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Reason Wafawarova on Thursday

Apart from the 2007 Lisbon EU-Africa Summit and the Cairo EU-Africa summit of 2000 where the African Union threatened to boycott the summits if President Mugabe was not invited, the AU has largely accepted the patronising behaviour of its Western hosts. Not much more can be expected from a body that seems to allow itself to be dissolved and divided in return for air cruises to Western capitals.

OUR African leadership lined up to put up pretentious smiles of glory as they proudly took turns to be photographed and filmed alongside US President Barrack Obama, a gesture interpreted by many of our own people as a sign of enviable achievement — the indelible epitome of political accomplishment.
This was during the recently concluded US-Africa summit, described by the White House as the “largest event any US President has held with African heads of state and governments.”

It was definitely a large event for the United States, not for the flocking mucked up African leadership, nor for our beleaguered continent.
There is nothing large or glorious about a clueless guest marvelling at being lectured on matters to do with his own homeland.

A cursory look at the White House photo gallery of this event portrays an image of well-fed and prosperous looking guests coming to discuss prosperity related matters with a willing wealthy host.

Of course the prosperous looking guests were none other than the 50 or so of our beggar leaders who were momentarily masquerading as balanced and sophisticated thinkers befitting of membership to the world’s community of leaders.

As has been happening with the EU over the past few years, the African Union sheepishly agrees to have its members fly wherever they are invited under the banner Africa, and not of the African Union itself.

Every time such summits are held Africa is the guest to those hankering for its resources, and apart from the Chinese, we have seen the EU and the United States quarantining some African countries perceived as not good enough for what should make up a summit invitee, and almost all the time this is done in the name of humanitarianism, like in defence of human rights and so on.

Why the AU keeps entertaining these divisive “such such-Africa summits” is a wonder.
Apart from the 2007 Lisbon EU-Africa Summit and the Cairo EU-Africa summit of 2000 where the African Union threatened to boycott the summits if President Mugabe was not invited, the AU has largely accepted the patronising behaviour of its Western hosts. Not much more can be expected from a body that seems to allow itself to be dissolved and divided in return for air cruises to Western capitals.

We are such a dependent continent that we need foreign donor writers even for the writing of our own history, or for statistics to do with our own economies.
Mark Anderson writing in the Guardian recently provided us with telling statistics compiled by a group of NGOs led by UK-based aid organisations.

The report says Africa receives US$134 billion each year in loans, foreign investment and aid, and it puts the cash flow out of the continent at US$192 billion, making our homeland a US$60 billion cash cow for the Westerners.

Our leaders do all in their power to impress in misery as Western donors are frantically courted for the US$30 billion they doll out to our continent each year, and the same leadership is blissfully oblivious to the US$46 billion siphoned by Western multinational corporations each year.

It does not appear like we are at all worried that US$35 billion is lost to the continent through tax evasion by the same multinational corporations each year.
As the African debt repayments stand at US$21 billion per year, our uninspiring leaders make newspaper headlines for the acquisition of more loans — the very cause of the debt crisis crippling the continent today.

For the vacuous accolade of being labelled democrats or statesmen, our leaders pride themselves as prime candidates for Western aid and loans, and the behaviour is frankly appalling.

Martin Drewry of the UK-based NGO Healthy Poverty Action describes Western developmental aid to Africa as “sustained looting — the opposite of generous giving,” and no description explains better the sorry state of affairs prevailing on the African continent at the moment.

It is like Australia’s idea of aid to neighbouring East Timor. In the 1930s Australia offered to provide a Qantas airline to Dilli, but this aid gesture was nothing more than a counter move to thwart Japanese, Portuguese and Dutch influence on Timorese people.

Following this aid gesture Australia alongside Dutch troops invaded East Timor in 1941, pretending to be beating Japan to the game of territorial expansionism. The invasion killed 50 000 Timorese people, or one in every 10.

In 1972 Australia claimed 80 percent of Timorese maritime area, only to be stalled by competing Portugal.
When the leftist Fretlin Party capitalised on the 1974 Portuguese revolution to declare Timorese independence, Australia feared “another Cuba on our door step,” and the Gough Whitlam government connived with Indonesia for the annexation of the newly independent state.

With tacit Australian support, Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, and the Australian interest was to secure a favourable maritime boundary that would guarantee the looting of Timorese oil and gas. The infamous Timor Gap Treaty was signed between Australia and Indonesia, and Australia acquired exclusive but undeserved rights to Timor’s oil and gas resources.

After the 1999 independence referendum for East Timor, Australia had to send troops to help a UN led peace initiative as Indonesia sponsored mass killings in retaliation to the independence vote.

Naturally the newly independent East Timor annulled the Gap Treaty, and Australia responded by lodging a reservation to the jurisdiction of the ICJ and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

This means Timor could not sue Australia because Australia just decided to suddenly not recognise the international bodies’ jurisdiction.
It is akin to a robber telling a domestic court that they are not turning up for trial because they have decided that courts are useless. That is the bane of international law.

Through aid promises East Timor was arm-twisted into signing a new treaty, with Australia getting 82 percent of the Gap’s resources, and Timor 18 percent. Woodside, an Australian corporation controls the $50 billion worthy Greater Sunrise field in the Gap.

East Timor took Australia to The Hague in December 2013, as it is opposed to the 2006 treaty that splits revenue 50-50.
It must be noted that if the border were to be drawn half way between the two nations, the vast majority of oil and gas would go on the East Timor side.

If East Timor wins its court challenge it could secure access to resources it badly needs to overcome hundreds of years of devastation wrought on it by various foreign powers, just like is the case with many African countries.

For returns of over US$1 billion in the 2013-14 financial year, Australia gave East Timor an anesthetic of US$120 million in aid. Anaesthetic aid is the common tool used by capitalist hegemonies to pacify leaders of the developing world so they can be accomplices in the raping of their own nations.

This story line mirrors accurately the sad post-colonial African chapter, and in the name of development our leaders have willingly allowed the sustained pillaging of our resources.

Andrew Gunder Frank writes about development thinking as a tool of post-war American hegemony, and this hegemony is what our leaders were flocking to embrace from Washington between 4 and 6 August. Development thinking in its context today is a child of neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism.

To the US African countries are mere semi-colonies that can be easily hoodwinked with developmental aid, and the strategy has not disappointed so far. With beggars in attendance one cannot possibly go wrong with aid.

The recent summit was more about American pragmatism and imperialism than it was about “mutual responsibility and mutual respect,” as Obama put it to our overly impressed leadership at the summit.

Political change is the basic ingredient for development, and for Africa what has changed is the colour of the skin of holders of political office, not the colonial political process itself.

We have accepted the unfounded theories of the IMF and the World Bank — and unto us an unhelpful mindset that says underdevelopment is a tradition and an original phenomenon to Africa has been donated.

Our poverty is neither original nor traditional. It is a creation stemming from our own shortcomings and from the legacy of coloniality.
Our leaders must have no business impressing aid givers with their misery, whether in Washington or in any other Western capital.

Anyone that thinks aid can develop nations is but a perfect fool.
We flock to a summit whose theme is “Investing in the Next Generation,” and our leaders scramble for sideline meetings with Obama so they can ensure that the Americans have an opportunity to invest upon our next generation: so that like us our youths will become unyielding believers in dependence.

When are our leaders going to learn that dependence is the opposite development? Is it ever going to dawn on the African leadership that self-reliance is the only solution to the basis of any viable economic structure?

We fought down the British colonial empire in Zimbabwe, only to embrace at independence the preached efficiencies of Thatcherism and Reagonomics.
Up today our leaders die to be invited to summits were they are lectured that efficiency and profit come first before equity, and we are all supposed to shape our investment policies in line with this unhelpful capitalist philosophy.

Instead of developing our countries, multinational corporations have taught us the culture of dependence, and this is why Foreign Direct Investment has become the compulsory homework of every African leader.

This don’t do that you will scare investors gospel is breeding blithering puppets on our continent.
We clamour incessantly for foreign investment and we end up stuck with the constraints of foreign debt.

The outflows of our resources far exceed the aid and investment inflows coming into our continent.
Frank gives an illustration of the monstrous nature of developmental aid by citing Hungary — a country that at one time had paid three times the loan, and still double was left to be paid.

He called this “the underdevelopment of development.”
Our leadership in Africa must understand how the world works before they fly to Western capitals to masquerade as civilised and sophisticated leaders, only for purposes of appearances.

We must fight for a prime spot for Africa in the centre-periphery politics of this world. We must position ourselves in the best possible position in the world’s process of accumulation, and we must place Africa in the best possible advantageous position when dealing with the hegemony rivalry of this world.

Where best can we stand in the US-China hegemony rivalry? Where does Africa stand in the EU-BRICS hegemony rivalry?
We must be the referees for economic competition on the African continent, but we wait for declassified CIA documents for us to know the quantum figures for own underground minerals. Our geologists are busy looking for white-owned companies to employ them.

When are we going to call for an AU-Europe summit where we determine the course of events in regards to our own resources?
They came to enslave and colonise us yesteryear and our ancestors could not defend the continent.

Today they call up our leaders for summits so they can exert their hegemony on us from the comfort of their own conference rooms, and our generation of leaders supremely cherishes these rare privileged opportunities.

When the United States talks trade and investment in Africa, they are talking about their own trade and investment, and to them Africa is only an opportunity, not a mutual partner.

It is perfect foolishness to blame the Americans for pursuing their own interests. The tradition of humanity is that the strong and the scheming plunder the foolish and the weak.

For as long as Africa keeps wheeling on borrowed ideas and donated welfare the perpetuity of the suffering of our people will remain a guaranteed phenomenon.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.