The all-time Greek philosopher Socrates once said: ‘A life unexamined is a life not worth living’. It is a fact that unlike other civilizations, it is Afrikans who suffer an indelible inability to examine ourselves in order to move forward with lessons from our past experiences.
African-American journalist, Keith Richburg, opined that in Afrika things stay the same until they fall part.
Afrikan countries were not the only parts of the planet that were colonized and/or ruled by foreigners.
Others, such as Japan, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Bangladesh and even parts of Greater Europe, were also colonized. Yet they managed to crawl out of their conditions of subjugation and reconstructed themselves into cohesive socio-political societies that serve the interests of the greater commonwealths in those lands.
Former Asian colonies that became countries are also composed of multiple ethnic and linguistic groups in their diversities that make for their overall strengths.
Many countries in the world also have artificial borders and continuing border disputes, so much so that some East Asian countries like Korea, Vietnam, were racked by destructive civil wars in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
But still Asia managed to prosper while Afrikans remain mired in poverty forever.
Ghana’s attainment of political independence from Britain on 6 March 1957 set in motion a tidal wave of independence and Uhuru celebrations across Afrika.
Malaysia and Singapore attained their independence from the same Great Britain much later than Ghana, and stories show that Malaysia’s level of development was way lower than that of Ghana at independence in 1957, to the extent Ghana reportedly gave Malaysia foreign development aid.
Today there is no comparison, meaning that Malaysia did something right and Ghana did not. Ghana, like any Afrikan country under African rule, remains in relatively the same conditions as before independence, sometimes even worse than before independence.
Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah‘s terminal cry was that Afrikans must seek first the political kingdom, and the rest will be added unto it. Yes, political kingdom came, but very little was added unto it, except pain, helplessness and hopelessness.
Nkrumah went as far as saying Afrikans must be given the opportunity to manage and mismanage their own affairs. He was right on mismanagement, as Afrikans never failed to mismanage and they excelled in this department. Political independence in Afrika continued to be the most important achievement Afrikan leaders continue to dangle above the heads of their people in order to stifle meaningful participation and change.
Great rhetoric about the bright future that never came was the official talk of Afrikan independence leaders, nonstop. Billboards, often accompanied by megalomaniac Heads of State, stated:
1960 was Africa’s Year
The 1980s were Africa’s Decade.
The post-1990s was heralded as Afrika’s Century – yet Afrikans continue to suffer, this time at the hands of their very own people and liberators.
The tale of this great but not altogether happy continent continues today while political independence is being celebrated ad nauseam while at the same time, most people cannot share in the dividends of independence.
It is so sad many people on the continent even look with nostalgia to the days of colonial oppression and in some countries in West Africa people started to ask: When will this independence be over?
This is the background of the debilitating phenomenon of Afro-pessimism, which is still the general tapestry against which most Afrikan scholars tell the stories of Afrika today. It would appear that the people who do not peddle Afro-pessimism are those in power and only while things are going well for them. Helplessness and hopelessness seem to continue unabated in most of Afrikan life. The reality of post-post-independent Afrika, with more than 50 years of self-rule and self-governance is that life is not good for the majority of this continent’s inhabitants – from whom great numbers flee their motherlands in search of better life for their children.
• Revolutionaries came, liberated their countries and proceeded to run Afrika into the ground.
• Soldiers came, promised redemption, and hastened to run Afrika into the ground.
• Civilians came and keep coming, better equipped at running Afrika into the ground.
WHERE IS THE AFRIKAN PROBLEM?
Writing in his seminal book A Man of the People, as far back as 1958, the world acclaimed novelist, Chinua Achebe, warned poignantly: ‘The trouble with our new nation … was that none of us have been indoors long enough … we had all been in the rain together until yesterday. Then a handful of us, the smart and the lucky and hardly ever the best … had scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers had left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves …. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loudspeakers that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the next phase – the extension of our house – was even more important – it required that all argument should cease and the whole people speak with one voice and that any more dissent and argument outside the door of the shelter would subvert and bring down the whole house …’
The celebrated Kenyan novelist and playwright, Ngugi waThiong’o, in his Petals of Blood, wrote: ‘This world … this Kenya … this Africa knows only one law. You eat somebody or you are eaten. You sit on somebody or somebody sits on you, Like you, I have wandered, I don’t know in search of what …’
One of Afrika’s most remembered statesmen, Tanzania’s first President Julius Nyerere alerted: ’While others reach their life goals as success, for us in Africa survival is success.’
In his 1984 book, The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, argues the real trouble with Afrika is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.
To paraphrase this, Afrika’s curse is a lack of visionary leadership, a leadership that is informed by what is in the best interest of the people at a time when there is no foreign rule to fight.
The international Magazine, Economist of 13 May, 2000, carried a column on the plight of Afrika under the rubric, ‘The Hopeless Continent’ describing, as it were, the state of affairs of Afrikan development compared to other continents. The columnist spared no breath in depicting Afrika as a continent without much hope, due to all kinds of calamities, most of which were the result of bad leadership, corrupt management, and poor planning.
This was exactly the time when the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was being transformed into the new African Union (AU) with all types of promises, and exactly the time when Afrikan leaders, under the leadership of South African President Thabo Mbeki, were trotting the globe spreading the gospel of the African Renaissance.
In 2004 Robert Guest published his book: The Shackled Continent, wherein he chronicles the myriad of maladies impeding Afrika’s move towards its highest potential. Amongst these is the culture of backwardness, corruption in government structures, despotic political leaderships, misaligned foreign donations, and inability to deal with diseases such as HIV/Aids, and a lack of an honest ethic in the law enforcement echelons.
For some reason, Namibia has escaped a good deal of this Afrikan malaise. In its 25 years of existence under its own leadership, Namibia acquitted itself in manners very different from the Typical Afrikan trajectory of mismanagement, maladministration, heartlessness and mindlessness and sheer unchecked corruption and abuse of political power. Perhaps the biggest factor to account for this blessing is the end of the Cold War, which happened just as Namibia was entering the stage of nationhood, unlike other Afrikan states that were pulled apart by the infamous Cold War.
Be that as it may, credit still must go to the Namibian leaders of all parties who steered the very difficult period of transition from war to peace. It was not easy!
Having come this far and with so much to be grateful for, it is important that we relook and reexamine the way we have used political power since independence.
We also need to bring our post-independence thinking into harmony with the nation’s development objectives as articulated in the National Development Plans 1 through 4, as dividends of independence and freedom.
In this regard, it is important to unravel the incompatibilities between the pursuits of development on the one hand and the quest for political survival and the reproduction of the existing forms of domination.
At the moment, unfortunately, the political space is taken up by those who are not leaders, but political entrepreneurs who use influence to gain power and/or wealth at the expense of the citizens.
Their interests are primarily their survival in politics with no regard to the wellbeing of the general population!
We have to realize that the politics of colonialism on the one hand and the politics of liberation have both ill prepared us to be one nation with a single loyalty to the Namibian state.
• To be continued
We cannot afford to duplicate the Afrikan story that we are all too aware of and we stand a very good chance to build a more pleasant and more positive story in Afrika. We stand a perfect chance to do this while we are still so small a population, and a people who have no desire for war.
In the context of Afrika’s path to self-destruction and underdevelopment, we in Namibia have something unique and upon which we can build a country without the shame of what is described above. It is the first time in Afrika that a nation has experienced so much peace, stability and democratic freedoms which are necessary foundations for meaningful and sustainable development. As we about to have our sixth democratic National Assembly and Presidential elections, one cannot help but be humbled by the peaceful transfer of power in this country unparalleled in Afrika and even beyond.
What we need now is an internalisation of the values of our system and to support it with a different mindset from the indifferent mindsets of yesterday.
A few years ago, the former Prime Minister, Nahas Angula, urged us all to start a paradigm that is characterised by Business Unusual. Our development strategies can no longer be influenced by what we ourselves get out of the country and its resources, but by what we bring to the table to make this country work better for the benefit of all who live in and those who are to come after us. This paradigm shift is important because we have come where we are through assumptions that might not be the right ones to propel us forward. One of such assumptions is that we are opposed to one another instead of realizing that we are all pursuing the same goal of creating a Namibia that is good for all of us, and wherein there are no enemies but brothers and sisters who are one another’s keepers.
In other words, it matters not what political party colours we wear for inside all of us is one people. Two Saturdays ago, Presidential candidate Hage Geingob urged the audience in Rundu to desist from disrupting other parties’ rallies or political campaigns during the preparations for the elections in November.
This is the Namibian way of doing politics – in climates of peace and without fear and intimidation. It is possible to create a positive story out of Afrika with our Zebra Style! The elections of this year must represent another milestone in our long march to our rendezvous with destiny as a nation at peace with itself, at peace with its neighbours and at peace with the rest of the human family.
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(Eva/Fransie if needed below)