On Thursday morning‚ 500 opinion makers and influential leaders in both private sector and government from across the African continent will gather in Durban for the 20th African Renaissance Conference.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will officially open the annual three-day shindig‚ which opens under the theme of inclusive social economic transformation - in line with one of the essential parts of the African Renaissance as envisioned by its chief architect former president Thabo Mbeki.
Mbeki‚ who earned himself the name "The Renaissance Man" for introducing the concept in 1997 - and which was adopted by the ANC at its 50th national conference as a key component of its ideological identity - had a grand vision of an African continent whose aims and objectives were defined by Africans themselves.
In a speech he delivered while he was deputy president at the United Nations in April 1998 titled “The African Renaissance‚ South Africa and the World”‚ Mbeki said: “An essential and necessary element of the African Renaissance is that we all must take it as our task to encourage she‚ who carries this leaden weight‚ to rebel‚ to assert the principality of her humanity - the fact that she‚ in the first instance‚ is not a beast of burden‚ but a human and African being.”
Despite his unceremonious recall after his embarrassing defeat by former president Jacob Zuma at the ANC’s Polokwane conference in December 2007‚ the African Renaissance has remained a prominent feature of the governing party’s policies.
And now it seems International Relations and Co-operation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is paving the way for Mbeki's political expediency as she outlined plans to strengthen SA's economic diplomacy with African neighbours using Mbeki as well as former president Kgalema Motlanthe.
But the lingering question is whether the ambitious and costly African Renaissance project has achieved its purpose as espoused by its chief architect.
Not likely‚ said political analysts.
Lukhona Mnguni‚ a PhD candidate in the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit at the University of KwaZulu-Natal‚ said there have been “glimpses of hope and inspiration”.
“But if one looks at the continent collectively there has been massive regression on issues of peace and stability‚ democratisation and extractive commerce has continued to pillage resources from the continent to the lands abroad‚” he said.
Mnguni also does not believe that Africans have discovered a sense of their own self-confidence after centuries of slavery and colonialism‚ as espoused by the African Renaissance.
“There are many structural issues that inhibit them to thrive. There are despotic governments in the continent and in some instances that are democratic governments that are also not people centred. There are governments with unscrupulous ties to foreign countries whether in the West or East that undermine the collective advancement of the people‚” he said.
Mnguni said Mbeki tried putting together a legislative framework with the likes of former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade and other supportive leaders.
Political analyst Professor Somadoda Fikeni also said the African Renaissance had not fully achieved what it was intended to - largely because its goals were “lofty”.
“Since some of these [goals] are not built and customised to be owned‚ embraced and naturalised by the institutions when the architects leave office those institutions suffer because whatever state support was there gets withdrawn‚” he said.
Fikeni said the African Renaissance had taken a knock and was suffering.
“Though the ideology was sound our obsession with personalities is such that we have vulnerable concepts and policies when their leaders are no longer with us or have moved to other spaces. So African Renaissance‚ it’s ironically something that when you meet many people from the rest of the continent they have embraced and the country of its origin has not.”
Both Fikeni and Mnguni agreed that a spate of deadly xenophobic violence witnessed in South Africa in the past few years did not signal a nightmare for the African Renaissance but a result of the tension caused by a competition for resources between foreign nationals and locals.