Tribes Must Go: New African Intellectuals and the Contested Idea of Black Nationhood

The paper discusses critically various ideas that late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ New African intellectuals in South Africa advanced regarding the notion of black/African nationhood. At the heart of debates and contestations over the character and scope of black/African nationhood was the issue of tribal identities and institutions. Some New African intellectuals argued that for a common black nationhood to emerge and thrive tribal identities should be jettisoned. Others held a different view, which did not consider tribal identities and institutions as detrimental to forging a common black nationhood. This paper discusses these perspectives and exposes their underlying assumptions regarding important concepts such as nation, tribe, and nationhood, and how these identities come into being. In discussing these debates and contestations, the paper demonstrates that there were and are nuances to the broad ideology of African nationalism that are often missed by some scholars who write on the African nationalist tradition.