Native intellectual

From MarxWiki

As defined by Frantz Fanon, the native intellectual is an African leader whose mind has been colonized by the oppressor through Western education, often in European institutions. Decolonization is at its core a refutation of the colonial ideology that dehumanizes natives at a moment when the native recognizes that he/she is not an animal and would reclaim his/her humanity. However, this “mockery of [colonial] values” is often lost in the conspiratorial dialogue between the colonial bourgeoisie and the colonizer. When the oppressor realizes that decolonization is at hand, the reaction is to Westernize African colonies in order to perpetuate the system of capitalist domination through the “Africanized” colonial structure. Thus, native intellectuals play into the agenda of the colonizer by advocating the peaceful withdrawal of settlers who will be replaced in their existing roles by Africans. So blinded by their intellectual colonization, these native leaders fight for Western ideals.

There is a point during the national liberation struggle when, in order to create a truly independent nation, the native intellectual must realize his/her dependency on the colonizer and, rejecting it, build a new solidarity with the masses, walking a fine line between fully two-sided conversation and becoming an “uncritical mouthpiece of the people.” If at this junction the native intellectual chooses to continue his/her complicity in the Western system of oppression, the country will not achieve true liberation and the still-colonized leaders will be “nationalizing the robbery of the nation.”