Editor,
This letter is a brief commentary on the legacy of the late Ali Mazrui, Professor and Prophet of African and Global studies. Kenyan-born, Ali Mazrui (1933-2014), who recently died, was a prominent scholar and ranked in 2005 among the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.
His works have engaged anthropologists, biologists, economists, historians, sociologists, secularists, humanists, creationists, evolutionists, political scientists, policy makers and philosophers, to mention a few. His documentary, “The Africans: A Triple Heritage” in 1986, albeit divisive for the American audiences, was a groundbreaking synthesis of many academic disciplines and social values.
For example, his simple definition of culture as “a deal reached between man and nature,” is quite comprehensive and intelligible.
His argument for Africa to re-colonize itself is not a notion of madness, but one of mindfulness, recognizing Africa’s under-development crises economically and politically. The new African Diaspora bear out Mazrui’s prophecy of Africans counter-penetrating the West — the labor force, the economies, cultures and universities.
In the last part of the series titled “Global Africa,” Mazrui prophesied three futures for Africa: that a) Africa will break out of being a pawn and become a player in global affairs, b) white minority rule will end in South Africa, and the black majority will govern the country and manage the nation’s industrial, mineral, natural and labor resources, as well as its nuclear potential, and c) the people of the United States will elect a black man as president.
On the first prediction, Africa is a long way away from economic and political self-reliance. The second and third prophesies have been witnessed by a joyful world. As the result, the presidents of South Africa and the United States are material proxies of Africa’s presence in global affairs.
Ali Mazrui was also as controversial as an academic and a scholar, and many of his works illustrate he was an equal-opportunity critiquer and offender of policy-makers and his fellow public intellectuals. As it came with his prominence, he had highly placed admirers such as Prince Charles of the United Kingdom, and worthy opponents such as Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian-born Nobel laureate in literature. When his data and analyses warranted, he criticized Africa, America, Europe, capitalism, communism, Marxism, socialism, conservatism and liberalism that had no bearing for African development.
He lauded President Barack Obama’s election in 2008, but criticized his foreign policy as more war-prone than peacemaking. Their shared ties to Kenya did not restrain him. Striking, as well, was that Mazrui, an Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities, did not spare his namesake’s racist past. Nonetheless, Professor Ali Mazrui lived quite a productive academic life and left a proud legacy for the present and future scholars who will miss him, even as his legacy lives on. It is not far-fetched for me to opine that Ali Mazrui was the Nelson Mandela of African Studies and the Humanities.
Sincerely,
Admasu Shunkuri
UNM faculty
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