The claim by Mbembe that African identity doesn’t exist as a substance is valid to a greater extent when we take into consideration that African has multiple ancestries. Mbembe criticize African scholarship where somehow they isolate Africa from the world by putting Africa as the place for blacks who share a common identity. This assertion set obstacles to moving forward and engaging with the African history. For Mbembe identity is a substance constituted through a series of practices which means that African identity cannot be named or subsumed under one category. It is of importance to note that Africa is not a country, though African share common African realities, cultures do differ.
Mbembe (2002:240) proceeds to give a persuasive critique of dominant intellectual trends for having only selected certain elements of the African collective imaginaire to define an African self, these privileged moments in African history being slavery, colonisation and apartheid. In the present day African intellectuals still perceive and portray Africa as a victim in their writings. He identifies suffering and victimisation as the main episteme of these narratives. Following these narratives, the implication is that Africa has always, has been acted upon by the external forces. This means that Africa is powerless in the international relations and will never progress due to being stuck in history, where history has been imposed on Africa. For progress and the embracing of the African consciousness it is therefore important to engage with the history, shift the way Africa has been perceived.
In doing so we shouldn’t neglect the role played by history through colonisation, slavery and apartheid. This should be treated as the African history where both the coloniser and the colonised played a role in the crafting. Mbembe (2002:246)
