Bewitched?: Autochthony, Xenophobia, and Development in Africa

Introduction And Background To The Chapter

“Bewitched? Autochthony, Xenophobia, and Development in Africa” explores the modern organization of Africa as a continent. It uses Yves Mudimbe’s representation of colonial organizations “the procedures of acquiring, distributing, and exploiting lands in colonies; the policies of domesticating natives and the manner of managing ancient organizations and implementing new modes of production.” Mudimbe (1988) argues that colonial organizations resulted in. “domination of physical space, the reformation of natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the western perspective” (Mudimbe 1988, p2). The chapter argues that the resultant three brought a collision of modern material individualism with the African perspective of ‘the wealth in people,’ which appears as ‘witchcraft’ where an African picks up weapons to kill another in the name of autochthon versus a stranger. Xenophobia manifests as witchcraft, an alien exercise of ‘brother killing a brother’ in the name of a son of the soil versus a stranger (Wells 1999, Hickel 2014, pp. 107-108). The solution to the impasse between Western capitalism and African integration does not lie in choosing one side and defending it due to the likelihood of leading to the same deadlock. Hence it requires an approach that critiques and affirms to provoke further thoughts towards a lasting solution.

Autochthony and Xenophobia are conjectures that come about as a result of marginality in Africa. Capitalism promotes unguarded individualism through competition. Whereas individualism promotes the rights and freedoms of the person, it also subverts communal tendencies, cares, and accommodation found in the African culture. Adam Smiths’ ‘invisible hand’ (Smith 1976, p. 184) is not exactly invisible but guarded by individualism, fierce competition through development, which outputs Xenophobia when not well-institutionalized.

The chapter uses archival and desktop research to document the pre-Berlin conference occurrences of 1884-1885. It touches on key figures like Marcus Garvey, Henry Sylvester William, Paul Cuffe, Web Du Bois, Leopold Senghor, Ben Azikiwe Nnamdi, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Jomo Kenyatta as some of the contributors to the Pan-African ideal. The discussions tease out the Pan-African debates to show why some countries resisted and how that resistance has metamorphosed in some regions as roots of Xenophobia due to unhealthy competition for resources amongst residents. Arguably, autochthony is idealist and un-achievable since indigeneity changes with new narratives (Geschiere & Jackson, 2006).

The chapter embarks on anti-xenophobic adventures, exploring the bewitchment caused by the pursuit of unlimited profit and development. It indicates inequalities, violence, dispossessions as denigration, “othering”, and militant policing (Orwell 1941, Foucault 2003). Capitalism in states with limited resources compared to the population within introduced racialized bodies globally and ‘ethnicized’ borders within states.

Mudimbe’s (1988) idea of marginality is used as a conceptual framework that exposes various inequalities within modern African societies. Marginality stems from De Janvry (1975) theory of unequal exchange, Cardoso and Faletto (1979), Wallerstein’s (1979) World-System theory of the core, semi-periphery, and periphery, Amin’s (1974) dependency theory, and Amin’s (2009) idea of Eurocentrism as an advancement of Andre Gunder Franks’ (1972) dependency theory.

Marginality is arguably an output of a reorganization of territory and mindsets fashioned along with the Western development and a convoluted notion of African development. The peripheral theories thus culminate in either colonialism output of capitalism or European metropolis development and industrialization with overseas reaching satellites. Whatever degree of colonial-capitalism or European development and industrialization takes, the outcome in Africa is the differentiated cultural bodies, capacities, development, and cultures. These differences have varying incompatible struggles for individualized development that opposes the Somali saying “Farkaliya Foolmadaqto” (You cannot wash your face with one finger).

It appears Xenophobia is equivalent to an attempt to wash one’s face with one finger in a globalizing world. Xenophobia is central to the dynamics of capitalist sorcery/bewitchment and barbarism. Xenophobia embeds threads of capitalist imperialism, European development, and industrialization without regard for context and cultures in the precolonial Africa.