Fanon The Pitfalls Of National Consciousness Analysis

The Pitfalls of National Consciousness written by Fanon in 1961, is a text that points out some of the things that went wrong with nationalist movements in a colonial and post-colonial context and tries to analyse how one might prevent these things from going wrong in the future. In this paper, I will critically engage two overwhelming issues the text provides; the relationship between the Nationalist Parties and the Economy, and the Leadership after independence in relation to contemporary times in Guinea Equatorial in an attempt to make them relevant and more meaningful to our today’s political reality. I will engage these two respectively.
First, Fanon analysed the relationship between Nationalist Parties and the Economy. He argued that …show more content…
Leaders of new states were often in the frontline of these anti-colonial struggles and have enormous amount of public trust invested in them because of what they sacrifice during that struggle and the Leadership role they played. However, as soon as independence is achieved, he states, the Leader will reveal his inner purpose; to become the general president of that company of profiteers, impatient for their returns, which constitute the national bourgeoisie. The Leaders overtime loses this immense gratitude that would have been invested in them due to the role they played in the anti-colonial structure and comes to be seen increasingly cynically as nothing more than a representative of foreign companies and national bourgeoisies. There is a gradual corruption and growing distance from the masses. These leaders interpret criticism as in gratitude for anti-colonial service, and responds …show more content…
I found it both interesting and sad to see these old thoughts still manifested in our contemporary political reality. It is a nice text however, apart from the fact the I had hard times decomposing his thoughts, I found it a good knowledge to grab. It challenges my beliefs and made me clearly see why many African economies are still stagnant and how on the hand, capitalism, which I used to believe in, can widen the gap between the rich and the poor. I am now beginning to understand the effects of colonialism on our Leadership today, and it is my hope that text like this will position me better to address Africa’s challenges in my capacity as a Leader in the nearby future. I thank my lecturer and faculty intern who despite sometimes I acted troublesome, still effortlessly managed to keep me on my toes with the class readings and pull me to see the world from their perspective to make me think more