10 0 Thomas Cassirer, “Politics and Mystique—The Predicament of the African Writer,” African Forum,Vol. 3, No. 1(Summer 1967), pp. 27-28. dollars to political campaigns in the hope of gaining ambassadorships. And in England, prospective contractors still lavishly wine and dine prospective clients to help them make congenial decisions. My intention is not to hold brief for African politicians. The points made in the preceding paragraphs are simply meant to illustrate one particular failing in the assesment of Africanwriting by European critics—especially when the writing is critical of a certain class within the society. If, for any reason, the writers fail to be objective in seeing the social, cultural, historical and philosophical roots of the Africanness of the African, the critics’ role should be to encourage the writers to be more circumspect. As things stand, it seems that the critics have adopted the writers for better or for worse, because the writers have been so adept at swallowing European values wholesale and in castigating the less enterprising Africans. Africans have always had values to be proud of, and no African needs to try to convince people that he is intelligent. Much of what I have touched upon in this paper is designed to make some people pause and think, and thus to make the study of African letters more businesslike and honest. No less important, much of the foregoing material is to encourage some scholars to make an effort to be more polite and less offensive to a whole people in their books and articles. We will all profit by that move.
