CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, August 2020 Page 1

Online Article

Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba Bazunini, 1942–2020: Militant, African Intellectual and Friend

n 15 July, in , he learnt were centrally concerned Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba with treating people with Michael Neocosmos Bazunini left this world. No dignity and respect. In BaKongo O Emeritus Professor doubt the usual clichés will abound: communities, the importance in Humanities a “Great Son of !”, “an of resolving non-antagonistic Rhodes University, Intellectual Giant!”, “a Great Pan- contradictions in a manner that Africanist!” and so on as people was participatory and democratic revert to the tired old slogans they was absolutely fundamental to regurgitate every time an important holding the community together. during which our conversations intellectual figure joins the world of It was out of the experience of covered all aspects of his politics, the ancestors. Wamba would have attending a number of these and his philosophical thought. giggled at this, as was his want. He collective sessions in the form In fact, the two were practically was keenly aware that behind such of a Mbongi or Palaver, that he indistinguishable. empty slogans were precisely empty wrote what is probably his most politics, and that these slogans Wamba was totally at ease well-known work Experiences of substituted for what he saw, and discussing the state in ancient Egypt, Democracy in Africa: Reflections deplored, as the absence of political the Mobutu regime, the problems on Practices of the Communalist thought among many intellectuals of the nationalist movement in Palaver as a Method of Resolving in contemporary Africa. Congo, the intellectual debates at Contradictions among the People. the University of Dar-es-Salaam His study of the Palaver was not Wamba (as he was known by all) in the 1970s, African spirituality, anthropological. In this study, and was a rare phenomenon. He was Pan-Africanism, the politics of the throughout his work, he related an organic intellectual in the full Cultural Revolution in China, the popular practices and struggles to sense of the term, and one of the philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre, a politics of emancipation which greatest on our continent. He Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Alain he was constantly re-thinking and lived his life in complete fidelity Badiou, the neo-colonial character developing. to his political principles, and at of liberal democracy in Africa, the considerable personal cost. He had The central concern of politics for dominance of statist conceptions of endured arrest and detention, been Wamba was not war or violent politics among ordinary people in a protagonist in armed struggle, antagonism, but the production of a Congo, or the sound of the guitar and narrowly escaped assassination collective unity. He insisted on the played by Franco the king of Rumba. attempts on several occasions. fact that his politics were always His principles were founded on Wamba was born on the 16th of directed to bringing peace to the drawing all the consequences from April 1942 in central Congo in Congo (as it happens the name the axiom that it is the people and a KiKongo-speaking area. His Wamba means the one who brings the people alone who are the makers was a peasant family, and he was peace). In his view, the failure of of the emancipatory currents in deeply immersed in local traditions the state in post-independence world history. I had the singular from his early youth. He learnt Africa was precisely the failure to honour of interviewing him over his respect and love for humanity develop a shared understanding of five consecutive days in May 2019 from a young age. The values that an idea of the ‘common good’. CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, August 2020 Page 2

There are perhaps two dominant Without a popular mass movement This required both self-criticism themes running through all his there could be no emancipatory and a thorough spiritual cleansing. intellectual and political work: politics. The problem of the state Such study could learn much, for in Africa was not so much the example, from the idea of Ma’at in 1. The importance for the state absence of institutions, but rather ancient Egypt, which insisted on in Africa to understand the fact that existing institutions the maintenance of social balance the need to manage the were modelled on the West so that and an ethical life that venerated ‘common good’ rather the state – even after independence justice and truth. The point here than the interests of (neo-) – remained an external imposition being that, even in the conditions colonialism, and historically disconnected from the people of the existence of the Pharaonic its total inability to do so, a it was meant to govern. In his state, in other words of extreme fact that implied its failure well-known expression, the post- power differentials, the interests to adhere to basic universal colonial state was simply ‘grafted’ of minorities excluded from power democratic norms and; onto the pre-existing colonial one, would be taken care of to a certain 2. the unavoidable centrality of thereby making it impossible to degree. In this way, at least some independent popular organi- transform Africa along a popular- sort of social balance could be sations in emancipatory poli- nationalist conception of genuine maintained and chaos, the main tics in order a) to hold those emancipation. fear of the ancient Egyptians, could in state power to account be avoided. Of course, this did not Wamba argued that Africa in always happen in practice. and thus to insist on genuine general, and Congo in particular, popularly-founded democ- remained the prisoner of a predatory Wamba also invested considerable racy and b) to provide the capitalism which systematically intellectual energies to an basis for popular movements engaged in the mass torture of elucidation and examination of to defend those who end a continent. The result was that, the historical predictions and up in power and attempt to following the colonial ‘civilising prescriptions of anti-colonial oppose (neo-) colonialism. mission’, Africa experienced a millenarian movements. One In Wamba’s view, without popular Western ‘developmental mission’ of these was the movement in democratic organisation, Pan- soon followed by a ‘democratising the Congo of the 1920s led by Africanism was impossible and mission’ in which a travesty of Simon Kimbangu, who predicted Africa will be doomed to continue development and democracy were the subservience and corruption as a neo-colonial amalgamation of deployed and more frequently of post-independence leaders countries ruled by predatory and imposed. African leaders were, to Western dominance and who repressive elites with disastrous in the main, unwilling to work to insisted on the need to fight the consequences for its people. support the realisation of the needs destruction of African languages. Of course this never meant the of the continent’s people because For Wamba these movements abandonment of an idea of class they allowed their interests to sometimes expressed political struggle, but rather an insistence on coincide with those of the West. prescriptions that were politically the idea that to effectively engage Much like those Chiefs and Kings more important than those of many in political struggles, the unity who had sold their people into Western-trained academics. He of the oppressed is an absolute slavery, post-colonial African argued that one had to learn from necessity. leaders continued to sell their these histories, and, in general, people to Western interests while the emancipatory prescriptions For Wamba the primary failure of blaming the latter for the people’s emerging from popular ruptures most African intellectuals was a poverty. with the order of domination. virulent and obvious state fetishism with a consequent inability to Wamba stressed that Africans The philosophical result of these theorise politics as being conditional should undertake a study of reflections was Wamba’s insistence upon emancipatory subjectivities their own past, including of their on knowledge acquisition as to be founded on the politics of the popular struggles (and similar a collective as opposed to an organised masses, much as was the ones like the Chinese), in order individual activity, and on case with Cabral’s famous notion to elucidate theoretical signs and dialectical thought, namely the of ‘Returning to the Source’. alternative political conceptions. recognition of contradictions CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, August 2020 Page 3 and divisions along with their World at Brandeis, Harvard and president of Codesria, Nyerere trajectories, as being at the Boston College. He was part of sought out Wamba’s advice with centre of emancipatory political creating the Student and Workers regard to the Congo. Laurent thinking. These philosophical for African Liberation (SWAL) Desiré Kabila had been in exile in views dovetailed completely with committee with which he worked but on invading Congo Wamba’s personal lifestyle and politically from 1973 to 1978. with the support of political commitments. At the and Nyerere feared that personal level Wamba was a very He then left for Dar-es-Salaam massacres may take place in spiritual person and would not see where he took up a position in Kinshasa. After achieving power, his departure from the living as the History Department where Kabila started persecuting ethnic in any way an end point. Rather, he ran the History Seminars minorities with the result that an the idea that a person’s soul (or which became a major centre for alliance of opposition parties the whatever one wishes to call it) intellectual debates. This is where Rally for Congolese Democracy could be resurrected in someone I first meet him in 1982. By then (RCD) was formed. This alliance of else was an African belief to which Walter Rodney had left and Wamba various disaffected groups, ranging he held strongly. He was fully became critical of both positions from ex-Mobutists, to ethnic Tutsis immersed in ancestral reverence taken in the so-called Dar-es- and Left democrats and radicals, and communication. The coercive Salaam Debate arguing that, was in search of a presidential separation of Africans from their rather than discussing capitalism figure acceptable to all. In 1988 spirituality was, for him, one of the or socialism, the primary focus Wamba was reluctantly persuaded more nefarious aspects of colonial should be on neo-colonialism to take up this position which he domination. which had to be thought in itself as deemed inevitably necessary as a a new historical epoch. contribution to liberating his people Wamba’s political involvement from centralised state oppression. began at the age of fourteen In December 1982 Wamba was when he was elected president arrested in then Zaire (today’s DRC) Nyerere was a particularly important of the teachers’ union when he while travelling through Kinshasa. figure in Wamba’s political life was teaching French to nurses He was caught with a paper he because it was he who persuaded at a medical school. He was also was writing that was critical of him to lead the RCD rebellion the secretary and then president Mobutu’s idea of “Authenticité” against Kabila. Nyerere was able of the school debating club. His which was the dictator’s idea of to provide him with support so that political practice took off from African nationalism. For Wamba the interventions of Rwanda and there. He was offered a scholarship this was simply a neo-colonial Uganda within the coalition were to the US where he became part of notion. As a result of international restricted. With the death of Nyerere what was called the Black Action pressure in the US, France, Britain in 1999, that support evaporated Movement (BAM) in Western and Tanzania, and the personal and the RCD broke up between Michigan University. He met intervention of , an ethnic faction based in Stokely Carmichael and received he was eventually released in and a democratic faction led by the Robert Friedman Philosophy December 1983. He later became a Wamba which moved to . Prize for his Master’s dissertation. member of the National Sovereign Although involved in an armed After returning home Wamba Conference (1991-92), which was struggle, Wamba was insistent entered government as the personal a genuine attempt by Congolese throughout that attempts be made assistant and eventually principal themselves to establish a new form to encourage the development of a secretary to the Minister of Social of state as Mobutu’s power had popular democratic movement in Development and Housing. He also waned. Mobutu with the backing that part of eastern Congo in order had the opportunity to go to France of the United States managed to to combat militarism within both where he met and became involved frustrate the Conference’s work. state and opposition. For Wamba politically with other philosophers From 1992 to 1995 Wamba was military power was always to be like and Sylvain the president of the Council for subordinated to popular democratic Lazarus. Back in the United States the Development of Social Science power. His attempts to build a he was again involved in student Research in Africa (Codesria), movement in the context of war politics teaching a course on The which is headquartered in Dakar, were largely stillborn. The rest, as Political Economy of the Third Senegal. After ending his term as they say, is history. CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 6, August 2020 Page 4

Wamba’s participation in this After peace negotiations at Sun It is noteworthy that in a letter struggle was the subject of often City, the war ended in 2003 and expressing his condolences, Alain vociferous controversy among Kabila’s son Joseph assumed Badiou emphasised that he cries “for African scholars in CODESRIA. power and was recognised by the friend and the militant, and for Unlike many of his colleagues states around the world. As part the thinker and the human being”. who insisted on the separation of the compromise Wamba took In a statement in honour of Wamba, between academic work and a position in the Senate where he Abahlali baseMjondolo remarked politics while being linked to was a prominent advocate for the that “Baba Wamba understood states and NGOs, Wamba was subordination of the neo-colonial that the oppressed have to organise a movement intellectual who state to popular democratic themselves for their own liberation, held that intellectuals should be practices. However, the new and he understood that, as well as practically committed to Africa’s government swiftly collapsed into being open to the whole world, we liberation. He was vilified by many complicity with neo-colonialism also have powerful tools within our of his erstwhile colleagues for and a predatory relation to society, own culture and history to draw on in being ‘subjective’. By committing the struggle”. Wamba was committed himself to a struggle he had, in In his last years Wamba was to emancipatory politics, not to social their eyes, crossed a line. Some engaged in developing political status, irrespective of who engaged even accused him of recruiting discussion groups (he called in them. Not many people would child-soldiers. This was a pure them Mbongi a Nsi) in Kinshasa be remembered in this way by both fabrication, of course, but what and engaging in Pan-African a leading philosopher in France and upset him most was that few of activities while in Dar-es-Salaam. some of the most committed and his African academic friends ever He sustained warm relations with courageous grassroots militants in took the trouble to go and see him activists, movements, and radical South Africa. to listen to his point of view and intellectuals around the continent, engage with him. This was the including here in South Africa Wamba loved to laugh. On learning case even when he was in South where he was seen as an elder by that he was a great fan of Franco’s Africa and Botswana while the social movement and trade union music, I remember asking him, negotiations were taking place. activists. some years ago, why Franco had Apart from the Zimbabwean Ibbo demeaned himself by writing songs Wamba’s intellectual work, extolling the virtues of Mobutu Sese Mandaza, who wanted to listen although published in scattered to his side of the story, he was Seko as a presidential ‘candidate’. places, is being brought together I said that it was understandable almost universally condemned for by friends. Although he will be “mixing politics with academics”. that he could not be critical of the sorely missed by many of us, his dictator but that surely there must be Of course the liberal notion that spirit and work will live among academic discourse was apolitical limits! Wamba replied “listen to the all oppressed people, particularly guitar, it is ironic!” And he laughed and that state democracy allowed among those Africans seeking an for independent thinking were and laughed. I’ve been enjoying this emancipatory future free from neo- irony ever since. making a comeback at the time. colonial domination.