Ex Africa semper aliquid Novi! Pixley ka Isaka Seme, the African Renaissance and the Empire in Contemporary South Africa

Document Abstract / Summary Overview

Abstract Since the 2000s, Africa has carried out a project of its regeneration, popularly known as the African Renaissance. This vision of a self-reliant and developed continent is embodied in the figure of Pixley ka Isaka Seme. Seme had first eloquently articulated this vision in 1906 in an award-winning speech titled the Regeneration of Africa. He had implemented its fundamental ideas of uniting African tribes in 1912 when he facilitated the founding of the oldest political movement in the continent - the South African Native National Congress (SNNC) - the precursor of the African National Congress (ANC). The traces of Seme and the African Renaissance are not obvious in the projects of NEPAD, the African Parliament and so on. They rather remain buried in the archives of the history of the ANC, and the social history of South Africa - but also in the dreams, aspirations and imagination of patriotic Africans. The aim of this article is to explore how and why a shared memory of Seme has to be built; to contribute to the construction of an ideology that will be instrumental in underpinning the work of resisting the negative effects of the empire or globalization.