“Fanon says the process of re-Africanization is something the majority of Africa’s people want. It is also positive and has an inherently revolutionary dynamic because it winnows out merely tribalistic values, leaving positive, inclusive values as a basis for future development. The majority of Africans want the institutional re-Africanization of the continent but the elite class is against any cleansing process because this will destroy it together with its Eurocentric philosophies. Thus, for the generality of the Westernized elite, re-Africanization can only be a catastrophe. An innovative minority, however, will have the sense to make common cause with the African people and so discover (in praxis) abandoned or even unsuspected values and social practices of a highly positive nature.

Both Fanon and Cabral specify, among these regenerative values, the practice of democratic discussion, self-criticism, open debate of a vigorous, frank tenor, collegial decision-making structures and collegial program design and communal construction…. These are the rules of communist democracy which selective use of other traditional African practices and values like universal age-group organization, democratic election and recall of administrators, could reinforce….

There are numerous obstacles, both authors point out, but the positive evidence indicates that Africans—the peasant people—prefer democratic self-government because that is the best traditional way they know….”

-Ayi Kwei Armah, Masks and Marx