Mangaliso Sobukwe’s Linkages to Pan-Africanist Struggles for a Decolonized and Afrocentric “African University”

Abstract

The year 2025 holds great significance in the calendar of Pan-Africanism. It marks the 80th anniversary of the fifth Pan African Congress (PAC) held in Manchester, London, following four Pan African Congresses held under the leadership of the Pan-Africanist philosopher, W. E. B. Du Bois. The five PACs, themselves, followed the Pan African Conference convened by the Pan-Africanist lawyer, Henry Sylvester Williams, in 1900. In this study, I examine how Mangaliso Sobukwe’s ideas, as a Pan-Africanist philosopher, located in South Africa, contributed to calls for a decolonized and Afrocentric “African University.” In SA, the calls took dramatic turns in 1995, at Wits University, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Manchester PAC, and, in 2015, at the University of Cape Town (UCT), coinciding with the Manchester PAC’s 70th anniversary. In examining Sobukwe’s Pan-Africanist philosophical thinking on decolonized and Afrocentric education, I simultaneously, examine how Sobukwe’s ideas resonated with Pan-Africanist philosophers, continentally, on decolonized and Afrocentric higher education.

Plain Language Summary

Mangaliso Sobukwe’s Pan-Africanist thoughts on decolonized and Afrocentric education in higher education

This study examines how the Pan-Africanist philosopher, Mangaliso Sobukwe, contributed to debates for a decolonized and Afrocentric education.

Introduction

Mangaliso Sobukwe is largely known for his role as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania’s founding president, the organization which led a march, on March 21, 1960, against the imposition of “passes” (identity documents) which restricted Africans’ movements to certain areas in the country (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, p. 3). Consequently, the South African police shot and killed approximately 80 Africans, and injured an estimated 297 people (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, p. 3). Sobukwe, arrested and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment, was, upon his sentence completion in 1963, detained for 6 years on Robben Island in solitary confinement until 1969 (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, pp. 3–4). Subsequently, he was placed under house arrest, banned, and banished to Kimberley (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, p. 4).

Focus on Sobukwe’s role in the PAC has, even if inadvertently, resulted in lesser attention to his Pan-Africanist philosophical thoughts on education. Yet, at the age of 24, as Fort Hare University’s Student’s Representative Council’s (SRC) president, and on behalf of the graduating class at the Completers’ Social on October 21, 1949, Sobukwe gave his philosophical statement on education: “education means to us [. . .] the identification of ourselves with the masses [. . .] service to Africa” (Pogrund, 2015, p. 422). Secondly, cognizant of Fort Hare University’s trustees’ plan to make the institution an “African College or University,” Sobukwe (2015, pp. 420–421) offered a philosophical conceptualization of an “African University,” noting that for Fort Hare to be meaningfully an “African University,” the “department of African Studies” should not only be “more highly and more rapidly developed,” but that the university itself had to become “the centre of African Studies to which students in African Studies should come from all over Africa,” an explicit statement that an “African University” must be an expression of Pan-Africanism. Thirdly, Sobukwe (2015, p. 421), objecting to the staff ratio of 4 Europeans to 1 African at Fort Hare, and to Fort Hare being “predominantly guided by European thought and strongly influenced by European staff,” proposed that it should become a “barometer of African thought” and “express and lead African thought.” Fourthly, Sobukwe (2015, p. 421) recommended that Fort Hare “should also have a department of Economics and Sociology,” because “A nation to be a nation needs specialists in these things.”

Subsequent to working as a teacher at Jandrell Secondary School in Standerton from 1950 to 1954, he became, in 1954, a language assistant at Wits University’s Department of Bantu Languages, now renamed Department of African Languages (Pogrund, 2015, pp. 49, 55). While at Wits, he was offered a job by Rhodes University’s Department of Bantu Studies as a full lecturer (Pogrund, 2015, p. 90). However, his political commitments not only led to his resignation from Wits, but also his inability to go to Rhodes University (Pogrund, 2015, p. 149). In March 1970, the University of Wisconsin’s African Studies Program in the United States offered Sobukwe an opportunity to teach and to pursue a PhD program (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, p. 27). A month later, Roosevelt University in the US offered Sobukwe a teaching opportunity (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, p. 29). These offers attest to Sobukwe’s “status in the eyes of colleagues in the scholarly domain of African Studies and [. . .] growing international status” (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, pp. 28–29). He could not take up these offers because the South African government denied him an exit permit (Hook & Laubscher, 2024, p. 32).

Lack of appreciation for Sobukwe’s academic roles has contributed to a “common [tendency] among some proponents of decolonisation who revel in showing familiarity with Euro-American theorists and show ignorance about African intellectual history and its leading thinkers and texts” (Zeleza, 2024, p. 44). The “decolonisers seem unaware of historiographical debates in the 1960s about the place of colonialism in Africa’s history” (Zeleza, 2024, p. 33). Acknowledging that after the “decolonisation drive dissipated,” it “was revived in post-apartheid South Africa as the country grappled with its belated decolonisation,” Zeleza (2024, pp. 31–32) further notes that “Black South African scholars suffer from the familiar dilemma of African scholars, a predisposition to value vertical connections to Euro-American scholars over horizontal engagements with other African scholars.” Though Zeleza’s charge is a generalization, his critique should be embraced as a call for an appreciation of African Intellectual History. In that spirit, this article, while the major focus is an examination of Sobukwe’s philosophical contribution on education, a link will be made to calls for decolonized and Afrocentric education at Wits University in 1995, and at UCT in 2015.

We begin by defining Afrocentricity, this exercise’s theoretical framework. We then examine how the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) shaped Sobukwe’s Pan-Africanist philosophical ideas on education, followed by an interrogation of how Pan-Africanist philosophers on the greater African continent influenced and shared Sobukwe’s thinking on the idea of the “African University.” We also examine how Pan-Africanist academics in the early 70s and mid-90s grappled further with the “African University” concept. We then conclude.

Afrocentricity: A Definition and Contextualization

Afrocentricity is a “philosophical perspective associated with the discovery, location, and actualizing of African agency within the context of history and culture” (Asante, 2003, p. 3). While Sobukwe never used the term “Afrocentricity,” his conceptualization of education as “service to Africa”—centering Africa—was Afrocentric. Similarly, his argument that the prerequisite for Fort Hare to be an “African University,” was becoming a “barometer of African thought” which should “express and lead African thought” was Afrocentric as well.

Cognizant that historically, African Studies had been developed by Western universities and largely influenced by concepts of old style “colonial studies” where, in “British Institutes of higher learning [. . .] there was a tendency to look to social anthropologists to provide the kind of knowledge that would help to support the particular brand of colonial policy known as indirect rule,” Nkrumah (1963, pp. 2–3) called for a “re-interpretation and new assessment” of the factors which made the history, culture and institutions, languages and African arts in “new African centred ways.” Nkrumah’s (1963, p. 2) “African centred” (read Afrocentric) approach meant displacing labeling “African music, dancing, and sculpture” as “primitive art” where African creativity was “studied in such a way at to reinforce the picture of African society as something grotesque, as a curious, mysterious human backwater, which helped to retard social progress in Africa to prolong colonial domination over its peoples.” Nkrumah’s (1963, pp. 3, 6, 8) call to scholars to “re-assess and assert the glories and achievements of our African past and inspire our generation, and succeeding generations, with a vision of a better future” was Afrocentric because of an expectation to serve Pan-Africanism by enhancing Africans’ understanding of African institutions and values and the “cultural bonds that unite” Africans, and for the study of Africans’ “ethical and philosophical ideas.” Afrocentricity insists that the “African University must devote itself, first and foremost, to the African environment and society,” and that it should also “localize its external appearances” because, as Ki-Zerbo (1973, p. 25) observes, it is “ludicrous to see African universities adorned by foreign coats of arms under Latin adages as if the continent is devoid of folk sayings.” The foreign images of universities in Africa that Ki-Zerbo observed in the 70s are still present in some universities which celebrate Greek achievements in education as if ancient Egyptian achievements did not predate Greece. This happens because to a large degree education in Africa continues to be Eurocentric. Eurocentrism refers to the centering of European cultural values—including philosophies—as universal values at the expense of the rest of other members of the human race’s values (Seepe, 1998, p. 66).

In 1995, when Wits University’s then Deputy Vice Chancellor, Makgoba (1997, pp. 54, 209), called for his university to be an “African university” through the process of “Africanization,” he, simultaneously, argued that “[c]entral to transforming higher education in South Africa, is the elimination of the present racist, dominant Eurocentric education and its total replacement by a new non-racial, equitable Afrocentric education.” Makgoba (1997, p. 203) defined “Africanization” as a “process or vehicle for defining, interpreting, promoting and transmitting African thought, philosophy, identity and culture.” In rejecting “Eurocentric education” in favor of “Afrocentric education” Makgoba ( 1997, p. 205) argued that Eurocentric education’s “historical function [had] been to mould the African psyche along European lines, to ensure that the educated African is alienated from his roots,” and ensuring that “an African can only compete from a position of weakness.”

The Youth League, formed in 1944, which Sobukwe joined in 1948, becoming its National Secretary in 1949, played an influential role in shaping his Pan-Africanist philosophical thoughts (Gerhart, 1979, pp. 135, 188).

The ANC Youth League, Pan-Africanism, and Sobukwe

The Youth League’s first president was Muziwakhe Anton Lembede, and its secretary, Ashley Peter Solomzi Mda (Edgar & Ka Msumza, 2018, p. 32). Lembede studied philosophy as a major in his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree, and subsequently obtained a Masters of Arts (MA) in Philosophy (Mda, 2018, pp. 131–132). Mda held a Bachelor’s Degree (BA) in History and Philosophy (Edgar & Ka Msumza, 2018, p. 37). Consequently, the Youth League’s orientation was consciously philosophical. African Nationalism, the Youth League’s “ideology underlying” the struggle for national liberation, had a “Philosophical Basis” (Lembede, 2015, pp. 112, 129). That “philosophical basis” was Pan-Africanism, “a recurring Youth League theme,” borne out by the Youth League’s expressed belief “in the unity of all Africans from the Mediterranean Sea in the North to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans in the South” (Karis & Gerhart, 2013, p. 35). This unity of all Africans was informed by a conviction that “Africans are one [. . .] irrespective of tribal connection, social status, educational attainment or economic class” (Lembede, 2015, p. 139).

When Mda succeeded Lembede as the Youth League’s president, “the most important of Mda’s organizing efforts during his presidency of the League centered on the University College of Fort Hare [. . .] at that time the country’s principal center of higher education for Africans” (Gerhart, 1979, p. 127). The rationale was that “[s]ince graduates of Fort Hare were the cream of South Africa’s black intelligentsia, and Africans who were trained as teachers at Fort Hare later took up positions in schools all over the country, capturing Fort Hare for the Youth League was one of Mda’s strategic objectives” (Gerhart, 1979, p. 127). Mda’s other strategic objective, “Winning over Sobukwe was a major triumph for Mda and the Youth Leaguers because he applied the lessons Mda taught him to attracting more converts to their cause” (Edgar & Ka Msumza, 2018, p. 42).

In May 1946, in a piece entitled “Policy of the Congress Youth League,” Lembede (Edgar & Ka Msumza, 2015, p. 141), having noted that “Africans are naturally socialistic in their social practices and customs,” pointed out that the “achievement of national liberation will [. . .] herald in a new era of African Socialism.” African society was “socialistic” because, Lembede (Edgar & Ka Msumza, 2015, p. 130) argued, historically, there “was [. . .] no individual ownership of land in ancient Bantu society” since the “Land belonged virtually to the whole tribe and nominally to the King or Chief.” Lembede (Edgar & Ka Msumza, 2015, p. 130) noted that “Socialism is [. . .] our valuable legacy from our ancestors.” This position of the Youth League followed the Manchester fifth PAC’s move which, in October 1945, rejected “capitalist and reformist solutions [and] unanimously endorsed the doctrine of African socialism” and, also, “adopted Marxist socialism as its philosophy” (Nkrumah, 1971, pp. 52–53). It is within this context that Sobukwe called for Fort Hare to have “a department of Economics and of Sociology,” because “[a] nation to be a nation needs specialists in these things.”

A voracious reader, Sobukwe subscribed to, and read the Pan-Africanist philosopher, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspaper, the West African Pilot (Pogrund, 2015, p. 21).

An “African University”—Azikiwe’s Perspectives

Azikiwe (1968, p. 140) appealed to Africans who had financial muscles to “[g]ive the Renascent African a University,” reasoning that while “[t]he universities of Europe and America have been responsible for the great movements in the national history of these continents [. . .] [a]n African graduate of these universities, unless he has developed his individuality, is nothing short of a megaphone, yea, a carbon copy of these universities [. . .] mis-educated.” Advancing this thinking, Azikiwe was instrumental in the founding of the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, “the first indigenous” university in the country (Onyejegbu et al., 2023, p. 537). Azikiwe (1968, pp. 134, 140) did not only argue that “Africans have been mis-educated,” but also that Africans needed “mental emancipation so as to be re-educated to the real needs of Renascent Africa,” a task which could not be left to Western universities which were mirrors of their social idiosyncrasies. Western education “prepared Africans for life in a social order which is stagnant and unprogressive,” one that made Africans “cultivate false values which are based on the veneer of a decadent civilization [. . .] to be mere imitators,” preventing them from cultivating “moral courage which is the basis of dynamic leadership” (Azikiwe, 1968, p. 134). Leadership, being the soul of any community, a community which lacked “constructive leadership” was destined to be “the footstool of other communities with constructive leadership,” and that the system of education which encouraged “the existence of a privileged class of alphabetists” had no prospect of producing “real leaders to guide and counsel the type of Africans that must come into their own, to-morrow” (Azikiwe, 1968, p. 135).

Azikiwe wanted a distinctly African philosophy of education for an “African University,” a quest shared by the Pan-Africanist philosopher, and independent Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

An “African University”—Nkrumah’s Perspectives

What Sobukwe had envisioned, in 1949, for Fort Hare to be a “centre of African Studies to which students [. . .] should come from all over Africa,” became a reality with the establishment of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, launched in 1963. Nkrumah (1963, p. 1) was pleased that the Institute had “already begun to attract to itself scholars and students from Ghana, from other African countries and from the rest of the world.” While Nkrumah (1963, pp. 9, 12) was gratified that the Institute could “welcome students from Asia, Europe and the Americas,” he emphasized that there was “naturally a special interest in developing this Institute as a centre where students from all parts of Africa can meet together and acquire [. . .] new learning” because the Institute was “essentially an Institute of African Studies, not of Ghana Studies, nor of West African Studies.” This Pan-Africanist orientation, however, was not just to be continental, but global as well, in that the Institute’s work had to “include a study of the origins and culture of peoples of African descent in the Americas and the Caribbean, and [. . .] seek to maintain close relations with their scholars so that there may be cross fertilisation between Africa and those who have their roots in the African past” (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 3). Envisaged was “a many-sided Institute of African Studies which would fertilise the University, and through the University, the Nation” (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 1). Cross fertilization meant that the Institute would foster the kind of education which would “produce men and women with imagination and ideas, who, by their life and actions, can inspire our people to look forward to a great future” (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 6).

In line with Sobukwe’s philosophy of education, “identification [. . .] with the masses [and] service to Africa,” Nkrumah (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 6) pointed out that “education consists not only in the sum of what a man knows, or the skill with which he can put this to his own advantage,” but that “education must also be measured in terms of the soundness of his judgment of people and things, and in his power to understand and appreciate the needs of his fellow men and to be of service to them.” Education should “seek the welfare of the people and recognise [. . .] attempts to solve [. . .] economic, cultural, technological and scientific problems [. . .] The educated man should be so sensitive to the conditions around him that he makes it his chief endeavour to improve those conditions for the good of all” (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 6). Therefore, there had to be an awareness that “as the aims and needs of our society change, so our educational institutions must be adjusted and adapted to reflect this change” (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 6). Nkrumah’s foregoing observation is a clear indication that calls for an “African University” were not limited to social sciences and humanities but, also, extended to hard sciences and technologies. In line with Nkrumah’s vision, in 1972, already, Ki-Zerbo (1973, p. 23) had observed that “the emphasis should be in the application of science to the practical problems of development. In medicine, the emphasis should underline social, prophylactic, and preventive medicine, rather than narrow specialization.”

There was an expectation that in working “closely with the people” and “serving the needs of the people of Ghana, of Africa and the world,” the Institute had to do so bearing in mind that in Ghana there was commitment to “the construction of a socialist society” and, as such, “Teachers and students in our Universities should clearly understand this” and act accordingly (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 7).

The idea articulated by Sobukwe in 1949, that education meant “identification [. . .] with the masses [and] service to Africa,” was reiterated by the Pan-Africanist philosopher, and independent Tanzania’s first head of state, Julius Kambarage Nyerere’s articulation of the role of the “African University.”

An “African University”—Nyerere’s Perspectives

In raising the rhetorical question—Why cannot we exchange students—have Tanzanians getting their degrees in Zambia as Zambians get theirs in Tanzania?—in his address at the inauguration of the then Zambia’s president, Kenneth Kaunda, as the first Chancellor of the University of Zambia in 1966, Nyerere (1968, p. 217) was echoing Sobukwe’s vision that for an institution of higher learning to be an “African University,” it must bring together students from all over the African continent.

Recognizing and appreciating that politicians’ time for “serious thinking about the way forward to Pan-Africanism is limited in the extreme,” Nyerere (1968, p. 216) pointed out that academics had a huge role to play in “achieving this goal of unification.” In line with Sobukwe’s views that education should mean identification with the masses and service to Africa, Nyerere (1971, p. 109), noted that “the purpose of learning is the advancement of man,” adding that “[k]nowledge which remains isolated from the people, or which is used by a few to exploit others, is therefore a betrayal.” Nyerere (1971, p. 108) also observed that “the full value of university activity can only be obtained when the university and the society it serves are organically linked together,” adding that “a university is wasting time if it ignores the society in which its student grew and learned his preliminary lessons.” Nyerere’s linking the community and the university reflected his conviction on the need for the university’s “relevance” in the community. Relevance depended on a number of factors namely, (a) the “African University” centering African philosophical perspectives, (b) relevant curriculum, and (c) community involvement in the university.

The “African University”—Centering African Philosophical Outlooks

Creating an “African University” entailed recognizing that there was “a past error to correct, and a present danger to avoid” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 111). Africans’ “past error” was not recognizing that Westerners expected “Harvard University” to “try to understand American society, and to be understood by it, in order to serve America,” and that “London University and Moscow University [had to] each try to understand, and be understood by, their respective societies in order to serve their nation’s people,” and taking the same approach to universities in Africa. Universities in Africa had “aimed at understanding western society, and being understood by western society, apparently assuming that by this means they were preparing their students to be – and themselves being – of service to African society” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 111). Although Africans had ultimately recognized this “past error,” and sought to rectify it, another challenge—the “present error”—loomed. While there was a rejection of Western domination, there was, simultaneously, a move in the “universities of Africa” of “trying to understand, and be understood, by Russian, East European, or Chinese society [. . .] fooling themselves into believing that they [were] thus preparing themselves to serve African society” in the name of being “progressive” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 111). While this was understandable, it was, nevertheless, “foolish” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 111). While accepting that Russian and Chinese societies were socialists, and that Tanzanians were working toward a socialist order, the “University of Dar es Salaam [had] not been founded to turn out intellectual apes, whether of the right or the left” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 111). The university had to train for a “socialist, self-respecting, and self-reliant Tanzania” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 111). For the University of Dar es Salaam to be “relevant to the present and future society of Tanzania,” there had to be a balancing act of avoiding “the twin dangers” of “some mythical ‘international standard’” and, “forcing our University to look inwards and isolate itself from the world in which we live” (Nyerere, 1971, pp. 107, 110).

Relevant Curriculum

Nyerere (1971, p. 111) was not oblivious to the fact that while the University of Dar es Salaam had to prepare people “to work in the future Tanzania,” and “to teach that which will be useful in years and decades to come,” Tanzania did “not exist on a planet by itself,” but was “part of Africa and the world” and “increasingly affected by what happens outside its own borders.” Cautioning against too narrow a definition of the word “relevant” which would be “inviting [. . .] own destruction,” Nyerere (1971, p. 111) pointed out that Tanzanians were human beings who were “entitled to the accumulated wisdom of mankind – and who have a corresponding duty to contribute to man’s pool of knowledge.” In order to achieve relevance in the University of Dar es Salaam’s disciplines, knowledge and syllabuses, there had to be recognition that Tanzania was a “backward and poor country” most of whose people lived in the rural areas, whose objective was to build a “socialist society” (Nyerere, 1971, pp. 110, 112).

Community Involvement

Emphasizing that “[i]n its teaching activities, and in its search for new knowledge [. . .] the aim of the University of Dar es Salaam must be service to the needs of a developing socialist Tanzania,” Nyerere (1971, p. 110) observed that such a purpose must not only “determine the subjects taught, the content of the courses, the method of teaching, and the manner in which the University is organised,” but, also, reflect “its relations with the community at large.” In the interaction between the community and the university, Nyerere (1971, p.113), appreciating that “[i]deas about what is needed, and can be done, should come both from the university staff and from the community at large,” emphasized that community members should not be expected to be passive recipients, but rather active members. Reference to “community” included “men who look after the grounds, or wash the dishes [. . .] as well as the students” (Nyerere, 1971, p. 114).

Nkrumah’s and Nyerere’s centering of socialism in the “African University” reveals not only convergences on the part of Pan-Africanist philosophers but, also divergencies.

Pan-Africanist Philosophers’ Quest for Socialism: Convergences and Divergencies

Blyden (2016, p. 32), notes that Africans’ “method [. . .] in all material things” is “socialistic and co-operative.” This “socialistic and co-operative” orientation was enabled, “from generation to generation” by, “first, the collective ownership by the tribe of all the land and water; second, the equal accessibility of these natural objects to all – man, woman, and child” (Blyden, 2016, p. 32). This African system enabled “free access at all times to the land and to the water, to cultivate the land for food and clothing, to hunt and to fish” (Blyden, 2016, p. 32). Blyden (2016, p. 39) points out that the “communistic order of African life is not the result of accident,” but “born of centuries of experience and is the outcome of a philosophical and faultless logic.”

The meaninglessness of political freedom without economic freedom, was articulated, in 1937, by Azikiwe (1968, p. 9) who noted that the “Renascent African cannot create a new social order without an economic foundation” and that the “quest for food, shelter, and clothing has been the primal motive in the establishment of society,” and that this quest was “responsible for the formulation of the social and political institutions of society [and] still the determinant factor in African contemporary history.” Since “African society is essentially Socialistic,” in a Renascent Africa, “No longer must wealth be concentrated in the hands of the few,” and “No longer must the profit motive guide and control the aim in the life of the African” (Azikiwe, 1968, pp. 9, 131).

In July 1943, while still a student at Makerere College, having opposed capitalism as “alien to African society,” Nyerere (Molony, 2014, p. 68) wrote a letter entitled, and advocating “African Socialism” in the Tanganyika Standard newspaper. Along the same lines, Nkrumah (1970, p. 73) noted that

If one seeks the social-political ancestor of socialism, one must go to communalism. Socialism has characteristics in common with communalism, just as capitalism is linked with feudalism and slavery. In socialism, the principles underlying communalism are given expression in modern circumstances.

In linking socialism to traditional African culture/s, Nkrumah (1970, p. 68) pointed out that the

traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can only be described, in its social manifestation, as being socialist. This arises from the fact that man is regarded in Africa as primarily a spiritual being, a being endowed originally with a certain inward dignity, integrity and value.

Nkrumah (1970, p. 69) concluded, therefore, that the African “idea of the original value of man imposes duties of a socialist kind upon us.”

Though Nkrumah (1973, p. 440) was once an advocate of “African socialism,” in his later political life, he disassociated himself from the term, pointing out that “uncertainties concerning the meaning and specific policies of ‘African socialism’ have led some of us to abandon the term because it fails to express its original meaning and because it tends to obscure our fundamental socialist commitment”:

Some year ago, African political leaders and writers used the term “African socialism” in order to label the concrete forms that socialism might assume in Africa. But the realities of the diverse and irreconcilable social, political and economic policies pursued by African states today have made the term “African socialism” meaningless and irrelevant (Nkrumah, 1973, p. 440).

Nkrumah’s criticism targeted, specifically, a conference, called the “Dakar Colloquium,” held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1962. The conference was partly sponsored by Senegal’s government, whose president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, was an advocate of “African Socialism” (Zolberg, 1964, p. 113). A view was expressed at the Dakar Colloquium that in Africa there was no “class struggle,” and that, therefore, “African socialism will be gradual and peaceful,” and that Karl Marx’s socialism was different from African socialism (Zolberg, 1964, p. 119).

While Nkrumah (1973, pp. 440, 441) believed that “basic organization of many African societies in different periods of history manifested a certain communalism and that the philosophy and humanist purposes behind that organization are worthy of recapture,” he also insisted that “All available evidence from the history of Africa, up to the eve of the European colonization, shows that African society was neither classless nor devoid of a social hierarchy.” Nkrumah (1973, p. 440) argued that in some parts of Africa before colonialism, there existed feudal practices which involved “a deep and exploitative social stratification, founded on the ownership of land.” Taking off his gloves in his fight against African socialism, Nkrumah (1970, p. 26) dismissed it as “meaningless,” “irrelevant,” and a “myth.” African socialism

implies the existence of a form of socialism peculiar to Africa and derived from communal and egalitarian aspects of traditional African society [. . .] used to deny the class struggle and to obscure genuine socialist commitment [. . .] employed by those African leaders who are compelled – in the climate of the African Revolution – to proclaim socialist policies, but who are at the same time deeply committed to international capitalism, and who do not intend to promote genuine socialist economic development (Nkrumah, 1970, p. 26).

Thus, Nkrumah (1973, p. 442) squarely identified himself with “scientific socialism.”

The Dakar Colloquium and African Socialism were also severely criticized by The Spark, a publication associated with Nkrumah’s the Convention People’s Party (CPP; Legum, 1964, p. 151). The Spark dismissed African socialism as an invention of neo-colonialists whose historical mission was to “combat and if possible defeat scientific socialism, firstly by introducing elements alien to socialist thought, and secondly by denying some of the foundations of socialist ideology” (Legum, 1964, p. 151). While Nkrumah had written approvingly of Africa’s traditional way of life, and that “some parts” of Africa were feudal, The Spark dismissed the “traditional collectivist way of African life” as “a mere illusion,” adding that Africa before colonialism, “wasn’t a classless society” with harmonious relations, but “a feudal system based on the hegemony of a few big families lording it over less privileged ones and even serfs” (Legum, 1964, p. 151). The Spark (Legum, 1964, p. 151) further charged that in pre-colonial Africa, human rights were “non-existent and industrialization was absent.”

In defense of African socialism, Nyerere (1968, p. 14) dismissed the criticisms as an “apparent tendency among socialists to try and establish a new religion – a religion of socialism itself.” Nyerere (1968, p. 14) found it distasteful that “scientific socialism” was paraded as the “holy writ in the light of which all other thoughts and actions of socialists have to be judged.” While Nyerere (1968, p. 15) conceded that “Marx was a great thinker” who “gave a brilliant analysis of the industrial capitalist society in which he lived,” he also made it clear that Marx “was not God,” adding that “his books are the result of hard thinking and hard work, not a revelation from God”:

Africa’s conditions are very different from those of Europe in which Marx and Lenin wrote and worked. To talk as if these thinkers provided all the answers to our problems, or as if Marx invented socialism, is to reject both the humanity of Africa and the universality of socialism. Marx did contribute a great deal to socialist thought. But socialism did not begin with him, nor can it end in constant reinterpretations of his writings (Nyerere, 1968).

Turning to the concept “science,” which is associated with Marx’s “scientific socialism,” Nyerere (1968, p. 16) pointed out that scientific thought meant finding out all the facts in a particular situation, independent of a person’s personal feelings or “preconceived ideas,” analyzing such facts, and working out solutions. Pointing out that it would not be “very scientific to reject Africa’s past when trying to build socialism in Africa,” Nyerere (1968, pp. 16–17) argued that a “really scientific socialist would therefore start his analysis of the problems of a particular society from the standpoint of that society.”

The debate about the meaning of the “African University” took center stage at the Accra Workshop, in Ghana, hosted by the Association of African Universities (AAU) from 10 to 15 July, 1972, the theme being Creating the African University: Emerging Issues of the 1970s.

The Accra Workshop’s Quest for the “African University”

The AAU’s self-dentification with Pan-Africanism in its preamble, notes that the AAU was established as “a corporate body to achieve our aims and objectives with the spirit of the Organization of African Unity” (Yesufu, 1973a, p. 5). The Accra Workshop was uniquely “African” in the sense that the “analysts who wrote the background papers and did the preliminary work of the conference, as well as the effective participants, were all drawn from within African universities” (Yesufu, 1973a, p. 6). The AAU believed that the “first pre-requisite was to redefine the whole concept of University in relation to Africa, and to identify and discuss some of the most basic problems which must be overcome in the search for an African identity for the African University” (Yesufu, 1973a, p. 6). In an Afrocentric spirit, the organization “proceeded to identify and formulate a new philosophy of higher education, particularly university education for Africa, in the hope of evolving institutions that are not only built, owned and sited in Africa, but are of Africa, drawing their inspiration from Africa, and intelligently dedicated to her ideals and aspirations” (Yesufu, 1973a, p. 5). The need for “a new philosophy” for an “African University” was a recognition that there was a difference between a “University in Africa” and an “African University” (Mthembu, 2004, p. 80). As Yesufu (1973b, p. 40) points out, a “truly African university must be one that draws its inspiration from its environment, not a transplanted tree, but growing from a seed that is planted and nurtured in the African soil.” Calls for an “African University” were a quest for “a new working definition of university, which would signify its commitment, not just to knowledge for its own sake, but to the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of, and for the amelioration of the conditions of, the common man and woman” (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 40). This means that an “African University”

must be accountable to, and serve, the vast majority of the people who live in rural areas. The African University must be committed to active participation in social transformation, economic modernization, and the training and upgrading of the total human resources of the nation, not just the small élite (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 42).

The movement for the Africanization of higher education faced huge challenges when it emerged in the late 1950s and onward.

Toward an “African University”—Struggles, Challenges, Resistances, Success, and Prospects

In 1956, when France conceded internal self-government to African countries, “control of the school curriculum was reserved to the metropolitan power along with diplomacy, national defence and finance,” with the co-operation signed during 1960–1, stipulating that “no African state may unilaterally reform the educational curriculum” (Ki-Zerbo (1973, p. 20). As late as 1968, “university degrees in the Francophone African countries were issued by the French Ministry of Education” until, subsequently, African countries’ certificates were recognized as equivalent to those of France (Ki-Zerbo, 1973, p. 21). This “principle of degree equivalency” conferred “prestige of the French label,” thus enhancing the chances of Africans wanting to work in France (Ki-Zerbo, 1973, p. 21). Confronted with these challenges “after what might well be called a decade of African Independence, the universities seem to remain as foreign as their origins” (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 39). While sending the best local graduates abroad for higher education helped some universities in Africa to localize their academic staff, the move actually undermined the Africanization project because by “virtue of their overseas training few of these indigenous staff had any insight into, or experience of, local problems” (Yesufu, 1973b, pp. 40–41). Also, the universities’ “philosophy and the academic content of the courses offered remained largely foreign” (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 41).

Partly because “the planners of the majority of the new African universities were academics drawn from metropolitan countries,” virtually all of them had drawn their inspiration from, and modeled their institutions upon foreign universities, especially those of the ex-colonial powers (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 38). The foreign character of universities in Africa persisted because “[e]ven the institutions that were established at the time of or soon after independence seemed to have felt the necessity to be closely identified with one or more foreign institutions, sometimes out of consideration for international recognition, and, as frequently, in order to be able to attract technical and other assistance” (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 38). However, in spite of the “imitative tendencies and foreign influences” identified above, “the founders of most African universities did seem to have fully appreciated the need, at least in principle, to adapt them for an effective role within their local context, and they philosophized accordingly” (Yesufu, 1973b, p. 38).

The 1972 AAU’s move of identifying and formulating a new philosophy of higher education, thus drawing a distinction between a “University in Africa” and an “African university” was a major contribution in the struggle for an Afrocentric higher education, one that inspired, and was openly acknowledged by Makgoba (1997, p. 176) when he called for the same at Wits in 1995.

 Makgoba’s call was dismissed by some as “lowering academic standards” and dumping “international standards” (Makgoba, 1997, pp. 86, 209). This charge was there in the 60s and 70s, prompting Ajayi (1973, p. 19), who, while appreciating the “international dimension of the university,” simultaneously argued that “if the international character of African universities continues to be interpreted as obliging the continuation of strong ties with European and American Universities,” such was “undermining the emergence of the idea of the university in the African environment.” The term “Africanization,” it was alleged by detractors, created confusion because there was a “lack of clarity, coherence and detail on the definition and implications of Africanisation” (Seepe, 1998, p. 63). Responding to these charges, Seepe (1998, p. 63) argued that it was “intellectual mischief to expect a new and evolving concept to assume the same meaning to all people, and intellectual dishonesty to expect it to immediately provide detail on how it is going to be acted out.” Seepe (1998, p. 63) further argued that what was required was “not a definition per se, but elements and meanings that can be attached to the concept.” Seepe’s foregoing responses were defensive and escapist in that the debates on “Africanization” of higher education were, though “evolving,” certainly not “new.” As shown above, these calls were raised earlier by Azikiwe, Sobukwe, Nkrumah, Nyerere, and the AAU.

In the 90s, issues which emerged “with alarming monotony whenever the concept of Africanisation [was] raised,” included “African culture(s) and standards,” questioning the “relevance [of African culture(s)] to the learning and teaching of science and mathematics” (Seepe, 1998, p. 66). The questions posed in 1995 were raised in 2015 when the Rhodes Must Fall Movement demanded decolonized and Afrocentric education: How do you decolonize and Africanize science and mathematics? While some genuinely sought answers to these questions, others had already concluded that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education was universal and had nothing to do with colonialism and, consequently, decolonization and Africanization, this attitude informed by the “idea [. . .] entrenched in the academy and in schools” where the “history and philosophy of Western science and mathematics suggest that these sciences originated in Europe” (Hoadley & Galant, 2019, p. 106). The question of STEM as shown above, was confronted by Nkrumah and the AAU. It cannot be avoided in the renewed struggle for decolonized and Afrocentric education. Sobukwe (2015, p. 422) understood this when he said: “In whatever branch of learning you are, you are there for Africa.”

Conclusion

Cognizant that the year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the Manchester fifth PAC, this article sought to establish Sobukwe’s Pan-Africanist philosophical contribution to decolonized and Afrocentric education in the context of his conceptualization of the term “African University.” In doing this, I sought to locate how Sobukwe’s ideas drew inspiration from, and resonated with Pan-Africanist philosophers in South Africa and in other parts of the African continent. Establishing these linkages extended to locating them between Sobukwe, on the one hand, and calls for Afrocentric education by Makgoba in 1995, and the Rhodes Must Fall Movement in 2015, seeking to critically appreciate the development of African Intellectual History about which little is known, as pointed out by Zeleza, by even African scholars advocating decolonization. The salient thread which emerged in this examination was a clear recognition by Pan-Africanist philosophers that the “African University” is possible only if “universities in Africa” were to operate on the basis of, and are informed by clear African philosophies on the meaning of education in general, and African higher education, in particular. For such to take place there is a need for Pan-Africanist scholars to create global networks which would strive to see to it that Pan-Africanist philosophers such as Sobukwe, Azikiwe, Nkrumah, and Nyerere, are given their rightful spaces in African Studies, particularly with reference to disciplines such as History, Political Science and Philosophy. Doing so would enable African stakeholders—politicians and scholars—to appreciate that trying to fix educational challenges without an enabling political and economic environment is a futile exercise. It was for these reasons that Sobukwe, inspired by the Youth League’s socialist inclinations, as early as 1949, advocated for an economics department at Fort Hare. It was for the same reasons that Nkrumah and Nyerere—their differences notwithstanding—both recognized the need to eliminate capitalism and bring about socialism in their quest for an “African University.” At the moment these scholars exist on the periphery in academic institutions, hence the call for decolonized and Afrocentric education in 1995 and 2015, 1 year, and 21 years, respectively, into South Africa’s democratic dispensation. A reflection on Pan-Africanist scholars’ endeavors on the occasion of the 80th anniversary on the Manchester fifth PAC, reveals that while Sobukwe’s, Nkrumah’s and Nyerere’s vision of having African students from one country studying in another, has been achieved, their reason—building pan-African consciousness and solidarity—is far from being achieved because to this day some Africans regard fellow Africans coming from other African countries as invasive “foreigners” deserving to be ill-treated, deported, and or killed. Building pan-African consciousness through the “African University” is the task of Pan-Africanist scholars, in general, and Pan-Africanist philosophers, in particular.