One of the most encouraging things to happen recently in Africa is the growing concern among local people with the need for respect for civil and political rights. In the forefront of this new movement are many of the continent’s intellectuals. Their agenda includes a more general call for respect of the rights of all citizens but also a particularly strong plea for greater academic freedom. For example, declarations in support of academic freedom were passed by the Association of University Teachers in Zimbabwe 1989 and by delegates from autonomous staff associations in six institutions of higher learning in Tanzania in May 1990. Both these initiatives came about as a result of government decisions to abrogate the autonomy of the universities as laid down in the acts once adopted by national law-makers to guide the operations of these institutions.

Among the changes and currents in the politics of African nations today are some the West “approves of,” for example, the trend toward multi-party systems. Others threaten civil liberties and the establishment of democratic states, in particular, the freedom of artistic expression implied in liberal democracy. “Islamic Fundamentalism” is seen by many in the West as especially threatening.

In the heydays of African socialism, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere declared that socialism was a state of mind. It was, it turned out, the state of mind of some intellectuals, but neither of the mass of the population nor of those in a position to turn an ideal into a political and economic system. In the early 1990s, democracy was sweeping through the continent—as the state of mind not only of a few intellectuals but of a larger segment of the population, although by no means all. It was revulsion against the abuses and human rights violations perpetrated by single party and military regimes, against the lack of accountability of leaders and the economic hardship brought about by years of mismanagement on the part of officials seeking first the political kingdom.

Right from the period of colonialism the herd or cult of the national bourgeoisie has been consistent in its chicanery of reifying, alienating and approximating the social existence of the peasants, the working class and other oppressed social strata. They operate the political culture from various levels of fetishisms as politicians, businessmen, professionals, religious prelates, feudal oligarchies and cultic forces. Set against the masses is the conglomerate of the class referred to by Wole Soyinka as the “self-consolidating regurgitative lumpen Mafiadom of the military, the old politicians and business enterprises” (The Man Died, London, Andre Deutsche Ltd., 1972, p. 181). This class consists of those that Frantz Fanon refers to as the conduit pipes and errand boys of international monopoly capital.

A realignment of economic interests in Zimbabwe is fueling broad-based demands for an open, democratic, multiparty society. The shift in alignment comes as a result of the ruling party’s failure to meet the needs and expectations of the majority of Zimbabweans in the eleven years since independence. Under the leadership of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), headed by President Robert Mugabe, the government adopted socialism guided by Marxist-Leninist principles as its ideological philosophy. The socialist agenda, coupled with cumbersome, centralized decision-making by a bloated bureaucracy, discouraged domestic and foreign investment and stymied employment growth.

African writers in English have done much to enlarge the image of Africa in the world. The novelists among them have contributed most to the understanding of the African points of view and perspectives on life, politics, culture and history. In their roles as chroniclers, custodians of the collective heritage, social critics, teachers and visionaries of their people, the novelists have illuminated the African situation and the forces that have kept the continent in an endemic state of crisis.

Over the past few years the Montreal World Film Festival has continued to increase its programming of films by African directors. The 1991 edition, which ran from August 22-September 2, was certainly no exception. I happened to turn on the television to the French station and caught Société Radio Canada’s “official” review of Laafi by Pierre Yameogo of Burkina Faso. The reviewers, Chantal Jolis and René Homier-Roy, dismissed Yameogo’s portrayal of a current African problem—braindrain—as weak in terms of artistic production. For example, they both agreed that Laafi had too many “monotonous moments.” Homier-Roy, in particular, seemed completely oblivious to the colonizing attitude he displayed when he spoke of how the film illustrated the “petit-nègre” (a phrase I have rarely heard spoken since I left France in 1987) side of Africans. He then proceeded to “legitimize” the comment by shrugging his shoulders and declaring, “It’s the Africans who are showing it this time, not us.” Finally, the reviewers decided that African films are really only useful for their “anthropological” information.

Paraphrasing Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Ivoirian politician Camille Aliali once said, “Democracy is a system of government for virtuous people. It seldom works even in mature countries. We must be realistic. Our people are ignorant of the problems we face. They cannot be left to choose the solutions,....” In 1990, the president and his close associates changed their minds. On May 3, 1990, the president of Côte d’Ivoire announced the legalization of opposition parties and the intent to hold multi-party elections. On October 28, Ivoirians voted in their first multi-candidate presidential election, which pitted the eighty-five year old Houphouët against long-standing critic and candidate of the “democratic left” coalition, Laurent Gbagbo.

Prior to 1960, such countries as England and Belgium trained a number of Africans in the technical areas of “movie-making” through their colonial film units which produced health and educational documentaries as well as propagandist shorts praising the colonial order and/or disseminating the Christian faith. Nevertheless, little had been done to encourage native “movie-thinking.” The late Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (Benin/Senegal), one of the pioneers and early historians of African cinema, often pointed out how the French colonial authorities would refuse scholarships to aspiring African film students, arguing that priority was to be given to the training of African doctors and teachers. One could very well suspect that there also might have been some concern as to the kind of politically detrimental anti-colonialist images these film students would have later produced.

The clarion call for democracy that pervades the world scene has given much legitimacy to discourses on democracy in Africa. However, although the debate on democracy has gained momentum and respectability on the African political landscape, its parameters and contents are still not well defined. In Uganda, the assumption of power by Yoweri Museveni, leader of the National Resistance Army (NRA), was hailed by many as holding out a promise for fundamental change in the country. In particular, it was hoped that Museveni and his army would allow for the great majority of Ugandans to exercise their political acumen and legitimate right to shape a democratic destiny for the country.

The decade between 1963 and 1973 was heralded by some observers as liberal democracy’s darkest hour in many parts of the non-Western world. During this period seven Latin American democracies collapsed; one African country after the other rejected multi-party liberal democracy in favor of either single-party or military regimes; Soviet hegemony prevailed and seemed to be growing stronger in communist Eastern Europe and parts of the Third World; and pockets of authoritarianism could even be found in Southern Europe (e. g., Spain, Portugal, Greece). Such developments led scholars to concentrate their research efforts on trying to understand why democracy had failed to either take hold or to survive in those places where it had been successfully introduced.

There are probably a billion videocassettes in the United States. Yet few, probably under a thousand, are African films. I want to ask why this is and describe a strategy to change it.

How can one of the least known and most under-funded cinemas in the world, African cinema, find a place in the most lavishly promoted and capitalized media marketplaces on earth, the U.S. feature film market?

In 1982 I left Ghana, as director of the Food Research Institute, for Cameroon. The next three years were spent researching and gathering information and data on alternative, affordable, manageable and sustainable processes that can be put together to form workable agro-industrial systems for use in Africa.

In 1984 I started experimenting with the organic system of crop production as an affordable improvement to the traditional multiple and multi-story cropping system. Several fruit trees—guava, carambola, sour sop, mango and avocado—were planted in a backyard plot of about twenty meters by nine meters or 180 square meters to which compost was applied.

The African student studying about Africa in the United States participates in two communities. The first community is the academic one in which studies of Africa are pursued; the second community is the existential one with which the individual identifies outside academe—most often the country of origin or the continent in general. (By existential community I mean the community to which the student has profound personal ties, such as family and friendships, and an enduring commitment.) Each community has its own values, commitments, and immediate agendas. As a member of the academic community, the African student must contribute to theoretical advancement; and, as a privileged member of an existential community, he or she must contribute to the development process.

Interest in the issue of multiculturalism has picked up momentum in the past few years. The reasons given for this increased interest in the focus of what multiculturalism is, what it means, what it should do, must do, and what should be done about it, are as varied as the people who discuss it. The main focus here is how it is looked upon in academic discourse and the ways in which the discussion so far has ignored the basic and real issues in continuation of conventional modes of engagement that refuse to acknowledge and admit the legitimacy of the views of marginalized people.