Wim van Binsbergen

for an annotated slide show of the conference, click here

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for a map of Cotonou, click here

Africa Cultures: Introduction

Under the direction of Olofin II Olofindji Akandé (Vizir of the Benin Association of Traditional Leaders), the Non-Governmental Organisation Africa Cultures (at Cotonou, Benin) cultivates a considerable international and intercontinental network. This is in line with the NGO's emphatic orientation towards Pan-Africanism and the thought of the African American leader Martin Luther King. It is also in line with Vizir Olofin's self-perception as a national leader (he ran for national president of Benin in 2002, against long-standing president Kerekou, but got virtually no votes), and as a world leader, whose computer and fax machine, whenever in working order, pour out an incessant stream of communications to all corners of the earth. In 1991, one year after Mr Nelson Mandela's release from South African prison, Africa Cultures managed to bring Archbischop Desmond Tutu to Benin for a conference which contributed to the re-integration of South Africa (long isolated in punishment for its racialist regime) back into the community of African states and nations. This was only one in a series of ambitious national and international conferences extending over several decades. Africa Cultures has penetrated to the world of international scholarship when its activities in the field of traditional leadership became the subject of a scholarly article in Perrot, C.-H., ed., Le retour des rois, Paris: Karthala, 2002. One of the most inspiring projects of Africa Cultures is that of Igbale-Aiye: a site near the Benin-Nigerian border, near Pobe, at a c. 100 km drive from Cotonou, where in plain rural conditions a shrine is erected that is to develop into a fitting monument for the souls of Africans who perished during the passage from Africa to the New World in the context of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade. Ultimately, the site is to grow into a major religious, intellectual and craft centre, with a bi-annual festival meant to attract pilgrims from all over Africa and especially from the New World.

The 2004 conference (for an annotated slide show of the conference, click here)

From among its intercontinental network, Africa Cultures has appointed, in recent years, a handfull of international scholars and religious leaders to serve as Ambassadors of the African Revolution. Nearly ten new such ambassadors were created at the Second Conference of the Ambassadors of the African Renaissance, 15-17 January 2004, where they presented their credentials in the form of a personal enumeration of their contributions to the cause of Africa Cultures, Igbale-Aiye, Pan-Africanism, Africa as a whole, world peace and understanding, often inseparable from the propagation of their own particular creed or denomination. The inimitable global spirituality and oratory of Olofin II Olofindji Akandé eclectically combines evangelical Christianity, a distant inspiration from African religion especially in the Yoruba tradition, an even more distant Islamic inspiration, South Asian, Ghandist, notions of non-violence as channeled through the example of Martin Luther King, a sprinkling of Afrocentrism, and a keen awareness of global technological thinking -- he is a civil engineer by training. This provided the highly personalised format for a rambling and strictly informal but passionate three-days discussion on values, priorities, strategies (including the building of a university at Igbale-Aiye) and resources, punctuated by long waits during which the Africa Cultures' television screen poured out videos of earlier conferences and projects. In the process, the hegemonic presence of the United States of America, its citizens, its local ambassador, and the more evangelical, fundamentalist forms of that country's many brands of Christianity, became increasingly manifest. However, under this somewhat uncomfortable blanket a great deal of companionship, mutual recognition, and mutual learning went on between the none too numerous delegates from Africa (mainly Benin and southwestern Nigeria), North and South America, and Europe, and well as the local Africa Cultures membership (consisting of teachers, university lecturers, civil servants, well-educated entrepreneurs, and a major traditional healer), and selected Benin traditional leaders who honoured the occasion with their presence.

Partly due to tragic personal circumstances (the unexpected death of my stepfather-in-law while I was on the plane to Benin) I felt I was unable to deliver my address on the history of pan-Africanism (with special emphasis on Afrocentricity) that I was originally scheduled to give; my reluctance was further enhanced by the fact that the formidable mainstream USA presence at the conference was not exactly a fitting audience for the argument I had prepared: a reading of current USA Afrocentrism, including the Black Athena debate, and especially of the opposition to this movement in the context of that country's so-called 'culture wars' of the 1990s, as the construction of an internal, black, intellectual enemy now that the long-standing external enemy, in the form of international communism, had effectively collapsed with the end of the Cold War, 1989. As a result of my withdrawal from the programme, the only academic presentation during the conference was Professor Luz Maria Montial's catalogue of the beautifully executed exhibition on the history of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, which she has prepared for freshman university students in Mexico. The same personal circumstances, coupled with increasing misgivings about the North American and Christian appropriation of Africa Cultures, made that I was only too happy to redefine my role at the conference as that of an observer, in which capacity however I did make long interventions about the continued relevance of traditional African religion in the face of Christian expansion, revealing myself as the Southern African sangoma diviner-priest-healer that I am in addition to being a European university professor. It was at my explicit request, which was readily taken up by Vizir Olofin, that the third conference day was devoted to a trip of all the conference delegates to Igbale-Aiye. A short while earlier a long-standing member of Africa Cultures, Mrs Kaete Regelade-Garcia 'Fagbemissi' ('Fa messenger of Heaven and Earth') had already conducted a traditional ceremony at the site. Surprisingly, the conference did not comprise African representatives of African traditional religion who actively and publicly identified as such. Therefore, Fagbemissi and her senior adept combined with me to complement the massive Christian prayers at the shrine, and the one Islamic prayer, by traditional African spiritual expression. Our expedition that third day of the conference was concluded with a visit to the UNESCO slavery monument in the notorious ancient slave port of Ouidah, at the other end of the country. Fearing that it would make me miss my plane back home, I declined participation in the even more ambitious and strenuous programme of the final two days of the conference, which took selected delegates first across the Nigerian border to one ancient slave port, then back into Benin and across the Togolese border to another ancient slave port in that country.

Further involvement

Meanwhile, my chosen status of observer did not prevent me from wearing the distinctive Africa Cultures uniform on the trip to Igbale-Aiye, and to strengthen the Igbale-Aiye initiative by making available, once more, after an earlier abortive reception, an extensive website which I had made for the project in early 2003, after my first encounter with Africa Cultures. With Vizir Olofin I discussed the possibility of enhancing Africa Cultures' potential by stationing M.A. students there from Leiden and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who could contribute to the Igbale-Aiye process in the context of their field research for the M.A. degree in African Studies or Intercultural Philosophy.

Philosophy

During the conference, I took the opportunity of having an extensive meeting with Professor Paulin Hountondji, one of Africa's most prominent philosophers, Founder-Director of the African Institute for Advanced Study at Porto Novo, Depute President of the Benin Methodist Church, and member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy, whose Managing Editor I am. I managed to persuade Paulin Hountondji to be the guest of honour during the official launching of the revived Quest gone online in late March 2004.

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