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BERNARD MAKHOSOZWE MAGUBANE |
| No subtetly of perception is required to determine that contemporary African Sociology is in crisis. Each year brings forth a crop of books and articles on various aspects of African social life. They are mere produce, not as food for thought---dry as dust. The African whether a student or teacher, if he wants to know what happened during the colonial era, finds himself trapped behind a lot of trivia and apologetics. The sociological books on Africa somehow fail to account for what journalists and novelists know---that behind the facades built by colonialism are nothing but empty forms which instead of serving the forces of life and furthering their growth, stifle and destroy them. For instance Kwame Nkrumah speaks of the grim emptiness that faced him and his government on assumption of independence, the gaps and deficiencies. ³Behind it all,² he writes, ³was the refusal to use our wealth for our development, not only were our natural resources extracted but the benefits of their exploitation came, not to us but to the metropolitan country.² [Africa Must Unite] The reasons for this crisis or what I may call triviality in African social science derive from many sources: there were strong pressures for example from established interests that prevented any serious discussion of the nature of imperialism and colonialism. What became of social anthropology, particularly the attempt to treat the effects of colonial rule, was merely the putting of the current practice into learned jargon. It generalized the notions entertained by plain man, introduced a minimum of logical order into them, and then fed them back to their originator as the latest word in sociological wisdom about Africa. In their deference to the activities of colonialists the African [European] social scientists betrayed their African subjects. The indifferent material world was always constructed in favour of the activities of the colonialists.
---B. Magubane, "Crisis in African Sociology", East African Journal, December 1968. |
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