The Complex Dynamics of Nelson Mandela’s Legacy

Essentially, storytelling is a question of cultural psychology, which, in turn, is a function of power, economics, and respectability, supposedly. What use is the political economy of storytelling to society? Stock exchange is about telling the story of monetized inter-communication across currencies. Apartheid is about telling the story of elevating white supremacy above black inferiority. Politics is about telling the story of rulership elitism, plebeian electoral franchise, and forced plebeian submission to political elitism. Slavery is about telling the story of the triumph of capitalist, religious, and cultural hegemonies over the forced submission of a section of humanity.

Afrocentricty is about telling the story as well as of exposing Eurocentric lies, arrogance, conscious distortions, and ignorance about African historical and cultural realities. Religion is about telling the story of man’s spiritual inferiority as well as of a system of agnostic beliefs based on a supposed superior ontology. Romance is about telling the story of the electrical transfer of emotions across physiological spaces mutually shared by individuals. Man is about telling the story of humanity, of community, and of his relationship with nature. That is, the art of storytelling constitutes the very definition of human existence, a hypothesis whose interpretive sustainability is subject to conditionalities of cultural contexts.

For instance, without proper cultural contexts of the Braille and sign language, how does a blind and dumb person effectively tell his story? For that reason, one automatically loses one’s birthright, that is, cultural psychology, if one allows someone else to arrogate the power of telling one’s story to himself. Exactly what does this mean for the cultural and intellectual preservation of Mandela’s legacy? Everything. Our position is bolstered by the fact that Howard Gardner’s “Creating Minds,” for instance, a book which putatively explores the creativity of humanity, merely samples a select few—Eliot, Freud, Graham, Picasso, Einstein, Stravinsky, and Gandhi—as subjects for his case study of human ingenuity and leadership.

Intriguingly, six Caucasian names precede Gandhi’s in the book’s subtitle. What does this mean? We don’t know! Where is WEB Du Bois, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Cheikh Anta Diop in Gardner’s case study? Where are women in the study? Where would Mortimer Adler have placed Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” and “Conversations with Myself” in the “Great Books of the Western World” or in Martin Seymour-Smith’s “The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written”? Since Mandela was not a Westerner, would his works have been in the preface or postscript of Adler’s or Seymour-Smith’s edited volumes?

Again, since Gardner had a wealth of information on Nkrumah and did not include that in his case study, is there any guarantee he’s ever going to add Mandela’s name to the list in later editions of his book? Again, as before, we don’t know! Yet our critique of Eurocentric Machiavellianism recalls Time Magazine’s profiling of Mr. Kofi Annan. In this profile the profiler made “Annan” a Scottish (Celtic) word, a word whose Celtic etymology points to “a brook” or “a small stream.” In other words, by emphasizing its Scottish etymology, the word “Annan,” according to the etymological caprices of the profiler, somehow becomes culturalized by Eurocentric standards.

Of course, the Irish, a branch of the ancient Celts, use “Annan” for their male babies as well. But the fact that “Annan” also refers to “fourth-born son” in Twi and that this knowledge held no philological consequence for the Eurocentric profiler is deeply troubling. Further, “Anane,” a variant of “Annan,” also means “fourth son.” Further still, “Anane” appears as “a fallen angel” in the Book of Enoch, a canonical document used by two Christological orthodoxies in Africa, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Gas of Ghana also use “Anang.” And then we have the “Anaang” or “Annaang” People of Southeastern Nigeria, a cultural and ethnic group from whom the Gas of Ghana, today, are believed to have descended in historical time.

In reality, the oral literature of the Annangs locates their origins in ancient Egypt. Yet, all these salient facts meant nothing to the profiler, this, if, in fact, he had any intellectual acquaintance with them at all. Having said that, the hagiographic Europeanization of Mr. Kofi Annan took form as he systematically initiated a series of progressive reforms at the United Nations, a cumbersome administrative process, which, in a way, in fact, generally, coincided with Western interests. Then, in no time, Mr. Annan laughably became a Ghanaian, an African, again, a mere “Kofi,” in Western corporate media, this, after he had courageously questioned Western ulterior motives for rushing to war in order to topple Saddam Hussein, a former ally of the West.

That is to say, the cultural calcification of an individual, particularly persons with non-European ancestry, in Western cultural psychology is not static, but, fascinatingly, follows the caprices of Western capitalist and political interests—for the most part. Moreover, the scheming hand of Western imperialism went ahead to excavate the role, if scandalous, which, Kojo Annan, Mr. Annan’s only son, may have played in the oil-for-food program. Consequently, the West blamed Mr. Kofi Annan for violating UN regulations pertaining to conflict of interest. Why wasn’t this incriminating economic and political biography of Mr. Annan and of his son done before he had questioned Western motives for going to war? This is how political Eurocentrism chiefly functions in the international community.

Carefully following the trajectory of our case, therefore, one easily recognizes that our moral arguments also recall the interesting issues Aisha Harris raises in her beautifully written and provocative essay “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore.” She writes: “That this genial, jolly man can only be seen as white—and consequently, that a Santa of any other hue is merely a ‘joke’ or a chance to trudge out racist stereotypes—helps perpetuate the whole ‘white-as-default’ notion endemic to American culture (and, of course, not just American culture.” Namely, Harris is implying that the cultural hegemony of whiteness is a serious universal problem and, therefore, must be resisted at all cost, on all fronts. And the theory of Afrocentricty is such a weapon.

Finally, Mandela was not a racist. Neither was Kwame Nkrumah. In fact, Mandela’s long-time lawyer and friend, George Bizos, is a Greek. Further, Mandela and the ANC worked with the Congress Alliance, a multiracial anti-Apartheid organization. Indeed, the Congress Alliance played an instrumental role in drafting The Freedom Charter, which the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) rejected. The PAC, like Steve Biko’s and Mamphela Ramphele’s Black Consciousness Movement, defined its primary mission in terms of dissolving the unequal relational dichotomy between black psychological subsidiarity and white superiority. This is applied Afrocentricty at its philosophical peak. Also, the military wing of the PAC, Poqo, which later became the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, enjoyed a level of popularity in Black South Africa as Mandela’s Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Mandela also worked with FW De Klerk and P.W. Botha to replace Apartheid with constitutional democracy, an instrument of communal liberalization unknown to both Botha and De Klerk. He was also friends with a slew of whites in the international community, from U2’s Bono, Bill Gates, and Bill Clinton to Nadine Gordimer. “In 1979, I wrote a novel, ‘Burger’s Daughter,’ on the theme of the family life of revolutionaries’ children, a life ruled by their parents’ political faith and the daily threat of imprisonment. I don’t know how the book, which was banned in South Africa when it was published, was smuggled to Mandela in Robben Island Prison. But he, the most exigent reader I could have hoped for, wrote me a letter of deep, understanding acceptance about the book,” Gordimer fondly recalls of Mandela.

Similarly, Nkrumah was friends with Grace Lee Boggs and Raya Dunayevskaya. Regarding the relationship between Mandela and Nkrumah, Mr. Isaac Amuah, the husband of Makaziwe, Mandela’s eldest daughter, has this to say: “Mr. Mandela saw Nkrumah as a hero who associated himself with the liberation struggle of South Africans of every race…Nkrumah, while Pan-Africanist to boot, was equally non-radical. Three women who were key to Nkrumah’s professional life till his death in 1972 were all white—namely Erica Powell, June Milne and Juliet Wright.” Therefore, given this historical revelation, why are Nkrumah’s ideological enemies insisting he was a racist, that he hated whites?

Moreover, both Oliver Tambo, who visited Nkrumah in Ghana in his capacity as the president of the ANC, and his, wife Adelaide Tambo, had expressed their fondness for Kwame Nkrumah. Why are his ideological enemies passing around the revisionist trinketry that Nkrumah was ideologically averse to the ANC because of its alleged accommodationist opposition to Apartheid? How could the bombings carried out by Mandela’s Umkhonto we Sizwe be construed as the ANC’s getting into the same romantic bed of ideological accommodationism with Apartheid? How could going to prison for 27 years be construed as accommodationism? Where are these “noble lies” coming from?

Meanwhile, Mr. Amuah goes on: “In fact, June Milne had both South African and Australian ancestors and is still Nkrumah’s literary executrix. She is the person who was closest to Nkrumah during his long and painful years in exile. And of course, Erica Powell was both the first private secretary and confidante of Nkrumah (See “Nelson Mandela’s Ghanaian Son-in-Law Speaks Out”).” Then again, didn’t Nkrumah invite a woman, Hanna Reitsch, a renowned German aviator, a respected aviation expert who will later work with Nkrumah’s government and Ghana’s armed forces to improve Ghana’s aviation, to Ghana?

Didn’t Nkrumah also take a Coptic woman for a wife? Wasn’t Nkrumah friends with Che Guevara, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Castros—Fidel and Raul—and with several non-African and African whites? Why are his ideological enemies questioning his acknowledged international credentials and non-racialist disposition? Is it any wonder that Kwame Anthony Appiah, Joseph E. Appiah’s son, and many others are claiming Sudan gained its political independence before Ghana? Doesn’t it matter to these ideological revisionists that both Nkrumah and Mandela had one uncompromising, powerful, and vicious enemy: The white man?

Then comes the irresponsible vitriol of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Alan Singer writes: “Fox News curmudgeon Bill O’Reilly is reported to have acknowledged that Mandela was a ‘great man,’ but at the same time dismissed him because ‘he was a communist.’” Didn’t O’Reilly call President Obama a socialist? Why do some individuals equate populist demands for social justice or egalitarianism with socialism and communism? How can anyone refer to a country’s president who donates half of his presidential salary to charitable causes a communist? Let’s recall that Mandela was not as wealthy as the billionaire Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who was paid a symbolic salary of $1 a year!

On the other hand, could Mandela be said to be the moral and ideological equivalent of Leon Trotsky, Mao Tse-tung, Josef Stalin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, or Pol Pot, when, in fact, he was more like Grenada’s Maurice Bishop, Guyana’s Walter Rodney, Angola’s Agostinho Neto, Guinea-Bissau’s Amilcar Cabral, America’s Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah? Interestingly, Osama bin Laden, one of America’s staunchest “capitalist” allies, may appear a communist to conservative media mouthpieces like O’Reilly, a media heavyweight who appears as anchor on his own controversial show “The O’Reilly Factor,” even though Osama led a successful campaign of putschism against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

No wonder Christian venture capitalists brand Christ a communist! Indeed, O’Reilly’s best-selling work, “Killing Jesus: A History,” a book co-written with the historian Martin Dugard, shares some similarities with how the whiteness of Apartheid killed Mandela and Black South Africa. On the contrary, a University of Notre Dame’s scholar of New Testament and early Christianity, Prof. Candida Moss, has dismissively labeled O’Reilly’s book a “historical fan fiction, not history.” Could it be why some critics of O’Reilly have consistently alleged the viewership of “The O’Reilly Factor” is made up of at least seventy-percent of unsophisticated individuals whose highest educational attainment is high school?

This is why Ayi Kwei Armah’s and Brian Becker’s calls for biographic objectivity come across as timely relevant. This is why Africa needs to exert absolute moral, intellectual, economic, and cultural authority over her affairs, a provocative theory we vigorously advanced in the essay “It’s Africa’s Moral Responsibility To Keep Nelson Mandela.” Why do we expect Bill O’Reilly, an anti-African newscaster with a large white following, to make such dismissive, a-historical remarks about Mandela? We argue that the Eurocentric arrogance and intellectual aloofness of O’Reilly have no place in scientific objectivity. Let’s, therefore, reject his uncritical remarks!

Therefore, in the end, especially regarding the interpretation of Mandela’s and Nkrumah’s legacies, let’s not pretend any one possesses either monopoly over all “truth” or interpretation of the “truth” as far as these two great world leaders are concerned. Benjamin Franklin captures the tensional hypocrisy between those we shall call fractious holders of the “truth” and those outside it, supposedly those in the wrong. He writes in his autobiography: “Like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, though in truth he’s as much in the fog as any of them.”

Aren’t Mandela’s pre-revolutionary days just as significant as his dovish post-Apartheid days? Why, then, is everyone concentrating on his post-Apartheid days, asked Julius Malema, founder of the Economic Freedom Fighter? “Thank you Mandela for ushering in political freedom…Those who came after you failed to deliver economic freedom…We are picking up the battle…We are still engaged in a long walk to economic freedom...We salute Cuban leader Raul Castro, we salute Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. We have no business saluting Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron, Malema said to cheering from his followers,” writes Meggan Saville in “EFF Will Take up Madiba’s Fight: Malema.”

We shall return…