Post-colonial African leaders adopted Tempels’s thesis that Africans are rational

Evidence

If Tempels’s project was considered useless and deceptive during the colonial period, then many post-colonial African thinkers believed that Tempels had articulated for many Africans the reality that they always knew to be true. Dominating the first two decades of independence were political philosophers such as Julius Nyerere (1922–1999), Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), Kenneth Kaunda (1924–2021) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001). They accepted the broad outlines of Bantu Philosophy, particularly the thesis that Africans are rational and have a culture, religion and morals. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 115

If Tempels’s project was considered useless and deceptive during the colonial period, then many post-colonial African thinkers believed that Tempels had articulated for many Africans the reality that they always knew to be true. Dominating the first two decades of independence were political philosophers such as Julius Nyerere (1922–1999), Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), Kenneth Kaunda (1924–2021) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001). They accepted the broad outlines of Bantu Philosophy, particularly the thesis that Africans are rational and have a culture, religion and morals. To Nyerere, for example, acceptance of the idea of Africanity initiated by Tempels took (in part) the form of rejecting Western ideologies. Nyerere’s (1977, p.12) words are to the point: “We, in Africa, have no more need of being ‘converted’ to socialism than we have of being ‘taught’ democracy. Both are rooted in our own past – in the traditional society which produced us”. The “we” refers to Africans, and the quotation suggests that African traditional societies were, arguably, socialistic and democratic. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 115

Categorization

• XREF: Contrast with Césaire and Diop’s colonial-era rejection — a striking reversal in reception between pre- and post-independence eras.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 115