Afrika’s Cause Must Triumph: Towards the Hegemony of Lembede’s “Afrika for the Afrikans” as a Political Philosophy of National Liberation in “South Africa”

• Published in: Thinker (Craighall Park, South Africa : Online) Vol. 99; no. 2; pp. 54 - 63
• Main Author: Lepuru, Masilo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 30.05.2024
• ISSN: 2075-2458; 2616-907X
• DOI: 10.36615/j50md866

Anton Lembede, who is regarded as a member of the “new Afrikans”, propagated the political philosophy of Afrikanism thatis premised on an exclusive idea of “Afrika for the Afrikans.” On the other hand, A.P. Mda’s idea of “broad nationalism” pursued an inclusive idea of Afrika. This paper seeks to foreground Lembede’s exclusive idea of Afrika in contrast to Mda’s idea of “broad nationalism” and inclusive idea of Afrika. We will rely on the historical and comparative method and the Afrikan-centred theoretical paradigm. There are several findings which this paper has deduced. The first one is that the political and intellectual relationship between Lembede and Mda has eventuated in the epochal emergence of the antagonism between two Afrikan political philosophies of national liberation in conquered Azania. These philosophies are Afrikanism and broad nationalism. The second one is that the intellectual legacy of Lembede is a marginalised study in South African scholarship especially on the figures of the Black Radical Tradition. The third one is that the broad nationalism of Mda was transformed into the Azanian political tradition by Robert Sobukwe and Steve Biko. The last one is that the triumph of Mda’s idea of Afrika must triumph has contributed to the disastrous dominance of nonracialism in South Africa at the expense of the racial nationalism of Lembede. This nonracialism has taken the form of the Congress/Charterist nonracialism of the African National Congress and its Tripartite Alliance and the Azanian nonracialism of the Pan-Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement. The fundamental objective of this paper is a call for the replacement of these naïve and dangerous forms of nonracialism with the uncompromising racial nationalism of Lembede, so that Africa’s causecan triumph as he envisioned it.