Assimilationist Leadership And Alms Race: Pan-Africanists Vs Imperialists

17 July 2010

By Reason Wafawarova

PAN-AFRICANIST writers and nationalist activists who take on the evils of Eurocentric imperialism sometimes leave the unintended impression that Africans are a passive people who are totally manipulated by a Eurocentric structure, and who are created totally by the white devil.

There is a need for us Africans to examine ourselves and see to what extent we have participated in the creation of this monster we call imperialism today. We must look at the type of leadership we have provided and how it has complemented in the maintenance of the imperial status quo.

We must look at the responsibilities that we have avoided, disregarded or ignored, and we must look at the opportunities that we have missed and continue to miss as a people.

We need to look at the assimilationist leadership that we have permitted to lead post-independent Africa and to represent us in the world of today.

This is a kind of leadership that has for long had its face turned outward, towards the European, towards the white man — a leadership that pays scant attention to the education of the re-socialisation of our people.

It is a leadership that believes that it can convert the white man for the better of the African.

We are here talking of a leadership that not only misguidedly seeks assimilation into the Eurocentric system, but is also madly involved in the alms race that has seen all manner of donor agencies scrambling for Africa in the post-Cold War era.

In fact, all but one of the African states that are lauded in the West as "emerging democracies" have their annual budgets made up of more than 50 percent in donor aid.

The only exception is South Africa.

Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, Botswana, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda and Mozambique are just some of the examples that come to mind.

We have an African leadership that commits all its energy in trying to convert the white man to be a better partner with Africa, and doing all in their power not to offend the Western donor and investor — instead of, in part, using that energy for converting ourselves as a people.

There is power in self-transformation as noted by Chancellor James Williams (The Destruction of Black Consciousness), and the way we think, the way we behave, helps in creating the kind of victimisation from which we suffer.

Amos N. Wilson (The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness), writes, "The oppressive configuration the White man has assumed in relationship to the Black man is in good part the result of the fact that we have permitted ourselves to remain in a complementary subordinate configuration conducive to his oppressive designs."

The imperialist Westerner cannot be what he is in Africa today unless we are what we are as a people.

The best way to transform the imperialist Westerner is through self-transformation on the part of us the victims of this imperialism.

We must take responsibility for that part of our personality, that part of our community, and that part of ourselves over which we have control. We need to change that part for our own good.

We must not even worry about changing the white man because he can only change for his own interests; not for ours. If we change those parts of ourselves that allow the white man to dominate us, then we will be able to change this man.

African leaders who engage the white man with a view to convert him for our own better are the biggest problem Africa has today. The practice has misled us for the past 54 years and it is time we gave it up.

Meles Zenawi is confronted with threats of withdrawal of Western aid for failing to impress Western opinion over elections in Ethiopia, Bingu wa Mutharika is threatened with withdrawal of Western aid for allowing Malawian values to precede over a Western sponsored campaign for homosexuality, and Zimbabwe is told to get rid of its leader, President Mugabe, if ever Western aid is to flow into the country. This is the Africa we live in today.

Zenawi tells Western donors to keep their money if they will, Mutharika capitulates and pulls out convicted homosexuals from jail, and President Mugabe maintains that Westerners can go hang because Zimbabwe is a sovereign country, and will not allow the West to impose its preferred leadership on the people.

But where is the African Union’s voice? Where is the African blueprint for economic independence from these unrepentant subjugators? When are we going to be free from Western aid? When are we going to realise that the alms race is no different in effect to the race for African slaves and the race for colonies that followed it?

The rehabilitation of the African into a self-respecting and self-reliant global citizen will only be realised by giving up the Westerner and forgetting about him and his influence. Social workers and psychologists deal with abused children and crazy people who often blame their parental backgrounds for their predicament.

You see people sobbing on television and saying, "my parents never loved me, they rejected me, they never hugged me, they never provided for me, they preferred the other child..."

We see these people together with television presenters blaming abusive parents and waiting for them to change. Reality is that even if abusive parents changed, the victims will still remain abused or crazy, whatever the case.

All that happens is that energy dissipated waiting to change abusive parents has been diverted, and the energy needed for self-change has atrophied, and therefore, even when the opportunity to get over the whole predicament presents itself the personality is unable to take advantage of it.

It is time we Africans must examine ourselves and see to what extent we have contributed to our own madness, demise, oppression and powerlessness.

If Zimbabwe has a potential to generate over US$2 billion per year in diamond trade alone, what excuse other than stupidity can be given for failing to take advantage of this opportunity?

Part of the problem of African dependency is not what the Westerner has done or continues to do in the former colonies. A part of it is how Africans react to the actions of the Westerner.

The problem is not so much that the Westerner says we are inferior, and that we are hopeless; that the European maligns our character, or demeans our collective personality. It is the belief on our part that what the Westerner says is true that drives us crazy as a people.

We trade back a crazy reaction for the abuses that come with imperialism.

Sometimes we engage ourselves into an insane and unthinking kind of approach to dealing with the actions of the Westerner.

The crazy reaction is a reaction of rage, and we find a lot of rage in our students, in our youths, and in most of our people: and this is a rage that distorts reality, it distorts our capacity and our creativity. It distorts our potential to unite and it kills the very mechanism that can get us out of our sorry economic predicament.

We are faced with a situation where our people are smitten by this Herculean image of the white man that they often are limited to the options solely provided by the actions of the Westerner.

We have our people who think they can only become what the imperial Westerner says, or they can become better just to prove the imperialist Westerner wrong.

Both reactions are tied up to the Westerner. To this end, the African bourgeoisie is as much a creation of the Western legacy as the African criminal or vagabond.

They are all products of reactionary styles, and they are all a means by which various people try to deal with imperial oppression.

Often we have our people thinking that there are only two options to deal with the perception of the imperial Westerner; it is either you confirm his stereotypes or you overachieve to prove him wrong.

If reactions of rage, of hatred, and of vengeance are not permitted to capture our personality, to consume our consciousness and attention, then perhaps we can assume other workable alternatives — and these must be alternatives that ignore and disregard the existence of the imperial Westerner.

We cannot continue to deny our own shortcomings; to deny the criminality on a certain segment of our own people, and we cannot keep helping in maintaining Western hegemony by subscribing to the doctrine of the alms race targeted at our own continent.

There are no less than 2 500 Western NGOs stationed in Zimbabwe alone today, and their calling is in the name of philanthropy and human charity, but their mission is to maintain the African position as dependant on the Eurocentric imperial system.

For failing to confront forthrightly the issues and circumstances we find ourselves in economically as Africans we must hold ourselves responsible. We have been independent for decades now, with South Africa as the youngest nation at 16 years old, and Ghana as the oldest at 54.

Our situation is not getting any better in terms of economic development for our people. We have a leadership that seems to refuse to confront the circumstances right before our 53 member countries.

We must hold ourselves responsible for the madness, disorganisation and apathy that flows from our leadership.

We have to hold ourselves responsible for not capturing economic and social control of our communities, and for abandoning the vision of Pan-Africanism that was started by the founding fathers of African independence, for failing to build up our brains, for failing to study, to read, to write, to organise, to develop and to provide for ourselves.

We must hold ourselves responsible for our own madness. The issue is not a diagnosis of the imperial West and its evil nature.

Rather, we must begin to do a diagnosis of ourselves, and more importantly, to get on with the revolution that the founding fathers of African independence started when they established the OAU.

Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@ rwafawarova. com or visit www.rwafawarova.com

 

 

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