The Sunday News
Up to this day very few African minds have come close to the poignant way in which, in 1972, Walter Rodney described ‘how’ through conquest, colonisation and enslavement ‘Europe underdeveloped Africa.” In other words Rodney graphically described the African “colonial wound” in its width and depth.
The continent was found by conquerors ‘undeveloped’ compared to other continents and the conquerors under the pretext of civilising and modernising the continent went on to ‘underdevelop’ it by dominating the people, displacing them, dispossessing them of their resources, and siphoning the resources to enrich Europe. African historians, politicial scientists and other scholars in the 1950s and 1960s described that condition of Africa as a condition of ‘dependency.’
The dependency theorists opined that Africa needed independence and used nationalist, Pan-Africanist and Marxist ideologies to push for the independence of Africa from colonialism and its cousin brother, imperialism. Experiences of Africans in the present show that the dream of African independence from colonialism has turned into a true nightmare where here and there some Africans can in the light of day ventilate such views as that maybe life was much better under apartheid and colonialism.
Colonialism worked and works that way; it seeks to convince the colonised that it is good for them and some colonised, during and after colonialism, hold dear the belief that after all is said and done colonialism is good or was good. It is in that way that colonialism works exactly like witchcraft that seeks to convince its victims that it is the true way of things and they should resign to their fate of bewitchment.
Africa: The risk society with Covid-19, conflicts
In attempting to engage with the idea of risk societies in the world one must begin by the observation that the Covid-19 pandemic has just turned the world into a huge risk society where life is precarious and existence itself fragile.
Pandemic conditions as conditions of risk, fear and death, however, have always been part of the African condition since conquest. Thanks to the African condition of inequality compared to the rest of the world the Covid-19 pandemic will remain around for a long time as an African problem, when the rest of the world is done with it.
The idea of ‘risk society’ was generated by the sociologists Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens in reference to a wide spectrum of threats to world society that included the ecological crisis, increasing poverty, social unrest and conflict.
One can convincingly claim that risk in that sense is perhaps the second name of the continent of Africa. Poverty alone threatens to totally engulf and overcome the continent of Africa where the rich are obscenely rich and the poor are poor to the point of misery.
In their issue of January to March 2020, Africa in Fact, the Journal of Good Governance Africa (GGA) reported in a number of articles that illegal guns and other weapons that emanate from different conflict zones of the world in Asia, the Middle East and in the West end up finding their place in Africa, illicitly.
These illicit guns get used in the many African conflicts that are causing death, poverty, misery, risk and uncertainty. This happens as in 2013; leaders of the African continent vowed “not to bequeath the burden of conflict to the next generation of Africans.”
This vow was accompanied by another continental political slogan to: “Silence the Guns in Africa by 2020.” But guns are becoming even more louder as 2020 has passed and conflicts continue to multiply in Africa. Armed criminal activity is increasingly getting normalised in most African countries which puts ordinary Africans at risk of violence and the threat of it at any moment.
The scourge of terrorism and the war against it which used to be a problem that Africans heard of in Western countries, the Middle East and other faraway places is now another one of African pandemics that are growing rather alarmingly. Starting from West Africa and now in Southern Africa, especially Mozambique, terrorism and the war against it are finding residence in Africa.
It is a legitimate fear and concern that in the few coming decades, Africa might be the home of terrorism and the many wars against it. The fact that terrorists recruit easily amongst the poor and the angry of the world makes Africa a dangerous and risk catchment area for terrorist activities.
As terrorism grows teeth in the continent African economies are also getting suffocated under the weight of multiple troubles that include money laundering and other illicit money flows out of the continent. The United Nations estimates that every year Africa loses close to Hundred Billion to illicit money flows that are driven by activities in the black market and outside mainstream economies that are supposed to take care of the needy Africans.
Corrupt and criminal syndicates working with corrupt African politicians are milking the continent dry, siphoning money to off show accounts while ordinary Africans perish of poverty, disease and malnutrition. It is not an exaggeration that some corrupt African politicians and their business friends and accomplices have become richer than their countries.
The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo still have bleeding memories of how Joseph Mobutu, who had become richer than the country, would occasionally make “generous donations” to the national budget and expect praises for the gesture.
As in the days of colonialism when settler colonialists monopolised the wealth of African countries and siphoned resources back to Europe and other metropoles corrupt and powerful Africans are bleeding African countries dry, starving the populations, while they build stashes of cash and havens of assets overseas.
The colonial and racist myth that Africans do not think and are not good for themselves grows when Africans normalise corruption and naturalise greed. That Africans have not produced a vaccine of their own against the Covid-19 pandemic is taken by some cynics as a sign of the scarcity of thought and knowledge in the continent. There has been, in Africa, no adequate investment in scientific research for scientific and medical discoveries and inventions to insulate the population from disease.
And this as the continent has enough resources to fund life giving scientific research and innovation. The resources continue to be monopolised by a minority of economic and political elites in the continent that work with criminal syndicates outside the continent. More intellectual and economic will, by Africans and their leaders, is needed to recover the continent from the abyss and restore it to the Pax Africana moment that remains a smokey dream.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes KwaMabusabesala village in Siyabuswa, Mpumalanga, South Africa.
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