TOWARDS A RESTORATIVE HORIZONTAL ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATION

 

General Background

                The model presented here aims at transgressing the on-going economic, environmental and political impasse in the global system, which is characterised by an acute crisis in its productive sectors. This acute crisis, we have argued elsewhere [Nabudere, 2010], is due to the exhaustion of thegeneral profitability of the capitalist enterprise (as a system) at its root. When this crisis reigned on us in September 2008, it was clear that even eminent economists in the centres of capital were caught unawares and were unable to understand the factors behind such a major occurrence. This indicated that even the economic theories and models upholding the system were no longer applicable.

The economist and financial ‘wizard,’ George Soros, who was himself at the centre of the speculation under way, in his book: The Crisis of Global Capitalism [1998] in a chapter entitled:  “A Critique of Economics” described the capitalist market system as “inherently flawed.”  He questioned the scientific basis of the theories had pointed out that while the physical(natural)  sciences were able to exhibit some universal validity in analysis, economics and ‘social events’  on the other hand, “involve thinking participants” who can “change the rules of economic and social systems by virtue of their own ideas about those rules” [Ibid: 19-20]. He instead advocated a theory of ‘reflexivity’ to cover this changing nature of economic phenomena in order to cover for the individual thinking and changes to the rules, which to some extent could explain the crisis.

                It is not surprising therefore that when the crisis struck in 2007-2008; most economists were caught off guard and flat-footed since they were stuck to a theory of economics, which had long been discredited.  Soros argues in another book: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means [2008] that at first classical economists “simply assumed that market participants based their decisions on perfect knowledge.” On this basis they postulated that the theory of perfect competition was itself based on perfect knowledge, which was not true. He continues:

 

“Building on those postulates, economists constructed demand curves and supply curves and claimed that those curves governed the participants’ decisions. When the construct came under attack, they took refuge behind a methodological convention--- (put forward by Lionel Robbins which) held that economics is concerned only with the relationship between demand and supply: what goes into constituting demand and supply is beyond its scope. By taking demand and supply as independently given he (Robbins) eliminated the possibility that there could be a reflexive interconnection between the two”[Soros, 2008: 5-6].

 

                Soros goes on to further point out that this line of thinking was later carried to an extreme in rational expectations theory, “which somehow contrived to reach the conclusion that future market prices can also be independently determined and are not contingent on the biases and flawed perceptions prevailing among market participants” [Ibid]. Soros contends that this theory “totally misrepresents how markets operate.” He further points out that although this theory had been long discredited, “the idea that financial markets are self-correcting and tend towards equilibrium remains the prevailing paradigm on which various synthetic instruments and valuations models, which have come to play such a dominant role in financial markets, are based.” Consequently, Soros concluded that the prevailing paradigms were false and urgently needed to be replaced [Ibid].         

Therefore since the theory, which had long been discredited, continued to guide markets (on the basis that markets were ‘self-correcting’), it would not surprise anybody to hear that all the economists, let alone market participants, were all taken by surprise to discover that markets did not operate on independent self-correcting’ basis, but were highly manipulated to meet individual desires to maximise their ‘profits.’ It turned out that the market player as ‘thinking individuals’ did not obey any market rules, but instead manipulated them by changing them to meet their interests and desires as groups and as individuals.

                Although I am not an economist, I have over the last twenty years taught myself political economy, which enabled to me to understand some economic theory, which included monetary economic theory. This enabled me to write two books on money and capital in the 1980s. The first: The Rise and Fall of Money Capital [1990] and The Crash of International Finance Capital and Its Impact for the Third World [1989] as well as recent monograph on the 2008 global capitalist economic crisis:  The Global Capitalist Crisis and the Way Forward for Africa [2010]. These books enabled me to have some capacity to predict the events that followed the 1978 “Bloody Monday” and hence also what was happening in 2007-2008.

                This is why in October and November 2008, I was able to write three articles in the Sunday Monitor only three weeks after the September economic ‘meltdown’ in which I argued that the crisis that was under way was not a ‘sub-prime mortgage’ crisis, neither a credit crunch nor a financial crisis. At bottom, I argued, it was a global capitalist economic crisis, which would not end soon, but would be protracted. In the last article which dealt with the Way Forward for Africa, I proposed a series of steps, which would be needed to strengthen local production through a number of policy measures at the grassroots and regional levels. These are enumerated in the section below dealing with the need to move towards a restorative horizontal economy and political system. Therefore the model that I am advancing here is a direct reflection of our general experience under the global capitalist system and a reasoned response to its impact, which we can refer to as a “post-capitalist synthesis.” The thesis being advanced here is a dialectical theoretical response to the crisis, which draws its elements from failing capitalist system and its antithesis. The restorative horizontal epistemology is a direct response to the effects of the mainstream vertical integration of the global economy paradigms, which are now in crisis and no longer able to explain economic reality. We suggest that these theories and paradigms be abandoned in favour of new thinking, which we in part propose here.

 

1. Vertical Integration of the Global Economy

(A)   History

Our advancing of the restorative horizontal transformation epistemology stems from the consequences of the global vertical integration theories that have upheld the operations of mega-transnational corporations that have dominated the global economy. Capitalism first emerged in England and slowly spread to the rest of Europe, then to the United States, the British Dominions, and later to the European colonies in a creeping integrative manner. Bilateral Imperialism was basically a vertical process [Nabudere, 1977:  101-143]. This led to “Competitive and Free Trade Imperialism” under which the Britain became “The Workshop of the World” only briefly [Nabudere, 1977: 50-100]. The British hegemony were soon challenged by the Germans (Frederick List) and the Americans [Alexander Hamilton]-who refused to accept the British of use ‘free trade’ ideology to dominate the world production off goods and  its trade.

Following these developments, capitalism begun to spread around the world, but there was always an attempt by one country to outcompete the rest and take leadership, which the Germans tried to achieve through two world wars but eventually failed. The Americans took advantage of the weakening of European powers due to wars and became the world economic power by using the weakness to drain Europe of their gold reserves. The result was that the United States became a hegemon by using the Bretton Woods system to build up its industrial power under “Multilateral Imperialism” [Nabudere, 1977: 144-211]. 

The US entry as a major player on the international economic scene led them to develop a series of institutions, systems, arrangements, mechanisms, techniques and ideologies, which enabled them to defend and maintain their hegemonic turf against European, Japanese and South Eastern competitors. The device to ‘integrate’ the world through transnational or multinational strategy was one such attempt by the US, but this was also emulated by the Europeans, Japanese, Soviets and later the ‘Third World,’ in their own attempts to take part in the global markets.

Globalisationwas just one such ideological tool used by the Americans in the era of the financial revolution to delude the world to believe that economic success lay only through globalisation of “free trade,” “free markets,”  and “free competition.” Thus through similar ideological institutionalisation tried by the British in the earlier period, the US was also able to establish its own hegemonic rule over the entirely world, which is now being challenged by the Chinese.  This was in fact a neo-liberal economic and political strategy, which aimed at controlling the world under U.S., led “neo-colonialism” [Nabudere, 1977: 212-267].

 

(B)   Theory

One of the vital mechanisms and techniques used by the Americans to dominate the world economy was the ‘vertical integration’ strategy, which was pursued by its transnational corporations into monopolistic organisations.  Theoretically, vertical integration in microeconomic and management terms describes a style of management, which controls through vertically integrated companies in a supply chain united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or (market-specific) service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need.  Therefore, vertical integration is one method of avoiding the “hold-up problem” by creating a vertical monopoly, which in effect means creating a cartel composed of competing monopolies but which through vertical integration control the fixing of prices to enable them to realise a ‘monopoly’ or ‘super-profit’ (that is to say profits above the average profit.

According to Paul L. Joskow [2003], vertical integration in the post-war period was heavily influenced by a sharp distinction drawn by neoclassical economics between resource allocation mediated through markets and resource allocation within private firms and related types of hierarchical organizations (e.g. public enterprises). Microeconomics in general and applied price theory in particular were concerned with the way anonymous spot markets worked to allocate resources. The factors that determined the boundaries between firms and markets were largely ignored and issues associated with the internal organisation of firms and the way they allocated resources internally were, with a few exceptions, viewed as outside of the domain of economics. Firms were conceptualized as production sets that defined the technologically most efficient opportunities to transform inputs into outputs. Therefore, it would seem, a generalising economic theory at this time was abandoned in favour of management techniques and mechanisms for controlling markets.

Thus, both multi-plant economies and vertical integration downstream and upstream were generally viewed as being unnecessary for a firm to produce at minimum cost in the absence of technological relationships that physically joined production between plants. Instead, the presumption was that vertical integration, and non-standard vertical contractual arrangements, reflected the presence of market power somewhere in the system and/or efforts to create or exploit market power. Vertical integration could be a profitable response to costs of successive monopolies (e.g. double marginalization and related “vertical externalities,” or it could facilitate price discrimination in a variety of different ways or vertical integration (and long term contracts) could be used strategically to soften competition in the short run by raising rivals’ costs or in the long run by increasing the costs of entry to foreclose rivals that might otherwise enter the market.  That is why vertical integration always worked in favour of the leader.

 

(C)   Practice

There are three types of vertical integration strategies, which are distinguished by the degree to which firms own downstream suppliers and upstream buyers. Contrary to horizontal integration, which is aims at consolidating many firms that handle the same part of the production process, vertical integration is characterised by one firm engaged in different parts of production (e.g. growing raw materials manufacturing, transporting, marketing, and/or retailing).There are three types of vertical integration are: backward(upstream); forward (downstream), and balanced (both upstream and downstream) vertical integration. A company exhibits backward vertical integration when it controls subsidiaries that produce some of the inputs used in the production of its products.

 

(D)   Particular experiences

The first attempt at creating vertically integrated companies was in the nineteenth century steel sector by a US tycoon Andrew Carnegie who introduced the concept and use of vertical integration. This led other businesses using the system to promote better financial growth and efficiency in their businesses to get higher profits for their investors. All the monopolistic players involved in these techniques aimed at a control of a technology since all modern production systems are science-based in their production and/or management systems. In fact it was the struggle for scientific and technological supremacy that spurred the growth of the transnational form of organisation, which came to include the joint venture technique and later the internationalisation-globalisation process. As Raymond Vernon noted in the 1970s:

 

“As a result of increasing complexity of industrial innovation, the process came to be associated with the existence of large and complex organisations with commitments of considerable sums of money over long periods of time” [Vernon, 1971: 96].

 

                Thus one had to ‘innovate or perish’ as monopolies struggled to establish scientific and technological supremacy in the post-war period as a way of survival on the international scene. In this struggle the size of the enterprise became crucial and hence the use of the vertical integration form of organisation based on research and development of technology and ‘scientific techniques.’ Therefore access to military research results and facilities became another way of competition because it assured those with economic power access to the state for favours and information or collaboration. This is how the US government promoted science and technology to strengthen their corporations in the global markets and investments. But as the struggle for scientific supremacy proceeded, some corporations resorted increasingly to reductionist techniques, which they referred to as ‘science,’ which have undermined nature and the ecosystems because these techniques try to ‘mimic’ nature in order to make profits.

                One of the leading corporations connected with vertical integration are those connected with the Rockefeller Foundation controlled by the Rockefeller Family.  Building on their successes in oil industry under Standard Oil, the Foundation adopted ‘vertical integration’ strategy for the food industry in which they first integrated forward into the marketing of the beef, and backward into the supply of raw material feeds for beef cattle and hogs. With the crisis of profitability in industry in general after the second world war, there was no going back to ‘free competition’ and Rockefeller and Ford Foundations promoted the ‘vertical integration’ strategy as a general business strategy by funding a research project at Harvard University-called the Harvard Economic Research Project on the Structure of the American Economy, which was headed by three economists-Leontief, Goldberg and Davis. The project produced a theory of economic management which re-introduced ‘vertical integration’ in US food production. This led to the pressure to ‘deregulate’ and ‘privatise’ the economy under the regimes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the UK and the US under the neo-liberal ideological slogans of ‘freedom’ and ‘free markets’ [Engdahl, 2007].

                This strategy enabled the Rockefeller Foundation to create the agribusinesses as a global economy which was highly integrated vertically, especially in the food production and marketing. The concentration led to the independent family farmers being driven out off their land to make way for the now ‘efficient’ giant corporate agricultural-industrial agribusinesses. Agricultural production became more and more industrialised as manufacturing industry became increasingly unprofitable. Under concentration, farming became a big time operation under “Factory Farms” or “corporate agriculture,” which increasingly took over the land from family farmers who were now forced to work for the new monopolies as “contract farmers.” Agribusiness and industrial agriculture transformed the face of traditional American farming in ways that were so drastic that they became incomprehensible to ordinary consumers. The family farmers gradually became contract employees responsible only for feeding and maintaining concentrations of thousands of animals in giant pens. They neither owned the farms nor the animals. They had become something comparable to feudal serfs and indentured labourers through huge debts owed to the banks-which had linkages to the agribusiness corporations [Ibid].

                The interests of the State and agribusiness had also become closer and closer so that on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003, the Pentagon’s National Defence University had the courage to declare that: “Agribusiness is to the United States what oil was to the Middle East.” The merger of agribusiness with the State meant that all the barriers that had been created in the defence of the small family farm were now removed and new ones erected to protect agribusiness against the small family famers. The Harvard group of ‘vertical integration’ project had predicted that the addition of entire new sectors created by the latest developments in genetic engineering, including GMO and the creation of pharmaceutical drugs from genetically-engineered plants, which they now called a ‘convergence’ into the “agri-ceutical system,” was likely to create a new huge market ‘vertical integration’ would have eliminated competition in those sectors entirely.

                The issue was not how to move: ‘From the Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution;” it was rather how to transform the way people of the world were to feed or not to feed themselves with their loss of control over land and seeds. There was no going back for both the agribusiness corporations and the small farmers: either agribusiness would succeed or the small farmer would strive to survive through struggle. A new super-class was emerging globally that was to ensure that the agenda of agribusiness was achieved, just as small farmers were strategising how to resist the new enslavement. Thus we reached a stage where vertical integration had monopolised most of global business in the ‘agri-ceutical system’ as the lives of the ordinary people were being threatened with increasing prices of food and medicines and other necessities [Ibid].

 

 

1. Horizontal-Lateral integration

                Mainstream microeconomics and strategic management theorists also utilise other forms of integration including horizontal integration to achieve similar objectives but with a managerial difference. This strategy is used by corporations that seek to sell a type of product in numerous markets. Horizontal integration in marketing is much more common than vertical integration in production. Horizontal integration occurs when a firm is being taken over by, or merged with, another firm which is in the same industry and in the same stage of production as the merged firm, such as a car manufacturer merging with another car manufacturer. In this case both the companies are in the same stage of production and also in the same industry. This process is also known as a "buy out" or "take-over." The goal of Horizontal integration is to consolidate like companies and monopolize an industry. A monopoly created through horizontal integration is called a horizontal monopoly. A term that is closely related with horizontal integration is horizontal expansion. This is the expansion of a firm within an industry in which it is already active for the purpose of increasing its share of the market for a particular product or service.

 

1. Benefits and disadvantages of both vertical and horizontal integration

                Thus both vertical and horizontal integration have several advantages for them. These include: (a) economies of scale, (b) Expansion of knowledge and capabilities, (c) increase in markets (and profits), (d) ownership of the whole life cycle of activity in order to change it in the way required, and (e) reduction in competition (by merging rather than competing with them), (f) providing better services to the target groups in the market. The disadvantage of creating these monopolies and their mechanisms is that they create uneven development because they choose and take what they regard as most profitable in terms of monopoly profits. They discourage dynamic competition which destroys small enterprises and small farmers and results in raising prices above the average and therefore excluding the poor from those products.

                Their disadvantages lie in their monopolistic practices, they divert the benefits of science and technology to a small group of consumers leaving the vast majority of human kind in poverty as well as undermining the environment and the ecosystem in general. Therefore the restorative horizontal model we propose transgresses all these mechanisms and techniques and instead develops a restorative horizontal integration that seeks to e-establish the productive capacities, potentialities and rights of the poor-small famers, workers and those who seek to work for their needs rather than for individual profits that undermine the well-being of communities.

1. A Restorative Horizontal Transformation

(A)   Background

                The epistemological basis for the restorative horizontal transformation that we are exploring takes a multi-dimensional approach, which in terms of academic disciplines is transdisciplinary. Thus restorative horizontal transformation tries to transgress and overcome the fragmentation of knowledge which results from mono-disciplinary discourses as well as their consequences in real life experiences pointed out above. Monodisplinarity leads to situations such as we have seen above in which a single discipline such as ‘economics’ fails to cover all the dimensions in market decision-making. As Professor Basarab Nicolescu has pointed out in his book on Transdisciplinary Manifesto [2001], it was in the classical viewpoint that the academic disciplines as a whole be conceptualised as a pyramid with physics being at the base. However, he adds, that it was ‘complexity’ that pulverised this pyramid which provoked “a veritable disciplinary big bang” because the fragmentation of the disciplinary universe had reached a “full swing.” This resulted from the domain of each academic discipline inevitably becoming more and more specific which made communication between the disciplines becoming “more and more difficult, even impossible” [P. 34-5].

In effect Nicolescu’s saw multiple causes to this disciplinary “big bang.” Most importantly, it was, in his view, a response to the demands of “techno-science without breaks, without values, without any end other than utilitarianism” [Ibid]. In short, disciplinary complexity and fragmentation was a reflection of the crisis of the utilitarian capitalist value system, which techno-science tried to perpetuate “without breaks” with more and more ‘discoveries’ of new forms of technology being created. But such a craze could not succeed without the human spirit and human values. Nicolescu therefore called for the “restoration of balance” between science and values in a transdisciplinary manner.

                Therefore, the restorative transformation we seek to advocate here is howeverdeeper in its aspiration and consequences. Our restoration seeks to recover the process of knowledge generation as it was conceived and developed in the Cradle of Humanity which happens to have been in Africa, but whose ramifications are universal as we shall see in a later section. For the present we want to highlight the restorative process that we are advocating here.  Ours is a ‘restorative’ approach to human relations emphasising the social and community aspects, which have become a major social movement in the world today amongst humanistic organisations and traditions. This has called for a change in the way we understand and learn new situations as well the way we reflect on old ways in which we used to think and act and which we want to overcome or unlearn in order to relearn afresh where necessary. This calls for a new epistemology that is able to reflect the reconstructed ontologies of these different environments for purposes of restoring balance. 

The new approaches call for a new way in which we look at the world-no longer as humans hostile to the natural environment, but as a living side by side in a friendly environment, which calls for respect for diversity-both human and natural. We could propose such an approach on the basis of a reformulated epistemology, in tackling contemporary problems that face humanity, especially in Africa, including the over-presence of dictatorial regimes of governance and elite politics, which encourage divisions that lead to ethnic and religious conflicts, environmental crises and their consequences on our future existence on earth.

 

(B)   The restorative governance and justice.

The colonial and post-colonial impositions on Africa in the name of ‘civilisation’ and ‘modernisation’ have left a deep scar on the African personality, especially the psyche. The religious and political interventions from the outside have looked at Africans as having no history, culture and even memory of themselves. They have disregarded African languages through which the African society historically constituted itself. They have dismissed African spirituality as ‘satanic,’ ‘superstitious,’ and ‘evil.’ They have equally dismissed African knowledge systems as ‘erroneous’ and ‘mistaken.’ These cultural arrogances of the Western and Arab worlds have undermined the basis for a positive cross-cultural dialogues and understandings, which are vitally required if we are to live side by side in a peaceful world in the 21^st century.

The objective of restorative governance and justice in most African traditional societies is to restore social relations in society and establish new balances that can enable people in the communities to regain control over their lives. The restorative governance systems must promote a restorative horizontal participation and broad democratic practice that empowers ordinary people to constitute what they regard as just systems that can regulate their relations and not through ‘democratic’ manipulations of the post-colonial state system. Democracy in this sense involves listening to voices of everyone who have normally been excluded from decision-making because of political manipulation or their unfamiliarity with colonial languages so that only those who can speak French or English can be elected. By being forced to accept French or English or Arabic as ‘official languages’ for decision-making, the post-colonial states deny the African people a meaningful inclusion in whatever they do. They are denied full meaningful participation in decision-making that governs them as a collective community because of the barriers of foreign languages. That cannot be democracy because ‘representation’ in this sense neither promotes ‘liberalism,’ nor ‘freedom,’ nor ‘participation.’

A restorative horizontal system of governance and justice requires that people are treated as subjects and not objects of state policy. It means restoring their cultures as the basis of their governance. More recent examples of African systems of governance that have persisted in the colonial and post-colonial era go prove that African traditional systems of governance and justice are strong, persistent, and dynamic, able to withstand changes and be part of change. These are lasting characteristics of the traditional systems, which explain why the system has been resilient and able to cope in the dominant western-introduced contemporary state systems and to ‘resurrect’ even where they have been ‘abolished’ ‘reformed’ or even ‘banned.’

Therefore, the colonial ‘mirror’ approach that necessitated the invention of ‘primitive’ society in order to define the Western identity over them is the result of European racism. The anthropological epistemologies pursued by colonial social scientists placed emphasis on some static historical understanding and cultures of these societies. With a more nuanced orientation in the social sciences, it became possible to realise that even the relations between political power and religion are not radically altered in the so-called complex societies, possessing hierarchies and clearly differentiated authorities.  These more nuanced studies were able to satisfy the following more lasting characteristics:

(i)                  Diversity and variability                                            

                             The most important lesson to be learnt from historical and contemporary African political experience, which the evolutionary and anthropological structural approaches could not capture, was the apparent diversity and variability in the forms of social political organisation of African political systems at each stage of development of the state. It is now widely accepted that the assumption of the existence of universal stages of development of differentiation, together with the concomitant manifestation of similar institutional qualities, has tended to minimise the importance of certain factors in the internal structures of certain polities. The variations at each stage have been perceived as secondary to the major characteristics of the overall stage, which is false.                 

                             There are examples in different parts of Africa, which show major breakthroughs of advancement from acephalous (‘stateless’) societies and chieftainships to early state formations and from early state formations to fully-fledged states. But because their development did not follow a linear progression, these breakthroughs did not always result in identical outcomes. There have also been cases such as ancient Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia which were able to develop into more differentiated imperial states, whereas others such as the old states in West Africa such as Ghana, Mali, and Songhai did not go beyond certain rudimentary phases of state formation [Eisenstadt, Abitbol, Chazan, 1988: 4].

(ii)                Reversibility and Irreversibility

                             A realisation that some of these differences might be traced back to the so-called secondary variations that they exhibited in the earlier stages has made some social scientists aware of another phenomenon of African political systems: the reversibility and irreversibility of certain state forms. This has shown the possibility of reversibility from state forms to traditional “stateless” forms and vice versa under certain social and historical conditions. Although both peaceful means and conquest were used to achieve political changes, the right of a group of people to separate and form new communities in which they could assert their own freedom was guaranteed in the economic and social arrangements as well as in the religious beliefs. These religious beliefs, backed up by concepts of mystical order on which African moral systems were based constituted the rationale for a monarchical political order but it also formed the basis for its challenge. Yet these religious beliefs could not be understood in the contexts of each of the particular societies/states studied, but in the context of an African cultural unity [Diop, 1989].

                             Prof Cheickh Anta Diop, a physicist, was ahead of his times when by utilising transdisciplinary epistemology was able to draw attention to the fact that the boundary between monarchical authority and a tribal clan authority was a narrow one. According to Diop, with different levels of culture, many African people lived in the “scarcely shaken or liberalised Clanic organization”, while those who lived in the cities and towns were detribalised. One could move from the one to the other because of this inherent right to separate and form separate communities and political forms-which was an aspect of the African peoples’ sovereign rights.

                             We need to look deeply in the internal structures of specific polities if we are to understand their viability or solidity. The empire of Mali has been cited as a good example of the reversibility of state forms. Mali held suzerainty of most of western Sudan from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. When it ceased to exist, a number of political units within it such as the Mandiga were able to revert to the traditional framework of the kafu.  According to Eisenstaedt, Abitbol, and Chazan, “the imperial referent, and especially its political symbols, remained explicit not only in the Mandiga consciousness and ideology but also in the transformation of the structural arrangements of the kafu according to forms derived from the imperial setting [Ibid: 3].” Asante (Ashanti) has also been cited as another good example in this respect. The memory of its continuity lies only in the present Akan traditional system.

                             The above examples demonstrate that political systems have never developed in an entirely self-enclosed manner. People, who live within the confines of a particular system, were also usually organised in several other systems, ways and different levels. The political system is just one such important system. Others include economic formations, ascriptive collectives and civilisational frameworks and these structures may change within the same society to different degrees or in different constellations [bid: 16]. They may also re-emerge in different forms and formations.

                             In his study of traditional pluralism in pre-colonial African societies, M. G. Smith, the Caribbean anthropologist, argued that the customary dichotomisation of African political systems into “state” and “stateless” (centralized and acephalous societies) was misplaced because this dichotomisation made it difficult to understand the organisation of different kinds of society and their linkages. He instead demonstrated that by looking for differences of corporate organisation, one could discover the variety of political organisation that made it possible for Africans to accommodate different kinds of social organisation and social life into polities of different kinds. This was a major breakthrough for social anthropology.

(iii)               Change and continuity

                             Another characteristic of African traditional systems of governance is their capacity to change, adapt and maintain continuity. The reason for this is that these systems are steeply rooted in the African peoples’ consciousness of what is considered just and fair government. The exploitation of symbolism such as ‘golden stool’ of the Asante, as an example, is deeply rooted in the spiritual and cultural values of the people, which are continuously memorised through ritual, proverbs, song, dance and historical memory. The system of African monarchies are characterised by their ‘divine’ nature and revered by the people because of it. Although the now preferred expression of this phenomenon by western scholars as ‘ritual’ rather than ‘divine,’ the two concepts are in fact related and the same.

                             As Davidson points out, these monarchies were viewed as “depositories of ritual power.” This was because their authority rested mainly and consistently upon its place “in a given peoples’ beliefs about themselves and the world” around them [Davidson, 1969:190]. These rituals are associated with stories of creation and origin, of worldviews and cosmogonies, of more memorable ancestor charters, the guidance of the ‘living dead’ to the still living and the unborn. As Davidson emphasises, the kings were not ‘divine’ in being regarded as gods as with the early and ancient Nubians and Egyptians, but as carriers of ‘living’ traditions of the people whom they govern according to traditional charters: “They were political and therefore earthly persons as well as ritual and therefore spiritual ones. The two kinds of quality hung inherently together.” The qualities could be separated “whenever a failing in the first appeared to threaten the second, and they often were; but the spiritual quality remained always paramount” and this for the purpose of their perpetuation [Ibid: 191].

                             That is why the systems persisted in different forms of continuity even when the odds seemed great. So long as the people remained in charge of their ever changing and differentiated lived experiences, the cultures were always renewed through adaptation. Nothing was ‘invented’ out of nothing. It was always a rediscovery of the heritage formulated according to the needs of the generality of the people. That is why it became a lived, historical and cultural experience, which alone was the sovereign. Davidson summaries this consistency in the following words in his books: The African Genius:

“Unity and continuity within diversity of forms were insistently present. Change brought kings on the scene and elevated them to high authority; yet the kings were strong only in the measure that they conserved, or could be brought to conserve, the ideal harmonies of old tradition. Law became elaborate and the charters were greatly altered; yet the governing ideas behind them stayed at the heart of the matter. Even the exceptions or apparent exceptions, at least until the nineteenth century; can now be seen to prove this rule”[Davidson, 1969:203].

(iv)              The African Constitution             

                             Chancellor Williams In his study of African societies in his famous book: The Destruction of African Civilisation has summarised the different experiences of African political systems which he gave the general name of the ‘African Constitution.’  This constitution is a body of principles and practice, which he draws from to identify the customary laws that governed the Black African societies from ancient times up to time of invasions. He traces the lineage ties and corresponding responsibilities and age-set andage-grade systems as the earliest institutions through which the African constitution functioned and out of which its democracy was born.

                             According to him, these elementary elements continued right through state forms such as kingdoms and Empires. He believes that a majority of African states operated on the principle of acceptance of common ancestry and the construction of the lineage system as “the powerful factor” that provided the basis and incentive for the later formation of kingdoms and empires. Out of these basic relationships that created the traditional political systems, Williams postulates some theories and principles of traditional constitutional law, and these spell out the fundamental rights of the African people. For instance, one of these principles is the right of the common people as final source of power. The second is the recognition that rights of the community of people as superior to those of individual members, including those of chiefs and kings. These principles can be found scattered in the different constitutions of the communities that did not accept chiefs and those that were in the kingdoms and empires [Ibid: 171-76].

                             In examining the pre-colonial African political systems, their experience through the colonial period as well as their contemporary practises and usages, one has to bear in mind the above tendencies in the African systems of governance since they have a long history of existence whose ethos seem to have been imbued with the original wisdom that manifested itself in the formation of the earliest state systems. One of the central aims of any investigation about them must therefore be to demonstrate why African societies were able to organise themselves so as to accommodate the very large number of diverse communities that peopled the continent but having at their core the same or similar ethos in pluralistic societies.

        It is in fact this aspect of inquiry that gives the African political systems a character of their own. It is also this aspect that goes to reveal the secret behind their survival under different historical and social conditions. The post-colonial situation is not different from this historical experience, which proves that Africans can make and unmake their state forms and that the people of Africa are truly the creators of their history, just like all human beings in their different cultural and historical circumstances. Many of these experiences have been co-opted in the form of neo-traditionalism to become part of the contemporary post-colonial states such as Swaziland and Botswana, proving once more that African traditional governance and judicial institutions can and do serve as vibrant institutions which can be rejuvenated into restorative and horizontal and transformative political systems.

But as Professor Archie Mafeje, one of the outstanding African anthropologists has observed the resilience of the ‘lineage principle’ in Africa: “even under what is supposed to be capitalist organisation” [Nabudere, 2011: C]. This confirms Prof Diop’s thesis about the centrality of the ‘Clanic organisation’ in African social and political organisation. This thesis points to the importance of a restructured discourse about African governance and justice, which as we observed above, must be restorative and horizontal in character.   The objective of restorative justice in most African traditional societies is to restore social relations in society and establish new balances that can enable people in the communities to regain control over their lives on the basis of rewarding good and punishing evil as enounced in the historical philosophy of Ma’at or ‘collective justice’ [Assmann, 1996].

This ‘restoration’ requires that the perpetrators of crime and other offences accept that they committed the evil or the wrong. This is a collective demand which requires them to accept responsibility for their wrongful actions (and crimes). Having accepted the evil or wrong action or omission, the perpetrator is required to render apology and atonements to the victims, which if considered genuine will be accepted by the victims together with the community. The acceptance by the community of the apology is a general acceptance by them to see to it that justice prevails. As part of the reprimand of the perpetrator, he/she is required to render compensation, reparation, and restitution before reconciliation with the victims and the wider community is publicly performed with rituals.

Such reconciliation restores a new sense of security; it restores dignity within the community and it creates a new harmony that can enable the community to set new rules for the restored social relations. It also means restoring within the community a feeling of a holistic justice that the whole community feels comfortable with. This therefore calls for a new holistic restorative and horizontal approach and transformation that takes into account the political, social, cultural, economic and the environmental situations and conditions. This is transdisciplinary and multi-dimensional approach that avoids western fragmented concepts of ‘justice,’ which pit ‘retributive justice,’ against ‘redistributive or restorative justice’ [Nabudere, 2011D]. It is also holistic in that it does not create a dichotomy between governance, law, and its dispensation. It is holistic because it combines the three actions into one restorative act.

These governance principles are best promoted when the people are given a wide leverage to constitute themselves in States that they can feel comfortable with. This may involve giving people in the current post-colonial state systems their sovereign right to constitute new States of their choice. This will give the people an opportunity to create new States in which democracy is rooted in their cultures. These cultures have the longest memory of different kinds of systems of governance since creation. They begin with the grassroots extended families, clans and political unions of clans based on organic lineage relations at different levels. The traditional and modern political thinkers have many models, from which they can draw composite models of democracy that can fit the African situation.

Whatever the situation, such a new system of democracy must have the ordinary citizens at the centre of the system, but such citizens must be capable of assuming greater responsibility for their self-governance. They should accommodate federal and confederal principles, which enable people to enjoy and accept the widest possible horizontal rights and responsibilities. Such States should be STATES WITH HEARTS AND FEELINGS, because by assuming greater responsibilities for their self-governance each individual undertakes to have feelings for the others in a new restorative and horizontal self-governing social formation that is based on greater individual and community responsibilities. It is horizontal and restorative because it spreads power and responsibility at the grassroots level to all local areas. Such relationship must be manifested both at local and global levels since restorative horizontality requires in its nature that vertical hierarchies of power be dismantled and dispersed horizontally to everyone. In terms of the failed post-colonial States, it means dismantling the hierarchies that emanate from the Imperial Presidencies and Militariates that are in place and replace them with restorative horizontal powers-that can form the basis of new states with the Heart. This is because since the Arab Spring, people of the world can no longer give support to state systems that do not have feelings for their citizens or respect their birth-given rights. People have the sovereign right to dismantle autocratic States and replace them with their own States, which they can control.

 

(C)    The restorative economic horizontal transformation

We have seen that the mainstream capitalist economic system adopted both vertical and horizontal-lateral integration as a form of monopoly management and control of production and markets. Both these systems raised the levels of production to high levels, but failed in the distributive capacities. These structures failed to bring about equal development and instead led to large scale uneven development and mal-development on world scale. However, development theories, which advocated unilinear “stages of development”, which were supposed to remove all uneven development and enable the former colonies to ‘catch-up’ did not succeed. By the 1970-80s these theories and ‘strategies’ were declared ‘dead.’ A good example of this was W. W. Rostow’s-The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto,” which was in fact an ideological tract aimed at counter-balancing the Marxist five modes of production, which it did not even succeed in doing.

 According to Richard A. Higgot, modernisation theories arose out of the success of industrial societies in the West overcoming major economic problems and severe inequalities in their countries. This led them to believe and advocate that it was only by following their path of transformation that the colonial “under-developed countries” could ‘catch-up’ and move along the same path. Uneven development was not viewed as a product of major philosophical or normative ramifications. According the development theorists, what was needed was to improve the strategies and techniques of development in the same way in order to remove the impediments to development which were considered to be the result of ‘backwardness.’  In fact many of these economists referred to these countries as ‘backward countries’ or ‘underdeveloped countries.’ Due to pressure by the former colonial countries at the United Nations, these countries were later called ‘developing countries’ as an ideological gimmick. With victory over Fascism in Europe after the Second World War, the liberal democracy project also appeared assured even in these former colonies:

 

“Advanced industrial Western society was established as the good society to which the colonial peoples could be steered by a process of guidance and diffusion. This background is particularly important for the growth of the study of developing countries. It is against such a background that modernisation was seen [Higgot, 1983: 15].”

 

            Neo-liberalism in pursuing the same paradigms, crafted the ‘Washington Consensus’ that theorised the need for ‘structural adjustment programmes’ after the failure of ‘development paradigms. This was reform without development-in fact it made the effort even pointless.  Faced with the failure of the development programmes, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund- the two multilateral institutions concerned with the matter- published a number of reports in the early and mid-nineties in which they now advised governments to begin to “reform” and eventually to “restructure” their economies and institutions according to new prescriptions and conditionalities.

                             Under the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan administrations in the UK and USA, the Bank pushed a series of policies that were contained in the five major reports on Africa referred to above.  In its annual report for 1980 the World Bank pointed out that whereas the old approach of the Bank was based on short-term, crises-oriented projects, the new approach was to be more far-reaching, more long-term but with the purpose of bringing about structural reforms. A new loan scheme called “Structural Adjustment Lending” was used to encourage this “dialogue.”

                             In 1979 the International Monetary Fund reinforced the World Bank policy dialogue and “Structural Adjustment Lending through its own economic stabilization programmes assisted by the new “facilities” it created for this purpose. The IMF conditionality came in as part of this “package” as a bait to encourage the “policy reform dialogue” strategy among weak economic states. In fact the ground was being laid for the economic globalisation of the African economies under a neo‑liberal ideology of structural adjustment. The IMF conditionalities were handed down through “standby arrangements” which were based on a “stabilization programmes” based on “hand to mouth” tactics.

                             The real objective was not only to control Third World economies in this direction of “globalisation”, but also to directly manage them.  Faced with the failures of all the “blueprints” of the multilateral institutions, the World Bank in 1989 sought to provide comprehensive theoretical and ideological rationalisations for the failure while at the same time pushing new mechanism of control and management in a more authoritarian mould. In its “more professional and less polemical” report “From Crisis to Sustainable Growth,” the Bank developed what, Beckman correctly called “a political theory of adjustment” [Beckman, 1992:83]. The new report adopted a broader, but in fact an authoritarian framework by raising social, political, and cultural issues in seeking ways to resolve the crisis.

                             To craft the policy, it blamed the first generation of African political leaders for distrusting foreign business and investment. This was an attempt to delegitimize nationalism and state policies aimed at ‘nation-building’.’ It blamed the post-colonial states for being “poorly rooted” in the African society! But the Bank did not point out how these states could not be better rooted in their cultures and societies. Here in fact was the root of the African crisis. The demonstration effect of emulative consumption by these leaders, which the report criticised, was also not properly explained. It even blamed the leaders for couching their political vision in the idiom of “northern values, institutions, and technology” as if these were not the very parameters the leaders were expected to imbue under modernisation theories and paradigms, which informed neo-colonialism!

                             The Bank even went further to blame African leaders for adopting “poor foreign models” for their development programmes, when the Bank was the very institution responsible for such ‘development’ models. The Bank finally blamed the leaders for a kind of “thinking’ that was dominated by the dichotomy between capitalist and socialist development model, when the majority of them had followed the capitalist models. In any case the leaders did not advocate the statist approach to development. It was a product of the Keynesian theories of development that were behind the ‘second colonial occupation’ and the British-propelled “political development’ approaches, which had also failed.

                             Based on these wrong analyses, the Bank proposed new guidelines that did not seek to ‘root’ the new ideas in African societies based on their cultures and value-systems. Instead, it implored the leaders to abide “by the worldwide trend towards privatisation,” another wrong Northern model! Thus the World Bank, in developing a political theory of adjustment, wanted to de-legitimise nationalism and nation-building project of the ‘second colonial occupation’ and put in place a new theory of colonial occupation. This was also intended to develop new agencies for this stage of ‘privatisation’ to support the selling out African assets and to accept the new neo-liberal ideology. These new agencies were new civic organisations called Non-Governmental Organisations-NGOs. The old civic organizations such as trade unions and cooperative unions were attacked as having encouraged statist development.

                      In fact the very objective of imposing adjustment programmes was to prevent a restorative horizontal transformation to take place in the rural areas. Many innovations amongst the farmers were taking place, but these were being frustrated by the structural adjustment programmes. Indeed, the joint research carried out by the Marcus-Garvey Pan-African Institute and the South African Human Sciences Research Council on the issue of interlinkages between Universities and firms (including communities) revealed that there was a lot of innovation that was taking place in rural agricultural communities, but which were being weakened by mainstream Transfer of Technology model pursued by the state under influence of the Bank [Nabudere, 2009].

                             The model of restorative horizontal economic transformation must delegitimize these exploitative theories, policies, and programmes based on them and their ideologies based on neo-colonial epistemologies. Restorative and horizontal economy means a transformation that empowers the farmers and working class to abandon economic programmes that are intended to marginalise them. These two groups must instead formulate programmes that are intended to meet their own needs and not the interests of the vertically integrated monopolies such as agribusinesses promoting GMOs (Monsanto, etc).  These monopolistic programmes are intended to produce cheap primary products for export to the countries which own the vertically-and laterally controlled monopolies, which turn the peasants into serfs on their own lands. This disempowerment of the small peasant producer is increasing with the land grabs under way, which within three years has taken 50 million hectares of land on which small farmers produce food for their self-sustenance. .  The restorative approach means that the empowered producers assume responsibility for their own restorative economic empowerment.

                             The restorative horizontal forms of organisation must be non-hierarchical and powerless to exploit other communities who are weaker. The horizontal process requires that the poor share experiences in order to widen the process of transformation for everyone in an innovative manner. Production must meet needs and not profits for a few successful capitalists. Local production should first address local needs, and then use the surplus for exchanges with neighbours for those goods that one is unable to produce for himself. The people’s response to the crisis must be COMPREHENSIVE, MULTI-DIMENSIONAL AND IMMEDIATE.

                             That means we must abandon the current fragmented ways of looking at the world and through which we think and ‘plan’ ’national’ programmes. The new approach must be holistic, transdisciplinary, and based on a new epistemology that is open-ended and accommodative to all voices. It is on such new epistemological basis that we can then begin to work out responses to the on-going crisis, but such responses must draw their lessons from the ordinary peoples’ lived experiences-both positive and negative. There are a lot of experiences from of the peoples’ knowledge systems with a lot of innovative ideas that can help us overcome the crisis and structure new economies along horizontal lines. These can and must be tapped to address these immediate problems in a comprehensive manner. We should therefore:

·         Combat uneven developmentthat has been created by neo-colonial and global capitalist economic relations. This system of production, despite its technological potential, thrives on scarcity which forces the poor to work for capital. Capital as a world system therefore survives on unequal and uneven development. Such model of development is buttressed on a system of monopoly markets based on “vertical integration” which links local productive units to exploitative global capital.. In so doing, international capitalism leaves other areas and regions of the world undeveloped and mal-developed. The response here must be to encourage a “restorative horizontal transformation,” which aims at spreading new productive energies in all regions horizontally with none being left undeveloped. This means, each and every one must have the opportunity to produce something for their own consumption and a surplus for the market with neighbours. This will have the consequence of bringing about an “independent, integrated and self-sustaining economy,” which the NRM militarist ‘mission’ failed to achieve.

·         Aim for immediate Food Securityin the restorative horizontal transformative approach. We cannot produce food for the international market while people on the ground have nothing to eat. This will have the implication of reviving indigenous food crops, which have been undermined by exotic food products promoted by agribusiness on the world market such as rice and wheat. Luckily, many Ugandans can now produce local varieties of rice and wheat in addition to ‘subsistence crops.’ But the ‘subsistence’ food crops have been undermined as they have become ‘cash crops’ with the peasant producers producing and selling everything to neighbouring markets where little production takes place such as Southern Sudan. This creates domestic pockets of hunger and famine which have to be overcome by increased production horizontally.

·         Promote efforts at developing a restorative horizontal transformation that can also take care of environmental conservation. Local education in sustainable development can lead to restorative solutions that provide immediate returns, while protecting natural capital of the environment. Simple, alternative technologies and methods, which the small farmers are capable of handling, can be used to encourage organic/sustainable agricultural practices, improve crop efficiency, decrease deforestation, increase reforestation, and build environmentally-friendly income-generating projects.  Thus by aiming at improving food security combined with conserving nature, small farmers can improve their livelihoods, expand domestic trade while also conserving and protecting the environment and the ecosystem.

·         Encourage neighbouring communities to develop systems of common human security,which will include food self-sufficiency and physical security to minimise conflicts in such conflicts as cattle rustling and land and water-source degradation. Such systems should encourage a spirit of neighbourhood solidarity, security, peace and sustainable development.

·         Encourage internal/domestic trade as restorative horizontal integrationtakes deeper root. This will encourage local processing or semi-processing of commodities as domestic production increases. It will also encourage local manufacturing and industrial parks to emerge.

·         Encourage regional trade across bordersto develop in addition to internal domestic markets. These markets will consolidate the domestic and regional horizontal integrations as well as contributing to Glocal markets in a restorative manner.

·         Createlocal and regional currencies in view of the crisis of the US dollar as an international reserve currency. Although it is still playing the role of hedging weakening currencies of other countries, it still cannot act as a global currency when the economy backing it is and continues to be weak. This has to be done if horizontal transformation of the economy is to succeed. We should learn from the Asians and Latin Americans who are experimenting in such new ways of thinking.

·         Work towards the establishment of regional federal and confederal systems of governance and justice if the new horizontal restorative new structures are to thrive. This measure will return to the people their sovereign rights to create new states of their choice. Furthermore. aregional currency requires a regional political state. The current efforts connected with the “fast-tracking” of the East African federation will not materialise because of the existing rivalries between political elites in the five members of the East African Community. To overcome these rivalries based on individual economic and political interests in each of these five states, a political determination and will should emerge aimed at abolishing the existing colonial boundaries and create space for the people to establish new states based on their linguistic-cultural identities. This will represent an expression of concession by the leaders to the people of East Africa to exercise their sovereign rights of self-determination. This will result in a political union and/or federation based on the new states sanctioned by the people themselves. In any case, if the leaders do not abolish the existing barriers to political unity, these existing states are bound to disintegrate.

·         Create a GLOCAL economic and political system based on the new restorative horizontal economic transformation as advocated here. This will not mean that the local producers will not be part of the global economic system. On the contrary, the collapsing of the existing global interests based on the vertically-literally integrated multinational corporations will create local economic potentialities as outlined above. These local interests will increasingly interlink on a new basis glocally. This is because with the strengthening of the horizontal domestic integrated economies, there will be more production coming from all corners of the domestic and regional markets, which will be available for global-local (glocal) exchanges. In support of such a development, the Daily Monitor of the 28^th July, 2011, reported that online trade by small businesses on a global scale is beginning to take shape in Uganda. The paper adds that online trade “helps in periods of economic crisis because it reduces on the day-to-day business expenses as well as eliminating the middle men” including multinational corporations.  Online trade is free in that it enables sellers and buyers to transact business without having any physical contact. In the future, this form of trade will enable small communities and traders to trade glocally with one another without the intervention of the old great transnational corporations [Nabudere, 2011B].

This approach to local economic transformation is drawn from the global experience that we have outlined above. Its restorative responses although directed at strengthening local responses is also globally-based to enable restorative horizontality to take place on a GLOCAL basis. The new approach does not support ‘autarchy’ nor does it support parochialism. It is aimed at strengthening LOCAL CITIZENSHIP in order to strengthen communal-state-citizen relationships. If this takes place throughout the world in the 21^st century, we can see an emergent GLOCAL CITIZENSHIP which will bring about a unity of humankind based on common values that respect HUMAN DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY.

 

(C)  The Environment and the Restoration of the Ecosystem

The health of the economic and political systems is measured by the health of the environment and the ecosystem in general, which supports them. This is because all life activities are dependent on a sound ecosystems including simple unobservable facility such as inhaling clean air for politicians and economic agents who keep in clipping at forests for their personal interests. Therefore if we are to recreate a restorative horizontal political and economic system, we must restore the balance between nature and our life activities, which can harm or nurture nature and the ecosystem. This is the only way we can ensure our long-term survival as human species.

Luckily, the long standing environmental movement has been joined by a ‘Convergence Movement” that is striving for a reconvergence of man and nature. The crisis of ‘reason’ that is under way and which informs the current mainstream scientific methods and political thinking is leading many scientists to question their premises within science and ‘reason’ itself, just as the quantum and the mechanics revolutions dislodged the classical physics and mechanics paradigms that created ‘vacuums’ and ‘excluded middles’ in nature. The convergence has begun to tell us not only what is, but what ought to be; prescribing in addition to describing the realities of life, thereby reconciling order and hierarchy. In this way, the new quantum science has now began to focus on the convergence of man and nature andon the framework which makes us, as living beings, dependent parts of nature and simultaneously makes nature the object of our thoughts and actions. In this situation scientists can no longer confront the universe as ‘objective’ observers since science now recognises the participation of man with the universe. This gives cosmic significance to the person. It is, therefore, not surprising that a new consciousness has emerged towards a new theory of knowledge propounded by a group of natural and social scientists called ‘Convergence,’ which rejects any notion of technological inevitability based on ‘scientific facts’ [Anshen, R. T, 1986: xi-xxix].

A reordering of our link with the universe must accept the cosmic reconvergence with nature since the power which man achieved through technology has transformed itself into spiritual and moral impotence. The reconvergence requires us to recognise that the content and usefulness of scientific knowledge is just an infinitesimal fraction of natural knowledge, but we are proud of producing it because it is our creation. But it is limited and subject to change. We must re-embrace those other forms of knowledge, which recombines us with nature. With the new science, science begins to include the realm of human values; otherwise there would be a danger that what we knew to be human would be forgotten. There is therefore need for a restorative learning and relearning. According to Anshen: “In fact, it may well be that science has reached the limits of the knowable and may now be required to recognise its inability to penetrate into the caprice and the mystery of the soul of the atom” [Ibid: xix].

From this emerges a major principle consistent with Afrikology. This is the principle of the unitary structure of the universe and hence of everything consistent with the Ubuntu philosophy of “I exist because you exist.” This is the principle, emanating from the original knowledge from the Cradle of Humanity which holds that the universe did not emerge out of nothing, but that it was part of continuous self-created reality combining physical and sensual elements, which underlines the basic interconnectedness between things and human consciousness. This principle emphasizes the interdependence and complementarity of all phenomena into a wholesome relationship. The principle also expresses the underlying law of nature of transformation of matter, of evolution of matter through time, considered as a divinity or khepera, which still continues to operate connecting all existence. This is what is represented in the Hesiod’s Theogony (borrowed from the Egyptians) and the Book of Genesis which state that in the beginning there was a primal unity, a state of fusion in which, later, all elements became separated but then merged again. It was out of this combined reality that emerged, through separation, parts of opposite elements but never disconnected because they intersect and interconnect into newer forms and matter, in meteoric phenomena or in individual things.

This is what we now recognise as the law of conservation, which expresses the profound underlying convergence that exists in all nature and this law, expresses the further principle that there is always a something that remains constant, unchanged which is energy and it is this something that holds the universe and humanity together in a great interdependence. It is also from this principle from which the law of growth, the law of evolution, and the law of convergence emerge, which have both creative and tragic natures. It is for this reason that our vigilance of these ‘opposites’ constantly require our constant development of knowledge. This is because growth and evolution entail at the same time degenerative processes and devolution, which constantly lead to new regenerations and evolutions. Therefore there is no end to the evolution of knowledge. This means that in terms of research, methods, and methodologies, there is a greater need for a deeper search for deeper meanings of science, philosophy, law, morality, history, technology: “in fact all the disciplines  in a transdisciplinary frame of reference” [Ibid: xxii].

The above convergences demonstrate the soundness of the proposition in this restorative horizontal model which propels us to state that it is only through a restorative approach to human activity-be it philosophising, politics, economics, etc, indeed all human endeavours, that balance with other forces surrounding them is possible. If this principle of a restorative horizontal transformation is not observed, then we must recognise that our presence on planet earth as human beings is not contributing to the survival of the entire ecosystem upon which we depend. It would have shown that we indeed are dangerous specie living at the expense of other species and that our continued existence is a danger to all nature. We must therefore adjust and recognise our interdependence with nature and that without a sound ecosystem we cannot survive and that nature has the capacity to destroy us, just as we think science helps us to ‘control’ nature and use it to our advantage and benefit.

 

The Problem of Epistemology

                The horizontal restorative epistemology (or Ways of Knowing) proposed here is essential if we are to change the way we look at the world. Our worldviews (cosmologies) have to change to conform to one which takes into account our cosmic relations with nature. This epistemology will help us to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge separated by the different academic disciplines that we are imprisoned in. It will enable us to think and act holistically not limited by the compartmentalised structures that we are currently promoting through research and teaching. We must discover a new epistemology that comprehends the world around us in a transdisciplinary, multi-dimensional and complimentary ways. The answer is to drop the Cartesian ‘scientific’ epistemologies that erect a barrier between the mind and the body-thereby fragmenting our ways of knowing by privileging the ‘thinking individual”  who uses only his ‘mind’ to ‘know.’ This does not mean we drop scientific work. It only means that scientific work has to be done differently by eliminating the crude reductionism that has been used to manipulate our relations with nature. However, the restorative horizontal epistemology is part and parcel of a broader philosophy (epistemology and ontology) called Afrikology.

                This broader philosophy and epistemology emanates from the original approach that was utilised in the Cradle of Humanity when the universe was first conceived by the first human beings. The procedures they deployed to understand the universe by creating a language in which it could be grasped continues up to the present day. The metaphysics, which later came to inform their cosmologies still informs our spirituality, cultures and belief systems.  This cosmology holds that the universe did not emerge out of nothing, but that it was part of a continuous process of a self-created reality that combined our physical and sensual elements into a holistic beingness. This cosmology underlines the basic interconnectedness between things and human consciousness. Therefore, the epistemology based on this cosmology emphasises the interdependence and complementarity of all things into a wholesome relationship.

                According to my recent research [Nabudere, 2011A]; Afrikology is a universal epistemology, which is based on the “Word” created by the Heart, which leads to the emergence of language. It is opposed to the Cartesian epistemology which separates the Mind from the body and privileges the ‘thinking individual’ to be the creator of knowledge. Afrikology, on the other hand, holds that the Heart is the centre of all knowledge and truth. It is based on the records of ancient Egyptian Africans called the Memphite Theology or The Shabaka Text, which describes how the first human being represented by the Batwa in the Mountains of Africa and the San people of Kalahari Desert, were able to experience the universe and how they began to know it.

The Text states that these first human beings were able to develop an epistemological procedure, which enabled them to create knowledge about the Universe around them.  According to the epistemology, the procedure through which they begun to ‘know’ the universe wasthrough the five senses experiencing the new reality around them. As they lived in their environments, they begun to recognise and progressively experience concrete situations and realities. Their experiences were given meanings through the procedures which were recorded. They state that they perceived the realities through the-five senses- Eyes, Ears, Noses, Mouths and Hands. According to the procedure, which became continuous, the five senses’ perceptions and experiences were then reported to the Heart and that it was the Heart that gave these realities and experiences names or meanings through the ‘Word.’

                This was basically the story of creation as first articulated in the Cradle of Humankind by man himself. It was not a contrived and abstract story that Plato later tried to construct in the Greek philosophies, which was a reflection on these developments in the Cradle far from the Greeks. The first human beings also recognised a god called Ptah-a Mutwa deity who was recognised by the Egyptians as the original deity.  According to the record, god Ptah had declared that:  “Before existence, I existed.... then I created.”  The story of the creation is then stated in the Shabaka Text. Through it, this self-created creator went on to give us an idea of the process of the emergence of consciousness as He became aware of His surroundings and environment, which represents the collective knowledge of the period of more than thirty thousand years.

Ptah tells us of how His anthropomorphic organs came into being such as the hand, the mouth, and the heart. The heart became the centre of consciousness and conception of the things around Him.  He tells us how He set about designing things from His heart from which he created “another form of existence.”  When the heart proved efficient He explains how, “the plan for the creation came before me, and I made everything I desired to make alone” [Obenga, 1989].

Professor Theophile Obenga, who has researched on the philosophy of the Egyptian Pharaonic period, argues that Ptah conceived all designs in His heart and that it was His heart that was the locus of reason and conception so that when reason had conceived everything (through the Heart), “the plan for creation presents itself before the One, before the Creator, before his face”. Obenga further argues that:

“Thus, human beings imagine the demiurge (god) with senses: it (the demiurge) uses its mouth, its hands, its heart, what is conceived in the heart (which for the Ancient Egyptians is the seat of intelligence, reason, intellectual perception) is uttered by the mouth.  Thus, at the beginning there was Reason, and only later came the Word.  Even before bringing into being, concretely, by uttering the name of what is about to be, the demiurge first conceives what will be through the power of the Word, the efficiency of creative speech” [Obenga, 1989:  306].

 

            Thus, for Obenga, it is the Heart that conceives the names to be attached to things, and it is the tongue and the mouth that utter or proclaim what the Heart had conceived.  Since it is the Heart that conceives the Word, which constitutes the language, the Shabaka Text insists that the Word is divine and the act of speech is also divine since such communication through speech gives meaning to all things from the Heart.  The Shabaka Text re-affirms that all divine speech as recorded in the hieroglyphs “originated from that which was thought up by the heart and commanded by the tongue.” The Text also adds that this was how all trades and arts were created.  Therefore, it is Ptah who created all things and caused other gods to originate. 

                The Frankfort, etc. [1949] agree and state: “This creation by thought conception and speech delivery has its experiential background in human life: the authority of a ruler to create command. But only the use of physical terms such as ‘heart’ for thought and ‘tongue’ for command relate Memphite Theology to the more earthly texts, which we have been considering. According to the Frankforts, here, as Professor Breasted has pointed out,” we come close to the background of the Logos doctrine of the New Testament: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ “ [op. cit. p. 65]. In Mathew 12:34A, it is stated: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” and in Psalms 19:14, it is stated: “Let the words of my mouth, and the mediation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” These statements testify to the validity of what has been stated above. All these developments about knowledge created by the Heart were later allocated to the Egyptian god-Thoth or Tehuti who was said to have written all the Egyptian books, again expressing the collectivity of thought in African cosmogonies. Thoth is later renamed by the Greeks with their less known and less knowledgeable god called Herms, whose name under the Greeks replaced that of Egyptian Thoth.

It should at this point be noted that the knowledge-creation process talked about here is universal because word creation and speech are attributes of all languages created by different human cultures. Therefore Afrikology as an epistemology applies to all languages and cultures since it is through this process of knowing through languages that “constitute all people,” according to Charles Taylor [Taylor, 1989]. Therefore when we are talking about knowledge generation, we have to recognise that this is an embedded process in every human’s Heart. Therefore everyone who speaks a language creates knowledge, which is shared with other knowledge creators in the speech community. Therefore knowledge creation is a universal process that enables all people to think, know, act and interact as well as creating memory, which reproduces such knowledge perpetually. It follows that knowledge ‘production’ is not an individual act of some isolated atomistic individual a la Descartes. It is a collective knowledge through world creation and this is what we mean when we refer to a peoples’ indigenous knowledge systems, which is not authored by an individual because IKS is created through the same process and passed on through memory to posterity in a continuous, never-ending process, which is self-validated [Nabudere, 2011B].

This places the Heart as the centrepiece of all knowledge and the Truth and that is why in common speech in most languages of the world, we talk of  “I am speaking from the bottom of my Heart” or expressions of that kind when one is trying to say that we are telling the truth. Although the truth is located in the Heart, so is the Untruth. This is because there can be no truth without untruth with which to contrast it; so equally there can be no untruth unless there is truth with which it can be contrasted. Since knowledge is created collectively through commonly accepted meanings, there can be no individual who can claim to embody truth. Truth is collectively established through daily dialogue, conversation and communication. Therefore in order to establish the truth, we cannot go inside our Hearts without communicating it to establish its authenticity with others.

Therefore as scholars and students who do research and teach to establish truth, we can only do so by creating dialogue and conversation with those from whom we seek to establish the truth through “information,”  “facts” and “brute data.”  The Cartesian Scientific Method is based on an artificial language called the Mathematico-logico language but although such language uses some words from the natural languages, such a ‘language’ is divorced from common peoples’ meanings and their worldviews. For its product to make meaning to those whom it is supposed to assist, it must subject itself to interrogation and problematisation not only by the peers but also by the ordinary people who belong to the language community in which the research and teaching is done.

These divine and ethical principles were not fully accepted by the Greek scholars like Plato and Socrates who, according to Samir Amin, developed ‘scepticism’ about some of the knowledge as conceived in the Cradle of Humankind located in Africa. Plato, according to Amin, who ‘spent time’ in Egypt, did not during his stay fully develop an understanding of the Egyptian mystery system, which was the basis of holistic knowledge in Egypt. If he had done so, according to Amin, he would never have seen the need for another cosmogony “with Universalist pretensions” deriving “from reason alone” [Amin, 1988:17-8].

Instead, we see here the first departure from this important organic Egyptian discovery by the Greeks who preferred to move in the direction of “human reason” detached from the Heart, which the late European Enlightenment accepted as the basis of “science” and ‘scientific disciplines.’ The departure begins in a sustained way with the writings of Aristotle and his classification of the components of the universe from the stars to the sublunary world, which, Amin tells us, he borrowed from the Chaldean astrological tradition instead of the Egyptian one [Ibid]. From this moment, the tyranny of the Western narrative began to be superimposed on that of the original thought created in the Cradle of Humankind and in the process marginalised it as a metaphysical creation.

The restatement of Afrikology is therefore an attempt to re-establish that original organic epistemology, which locates the creation of knowledge in the perception of things by the five senses and their conception and naming by the Heart. In doing so, Afrikology repudiates the attempt by the Cartesian grid to locate knowledge creation in the individual who is allocated the sovereign right to “think” and “know” according to scientific categories created by an artificial mathematico-logico language. This epistemology creates a barrier between the body (and hence the senses) and the mind, which is supposed to enable the individual to think better and ‘independently’! But the body-the senses- are part of the Heart and while the mind does play an important part in the process of knowledge creation, it is still dependent on the Senses and the Heart in the processing and storage of such knowledge into the brain, which is the archive and library of all that is thought, conceived and named by the Heart.

Afrikology therefore requires all scholars, students and practitioners to liaise with the language communities in understanding what they know and mean. This knowledge cannot be said to be “untested,” “unreliable,” and “superstitious.”  In the first place all those modern ‘scientific categories’ are themselves the product of natural languages and the cultures from which they are created. They originate from a fragmented worldview of the Greeks, which the European Enlightenment accepted but, which itself needed to be interrogated and validated by interrogation even within the Cartesian epistemology itself. Similarly, the knowledge from the Community Sites (hereinafter called The Community Sites of Knowledge) can only be interrogated and validated from the generality of that community collective knowledge and not from outside it.

It is only the dialogue between them that understandings can be obtained which lead to a cross-cultural enrichment of knowledge across cultures. Scholars from whatever culture cannot be “objective,” “independent,” or ‘neutral” in their ‘thinking.’  Even God cannot be neutral because He has a specific message to convey, which can only be validated by Him alone. Equally knowledge created in the Community Sites of Knowledge can only be validated by that community and it is the duty of the scholar or student to follow that procedure if we want to produce knowledge that is usable in the community in the interest of Humankind. The restorative horizontal transformation begins from these epistemological bases.

It means taking indigenous knowledge systems-IKS to be the challenge of the moment. According to Professor Catherine Odora Hoppers of the University of South Africa-Chair in Development Education, IKS posits profound challenges to contemporary theory and practice which she enumerates. The first is the challenge of knowledge generation and legitimating process itself such as the knowledge produced in scientific institutions, the type of research questions being asked as well as the existing rules and regulations governing legitmation and accreditation of scientific knowledge have to be questioned. Secondly, the social and economic survival of ‘resource-rich, but economically poor’ local communities and their empowerment out of this poverty trap-how does scientific knowledge together with IKS alleviate and put an to such a phenomenon? Thirdly, the challenge of integration of knowledge systems and the need to explore deeper the interface between epistemology, diversity, and democracy as well as the potential for true exchange and the ‘reciprocal valorisation among knowledge systems, which such interface might make possible.” Fourthly,  internal to IKS, there is a separate challenge in the need to engage in its critical evaluation and careful validation, “while recognising its inner truths and coherence in order to facilitate its active re-appropriation and authentification into current into current, living research work” [paraphrasing Hountondji 1997:15].

Prof Odora continues in her fifth and sixth challenges to point out that there is need to directly interrogate, the historical, scientific and colonial discourses that led to the semantic shift that turned the ‘illiterate native’ from being someone ‘ignorant of alphabet,’ to an ‘absolute ignorant’ pitting what was not written as thoughtless, as a weakness, and, at its limits, as primitivism.’ In view of the resultant intolerance of modern science to IKS, there is therefore the challenge for ‘modern knowledge’ to engage with IKS in order to enable the ‘re-open (of) crucial files that were summarily closed somewhere in the chaos and violence of colonialism.’ The seventh and final challenges, lie in the possibilities of this re-opening to present new opportunities for IKS and science to interface, since such a step will “move the frontiers of discourse and understanding in the sciences as a whole, and open new moral and cognitive spaces within which constructive dialogue and engagement for sustainable development and collective emancipation can begin.”  Thus, the re-opening ‘clears the space’ to enable new directions for philosophy and sociology, as well as political economy of the sciences to emerge.  

Hence, the study and application of IKS will enable the re-establishment of science “as the story of all animals, and not just of only the lions.” This will “develop a clearer sense of the ethical and judicial domain within which science works by understanding the political economy of ‘othering’.” [Odora, 1992]. This means IKS will play the role of humanising current scientific practices and enable the marginalised who are regarded as ‘refractory to the scientific to the scientific gaze to become part of an empowered process and strengthen their capacity to take an active part in questioning the competence and ethics of the professional experts and at the same time work towards forging genuine partnerships and informed alliances for development [Ibid: 9-10].

                Professor Odora believes this re-appropriation of the heritage may provide new clues and directions as to the visions of society, human relations, sustainable development, poverty reduction and scientific development, “all of which cannot be resolved using existing ethos of the Western framework alone.”  This clearly restorative horizontal transformation through IKS will enable the communities to lay claim to legally protected intellectual property which is currently monopolised by a few global corporations from their true owners. These corporations control a whole range of collective properties such as patents, copyrights, pharmacological, artistic and other products which are currently extracted in areas of the indigenous communities without recognition of their contributions and conservations and without compensation.

If the communities, as the true owners of the knowledge that is appropriated and incorporated in the plants and herbs by the vertically integrated monopolies, are rewarded for their ‘intellectual properties’ on a collective basis, then it is clear that the restorative horizontal transformation that is being proposed would have had the material basis for its actualisation. This will result in the development of new protocols for benefit and value sharing between different kinds of actors. The value additions as well as the development of new ethics of extraction and utilisation of resources horizontally will have emerged. This will also contribute to the revisiting of the existing legal, educational, industrial, commercial and other sectoral provisions currently under implementation, “with a view to questioning the extent to which they are oriented to serving, promoting, developing and protecting all sources of knowledge, and putting them to use for the benefit of all” [Ibid:11]. She concludes:

“In methodological terms, engaging with IKS implies sensitisation, empowerment, and restoration of holism and ethical practices, including spirituality, for individuals, systems and institutions, and reaching the point where it is possible to ask questions that can serve to re-centre Africa and the Third World [paraphrasing Hountondji, Ibid:11].

 

                The question then is one of how do we can mainstream IKS in such a way that it can interface with science and other forms of knowledge in order to restore a holistic knowledge to become a reality. We have referred to the role that Afrikology can play as a universal epistemology to respond to this ‘crisis of reason’ of modern ‘scientific’ knowledge.  According to Professor Cheickh Anta Diop, we need a new the scholar who is integrated spiritually and materially into the community he/she serves. This requires a scholar that has a changed attitude to nature.  To face this new reality, the new epistemology must have an inbuilt spiritual basis for transformation that can guide the scientist and scholar to be both scientists and non-scientists. For this to happen, the currently alienated scholar must undergo a cultural transformation, which can enable him/her to reconnect with the cultural and linguistic realities around them. The epistemology of Afrikology makes this possible.

Conclusion

This Inaugural Lecture was intended to enable me to share my academic experiences with the community of scholars at the Makerere University-one of the oldest modern institutions of higher learning on the African continent. Makerere established its record as one of the best institutions on the continent, but it did so by building on the basis of a Euro-centric knowledge system. Since then it has been turned into a ‘market place’ for those who are able to pay for the knowledge it generates. This means that Makerere begun on a wrong footing of serving colonial interests and not the interests of the African people. The critique by Prof Mahmood Mamdani in his book: Scholars in the Market Place: The Dilemma of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005 expresses this continuing dilemma but his critique also fell short of giving us an idea how Makerere could move forward towards a transformation that would have served the people of Africa. In my own critique of Mamdani’s assessment, I argued that the way for Makerere to move forward was towards the university become a “Mode 3” university. As such Makerere would become an institution working side by side with the Community Sites of Knowledge, which we at the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan University are attempting to do. [For those who did not read my critique-a copy is attached].

We cannot afford to do our work in the same old way if we are to participate in the restorative process of creating grassroots horizontal transformative systems, which empower the ordinary people who are the real generators of knowledge through their languages to be active partners. Indeed by adopting the approach of listening a little more rather than talking a little more, we shall be able to unlearn imposed knowledge systems and their practices in order to relearn from the peoples’ inherited store of knowledge, which has been passed to us for centuries. If we truly do so, we shall find that we adopt a more transdisciplinary, holistic and multi-dimensional ways of doing work will lead us to Afrikology as a restorative epistemology.

African languages and indigenous knowledge systems are not structured according to academic disciplines and therefore by having recourse to these languages, scholars and students shall be forced to understand reality holistically and horizontally. These languages are holistic and more integrated in their structures in which temporal and spiritual elements are combined. This is what the researchers in the UNESCO General History of Africa discovered when they ventured into interviewing ordinary Africans about their past through their languages, which are orally-based. In this respect Afrikology will stand such scholars in good stead in adapting to the new restorative horizontal learning systems because Afrikology insists on continuity of the knowledge through the ‘Living Word,” which means that if we are to find true knowledge we must listen to the people who speak the languages and obtain ‘facts’ and ‘data’ we need for our analysis from them, which must ultimately be validated by the people themselves.

This lecture should be an initial attempt at getting our two institutions to work together to develop new ways of generating knowledge together with our communities through their languages-so that knowledge generated on the basis of this collaboration can assist the communities in transforming their lives in a restorative manner that re-empowers them to assume full responsibility for their livelihoods. This means they will no longer be forced to operate within forced and imposed neo-liberal systems and imposed epistemologies, policies and programmes. This is what we mean in proposing a restorative horizontal transformation across all the academic disciplines.

 

 

Recommendations

We therefore recommend that in order to establish collaborative relationships, which we have already begun doing with South Africa, especially with the University of South Africa-UNISA, Pretoria and the Mapungubwe Institute in Johannesburg, we should embark on the following activities, some which can be organised in a trilateral relationships and partnerships aimed at:

·         Transforming the Academytowards working with Community Sites of Knowledge in generating new knowledge and applying it in communities instead of adopting the superficial “community outreach” approaches that do not take community indigenous knowledge seriously;

·         Setting up Learning and Study Centres and where possible Institutes in the Communitieswhere there is specialised expertise in a particular kind of knowledge and practice, which can enable students from the Universities to learn at these centres as well as acting as transmission lines for community learners to obtain higher academic qualifications;

·         Collaboratingin developing new transdisciplinary curricular programmes that work to promote Afrikology as a Universal epistemology by encouraging students to learn new languages of peoples of different continents by relating to the communities in those countries from their accumulated indigenous knowledge since Afrikology begins from the thesis that knowledge is to be found in all languages and that anyone who speaks a language is a knowledge creator;

·         Adopting and encouragingscience to interface withindigenous knowledge in a hermeneutic manner because both can learn from the other. While we must acknowledge that modern science and scientific epistemologies do produce useful knowledge, especially where they use holistic approaches and not reductionist techniques that undermine nature and the ecosystem, we must also adopt a new approach that encourages both to interface;

·         Together workingtowards establishing horizontal restorative relationships between African Universities and Universities in other parts of the world, where the intention is to create and/or reinforce horizontal GLOCAL SYSTEMS OF KNOWLEDGE IN ORDER TO SHARE EXPERIENCES GLOCALLY.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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