By Itayi Garande
April 7, 2010
AFRICA is no longer the Dark Continent anymore; it is flashing with
vivid light. It has a lot of learned people, seasoned businessmen, and
is springing in a step from what the colonists saw in the 18th
Century. It is on the march and marching fast. At the same time, much
of Africa is attempting to throw off the political and economic
shackles of the West.
Africa has embraced the education and mode of life of the West, but
will never embrace its domination or exploitation. The calls for
indigenisation today in South Africa and Zimbabwe are simply an
attempt to be free from colonialism with its deprivations, abuses and
anachronisms.
Jan Christiaan Smuts once wrote: "For better or for worse the old
Africa is gone and the white races must face the new situation which
they have themselves created in this continent."
The West loves Africa, not merely because it is important
strategically and is packed with vital raw materials, but because it
is their 'Last Frontier'. They cannot touch Asia anymore; Africa
remains for the taking and it is their richest prize.
What is more is that it seems almost defenceless and pants for
development. The reasoning has shifted from "We will develop Africa"
to "If we do not develop it, China will."
Yet Africa presents a problem for the West; a problem created by the
West. Almost a century and half ago, European powers carved up Africa;
and swindled large tracts of land out of native kings by giving them
worthless loops of of beads; and made 'treaties' by planting a flag.
For example King Leopold II of Belgium created and personally owned
the Congo 'Free' State.
By 1900 Africa was completely owned by Great Britain, France, Belgium,
Italy, Portugal, Spain and Germany. Africa was their melon and was
duly portioned out, and it really didn't matter what the African
thought about this.
This scramble, and the subsequent partitioning, made Africa difficult
to deal with. Something like 40,000,000 Africans left their tribes,
and took up residence in towns and villages that were in countries
they never knew existed, and had no economic, social or political
makeup as their own. The social mixups caused by this uprooting are
formidable and they presented (and still present a challenge) for the
West.
Yet the African is blamed for tribal infighting and fighting for land,
by the same people who partititioned it. They are called primitive,
corrupt and all sorts.
Political frontiers in Africa have little natural reality. For the
most part, they mark off where the rule of one white man stopped and
another started, but not much else. What is the difference between the
Somalis, the Ethiopians and the Eritreans, in geographic terms? Or the
Zulus and Ndebeles? The differences were made a long time ago by
latitude and longitude-'written in the heavens'-by Europeans because
the interior of Africa was almost totally unexplored.
Even today nobody can tell from the terrain where for instance, the
southern Sudan ends and northern Uganda begins. A tribe like Masai
lives on both sides of the Kenya-Tanzania border, and pays little
attention to what country it is in.
But one truth now exists: colonialism is over, and where it is not
over, it is dying and dying fast.
Outright repression is no longer in vogue. Hence the major trend in
most of Africa; especially Zimbabwe and South Africa, is a peculiar
combination of stubborn defiance by former colonists of the growing
power of the black ruling class, together with attempts to save the
economic status quo where the black person remains subjugated and
prolong economic dependence by a steady-if slow-process of
amelioration and concession.
Sensible Europeans and white businessmen know that the price of
peaceable survival on the African continent is reform.
There are arguments that Africans cannot rule and are incapable of
running big business or simply do not have the funds to do so; or
worse still, that governance is synonymous with cronyism. That view no
longer has much relevance, strange as this may seem. Africans must
start somewhere, sometime, and must learn government and business by
practicising it. The previous colonial governments did very little to
promote the majority; and the majority have now taken matters into
their own hands.
The irony is that nationalists are blamed for fighting segregation;
sometimes by their own people. yet, it is segregation that is at the
root of the African problem; it makes the African boil with
discontent.
Wendel Willkie, the US Republican Party nominee for the 1940
presidential election, once remarked: "The colonial problem cannot be
solved without equitable distribution of wealth everywhere." The
pattern of today's Africa is troubling.
Almost all African countries have now attained national independence
and are sovereign states, but the struggle for economic independence
continues. In South Africa DeBeers still owns diamonds, yet millions
of Africans in that country live in poverty. A rich family still
controls a whole country; and the headquarters of that company is not
even in South Africa anymore.
Most of the continent's resources are shipped out of Africa in their
raw form whereas beneficiation and value-addition would benefit the
African countries. Most of the corporations that bleed Africa of its
natural resources come under the guise of Foreign Direct Investment;
and Africans have been made to believe that they need FDI to develop;
yet FDI has been on the continent for centuries.
Africa is the most impregnable of continents, hence the least
developed. Communications are still difficult. Roads and railways
built, only go to the places where the corporations' businesses are,
or go to. The continent has only about 9 per cent of the world's total
railway mileage, yet it is as big as the United States, western
Europe, India and China put together; and its area is one-fifth of the
entire land surface of the globe.
Many people still struggle to make it through the day and survive on
less than a dollar a day. Poverty and disease are rife. Yet
multinational corporations have made billions from the continent.
FDI has been on the continent for over a century. What then is the
relevance of that FDI? Why are we made to believe that foreign
investment is a panacea for African development, when it hasn't done
much good for so long? A new paradigm has to obtain.
The grower of coffee on the African continent today receives less than
one percent of the price of soluble coffee on the market – about .06
cents. That’s $.0006. In order to make even one cent, the coffee
grower would need to grow and sell enough coffee for almost 1,700 cups
of coffee bought at the local coffee shop in Britain. For most coffee
growers, that means operating at a loss year after year. None of the
money made by the corporations (Starbucks, etc) is reinvested in the
African countries.
Companies that extract diamonds, platinum, gold, etc are listed on
foreign stock exchanges and remit billions annually to the West. They
reinvest very little in sectors that do not benefit the people. They
bank offshore. What good are they to the local stock market and to the
local banking system?
There are some African leaders today who have fought hard to free
their people. They despise the British, the French, the Belgians
enough to be willing to take aid from anyone else; China for example,
when they need it, if they can get it. They have nowhere else to turn.
If the West does not help Africa to fulfil its legitimate aspirations
(economic independence, etc), they have friends in the East, who
helped the decolonise. It can take centuries, but it will happen. Rome
was not built in a day.
Unless the West can embrace the legitimate concerns of the people of
Africa, and not use backdoor tactics aimed at extracting and
plundering, the bad joke will be on them. They will soon not withstand
the heat Africa, like they did in Asia.
The calls for indigenization in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the rest of
the region are sincere and as serious as they can get. No court of law
will stop the fight for self-determination on the continent. The
African has simply come a long way; and is not about to be derailed at
the terminus.
Member Opinions:
By:
vicegrip on 4/7/10
Sadly Itayi, Omugabe is right
Africa belongs to the Africans and for the next 1000 years Africans will
continue as we have done for the last 1000 years.
We have been self-sufficient and self-determined for thousands of generations,
basking in our own egotistical abilities which is why it was only when the
other continents arrived to find nothing were they able to give us our
infrastructure and tarmac roads where until 100 years ago only bush paths led
the way.
Without the ongoing input of the East or the West we will revert to that which we once were, but only after we have extradited the lot of them, i.e. Mud huts and women grinding corn by hand while men sit in the shade and discuss matters of state over beer drinks.
Go into the rural areas of Zimbabwe today and you will find our women, our sisters and our mothers and grandmothers, walking many miles carrying heavy bags of corn, a child on her back and one or two at her knees. Nothing has changed and they walk miles to get corn ground for their families. The female children too will be carrying smaller bags on their heads because they must be conditioned to what is the woman's role in this life.
Nothing has changed since Independence. Her lot is still buried in our past. We are used to seeing her barefoot and pregnant. We dare not elevate her and give her equality in case she takes over, like the women of the West and the female lab technicians in the East.
For once I agree totally with Omugabe. We must remain vigilant.
The East evolved before Christ and is over 3,000 years old. They were weaving silken threads from silk worms when we were still wearing our own traditional garb. It is only now our men wear silk suits and silk shirts but the silk is imported from the East. It is the East who taught the West the value of printing and paper while they sailed right past our shores, teaching us nothing until the 'Fifties when we sought their support in Chimurenga II. Then they taught us how to fire bullets, to fly jet planes and how to destroy our parasites.
Their interest in us is now purely financial especially cheap labour. Just as is the West's.
As OMugabe says, we are self-sufficient and self determined - we were the first man sure, and we will be the last man but we will continue to be without so long as all our budding intellectuals and gifted degreed individuals (just like himself) with their extended families living overseas continue to turn their backs on the Motherland and live as parasites elsewhere on the planet - just as the criminal invaders did when they came to live as parasites in our midst. And what do we give them in return? Still cheap labour.
Itayi, as he reminds you and I both, Africans have been Self-sufficient &
Self-determined for thousand of generations. Yes, we were the first and we
will be the last because just as everything has a beginning so everything has
an end. Watch this space.
By: Omugabe
on 4/7/10
Literacy and formal learned were introduced by the Africans of the Nile Valley
Civilizations for thousands of years, and Africans of Ethiopia carried on
those proud traditions for centuries.
So only ignoramuses from 'other continents' could claim to have found nothing in Africa.
In addition, only fools would ignore Africans good stewardship of the Continent.
Africa and the rest of the planet are being ravaged by the anti-Nature forces
from outside, and which are destroying the life-giving environment on the
planet.
If Africa was now as it was a 1000 years ago, then the life-giving environment
would be pristine; and Africans would be HAPPY and free of the criminal
invaders, who have wreaked much destruction on the Continent.
Some think that living naturally is inferior to living artificially; but only the natural is sustainable!
Those who have affinity for artificiality are self-deluded and doomed to
self-destruction.
And it is a positive sign that Africans get weapons only later to fight
Chimurenga II!
Only the lost, self-deluded and destructive exist in a permanent state of war
mentality.
The important thing is that the Chimurenga WAS WON by the correct forces!