The underlying logic of the African struggle for independence from European rule and subsequently from neo-colonialism in all its manifestations was (and is) that the European intrusion into African life was inhumane and disruptive. European enslavement of Africans bespoke a denial of African humanity, and European colonization of the continent denied Africans the right to follow the developmental course charted by their past experiences as the most consistent with their values and aspirations; it pointed them instead along courses dictated by European self-interest. The same logic indicates that the successful struggle for African self-determination would lead to a resumption, as much as consistent with new realities, of the march halted by the European incursion, and that it would be supremely ironic if self-determination was followed by an acceptance of the new, European-imposed orientation (mental, social, or political) as unimpeachable.

The African claim to self-determination is not predicated on a supposed intrinsic superiority of African ways to European ways, but on the principle that for good or ill every people must be free to exercise ultimate control over its destiny. At the height of the campaign for independence, Nigerian politicians, for example, defiantly demanded from Britain “the right to govern or misgovern ourselves.” In that formulation was a denial of any right to any people to intrude into the private lives of any other people under any pretext and an affirmation of the rights of any people to freely conduct its own affairs and the requisite internal (even internecine) debates without the sort of outside interference that colonization represented.