Africa: Debunking the Myth of the 'White Man's Burden'
Bowden Mbanje and Darlington Mahuku 9 September 2011
opinion
The target countries for this democratisation agenda were to be found
in the South. Africa and Latin America became the easy pawns for this
new Northern project.
Ever since the de-colonisation of Africa, it has always been a Western
strategy to re-colonise the continent through Western educated African
intellectuals and the brainwashed neo-liberal university educated
indigenous black academics. A full dosage of neo-liberal principles of
good governance and advancement of human rights did the trick.
It was in the late eighties and early nineties that most African
universities were given millions of dollars in grants to carry out
research based on Western political and economic thought. This funding
was approved by African nationalist governments as they wanted to gain
Northern trust and to be given aid. The Western democratic cancer
began to infect the nationalist marrow of pan-Africanism from the
1990s onwards.
Research based on pan-Africanist scholars such as Amilcar Cabral,
Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah and many others gathered dust in library
archive sections.
Western intellectuals who included university professors and doctors
(on sabbatical leave) were sent to many an African university to
preach the gospel of democracy and human rights. Amongst this coterie
of Western neo-liberal prophets of democracy were lawyers, economists,
political scientists and culturists.
The agenda was to recolonise Africa through a more sinister and subtle
way which was based on false intellectual generosity. The liberation
struggle was discarded as a true avenue that had brought about the
rights of the oppressed and repressed African populace. Instead human
rights groups led by lawyers and bogus human rights activists were
preferred as the genuine liberators of the people - women, girls gays
and lesbians.
The neo-liberal human rights movements aimed to replace the liberation
movements and nationalist parties with their false claims of being the
true liberators and fighters for people's freedoms. The part played by
the liberation movements and nationalist parties in waging protracted
wars and in some cases in carrying out violent demonstrations to
dislodge the oppressive, suppressive and repressive white colonisers
was quickly buried and was never to take a central role in university
discourses.
African university students were made to define their ontology in the
neo-liberal perspective ignoring other paradigms such as the radical
approach/dependency theory in helping them to explain the condition
Africa finds itself in. The neo-liberal approach heaped all the blame
on Africa's underdevelopment and abject poverty, disease, hunger and
many other social ills on the nationalist liberation movements but
they did not mention anything on slavery, colonialism, imperialism,
neo-colonialism, settler exploitation, racism and apartheid. It is as
if these vices had no negative impact on the continent's development.
Osabu-Kle correctly observed that most of the leaders in Africa have
been sponsored and sustained by the North. He points out that the
allegation that Mobutu was a corrupt leader itself had political
roots. The fundamental political issue was not the corrupt attitude of
Mobutu per se, but who was responsible for placing such a character at
the helm of affairs in the Congo.
However, the same international political and economic forces
interested in controlling the economies of Africa to their advantage
worked to both assassinate Lumumba and to entrench Mobutu as their
puppet.
The same Mobutu who was praised as "our man in Africa" by the West was
described after the demise of the Cold War by the same West as
corrupt. He was then assessed to be more of a liability than an asset.
The nationalist agenda of bringing about social and economic rights to
the masses was hijacked by the neo-liberal programme. Through heavy
Western funding these newly initiated disciples of neo-liberal thought
soon turned against their nationalist governments. The Sadc Tribunal
had a composition made up of such jurists. They attempted to reverse
Zimbabwe's nationalist oriented land reform programme. The irony of it
all was that African jurists had come up with such a flawed judgement.
This judgement was meant to undermine the nationalists' radical stance
of redistributing the country's resources to its rightful owners.
The donor funded media is at the forefront of rubbishing and
undermining the gains made by the nationalist parties since
independence.
However, Tendai Chari critically points out that all media is
propaganda. He claims that: " . . . it is easy to see obvious
propaganda from "enemies" while veiled propaganda in our favourite
media is not easy to unmask." It is taken for granted. Chari further
observes and questions why in these so called papers the ones deemed
purveyors of the gospel truth they employ propaganda techniques such
as loaded language, name calling, glittering generalities, bandwagon,
insinuation devices, and terror-photo techniques.
The African neo-liberal journalist believes that he is immune to bias
as he claims to report as it is. He believes by defending Northern
liberal thought he is upholding the truth.
Claude Mararike rejects the notion of a free press pointing out that
journalists and the whole editorial board write what the owner of the
media wants. He concludes by saying, owners of the media are in most
cases interested in a political agenda. Their reasons for setting up
newspapers are to promote their political agendas and those of their
friends or particular groups of people.
In essence, according to Mararike, there can be no thing as
"independent" or "free" media. All media serves particular view points
and interests. This bears a lot of truth in the 21st century if one is
to look at the number of Western funded newspapers which have
mushroomed almost everywhere in Africa in the name of democracy and
media pluralism. The independent media in Africa is a complete
extension of the North. It is driven by the desire to belittle or
demean liberation movements and nationalist parties while forwarding
the North's imperialist agenda.
The public media which is usually nationalist controlled defends the
pan-African stance while the "independent" or "private" media which is
foreign funded does not hide its support for neo-liberal views. The
nationalist media usually champions stories on land redistribution;
black empowerment; the equitable distribution of resources; human
rights for all citizens irrespective of their standing in society and
pan-African ethos and ideals.
The neo-liberal "private" press supports pseudo-democratic principles
centred on rule of law which actually serve those in Northern funded
opposition political parties, politically oriented civil society
groups, NGOs and their Western funders; it defends property rights
which include ownership of Africa's fertile land by the white minority
as is happening in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Ivory Coast and other
African countries ; highlighting issues on human rights that mainly
focus on a few individuals which include opposition party activists
and politicians and also the white minority group.
The neo-liberal African media has totally failed to support the
advancement of the majority of the people of Africa rather it has
largely centred or mainly focused on few individuals in donor funded
political parties, civil society groups, NGOs and the Northerners who
fund some of the private media houses. The neo-liberal media has
proved to be pro-propertied class and anti-poverty stricken masses.
The private media is the anti-thesis of nationalism. It propagates
imperialism in its entirety.
Questions one may ask are that: Whose bags is one carrying? Whose path
is one following? Whose space is one occupying? The path followed is a
neo-liberal one which aims to disposes his poor black brother of the
fruits gained at Uhuru. The neo-liberal black lawyer, intellectual/
academic and journalist are a companion of the North.
He defends the white man in various court cases, academic discourses
and newspaper articles. These include cases on land rights, ownership
of mines and other means of production as well as issues against his
vulnerable poor fellow black man. The white man aware of such
treachery gives the neo-liberal black brother (turned traitor) various
awards of bravery, peace, defender of minority rights, being a beacon
of hope in a dark continent and the list goes on.
These groups have become the defenders and bidders of the white man's
interests on the continent. The space that they occupy is unAfrican.
It is a total negation of what pan- Africanism stands for. It is the
anti-thesis of nationalism. It is the white man's space that they
occupy. The white man's space creates a monopoly of capital and the
rule of private wealth and industry for private profit alone. The
profit only benefits the North at the expense of the black man.
Professor Shivji calls this imperialism.
It is now the duty of the neo-liberal African lawyer, academic and
journalist to consolidate and propagate white rule on the continent.
Such a treacherous job is rewarded very handsomely. These rewards
include trips to Northern capitals were one is served in the white
man's best hotels enjoying the services and pleasures of white
prostitutes.
This is termed as white hospitality for a job well done. Children of
the pseudo-democrat are given scholarships to study in Northern
universities where they are also fed with heavy dosages of liberal
literature as for them to sustain neo-colonial rule in future years.
Articles in various Western sponsored journals in Africa have
basically centred on very negative research work on liberation
movements and nationalist parties. Most articles accepted for
publication show a heavy bias towards neo-liberal thought.
The greatest threat to all independent African states as well as to
African political and economic thought are these neo-liberal African
scholars who through imperialist funding have now become ambassadors
and defenders of Northern political and economic thought.
Many African researchers have admitted that through consultancy work
they have been requested by the Western donors to change their
findings as to suit what the Western donor wants. Failure to comply
will mean that the work will never see the light of day and neither
will it be published in these Western sponsored journals.
A good case in point is the seminar held in South Africa to discuss
Marange diamonds. The seminar brought in neo-liberal funded Zimbabwean
NGOs and pseudo-academics who presented one sided papers full of lies
about what is really taking place in Chiadzwa.
The African pseudo-democrat is the greatest threat on the continent as
he works in cohort with the former coloniser to dismantle the whole
pan-Africanist agenda, replacing it with a pseudo-liberal one that
protects the white man at the expense of the indigenous black man.
The danger posed by this pseudo-African democrat is a double one: he
wants his African brother to assimilate Northern culture and he also
wants the continent to follow the Western developmental path. Such
thinking is not surprising given the pseudo-democrat's neo-colonial
roots and his anti-pan-Africanist mission.
The African academic, lawyer and journalist must join their own people
in their daily struggles. If they fail in this, then it spells
disaster for the future of the African continent. Frantz Fanon is
quick to warn Africa from taking such a disastrous path when he says:
Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry . . .
We have better things to do than follow Europe . . . We today can do
everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not
obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. In other words Africa
should never be the blueprint or portrait of the North.
China has become what it is today because it took its own development
path. Africa should do the same.
The writers Bowden B C Mbanje and Darlington N Mahuku are Lecturers in
Peace and Governance and International Relations at Bindura University
of Science Education.
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