Zimbabwe's Triple Crisis: Primitive Accumulation, Nation- State Formation and Democratization in the Age of Neo-Liberal Globalization

ABSTRACT This essay is concerned with the cultural identity of Africa and the appropriate study of Africa(ns). It is a direct response to the notion of conceptually and pragmatically situating Africa, in all its scope and dimensions, back into Africana Studies. The paper raises a fundamental question: whether the vocation of 'African Studies' is really about the study of Africa(ns) and proposes that Africana studies is better suited to project a consummate cultural identity and approach to the study of Africa(ns). Toward that end, the paper distinguishes 'African studies' from 'Africana studies' which is perhaps the first step in confronting the challenges faced by both enterprises, as well as how the latter can become an appropriate intellectual enterprise that would substantively contribute to African life and practice. INTRODUCTION Ancient cultures are being transformed through globalized social reengineering into an electronic, legal, linguistic and moral parking lot that blankets the earth in an undifferentiated paved uniformity. Both the lot and access to it are Indo-European (including clones and associates) owned and managed. Upon the certification of their postmodern Euro-American cultural reorientation, formerly distinct nationalities, states, clans, [ethnicities] are provided with bar-coded entrance keys and assigned parking spaces (fixed economic roles/status) to facilitate the rapid production, transfer and consumption of goods and services. Ownership and control of the means of production, rulemaking agencies, financial centers and the global telecommunications that facilitate the transactions are securely in the hands of the American, European, and Japanese business elite . This is the current face of an old monster that feverishly reinvents itself. This is a wolf pack that changes clothes between slaughters. This is the rapacious and insatiable Indo-European expansionism. (1) The 'parking lot' analogy is both purposeful and instructive. For our purpose, the analogy contextualizes the discussion that follows, elucidating some of the current global and local truisms of the condition of African people. This essay is concerned with the cultural identity of Africa and the ways in which the study of Africa(ns) is approached. It is also a direct response to a statement by Oyekan Owomoyeka: ". perhaps the surest way of getting Africa back into African Studies is to get African Studies back to Africa . But, even if we cannot return African Studies to Africa in geographical terms, we could do so at least epistemologically and paradigmatically. " (2) Owomoyeka's statement is principally a conceptual claim premised on the anchoring and ownership of the study of Africa(ns) by Africans. It raises the fundamental question of whether the vocation of 'African Studies' is really about what its purports to be. Does African Studies contribute to African life and practice in substantive ways? If the study of Africa has been and continues to be driven by paradigms and theories established by non-African scholars, then African studies is an invention of academia, which ultimately serves its own interests and those of non-Africans. Here, I am merely stating the obvious. The problem that Owomoyeka poses is significant not so much for the field of African studies, but for the study of Africa(ns). By the study of Africa(ns), I mean an African centered approach that conceptualizes reality and situates Africans within their cosmological, symbolic, and pragmatic universe. Such an unambiguous approach not only affirms African agency and serves their best interests, but also authenticates the notion of an African cultural-historical continuum that predates African studies and would continue even if the academic field ceased to exist. The discussion that follows seeks to address why the situation Owomoyeka describes came into being and how it is possible for the study of Africa(ns) to conceptually and pragmatically become anchored in the reality of Africa, in all its scope and comprehensible dimensions. …