The Sunday News
Decoloniality at large with Cetshwayo Mabhena
African scholars have written much on the national question in Africa. The national question being the political equation that African countries need to solve in building their nations. Nation building involves the daunting task of getting different ethnicities within one country to unite under one flag and sing one national anthem while pursuing a common national political and economic future. This being done with the will, consent and happiness of the people that are not coerced. Most African countries managed to build nations but did not go on to produce nationals for the nations. Africans remained divided on ethnic grounds and the divisions manifest themselves when it comes to the sharing of national resources, life opportunities and power in African countries. Most elections in African countries become ethnic censuses where people follow and vote leaders on ethnic and tribal grounds. A nation has not been built when people still see ethnicity as political merit and not the competence of a specific political candidate.
Largely, ethnic divisions in Africa were politicised by the colonialists in their divide and rule stratagems. What the British did with the one tribe in Uganda is a telling example. In pursuit of indirect rule, the British promoted that tribe into a superior tribe that ruled over other tribes, monopolised land, life opportunities, political power at the expense of other identity groups in Uganda. The tragedy about ethnic politics and divisions in Africa is that many decades after the colonialists retreated and changed the colonial systems of domination and control, Africans are still divided along the lines that colonialists designed for them. In other words, African countries have not decolonised their nations.
They have not produced nationals for their nations. Africans still walk around their countries as this and that tribe and not as part of the nation. This disunity and the divisions within countries has made the African continent itself a fragile continent made of countries that are divided inside themselves and are divided amongst each other as African countries.
A divided African continent that is made out of countries that have divided national populations has become a really small place within the world system. Africa is a political and economic weakling within the world system because African countries are not united and are divided within themselves. Weakness and powerlessness have made Africa a push-over in the world interstate system where political and economic stamina matters most. The grand dream of a United States of Africa evaporated and left a fragile continent of precarious countries that have no voice in the world system where voice is most important.
Isolate and rule
Lines are drawn between the United States of America and the Republic of South Africa. The contentious matter is that South Africa is suspected to have supplied some weapons to the Russian Federation that is engaged in a war with Ukraine. Ukraine is receiving the USA and NATO support in its war against Russia. The USA, through its ambassador to South Africa claims to have concrete evidence that South Africa violated its pledge of neutrality to take a side with Russia in its war with Ukraine.
The US threatens sanctions and withdrawal of trade concessions that have been extended to South Africa. South Africa denies sending weapons to Russia and pledges to investigate the matter in case a private company in South Africa did actually send weapons and armaments to Russia. As this happens other African countries watch from a safe distance. Isolated, South Africa is weak in its engagement with the USA that has the power to suffocate the country economically and politically.
Diplomatic efforts are afoot on the one hand to calm the angry superpower and save South Africa the punishment. On the other hand, South Africa is pushing other manoeuvres to keep its economic, economic and military relationship with Russia that is a fellow member of the BRICS collective of countries, China, Russia, India and Brazil. It is a question to ask why an African country should go through so much trouble to freely exist and circulate in the world system. Why should African countries live to appease superpowers and bullies that use their ill-gotten power to exploit and punish other countries.
South Africa has been isolated for threats and punishment while other countries watch haplessly. To isolate and to rule is what powerful countries do to Africa countries. African countries, if they were liberated, should be able to enjoy multipolar relations in the world where the continent can relate with any country of its choice without having to fear economic and political consequences. Multipolarity in the world system is a treasured African political and economic desire. An Africa that is a sphere of influence of this or that superpower is a colonial object that should come to and end.
The fragility of non-alignment
For many decades African countries have been demanding that the United Nations Security Council be reformed to accommodate Africa more equitably. These demands have been ignored. The will of permanent Security Council members systematically gets imposed on African countries that are pathetic tokens with the UN system.
In 1961, some Asian and some African countries came together to found the Non-Aligned Movement seeking to advance the interests of developing countries in the context of the Cold War. The movement was central in the decolonisation projects of the Global South but suffered its own limits that brought its potency to a compromise.
The first limit is that member countries were not equally committed to the movement. There was distrust and divisions amongst member countries that had differences of their own in geopolitical terms. There has always been a scarcity of the kind of charismatic leaders that founded the movement. Leaders like Nehru, Tito and Nasser have not been easy to come in the Global South. The countries are economically and militarily powerless, hence their lack of full ability to ignore superpowers and their demands. Economic and military dependence on some powerful countries has limited the voice of countries of the Global South that remain exploitable and punishable. What the countries of the Global South need most is to forge strong economic unity and interdependence among themselves. The economic interdependence should lead to political interdependence that will allow the countries to negotiate with the West and the East in one voice. Over and above other strategies, countries of the Global South should build their nations with internal unity of their populations. To ask for a united Global South, and a United States of Africa, before a country has achieved unity of its different ethnic groups is to demand to fly before we have even cycled. A united Africa, and a united Global South might actually use their unity and strength to bring the unipolar world to an end and usher in the much-desired multipolar world.
ν Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from Gezina, Pretoria, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected]
