By Mukazo Mukazo Vunda.

Knowledge of the need for a renaissance like process in Africa, or in the Diaspora, is not new. As far back as the beginning of this century, many Africans, in the Diaspora and on the continent, have realized that, to become independent, to be free, and, more importantly, to be capable of sustaining the won independence, Africans had to start thinking properly, meaning that they, as a group, had to become aware of the "ways of this world", to be able to react to it appropriately.

The goal has always been the overthrow of an oppressive system. This process is called a revolution. The route to this is not simple revolutionary struggle, as many are led to believe. Prior to this should come an enlightenment that enables the people to see a true image of themselves, the need for change, and how properly to bring this change about. Without this process, which, for lack of a better term, in view of the need to redeem in the case of present day Africans, I call a renaissance, a victory will be won, but the aftermath will be wrought with confusions, degeneracy, mediocrity, and, obviously, the return to a former, enslaved state will be the next step.

This is the reason many first positive moves to free the African from the chains of imperialism by the very first positive minded African leaders like Kwame Nkhruma, or Patrice Lumumba failed. The fact that Africans themselves participated in dooming their own hard won independence is testimony to this fact.

The creation of a culture through revolutionary struggle without a process where people are enlightened enough to see the state they are in, and how to free themselves from the chains that keep bringing them down, is bound to end up a total failure, or a disaster, even if, through armed struggle, they remove the oppressive system. A national conscious, a national identity, a culture, and the like, are products of contributions from enlightened individual members of the concerned community or society, and cannot be achieved by a group only fighting to end oppression and the visible effects of this. As Ralph Ellison aptly put it, you do not create a culture by creating the un-created features of the race, but by the individual members creating the un-created features of their own individual faces, and to this end they must receive incentives.

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