| Godfrey Mwakikagile | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1949 Kigoma, Tanganyika |
| Occupation | scholar, writer |
| Nationality | Tanzanian |
| Alma mater | Wayne State University (1975) |
| Notable work(s) | Africans and African Americans: Complex Relations - Prospects and Challenges (2009) Africa 1960 - 1970: Chronicle and Analysis (2009) |
Godfrey Mwakikagile is a prominent Tanzanian scholar, writer and specialist in African studies.
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He was born in the town of Kigoma in western Tanzania - what was then Tanganyika - on 4 October 1949 and was baptised Godfrey about two months later on Christmas day, 25 December 1949, as a member of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) among whose supporters was Scottish explorer and missionary-doctor, Dr. David Livingstone of the London Missionary Society. Dr. Livingstone campaigned against slavery and the slave trade but also helped pave the way for the colonisation of Africa.
As Godfrey Mwakikagile states in one of his books Africa and America in The Sixties which is partly autobiographical and - among other subjects - also covers members of the baby boomer generation including himself born after the end of World War II, he was, according to his birth certificate, baptised by Reverend Frank McGorlick (from Victoria, Australia), a Scottish minister of the CMS Church in Kigoma his parents belonged to. But he was brought up as a member of the Moravian Church in Rungwe District in what was then the Southern Highlands Province in colonial Tanganyika.
He moved to Rungwe District with his parents when he was 5 years old after living in different parts of Tanganyika - Kigoma, Ujiji, Kilosa, Morogoro, and Mbeya - where his father worked as a medical assistant for the British colonial government. According to his autobiography, his father also worked at the Amani Research Institute in Amani, in Muheza, Handeni, and Tanga before moving to Kigoma four months before Godfrey Mwakikagile was born. Rungwe was his parents' home district. Both were born and brought up in Rungwe District and were members of a tribe indigenous to that part of Tanzania.
Rungwe District, ringed by misty blue mountains, is close to the border with Malawi and is located in the Great Rift Valley north of Lake Nyasa.
Godfrey Mwakikagile went to school in Tanzania and in the United States1.
Tanganyika united with Zanzibar in 1964 to form Tanzania.
He attended primary school (up to Standard 4) at Kyimbila near the town of Tukuyu and middle school (up to Standard 8) at Mpuguso in Rungwe District in Mbeya Region in the Southern Highlands, secondary school (up to Standard 12 or Form IV) at Songea in Ruvuma Region, and high school (up to Standard 14 or Form VI) at Tambaza in Dar es Salaam.
He once worked as a news reporter at the Standard, which was later renamed Daily News, and as an information officer at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Tanzania's capital Dar es Salaam before going to school in the United States in November 1972.
He first joined the editorial staff of the Standard as a junior reporter when he was still in high school, in Form V, in 1969.
Coincidentally, his editor at the Daily News, Benjamin Mkapa, who also helped him to go to school in the United States, years later became president of Tanzania (1995–2005).
The president of Tanzania during that period, Julius Nyerere who led the country from 1961 to 1985, was the editor-in-chief of the Daily News. But his role was only ceremonial rather than functional.
Godfrey Mwakikagile graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit in the state of Michigan, USA, in 1975.
He also attended Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1976. One of his professors of economics at Aquinas College was Kenneth Marin who once worked in Tanzania.
It was just a coincidence that he went to Aquinas College where he ended up being taught by someone who had worked in Tanzania years before. He did not know anything about Professor Marin before then and met him at that school for the first time.
Professor Marin once worked as an economist for the government of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam in the late sixties and early seventies. He went to Tanzania in 1968 and served as an adviser to the government on capital mobilisation and utilisation. Before then, he worked as an economist for the United States federal government. He was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve on Wage and Price Control during the mid-sixties. President Johnson appointed Professor Kenneth Marin as a member of the White House Consumer Advisory Council.
In 1966, Professor Marin was a member of a U.S. State Department evaluation team that was assigned to review various performances in the economic and political arena in six South American countries.
Years later, one of his students, Godfrey Mwakikagile, also ended up writing about economics, among other subjects, mostly about Africa. And coincidentally, Mwakikagile's first book was also about economics.
Godfrey Mwakikagile came into prominence in Tanzania and elsewhere after he wrote a major book about Julius Nyerere not long after the former Tanzanian president died.
He is considered by many people, including those who have reviewed his books about President Nyerere in different newspapers, magazines and academic journals in a number of countries, to be an authority on Nyerere and one of his most prominent biographers.
One scholar who has cited Godfrey Mwakikagile as an authoritative source on President Nyerere is Professor David Simon who teaches development studies at the University of London and who is Director of the Centre for Development Areas Research at Royal Holloway College at the university. Professor Simon has published excerpts from Godfrey Mwakikagile's book on Nyerere in his compiled study, Fifty Key Thinkers on Development, published in 2005.
Professor David Simon is also editor of the scholarly Journal of Southern African Studies and is on the editorial staff of another academic publication, the Review of African Political Economy.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's works have been getting serious attention among many people including academics in many countries who have also reviewed some of his books in scholarly journals.
His first book, Economic Development in Africa, was published in 1999 and he has maintained a steady pace since then, writing books, as demonstrated by the number of titles he has on the market. He is one of Tanzania's most well-known authors and one of Africa's most prolific.
He has written more than 30 books (since 1999) mostly about Africa during the post-colonial period, and has been described as a political scientist although his works defy classification. He has written about history, politics, economics, as well as contemporary and international affairs from an African and Third World perspective and is known for such works as Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, and Africa and the West.
Both have been favourably reviewed in a number of publications including the highly influential West Africa magazine (founded in 1917 and based in London) which reviewed two of his books in the same year; a rare accomplishment in such a major publication.
The books were reviewed by West Africa magazine editor Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, a Ghanaian who also once was a visiting lecturer and scholar-in-residence at the University of Botswana. They were excellent reviews.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's book, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, his magnum opus and probably his most well-known title, was reviewed by West Africa magazine in 2002 three years after Nyerere died of leukemia in October 1999 at the age of 772.
It was also reviewed by the Daily News, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in October 2002 and is seen as a comprehensive work, in scope and depth, on Nyerere3.
Others who have reviewed the book include Professor A.B. Assensoh, a Ghanaian teaching at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. He reviewed the first edition of Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era in the African Studies Review, an academic journal of the African Studies Association, in 2003.
The same book was also reviewed by Professor Roger Southall of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), formerly of Rhodes University, South Africa, in the bi-annual interdisciplinary publication, the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (Taylor & Francis Group), 22, No. 3, in 2004. Professor Southall is also editor of the journal.
The first edition of Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era was published in November 2002, and the second, an expanded edition, in January 2005. The third edition, also an expanded version, was published in November 2006. And the fourth edition, also expanded, was published in December 2008.
The book has also been cited by a number of African leaders including South African Vice President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka in one of her speeches about African leadership and development in which she quotes the author4.
She was the main speaker at a conference of African leaders, diplomats and scholars at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa in September 2006 when she gave her speech.
Although his books have been able to get the attention of some African leaders, it is impossible to know if they have had any influence on any of them. But the mere fact that they are cited by them shows that he is taken seriously as an author, not only in Tanzania but also in other African countries and elsewhere.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's other book, Africa and the West, which is a sweeping survey of the continent before the advent of colonial rule and during the colonial era as well as after independence, was also reviewed by West Africa magazine in its edition of 21–27 January 2002.5.
The book, which was published in 2000, has been described as an appeal to Africans to respect their cultures, values and traditions and take a firm stand against alien ideas which pollute African minds and undermine Africa. It is also a philosophical text used in a number of colleges and universities in the study of African identity, philosophy and history. It is also a strong condemnation of the conquest of Africa by the imperial powers.
West Africa magazine, in its January 2002 edition, also described Godfrey Mwakikagile as an author who articulates the position of African Renaissance thinkers.
And one American journalist who interviewed him described him as an independent scholar who was also a widely read and highly regarded author.
Godfrey Mwakikagile responded by saying that he was just an ordinary African, like tens of millions of others, deeply concerned about the plight of his continent.
But there is no question that he is a serious writer whose writings are widely read even if he considers himself to be just an ordinary African like millions of his brethren across the continent and elsewhere.
He has also been invited to give lectures at different universities because of the books he has written. And his role as a public intellectual has been demonstrated in other ways. For example, he has been sought for interviews by BBC, PBS (America's public television network), and by Voice of America (VOA), among other media outlets. This is documented in the interview he had with the American journalist.
The interview, which focused on Julius Nyerere as a leader and on other subjects about Africa, is reprinted in its entirety in one of Godfrey Mwakikagile's books, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era.
Although he has been exposed to Western cultures, was educated in the Western intellectual tradition and even lived in the United States for many years, his perspectives and philosophical conceptions have undoubtedly been shaped by his African upbringing and are deeply rooted in African cultures and traditions. And he rejects the notion that Africa was a blank slate until Europeans came to write on it.
He passionately argues that the history written about Africa by Europeans when they first went to Africa and even during colonial rule as well as after independence is not African history but the history of Europeans in Africa and how they see Africa and Africans from their European perspective or perspectives.
He also contends that traditional Africa has produced philosophers and other original thinkers whose knowledge and ideas - including ideas at a high level of abstraction - can match and even surpass the best in the West and elsewhere in the world. He forcefully articulates that position in his book, Africa and The West6.
And although he sees Africa as an indivisible whole, he also argues that all nations, include those in Africa, have different national characters. He looks at the concept of national character in the African context in one of his books, Kenya: Identity of A Nation, and makes a compelling case for this idea which is sometimes highly controversial. The work is, among other subjects, a study of comparative analysis in which the author looks at the national characters of Kenya and Tanzania, thus demonstrating that nations do indeed have different national characters and have been that way throughout history.
He undoubtedly has strong convictions but does not neatly fit into any ideological category. He expresses strong Pan-Africanist views in his writings and sees Africa as a collective entity and one organic body and has strongly been influenced by staunch Pan-Africanist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure and Patrice Lumumba whom he also strongly admires7.
He says Africa does not have those kind of leaders anymore.
He also strongly admires Thomas Sankara as a man of the people like Nyerere and contends that among the new breed of African leaders, Sankara - who has been described as the African Che Guevara - showed great promise but was eliminated by some of his so-called compatriots working for France and other Western powers before he could realise his full potential the same way Lumumba was, eliminated by the United States and Belgium. Godfrey Mwakikagile has written about Thomas Sankara in his book Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties and in African Countries among other works.
But some of his critics contend that he overlooks or glosses over the shortcomings of these leaders precisely because they are liberation icons and played a leading role in the struggle for independence and against white minority rule in Southern Africa8.
He also seems to be "trapped" in the past, in liberation days, especially in the seventies when the struggle against white minority rule was most intense. But that may be for understandable reasons9.
He was a part of that generation when the liberation struggle was going on and some of his views have unquestionably been shaped by what happened during those days as his admiration for Robert Mugabe, for example, as a liberation icon clearly shows; although he also admits in his book, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, that the land reform programme in Zimbabwe could have been implemented in an orderly fashion and in a peaceful way and without disrupting the economy.
But his admiration for Mugabe as a true African nationalist and Pan-Africanist remains intact; a position that does not sit well with some of his critics although he does not condone despotic rule as he clearly states in his writings.
He admires Mugabe mostly as a freedom fighter and liberation hero who freed his people from colonial rule and racial oppression and exploitation, and as a strong leader who has taken a firm and an uncompromising stand against Western domination of Africa.
And by remarkable contrast, his contempt for African leaders whom he sees as whites with a black skin also remains intact. He mentions Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda as a typical example of those leaders10.
He has written about Dr. Banda and other African leaders, among other subjects, in his book, Africa After Independence: Realities of Nationhood.
Godfrey Mwakikagile also contends that only a few African leaders - Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Nasser, Ben Bella and Modibo Keita - strove to achieve genuine independence for their countries and for Africa as a whole and exercised a remarkable degree of independence in their dealings with world powers. And Mugabe is the only African leader today who fits this category, in spite of his shortcomings.
According to Ben Bella, the six leaders - Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Nasser, Modibo Keita and Ben Bella himself - constituted what came to be known as "The Group of Six" within the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). In an interview in Switzerland in 1995 with Jorge G. Castañeda, the author of Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, Ben Bella said the six leaders worked together secretly within the OAU on a number of issues including the Congo and African liberation, excluding other African leaders. It is a subject Godfrey Mwakikagile has also addressed in his book Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's background as a Tanzanian has played a major role in his assessment of many African leaders because of the central role his country played in the liberation struggle in the countries of Southern Africa, and not just in South Africa - the bastion of white minority rule on the continent.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is one of the African leaders who have had strong ties to Tanzania, Godfrey Mwakikagile's home country, since liberation days. Others with strong ties to Tanzania include Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa; Joaquim Chissano, former president of Mozambique; and Sam Nujoma, former president of Namibia.
In those days, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was the headquarters of all the African liberation movements, under the leadership of President Julius Nyerere, and Godfrey Mwakikagile got the chance to know many of the freedom fighters who were based there when he worked as a young news reporter in the nation's capital.
They included Joaquim Chissano who was the head of the FRELIMO office in Dar es Salaam and who later became the minister of foreign affairs and then president of Mozambique when his country won independence after 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule.
Many other freedom fighters who were based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, also went on to become national leaders in their respective countries after the end of white minority rule in Southern Africa. And they all still have strong ties to Tanzania even today.
In his seminal work, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Godfrey Mwakikagile has written extensively about the liberation struggle, and the liberation movements, in Southern Africa in what is probably one of the best accounts of that critical phase in the history of Africa. He has also, in the same book, written an excellent analysis of the Congo Crisis during the turbulent sixties.
Godfrey Mwakikagile has also written a book about the struggle against apartheid and the end of white minority rule in South Africa and on the prospects and challenges the country faces in the post-apartheid era. The work is entitled, South Africa in Contemporary Times.
The years he spent on the editorial staff at the Standard and the Daily News were critical to his future career as a writer. Those were his formative years, and had he not become a news reporter, his life, and his career as an author, might have taken a different turn.
As he states in Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, he was first hired by renowned British journalist David Martin who was the deputy managing and news editor of the Tanganyika Standard. The managing editor was Brendon Grimshaw also British who, in the seventies, bought Moyenne Island in the Seychelles and became its only permanent inhabitant. Brendon Grimshaw also played a major role in recruiting Godfrey Mwakikagile as a member of the editorial staff at the Standard.
It was a turning point in Godfrey Mwakikagile's life.
That was in June 1969 when he was a student at Tambaza High School in Dar es Salaam. He was 19 years old and probably the youngest reporter on the editorial staff at the Standard during that time.
The Standard which was renamed Daily News in 1970 was the largest English newspaper in Tanzania and one of the largest and most influential in East Africa. And it served Godfrey Mwakikagile well, not only in terms of providing him with an opportunity to sharpen his writing skills but also - after it became the Daily News - in helping him to go to school in the United States where he became an author many years after he graduated from college.
David Martin, when he worked at the Tanganyika Standard and at the Daily News, and thereafter, was the most prominent foreign journalist in Eastern and Southern Africa in the sixties and seventies. And he wrote extensively about the liberation struggle in the region for the London Observer and for BBC.
He went to the combat zone with FRELIMO guerrilla fighters in Mozambique many times and also covered the Angolan civil war for BBC and for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation).
He knew and worked closely with all the leaders of the liberation movements including Robert Mugabe, Dr. Eduardo Mondlane, president of FRELIMO, who was assassinated in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in February 1969; and Mondlane's successor Samora Machel who died in a mysterious plane crash in 1986 when he was president of Mozambique.
The plane crashed on the South African side of the border with Mozambique and the apartheid regime was suspected of having caused the "accident." He was succeeded by Mozambique's foreign affairs minister, Joaquim Chissano, as president.
David Martin was also very close to many Tanzanian leaders including President Julius Nyerere, and President Benjamin Mkapa who was also his close friend for many years since the sixties when they worked together in the media.
He also interviewed President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia many times during the liberation struggle when many freedom fighters were based in that country and used it as an operational base as they did Tanzania.
He wrote more than 20 books. He died at his home in Harare, Zimbabwe, in August 2007, where he went to live after Zimbabwe won independence in April 1980.
President Mugabe delivered an official condolence message and David Martin was accorded a state-assisted funeral in recognition of his works exposing apartheid South Africa's destabalisation campaign in neighbouring countries, racial brutalities and injustices under white minority regimes throughout Southern Africa and for his outstanding role as a champion of racial equality.
The report of his death which included President Robert Mugabe's long message of condolence on behalf of the government and the ruling party ZANU-PF was published in the Zimbabwean government-owned newspaper, The Herald, 22 August 2007, and was headlined, "President Mourns David Martin."
Another report on David Martin's contributions as a journalist when he reported extensively on the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, and on his support for regional integration of the countries in that part of the continent after the end of white minority rule, was published in the same paper on August 24 and headlined, "Martin - Man of Many Talents."
He was buried in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa were some of the African leaders who sent condolence messages.
Zimbabwean government leaders including cabinet members, Tanzanian officials, war veterans who fought for Zimbabwe's independence during the liberation struggle in the sixties and seventies, and diplomats, attended the funeral, according to The Herald, Harare, Zimbabwe, 25 August 2007, in a report headlined, "Martin Laid to Rest."
David Martin often said he credited his education to the 10 years he spent working as a journalist in Tanzania and was inspired by President Nyerere and by the liberation leaders and movements based there. He interviewed many of those leaders many times during the liberation struggle and thereafter.
In his book Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Godfrey Mwakikagile has written about David Martin and the role he played as a journalist during the liberation struggle in Southern Africa. But David Martin was also instrumental in opening the door for Godfrey Mwakikagile into the world of journalism, writing everyday, after which both became successful writers.
As Godfrey Mwakikagile himself has stated in his books including Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Africa after Independence: Realities of Nationhood, The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation, Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties and in Africa is in A Mess and others, his background as a news reporter which included meeting deadlines when writing news articles prepared him for the rigorous task of writing books.
Godfrey Mwakikagile lived and grew up under the leadership of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, a legendary figure, liberation icon and staunch Pan-Africanist and one of the most influential and most respected leaders Africa has ever produced, whose socialist policies he has also defended in his writings because of the egalitarian ideals they instilled in the people of Tanzania enabling them to form a peaceful, cohesive nation in which they saw themselves as one people and equal in terms of rights and dignity as fellow human beings in spite of the poverty they endured under ujamaa, Nyerere's African version of socialism.
Yet, in spite of his admiration for liberation icons, he also is highly critical of African leaders from the same generation who led their countries to independence, contending that most of them did not care about the well-being of their people; a position he forcefully articulates in his writings11.
He sometimes seems to be a contradictory character, or simply difficult to understand, but he is actually torn between two worlds because of the generation to which he belongs, having been born before independence and partly brought up under colonial rule. He even wrote a book, Life in Tanganyika in The Fifties, about those years.
One of his critics has described him as a shrewd intellectual in defence of liberation icons and accuses him of not being intellectually honest about leaders such as Nyerere and Nkrumah for not criticising them harshly for their failures12.
In a way, some people may see him as a complex character not always easy to understand, although he articulates his position clearly and forcefully.
Some of the confusion among his readers about his position on African leaders of the independence generation has to do with his own background since he was an integral part of that generation in the sense that he witnessed the end of colonial rule and the emergence of the newly independent African states although he was not old enough to have participated in the independence struggle himself13.
He admires the leaders who led their countries to independence, yet he is highly critical of them in most cases for their failures during the post-colonial period. He admires many aspects of Nyerere's socialist policies in Tanzania, yet concedes the policies were also a failure in many cases. And he strongly favours fundamental change in African countries, yet he is nostalgic about the past14.
His advocacy for fundamental change is articulated in many of his writings including The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation, which was published in 2001 and which is also one of his most well-known books.
In his review of the book, Ronald Taylor-Lewis, [born of a Sierra Leonean father] and editor of Mano Vision magazine, London, described it as a masterpiece of fact and analysis15.
The book has also been reviewed in other publications. Tana Worku Anglana reviewed Godfrey Mwakikagile's Modern African State: Quest for Transformation in Articolo and described it as unbiased literature16.
Other people have also cited the book in their different analyses of the African condition. They include Dr. Elavie Ndura, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia, USA, who used Godfrey Mwakikagile's book, The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation, among other works, in supporting her central thesis in her study, "Transcending The Majority Rights and Minority Protection Dichotomy Through Multicultural Reflective Citizenship in The African Great Lakes Region," in Intercultural Education, Vol. 17, No. 2, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, in May 2006.
Professor Elavie Ndura, a Hutu from Burundi where her family experienced genocide, has taught for many years at a number of schools in the United States, including the University of Nevada-Reno and George Mason University. Ethnic conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi between the Hutu and the Tutsi is one of the subjects Godfrey Mwakikagile has addressed extensively in his book, The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation.
In many of his writings, Godfrey Mwakikagile focuses on internal factors - including corruption, tribalism and tyranny by African leaders - as the main cause of Africa's predicament, but not to the total exclusion of external forces.
And the position he articulates in his writings on many issues is cited by other people to support their arguments in their works. One of the works in which Godfrey Mwakikagile is cited and quoted is a compiled study by Professor Robert H. Bates, When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, published by Cambridge University Press in February 2008.
Godfrey Mwakikagile is also quoted by Professors Robert Elgie and Sophie Moestrup in their book, Semi-Presidentialism Outside Europe: A Comparative Study - Routledge Research in Comparative Politics, Routledge, 2007; Mueni wa Muiu and Guy Martin in A New Paradigm of the African State: Fundi wa Afrika, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; Minabere Ibelema, The African Press, Civic Cynicism, and Democracy - The PalgraveMacmillan Series in International Political Communication, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; James Crawford and Vaughan Lowe in British Yearbook of International Law 2005: Volume 76, Oxford University Press, 2007, and in other works.
Others who have cited Godfrey Mwakikagile and his works include Professor Robert I. Rotberg of Harvard University who once taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. He used Godfrey Mwakikagle's book Ethnic Politics in Kenya and Nigeria, among other works, to document his study, Crafting The New Nigeria: Confronting The Challenges, a book that was published in 2004.
Other researchers and scholars who have cited and quoted Godfrey Mwakikagile in their works include Gabi Hesselbein, Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, and James Putzel, in their study, "Economic and Political Foundations of State-making in Africa: Understanding State Reconstruction", Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK, 2006; E.M. Poff, "Liberal Democracy and Multiethnic States: A Case Study of Ethnic Politics in Kenya," Ohio University, 2008; PJ McGowan, "Coups and Conflict in West Africa, 1955 - 2004: Part II, Empirical Findings," Armed Forces and Society, Sage Publications, 2006; Christopher Richard Kilford, in his doctoral dissertation, "The Other Cold War," Queens University, Canada, 2009; Martin P. Mathews, in his book, Nigeria: Current Issues and Historical Background, Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2002; Michael Kweku Addison, "Preventing Military Intervention in West Africa: A Case Study of Ghana," Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, USA, 2002; Isidore Okpewho and N Nzegwu, in their book, The New African Diaspora, Indiana University Press, 2009; C.M. Brown, S. Reader and G. Lober, "US National Security Interests in Africa and The Future Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)," Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, USA, 2005.
Others who also have cited Godfrey Mwakikagile in their studies in different analytical contexts include Rajend Methrie, "South Africa: The Rocky Road to National Building," in a book, Andrew Simpson, Language and National Identity in Africa, Oxford University Press, 2008; Valéria Cristina Salles, "Social Representations Informing Discourse of Young Leaders: A Case Study of Tanzania," University of Cape Town, 2005; L.B. Inniss, "A Domestic Right of Return? Race, Rights, and Residency in New Orleans in the Aftermath of Katrina," in the Boston College Third World Law Journal, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 2007; Eric M. Edi, in his book, Globalization and Politics in the Economic Community of West African States (Carolina Academic Press Studies on Globalization and Society), Carolina Academic Press, 2007; James John Chikago, in his book, Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Analysis and Solutions to Poverty Reduction, 2003; James Kwesi Anquandah, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, and Michel R. Doortmont, in their book, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Landmarks, Legacies, Expectations, Sub-Saharan Publishers, Accra, Ghana, 2007; Luciana Ricciutelli, Angela Rose Miles, Margaret McFadden in their book, Feminist Politics, Activism and Vision: Local and Global Challenges, Zed Books, London, 2005; Emmanuel Ike Udogu, in his book, African Renaissance in the Millennium: The Political, Social, and Economic Discourses on the Way Forward, Lexington Books, New York, 2007; and others.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's books have been used by many other scholars in different analytical contexts in a number of countries in the Third World and in industrialised nations.
And his diagnosis of - and prescription for - Africa's ailments has also been cited by scholars and other people for its relevance in other parts of the Third World. As Dr. Hengene Payani, a political scientist at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, stated in his review of Godfrey Mwakikagile's book Africa is in A Mess on amazon.com, the book is excellent, honest and thought-provoking and is relevant even in the context of Papua New Guinea, a country which has been ruined by greedy politicians. He also contacted Godfrey Mwakikagile to congratulate him for his work.
Although he has written mostly about Africa, and as a political scientist or as a political analyst, his works cover a wide range of scholarship including American studies.
One of Godfrey Mwakikagile's books, Black Conservatives in The United States, has been cited by Christopher Alan Bracey, a professor of law and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, in support of his research when he also wrote a book about black conservatives entitled Saviors or Sellouts: The Promise and Peril of Black Conservatism, from Booker T. Washington to Condoleezza Rice, published in February 2008.
But there are limitations to the role played by people like Godfrey Mwakikagile in their quest for fundamental change in African countries. Their contribution is limited in one fundamental respect: They are not actively involved with the masses at the grassroots level precisely because of what they are. They belong to an elite class, and the concepts they expound as well as the solutions they propose are discussed mainly by fellow elites but rarely implemented.
This should not be misconstrued as unwarranted criticism of Godfrey Mwakikagile's writings or the role he plays in the quest for fundamental change in Africa. It is mere acknowledgement of the limitations he faces in his attempt to accomplish this task in conjunction with his brethren across the continent.
Still, there is no question that in many cases, only a few members of the African elite have played and continue to play the role of intellectual activists like Dr. Walter Rodney who wrote his best-selling book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa in the early 1970s when he was teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania; coincidentally during the same period when Godfrey Mwakikagile was a member of the editorial staff at the Daily News in Tanzania's capital Dar es Salaam.
Before he went to Tanzania, Dr. Walter Rodney was actively involved with the masses when he taught at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, in Jamaica in the late sixties. He was also expelled from Jamaica by the government because of his political and intellectual activism and went to Tanzania in 1968 to teach at the University of Dar es Salaam in a country where his views and his role as an activist intellectual found acceptance under the leadership of President Julius Nyerere who was a superb intellectual himself and who was acknowledged as one even by some of his critics such as Kenyan Professor Ali Mazrui.
In his book On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship: Essays on Independent Africa and in his other writings, Professor Mazrui has described Nyerere as the most original thinker among all the leaders in Anglophone Africa, and Senegalese President Leopold Sedar Senghor in Francophone Africa. Mazrui has also described Nyerere as the most intellectual of the East African presidents, an attribute which enabled Walter Rodney to thrive in Tanzania as an intellectual activist.
And in an interview with The Gambia Echo in February 2008, Professor Mazrui said:
"Intellectually, I admired Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania higher than most politicians anywhere in the world. Nyerere and I also met more often over the years from 1967 to 1997 approximately. I am also a great fan of Nelson Mandela. By ethical standards Mandela is greater than Nyerere; but by intellectual standards Nyerere is greater than Mandela."
Professor Ali Mazrui also paid glowing tribute to Nyerere when Nyerere died in October 1999. In his article "Nyerere and I," Ali Mazrui had this to say about Nyerere: "He was one of the giants of the 20th century....He did bestride this narrow world like an African colossus."
Professor Walter Rodney himself was a great admirer of Nyerere as a leader and as an intellectual even before he went to Tanzania to teach at the University of Dar es Salaam.
After Rodney left Tanzania in 1974 and returned to Guyana, he continued to be actively involved with the workers at the grassroots level until he was assassinated in June 1980 by a government agent when Guyana was under the leadership of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.
Most African intellectuals don't do that. They don't work with the masses at the grassroots level. And that severely limits their role as agents of dynamic and fundamental change in Africa.
African writers like Godfrey Mwakikagile and other intellectuals are also severely compromised in their mission because most African leaders don't want to change. Therefore they don't listen to them—in many cases the entire state apparatus needs to be dismantled to bring about meaningful change.
But, in spite of their limitations and the obstacles they face, many African writers and other intellectuals still play a very important role in articulating a clear vision for the future of Africa. And Godfrey Mwakikagile's writings definitely fit this category because of his analysis of the African condition and the solutions he proposes, although he is not a political activist like other African writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o in neighbouring Kenya or Wole Soyinka in Nigeria.
But even they - had to flee their homelands, at different times, for their own safety, in spite of the courage they had to contend with the political establishment in their home countries, and sought sanctuary overseas although that has not been the case with Godfrey Mwakikagile and many other Africans who once lived, have lived or continue to live in other countries or outside Africa for different reasons.
Writers like Godfrey Mwakikagile and other members of the African elite have a major role to play in the development of Africa. They do have an impact on constructive dialogue involving national issues. But it is not the kind of impact that reverberates across the spectrum all the way down to the grassroots level precisely because they are not an integral part of the masses, and also because they are not actively involved with the masses to transform society.
So, while they generate ideas, they have not been able to effectively transmit those ideas to the masses without whose involvement fundamental change in Africa is impossible, except at the top, recycling the elite. And while they identify with the masses in terms of suffering and as fellow Africans, many of them - not all but many of them - have not and still don't make enough sacrifices in their quest for social and political transformation of African countries. And Godfrey Mwakikagile is fully aware of these shortcomings, and apparent contradictions, in the role played by the African elite. He's one himself.
Yet, he has not explicitly stated so in his writings concerning this problem of African intellectuals; a dilemma similar to the one faced by the black intelligentsia in the United States and which was addressed by Harold Cruse, an internationally renowned black American professor who taught at the University of Michigan for many years, in his monumental study, The Crisis of The Negro Intellectual. The book was first published in 1967 at the peak of the civil rights movement, five years before Godfrey Mwakikagile went to the United States for the first time as a student.
But that does not really explain why Godfrey Mwakikagile has not fully addressed the subject, the dilemma African intellectuals face in their quest for fundamental change, especially in his books - The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation, Africa is in A Mess: What Went Wrong and What Should Done, and Africa After Independence: Realities of Nationhood - which are almost exclusively devoted to such transformation in Africa in the post-colonial era.
African leaders have failed Africa. But African intellectuals themselves have not done enough to help transform Africa into a better society.
Still, Godfrey Mwakikagile belongs to a group of African writers and the African elite who believe that the primary responsibility of transforming Africa lies in the hands of the Africans themselves, and not foreigners, and that acknowledgement of mistakes by African leaders is one of the first steps towards bringing about much-needed change in African countries; a position he forcefully articulates in his writings. For example, Political Science Professor Claude E. Welch at the State University of New York-Buffalo, in his review of one of Godfrey Mwakikagile's books - Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties - published in the African Studies Review (Vol. 45, No. 3, December 2002) described the author as being merciless in his condemnation of African tyrants.
The same book was also cited by James C. Owens of the University of Virginia in his article, "Government failure in Sub-Saharan Africa: The International Community's Response," in the Virginia Journal of International Law, 2002. He used Godfrey Mwakikagile's book, Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties, among other works, to document the failure of leadership in many African countries in the post-colonial era.
And that is valid criticism of African leadership in post-colonial Africa by Godfrey Mwakikagile. Corrupt and despotic rulers don't deserve mercy. They don't deserve sympathy. They are not entitled to it. They have destroyed Africa.
In what is probably his most controversial book, Africa is in A Mess: What Went Wrong and What Should Be Done, he strongly criticises most of the leaders of post-colonial Africa for tyranny and corruption, and for practising tribalism, a common theme in the works of many African writers and other people including well-known ones and many African scholars in and outside Africa. But Godfrey Mwakikagile's book stands out as one of the most blunt ever written about Africa's rotten leadership.
Unfortunately, because of its vitriolic condemnation of most African leaders during the post-colonial era, the book has been cited by some people, who obviously have not read it well if at all, as a clarion call for the re-colonisation of Africa (because things are so bad, colonial rule was better) although the author says exactly the opposite in his work17.
One of the people he has quoted in his book articulating a similar position is Moeletsi Mbeki, the younger brother of former South African President Thabo Mbeki and head of the South African Institute of International Affairs, who said in September 2004 that Africans were better off under colonial rule than they are today under African leadership in the post-colonial period.
Mbeki also said African leaders and bureaucrats are busy stealing money and keeping it in foreign countries while colonial rulers built and maintained the infrastructure and ran their African colonies efficiently. He was quoted by BBC Africa in a report, on what he said, entitled "Better Colonial Times" published on 22 September 2004.
Yet in spite of all that, Godfrey Mwakikagile unequivocally states in his book, Africa is in A Mess, that he does not support any attempt or scheme, by anybody, to recolonise Africa, but also bluntly states that African countries have lost their sovereignty to donor nations and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dominated by Western powers including those who once colonised Africa and are therefore virtual colonies already.
He also contends that African countries have really never been free in spite of the instruments of sovereignty they are supposed to have. And in one of his books, Investment Opportunities and Private Sector Growth in Africa, he warns about the dangers of the Second Scramble for Africa by the industrialised nations which are busy exploiting Africa's resources for their own benefit and contends that globalisation is in many ways a new form of imperialism.
Yet he has wrongly been portrayed, along with some prominent African and European scholars including Professor Ali Mazrui, Christoph Blocher, Mahmood Mamdani, Peter Niggli, and R. W. Johnson as someone who advocates the recolonisation of Africa18.
Godfrey Mwakikagile says exactly the opposite in his book Africa is in A Mess.
In fact, the title, although not the sub-title, comes from President Julius Nyerere who said exactly the same words in 1985: "Africa is in a mess."
Godfrey Mwakikagile explicitly states that in his book, saying he got the title from Nyerere's statement and felt it was appropriate for his work, although the tone and content might be disturbing to some people. He is brutally frank about the continent's deplorable condition.
But the book echoes the sentiments of tens of millions of Africans across the continent who live in misery and those who are frustrated by lack of fundamental change in African leadership notorious for corruption and other vices including tribalism and tyranny as Godfrey Mwakikagile bluntly states in his work.
His fellow Africans who have reviewed the book on amazon.com and elsewhere in different publications and on the Internet strongly support the author and share his concerns about Africa's plight and the misguided leadership the continent has had to endure for decades since independence19.
One African reviewer, Mona Kabba, a member of Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabba's family, also contacted the author to congratulate him for writing such an honest book, as she stated in her review of the book on amazon.com. And she provided an additional perspective, as an insider, that shed more light on Africa's predicament in her review of Godfrey Mwakikagile's book, Africa is in A Mess, and said she was going to work with him on a joint project about Africa.
And in the same book, Africa is in A Mess, Godfrey Mwakikagile is also highly critical of Western powers for ruthlessly exploiting Africa even today in collusion with many African leaders.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's books have also been reviewed in a number of academic publications, including the highly prestigious academic journal, African Studies Review, by leading scholars in their fields. They include Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties which was reviewed in that journal by Professor Claude E. Welch of the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York, Buffalo; and Ethnic Politics in Kenya and Nigeria reviewed by Nigerian Professor Khadijat K. Rashid of Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C.20.
His other books have also been reviewed in the African Studies Review and in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies. They include Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era and The Modern African State: Quest for Transformation which were reviewed in the African Studies Review; and Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era which was also reviewed in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.
See also an analysis of Godfrey Mwakikagile's book, Ethnic Politics in Kenya and Nigeria, in A. Simpson and B. Akintunde Oyetade, "Nigeria: Ethno-linguistic Competition in the Giant of Africa," published in Language and National Identity in Africa, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 172 – 198; and Godfrey Mwakikagile's Military Coups in West Africa Since The Sixties in P.J. McGowan, "Coups and Conflict in West Africa, 1955 - 2004: Part II, Empirical Findings," in Armed Forces & Society, Sage Publications, in 2006.
For more reviews of his books, see also Expo Times, Sierra Leone; The Mirror, Zimbabwe, and other publications including those featured on the Internet21.
He has also written about race relations in the United States and relations between continental Africans and people of African descent in the diaspora. His titles in these areas include Black Conservatives in The United States; Relations Between Africans and African Americans; and Relations Between Africans, African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans.
Godfrey Mwakikagile's books are found in public and university libraries around the world and have been adopted for class use at many colleges and universities in the United States and other countries. Most college and university libraries in the United States have his books.
Titles by Godfrey Mwakikagile: