Marcus Garvey Pan Afrikan Institute

The world is rapidly being transformed into a new world. This process is an on-going one, but there are moments in world history when single events or actions of individuals have the potentiality to create a shock that lead to qualitative changes in social relations and in the relations between cultures, peoples and countries. It is now widely accepted that the events of September 11 have such potentiality. This unfortunate date has become the watershed between the politics of the Old Order and the New Order that the US and its allies wish to impose on the whole world. In many ways, it can be said that these events were connected to the events that remained uncompleted since the end of the Gulf War. In that war Saddam Hussein tried to challenge the hegemony of the US in the Arab world by trying to take over Kuwait and its oil, which serviced US global power, but failed. In response George Bush, the father, tried to destroy the base off that challenge by eliminating Saddam, but he too failed.


TOWARDS A NEW GLOBAL AGENDA FOR THE 21st CENTURY - AFRIKAN CONTRIBUTION
A PROPOSAL FOR RESEARCH Prof. Dani W. Nabudere Executive Director, Afrika Study Centre, P. O. Box 961, MBALE, Uganda daninabudere@yahoo.co.uk daninabudere@hotmail.com Introduction The world is rapidly being transformed into a new world. This process is an on-going one, but there are moments in world history when single events or actions of individuals have the potentiality to create a shock that lead to qualitative changes in social relations and in the relations between cultures, peoples and countries. It is now widely accepted that the events of September 11 have such potentiality. This unfortunate date has become the watershed between the politics of the Old Order and the New Order that the US and its allies wish to impose on the whole world. In many ways, it can be said that these events were connected to the events that remained uncompleted since the end of the Gulf War. In that war Saddam Hussein tried to challenge the hegemony of the US in the Arab world by trying to take over Kuwait and its oil, which serviced US global power, but failed. In response George Bush, the father, tried to destroy the base off that challenge by eliminating Saddam, but he too failed. September 11 was a second attempt by disaffected elements from the Arab world to destroy the pillars of western propelled modernity in a highly contested, Western dominated world order. This disaster gave the US; under George W. Bush, the son, to resume the challenge poised earlier by his father's failure to eliminate the threat to Western-Christian civilisation and World Order. In the event the date has come to signify the attempt by the US to impose a new global order based on a triumphant capitalist neo-liberal ideology. This ideology presents "pre-emptive intervention" against those considered to be enemies of "civilisation" as the only way to preserve western democracy. The export of western-style democracy and neo-liberal market economy becomes the ideological justification for the aggression. The enemies are metaphorically referred to in a new Bush Doctrine as "Barbarians" and "forces of evil" to be "punished" and "brought to justice" by those on the side of "civilisation," which is the western civilisation. This is also carried out under the offensive strategy of "fighting global terrorism." The evolution of the world situation since the declaration of "war against terrorism" has come to be characterised by a high level of intolerance of political opponents on the part of the neo-liberal ideologues. It seems to have come to represent the "End of History" of the Old World, creating conditions for the emergence and birth of a New World. But since the neo-liberal ideologues do not present clearly the parameters and the essence of this New Order, the "revolutionary situation" created by their aggressive and imperialistic expansionism gives room to the emergence of new social forces that come from the Old Order to "re-invent" history and create a New Society. These forces have to be identified and made visible by concerted research, reflection and action. It is significant that these events happened at the beginnings of the new century. The New Millennium had been welcomed with a lot of fanfare and hopes just a year previously. The United Nations Millennium Summit was held to give hope to the poor, but within the limits of the Old Order. The UN Secretary General in his report to the Summit made the following clarion call: "Let the Millennium Summit signal the renewed commitment of Member States to their United Nations, by agreeing on our common vision . Let the world's leaders prove their commitment by acting on it." This has not happened, and where it has it has been to conform to a new doctrine on which there is no consensus to become "our common vision." It seemed as if the Old Order was trying to project itself into the 21 st century against all odds with all its problems. Within a year of the Summit, the skies of New York and Washington were up in flames to be followed by others throughout the world. The Old World was divided between the exploiters and the exploited, the oppressors and the oppressed. In such a world, there could be no "common vision" that could guide the world on agreed principles. In any case, September 11 and its aftermath has destroyed what had remained of the Old Legal Order represented by international law and the United Nations. These were declared by president Bush on the even of the Iraq war to be "irrelevant." Even the limited social-economic programme contained in the Millennium Declaration failed to address the major burning issues affecting the world: galloping poverty, ecological degradation and one-sided world power. After September 11, the Old Order found no better way of representing itself and the 'enemy' except in a semi-religious idioms and appellations, which had led to the conflicts of the Old Millennium. This implied an acknowledgement that the dominant philosophical and political premises that led to the western Enlightenment were becoming exhausted by the challenges of the moment. These challenges were emanating from the economic and cultural globalisation that western capitalism and resistances to it implied. It also undermined the very basis of the functioning of the modern nation-state system, and its underlying political ideology and the international law, which regulated it. This clearly called for a new synthesis of social life through reflection and a new philosophical premise upon which all humanity could agree on "a common vision." In turn what was happening was calling for epistemology, cosmological revolution and deep paradigms shifts that no longer espoused binary oppositions and disregard of the peculiarities and diversities of existence of life. A new epistemology of knowledge had to take into account all the diversities and acknowledge their contribution to human existence. It had to create conditions in which we could unlearn the old negative positions in order to relearn in new ways the histories of our dilemmas. This would create new bridges of understanding of the different religions, cultures, and civilisations through processes of reconciliation and healing. To do this, we could not afford to accept the Huntingtonian "fault lines" to be the basis of clashes between civilisations. Such clashes, one of which emerged out of September 11, would destroy all of us before the last "fault line" was resolved through conflict. A new Universal Philosophy had to address the causes of the "fault lines" and create the cement to bridge them. This would be the basis of a new civilisation in which all the peoples of the world would identify with. Our task as scholars is to contribute to the articulation and emergence of such a new synthetic paradigm if we are all not to perish in the conflicts that September 11 has set in motion. The Problematic If the events of September 11 could be summed up in a single phrase, perhaps this could be: "Crisis of Modernity." It is the modern, mainly western-based project and paradigm that was challenged by a paradigm of resistance that has been undercurrent all through the period after the European Enlightenment. Stephen Toulmin [1990] demonstrated that there were in fact two renaissances that occurred within the European Enlightenment. The first renaissance marked the birth of Western civilization that occurred in the sixteenth century. This renaissance, according to him, represented a full, humanistic flowering of scientific, social, and moral thought. In this phase the contributions of the different cultures and traditions of the different societies and communities were recognized by Western intellectual traditions before Protestantism became a political threat to Catholic-dominated social order of Europe. The struggles between these religious sects led to the intolerances that emerged in the later phase leading to the second renaissance. The second renaissance occurred in the latter part of the seventeenth century after the Thirty Years War (1618-48), which was characterized by a chaotic shifting of alliances between nobles and their Catholic and Protestant communities. This period saw a searching for new foundations of social organization in the light of these destabilizing developments. This explains why attempts were made by the social theorists in this to build a new "rational" theoretical and philosophical basis for a new social order in place of the old one. This phase placed the modern scientific paradigm on a pedestal that gained its own momentum and in time became the dominant paradigm given the development of industrial capitalism that accompanied it to be become the world system. The paradigm set in motion a new search for science-based knowledge in place of the old epistemologies that were characterised by "errors and superstition." This new search, according to Toulmin, was distinguished from the earlier search by the deliberate use of philosophical strategies, which avoided the cultural conflicts that raged between Catholics and Protestants in Europe. By the same token it did not, nor could it have taken into account the conflicts, which the paradigm was itself going to generate since it could not judge itself out of no experience, emerging as it was with its own "errors and superstitions." It became fashionable to have a philosophical discourse that systematically put the history of the period in the background and searched for new social-organizational paradigms that placed emphasis on the supposed universal characteristics of the individual. The appearance of Galileo's and Newton's atomistic-mechanistic scientific methodology provided analogous models of natural social order based on the individual seen as an atom in society. It was this philosophical environment that led political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke to construct their theories of political order based on "universal motives," built out of "human nature" as understood by the new paradigm. They also constructed the basis for "rational behaviour" of individuals starting from a "state of nature" which had prevailed during the chaos into modern nation-state organisation based on capitalist production. This "Model" has evolved through phases of its own, through Western imperialism, to the present phase of economic globalisation, which seems to inform the crisis of the modern project. For in the events that took place on September 11, 2001 economic globalisation was seen by the other side to the conflict as a Western imposed project "that undermines the independence of Islamic states, enslaving them and opening them up to the immorality of the West; while ordinary, faithful believers have to live in poverty (with) a few gaining from the exports of oil, which in any case (are) dominated by6 global, Western oil companies" (slightly rephrased and rearranged by the author) [Liebenberg, J & Abdurahman, Z, 2002: 99-100]. This quotation puts the contradictions behind the events of September 11 squarely, although it does not deal with the wider aspects related to this contradiction manifest in similar opinions of most "Third World" peoples, so much so that the real crisis of September 11 was in fact a global crisis against aspects of western-propelled modernity that seemed inimical to the interests of the peoples in these countries. But the event underlined the real problems of the present global system of social, economic and political relations in relation to these interests. What are these problems? The answers to this question are important because they will enable us to identify issues that can be further investigated as part of the process of devising a new global agenda. The modern global system of social and economic relations can be said to have "ideally" emerged as part of a troika of social, economic, and political relations around which modern institutions, ideologies, and paradigms were erected. These tripartite relations were: THE STATE, THE MARKET, and CIVIL SOCIETY . The emergence and integration of these structures were built on the social relations on which the modern project was created. Within this combination were contained internal contradictions that increasingly exposed the workings of the system as no longer "rational" to a great number of peoples who were brought within the circuits of its operation. In the process of its evolution, it was civil society that became the driving force behind the changes that occurred in the system assisted by technology (and the market in general). The market split civil society into classes, which propelled and serviced it and the market increasingly was monopolised by a section of civil society, while turning others into labourers. The state arose out the class struggles between the different sections of civil society in the market, and although ideally supposed to be "above" each of the factions and classes and able to "mediate" the conflicts between them, the state became the instrument of domination by one social class, which held the levers and "commanding heights" of the economy. It did this through the mechanisms of the market and the social relations on which it was based. The market, just like the state, begun to appear to be above society. The crisis we face today is manifested in all these three spheres of what we call today "economic globalisation." The Market: Economic globalisation is propelled by the profit motive of individuals, but the relations here are informed not by "free markets" as the neo-liberals would have us believe. The process is propelled by monopolistic control and competition for resources in a changing global environment. From the earlier "comparative advantage" of the different players in the market, the market began to assume a monopolistic competitive advantage , now called the "competitive advantage." Whereas comparative advantage (under the earlier free competition of the national economies) suggested diversity in which states were endowed with different kinds of resources and characteristics that enabled it to become an actor in the international market (as an advantage), competitive advantage (under economic globalisation) on the other hand, assumed sameness of advantage under which all `national' markets are assumed to be the same and at same level of competitiveness. This enabled the monopolistic corporations to compete everywhere on the same terms and similar conditions, which had implications for the national state and civil society-because these, very soon lost control of their "comparative advantages" to the global corporations [Du Toit, 2002: 75-76]. The nation has lost control and national economies have lost coherence. Under this "productivity paradigm ," and given the declining transport and communication costs, corporations could now access resources from any location of the world cheaply and "efficiently, making resources themselves less valuable." The advantage lay in "superior productivity of capital in assembling resources to create valuable products and services" [Porter, M. E, 2000: 1-18]. With this development, labour across the globe was undervalued and cast asunder, hence the marginalisation of vast numbers of unemployed people both in the centres of finance capital and in the peripheries [Castells, 1996, 2000]. The market also became infected with criminality in forms of speculative capital, mafia networks, drug industries, currency launderings, conflict diamonds and other forms of criminal gang networks into what Castells has called "the global criminal economy" [Castells, 1998, 2000]. At the core of the system, corporate crime and fraud increased as chief executive officers of big corporations and accounting firms paid themselves high pay-offs and defrauded investors of their investments or "cooked books" to reflect `market values' that were not in line with the `normal' conditions. This was evidence that the capitalist mode of production was increasingly become parasitic and moribund. It has become increasingly self-evident that a new model of economic organisation, which takes the interests of all the people of the world into account apart from that presented by the neo-liberals is required. The State : In this evolution of events, the capitalist liberal state has become anathema to the monopolising tendencies of a small group of corporations. The "free market" has become an empty slogan serving the interests of these corporate interests. The state has become an instrument of accumulation at the hands of the dominant classes controlling these corporations and labour has been disorganised and fragmented by capital. The democratic system has been undermined by these authoritarian pressures towards "good governance" that favours managerial techniques at the cost of democratic process of decision-making. The "market" has been privileged to the point of becoming a "God." The nation-state has been over-ridden by new forms of communication and across-border flow of financial resources and investments that operate independently of state intervention. Hence, the nation-state has lost control over "monetary and fiscal policy" in favour of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation, the ideology of the `new economy.' The African post-colonial state has been downsized to a new neo-colonial status serving new global corporate. At the core, the state begins has begun to decompose as high levels of corruption and criminality eat deep into the administrative, regulatory and judicial institutions of the state. At the periphery, the post-colonial state has disintegrated and become victim to warlords in cooperation with new mafia criminal forces and "elite networks" pillaging and plundering what remains of Africa's human and natural resources. The collapse of the Somali state and "Africa's First World War" in the Great Lakes Region are good examples of this melt-down of the African post-colonial state. In this case something like a "post-traditional state" appeared in Somaliland where the Guurti system comprising of elder councils tried to constitute something in the nature of a new state based on clans as constituent units [Nabudere, 2000: 24-32]. Calls for the reconstitution of new forms of nation-states are being made [Gyekye, 1997]. I think that new thinking is required in this direction as well as calls for a United States of Africa are also made at the level of the heads of States. Can the reconstituted African Union become the basis for the reorganisation of the African post-colonial and post-apartheid state system? Civil Society : The decomposition of the nation-state undermines democracy at the core of the system. As the market globalises and concentrates wealth, power and privilege, civil society has become fragmented into "flexible employment" markets. Labour at the centre of the system has been in a number of industries been replaced by labour at the periphery where wages are low and where female and child labour is being exploited to the extreme. "Big government and big labour" have lost glory. New civil society organisations have also proliferated and taken up "single issues" of struggle. It has become diversified, as identity politics has also entered the scene to become the basis of new forms of organisation. In African conditions, the identity politics has been exploited by the elites into ethnic demands for "equality" and sometimes into demands for separation. On the other hand, ethnicity as an ideological construction has also become a rallying point for the masses for recognition. The new nation state has been shaken at the core as the nation-building project has crumbled since social and economic integration was made impossible by the disintegrating and fragmenting forces of economic globalisation. On the other hand civil society organisations at the global level have expanded-making new demands for a new "sustainable development." Mainstream g lobal politics has become afflicted by a break down of the political discourse as the United States under president Bush has tried to redefine the rules of the game against "terrorism," which is equated with moral "evil." Legal mechanisms in the form of international law have been undermined. At the same time demands for a new model of global corporate and political governance are made by the new global civil society. Civil society has been challenged to articulate new rights, duties, and responsibilities for a global citizenship , despite the fragmenting pressures emanating from the global economy. This has been called an "anti-globalisation movement." In fact this movement seeks a more just and better-managed globalisation system. There is a vacuum that needs to be filled with better ideas in place of neo-liberal dogmatism on this point. Nevertheless, these new developments in civil society constitute the basis for a new political agenda for the 21 st century. These developments offer the basis for the new global political and economic dispensation, which requires further investigation and research. It would appear that some concerted efforts towards this direction have been undertaken by a number of countries and civil society organisations. For instance, Tanzania and Finland have set up the " Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy, " which is aimed at building a coalition of states and NGOs to change the way global policies are currently being made. The "Helsinki Group" comprising the Foreign Ministers of Tanzania and Finland, alongside outstanding individuals such as Mary Robinson, the former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commission, Clare Short, former British minister for overseas cooperation, Cyril Ramaphosa, an ANC Executive Committee member and a business representative, and many others, including a number of international NGOs, are conducting hearings towards finding new ideas for the future. According to Martin Khor: "The Helsinki Group meeting brought up a whole range of problems, including the `democratic deficit' (implicit) in global governance, especially in the way the international financial institutions and the WTO operate; the lack of progress in solving global environmental problems, financial instability; the erosion of multilateral cooperation; terrorism and the unilateral response by big powers, in the security area. In the end, the Group decided its work would be in the nature of issuing a `wake up call' on the need to resolve key global problems, and change from the old development politics towards a new paradigm" [Khor, 2004: 3]. This development should also act as a `wake up call' to scholars to join the process of working towards the development of a new paradigm for the 21 st century on those issues of global concern that are already self-evident. What is to be done? The summary that has been made above implies the need for an action plan of investigation into some of the issues raised above about the global system and how it affects national systems. Afrika is the worst affected continent from the ill- effects of this system, as it has indeed done throughout the 500 years of the European colonisation of the continent. Throughout these years Afrika has also made her contribution to the global system through its struggles against these colonial impositions. Indeed, it can be said today that the international human rights law starts with the struggle of the enslaved Africans against slavery as evidenced by the first international Convention on labour. Other international rights, which Africans, along side other oppressed peoples, have achieved, have been enshrined in international legal instruments on political, civil, social, economic and cultural fronts-creating a basis for the consolidation of a human rights regime for the 21 st century. It is on these achievements that we must be build to widen the scope for human freedom in general in the new global dispensation. A few themes arising from the above summary of the global system might be indicative of the areas in which we could focus our research efforts. To these could be added other ideas to create a comprehensive research programme about Afrika's contribution towards creating a new global agenda for the 21 st century . This programme should involve as many institutions, scholars, activists, practitioners, individuals, communities across-the-board. The experiences achieved by individual and groups should as much as possible form part of the evolving agenda. Some Themes For the research to be comprehensive, it must begin with basic issues of consciousness that tend to influence our thinking and action at the base in the present world. Hence problems arising from r eligious beliefs and peoples' philosophies should be at the fore of our research, indicating in which ways some of the old beliefs which tend to complicate relations and violent conflicts between communities could be overcome in the new political, economic and social dispensation. Religion : Has influenced and continue to influence the basis of our beliefs in our lives. But they have also added to our suffering since religious ideas constitute one of the fundamental pillars of our self-understanding and the understanding of others who do not practise our religions. Liebenberg and Abdurahman [2002:94-102] have linked the September 11 events to the "Strict Father Morality" which is to be found in patriarchal systems implied in Christianity and Islam and which are traceable to the Bible and the Koran. The two authors believe that within these Great Traditions, there has always been a Little Traditions in both these religions, which are less patriarchal and more accommodative of other points of view. They believe that these Little Traditions can be the basis for an "alternative ways of moral thinking," which they call the "Nurturant Parent Morality" [Ibid: 102]. This is, in our opinion, a fruitful way to proceed by examining what is positive and what is negative in each of our religions in order to create a new synthesis that can inform all of them. The idea is not to create one mega-religion . On the contrary, it is to make it possible for the flowering of religious though but one that is informed by certain basic moral ideas that unite humankind. Philosophy: Some will disagree with the above two authors and insist that the underlying ideas in the September 11 events are "philosophic obscurantism" created by over-confidence in our belief in scientific ideas. This is what Simon Critchley has called "scientism." In line with Ramose [2002: 152-3], Critchley gives room to wisdom, which he thinks can fill the " felt gap" that has been left by scientific philosophy and thinking [Critchley, 2001: 4]. According to Critchley whereas ancient philosophy was concerned with the search for wisdom, modern philosophy has replaced that concern with the search for knowledge , yet knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. Ramose agrees and believes that much of that wisdom cab be found in Afrikan philosophy, especially in the Afrikan principles of Ubuntu [Ramose, 2001] . The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy is precisely to emancipate Afrika from the impositions of colonialism [Serequeberhan, 1994]. In this connection, Masolo is right in pointing out that the birth of modern Afrikan philosophy and the debates surrounding it are historically rooted in the two related discourses of contention-the one on western discourse on and about Afrika and the second being Afrikan response to it. Masolo locates the point of difference in this debate as one surrounding the western concept of reason, which is at the centre of modern western philosophy [Masolo, 1994:1]. Thus for me this debate seems to be a good of entry in disentangling the points of agreement and disagreement in these two philosophies in order to find common ground for the future. Distinctions and attempts at synthesis could prove productive in this search for a new global knowledge agenda. This is proper and fitting because, according to Critchley, the present state of philosophy is marked by the "exhaustion of a whole series of theoretical paradigms." While analytical philosophy has achieved some "historical consciousness," it has ended up becoming only interested "in its own tradition" and attempts by the post-analytic philosophers to revive the philosophy have amounted to no more than making "attempts to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted." Equally, according to him, Continental philosophy has become a philosophy of "proper names" as strings of philosophers and their philosophies lose meaning in a world of complexity. What is emerging is the need for a "a genuine non-sectarian recurrence of interest" and the quest to address issues to "local conditions and to learn to speak the dialectic of the place and the language of the tribe" [Critchley, 123-27]. So the time has come for the "tribes" to come out of the hiding where they had been beaten by the logic of analytical philosophy based on "reason" in order to contribute to the emergence of a comprehensive philosophy that synthesises knowledge and wisdom. Both these schools now recognise that the gap between knowledge and wisdom cannot be bridged by empirical enquiry and this deep question that cannot be answered in this way is: "What is the meaning of life" to which philosophies can make a contribution. New Economic and Global Agenda: The search for "home-grown" solutions to Africa's problems has become legend. The New Partnership for Africa's Development-NEPAD is seen as one such good example but there have been some challenges whether the NEPAD is indeed an African "home-grown" agenda [Nabudere, 2003A]. The African Union proposes a model for the creation of a United States of Africa built on the "building blocks" of regional economic blocks. Other ideas and models have been presented as to how to achieve a good African political and economic reorganisation in the current global agenda. "African renaissance" has been bandied around as the basis of Afrika's recovery and rebirth, but no clear theoretical framework has been articulated to support. Perhaps the challenge of an African renaissance, which is challenged on philosophical ground, should inform our debate and research about Afrika's future and her contribution to a new global agenda. Perhaps we should take a leaf from Dr Pixley Isaka ka Seme's call for "Africa's Regeneration" since the concept `renaissance' is criticised for being an emulation of the European experience that resulted in Afrika being brought under European control. Seme's model of an African regeneration started with the calling of a meeting of African princes and chiefs in 1912 that led to the formation of the African National Congress [Magubane, B. M 1999: 31-2]. This paradigm based on Afrikan heritage seems to present an organic way for developing a new Afrikan agenda for the 21 st century whereby the ordinary African men and women play an active role as a process of liberation. *African education:* A massive, comprehensive programme of research leading to an epochal global agenda, in which active citizens play a role in fashioning their future agenda as global citizens, requires a revolutionary educational agenda. That is why we take the liberty of clipping the issues of education from the above general issue to emphasis its basic significance. To learn to unlearn the old ways of doing things that no longer work is a necessary step of learning to learn new ways of doing things. This requires a gigantic programme that involves of every one. Afrika's educational policies have downgraded Afrikan ideas and institutions while creating no new avenues for education for all. The Afrikan masses have been under-educated and uneducated in the process. A new educational paradigm must raise the issue of Afrikan knowledge and wisdom to the forefront as a practical policy issue. The creation of the Pan-Afrikan University is a necessary part of this process. To be truly Afrikan, the new University must stand on two legs-one at sites of knowledge in the community where students are given training by community experts; and the other at the University Campos where the knowledge is systematised through comparative studies that draw from other human experiences in other countries [Nabudere, 2003B]. Ideally this research should be part of the process of developing the Pan-Afrikan University that will link existing Universities into new approaches of developing knowledge through life long learning in which all Afrikans learn, teach, and research about their society and the world at large. The research in many areas must begin with creating registers of Afrikan Sites of Knowledge, as a basis for defining the Afrikan learner and Afrikan knowledge creator [Nabudere, 2003B]. Methodology This project should bring aboard as many people as possible from the different social science disciplines and the humanities. It is not based on a single paradigm and its purpose is in fact to promote dialogue between the different disciplines, paradigms and methodologies. It also goes beyond what is normally called "interdisciplinary," "multidisciplinary," or "pluridisciplinary approaches. These combinations do not add much qualitatively to the weaknesses of each of the disciplines and approaches. As Marc Auge once observed: "Interdisciplinarity is the proud title we give to the anxiety from which the different disciplines suffer" [Auge, 1982: 111]. In order to avoid the intellectual confusion, which is thereby generated, it might be a good strategy for every voice to be heard and put into a dialogical relationship with other voices. This is the purpose of creating cross-disciplinary and cross-paradigmic dialogues aimed at producing something new and comprehensive based on understanding and not misunderstanding. Therefore, the method we use to put the different data together and to promote dialogue is the one we should adopt. Hermeneutic approaches are therefore recommended for, according the African philosopher Okonda Okolo: "In Africa, the interest in hermeneutics also arises out of the reality of crisis: a generalized identity crisis due to the presence of a culture - a foreign and dominating tradition - and the necessity for self-affirmation in the construction of an authentic culture and tradition" [Quoted in Serequeberhan, 1994: 24]. This crisis of identity is what we have called here the `crisis of modernity' which has brought about the need for people to become ever more conscious of their cultural heritages and identities. It is the same crisis that led to the reinvention of the hermeneutic movement in Europe, which, according to Okolo, was connected with the appearance of "crises of identity in German romanticism." Okolo adds further that it is this "crisis of Europe confronted with the technical world and language" which Heidegger, among others, regarded "as the forgetting of Being" that has to be addressed. The time has come for the recognition of language of each people and its philosophical underpinnings that is at the base of the crisis of modernity. It is a demand for recognition and representation. An epistemological revolution becomes necessary at this stage [Nabudere, 2002]. The idea is to tentatively recognise the role of the different players and their disciplines and methodologies acting in collaboration. The idea is to create dialogues between the different "fields" of theory, practice and policy. In this case, as Catherine Odora Hoppers, has pointed out: "Fields are taken as discursive formations that are manifestations of knowledge and power domains. Reconstruction in the framework of the dialogue between fields implies disruptions in order to create a higher levels basis for action, and engender a more inclusive democratic cosmology. Disruption is regarded as essential to the contemplation of `potential realities' [Odora Hoppers, 2002: 18]. This is to place "objective research" in a new interface with other approaches to knowledge production, which has epistemological and cosmological dimensions. Thus the aim is to interface academic researchers, practitioners and Afrikan knowledge producers and theoreticians in contact in an exercise that can be called "field-building," in which the knowledge, skills and expertise available to each group can be placed in a common pool accessible to all [Nabudere, 2001]. The idea is to create conditions for dialogue between the different dimensions and paradigms, as well as promoting epistemological and cosmological counter-interrogations [Odora Hoppers, p. 18]. Administration and Coordination This research proposal arises out of a Memorandum of Agreement between Afrika Study Centre-ASC and the Department of political science and Philosophy of the University of South Africa-UNISA. But as we have indicated, the research should be open-ended to include other players. It is proposed that the two institutions-ASC and UNISA be responsible for the coordination and administration of the project. However, any new institution joining into the research should undertake to have someone to become a co-respondent to work closely with one of the two institutions and, where necessary, to act as a coordinator in a particular region where the two institutions are not represented. The organisation will include regular workshops, seminars, and conferences, which will work towards curriculum development and produce publications from the research in the form of newsletters, websites, papers, journals, monographs and books. These meetings and different forms of media will enable us to bring about dialogue between the different approaches and results and the implications of the findings in terms of pedagogical, methodological and curricular development. The two initiating institutions will work out a timetable for the workshops, seminars, and conferences at different sites where the research is being carried out. The two institutions that will coordinate the project will appoint the two coordinators. Financing The respective institutions taking part in the project will facilitate the financing of the research project. However, due to the fact that many other institutions might be involved which do not at the moment have resources, a common fund should be raised to facilitate such individual researchers. Furthermore, expenses such as those covering workshops, seminars and conferences may not be met within budgets of faculties and departments. For this reason, there will be need for a general budget to cover the activities of the research. The two initiating institutions should agree on the budget after ascertaining who will take part in the research and then fund-raise to cove r the project. Time Frame : It is suggested that the first phase of this research be three years: July 2004-June 2007. Proposal submitted for seminar discussion by: Professor Dani W. Nabudere Executive Director, Afrika Study Centre, Mbale, Uganda Date: 3 rd March 2004. REFERENCES Auge, M [1982]: The Anthropological: Symbol, Function, History, Cambridge , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Castells, M [1996, 2000]: The Rise of the Network Society , Blackwell Publishers, Oxford. Castells, M [1998, 2000]: The End of Millennium , Blackwell Publishers, Oxford. Critchley, M [2001}: Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford. Du Toit [2002]: "Rethinking Globalism After September 11: Paradoxes in the Evolution of Globalisation" in Du Toit, CW and Lubbe, GJA [2002]: After September 11: Globalisation, War and Peace, UNISA Press, Pretoria. Khor, M [2004]: "Making Global Governance More Democratic" in Third World Network, Features , February 2004. Liebenberg, J & Abdurahman, Z [2002]: "Metaphor in 9/11 talk: Religious Implications" in Du Toit, CW and Lubbe, GJA [2002]: After September 11: Globalisation, War and Peace, UNISA Press, Pretoria. Magubane, B. M [1999}: "The African Renaissance in Historical Perspective" in Makgoba M. W [1992]: African Renaissance-The New Struggle , Mafube Publishing Limited, Cape Town. Masolo, D. A [1994]: African Philosophy in Search of Identity, Indiana University Press/ Edinburgh University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis. Nabudere, D. W (editor) [2000]: "Globalisation, the African Post-Colonial State, Post-Traditionalism, and the New World Order" in Nabudere, D. W (editor) [2000]: Globalisation and the Post-Colonial African State, AAPS, Harare, Zimbabwe. Nabudere, D. W [2001]: Report of the Proceedings of the "Field Building" Workshop on Peace and Security in Pastoral communities in eastern Africa, held at Ridar Hotel, Seeta, Kampala, Uganda, 5th-7 th November 2001. Nabudere, D. W.[2002]: The Epistemological and Methodological Foundations for an All-Inclusive Research Paradigm in the Search for Global Knowledge, Occasional Paper Series, Volume 6 Number 1, published by the African Association of Political Science-AAPS, Pretoria, South Africa. Nabudere, D. W [2003A]: Towards a New Model of Production: An Alternative to NEPAD, Mimeo, Mbale. Nabudere, D. W [2003B]: Towards the establishment of the Pan-Afrikan University, Mimeo, Mbale. Porter, M. E [2002]: "Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, and the Microeconomics of Prosperity" in Harrison, L. E & Huntington, S. P [2002]: Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress , Basic Books, New York. Serequeberhan, T [1994]: The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy , Routledge, London.

September 11 was a second attempt by disaffected elements from the Arab world to destroy the pillars of western propelled modernity in a highly contested, Western dominated world order. This disaster gave the US; under George W. Bush, the son, to resume the challenge poised earlier by his father's failure to eliminate the threat to Western-Christian civilisation and World Order. In the event the date has come to signify the attempt by the US to impose a new global order based on a triumphant capitalist neo-liberal ideology. This ideology presents "pre-emptive intervention" against those considered to be enemies of "civilisation" as the only way to preserve western democracy. The export of western-style democracy and neo-liberal market economy becomes the ideological justification for the aggression. The enemies are metaphorically referred to in a new Bush Doctrine as "Barbarians" and "forces of evil" to be "punished" and "brought to justice" by those on the side of "civilisation," which is the western civilisation. This is also carried out under the offensive strategy of "fighting global terrorism."

The evolution of the world situation since the declaration of "war against terrorism" has come to be characterised by a high level of intolerance of political opponents on the part of the neo-liberal ideologues. It seems to have come to represent the "End of History" of the Old World, creating conditions for the emergence and birth of a New World. But since the neo-liberal ideologues do not present clearly the parameters and the essence of this New Order, the "revolutionary situation" created by their aggressive and imperialistic expansionism gives room to the emergence of new social forces that come from the Old Order to "re-invent" history and create a New Society. These forces have to be identified and made visible by concerted research, reflection and action.

It is significant that these events happened at the beginnings of the new century. The New Millennium had been welcomed with a lot of fanfare and hopes just a year previously. The United Nations Millennium Summit was held to give hope to the poor, but within the limits of the Old Order. The UN Secretary General in his report to the Summit made the following clarion call: "Let the Millennium Summit signal the renewed commitment of Member States to their United Nations, by agreeing on our common vision . Let the world's leaders prove their commitment by acting on it." This has not happened, and where it has it has been to conform to a new doctrine on which there is no consensus to become "our common vision."

It seemed as if the Old Order was trying to project itself into the 21 st century against all odds with all its problems. Within a year of the Summit, the skies of New York and Washington were up in flames to be followed by others throughout the world. The Old World was divided between the exploiters and the exploited, the oppressors and the oppressed. In such a world, there could be no "common vision" that could guide the world on agreed principles. In any case, September 11 and its aftermath has destroyed what had remained of the Old Legal Order represented by international law and the United Nations. These were declared by president Bush on the even of the Iraq war to be "irrelevant." Even the limited social-economic programme contained in the Millennium Declaration failed to address the major burning issues affecting the world: galloping poverty, ecological degradation and one-sided world power.

After September 11, the Old Order found no better way of representing itself and the 'enemy' except in a semi-religious idioms and appellations, which had led to the conflicts of the Old Millennium. This implied an acknowledgement that the dominant philosophical and political premises that led to the western Enlightenment were becoming exhausted by the challenges of the moment. These challenges were emanating from the economic and cultural globalisation that western capitalism and resistances to it implied. It also undermined the very basis of the functioning of the modern nation-state system, and its underlying political ideology and the international law, which regulated it. This clearly called for a new synthesis of social life through reflection and a new philosophical premise upon which all humanity could agree on "a common vision."

In turn what was happening was calling for epistemology, cosmological revolution and deep paradigms shifts that no longer espoused binary oppositions and disregard of the peculiarities and diversities of existence of life. A new epistemology of knowledge had to take into account all the diversities and acknowledge their contribution to human existence. It had to create conditions in which we could unlearn the old negative positions in order to relearn in new ways the histories of our dilemmas. This would create new bridges of understanding of the different religions, cultures, and civilisations through processes of reconciliation and healing.

To do this, we could not afford to accept the Huntingtonian "fault lines" to be the basis of clashes between civilisations. Such clashes, one of which emerged out of September 11, would destroy all of us before the last "fault line" was resolved through conflict. A new Universal Philosophy had to address the causes of the "fault lines" and create the cement to bridge them. This would be the basis of a new civilisation in which all the peoples of the world would identify with. Our task as scholars is to contribute to the articulation and emergence of such a new synthetic paradigm if we are all not to perish in the conflicts that September 11 has set in motion.

If the events of September 11 could be summed up in a single phrase, perhaps this could be: "Crisis of Modernity." It is the modern, mainly western-based project and paradigm that was challenged by a paradigm of resistance that has been undercurrent all through the period after the European Enlightenment. Stephen Toulmin [1990] demonstrated that there were in fact two renaissances that occurred within the European Enlightenment.

The first renaissance marked the birth of Western civilization that occurred in the sixteenth century. This renaissance, according to him, represented a full, humanistic flowering of scientific, social, and moral thought. In this phase the contributions of the different cultures and traditions of the different societies and communities were recognized by Western intellectual traditions before Protestantism became a political threat to Catholic-dominated social order of Europe. The struggles between these religious sects led to the intolerances that emerged in the later phase leading to the second renaissance.

The second renaissance occurred in the latter part of the seventeenth century after the Thirty Years War (1618-48), which was characterized by a chaotic shifting of alliances between nobles and their Catholic and Protestant communities. This period saw a searching for new foundations of social organization in the light of these destabilizing developments. This explains why attempts were made by the social theorists in this to build a new "rational" theoretical and philosophical basis for a new social order in place of the old one. This phase placed the modern scientific paradigm on a pedestal that gained its own momentum and in time became the dominant paradigm given the development of industrial capitalism that accompanied it to be become the world system.

The paradigm set in motion a new search for science-based knowledge in place of the old epistemologies that were characterised by "errors and superstition." This new search, according to Toulmin, was distinguished from the earlier search by the deliberate use of philosophical strategies, which avoided the cultural conflicts that raged between Catholics and Protestants in Europe. By the same token it did not, nor could it have taken into account the conflicts, which the paradigm was itself going to generate since it could not judge itself out of no experience, emerging as it was with its own "errors and superstitions."

It became fashionable to have a philosophical discourse that systematically put the history of the period in the background and searched for new social-organizational paradigms that placed emphasis on the supposed universal characteristics of the individual. The appearance of Galileo's and Newton's atomistic-mechanistic scientific methodology provided analogous models of natural social order based on the individual seen as an atom in society. It was this philosophical environment that led political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke to construct their theories of political order based on "universal motives," built out of "human nature" as understood by the new paradigm. They also constructed the basis for "rational behaviour" of individuals starting from a "state of nature" which had prevailed during the chaos into modern nation-state organisation based on capitalist production.

This "Model" has evolved through phases of its own, through Western imperialism, to the present phase of economic globalisation, which seems to inform the crisis of the modern project. For in the events that took place on September 11, 2001 economic globalisation was seen by the other side to the conflict as a Western imposed project "that undermines the independence of Islamic states, enslaving them and opening them up to the immorality of the West; while ordinary, faithful believers have to live in poverty (with) a few gaining from the exports of oil, which in any case (are) dominated by6 global, Western oil companies" (slightly rephrased and rearranged by the author) [Liebenberg, J & Abdurahman, Z, 2002: 99-100].

This quotation puts the contradictions behind the events of September 11 squarely, although it does not deal with the wider aspects related to this contradiction manifest in similar opinions of most "Third World" peoples, so much so that the real crisis of September 11 was in fact a global crisis against aspects of western-propelled modernity that seemed inimical to the interests of the peoples in these countries. But the event underlined the real problems of the present global system of social, economic and political relations in relation to these interests. What are these problems? The answers to this question are important because they will enable us to identify issues that can be further investigated as part of the process of devising a new global agenda.

The modern global system of social and economic relations can be said to have "ideally" emerged as part of a troika of social, economic, and political relations around which modern institutions, ideologies, and paradigms were erected. These tripartite relations were: THE STATE, THE MARKET, and CIVIL SOCIETY . The emergence and integration of these structures were built on the social relations on which the modern project was created. Within this combination were contained internal contradictions that increasingly exposed the workings of the system as no longer "rational" to a great number of peoples who were brought within the circuits of its operation.

In the process of its evolution, it was civil society that became the driving force behind the changes that occurred in the system assisted by technology (and the market in general). The market split civil society into classes, which propelled and serviced it and the market increasingly was monopolised by a section of civil society, while turning others into labourers. The state arose out the class struggles between the different sections of civil society in the market, and although ideally supposed to be "above" each of the factions and classes and able to "mediate" the conflicts between them, the state became the instrument of domination by one social class, which held the levers and "commanding heights" of the economy. It did this through the mechanisms of the market and the social relations on which it was based. The market, just like the state, begun to appear to be above society. The crisis we face today is manifested in all these three spheres of what we call today "economic globalisation."

The Market: Economic globalisation is propelled by the profit motive of individuals, but the relations here are informed not by "free markets" as the neo-liberals would have us believe. The process is propelled by monopolistic control and competition for resources in a changing global environment. From the earlier "comparative advantage" of the different players in the market, the market began to assume a monopolistic competitive advantage , now called the "competitive advantage." Whereas comparative advantage (under the earlier free competition of the national economies) suggested diversity in which states were endowed with different kinds of resources and characteristics that enabled it to become an actor in the international market (as an advantage), competitive advantage (under economic globalisation) on the other hand, assumed sameness of advantage under which all `national' markets are assumed to be the same and at same level of competitiveness. This enabled the monopolistic corporations to compete everywhere on the same terms and similar conditions, which had implications for the national state and civil society-because these, very soon lost control of their "comparative advantages" to the global corporations [Du Toit, 2002: 75-76]. The nation has lost control and national economies have lost coherence. Under this "productivity paradigm ," and given the declining transport and communication costs, corporations could now access resources from any location of the world cheaply and "efficiently, making resources themselves less valuable." The advantage lay in "superior productivity of capital in assembling resources to create valuable products and services" [Porter, M. E, 2000: 1-18]. With this development, labour across the globe was undervalued and cast asunder, hence the marginalisation of vast numbers of unemployed people both in the centres of finance capital and in the peripheries [Castells, 1996, 2000]. The market also became infected with criminality in forms of speculative capital, mafia networks, drug industries, currency launderings, conflict diamonds and other forms of criminal gang networks into what Castells has called "the global criminal economy" [Castells, 1998, 2000]. At the core of the system, corporate crime and fraud increased as chief executive officers of big corporations and accounting firms paid themselves high pay-offs and defrauded investors of their investments or "cooked books" to reflect `market values' that were not in line with the `normal' conditions. This was evidence that the capitalist mode of production was increasingly become parasitic and moribund. It has become increasingly self-evident that a new model of economic organisation, which takes the interests of all the people of the world into account apart from that presented by the neo-liberals is required.
The State : In this evolution of events, the capitalist liberal state has become anathema to the monopolising tendencies of a small group of corporations. The "free market" has become an empty slogan serving the interests of these corporate interests. The state has become an instrument of accumulation at the hands of the dominant classes controlling these corporations and labour has been disorganised and fragmented by capital. The democratic system has been undermined by these authoritarian pressures towards "good governance" that favours managerial techniques at the cost of democratic process of decision-making. The "market" has been privileged to the point of becoming a "God." The nation-state has been over-ridden by new forms of communication and across-border flow of financial resources and investments that operate independently of state intervention. Hence, the nation-state has lost control over "monetary and fiscal policy" in favour of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation, the ideology of the `new economy.' The African post-colonial state has been downsized to a new neo-colonial status serving new global corporate. At the core, the state begins has begun to decompose as high levels of corruption and criminality eat deep into the administrative, regulatory and judicial institutions of the state. At the periphery, the post-colonial state has disintegrated and become victim to warlords in cooperation with new mafia criminal forces and "elite networks" pillaging and plundering what remains of Africa's human and natural resources. The collapse of the Somali state and "Africa's First World War" in the Great Lakes Region are good examples of this melt-down of the African post-colonial state. In this case something like a "post-traditional state" appeared in Somaliland where the Guurti system comprising of elder councils tried to constitute something in the nature of a new state based on clans as constituent units [Nabudere, 2000: 24-32]. Calls for the reconstitution of new forms of nation-states are being made [Gyekye, 1997]. I think that new thinking is required in this direction as well as calls for a United States of Africa are also made at the level of the heads of States. Can the reconstituted African Union become the basis for the reorganisation of the African post-colonial and post-apartheid state system?
Civil Society : The decomposition of the nation-state undermines democracy at the core of the system. As the market globalises and concentrates wealth, power and privilege, civil society has become fragmented into "flexible employment" markets. Labour at the centre of the system has been in a number of industries been replaced by labour at the periphery where wages are low and where female and child labour is being exploited to the extreme. "Big government and big labour" have lost glory. New civil society organisations have also proliferated and taken up "single issues" of struggle. It has become diversified, as identity politics has also entered the scene to become the basis of new forms of organisation. In African conditions, the identity politics has been exploited by the elites into ethnic demands for "equality" and sometimes into demands for separation. On the other hand, ethnicity as an ideological construction has also become a rallying point for the masses for recognition. The new nation state has been shaken at the core as the nation-building project has crumbled since social and economic integration was made impossible by the disintegrating and fragmenting forces of economic globalisation.

On the other hand civil society organisations at the global level have expanded-making new demands for a new "sustainable development." Mainstream g lobal politics has become afflicted by a break down of the political discourse as the United States under president Bush has tried to redefine the rules of the game against "terrorism," which is equated with moral "evil." Legal mechanisms in the form of international law have been undermined. At the same time demands for a new model of global corporate and political governance are made by the new global civil society. Civil society has been challenged to articulate new rights, duties, and responsibilities for a global citizenship , despite the fragmenting pressures emanating from the global economy. This has been called an "anti-globalisation movement." In fact this movement seeks a more just and better-managed globalisation system. There is a vacuum that needs to be filled with better ideas in place of neo-liberal dogmatism on this point. Nevertheless, these new developments in civil society constitute the basis for a new political agenda for the 21 st century. These developments offer the basis for the new global political and economic dispensation, which requires further investigation and research.

It would appear that some concerted efforts towards this direction have been undertaken by a number of countries and civil society organisations. For instance, Tanzania and Finland have set up the " Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy, " which is aimed at building a coalition of states and NGOs to change the way global policies are currently being made. The "Helsinki Group" comprising the Foreign Ministers of Tanzania and Finland, alongside outstanding individuals such as Mary Robinson, the former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commission, Clare Short, former British minister for overseas cooperation, Cyril Ramaphosa, an ANC Executive Committee member and a business representative, and many others, including a number of international NGOs, are conducting hearings towards finding new ideas for the future. According to Martin Khor: "The Helsinki Group meeting brought up a whole range of problems, including the `democratic deficit' (implicit) in global governance, especially in the way the international financial institutions and the WTO operate; the lack of progress in solving global environmental problems, financial instability; the erosion of multilateral cooperation; terrorism and the unilateral response by big powers, in the security area. In the end, the Group decided its work would be in the nature of issuing a `wake up call' on the need to resolve key global problems, and change from the old development politics towards a new paradigm" [Khor, 2004: 3]. This development should also act as a `wake up call' to scholars to join the process of working towards the development of a new paradigm for the 21 st century on those issues of global concern that are already self-evident.

The summary that has been made above implies the need for an action plan of investigation into some of the issues raised above about the global system and how it affects national systems. Afrika is the worst affected continent from the ill- effects of this system, as it has indeed done throughout the 500 years of the European colonisation of the continent. Throughout these years Afrika has also made her contribution to the global system through its struggles against these colonial impositions. Indeed, it can be said today that the international human rights law starts with the struggle of the enslaved Africans against slavery as evidenced by the first international Convention on labour. Other international rights, which Africans, along side other oppressed peoples, have achieved, have been enshrined in international legal instruments on political, civil, social, economic and cultural fronts-creating a basis for the consolidation of a human rights regime for the 21 st century. It is on these achievements that we must be build to widen the scope for human freedom in general in the new global dispensation.

A few themes arising from the above summary of the global system might be indicative of the areas in which we could focus our research efforts. To these could be added other ideas to create a comprehensive research programme about Afrika's contribution towards creating a new global agenda for the 21 st century . This programme should involve as many institutions, scholars, activists, practitioners, individuals, communities across-the-board. The experiences achieved by individual and groups should as much as possible form part of the evolving agenda.

For the research to be comprehensive, it must begin with basic issues of consciousness that tend to influence our thinking and action at the base in the present world. Hence problems arising from r eligious beliefs and peoples' philosophies should be at the fore of our research, indicating in which ways some of the old beliefs which tend to complicate relations and violent conflicts between communities could be overcome in the new political, economic and social dispensation.

Religion : Has influenced and continue to influence the basis of our beliefs in our lives. But they have also added to our suffering since religious ideas constitute one of the fundamental pillars of our self-understanding and the understanding of others who do not practise our religions. Liebenberg and Abdurahman [2002:94-102] have linked the September 11 events to the "Strict Father Morality" which is to be found in patriarchal systems implied in Christianity and Islam and which are traceable to the Bible and the Koran. The two authors believe that within these Great Traditions, there has always been a Little Traditions in both these religions, which are less patriarchal and more accommodative of other points of view. They believe that these Little Traditions can be the basis for an "alternative ways of moral thinking," which they call the "Nurturant Parent Morality" [Ibid: 102]. This is, in our opinion, a fruitful way to proceed by examining what is positive and what is negative in each of our religions in order to create a new synthesis that can inform all of them. The idea is not to create one mega-religion . On the contrary, it is to make it possible for the flowering of religious though but one that is informed by certain basic moral ideas that unite humankind.
Philosophy: Some will disagree with the above two authors and insist that the underlying ideas in the September 11 events are "philosophic obscurantism" created by over-confidence in our belief in scientific ideas. This is what Simon Critchley has called "scientism." In line with Ramose [2002: 152-3], Critchley gives room to wisdom, which he thinks can fill the " felt gap" that has been left by scientific philosophy and thinking [Critchley, 2001: 4]. According to Critchley whereas ancient philosophy was concerned with the search for wisdom, modern philosophy has replaced that concern with the search for knowledge , yet knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. Ramose agrees and believes that much of that wisdom cab be found in Afrikan philosophy, especially in the Afrikan principles of Ubuntu [Ramose, 2001] .

The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy is precisely to emancipate Afrika from the impositions of colonialism [Serequeberhan, 1994]. In this connection, Masolo is right in pointing out that the birth of modern Afrikan philosophy and the debates surrounding it are historically rooted in the two related discourses of contention-the one on western discourse on and about Afrika and the second being Afrikan response to it. Masolo locates the point of difference in this debate as one surrounding the western concept of reason, which is at the centre of modern western philosophy [Masolo, 1994:1]. Thus for me this debate seems to be a good of entry in disentangling the points of agreement and disagreement in these two philosophies in order to find common ground for the future. Distinctions and attempts at synthesis could prove productive in this search for a new global knowledge agenda.

This is proper and fitting because, according to Critchley, the present state of philosophy is marked by the "exhaustion of a whole series of theoretical paradigms." While analytical philosophy has achieved some "historical consciousness," it has ended up becoming only interested "in its own tradition" and attempts by the post-analytic philosophers to revive the philosophy have amounted to no more than making "attempts to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted." Equally, according to him, Continental philosophy has become a philosophy of "proper names" as strings of philosophers and their philosophies lose meaning in a world of complexity. What is emerging is the need for a "a genuine non-sectarian recurrence of interest" and the quest to address issues to "local conditions and to learn to speak the dialectic of the place and the language of the tribe" [Critchley, 123-27]. So the time has come for the "tribes" to come out of the hiding where they had been beaten by the logic of analytical philosophy based on "reason" in order to contribute to the emergence of a comprehensive philosophy that synthesises knowledge and wisdom. Both these schools now recognise that the gap between knowledge and wisdom cannot be bridged by empirical enquiry and this deep question that cannot be answered in this way is: "What is the meaning of life" to which philosophies can make a contribution.
New Economic and Global Agenda: The search for "home-grown" solutions to Africa's problems has become legend. The New Partnership for Africa's Development-NEPAD is seen as one such good example but there have been some challenges whether the NEPAD is indeed an African "home-grown" agenda [Nabudere, 2003A]. The African Union proposes a model for the creation of a United States of Africa built on the "building blocks" of regional economic blocks. Other ideas and models have been presented as to how to achieve a good African political and economic reorganisation in the current global agenda. "African renaissance" has been bandied around as the basis of Afrika's recovery and rebirth, but no clear theoretical framework has been articulated to support. Perhaps the challenge of an African renaissance, which is challenged on philosophical ground, should inform our debate and research about Afrika's future and her contribution to a new global agenda. Perhaps we should take a leaf from Dr Pixley Isaka ka Seme's call for "Africa's Regeneration" since the concept `renaissance' is criticised for being an emulation of the European experience that resulted in Afrika being brought under European control. Seme's model of an African regeneration started with the calling of a meeting of African princes and chiefs in 1912 that led to the formation of the African National Congress [Magubane, B. M 1999: 31-2]. This paradigm based on Afrikan heritage seems to present an organic way for developing a new Afrikan agenda for the 21 st century whereby the ordinary African men and women play an active role as a process of liberation.
African education: A massive, comprehensive programme of research leading to an epochal global agenda, in which active citizens play a role in fashioning their future agenda as global citizens, requires a revolutionary educational agenda. That is why we take the liberty of clipping the issues of education from the above general issue to emphasis its basic significance. To learn to unlearn the old ways of doing things that no longer work is a necessary step of learning to learn new ways of doing things. This requires a gigantic programme that involves of every one. Afrika's educational policies have downgraded Afrikan ideas and institutions while creating no new avenues for education for all. The Afrikan masses have been under-educated and uneducated in the process. A new educational paradigm must raise the issue of Afrikan knowledge and wisdom to the forefront as a practical policy issue. The creation of the Pan-Afrikan University is a necessary part of this process. To be truly Afrikan, the new University must stand on two legs-one at sites of knowledge in the community where students are given training by community experts; and the other at the University Campos where the knowledge is systematised through comparative studies that draw from other human experiences in other countries [Nabudere, 2003B]. Ideally this research should be part of the process of developing the Pan-Afrikan University that will link existing Universities into new approaches of developing knowledge through life long learning in which all Afrikans learn, teach, and research about their society and the world at large. The research in many areas must begin with creating registers of Afrikan Sites of Knowledge, as a basis for defining the Afrikan learner and Afrikan knowledge creator [Nabudere, 2003B].

This project should bring aboard as many people as possible from the different social science disciplines and the humanities. It is not based on a single paradigm and its purpose is in fact to promote dialogue between the different disciplines, paradigms and methodologies. It also goes beyond what is normally called "interdisciplinary," "multidisciplinary," or "pluridisciplinary approaches. These combinations do not add much qualitatively to the weaknesses of each of the disciplines and approaches. As Marc Auge once observed: "Interdisciplinarity is the proud title we give to the anxiety from which the different disciplines suffer" [Auge, 1982: 111]. In order to avoid the intellectual confusion, which is thereby generated, it might be a good strategy for every voice to be heard and put into a dialogical relationship with other voices. This is the purpose of creating cross-disciplinary and cross-paradigmic dialogues aimed at producing something new and comprehensive based on understanding and not misunderstanding.

Therefore, the method we use to put the different data together and to promote dialogue is the one we should adopt. Hermeneutic approaches are therefore recommended for, according the African philosopher Okonda Okolo:

This crisis of identity is what we have called here the `crisis of modernity' which has brought about the need for people to become ever more conscious of their cultural heritages and identities. It is the same crisis that led to the reinvention of the hermeneutic movement in Europe, which, according to Okolo, was connected with the appearance of "crises of identity in German romanticism." Okolo adds further that it is this "crisis of Europe confronted with the technical world and language" which Heidegger, among others, regarded "as the forgetting of Being" that has to be addressed. The time has come for the recognition of language of each people and its philosophical underpinnings that is at the base of the crisis of modernity. It is a demand for recognition and representation. An epistemological revolution becomes necessary at this stage [Nabudere, 2002].

The idea is to tentatively recognise the role of the different players and their disciplines and methodologies acting in collaboration. The idea is to create dialogues between the different "fields" of theory, practice and policy. In this case, as Catherine Odora Hoppers, has pointed out:

This is to place "objective research" in a new interface with other approaches to knowledge production, which has epistemological and cosmological dimensions. Thus the aim is to interface academic researchers, practitioners and Afrikan knowledge producers and theoreticians in contact in an exercise that can be called "field-building," in which the knowledge, skills and expertise available to each group can be placed in a common pool accessible to all [Nabudere, 2001]. The idea is to create conditions for dialogue between the different dimensions and paradigms, as well as promoting epistemological and cosmological counter-interrogations [Odora Hoppers, p. 18].

This research proposal arises out of a Memorandum of Agreement between Afrika Study Centre-ASC and the Department of political science and Philosophy of the University of South Africa-UNISA. But as we have indicated, the research should be open-ended to include other players. It is proposed that the two institutions-ASC and UNISA be responsible for the coordination and administration of the project. However, any new institution joining into the research should undertake to have someone to become a co-respondent to work closely with one of the two institutions and, where necessary, to act as a coordinator in a particular region where the two institutions are not represented.

The organisation will include regular workshops, seminars, and conferences, which will work towards curriculum development and produce publications from the research in the form of newsletters, websites, papers, journals, monographs and books. These meetings and different forms of media will enable us to bring about dialogue between the different approaches and results and the implications of the findings in terms of pedagogical, methodological and curricular development. The two initiating institutions will work out a timetable for the workshops, seminars, and conferences at different sites where the research is being carried out. The two institutions that will coordinate the project will appoint the two coordinators.

The respective institutions taking part in the project will facilitate the financing of the research project. However, due to the fact that many other institutions might be involved which do not at the moment have resources, a common fund should be raised to facilitate such individual researchers. Furthermore, expenses such as those covering workshops, seminars and conferences may not be met within budgets of faculties and departments. For this reason, there will be need for a general budget to cover the activities of the research. The two initiating institutions should agree on the budget after ascertaining who will take part in the research and then fund-raise to cove r the project.

It is suggested that the first phase of this research be three years: July 2004-June 2007.

Professor Dani W. Nabudere
Executive Director,
Afrika Study Centre,
Mbale, Uganda
Date: 3 rd March 2004.

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