The “Benda” As African Thought In The 21st Century

All the tendencies of modernity (liberalism, communism, micronationalism, social democracy) are incompatible with Africa. The way of Africa must be based on the concept of “Benda” (which in my language Kissi ¹, means “solidarity”-“communion”-“harmony”-“solidarity”,-“alliance”) as a pan-African, conservative, revolutionary, justicial, spiritual option of socialism based on “God-Africa-Family-Work-Social Justice-Solidarity”.

THE BENDA: FOR AN AFRICAN SOCIALISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY

When we talk about socialism, it is important to point out that in the African context, it existed long before Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels existed to theorize it. But ancestral African socialism, unlike that theorized in the West, was based on community harmony and intra-communitarianism, not on class struggle (since there were traditional castes that harmonized the life of the city in an equitable way), and not on the enrichment of a minority to the detriment of the majority. This pushed the Pan-Africanist Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere to theorize the concept of Ujamaa² (socialism with Tanzanian characteristics), the Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré to introduce the concept of Communocratie – Communocracy - (socialism with Guinean characteristics), the Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah to elaborate his thought around Consciencism³. For them, communism is not in the nature of the African, rather communitarianism is our essence.

Our socialism did not reject God and Tradition, whereas Marxist socialism advocates atheism and materialism. We are communitarian, endo-solidarity, anti-materialist societies that recognize the primacy of God.

The African of the 21st century who is in Struggle to reconnect with his Original Logos, rejects the tendencies of modernity (liberalism, communism, micronationalism, social democracy, globalism, etc.). But in the face of this rejection, a void must be filled. The Franco-Martinican anti-colonialist psychiatrist, writer and militant Frantz Fanon stated in the 20th century that "the worst danger against Africa is the lack of ideology". We must rediscover our Nature: Socialism. But an immaterial, conservative, revolutionary, spiritual/religious socialism, based on social justice, active constraining nihilism and overcoming. I define this Socialism with the name “Benda” (which in the Kissi language and for the Kissi People⁴ means as a term “harmony”, “solidarity”, “love”). The Benda must therefore reject the love of capitalism, but embrace the love of Faith and God (whatever the name or religion), reject the concept of progressivism and evolution in the Western and modern sense, but defend the love of the Roots and the fundamental Tradition. The Benda must not be a nostalgic return to the past, but will be revolutionary (re-volutio = return), to turn back with the necessary elements and advance towards the future. The Benda must reject capitalism in its current Western form and advocate popular solidarity, around a traditional (but not classist) hierarchical order. This Benda must oppose colonialism in all its forms, external interference that threatens African sovereignty, but also internal evils that may be present among Africans: corruption, bad governance, kleptocracy, jealousy, envy, competition, fetishism, slander and betrayal. The success of the Individual is the success of the Collective: which is why, both in Africa and in the Diaspora, it is necessary to practice mutualism, solidarity and support. This Benda must be nihilistic on an active and constructive level, with the aim of generating a New African, a New Muntu (Individual in Bantu languages) endosolidal, spiritual, patriotic, conservative-revolutionary, populist, imperial pan-Africanist.

CONSERVATIVE BENDA

If it is true that I have specified a necessary conservative approach of the Benda, it is important to distinguish the different branches of conservatism.

• SANKOFA THEORY: Sankofa is a philosophical concept of the Akan People based on the return to the Roots. The philosophical motto is “go back, recover, and move forward”. It is an approach very much defended by Afrodiasporic forces oriented towards African Culture, African Tradition and Roots. The Sankofist approach is essentially revolutionary-conservative. However, we must be careful! Sankofism (to use a neologism) does not advocate a return to remain imprisoned in the past. The Sankofist vision wants to take the best elements of our Culture to look forward.

• KEMET / KMT / AFROCENTRIST THEORY: KMT (Kemet) is the original name to define the Blacks, according to the works of the historian Cheikh Anta Diop⁵, the most brilliant and important in Africa of the 20th century. Afrocentrist followers defend ancestral monotheism, the social order founded on Maat and the defense of a Pharaonic Black Egypt as the historical-civilizational matrix of the Blacks, as well as a rigorous return to the Kemetic-Nubian-Ethiopian cosmogony. The limit of some of its defenders today is that it remains locked in the past and sometimes degenerates into social and religious intolerance.

• LIBERAL PARADIGM: Then there is the liberal approach of conservatism. It is hostile to any idea of Revolution, it defends mostly values inherited from the modern world rather than from Tradition as such.

Faced with these evoked paths, the Benda must resume the Sankofist concept of “return to the roots”, but challenging modernity, resume the values of exaltation of Culture defended by Afrocentricity, rejecting religious intolerance and dogmatism. The Benda must be able to make the different religions and spiritualities coexist, because as the Malian Sufi mystic Tierno Bokar, the Senegalese mystic scholar Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the animist sage Ogotemmeli, the Christian religious leader Simon Kimbangu taught, all the different religious manifestations represent the branches, but there is a single root that unites them. Here, we enter into the full Perennialist theory of the various René Guénon, Julius Evola, Fritjof Schuon, Coomaraswamy, Michel Valsan, who defended the idea of a Primordial Tradition common to all. I would add that since Africa is the Matrix of Humanity, this Primordial Tradition is of Negro-African origin and has left its traces in the different currents. The Benda must embrace Perennialism⁶: for a Theory of Afroperenniality. This is the conservatism that will make sense, opposed to the modernist axis represented by liberals and progressives. As for the concept of “progress” and “evolution”, Tierno Bokar had to say that the term evolution loses its meaning if it is not linked to a traditional anchor⁷. We speak of evolution and progress (in the African paradigm) when one constantly observes, perfects one’s Culture, and looks at Tradition as a basis for advancing. In the modern (Western) paradigm, progress is the disconnection from the Past, from Culture, History, Tradition, to go in a direction towards the precipice against the Laws of Nature. An inaugural African theoretical model will have to take this reality into account. Order and Harmony are at stake here.

TRADITION AS REVOLUTION

Tradition has nothing to do with the customs or habits of peoples in a given geographical context. Customs can change according to time and ethnocultural context, and only a charlatan can pass them off as Tradition.

Tradition itself is the link with the Divine, with the Principle, with what is Transcendent, mystical, hidden, immutable, eternal, perennial. All those who want to approach this Initial Law can do so from the moment there is a metaphysical/initiatory approach. And here, we must distinguish a certain form of Traditionalism from Tradition. Traditionalism is the approach that is needed to approach the practice that is Tradition (even if some who speak of Traditionalism without the practice are in reality those I define as “para-traditionalists” and are convinced that they are approaching Tradition, unconsciously repeating the scheme of the modernists through New Age practices).

Let’s face it, Tradition is perennial. Although the African is its first Guardian, Tradition is not African, nor Western, nor Eastern, but Divine, and as a root, the approach of all revealed religions and the spiritual one draws its essence from it. Understanding it (as Master Tierno Bokar explains) means avoiding futile religious divisions, because the esoteric (hidden) root is the same, even if the exoteric (visible) manifestation varies from branch to branch.

Tradition is above all Eternal Revolution. The Benda impregnated with Tradition will allow us to win the war waged by the globalist axis against the forces of Tradition that resist it.

BENDA FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

It is clear that we must fight the social inequalities that exist in Africa. It is not normal, it is not right, that a minority lives on the backs of the majority, that this minority alienates the majority by forcing it to be in an eternal status of “proletarianization”. In a traditional approach, all this would not exist. But in a world where the economy now has primacy over politics and society, a small handful of men decide the fate of the majority. In the historical tradition of African socialism, the Benda must reject classism and fight it, and promote a traditional precolonial scheme of harmony and endocommunitarian solidarity.

IMPERIAL BENDA

When Western oligarchs went to Africa, they found themselves faced with a noble territorial configuration built by the Africans (Manden Empire, Kongo Empire, Dahomey, Ethiopian Empire, Zulu Empire, etc.).
The oligarchs thus imposed a geopolitical structure in accordance with their “imperialist” will.

It is necessary, however, to distinguish Empire and imperialism.

-EMPIRE: An Empire is a state unit that unites communities while preserving their political and cultural traditions in the name of a “pan-nationalism”, that is, the Civilization-State.

-IMPERIALISM: Imperialism, on the other hand, is a political system imposed by European countries born from Modernism to establish their control over a Nation, to exploit it economically for the benefit of the capitalist system.

Empire and imperialism are destined to clash, as demonstrated by the conflict between the Ethiopian Empire and Italian imperialism. The Empire is traditional, while imperialism is a creation of European modernism; the Empire is sacred, imperialism is secular; the Empire is just and is based on Honor, imperialism on the accumulation of resources through exploitation; the Empires are terrestrial, sovereign and sedentary powers, imperialism is based on the maritime-hegemonic expansionism that characterized the colonial nations. Today, the “new imperialism” is neoliberal globalism. The first stage of independence in Africa took place in the 1960s through the territorial liberation of the nation-states (defined by the West in 1884-1885 to the detriment of the pre-colonial territorial configuration). In the second stage, in the midst of the Cold War, these nation-states had to choose between communism/marxist socialism and liberalism. In the third stage, which is that of this century, an epistemological break from external models is needed, to think of alternative models that revolve around intra-continental African communitarianism (opposed to ethno-centrism) and the Empire (opposed to micronationalism, but also to imperialism in its thalassocratic/Western vision). The answer is that all this lies in the desire for “Harmony” and “Union” around the Benda.

GLOBALIZATION, GLOBALISM, ALTERGLOBALISM, MULTILATERALISM, MULTIPOLARISM

It is necessary to differentiate some terms that are very often confused.

-GLOBALIZATION: It defends the diffusion of knowledge, the interaction between civilizations, recognizes the existence of multiple peoples, but aims for these, in respect of their essence, to be able to collaborate and get to know each other without the Identity or Tradition being attacked. The dialogue between the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Romans was a form of globalization, as was the interaction between the Manden People of Farafina (Africa) and the original populations of Abya Yala (what is now called America).⁷

-GLOBALISM: It is the Western anti-identity vision of the world, the paroxysm of globalization. Globalism has changed from capitalism, after the defeat of communism and the Western-liberal victory. It imposes itself forcefully on the different civilizations in the name of neoliberal democracy. This globalism defends Western unipolarism for a world without poles, it fights multipolarism (which wants to consecrate the idea of a world founded on Civilizations and Empires). Within this unipolarism, there is another branch developed by the United States under Barack Obama, called “multilateralism”. Multilateralism should not be confused with multipolarism. Multilateralism does not see the world in poles or in Civilizations. ⁸ Rejects this idea. For multilateralism there would be Westphalian national states that have the freedom to be actors on the geopolitical scene, as long as we remain in the Western neoliberal paradigm traced by the unipolar order. Multilateralism is therefore “American supremacy” (Kissinger style) disguised as multipolarism. The Benda must position itself on multipolarism with its pan-African imperial vocation.

AFRODIASPORIC BENDA: NEO-MARRONAGE AGAINST NON-POLARISM

The Western unipolar transition has now reached its end, but another much more dangerous evil has emerged: non-polarism. The non-polar is not unipolar, but fights the multipolar.

The non-polar was foreshadowed – in a certain sense – by Brzezinski who stated that the 21st century will not belong to the elites, but to civil societies. These civil societies are co-opted by an oligarchy without borders and without identity that feels carried by a false providential mission.

The non-polar is characterized by liberal ideology (open society, NGOs, Black Lives Matter, destruction of identities, universalism, humanitarianism, ..) in false opposition to economic liberalism, when in reality all liberals, have a single contestable matrix.

In the face of generalized non-polarization, a strong communitarian and identity-based field is needed: in the Black African context, we must start talking about “neo-marronage”. Marronage (the original one) was the resistance of enslaved Africans who decided to rebel against the capitalist White slaver. The marronage aimed at self-determination and the construction of autonomous villages called “quilombo”.⁹ Today, in the 21st century, a neo-marronage (new marronage) is needed, that is, an African communitarianism, an Afrodiasporic Benda, opposed to the non-polar. Neo-marronage would mean economic, cultural, intellectual, metapolitical self-sufficiency.

If it is society and statelessness that characterize the non-polar, in the neo-marronage it will be the Community.

In structuring an Empire in Africa for dark-skinned populations, those who do not live in Africa, must think about structuring a community lobby, oriented towards the Community. This quilombism will prevent falling into the trap of non-polar globalism.

THE AFRICAN MUST RECONNECT WITH GOD

The African must reconnect with God (whatever the name – because God is One -, whatever the religion), deeply immerse himself in his precepts. We are the People who know God better than anyone else. Behavior on the social level is linked to the religious sphere. The battle of the multipolar against the non-polar and the unipolar, is a battle between God and the devil, between Good and evil, between Civilization and anti-Civilization, of those who resist against those who want to destroy collective harmony, the Homeland, the Family, the bond between Son and Parent. It is an eschatological and divine battle, as well as social and political! We will emerge victorious!

Fara Fin,
African Man, Kissi, Italian-Guinean born in Rome. Pan-African thinker. Political speaker. Perennialist/Christian.

REFERENCES

1. Language spoken by the Kissi People.
2. “Ujamaa : Essays on socialism” J. Nyerere, 1968
3. “Consciencism” K. Nkrumah, 1964
4. The Kissi are a People who live in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Kenya. They would have emigrated from East Africa to West Africa, according to Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop. To learn more about the People in question, we recommend reading “Naître, vivre et mourir en pays kisi précolonial : Essai d’anthropologie sociale et culturelle” by Dr. Aly Gilbert Iffono published with the publishing house L’Harmattan.
5. “Nations Nègres et Culture”, Dr. C. A. Diop, 1954 (Présence africaine)
6. Perennialism (also called integral traditionalism or fundamental traditionalism) is a philosophical orientation whose study is centered on the idea of an ancient primordial Tradition, forgotten by men in the times of modernity.
7. “They came before Columbus: The African presence in Ancient America” Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, 1976
8. “Teoria del mondo multipolare”, Dr. Alexander Dugin, 2012 (AGA Editrice)
9. “O Quilombismo : Documentos de uma Militância Pan-Africanista”, Abdias Nascimento