Black Africans and Fear: The Fear of Fear is the Beginning of Wisdom in the Sub-Sands.

A black African newborn is probably one of the most courageous human beings in the world. He has overcome all the possible odds in his nine months of uterine life to see the light of the day. Even the process of his birth is a major feat that if transposed on any adult-life challenge, will require the most courageous adult to surmount the odds and live to tell the story. The newborn is born with in-built survival mechanisms. Having overcome all the odds of intra-uterine life and the perilous process of his birth, he comes into the world, endowed with an innate ability to overcome fears and to surmount the comparatively less challenging odds of life. However, his instinct to survive and live well soon becomes captive of the acquired fears of his environment. The family and the society teach him that the fear of fear is the beginning of wisdom. He is immediately constrained by family and community taboos, founded on their fear of the known and the unknown. He inherits, and is soon held captive by internally generated fears which include cultural fears, fear of the environment and the elements, religious fears, institutional fears, distrust and fear of others, and to this list, he learns to add his own individual fears. Paradoxically, the only thing that he is taught not to fear is time; the only thing that really puts his existence at peril. He soon learns that a village hill is “sacred” and cannot be climbed because of “evil spirits” on top of the hill; or that a river passing at the edge of the village must be worshipped and sacrifices must be made to appease it in order to continue to flow or not to flood the village. The list of fear induced-taboos is endless, and a fearless child soon becomes a captive of fear like his forerunners. These fear-induced taboos define the philosophy of life of the community. Courage is redefined within the limits of community-imposed taboos and is premised only on ensuring basic survival. The community (deliberately or unconsciously) does not recognise, or chooses to ignore the rights of the individual to challenge these taboos, a feat that may improve the quality of his life and by proxy bring positive changes to the community. The community sets the limits of challenge and courage, and its members are obliged to conform.
Sometimes, these fears are not unfounded. In some instances, they are predicated on lived experience, and in other cases, a small group of people introduced these fears as community-control tools in order to protect the interests of the group. However, whatever may be the origin of these fears, they become sacrosanct with time, and constitute a way of life of the community in the name of culture and tradition. Any member of the community that challenges the “sacredness” of these fears either is considered “mad” or becomes an untouchable outcast. In certain cases, sentences of mysterious punishments and maledictions, including death (often helped by human hands) hang over anyone who attempts to demystify or challenge these fear-induced taboos. Ironically, these fear-induced taboos only apply to members of the society of origin; it does not apply to foreigners who for one reason or the other have come to temporarily reside in this society. It is not an uncommon sight in Africa that so-called strict all-male cults from which the local women are excluded at the pain of death are rolled out as “cultural activities” to visiting women from other cultures. Moreover, there is no cult too important or so sacred that the African will not roll out to foreign journalists and visitors irrespective of their sex. These internally generated fears and their taboo appendages only serve to repress creative challenges that can improve the quality of life of the local people. Rather than evolve to match the exigencies of the fast-changing world, these fears are caste in iron. The power-cabal among the Africans, afraid of losing their hold on the people, keeps the centuries-old flame of fear alive among the people. It is interesting to note that western education has no influence whatsoever on this kind of self-induced phobia. Many Black Africans living outside the shores of Africa make annual trips back to their villages of origin to “celebrate” these fears. And many that live in other parts (away from “home”, even if less than a hundred kilometres) of the geographical entity called their “country” also make the annual trip back home to reaffirm their commitments to stay within the limits of age-old fears. This is not an attempt to discredit or demystify peoples’ cultures and traditions. All human beings have the right to develop and keep their culture, but when any culture or tradition fails to evolve and visibly handicaps the development of the people, then, it should come under question. Fear and its taboo mate kill creative mind-liberating curiosity and inhibit the natural human instinct to invent ways to overcome adversity. A fear-afflicted society lives with “what” and its consequences; fear (and the continuous reengineering of it by certain interest groups) does not permit, and in many cases forbids the members of the society to ask “why” and “how”.
Internally generated fears, as already argued become venerated taboos. An example of this kind of fear-induced taboo is found in a still-existing chiefdom in a mountainous African country. The chiefs whose homes or palaces are situated on top of the mountains are forbidden by tradition to descend the mountain. They cannot visit their subjects that live in the valleys and on the plains. According to “tradition”, any chief that flouts this tradition will die. Everyone believed and still believes without asking questions. Why would a king, a mortal like any of his subjects die if he came down from his mountain home? What will kill him? A supernatural cause or a man-assisted “supernatural” cause? The “what” and its consequence became the tradition and no one ever bothered to ask “why” or “how”. The system of governance (and any development it could have brought about) was hampered by this taboo for centuries. It was eventually found out that the people living on top of the mountains, including the chief himself had no exposure-induced natural immunity to malaria because there were no mosquitoes, hence malaria at the altitude where they lived. Thus, if they came down to the plains, which had many mosquitoes and caught malaria, the course of the disease was more fulminant than in the inhabitants of the plains and invariably ended in death of the victim. Someone else deciphered the “why”. In spite of this knowledge, and the availability of malarial prophylaxis, people still hold on dearly to this “tradition”.
The other group of fears, into which the African child is born, has its roots in the collective experience of Africans in their relationship with the outside world. This group of fears self-multiplies and self-sustains. Both the local power-cabal and their people are at the mercy of these fears. This group of externally generated fears includes the elements, diseases (like malaria), pernicious exploitation (including slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism) by people from other cultures and imported religions. These fears are characterised by their uncanny ability to self-propagate exponentially in a society already weakened by its internally generated fears. As is the case with fear-induced taboos, the “what” and the consequences of these fears are the only considered factors. The people, heavily burdened by their own internally generated fears do not even have the energy to question the “why” and “how” of the externally induced fears. It is impossible to produce a response to overcome any source of fear if the “how” and “why” are not put under scrutiny. The African society has suffered and continues to suffer from this error. Sub-Sahara Africa has paid and continues to pay dearly with the lives of its citizens, its resources, and will possibly pay with its future for this oversight.
The obsession with “what” and a complete disregard of “why” and “how” in the face of adversity can be illustrated with events that occurred during the three-hundred years of transatlantic slavery to which sub-Sahara Africa was subjected. We will look at one of the methods by which people were caught and sold off, and we will analyse the reaction of the African society to this method. One favourite method of slave catchers was to set fire to the thatched houses in the village under siege. People rushed out of their houses and were rounded up by the slave catchers, bound in chains, and matched to the coast to be sold to their European clients. In some instances, the slave catchers painted themselves in chalk to acquire grotesque appearance, which served to immobilise (with fear!) those who had rushed out of their burning huts and to facilitate rounding them up. This method, among others was used for nearly three hundred years. In a society not imbued with fear, one would expect that the people would take measures to construct not-easily-flammable houses; that they would direct their mental and natural resources at inventing counter-measures. If this had happened, maybe less people would have lost their lives and maybe less people would have been taken away in slavery, or maybe the period would have been much shorter. This however did not happen. The same thatched houses or mud houses with thatched roofs that facilitated the work of the slavers still litter the African landscape until today. Some may want to argue that the African way of building is premised on the climate and that the African is an outdoors person. They may further argue that this form of building is environment-friendly. This argument is not only devoid of any logic in the face of the damage that this form of habitation caused in terms of slavery, but it is also a futile exercise to justify the unjustifiable. It reeks of a condescending attempt to condone complacency in the face of adversity and does not in anyway do justice to the effort to challenge Africa to rise up to redeem itself. The apologists of this line of thought will concur that, even today, in many of these villages, one can find some brick and mortar houses. The question that a true African should ask is why did it take so long for these houses to begin to appear on the African landscape? Moreover, why were Africans, who faced serious adversity because of the nature of their houses, not the avant-gardes of house construction revolution with the immense natural resources at their disposal? Some Africanists will argue that Mali was at the forefront of building revolution in Africa, and that the multi-storey mud houses in Timbuktu attest to this. This argument merits to be analysed in the face of the fact that on transposing this period of Mali Empire on contemporary Africa, one discovers a stunning parallel. It is a historical fact that some houses in Mali Empire were made of mud and straw. Timbuktu was famous for this; it was the capital. Outside Timbuktu, people lived in thatched houses, at the mercy of the elements and slavers. The same is the case in most of contemporary African societies today. Contemporary African governments go the extra mile to build “befitting capitals”. Multi-million dollar high-rise buildings, expensive villas, beautiful tarred roads, many-star hotels, cafès, highbrow restaurants, and many self-deluding white elephant structures fashioned after their metropole make up the city centre. On travelling a few miles out of the city, one finds that a large part of the population still lives in the same conditions as their ancestors did many centuries ago. Thus, it is logical to pose the question that when one talks of Africa, (either as an Africanist or an external observer committed to Africa), to which Africa and to what Africans should we make reference? There is no doubt that we should source our reference in the teeming population of the fear-imbued oppressed people and not in the myopic political bourgeoisie either in Timbuktu or in any contemporary African capital. Herein lies the source of conflict between a western-educated African and the external observer; the educated African seeks and finds his reference in the landmarks of the circumscribed surreal environment of the African bourgeoisie, while the external observer looks at the same society at large and draws his mental image of Africa. Irrespective of whatever arguments or excuses employed by different interest groups, the fact remains that there are no documented concerted efforts to review the nature of houses people lived in, in order to thwart the arson tactics of slavers.
Following three hundred years of slavery-induced fears and consequences, the continent was subjected to colonialism for another hundred years. Colonialism did not only aggressively introduce a new set of fears into the society; it also actively sought to perpetuate this fear through a gradual mental re-engineering of the colonised peoples. It created the fear of unity in sub-Sahara Africa in order to facilitate neo-colonialism, the next phase, or next package of fears for Africans. Kwame Nkrumah, at the founding conference of the Organisation of African Unity in May 1963 warned the African leaders of the dangers of creating favourable environment for a new generation of fears. He called on Africans to “unite or to perish”. He, passionately, and with vision called on his colleagues to overcome the fear of unity. No one listened; if they did, their individual fears and externally-induced fears had gained so much ground in their minds that they could not see the “why” and “how” and the consequences of fear which Kwame Nkrumah graphically painted to them. In the Accra summit of 1965, Nkrumah again repeated his call and as he did in 1963, gave a blueprint on the advantages of overcoming the fear of unity. No one heeded him.
An important fear that evolved in the course of the contact of the African with the foreigner and his consequent mental reengineering is the fear of truth. We live in the age of fear of truth, where a truth-activist is a pariah, an undesirable element. A good example of the fear of truth was the reaction or inaction of the founding fathers of Africa to Kwame Nkrumah’s warning on the dangers of balkanised (along colonial lines) Africa. The late Julius Nyerere on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the “independence” of Ghana in March 1997, confirmed that it was fear (nurtured by a large majority of leaders present in Addis Abeba in 1963) that neutralised Nkrumah’s vision. In his speech, he said “ ..Kwame Nkrumah underestimated the degree of suspicion and animosity which his crusading passion had created among a substantial number of his fellow heads of state.., the fear of a number of us to lose our precious status was quite palpable[i]”.
It is no over-statement that sub-Sahara Africa is now in the clutches of neo-colonialism-induced fears, as was foreseen by Kwame Nkrumah. In his speech in 1963 in Addis, he said, “We must unite...or perish”. This is an impending prophesy – Africa failed to unite in 1963 and 1965, and the imminence of the consequence of this historical failure was not lost on Kwame Nkrumah who shared it with his fellow presidents.
Africa has undergone three phases of externally induced fears (slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism) and failed to learn anything from the experience. If we apply the theory of Human Energy Pole (HEP) to the future of Africa, then it is evident that the next phase is probably the extinction of sub-Sahara Africa (Kwame Nkrumah’s prophesy of perishing). This does not necessarily mean the extinction of the black race. The disappearance of sub-Sahara African peoples will come in form of their dispersion, their displacement (from Africa) and their scattering as small politically unimportant minorities among other cultures even here on African soil. And the process has already innocuously begun! The future depopulation of Sub-Sahara Africa in some years to come has become, albeit unwittingly, a favourite “discovery” by “experts” from all the corners of the world except from Africa. In different ways, and using different forms, they announce the imminent demise of Sub-Sahara Africans. For example, climatologists claim that Africa will be at the severe receiving end of global warming, not only because of the effect of this phenomenon on agricultural outputs, but also because of exponential increase in number of cases of infectious diseases like Malaria, HIV/AIDS, and Tuberculosis. Experts in infectious diseases yearly publish astronomical figures of Black Africans who have died the previous year, or who will die in the coming year from a wide range of diseases. When all these “expert” predictions and declarations are put together and added on to the senseless wars and killings that happen on the African soil, it becomes apparent that a severe depopulation of Africa is already underway, and we are simply not aware of it.
It is paradoxical that under the heavy and highly-mediatised apocalyptic disease burden and violent deaths in Africa, another group of “experts” claims that the population figures of Africa are on the increase! “Experts” many a time are too highly absorbed with their “areas of specialisation” and with themselves to know what “experts” in other fields, even located next door to them are saying. They treat their “facts” as if they were unrelated and as if they were referring to different groups of peoples. No one bothers to put these facts together to deduce the real aggregate effects of these “facts” on Sub-Sahara Africans. This deliberate or negligent gap in information management and knowledge chain plays into the hands of the political elite, who prefers to choose and use (more favourable for their purposes) data. The import of their criminal negligence of the present on the future generations of Africans is lost on the political elite. Rather than tackle this problem with vision, self-serving African political elite’s vision is limited to self-enrichment and perpetuating themselves in power. Besides the glamour of having the power and wielding it to cower dissenting voices, the African political elite has not shown any signs of a carefully thought-out and focused commitment to reverse the dire fortunes of the black race. Padded census figures are not only useful tools for corruption, but also serve to demand aid and debts from their “international community friends”.
Kwame Nkrumah said it and it is beginning to happen without Africans giving a thought to it. Contrary to the misconceived expectation of a cataclysmic event, the process of depopulation and subsequent reduction to politically unimportant minorities that failed to happen during three hundred years of slavery and more than a hundred years of colonisation has begun insidiously. The process is gaining steam under the malicious marginalisation of Africans from the human mainstream (except as a reminding sample of what not to aspire to be).
Ironically, while the African is a willing and compliant depository of all imaginable fears that threaten his existence, the only thing that he does not fear (and which puts his survival in great danger) is time. Many scholars and non-scholars have studied and written numerous papers and books on the African concept of time. In ignorance, Africans themselves proudly refer to their self-destructive positioning within the universal space and time that define the existence of our universe as “African time”. It is absurd that the African deliberately disregards the only thing that will cost him dearly in the fast-changing world. Rather than admonish the African peoples of this counter-productive and self-destructive mental attitude, African intellectuals write “academic papers” on the African concept of time and go to great lengths to justify the African perception of his position in space and time. This is defending the un-defendable. Africans, to whom time has been cruel in their history, and are, therefore lagging behind the rest of the world, cannot afford to play with time. Neither can they afford to continue to romanticise time concepts that have become completely obsolete in the fast changing world. If Africa wants to catch up with the rest of the world, then, it has to change its attitude to time. As a matter of survival, Africans at this period of their history need to place more value on time than any other culture in the world.
[i] Julius Nyerere – “Without unity, there is no future for
Africa” – New African, February 2006.

A CALL TO LEADERSHIP: The role of Africans in the Development Agenda by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane WITH MY COMMENTS

A CALL TO LEADERSHIP: The role of Africans in the Development Agenda
Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture: 30 November 2006 Shepstone 1, Howard College CampusUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal .
By Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, Archbishop of Cape Town, Founder and President – African Monitor
With my Comments in indigo font

It is a great privilege and distinctive honour that I have been invited to deliver an address on “A call to leadership : the role of Africans in the development Agenda’ – a subject I feel very passionate about. As weall know, Africa is a great continent. It is the cradle of humanity. Africa is a continent of opportunity that has very rich mineral wealth. Africans are the most hopeful people in the world. Yet millions of her people go hungry every day; millions die each year because of diseases that are preventable. One often asks the question why. So many factors have colluded that have had an adverse effect to Africa’s growth and development. Chief among them was colonialism……a) Colonial ruleColonialism with its legacy of slavery, economic expropriation and racially divisive tendencies. We know that colonial rule and its legacy in the continent was more devastating than some of the worst natural disasters such as famine, floods, etc. We do not need rocket scientists to tell us that colonial rule in Africa was particularly focused on exploiting and extracting the continent's natural resources. Infrastructure was built to exploit and extract copper, timber, oil, gold, etc from the continent. It is partly because of this system ofextraction and exploitation that infrastructure in the continent is severely limited and unable to contribute to equitable development that benefits all. I will not spend time going into Gallagher and Robinson’s (1953) argument that beyond economic exploitation and political domination, colonialism was also about humanitarianism. To argue that is to argue that the husband who beats up his wife daily is doing it forher sake. It is a fallacy, at best. In fact, studies such as those done by Bertochi and Genova (1996), and Young (1994) prove that Africa’s development crises can be directly traced to European colonial rule. Butwe all know this, ladies and gentlemen. This is why we stand proud to remember people like Nkwameh Nkrumah of Ghana, Seako Toure of Guinea, Namdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Patrice Lumumba of The Congo, to mention a few, who ushered in the era of independence in the 1960s.b) IndependenceFollowing colonial rule came independence, which marked an important historical milestone in the development and growth of Africa. It symbolized the awakening of the continent and its people to fight forwhat was theirs, and claim back ownership of their destinies. As Wordsworth, referring to the Renaissance period, wrote: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was the very heaven’. In its editorial on the 4th January 1960, the Rand Daily Mail wrote: ‘The sixties opened in an atmosphere of expectations, of heightened awareness of pending change. In a few years’ time Africans will be governing the greater part of the African Continent. This will be a decade of great change for the world and for Africa. Can we in SouthAfrica hope to escape the implications?’ The winds of change to which the British Prime Minister, HaroldMacmillan, referred in his speech to the South African Parliament in 1960 finally reached South Africa more than 30 years later. During this era, we can still see in the history books remnants of the tendency for others to speak on behalf of Africans about Africa and its development. In this category, I want to distinguish three role players.

The notion of independence of African states is an illusion. Africans have been deluded into thinking that by fighting and later negotiating for independence, they have truly become independent. There is an economic school of thought that claims that following the economic and human losses incurred by the colonialists at the beginning of independence struggles, the colonialists had a quiet rethink based on economic benefits of granting or not granting “independence” to African states. And BINGO: the smart think-tank boys came up with the theory that colonialists would gain more economically by giving “independence” to African states, but maintaining a strangle-hold on them. They argued that Africans themselves would open the doors for huge economic profits to their erstwhile colonisers. And are they not right? Two examples:
In exchange for independence after a failed effort of Charles De Gaulle (5th republic) the French made its former colonies sign agreements that France has first priority over existing and undiscovered-yet resources in these countries, and also that French companies have first priority for all public businesses in these countries. No one ever talked about it until Laurent Gbagbo came to power and decided to not to go along with this “Independence agreement.” And see, the French (like they did for Sekou Toure of Guinea, and the British did for Kwame Nkrumah) are taking the rug off his feet. Everyone says everything about the problem in Cote d’Ivoire except the root problem.

Further on the economic benefit of granting independence to African states, I will cite a recent example:
Britain took away far more money from sub-Saharan Africa than it gave in aid and debt relief last year, despite pledges to help the region, the charity, Christian Aid claimed in a report. In all, it took away £27 billion from Africa. In the 12 months since an annual Group of Eight (G8) summit in Scotland last July, the British economy gained a net profit of more than £11 billion ($20.3 billion) from the region, Christian Aid said. The charity calculated that almost £17 billion flowed from Britain to sub-Saharan Africa in the past year, including donations, remittances from salaries earned by Africans in Britain and foreign direct investment. At the same time, more than £27 billion went in the opposite direction, thanks to debt repayments, profits made by British companies in Africa and imports of British goods and capital flight.

This is about financial capital flight. Do you think Britain ever made so much from Africa during colonial rule? No, when one takes into consideration the costs of running overseas administrative offices, problems with the locals etc.
And this:
Christian Aid estimates that Africa has lost $272 billion in the past 20 years from being forced to promote trade liberalisation as the price for receiving World Bank loans and debt relief.
And Human Capital flight? Here is an example that I cited in my most recent book “In the Embrace of Fear” –
It is claimed that in the US alone, “African immigrants are the highest educated class in the range of all immigrants….there are over 640’000 African professionals in the US; over 360’000 of them hold PhDs; 120’000 of them (from Nigeria, Ghana, Sudan and Uganda) are medical doctors. The rest are professionals in various fields – from the head of research for the US Space Agency, NASA, to the highest paid material science professors…..”
Now, didn’t the smart boys who drummed up the whole idea get it right?

Poor African leaders (with the exception of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Patrice Lumumba and Samora Machel), drunk on their “independence” did not see through this ruse and forge alliances not only to undo this plan, but also to create solid foundations for African development. They played into the hands of their former oppressors as was foreseen by the smart think-tankers. (see their OAU charter of 1963).

Firstly we see the former colonial powers garnering together in attempts presumably to fix their mistakes and assist in the regeneration of their former colonies.

Fix their mistakes? I beg to disagree. Hear Mark Curtis in The Guardian (September 2005):
“The G8 agreed to increase aid from rich countries by $48 billion a year by 2010. When Tony Blair announced this to parliament, he said that "in addition... we agreed to cancel 100 per cent of the multilateral debts" of the most indebted countries. He also stated that aid would come with no conditions attached. These were big claims, all of which can now be shown to be false.
First, in recent evidence to the Treasury committee, Gordon Brown made the astonishing admission that the aid increase includes money put aside for debt relief. So the funds rich countries devote to writing off poor countries' debts will be counted as aid……. Blair's assertion that aid will come with no conditions is contradicted by Hilary Benn, his development secretary, who told a parliamentary committee on July 19 that "around half" of World Bank aid programmes have privatisation conditions. Recent research by the NGO network Eurodad shows that conditions attached to World Bank aid are rising. Benin, for example, now has to meet 130 conditions to qualify for aid, compared with 58 in the previous agreement.. ….. Yet in the G8 press conference Blair refuted the suggestion that privatisation would be a condition for aid.”

What the good archbishop has misconstrued as “fixing their mistakes” is another ruse. It is a mopping-up operation of all the assets that accidentally got in the hands of the so-called independent African states during “independence” and those that they managed to acquire with the sweat and blood of the common man post-“independence” . After burying poor Africans in deep holes of debt and taking away the ladder, the so-called good Samaritans now hide behind the curtain of “Aid” to completely disendow and disenfranchise the African. It is a classical case of social darwinization strategy, in which Africans will be (and are being) led by the nose to the bottom of humanity ladder and encouraged to stay there…..maybe forever.

If we continue to use the metaphor of a battered wife – I dislike this metaphor. I tend to think that metaphors and analogies are a reflection of the subconscious. The good archbishop should have found a better example to use.

imagine her lying in bed with broken ribs and bleeding wounds while the same inflictor of pain nurses her back to health! In all fairness, one would have to be careful not to dismiss completely the efforts of thecolonial power’s post colonial rule, as some good came out of it. However, it is necessary to look retrospectively with a critical eye and acknowledge that there were instances where we should have simply cut all ties in order to prevent further exploitation and continued dependence, and claim back our dignity.

I advise the archbishop to read the OAU charter, Kwame Nkrumah’s call for African unity. It was African leaders under the tutelage of the colonizers who undermined all efforts at claiming back any dignity.

The second category of role players during independence, speaking on behalf of Africans about Africa, was the international community, represented by multilateral institutions. The incredible effort put behind pushing a structural adjustment agenda that further diminished the capacity of African countries to grow and develop is astounding, even today. Again in this instance, Africans listened to others telling them what was good for their own economies. Many have argued this to be expanded exploitation and imperialism.The last set of role players who determined to speak on behalf of Africans is a curious group. They are the number of Africans who rose up at the time of independence to lead their people astray and exploit resources for personal economic gain. Our mistake was to assume that because they were Africans, they would fight the cause of Africa. These Africans dared to speak from a point of legitimacy, when in fact they were no different from the exploiters of the colonial legacy who had nothing but greed in their hearts.

All African leaders (with the exception of Kwame Nkrumah, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara, Sekou Toure before his demonisation by the French, and Patrice Lumumba) stand guilty here. From Mansa Kan Kan Mussa of the ancient Mali Empire to Joseph Kabila, the most recently “elected” African president. The history of Africa is a history of betrayal by its leaders – from the first contact with the Arabs in 8th century through 2006 AD. Judas’ descendants probably migrated south of the sands. Among many other things, these leaders stand guilty of the following charges:
- they are photographic negatives of the colonisers.
- their interest was and is to occupy the seats vacated by the colonisers
- they have criminally kept intact all the oppressive institutions of the colonisers
- they use the same or similar oppressive laws inherited from the colonisers to govern
- they continue with oppression of the masses as the colonisers did.
- they behave themselves as the colonisers before them did.
- they have no other reference of behaviour or governance except what they learnt from the colonisers.

The other set of factors that has contributed to the stagnation of growth and development in our continent is coups d’etat, civil wars, dictatorships and interstate wars. Moeletsi Mbeki puts it this way: ‘…violent political conflicts accelerated the flight of skills and capital, fuelling the downward spiral in the quantity and quality ofsocial services provided in most African countries.’To illustrate his point, Mbeki makes a comparison between Ghana and Korea in his article published in the Cape Times last week. ‘In the 1950s and 1960s, Ghana was way ahead of Korea in terms of incomes and exports per capita but from the early 1970s Korea overtook Ghana and streaked ahead at such a pace that today Korea’s per capita income is 20 times Ghana’s.’Mbeki writes that the World Bank summarized this state of affairs thus: ‘Korea’s exports per capita overtook Ghana’s in 1972, and its income level surpassed Ghana’s four years later. Between 1965 and 1995, Korea’sexports increased 400 times in current dollars. Meanwhile Ghana’s increased only by four times, and real earning per capita fell to a fraction of their earlier value.’c) Development actorsIn the context of independence and democratisation during the last decades we have noticed an increasing rise in the contributions made by Africa’s development partners to Africa’s development. Hundreds ofmillions of rands have been spent in Aid to Africa again to develop the continent. And of course for years these millions were accompanied by prescriptions of where the monies could be spent, how they could bespent and over what period. Again, in these instances others continued to speak on behalf of Africans about Africa’s development.To qualify this statement, I must add that I have noticed that there is a wind of change blowing throughout the development community in recent years. There is a growing recognition that development cannot happenwithout the people who are its beneficiaries. I would even go a step further and say that development must be led by the people who will be its beneficiaries.Going back to my initial thesis then, we must ask ourselves a few difficult questions to explain why the tendency for others to speak on behalf of Africans about Africa has persisted from generation togeneration since colonial rule and slavery.
1. What has been the motivation of others to speak for us and participate so heavily in our affairs?
2. Why have we Africans allowed others to speak for us and determine our future?
3. What is the cost of letting others speak for us when we can speak for ourselves? Instead of answering these questions myself, ladies and gentlemen, I will refrain from doing so to give you an opportunity to ponder on them. I would not want to be seen to be speaking on your behalf!
I will advise the good archbishop to read “In the Embrace of Fear” – Fear as a determinant factor of underdevelopment in sub-Sahara Africa. All the answers to his questions are there.

2. Highlighting the Role Africans have played in the past.Before I go any further let me stress this point to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. My thesis is not that Africans have been sitting around while others were busy stewing and stirring the pot. I stand proudly here today as an African and name leaders who have shown us great courage, leadership, vision and action. About 40 years ago, the doyen of pan-Africanism, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, made an impassioned plea:‘Africa must unite or perish.’ This was in May 1963 when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) signed the Charter for Unity in Addis Ababa. One of the key tenets of the OAU’s Charter remains as valid today as it was then – that African countries should ‘co-ordinate and intensify their co-operation and efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa’. There were interesting debates at various forums of Africa’s leadership at the time: whether we should opt for a giant, monolithic state of Africa or a United States of Africa.

Yes, Kwame Nkrumah said it, not only in 1963 in Addis, but again in 1965 during Accra summit and what happened? No one heeded him. Julius Nyerere would 27 years later admit that they were all afraid to lose their prestigious posts and their 21-gun salutes!!!

We have to note also that there were leaders like Mangaliso Sobukwe who came to the fore in the 60s. He identified the Pass Laws as being at the heart of the oppression of the black person. With the extension of the system to women he stated that ‘it might happen to my mother, my wife, my daughter. It is a situation we cannot tolerate any longer. The white man behaves as though he were an occupying power. In order to entrench their privileges, the whites have surrounded themselves with oppressive laws. We have no obligation to obey these laws.’ Later in the 70s leaders like Bantu Biko brought a message of hope in the midnight of despair I am proud to relate stories of ordinary people in communities who have stood high above their circumstances to instigate change in their own localities. I think of the woman in a village in the Eastern Cape who takes in children whose mother is lying in bed sick with the HI Virus. Or the community that starts a poultry farm to generate income for local children to go to school.I am proud to recognize African governments who have put programmes in place and channeled resources to ensure that people on the ground benefit from development. I recognize teachers, police, professionals,young people who are passionate about this continent, and who individually and collectively make a difference by waking up every morning to do their best. I even recognize and applaud those who are notfrom the continent, but who desire the best for the continent for no personal gain. These are friends of Africa who have spent resources and their time in dialogue with the continent planning, strategising andimplementing formidable programmes.All these amazing role players have worked hard and changed the direction of development in big and/or small ways.Today however I will not focus on this breed of people, as they are on the right track to enable the continent to reach its potential.I want to open a debate and facilitate discussion about those of us who have become complacent about Africa’s development. I want to speak to the legacy that has led the whole world to think that it is acceptableto think for Africans about Africa’s development. I want to call for action that will enable all of us to stand up and speak in one voice about Africa and its development.In every place in the world to which I have traveled, I have listened to impassioned debates about what Africa needs and what is wrong with the continent. These discussions often go beyond opinion, which all of us are entitled to. There is often a tone of self-righteousness and assumed ownership and power even in instances where ordinary citizens are talking about the continent.I want to argue today that enough has been said about what the donor should and must do. Enough has been said about what multi-lateral companies should and must do. Enough has been said about internationalbig business and investments. Even I have been known to call upon these actors to act in ways that are fair and just. These calls are on target and necessary at relevant forums.But today I am talking to you, fellow Africans. I talk to you as an African, and as an advocate for development that brings improvements to the lives of the people on the ground. I want to talk about what we as Africans should and must do to fast-track development in the continent. I want to expand on what kind of African will participate effectivelyand cause progressive change in the fight against poverty; the race towards the millennium development goals; and the challenges of racism, ethnicity, war and conflict.3. The role Africans must play in Africa’s Development AgendaI do not need to expand on why we need to act, and why we need to act now. Nearly 3 billion people in the world live in abject poverty, a majority of whom are on this continent. As we speak, a number of countries are engaged in some or other form of conflict within the continent. Levels of unemployment are continuing to increase; access to primary health care, education and municipal services is minimal; and the HIV epidemic is on the rise.The time for accelerated action is now.

Yes Sir. “Between Alpha and Omega is now….”

The question then is: “What needs to be in place in order for such acceleration to happen?”(a) Collective ownership:The need for collective ownership of Africa’s development agenda cannot be over-stated. It is time for Africans to stand up with one voice and collectively think about the continent, strategize about what works and speak effectively about what does not work. The dialogue needs to take place within countries, between countries, between sub-regions andwithin continental structures. I know that for South Africans it is difficult to understand the concept of inter-dependence and dialogue with the rest of the continent. Much of that is founded on the apartheid regime that ensured that even within our country we behaved as islands.This culture must change.It is encouraging to see that our own government is an active participant within SADC, the AU and in bilateral relationships withAfrican countries. Civil society is starting to organize collectively across the continent with several campaigns such as Make Poverty History, the Global Coalition Against Poverty and the Millennium Campaign.Collective ownership of the development agenda will inject a sense of urgency in each of us about what needs to be done, and what needs to stop. It will enable us to claim back the power to change our context both as individuals and as organization. Collective ownership dismisses the notion that development is the function of governments, and puts theresponsibility for well-being on the collective shoulders of the masses, civil society (including business and the academia), as well as governments. In my book, there are three essential pillars for effective development. These are government, the private sector and the broad church of civil society.(b) Overturning the Power balanceThe current landscape of Africa’s development does not give much confidence that Africans own the power to make decisions about their own development. Theoretically, and according to good development principles, Africans should be the determinants of their own destinies. We all agree on this. However, the political and economic systems of theworld are a bit more complicated than that.With the current economic systems, countries must rely on outside investors to help their economies grow; outside donors to spend on development; an unjust trade system to acquire economic wealth. Out of these variables, which should African people choose to have decision making powers on? I cannot name all of them, but here are a few thoughts:-African people should be able to make decisions about how they will spend Aid money contributed to their own countries. They should be able to identify spending gaps, such as infrastructure for water, sanitation, roads, and channel resources to where the greatest need is. Furthermore, they should be able to control what kinds of assistance comes into the country, and say NO to undesirable types of Aid. The same should apply to forms of debt relief, or loans accepted by our governments. Africans should be able to make their own decisions about economic policies. Thelist goes on. Without wanting to suggest violence, it is necessary for African people to adopt a level of arrogance in protecting their own welfare.At the level of the grassroots, ownership means the involvement of ordinary people in policy debates and law making policies that will affect their welfare, both at a country and regional level. It means creating spaces for politicians to listen to ordinary citizens, and allowing for free flow of information to inform citizens of crucial decisions and processes.Over-turning the power balance does not mean assuming that Africa doesnot need help. It does not imply carelessness either. It means being in a position to say what type of help will be accepted, when and how. Without this sense of power, collective ownership of the development agenda will not mean anything.(c) Broad Participation and inclusivityBroad participation and inclusivity is the logical outcome of collective ownership. When people believe that they have a responsibility to do something, as well as the power to make decisions, their participation becomes almost automatic. Attempts to increase participation therefore must start at the level of shifting misconceptions and giving power tothe people as it were.It is important to mention that broad participation must include harnessing the voices of Africans to become more visible in the international development agenda. There needs to be increased visibility of efforts by Africans already existing to impact positively on development. There also needs to be a strengthening of networks and collective efforts to speak effectively. This will ensure that among the plethora of actors speaking on Africa’s development, that Africans are the dominant voice.(d) Visionary LeadershipIf ever there was a time for visionary, creative, imaginative and dynamic leadership in Africa, it is now. We need a leadership that is accountable, a leadership that is driven by a deep desire for sustainable livelihoods for all its citizens and a leadership that guarantees and upholds fundamental human rights for everyone created in God’s image.We applaud the establishment of the African Union and its subsidiary bodies whose fundamental objectives are good governance, accountability and transparency.I believe that it is urgent that there be a meeting of minds of statespersons and other opinion-formers in Africa on the need to take the aspirations of Africans further. Political leaders should be looking beyond mere bilateral or regional economic agreements, to ambitious concordats, such as that which has seen the European Union flourish.The concept of an Economic Union of African States needs urgent support backed by research to ensure that it will benefit the greatest number of people. Such a Union would co-ordinate economic activity in the continent of Africa for the general well-being of its people. It would ensure inter alia that:
• Africa would never again be marginalized, thereby becoming the begging bowl of the world;
• Africa’s resources would never again be exploited;
• Africa would not become the dumping ground for environmentally repugnant refuse, such as nuclear waste; and
• Conditions exist for attracting investment capital from all parts of the globe into the continent of Africa.4. The African Monitor – a model for Africa’s participation in the Africa’s development agenda.
Let me spend a few minutes sharing with you what I think is a good model for increasing participation of Africans in Africa’s development.The African Monitor is an independent continental body set up to act as a catalyst to monitor development funding commitments, delivery and impact on the grassroots, and to bring strong additional African voices to the development agenda.Its premise is that Africans must speak for themselves and become more visible in the international development agenda. It believes that increased capacity of Africans – especially at grassroots level – to monitor development implementation will be an effective way of increasing collective ownership, power and participation of Africans intheir own development.o The African Monitor aims to systematically monitor development promises, by looking at the volume of commitments, timeliness, delivery results on the ground, quality of aid, and prioritization. Promises from both African governments and donor governments will be looked at.o It will also look at trade policies and business regulations, in order to analyze how these hinder or enhance the ability of African countries to deliver on development.o The AM will engage African governments and support their efforts to meet the MDG’s by 2015, by tracking progress, assisting in integrated policy making and facilitating increased stakeholder participation.o Also, the AM will measure the benefits of development programmes in Africa focusing on targeted sectors, in order to draw lessons from local communities about what works and what does not. The intention will be to listen to local voices and channel information through to decision makers at local, national and international level.The AM will not monitor just simply for the sake of it. It will monitor with the intention to effect change, to speed up the rate of delivery and increase the rate of effectiveness. The advocacy strategy of the AM will be spearheaded by a group of high level independent figures, drawn from the Continent and elsewhere – the Togona. Togona is a word fromMali, which means wisdom. Our ‘house of wisdom’ will be the ambassadors of African Monitor, lending their weight in support of local communities in their development aspirations and experiences. Besides Monitoring and Advocacy, the African Monitor will perform two other critical functions:-We will build networks of African voices across key stakeholder groups for stronger promotion of the development agenda at the grassroots. The intention will be to increase the dialogue between the different role players by hosting and participating in multi-stakeholder forums; as well as initiating and participating in processes that create spaces foran interface between two or more stakeholders. The AM will endeavour to create opportunities for grassroots participation as well as strengthen grassroots networks to enable such participation.The AM will also promote grassroots participation by galvanising African Voices to speak for Africa’s development. The chorus from these voices will strengthen the culture of accountability and increase transparency.These voices should complement the call for the kind of governance culture that can support a selfless approach to the utilisation of resources meant for the poor. The AM will also support communities todevelop programme monitoring skills as well as to develop the capacity to call for accountability from local authorities.The African Monitor is but one example of the kinds of initiatives Africans should be engaging with to accelerate the pace of development in the continent. Role players must be called to account on what they are doing, and its impact on the ground. Ordinary Africans are best placed to call for that accountability and ensure that what needs to happen happens.5. ConclusionI have submitted to you today that there is a need for a sense of urgency in implementing and participating in development. There is also a need to become bolder in our demand for delivery from ourselves as well as our development partners. I have argued that in that process, the grassroots have a significant role to play in the delivery through monitoring and advocacy. I hope that as we discuss we will think critically about what role we can carve out for ourselves as well as our organizations. I am sounding the alarm, calling to arms against poverty and domination to all those of you who will hear it.

Generally: A very good paper with valid proposals for moving the continent forward – contains many words from development-speak lexicon. Hear Steve Biko: the most important weapon in the hands of an oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. I say, let us begin our development by undoing the colonial legacy – the borders, the language barriers, and religions. Let our leaders get out of silly language schools of the oppressed like commonwealth, Francophonie, Lusofonia etc. LET THEM OVERCOME THEIR FEARS AND TEACH US TO OVERCOME ALL OUR FEARS TOO. WE NEED TO MOVE FROM BASIC EXISTENCE TO ESSENCE. And more importantly is a moral revolution in Africa – a need for all black Africans to have the ability to clearly distinguish evil from good (ref. African In the Mirror). When we are conscious of our responsibility to one another, then Africans will cease to become easy prey for plunderers. Paraphrasing Kwame Nkrumah: We must seek the kingdom of liberation of our minds from colonial fetters first, and all other good things will be added on thereafter.

Abimbola Lagunju,
Dakar, 5th December 2006.