UJ Host International Peace Scholar on Africa's Liberation Stuggles

International peace and justice scholar, Professor Horace Campbell, a professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University, New York, share his views on the Challenges of African Transformation in the 21st Century when he addresses a seminar at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The talk which took place on Monday, 26 August 2013 at 18:00 in the Council Chambers at the Madibeng Building on the Auckland Park Kingsway Campus.

Prof Chris Landberg, UJ’s Department Head of Politics; the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChi) Chair in African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, and Senior Associate of the University’s School of Leadership, will chair the seminar. He is available for interviews on request. He can be contacted on 082 791 7907.

Abstract: Prof Horace Campbell

Reconstruction, Transformation and African Unity in the 21st century

Suddenly there are books on the The Fastest Billion: The Story Behind Africa's Economic Revolution. Demographers and forward planners are writing on Africa 2050.  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD) predicts that China will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy by 2016) and that by 2025 the economies of China and India combined will be bigger than those of the Group of Seven (G7) industrial countries.  Regional alliances and new political and diplomatic initiatives are changing the international system.

These seismic shifts are most evident in a new multipolar world,  exemplified by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) cooperation mechanism, which excludes the consciously seeks to chart a new path for the entire nonaligned regions. .What has been missing from these projections  about international politics is the call by the Pan African movement for the full unification of Africa.

Presently the peoples of Africa possess four major strengths. First is the demographic asset. Second is the most recent history of political collaboration to end apartheid. Third is the push to harness the massive resources of Africa for the transformation of the economies and fourthly is the rapid technical change occurring in Africa. With these strengths, in the next fifty years of the processes of unification, the conceptual skills along with the creative spirit and cultures of African peoples remain one of the frontline weapons against the attempts of capitalism to dehumanize and to turn certain humans into mere body parts providing needed tissues and organs for the rich.  By 2030, all sections of the planet will have to contend with a revitalized Africa.

The presentation will argue that the world is going through a period of unprecedented change with major pressures for the unification of Africa from below. With the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and the competitive devaluations in the western capitalist economies, central bankers all across the world are learning the painful lessons of the Exorbitant Privilege of the US currency.  Global economic crisis, increased militarism and the need to conserve capital in Africa creates new opportunities and challenges. These challenges call on African scholars and activists to rethink the basic ideas of Pan Africanism when the African Union celebrated fifty years and has launched an ambitious agenda for the next fifty years to 2063.

In an attempt to grasp the possibilities of the transformations within the Pan African ideals, this paper will examine eight areas of reconstruction, focussing on the challenges for replenishing Africa with the ideas of the Grand Canals for Africa and the Great Green Wall across Africa. One of the core arguments will seek to propose the ideation system that can dynamize the demographic assets of the African youth in a moment when corporate elements are salivating on Rising Africa.

It is the proposition of this intervention that we are living in a revolutionary period where the objective conditions are ripe for serious transformations. One of the many challenges will be to inspire a new cadre of leaders armed with cultural, spiritual and scientific powers to harness the powerful ideas from the Pan African past to engender a leap in politics. This concept of a leap is central to quantum politics which is itself linked to fractal optimism and fractal wisdom.​