Frantz Fanon (originally from Martinique Island and later settled in Algeria) believed that violent revolution was the only means of ending colonial repression and cultural trauma in the Third World.
The argument was that violence was the cleansing force by which Africans, who were shattered by gaze and colonial brutality, could be freed.
Violence freed the African from his inferiority complex – and from his despair and inaction, it made him fearless and restored his self-respect.
The colonisers were wrong for not seeing the colonised as human beings, as they forced the colonised to accept themselves as mere objects.
This can equally be attributed to what Joseph Conrad writes in his book, ‘Heart of Darkness’, which portrays Africans as mere objects and dehumanises them in the process.
Fanon demonstrated how the problem of colour was connected with a range of words and images, starting with the symbol of the dark side of the soul.
White is associated with justice, truth and virginity, while black is associated with evil and backwardness.
The instrumentality of violence would lead to the emergence of a critical and confident African consciousness, which was part and parcel of a dawning universal humanistic consciousness.
This would ultimately lead to the rebirth of a new African, equipped with the language of hope and political action.
Central to the political action was the conquest of disease, hunger and the eradication of hunger on the African soil.
Fanon further stressed the need to overcome material necessities to acquire new African freedom to heal the interiorised African shame and self-hatred.
The building of a nation at independence was of necessity – as long as it was accompanied by the discovery and encouragement of universal values.
Postcolonial nations would end in disaster if they simply replaced their colonial bourgeois leaders with African bourgeoisie trained by Europeans, as oppression will retain the capitalistic class structure (Fanon, 1963; Wiredu, 2006).
Despite this caution, the liberated African leaders became more oppressive than the colonisers (Freire, 1972).
This scenario has led to an unimaginable magnitude of suffering among the Africans, whose euphoria at independence has turned into a nightmare.
Instead of harvesting the fruits of independence with joy, Africans in many countries are voting with their feet.
However, Gyekye’s philosophy of communitarianism challenges the view that community confers personhood on the individual; thus, the individual’s identity is merely derivative of the community but argues that African thought ascribes definite value to the individual by citing an Akan proverb: “All persons are children of God; no one is a child of the earth”.
This is in support of the argument that a person is conceived as a theomorphic being, having in his nature an aspect of God.
This means that a person is more than just a material or physical object, but a child of God and therefore intrinsically valuable.
Despite this argument that the person is ontologically complete, Gyekye also acknowledges that people live in a community as per the following proverb: “When a person descends from heaven, he or she descends into a human society”.
Consequently, a person’s abilities are not sufficient for survival, but the community is equally necessary for the survival of the individual.
According to him, it is an error to hold that African philosophy denies the individual but maintains that the individual is intrinsically a valuable child of God, linked to a web of human relationships.
This link is crucial, as “we are linked together like a chain; we are linked in life; we are linked in death – persons who share a common blood relation never break away from one another” (Gyekye, 1998).
In this regard, there is a belief that all human beings were created and are consequently the products and children of a Supernatural Being, and should therefore live in peace and respect one another.
In an attempt to elevate an African, Wiredu’s Philosophy of Personhood, on the other hand, hosts a two-part conception of a person.
The first and most intuitive to Western conceptions of persons is the ontological dimension, which includes one’s biological constitution.
The second dimension, which is the normative conception of personhood, is based on one’s ability to will freely, which is dependent on one’s ethical considerations.
This designates a person to become a person.
According to this assertion, one is not born a person but becomes one through events and experiences that lead one to act ethically.
Wiredu opposes the ethnophilosophical and philosophical sagacity approaches to philosophy, arguing that all cultures have distinctive folk beliefs and world views, which must be distinguished from the practice of philosophising.
Although he acknowledges the role of folk philosophy as genuine philosophy, he argues that the latter demands the application of critical analysis and rigorous argument (Wiredu, 2006).
The point of good ethics as leading to a good life is evident among all generations and more so in respecting other people as creatures of God.