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Interview with African Professor Ali Mazrui: "Bush Is Blind On Terror Threat From East Africa"

Denis Maina Gathanju - 8/25/2005

He is one of the most outstanding and prolific scholars of East African origin and an outstanding international scholar and influential political commentator on Africa’s affairs. Prof. Mazrui discusses the role he played in helping Kenya’s Professor Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement win the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace. Placed 50th in the list of 100 greatest African, Professor Ali Mazrui is the chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Juja, Kenya and an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Institute of Global studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Dr. Mazrui has authored more than twenty books, with his most influential articles of the last forty years having been republished by Africa World Press in three volumes edited by Dr. Toyin Falola of the University of Texas. Recently, Denis Main Gathanju interviewed him for the Global Politician.


Q. We have seen a new political dispensation sweep through Africa with opposition parties taking over leadership for the first time in Ghana and Kenya. What is your take on the democratic process on the continent?

A. The situation is quite encouraging. The African Union (AU) has been encouraging political reforms across Africa. Unlike its predecessor, the OAU, the union has been vocal in condemning and discouraging military coups [like it recently happened in Mauritania and Togo] on the continent.

Q. Kenya has been dogged with high levels of corruption since independence. The current government was voted into power on the platform of eliminating the vice. Do you think the government is doing enough to fight it?



A. The Kibaki administration has done a lot to fight corruption. Unlike under the previous regime, there is a lot of press freedom. Graft needs to be dealt with at the judicial level. Corruption has not been fully eliminated from the system of government because the current political elite are no different from the previous one.


Q. Is the US committed to ending poverty in Africa?

A. The Bush administration is primarily committed to fighting AIDS in Africa. It efforts on providing aid is dubious. The administration is interested in fostering trade and is out of step in dealing with African needs.


Q. The Bush administration has taken the fight against global terror to a higher level. Kenya has been hit on two previous occasions when the US embassy in Nairobi and an Israeli-owned beach resort became Al-Qaeda targets. Is the US doing enough to fight terror in Africa?

A. While the Bush administration is focused on fighting global terror, it is blind to the fact that an impoverished Africa, especially East Africa could be a breeding ground for anti-Americanism.


Q. The world is becoming a global village. What are your views on the effects of globalization to Africa?

A. Globalization is weakening Africa rather than changing Africa.


Q. Elaborate.

A. Skilled Africans are moving overseas in search of greener pastures. African badly needs their input for the development of the continent.

The brain drain needs to be turned into a brain bonus. This would occur when the African Diaspora would help set up companies and industries in their respective countries. For instance, Kenyans abroad may engage in projects that may help like sinking boreholes in their respective rural homes or form Kenyan NGOs based abroad.


Q. You have been billed as the African Queen maker in helping Kenya’s environmentalist Professor Wangari Maathai win the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. How did this come to be?

A. The Nobel Committee and Nobel Foundation in Oslo invited me for an evaluation of Wangari Maathai for the Prize. I got the impression that the decision was hanging in the balance as the final short list was being assessed. In my response to the Nobel Prize selection judges, I said that conservation is interpreted as saving the heritage already in existence, but Wangari Maathai interprets conservation to include environmental renewal and replenishment.

I wrote that Wangari Maathai was a woman of her convictions. She has spoken the truth to power, has suffered imprisonment, and even physical assaults. This woman, I wrote, is of extraordinary courage and moral convictions.

I was deeply humbled to have played a part in the process.