“The most serious domestic obstacle facing re-Africanization is the elite itself which has a self-preserving habit of sabotaging any possibility of democratic decision-making. It prefers mystificatory, colonial bureaucratic manipulation to voluntary participation. This preference is explainable because the elite is that part of the population whose values are derived from the Western way of life. The accent is on individualistic or familial priorities, the maximization of personal perquisites and the minimization of personal sacrifice to the point of avoiding productivity. Fanon says that this class is simply incapable of implementing any innovative or meliorative program whatsoever. The mission it has accepted is crudely to preserve for itself the irrational, unjust privileges set up by the old order and it cannot do this if it allows open, democratic discussion of priorities, plans and practices. So it hides behind formulae that allow it to avoid democratization.

Fanon calls it a worthless class which is unproductive and uncreative; a hustler class with the mentality of pimps, incapable of achievement and so mediocre even in its greed that it is satisfied with the mere crumbs of imperial privilege.”

-Ayi Kwei Armah, Masks and Marx