Chronicle Editor
Intellectually, getting into trouble is an achievement. Not being questioned or critiqued, or challenged might be a sign that one is not doing something right. It is being intellectually irrelevant or not being intellectual at all to be ignored or not being engaged with.
That truism has made all intellectuals some kind of attention seekers and performers of the art of attracting attention. As a result, some great intellectuals have gone to their graves not knowing that they are intellectuals and great ones because in their lives they were ignored, only for their work to be recognised after their sad deaths.
Hannah Arendt died knowing herself as a controversial journalist who wrote a number of articles and essays about contentious issues. That she was after all a philosopher came many decades after her demise. This is true of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who was a dubious and inconsequential prize-winning essayist that was later, after his death, included amongst the great philosophers. George Orwell too, died without the full knowledge of the impact of his writings. I arrive at the observation that actually, the greatest intellectuals are those that die before the fruition and recognition of their work.
These are the prophets who think of and write on unpopular and unbelievable truths that societies recognise only later when the thinkers have physically exited the intellectual landscape. These are also few in number as most would be intellectuals prefer quick truths that gain immediate attention and popularity.
As such, I am boldened to think that the true intellectuals are the un-intellectuals and non-intellectuals whose work relies on time for validation and fulfilment. For that reason, I am skeptical of all the celebrity journalists and scholars that are serving us fast food for thought, quick truths, and easy facts on the condition of the world right now. I am interested in the dissidents that are cutting against the grain and depositing unpopular and unbelievable observations. I am, otherwise, critically suspicious of popular truths and quick wisdoms because they tend to credit living and selfish intellectuals that might be opportunists who sing for their supper, lunch and breakfast included. Cheap shots might be what our intellectual celebrities are firing right now. They speak the truth of power instead of speaking truth to power.
The present absence
That true intellectuals are few is realised when the world faces an existential crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the present war between Israel and Hamas are only but a few events that have exposed the absence of intellectuals in the world. This is far from that our intellectuals have not observed, thought about, and written on these events. They have, but only to amplify the Euro-American line which is not the only line but enjoys undeserved hegemony. To be intelligent now, for instance, is to brilliantly do the easy and popular thing of articulately condemning Russia, blaming the terrorists, and demanding that the United States of America must urgently lead the whole world in restoring order in the world. This is a convenient and popular line that may easily get one rewarded and popularised for. We have a scarcity of brave dissenters and critics that can name the condition of the world without singing the boring song of power and its self-righteous truth.
The New World Disorder
How is it new, is it a world, and how is it disorder and not order? I received attention last year at a conference when one delegate decided to publicly correct me for talking about the New World Disorder instead of the New World Order that he was so informed about. I took the opportunity of being questioned and corrected to imagine that I was right after all. I then went on to explain why, for Africa, the New World Order that my interlocutor was teaching about was a disorder. So many things, I said, that are about and for the world were actually problems for Africa.
The world is a world against Africa I opined. After all, I noted, the world might have to unbecome for Africa to become. With the world, Africa does not exist because the existence of the world has meant a troubled existence for Africa. The present world is rooted in African problems.
The prosperity of the present world is based on the impoverishment of Africa. The Wealth of Nations that Adam Smith wrote about, classically, was created through the theft of Africans that were turned into slaves and African resources that continue to be siphoned to the West to find the power and the prosperity of the Euro-American Empire. F
or me and a few others, it was obvious that one cannot speak of the world without describing Euro-America and its historical violence against Africa. Not even to ignore that the East has also historically impacted against and on Africa. Where I lost even the few others that agreed with me is when I noted that the war in Ukraine was first and foremost an African war and a war that was against Africa from the Euro-American Empire. Some of my friends, even, gave me the eyes of specialists looking at a madman. I was almost convinced myself that I had lost it.
The dissidents
Professor John Mearsheimer and Professor Jeffrey Sachs are two American intellectuals that have used being American to educate the world about the evil of America in the world system. Joseph Stiglitz too, is one western thinker that has worked for the American government and the World Bank and has used that experience to unmask the financial evil of the West in the world.
I am writing about Americans that could have made more money and become even more famous by selling the American line of truth but have chosen not to do so. These are dissidents that question popular truths and powerful standpoints. These have gained many enemies for their courage and purpose. And so are they great intellectuals who may have their greatness only fully recognised after their deaths.
I say this without falling for the trap of celebrating western critics of the West that might just be using their power and privilege of being western to push personal names and careers by dissenting for the pleasure and heroism of dissenting. They may also be using dissent to sell the false image of a West that is democratic and that it can live with opposition and critique to itself.
Africa my Africa
I am against war. Against the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza and Israel right now. My being against war and all wars is based on my being an African.
My being of an Africa that has existed because of wars against it right from conquest to the present. To be African in the present world system is to be a victim of war and all wars because every war in the world ends up with African symptoms and African reverberations. Africa cannot afford to be a neutral spectator of any war in the world because Africa has known war best from being the ultimate victim.
It is not only easy but also natural for Africans to see themselves as all victims of war in any part of the world because war has been our definition and the definition of our victimhood. Africa should lead the world from its disorder to decolonial order and liberation. It is Africa, perhaps, that will humanise the world.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of Western Cape, Cape Town, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected].
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Bongani Ndlovu