"Professor Mazrui Excites Audience in Accra" - Mazrui Responds

Dear Friends:
I have just arrived back from a Pan-African tour. Regarding the accusation that I am a divisive factor between Muslims and Christians in Africa, please note that none of my hosts in Ghana this August were Muslim – the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Center, the Pan African Writers Association and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. I gave half a dozen media interviews (radio, television and print) only one of which was to a Ghanaian Muslim. Two of my main lectures were chaired by distinguished Ghanaian Christians; the third by a distinguished African American Christian.

To the charge that I favor the political party currently in power in Ghana, please note that I was graciously received separately by both President Kufuor and by former President Jerry Rawlings during my few days in Ghana. Both meetings were very cordial and full of good humor. In fact Mrs. Rawlings also graciously came with her children. I am not a partisan in Ghanaian politics, but I do try to be an independent thinker in my pronouncements. I should also mention that I was ceremonially received by both the Royal House of the Ga in Accra and the Royal House of the Ashanti in Kumasi. Neither Royalty was Islamic.

Yes, I did discuss in one of my lectures “inter-racial marriage” as an aspect of globalization. My Ghanaian examples were Joe Appiah, Kwame Nkrumah and Kofi Annan. My first marriage to an English woman was also mentioned in my lecture. Nkrumah and I each decided to call one of our sons Jamal (pronounced in Egypt as Gamal). Jamal Mazrui and Gamal Nkrumah are of racially mixed parentage. Gamal Nkrumah’s mother tongue is Arabic. I wish Jamal Mazrui was as linguistically versatile. Inter-racial marriage is a wave of the future in any case.

My views about Kwame Nkrumah were partially misreported on the Internet. It is correct that Nkrumah’s domestic policies for Ghana internally were wrong (detention without trial, one-party system, dismissal of Chief Justice, shortsighted economics, intimidation of political opponents), but all my three lectures in Ghana spent a lot of time spelling out Nkrumah’s outstanding contributions to Africa and to Pan-Africanism. My thesis was that Nkrumah was a great African, but not a great Ghanaian in his domestic policies.

It was a great honor for me to be able to lay a wreath at the tombs of Kwame Nkrumah, W.E. B. DuBois and George Padmore. May they continue to inspire us.

Debating big issues is an excellent idea, but let us not distort each others views.

Yours sincerely,
Ali A. Mazrui, D.Phil., (Oxon)
Director Institute of Global Cultural Studies
Email: amazrui@binghamton.edu