’s writing reads like a text book designed to inform any learner of African studies. Whether the learners are the African workers and peasants to whom the book is dedicated, African pupils or international scholars such as Spelman ADW undergraduates they gain a clear understanding of class struggle in Africa relevant to the time period when the book was published as well as the contemporary context. Much in keeping with the concept of fact making discussed last semester in ADW 111, given the myths and fabrication designed by so-called scholars who embrace a Eurocentric point of view Nkrumah the Ghanaian griot sets out to “write a tale of hunting that glorify not the hunter but the lions and lionesses.” (African Diaspora 4)
Chief among the untruths propagated that Nkrumah is bent on dispelling is the notion that compared to the rest of the world Africa is a stand-alone entity. She had no history prior to colonialism in light of which principles that apply to other nations does not apply to her. On page 10 Nkrumah states:
For too long, social and political commentators have talked and written as though Africa lies outside the main stream of world historical development-a separate entity to which the social, economic and political pattern of the world does not apply. Myths such as “African socialism” and “pragmatic socialism”, implying the existence of a brand or brands of socialism applicable to Africa alone, have been propagated; and much of our history has been written in terms of socio-anthropological and historical theories as though Africa had no history prior to the colonial period. One of these distortions has been the suggestion that the class structures which exist in other parts of the world do not exist in Africa Therefore, scholars have denied the existence of class struggle in Africa. Nkrumah sees one chief reason to this state of affairs. He says: “class divisions in modern African society became