Panmobilism and optimism in teilhardian humanism

8.2.2.2. The split of personality in the African

The Negro also carries the blame of his depersonalisation because he always strives to be someone else, not himself. According to Frantz FANON, such a striving is a tragic and forlorn illusion. Fanon insists:

The black man wants to be white. The white man slaves to reach a human level...For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white...but the white man is sealed in his whiteness, the black man in his blackness.^'

It is thus true that we cannot find our identity by dreaming of becoming what we are not, by escaping from our identity. Even though caused by racism and colonialism, the inferiority complex in the African can be solved through a change in mentality. What we ought to fight is the attitude of not accepting one's own identity as black. In effect, Aime CESAIRE observes that the Negro-African tends to reject himself and his whole ancestry which has made him into what he is. Let us listen to Cesaire's expression of this denial of self:

[...] and these tadpoles in me bloomed by my prodigious ancestry!

those who invented neither powder nor compass

those who never tamed steam or electricity

those who did not explore sea or sky

but they know in their innermost depths

the country of suffering

those who knew of voyages only when uprooted

those who are made supple by kneelings

those domesticated and Christianized

those inoculated with degeneracy

tom-toms of empty hands

tom-toms of sounding wounds

burlesque tom-toms of treason⁼

In effect, nobody can give another man an identity; one cannot even help him to find it; it is something personal: by helping him, one only succeeds in making him find a spurious identity, one which is and remains an appendix of that of his "benefactor". One can only remain oneself by oneself. Albert LUTHULI gives a similar point of view when he says:

^I Frantz Fanon, Black skin, white masks, Great Britain, I970, p. I2. ² Aime Cesaire, Return to my native land, Paris, I97I, p. II0.

It was no more necessary for the African pupils to become Black Englishmen, than it was for the teachers to become White Africans...I remain an African, I think as an African, I speak as an African, I act as an African.^I

With much more regret, Ebenezer NJOH-MOUELLE deplores this sorrowful state characterising the underdeveloped African. He presents the underdeveloped African as someone who is disorientated.²

In effect, the underdeveloped African is mentally and culturally disorientated and this leads to his depersonalisation. It portrays a lack of self-identity in the African, an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the European and the American cultures. In fact, the African is neither himself nor is he a European or an American; he suffers form a duality which affects his inward self.

Underdeveloped Africa is in fact full of people wearing masks. Most Africans do not want to accept their culture as Africans and at the same time, unfortunately, they cannot be what they want to be. Most Africans feel that they have a culture which is inferior to that of Westerners.

Moreover, most Negroes who have lived in Europe and returned to their original environments convey the impression that they have added something to themselves, or that they have completed a cycle in their lives. They return literally full of themselves. Some cannot even speak their vernacular; they do not even want to listen to it and forbid it in their homes. This is because they want to feel superior; they think that the European culture is the best. Even those who have never travelled by plane or by sea claim to appreciate Western cultures locally, through the intermediary of boasting elite, television and other forms of media. This is reflected in the way young people dress, the

^I Albert Luthuli, cited in Ruch, E., (ed.), African Philosophy, Rome, p. I97.

157 type of films they enjoy, the type of music they like to listen to and to dance. Most of them consider the fact of speaking their vernacular very shameful and even when they speak English or French in public, they will endeavour to change the tone of their voices in order to imitate the white man's accent.

As a result of his inferiority complex, the African develops a split personality. This reflects itself more especially in African leaders as Kaunda points out: "the modern African leader is a split personality between two ways of thought...between heart and head."^' This schizophrenia extends to the masses. In effect, the problem lies in the mentality of the African. Frantz FANON observes: "the Negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro; and this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation."²