Thoughts of freedom on Africa Day President Mugabe
President Mugabe

President Mugabe

Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor

Today we celebrate Africa Day, the 25th of May. Millions of our people wallow in poverty. The continent is plagued by internecine wars, nearly all of them manufactured and sponsored by foreigners in the name of democracy and human rights. In Zimbabwe we have had a long encounter with such a war, particularly in the past 15 years when we have sought to give substance to the slogans of independence and democracy.

IT is 52 years since 1963. That is the year African leaders founded the Organisation of African Unity. That period was also perhaps the high water mark of Africans’ lofty ideals, a period when African political leaders and intellectuals worked in solidarity and could imagine without flinching, making sacrifices for fellow Africans still labouring under the colonial yoke.

It was a period when idealistic politicians imagined that constructing a new independent and prosperous African state was a matter of kicking out the colonial power.

Since then we have seen the pitfalls of underestimating the bitterness of the enemy we fought, how easy it is to be sidetracked on the road to meaningful independence beyond the flag, how it has been so difficult to wean ourselves from the tutelage of the former colonisers whom we have set up as our standard bearers.

They have remained the carriers of the values and standards we can only aspire to but do not have the human resources and experience to immediately deliver to our people.

The enemy has used this apparent failure to deliver prosperity, drive a wedge between politicians and idealistic intellectuals whom the former colonisers now deploy as a tool to denigrate African leadership failure for their acts of sabotage — sanctions for example.

Those who should help open the eyes of society to see the real enemy have been seduced with money and head some of the most vocal foreign-sponsored institutions to preach a new divisive gospel of individual human rights as opposed to a shared fate, a common destiny for African people, and the one common enemy.

Whatever solidarity was forged in the struggle for independence has been shredded in search of individual glory.

We all strive everyday to demonstrate to the enemy that we are the most qualified to represent his values and standards to our people, all the easy for him to feel at home.

So in our interactions with Europe and America today, issues of homosexuality take pride of place or there is no aid.

They say in God we trust.

My choice of homosexuality as a condition for aid to Africa is not fortuitous.

It is because it has both physical and symbolic significance.

It is first and foremost to expose the ungodly perversity of the values we are supposed to embrace.

It is to expose the insult we are supposed to subscribe to; and how far we can be degraded against our better understanding of nature, just so that we get what they call aid.

But most importantly, it is to expose the sterility of that relationship before man and before God. What life can be conceived out of a homosexual relationship between people and between nations?

Today the same races who for centuries enslaved Africans and built their wealth on the back of African sweat and tears, followed that through colonial exploitation and now continue without shame the theft of African natural and human resources without compunction, are the same people telling us that our human rights must be concretised in unnatural acts like homosexuality.

Yet throughout history they have never acknowledged blacks as full humans, not even in their United Nations Charter mid-20th century. Talking about the need for independence and territorial integrity didn’t include taking Africans as deserving of freedom, independence and human rights.

It took the force of military hardware for the white man to let go, very grudgingly at that. And such are the people we want to hold up as standard bearers of humanity’s best values!

Africa awake

Today Africa is “free” of direct colonial occupation. It is trudging through one of the most dangerous stages in the search for independence and freedom, a stage when the enemy is hidden to the casual observer, when we have been told to do the unnatural — to obliterate colour. The enemy wears a sheep’s skin and we sup with him in supplication, so he can save us from ourselves.

Africa is trudging through a dangerous phase in quest of true independence because, having obliterated the colour code, your brother becomes your most dangerous enemy.

He can shelter under skin colour, and fight you viciously when you assume you both know the common enemy of Africa’s development and progress.

The founding fathers of Africa didn’t have this complicated matrix. The enemy stood out in all his shameless nakedness as defined by colour and origin and language. The founding fathers were more committed to the cause, to restore the humanity of Africans. They did not sacrifice for a reward, for public adulation, for personal recognition, for a Nobel prize. It was like a calling, a vocation to serve. Not so anymore.

Today we celebrate Africa Day, the 25th of May. Millions of our people wallow in poverty. The continent is plagued by internecine wars, nearly all of them manufactured and sponsored by foreigners in the name of democracy and human rights. In Zimbabwe we have had a long encounter with such a war, particularly in the past 15 years when we have sought to give substance to the slogans of independence and democracy.

Democracy and independence are meaningless without economic independence. Looked at that way, one begins to understand the scornful cynicism of those who laugh off President Mugabe’s mantra on sovereignty. They know sovereignty without economic independence can only be a wish, especially when you lead a generation which is not prepared to sacrifice, shuns the soil, a generation which is easily dazzled by the ephemeral glamour of Hollywood movies, lives by the day, yes come on Botha, a generation which cannot plan beyond a year.

Africa, Africa awake

This week my spirit was uplifted. That often happens when once in a while a Malema shows up in South Africa, Sankara in Burkina Faso, Yaya Jameh in the Gambia — young people who can see beneath the colour of the skin, who can pierce the veil of conviviality and unmask the real man and his hidden motives and agenda.

Two things happened this week in East Africa, none of them entirely new, but are very significant as we commemorate Africa Day. There is something stirring, some flicker of hope. Perhaps finally Africa is rising, rising for itself, not just as a huge market for foreign goods.

First, Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete voiced what has probably been bugging him for a long time. European messiahs last year withheld more than $500 million of budgetary aid to Tanzania, for the African sin of corruption. That’s not small change and that hole can cause trouble for any country. Kikwete was furious. “It is unacceptable,” he fumed, “for our development partners to use their aid stick to pressure us to do certain things or else they will cut aid. We will reach a point where we will say this is too degrading … keep your aid.”

Achebe it was, that great creative writer from Nigeria, who once warned that what will kill a man often begins as an appetite. Africa’s addiction to aid is such an appetite; its eager dalliance with America and Europe’s IMF and the World Bank its death.

Tanzania has learnt its lesson. Its government has resolved it will wean itself of donor dependency in the 2015-2016 budget.

Across the border, Kenya dispatched its Foreign Affairs Cabinet secretary Amina Mohamed to Moscow to lobby Russia for reform of the United Nations Security Council. She said the current UNSC set up didn’t “reflect the dynamics of the 21st century”. A déjà vu! Do I hear an echo of a Mugabe?

She elaborated in a statement issued from Moscow after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: “We believe Africa’s under-representation and non-representation in UNSC is discriminatory, unfair and unjust.”

Africa wants at least two permanent representatives with a power of veto along with Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. Population ratios demand it; we want democracy in practice.

Kenya is a member of the Committee of Ten Heads of State and Government (c10) set up by the African Union to spearhead the lobby for a common position for UN reforms. The other members are Libya, Algeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Zambia, Uganda, Equatorial Guinea and Congo.

Kenya and Equatorial Guinea head the lobby group.

This week Lady Mohamed and Equatorial Guinea’s Foreign minister Agapito Mokuy head for China to lobby for its support for African representation in the UNSC and a power of veto.

These are the real struggles, the challenges faced by Africa today as it fights for real independence and democracy — the ability to influence decisions which impact on its people and to veto criminal resolutions which create disasters such as we witness in Libya today, such as the evil plot currently under way to seek UN authorisation to drown or slaughter militarily Africans and Arabs escaping America’s Frankeinstein monster, ISIS, which is rioting in the Middle East and Africa.

Africa shall be free, Africa arise. It is time to decide your own destiny.

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