No title {Further reflections} Long Walk Original Manuscript (Image #621)

African Tour: (Note: This has to be incorporated in the appropriate place). Under the conditions in which I write this account I have no acces whatsoever to material relevant to African socialism, especially to the works of Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Leopold Senghor and D'Aboussier and others. My remarks will accordingly not be a critical comment on any specific views that have been expressed by any particular individual on the subject. As I understand it there is as yet no widely accepted exposition of African socialism and African scholars and thinkers have produced a diversity of ideas unrelated to one another except in name only. Some varieties of the concept are no more than capitalism wrapped up with the name socialism. Others are systems of ideas that are skillfully presented but bear little relation to objective truth and scientific experience. Nevertheless African socialism is an attempt to build a social system distinct from capitalism with its division of society into classes and is a move towards some measure of nationalisation of the various sectors of the economy. To that extent it is a progressive idea which we should welcome and encourage. It shows that the people of Africa rightly link colonial oppression with capitalism and its evils and are determined not to perpetuate in their own countries a social order which has caused so much human suffering.