The Re-Discovery of Africa
| Date | 01 March 1954 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070205400900107 |
| Published date | 01 March 1954 |
| Author | Harold R. Isaacs |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE
RE-DISCOVERY
OF
AFRICA
Notes
on
Some
Recent
Books
Harold
R.
Isaacs*
N
his
highly
informative
little
book,
Mau
Mau
and
the
Kikuyu,
L.
S. B.
Leakey describes
how
the
British
arriving
in
Kenya
fifty
years
ago
appropriated
the
best
available
land
for
Euro-
pean
settlement without
knowing
or
bothering
to
learn
whose
land
it
was
or
how
it
was
held.
It
does
not
matter
much
now
whether
this
was,
as Leakey
suggests,
an
error
made
in
innocent
good
faith,
or
an
example
of
the ruthless
indifference
characteristic
of
the
time
and
place.
The
important
point
is
that
this
was
the
act,
rooted
in
ignorance,
which
led
through
all
its
concentric
consequences
to
the
ultimate
emergence
of
Mau
Mau
and
the transformation
of
Kenya into
a
land of
fear
and
violence
where
all
Europeans
must
live
in
what
looks
like
a
permanent
state
of
siege.
This is,
in
essence,
the
unfolding
story
of
much
of
Africa.
The white man found
in
his superior
power
the
sufficient
sanction
for
all
his acts.
He
rarely-and
never adequately--concerned
himself with
the
effect
of
his
acts
on
the
Africans
among
whom
he
came. Now
the
white
man's
power
is evaporating.
The
African,
in
varying
ways,
is
beginning
to
reassert
himself, and
in
the fact
of
this
reassertion,
the
white
man
is
overcome
with
a
desperate
helplessness.
If,
like
the
whites
of
South
Africa
or
the
settlers
of
Kenya,
he is
beyond
all
capacity
to
understand
his
plight,
he
reacts
with
fear
and
fanaticism
and
is hopelessly
trying
to
maintain his
supremacy
by
main
force.
If
his instinct
for
self-preservation
is
still
informed
by
some
measure
of
in-
telligence,
he is
trying
to
face
the fact
that
the
African,
as
Vernon
Bartlett
puts
it,
in
Struggle
for
Africa,
is
bound
to
achieve
"at
least
equality
with
the
European
and
probably
dominate
over
him."
This
European
is
asking himself
if
he
can
avert
a
holocaust
by
trying
to
"become
the
partner
of
the
African,"
and
if
so,
how
this
is
to
be
done.
It
is
this
emergent
situation,
especially
as
exemplified in
the
different
and
differing
parts
of
British
Africa
and
the
Union
of
*Research
Associate,
Centre
for
International
Studies,
M.I.T.,
Cam-
bridge,
Mass.;
former
Far
Eastern
Correspondent,
Time
magazine;
student
of
the
political
problems
of
under-developed
areas.
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