In Mazrui's death, Africa has lost an icon

Ali A Mazrui is no longer with us but his work as a pioneer educationist and an African intellectual will be remembered by current and future generations.

Prof Mazrui was not just a son of Kenya. He was also a son of Africa.

He was a Kenyan married to a Nigerian and who has a son named "Jamal"; a name he said was to salute both the late President Jomo Kenyatta and Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Pan-African activist and the second president of Egypt.

In fact Prof Mazrui did not limit himself to Africa, but to people of African descent. He was a man who saw Africa as the commonality of people of black descent.

He was a man who believed in what he referred to as the 'Global African'; a powerful force which according to him can be created by fusing the creativity, imagination and the intelligence of what he referred to as 'Africans of the blood' that is, people of African ancestry with 'Africans of the soil'. That is those who lived on Mother continent. He was a true Pan Africanist.

Prof Mazrui also believed in the economic emancipation, co-operation and integration of the entire African continent. He was a man who fully understood that the political freedom of the Africans would remain insufficient and meaningless unless it was accompanied by genuine economic independence.

He told us many decades ago that the independence we and others in the continent gained from our colonial masters was a false one and is only but a partial liberation.

In the now famous 1986 BBC/NPR documentary "The African; A Triple Heritage", Prof Mazrui taught us that Africa was still in a phase of neo-colonialism; a form of imperial rule, stage managed by the colonial and the new powers to give the colonised the illusion of freedom but one where the continent is still a victim of an indirect and subtle form of domination by political, economic, social, military or technical means.

You can probably now add 'legal' means to that narrative, given it was only last week when our own head of state was paraded in 'Europe's Guantanamo Bay for Africans', a court Prof Mazrui in an interview with Wachanga Ndirangu, described as one that is part of 'a system that disproportionately targets Africans because of the nature of world politics'.

If we are to honour Prof Mazrui, we will have to emulate him and refuse to accept to be exploited.

We will have to destroy the foundation that have been laid by our colonial masters to support the continued exploitation of our riches through divide and rule, the imposition of puppet leadership and perpetual instability that is meant to ensure we remain half independent.

We live in a continent that has a lot of wealth. Wealth that has in the past been used to build other continents. As Prof Mazrui said: "The labour of Africa's sons and daughters was what the West needed for its industrial take-off.

The slave ship helped to export millions of Africans to the Americas to help in the agrarian revolution in the Americas and the industrial revolution in Europe simultaneously."

Unless we wake up and use the human capacity that God has blessed us with, to develop the technology and means to exploit our own resources for our own benefit, there is every chance that history will repeat itself and that we will help build yet another far away continent.

That will make Prof Mazrui turn in his grave. Instead of supplying the labour of African sons and daughters, this time we risk a scenario where Africa's massive natural resources will be used for China's industrial take off rather than for 'Africa Rising'.

We gain nothing from replacing one neo-colonial power with another. We must chart our own course and deal with the others as true development partners and not play second fiddle to them.

That is what Prof Mazrui preached all the time. The best tribute we can give to this African icon is to work towards the Global Africa that he dreamt of.

An Africa whose resources and the labour of its sons and daughters will be combined for its own benefits. An Africa that is economically independent. Our current and mostly youthful generation of leaders must live up to the ideals that Prof Mazrui and other Pan Africanists stood for.

And to use President Barack Obama's words, our leaders must seize this "moment of great promise" of Africa Rising.

They must wrest control of our country and the continent from those with inferiority complex; those who doubt that it can be done. Those who still somehow believe that we are not able to chart our own political and economic course.

As part of the viable Global Africans Prof Mazrui dreamt of, we must become engaged in the struggle to throw off the shackles of neo-colonialism, resist all efforts to interfere with our affairs and seek our own partners to help us release our continent's full potential.

Kwame Nkrumah told us many years ago: 'Seek first the political independence and all else shall be added unto you'. We have attained political independence.

What we and the rest of the continent need to embark on now is the second phase of the struggle for technical and economic independence.

That is what Prof Mazrui always advocated for. And that is the best way to remember his legacy as a true African intellectual giant and guru.

May the Almighty reward the departed African legend with paradise and give his family, including his nephew and my good friend Senator Hassan Omar Saray, Subra.