By Manish Chand

The Kenya-born Mazrui's research interests are wide-ranging that includes African politics, international political culture, political Islam and North-South relations. A passionate advocate of a new ideology of liberalism that suits the African ethos, Mazrui has authored more than twenty books, including “The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis,” “The African Predicament and the American Experience: A Tale of Two Edens” and “Islam: Between Globalization and Counterterrorism.”

He has published hundreds of articles in major scholastic journals and also served on the editorial boards of more than twenty international scholarly journals. He straddles the worlds of academia and media with equal ease. He created a BBC-produced television series entitled “The Africans: A Triple Heritage,” which was later published as a book.

Mazrui, an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton, came to India in November last year to attend an international conference on Africa.

Mazrui spoke to Manish Chand, Editor, Africa Quarterly, on a wide array of issues that will influence the course of African resurgence, the potential of an African renaissance in the 21st century, India’s soft power in Africa and the need for India and Africa to move beyond nostalgia and old slogans to fashion a quintessential 21st century partnership.
Excerpts from the interview:

Q: There is much talk about an African renaissance these days. What’s your idea of an African renaissance? What factors do you think are contributing to it and what factors are holding the resurgence of the African continent?

A: Well, we’ll begin with the issue of the African renaissance. The first time this term was used was really a long time ago; it was way back in the 1930s, believe it or not, by somebody who later became Nigeria’s first president Nnamdi Azikiwe. Of course that was a time way before independence. So at that time it was more of a dream about getting Africa out of its bondage rather than getting Africa into a revivalist mood. And then the term almost completely disappeared until quite recently. And people started raising it mostly in South Africa and before the full dismantlement of apartheid - close to that period. And now it has spread out as a concept more widely beyond South Africa. But underneath it all there is a kind of, more than revamping Africa, attempting to give it a new energy and greater regard, and redefine its agenda, and its destiny. And very often it’s a wine bottle rather than the wine -- because the wine may differ from thinker to thinker or from country to country -- but the bottom-line is still vintage renaissance. This desire to do justice to Africa and give it a greater personality than we he have allowed it to have and to make its more inhabitants more proud of it. So we are engaging with this idea of renaissance in one way or another.

Q: Mostly people talk about an African renaissance in terms of economic resurgence…

A: Well, the resurgence has many elements. The economic is one element of resurgence. But even that would be more than just a heavenly situation when the economy is doing better than it did before – a situation where it is based on something more reliable than what it has been in the past. And then you can have resurgence that is political which gets beyond the old-style lethargy and the instability. Also, the old-style trial and error like trying one party system that does not work and experience periodic well-meaning military coups which turned out to be dictatorial. The one-party systems used to be a prestigious experiment in the 1970s and 80s. In other words, people have tried certain things and found them wanting and are now looking for alternatives.

Q: You wrote about the relative decline of the strategic value of Africa in the Cold War period. And now there is a sense that Africa is again emerging in the 21st century, that it is probably acquiring greater weight in the international calculus. Is this for real?

A: Well, it is true that it is beginning to regain some strategic value for certain reasons and many of these reasons are not always good. For example, there is a sense that the so-called war on terror requires a more stable Africa than we had before and requires reducing enmity towards the West within Africa. So that increases Africa’s strategic value. Unfortunately, the war on terror is sometimes conducted by the United States in ways which threaten Africa’s democratization. Therefore, it is not a reliable way of regaining strategic value.

What made Africa lose the strategic value was the appearance that the world had only one superpower in post Cold War period and there’s no longer competition for Africa’s friendship. And even Russia is not as engaged in Africa as it was when it was the Soviet Union. But it turned out premature to say that the world had only one superpower. Now countries like China and India will be joining the competition for Africa’s goodwill and Africa’s friendship.

Q: Talking about the engagement of external actors, do you think a new variant of neocolonialism is at work here?

A: Well, there is a risk of such a thing. I don’t think there is yet a concrete trend. There is a risk of getting in that direction. But at the moment the effort of China, for example, is one which is often discussed in these terms. To be on the better side of Africa does not mean it should marginalize Africa. China is discussed in the West in terms of a potential exploiter of Africa. The West has a reason to denigrate its rivals. At the moment it’s target is China. But tomorrow if India is more active, you could get the same treatment. In general, China at the moment is not doing things, which seek to marginalize Africa but is at the risk of doing things which might be seen as exploitative. It has to, therefore, watch how it deals with its new friendship with Africa, that it doesn’t become neocolonial and exploitative in its effect. So the risk is there. I don’t think we are there yet except in terms of western reaction.

Q: But you don’t see tendencies in that direction? For example, striking deals with dictatorial regimes..

A: Yes, but you get it both ways. If you start choosing regimes on the basis of democratic order. A democratic order is a good thing for the people. But China is not a democracy itself, so it will be totally hypocritical of China to demand of Africa higher democratic standards than it practices itself. China, therefore, decided to outdo the west as it does not have democratic credentials for the time being.

Q: India likes to think that it has a more humane development-centric approach to Africa than other powers. How do you see India’s engagement with the continent?

A: India does have credentials, which are definitely better than those of most major players in world politics today. First of all, India has had longstanding historical relationships with parts of Africa long before the Europeans came. And secondly, it did have for a while the type of leadership that is committed to Afro-Asianism as a basis of solidarity. And people like Nehru and Gandhi were strongly committed to South-South friendship. So all that is a good starting point for a new relationship. But, of course, we need more than just nostalgia for the new 21th century. And India, because it itself started off as a developing country, an exploited country knows many of sensitivities of developing countries in Africa and can avoid some of the pitfalls of a superior power.

Q: Is there a view in Africa, as you said, that it’s time to move from nostalgia and build the relationship with India on new ideas?

A: I think this view is shared and partly because India is still a developing country and everybody wants to do things. It’s capacity to fulfill, however, does not sometime match its intentions. In general there are problems of India as a developing country reduces its effectiveness to meet the obligations of the major powers. And some of it is just the inefficiency of the underdevelopment in India. There are problems in terms of organizational effectiveness.

Q: You have spoken about India being a much bigger cultural force or soft power and its soft power is more deeply felt than any other external player in Africa. How do you see India’s presence in Africa and the importance of cultural relations in framing diplomatic relations between the two sides?

A: India’s soft power influence is very much there, especially if you are comparing it with China where much of the focus has been on economic relations and on some degree of military cooperation. But there is very little Chinese cultural impact on Africa. On the other hand, there is a longstanding Indian cultural impact. And even an older Asian power in Africa is Japan and it has next to no cultural impact except for economic, trade and some diplomatic cooperation. Part of it is that they don’t project themselves culturally. You don’t easily get to listen to Japanese music or Chinese movies. But these have been part of the African experience from the days of the British Raj in both India and Africa. When I was growing up as a child, Indian movies were a regular feature in Mombasa. There even used to be a special institution called the ‘Ladies’ Nights” - a screening of Indian movies, especially organized for ladies where men were not allowed. That institution seems to have disappeared after independence… So this was my childhood. And then our entire cuisine in my subculture has been considerably influenced by the Indian cuisine. There are a lot of dishes in our cuisine that Indians have almost never heard of but there are many dishes that still bear Indian names like pulao, biryani, chapatis etc. For weddings, biryani is a must you know! So there is the movie impact and the music impact. CDs of Indian music were sold like hot cakes in Kenya, Tanzania and north Nigeria. Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar’s songs are a big draw in Africa. And then is some degree of impact of language. Although sometimes you are not sure whether you have got that word directly from India or Persia or some other place. Take the word ‘Taj’ in Taj Mahal. You see our Swahili word for crown is ‘Taji’. And I was discussing about the ‘Mahal’ with my Indian friends in ‘Tajmahal’ and he told me it means palace, in our language the world is “mahali” and it means place.

And then what do you call a vehicle? Gadi. In Swahili, it’s called gadi. So you must have got that from us.

I can’t think about any equivalent linguistic influence from China in Africa. Maybe there is some that I just didn’t know about. But the nature of our interaction with China has not been close enough to include soft power influence like the one we have with India. And that can sometimes happen regardless of our attitude to Indians.

Q: Coming to the Indians, what is the attitude in Africa about the Indian Diaspora that is quite substantial in some countries especially in East Africa and South Africa. What is the attitude of Africans towards Indians? Are they seen as integral parts of African society?

A: There’s a great variation among the attitude of the African countries towards Indians in their midst. In Tanzania, there’s greater Indian integration and even assimilation than in Kenya or in Uganda. And the homes in Tanzania are more pronounced than in Zanzibar where Indians allow themselves to speak Swahili. In Tanzania, there’s quite a high level of assimilation. In South Africa there’s high level of political integration. That’s because the nature the apartheid system created situations where Africans and Indians became allies.

It happened differently in Kenya where there was constant tension as the Indians there were seen as better-off under the British Raj and they were afraid of black majoritarian rule. Therefore, after the end of political apartheid till 1994, many Indians rose very highly in the government. And the first speaker of the parliament was an Indian woman. On the other hand, there was far less either integration or assimilation in Kenya or Uganda etc. In Uganda it was disastrous as an awful government targeted and expelled Indians after they killed thousand of Africans. So it was just an awful tyranny as long as it lasted. In Kenya the Indians have remained a major aspect of the scene and some of them have become powerful. Now we don’t have an Indophobia. However, during the last decade of the colonial rule, the Indian settlers were seen as the allies of the Raj. It was a contradiction of sorts as there was a great admiration of the Indian nationalist movement and of the Congress Party. There were a lot of speeches by African leaders admiring the Indian nationalist movement and many African leaders proclaimed themselves as Gandhians.

Q: In your early career, you were extremely critical of Marxism and other Western ideas and you thought that perhaps Africa needs to have its own version of political liberalism. What kind of political culture do you see working and succeeding in Africa, which can really be instrumental in the context of resurgence and renewal?

A: A subtle version of political liberalism, not necessarily economic liberalism, an open society and pluralism, considerable tolerance of difference and dissent. These are preconditions for Africans to find out what formula suits them best. Because if some other system demands conformity on the basis of who is in power, you are going to stifle potential African creativity, including capacity for self-rediscovery. If you don’t allow freedom you won’t even allow yourself to find yourself. I have always maintained this position. Liberalism has been a potential key to intellectual autonomy and cultural rediscovery. And it is true that I was afraid during those days of our being mesmerized by western Marxism and western versions of socialism. I regard capitalism as an economic system. And some limited capitalism is a precondition for political liberalism like multiparty system and freedom of press.

Q: There are some democracies which are working in Africa but there’s still a big democracy deficit in the continent. What are the factors that are hindering the democratization of African countries and how do you see this process unfolding?

A: Well, for a long time the problem was excessive imitation of somebody else’s democracy. There was very little effort to explore the cultural compatibility and to figure out what kind of system would suit us best. But I think we are making progress. We are in a situation now where we can make amends in the system of democracy. There are experiments like combining a powerful president with a powerful prime minister, like in Kenya. We never had this kind of situation before as Africans have had prime ministers combined with presidents but there wasn’t a situation where they both were powerful. In a country like Kenya, you do need a distribution of offices which are genuine checks and balances. On the whole, the systems are beginning to produce results.

Q: Talking about the bigger role for Africa at the global stage, there’s this ongoing debate about reform of the United Nations Security Council and other international institutions. This debate has acquired an added urgency in view of global financial crisis. Do you see any movement in that direction? Do you see Africa getting there or India getting there?

A: I think they will be forced to make changes certainly to accommodate the aspirations of countries like India and Brazil and China. Whether they’ll make enough changes to accommodate the aspirations of Africa we don’t know. We have been agitating for it, global institutions like that have enormous power over many countries. Therefore, these institutions should have more representation from countries over which they exercise their power. That includes the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Security Council of the Unite Nations. So I think this crisis may create greater responsiveness to the need for global reforms.