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key to achieving this level of humanity is often seen as based on humanity’s compliance to the upholding of fundamental human rights – those rights enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
The first two Articles of the UNDHR are very pertinent in international relations and they would, outside the reality of the politics of exclusion and imperial domination, form the international basis for a free global society based on a family of nations founded on equality, justice and a respect for people’s inalienable rights.
Article 1.
l All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
When the UN General Assembly adopted this article on December 10 1948, the consensus of the day was that humanity is founded on equality and that all humans share equally one form of dignity and the same set of rights.
The Millennium Development Goals pursued by nation states today confirm the sad reality that dignity for humanity is relative and equality among global citizens is easier talked about than practiced.
Timor Leste aims to achieve its MDG targets in terms of water and sanitation by ensuring that its rural citizens will have one pit latrine per family and at least a water tap for a set of five families.
If one compares this to neighbouring Australia where an average household has at least eight taps and two flush toilets, the idea that humanity shares the same dignity becomes a very sad joke.
When one looks at Australia exploiting the oil resources of Timor Leste on the basis of a 2006 oil deal designed pretty much to steal oil and gas from the Timor Sea, then the reality that there is no such thing as equality and justice in international relations becomes just so apparent.
After Australia arm-twisted Timor into signing an oil deal allowing Australia to steal the only resource that could possibly make the lives of Timorese people better, the then Foreign Affairs Minister for Australia, Alexander Downer had the following to say:
“We wouldn’t enter into an agreement we didn’t think was good for Australia and the Australian people, and I think . . .you know, I mean, I always make the point as the Australian Foreign Minister I vigorously stand up for Australia. I’m a very, very proud Australian. And it’s not my job to stand up for other countries.”
With a rich neighbour behaving this way towards the poorest country in East Asia, would anyone ever dream of equality among nations, let alone equality among humans?
The deal that Australia forced Timor Leste to sign entails that the Timorese people will only realise about US$10 billion from their oil reserves in the next 40 years.
Independent estimates indicate that Australia will make hundreds of billions of dollars from the deal over the same period, although Downer said Australia would “realise about the same amount” as Timor Leste.
In a free global society where nation states are equal and humanity is based on equality, justice, peace and the respect for people’s inalienable rights, why would a neighbouring rich country ever share the proceeds of its poor neighbour’s oil in equal proportions?
We may want to look at Article 2 of the UNDHR so we may examine further the idea of equality and free societies in international relations.
Article 2.
l Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
The Western model of democracy preaches the establishment of “free societies” based on such fundamental rights as the right to life, liberty, security of person, protection from slavery and servitude, movement, conscience, expression and association – all essential components of the UNDHR.
What the Western model of democracy does not explain is the link between Western democracy and global capitalism, or more importantly the neo-liberal economic hegemony of the West and the realisation of these fundamental rights by those subjugated to this hegemony.
So, the Timorese people are entitled to the right to life, but a life of misery; to liberty, but liberty in poverty, right to security of person, but security in the context of subjugation by a rich and powerful neighbour; to protection from slavery and servitude, but in servitude to the economic dictates of a rich and powerful neighbour.
Zimbabweans are well aware that illegal sanctions from the EU will not go for as long as the right to conscience is not fully realised in the country (at least to the EU’s expectations), except when such consciousness leads to the people rising against colonially settled white commercial farmers.
That kind of conscience is not acceptable in Western circles.
The same illegal sanctions will not be lifted if Zimbabweans are seen as not free to express themselves, except when such expression is to say Zimbabwean resources are primarily for the benefit of Zimbabweans and as such at least 51 percent control of all big businesses in the country should be by locals.
That kind of free expression is not acceptable at all. What is acceptable is the freedom to express dissent against one’s own government, especially when such a government is being led by a nationalist leader like Robert Mugabe.
And the EU says the illegal sanctions will not be lifted until Zimbabweans are free to associate as they wish, except of course when such association is related to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe or his Zanu-PF party. Free association is by Western definition pro-West and pro-capitalism.
It is a sanctionable offence to be a member of Zanu-PF and to be appointed by Robert Mugabe to serve Zimbabwe as one of its senior public servants.
Article 22 of the UNDHR talks about economic and social rights and one such fundamental right is the right to education.
Other such rights include the right to food, shelter, and lately clean drinking water.
These are primary rights, which can only be fully realised in the developing world if Western capitalist hegemony is discredited and abandoned.
These rights are silent in the West’s crusade to democratise the world.
They are rights in threat to capitalist hegemony.
Where they are pronounced it is only in such appaling relative terms where five families sharing a water tap in a poor ex-colony are the equivalent of one family having five taps in the West.
Realists from the right will tell us that an international setup where humanity is organised based on equality, freedom, justice for all and peace for all is contrary to human nature.
That is the essence of the capitalist theory.
Other neo-liberal thinkers will argue and say such a society is incompatible with the demands of efficiency.
The argument that a free society is contrary to human nature is quite interesting.
The privileged will often ask, if people really want freedom and happiness, are they prepared to take the full responsibility that goes with it, or would they prefer the hegemony of a benevolent imperial master who will let crumbs fall from the table through the much exalted trickle-down effect of the capitalist model?
Apologists for the imperialist model led by the US today have advocated in raucous unison for the idea of the happy slave – arguing that the people of resource-rich Africa are happier off being employed by Western investors and working as farm hands on land belonging to themselves and their posterity.
So we are told the land reform programme in Zimbabwe deprived the black farm “slaves” of their happiness.
Mugabe and his Zanu-PF kicked out the slave masters that “employed” these farm hands on slave wages and we are told that the removal of these colonially settled white commercial farmers “destroyed the economy” of Zimbabwe. In fact this shameful theory is sold without any sense of irony.
Two centuries ago, Rousseau denounced the sophisticated politicians and intellectuals who always came up with ways to mislead people by running away from the fact that the quintessential and defining property of human beings is their freedom.
He argued, “They attribute to men a natural inclination to servitude . . . without thinking that it is the same for freedom as for innocence and virtue – their value is felt only as long as one enjoys them oneself and the taste for them is lost as soon as one has lost them.”
Rousseau pointed as proof to this doctrine the marvels of all free people to guard themselves from oppression, more so the people under Western democracies.
He noted that sometimes those who abandon the life of the free: ” . . . do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains . . . But when I see the others sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; . . . when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom”.
Perhaps we can endeavour a contemporary interpretation to this comment.
What is more important to Zimbabweans – the happiness of former farm slaves or the independence of having ownership and control of their own land?
When Zimbabweans stand against Western voluptuousness and refuse to live on wage labour that comes at the expense of the country’s resources; are we not supposed to see an honourable resolve to safeguard the value of true independence?
Is such independence not the true basis for a free society?
Kant had this to say about powers that deny the weaker their freedoms and independence:
“If one accepts this assumption (that there are people who are not yet ripe for freedom), freedom will never be achieved; for one cannot arrive at the maturity for freedom without having already acquired it; one must be free to learn how to make use of one’s powers freely and usefully.”
Zimbabweans must be allowed the freedom not only to fully utilise their resources, but also to make blunders and errors as they seek to beneficially utilise what belongs to them.
The first stages have surely been brutal and have led to a state of affairs that has been more painful and even dangerous than the former condition, especially in regard to the land reform programme.
The reality is that one can only achieve reason through one’s own experiences, and indeed one must be given the freedom to undertake such experiences.
Zimbabweans do not need the continued protection of the former colonial master – the protection of an external authority.
Zimbabwe needs to learn to walk on her own feet and not the “massive handholding” suggested by US ambassador Chris Dell in 2007.
Kant concluded by saying, “To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for those under one’s control and that one has the right to refuse it to them forever, is an infringement on the right of God Himself, who has created man to be free”.
Indeed it is an infringement on the right from God Himself for anyone to propose that Zimbabweans are wrong in reclaiming their land and their natural resources from the grip of colonially established business enterprises.
Zimbabweans have a God given right to their diamonds, gold, soil, and every other resource and only through full ownership of these resources can Zimbabwe ever become a true free society.
This business of preaching “real change” that is based on returning people to the happiness of the slave will not help the country at all.
Those who preach a Zimbabwe that will be happy in employment under Western economic hegemony or any other external hegemony are enemies of freedom and happiness.
They are agents of subjugation and they stand against the noble intention of achieving a truly free world – so far made entirely impossible by the selfish machinations of powerful corporations working in cohorts with political elites.
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on [email protected] or reason@rwafa warova.com or visit www.rawafawarova.com