Abstract
To write of how Africans see each other is a subject particularly fraught with pitfalls. First, I am aware of the limits of my capacity to handle the probing of something that touches on deep wells of the psychology and cultural identity of other peoples. Secondly, in dealing with perceptions of what are in fact stereotypes, one is bound to make generalisations, and every generalisation usually has a qualification. Thirdly, the division between ‘anglophone’ and ‘francophone’ is an artificial distinction imposed by colonialism, and therefore should not exist. Those who dwell on the subject are bound to be seen as divisive.
“Yes, but the white men think they know everything,” went on the beggar. “And what do they know when all is said and done?”
from Camara Laye, The Radiance of the King
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Notes
C.W.E. Kirk-Greene, French False Friends (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).
There is brilliant dissection of the sociology of the Commission by A.C. Branwell in ‘Dans le Couloir. The Political Culture of the EEC Commission’ International Journal of Moral and Social Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1987.
Tikum Mbah Azonga, ‘Breaking the image’, West Africa, 1 November 1985, p. 2357. See also Jacques Benjamin Les Camerounais Occidentaux (Presses de l’Université de Montreal, 1972).
See Senegambia: Proceedings of a Colloquium at the University of Aberdeen (Aberdeen University of African Studies Group, 1974). Also Eric Makedonsky, Le Sénégal, Le Sénégambia, 2 vols (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1987). In 1989, since this paper was delivered, the Senegambian confederation has collapsed.
West Africa, 8 October 1971, p. 1161 The editorial was actually called ‘Burying Fashoda’. The expression ‘spirit of Fashoda’ was taken from a speech by Senghor delivered in Monrovia in 1968.
From ‘Que chacun balaye devant sa porte….’, Paris-Dakar, 7 September 1959.
From ‘Le Deuxième congrès …’ in L’AOF, 23 May 1947. This quotation and no. 7 may be found in Jacques Louis Hymans, Léopold Sédar Senghor: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh University Press, 1971).
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Whiteman, K. (1995). Mutual Perceptions in Africa. In: Kirk-Greene, A., Bach, D. (eds) State and Society in Francophone Africa since Independence. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23826-2_18
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