The man who exercises political responsibilities is a citizen committed to his people and who develops his fight at all founding levels of society. Its political and economic demands must be accompanied by intellectual, social and cultural commitment.
In these terms, we can say that the politician is a social being, honest, builder and convinced who defends the moral, cultural, political and economic values to which his people claim.
It is in this sense that African leaders, faced with the major challenges of the 21st century, must work today to effectively and sustainably build the foundation of the African renaissance.
It is from this postulate that we will develop the conditions necessary for the good management of a State, for its democratic, intellectual, cultural and unitary coherence.
After independence and the decolonization process, the majority of African leaders exercised their power over the rubble of the colonizer with its effects of economic, bureaucratic, social and cultural dependence. This long process of disintegration of African culture has had, as we know, disastrous consequences on the continent and on the African people. All these forces of “depersonalization” have led certain States and their leaders to continue to deny the existence of African values, of a singular social functioning and of a rich culture adapted to its environment, thus continuing the work of colonial division and further dispossessing people of their cultural heritage and their sense of identity.
Colonial imperialism has done its work to be able to maintain the African continent in a state of economic, social and cultural dependence, to such an extent that it cannot assert its continental sovereignty and ensure its capacity for economic, social and cultural.
Sciences, technological advances, cultural values, thought are a universal heritage. In no case are they the monopoly of the colonizing powers. African culture has as much strength and richness as European or Chinese thought. They feed off each other to arrive at what we call universal beliefs which draw their foundation from the singularity of one to enrich the other.
In other words, the European States which colonized the African States are not the intellectual, cultural and economic holders of the true and sustainable development of the African continent.
For a long time and by maintaining this false oppression aimed at establishing a feeling of intellectual, scientific and administrative inferiority in Africa, the colonial powers only exploited the riches of the African continent, to the detriment of the people and their capacity to survive. self-manage.
“Culture is the way in which a given society directs and uses the resources of thought.” It is this ancestral and modern cultural faculty that Africa must equip itself with to recover its true identity.
It is in this “reconstruction” of identity and in this historical and cultural “renaissance” that lie the responsibilities of African political leaders, associated with men of culture, science and intellectuals.
Aimé Césaire said, during the second congress of black writers and artists in 1959, that “in hindsight we will say, to characterize our era, that as the 19th century was the century of colonization, the 20th century was the century of decolonization.
To support our point, what do we mean by the meaning of the word “decolonization”?
It is not only the withdrawal of colonial forces, it is the capacity to “reappropriate” its historical, cultural, social, political and economic heritage. It is, in other words, about making an epistemological break with all the harms of colonization and the mental disorder it has caused.
This concept of cultural reconquest is linked to political will but this cannot be enough. Intellectuals, men of culture, men of science and new technologies and of course all social actors must unite to bring about this historical and cultural awareness.
As Aimé Césaire further clarifies: “In colonial society, there is not only a master and servant hierarchy. There is also, implicitly, a creative and consumer hierarchy.
The creator of cultural values, in good colonization, is the colonizer. And the consumer is the colonized. And everything is fine as long as nothing disturbs the hierarchy. There is a law of comfort in all colonization. Please do not disturb. We are asked not to disturb.
But cultural creation, precisely because it is creation, is disturbing. She is upsetting. And first of all the colonial hierarchy, because of the colonized consumer, it makes the creator. In short, within the colonial regime itself, it returns the historical initiative to the one from whom the colonial regime has given itself the mission of taking away all historical initiative. »
The united African continent must rediscover its impulses of creativity and no longer choose the ease of assimilation. It is under these conditions that the upheaval can take place, by refusing all lazy intellectualism, by renouncing feudal, nationalist, balkanized states to commit honestly, without nepotism, without waste, without misappropriation of public funds, with total respect of public affairs, to build the Africa of tomorrow.
It is from these fundamental perspectives that I add here that the 21st century is that of the “African renaissance”.
Amadou Elimane Kane is a poet and writer.
