15 August 2012 By Reason Wafawarova One wonders what it is that induces Africans to
accept their subordinate status in world affairs as
natural, with many among the civic and political
leadership in Africa trifling in vacuous endeavours to
excite admiration from vanity, many times elevating
excrescent puppetry to levels of high-ranking
nobilities like democracy or respect for human rights.
The continent is diseased with the viral legacy of
colonialism and the interaction between African states
is diseased, generating diseased social interactions
within individual countries, degenerating We have a great chain of discontents cementing our
societal and cultural make-up, and the culture of
dependency and imitation emanates from this historical
legacy of discontents. The historical power relations between dominant
colonial powers and subordinate African populations
have to be factored in when one looks at the analyses
of the character and conduct of the present-day
African. It does not matter one is making a judgment about
good or evil leadership in Africa, or that one is
making conclusions of superiority or inferiority, the
prevailing dominant factor is always the historic
intergroup, intragroup and interpersonal relations. If one takes a filthy white vagabond from Europe
and clean him up before flying him to meet Africa
leadership, chances are that the man will be treated
with the highest accolades of honour derived not from
his personal worthiness but from the colour of his
skin. He could easily be mistaken for a serious
investor. Conversely, if one takes an African invention to
Europe it can easily be guaranteed that the invention
will inevitably pass the test of primitiveness, not
for its unmeritorious content but more for who has
made up the invention. The subordination of the African by Western
influence is centred on historical power relations
deliberately constructed by the white colonial
establishments, and today perpetuated by the
neo-colonial imperialist establishments in the Western
world. A child growing up in the Western world is made to
believe that his social upbringing and conditions are
by definition superior to those of an African child.
The African child is socialised to admire the white
child while the white kid is conditionally taught to
pity the African child. Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Africa was
diplomatically packaged as a visit by a world leader
to an Africa so desperate for Western investment and
political intervention; starting with her reading the
riot act to Kenyan politicians and warning them
against continued squabbling or else, to defining what
should be the political route for the people of
Zimbabwe in regards to US sanctions imposed on the
nation, up to declaring that only the United States of
America holds the moral standard to promote democracy
and human rights in Africa, even making the comical
claim that the US foregoes its economic interests in
pursuit of the high value of democracy and respect for
human rights. Hillary Clinton had the audacity to warn African
leadership against partners whose aim is to exploit
African resources, declaring with a straight face that
the US was unlike these evil-minded unnamed partners,
itself being such a morally upright nation only driven
by the need to "stand up for democracy and universal
human rights even when it might be easier or more
profitable to look the other way, to keep the
resources flowing . . . Not every partner makes that
choice, but we do and we will." This coming from a representative of a country that
has systematically looted world resources for
centuries from the Middle East, South America, Asia,
and from Africa was quite telling. Hillary Clinton
must be aware of her country's support for Chile's
Augusto Pinochet, of the support the US gave to the
murderous Saddam Hussein over the years, of how the US
nurtured and sponsored the Taliban in Afghanistan, of
how the US together with Britain supported fully the
ascendancy to power of Idi Amin in Uganda, of the
support given by the US to the murderous Raul Videla
in Argentina, of the US support given to the Congolese
brute Mobutu Sese Seko, and of the US support for
dictatorial General Suharto in Indonesia. The list is
endless and includes moments of US support for people
like Gaddafi, for as long as they allowed the oil
resource to flow northwards. What Clinton was coming to perpetuate in Africa are
social power relations that involve socio-political
practices and processes which mediate the Western
socioeconomic, socio-political and socio-psychological
manipulation and construction of African consciousness
and behaviour for the benefit of white interests. Depending on how African consciousness stands as a
threat to Western economic interest in Africa, the
arbiter of normality or abnormality is raised by the
Westerner. Those African governments that support the
continuity of white supremacy over the affairs of
Africa and have no problem with the West looting the
continent's resources are labelled normal, and in the
process are rewarded with such honourable titles as
human rights defenders or democrats. Those that openly oppose the continuity of white
supremacy in Africa and call for control of African
resources by Africans are labelled abnormal and often
derided as autocrats, dictators, or tyrants. Today what is being called normal black
consciousness on matters of democracy and human rights
is nothing more than endeavours created and originated
in the West, with black activists sponsored or bribed
to front them as matters of personal conscience. It is
a matter of adding the black colour to white ideas. This is precisely why black people who are
inherently disgusted by the practice of homosexuality
find themselves championing the cause of promoting gay
rights, more to please those who sponsor the idea and
less in appreciation of what they advocate for. This is precisely why South Africa's ANC leaders
are fiery advocates of revolutionary leftist rhetoric
on the one hand and very reliable disciples of
capitalist extremism at the same time. Patrick Bond
has called it "talking left and walking right." The consciousness of the African is determined by
habitual thought patterns and behavioural tendencies
which are designed to make it inevitable for the
African to be pliable to white dominance and social
control, and resistance is often minimal. In fact, the
African has largely accepted his subordinate status as
only natural, with many of Africa's civic and
political activists easily mis-perceiving their
oppression by white imperialists as freedom. Many of
them deride their own governments for not doing enough
in pleasing Western governments in order to be top on
the list of countries that receive Western donor
funding. Those political leaders like Zimbabwe's Robert
Mugabe who may be as "abnormal" as to promote thought
patterns and behavioural tendencies in blacks which
make white dominance ineffective or intolerably so
hard to implement are labelled legitimate targets of
the West's regime change agenda, and they are
routinely vilified as ruthless despots by Western
media, and many times treated as outcasts of the
"international community." Protesting, resisting or rejecting imperial
dominance is synonymous with barbarism and
primitiveness inasfar as the West is concerned, and it
is unforgivable. The arbiter of being a democrat in Africa today is
tied up to the continuity of white supremacy, not
exactly to the idea of the rule of Africa by the
people of Africa, and for the people of Africa. In
fact, for a people to be labelled true democrats by
the West, it must be discovered that in them are
behavioural tendencies that serve well the hegemonic
interests of the West. Precisely this is why President
Robert Mugabe stands isolated and sanctioned while his
Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, is hailed as a
"freedom fighter" in the West. Mugabe stands for the abnormal African and the
pliant Tsvangirai is the epitome of a progressive
democrat from the vantage point of the continuity of
white supremacy. Our thoughts as Africans have been manipulated by a
past whose effect on our behaviour we dangerously
underestimate. We are a people with disturbed
emotions, with a disturbed sense of motivational
appetite, and our values and priorities are derived
from this disturbed thought process. In defining oppression, author Amos N. Wilson says:
"To be oppressed is by definition to have one's
thought processes disturbed; emotions impaired;
motives and values inverted; and one's body functions
imbalanced." For as long as Africa cannot wean itself from the
supremacy of the white man, it will remain a
requirement that Africans involuntarily and
obsessively continue to wallow in self-deception. Today the trademark of African consciousness is
degenerating into this collective self-deception,
benchmarking the main product of the relations between
the West and post-colonial Africa. This power
relationship has somehow successfully manipulated
Africans into operating against their own best
interests, inadvertently pushing for the interests of
their Western oppressors. We have today an African in self-denial, in
self-defeat and continuously engaging in
self-destructing conduct. The sad reality is that
those doing so are more than convinced that the
opposite is true. Those Zimbabweans being led by Prime Minister
Tsvangirai into believing that only Western investment
can prosper a nation actually count themselves as very
progressive thinkers, even geniuses. In fact, they
view the indigenous economic empowerment policies
being pushed by Zanu-PF as an excruciating attack on
modernity. A world of indigenised economies to these
people is a retrogressive march back to the Dark Ages.
Only the civilised people from the West must lead in
the control of resources the world over — so the
reckoning goes. A modern economy is to them a world of powerful
Western investors providing jobs and livelihoods for
hard-working and loyal African labourers. Africa is not going to prosper by diligently
providing its labour to foreign investors. Neither is
the continent going to be wealthy by receiving
billions of dollars in aid money from the West. Dare I
say Africa is not going to be democratic by mimicking
utterances on democracy from Western sources? Democracy is not the art of mimicking Western
secular life. It is the rule of the people by the
people, and for the people. When the people of Zimbabwe spoke about what they
wanted enshrined in the country's constitution, it was
not the duty of Copac's committees of whatever names
to negotiate these views towards compliance with
Western tendencies and opinion. Even Zanu-PF negotiators felt they could not be
left out in this noble endeavour to modernise our
rural populace by modifying their primitive views
towards the Western line, as guided by those who were meeting
Western representatives on the dark sidelines of the
constitution-making process. That behaviour is
treacherous. Africa is not going to be emancipated by people
obsessed with playing pliancy games to Western
diktats. Africa, we are one and together we will
overcome. It is homeland or death!! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in
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