AS I SEE IT

MICHAEL DINGAKE | Tuesday August 7, 2007 00:00

He added other more relevant and necessary development issues on the continent:  Aid alone would not end poverty; it is vital that Africa leads its own development process; peace and security, development, human rights and the rule of law were crucial for pulling Africa out of the quagmire of poverty and wars; to stop conflicts in many spots on the continent,  including Northern Uganda and Darfur.

Obviously aid alone cannot end poverty. Aid induces dependency, blunts initiative, stalls innovation and substitutes self-reliance. It promotes indolence in body and mind. When a country depends on foreign aid, it ipso facto relies on foreigners to think policy, manage economy, gear and align national development to alien's national self-interest. Perhaps what Africa needs more today, is foreign technology. We do not have to invent the wheel, when the wheel has long been invented. Technology can be acquired through FDI; if it is not availed through this channel due to sluggish FDI inflow, it can always be obtained through the backdoor - on the black-market or through other means.

Peace and security, human rights and the rule of law, have all been our standards. Of course we did take up arms against one another, but made amends by negotiating stable inter-community relations through intermarriages and other diplomatic protocols, before the colonisers interrupted our development model and 'divided and ruled' us according to their hostile racial agenda. As for human rights and the rule of law, those were our greatest values. Tyrants were not tolerated. Whenever an African ruler became tyrannical she/he risked been deposed violently. It is a basic rule and custom in African society that Kgosi ke kgosi ka batho/a king is king by (listening to) his subjects. Individual rights have always been relatively respected as they merge with communal rights, thus creating a solid bedrock of the rule of law, enforceable by the entire community through its norms and judicial system. Africa can do it. She has done it before!    

More cogent in Annan's lecture was this: 'The ever downward spiral of Zimbabwe, for example, is both intolerable and unsustainable, we all have a stake in resolving the crisis... Africans must guard against a pernicious, self-destructive form of racism that unites citizens to rise up and expel tyrannical rulers who are white, but to excuse tyrannical rulers who are black.'

Excusing black tyrants is a new phenomenon in African tradition. African kings in the region resisted Tshaka's despotism, repulsed Mzilikazi's belligerent adventures  and arrested Mantatise, woman-power whirlwind blitz. No acquiescence, no silent diplomacy, no bemused surrender to tyrants' agenda of regional devastation or any such ridiculous black-brotherly postures. Sure, Africans have been mistreated and exploited before by alien races. But racism is not the only prejudicial pain suffered by Africa. Tribalism shares the same characteristics with racism, religious intolerance, ethnicity, elitism, discriminatory practice of whatever form is an abuse of sacred human rights. If accepted it is pernicious and self-destructive! It stunts development.

Thanks to the liberation struggles of varying intensity, colonialism is behind us, never to return. Neo-colonialism, a by-product of headlong independence, has its days numbered; it shall not take permanent root. Enslavement by foreigners is also dead and buried. We read reports, however, that forms of slavery continue to survive in parts of independent Africa. Surprisingly, the AU never mentions this perversity. The current grim reality is that, while Africa has abolished her raping ordeal by rapist strangers, she indulges in voyeurism and tolerance of incestuous relations within herself! The rulers commit these crimes with insolence and unaccustomed impunity! Africa, like a mother terrified of broadcasting the stigma of her incestuous husband, keeps mum, while her daughter suffers traumatic abuse.

The above is not hyperbolic, but underscores Kofi Annan's point. Stereotypically, blacks seem to believe that all whites are evil; that they hate, despise and mistrust blacks. All that is relatively true, but not absolutely. And it does not exonerate blacks from similar allegations. There are blacks who are more evil, brutal and vicious to fellow countrymen. Human rights are trampled upon, not only by racists of a non-black hue but by black despotic maniacs as well. It should not be allowed to happen. It should be nipped in the bud. It can be done, if we have a sense of human dignity and wish to be respected by other nations. It is high time that Africa to reject the old stereotype of seeing whites as the only violators of human rights! Africa in the image of the Mugabes, demonstrates she can out-Hitler Hitler, when she means to.

African underdogs and sympathisers, must not be on-lookers, by condoning what their brother-leaders are doing. They have an obligation and power to stand up and organise to repel the ruling collaborator-clique, in the same way they stood shoulder to shoulder, to expel foreign colonisers. They should go farther if needs be, to invite outside solidarity and support from all who can lend it. We have done it against white tyrants, nothing is wrong in doing it against black tyrants. Mugabe's problems are not orchestrated by Bush and Blair, as he is fond of moping. They are a product of his psychotic mind. His brother-leaders seem to be enchanted by his self-indulgent harangue of the twosome!

Mugabe's Gukurahundi killed more than 20,000 fellow-Zimbabweans in the mid-eighties, the 2000 'free and fair' elections saw intimidation, harassment, cheating, disappearance and killing of many members of the opposition MDC; then followed Murambatsvina, the black-fanged beast with a sweet-sounding name. Kofi Annan's lady emissary's report about this creature, was unflattering, but poor Annan could not take it a step farther.
He was spurned and denied a personal visit. The concession by Mugabe to meet him at the AU summit was a ploy. The protective steel ring of cohorts closed around Mugabe to make him inaccessible, in the labyrinth of corridors of intrigue and infamy of African silent diplomacy.

Why is Africa indifferent to the woes of Zimbabweans and so protective to Mugabe's wily sovereign claims? It is Zimbabweans who are sovereign; Mugabe is a usurper!