RE: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?

Pius:
 

Not/unfortunately, by our training, this is our default mode – to do analysis, using these concepts and terms and models. But they are necessary and every society has its thinkers and talkers. The problem I think is that, right now the thinkers and talkers, i.e., the us group [among the three categories that you identified], the people, and the executing group (leaders) are not organically linked in political or cultural communities that they are all equally committed to building together.

 

At any rate the image you attached to your post tells me a couple of things, viz: Poor people (possibly also poorly educated) are much more concerned with pressing needs; with the immediacy of their poverty, and with survival than with developmentally relevant platforms, creditable political party candidates, or with big concepts of agency and structure, though these concepts are abstractions of realities that affect the possibilities and choices of their lives and actions.

The Adedibus, on the other hand, are more concerned with acquiring political power, retaining it, and peddling it for its (and their) own sake and as an instrument to develop their individual pockets.

As for the us group, it seems to know what the problem is and the likely solution; they know what is agency and what is structure and how China and Taiwan broke through the ranks of the poor into the league of the powerful. But as you aptly asked – how come the Adedibus and the people do not listen to the us or perhaps, how come the us group has been ineffective or unable to engage either group to change their perceptions and convictions.

 

 Who is responsible for creating that needed bridge and what is the nature of the bridge that can align the three groups around the same broad true interest that will produce national development – rather than individual enrichment?

 

And this brings me back to the question I asked in my last post – whether we should not now stop focusing our analysis only on the bad leadership side of the equation and rather include a serious look at the followership and its quality. Now, effective followership by the poor masses demands that they too be led by some sort of enlightened self interested middle class group. If this latter group is physically or technically absent or where they are unable to deploy their agency effectively to redirect the people away from following the Adedibus, or persuade the Adedibus that national development would serve their personal development better, we may indeed have to wait for ever for the magical hands of "history" or the unlikely ones of external intervention to right things for us. 

A good and effective followership should be able to compel  goodness and effectiveness in its leadership. 

------------------------

F. J. Kolapo,  

(Associate Professor of African History)
History Department *  University of Guelph * Guelph * Ontario * Canada* N1G 2W1
Phone:519/824.4120 ex.53212  Fax: 519.766.9516

----- Original Message -----
From: Pius Adesanmi <piusadesanmi@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:31:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: RE: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess?

Ken, Moses, Bode, Femi, Ehiedu: Look at this picture of Lamidi Adedibu distributing cash to followers, 'citizens', and party faithfuls just before an election in 2007: Adedibu Why should the people waiting for that cash listen to us and our high-wire disourses and not the gestural "discourse" of Adedibu? How do we reconcile the Africa of our discourses with the Africa known and lived on entirely different wavelengths by Lamidi Adedibu's audience? I am just trying to water down the rarefied trajectory of this thread... Will Africa's "mess" or problems be half solved the day the folks in this photo can relate to how we narrate them? Pius --- On Sun, 19/12/10, Olabode Ibironke <ibironke@msu.edu> wrote: From: Olabode Ibironke <ibironke@msu.edu> Subject: RE: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess? To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com Date: Sunday, 19 December, 2010, 21:09 I agree with Kwame and Jaye totally. I differ with Ehiedu only in a few places: 1. "much of what we say and debate will be side-tracked by the outcome of 'actual African history in the making'" This presupposes that the reality of which he speaks has a logic of its own separate from the "familiar lazy constructions of Africa in terms of 'corruption', 'poverty' and 'incapacity'". I prefer to think about this in terms of how historical reality and discourses reproduce one another in a mobile exchange. Certain discursive constructions create and perpetuate certain realities. 2. systems are not essentially negative and restrictive, they enable, empower and sustain. So, when we talk about global, I prefer the term "general", systemic determinations, we are not simply talking about constraints. 3. it is indeed true that the global system is a prison house for many. We must see ourselves jail breaking when we seek fundamental transformations of the system. The overall point is that AFRICA IS NOT AN EXCEPTION. I believe that Ken Harrow was preempting the question that usually follows "why is Africa in such a mess?" It very often leads to a criticism of leadership, which is a mask for questioning the inherent humanity of Africans based on a characteristic existential situation. He is asking us via Mamdani to look beyond Africa to see similar mechanisms re/produce the exact same situation time and again. Once we understand those general mechanisms or apparatuses, we can set at a purposeful and meaningful program of reconstruction. Bode -----Original Message----- From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of eiwerieb@hunter.cuny.edu Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2010 9:15 AM To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why is Africa in such a mess? Is Africa in a mess? This discussion has gone on for quite sometime and like so much of such discussions about Africa it threatens to reduce to the listing of Africa as incapacitated and bounded by nothing but constraints. But this discussion also provokes several questions.      In what sense is Africa in a mess? Which Africa? All 54 countries? Some Countries? Are African countries actually where they where 40-50 years ago? What is actually on the ground that was not there 50 years? What is actually missing in terms of Africa's capacity for self-propulsion? 2. It is true that in one way or another there has always being a world system much as there is national, regional, state, provincial, town, village, neighborhood and family systems. People and societies operate within and without the bounds of these systems. 3.Historically development has always been about consciousness, vision, goals, organization, opportunities, constraints and choice. 4. There is no question that any power that emerges,  past and present will try to organize the world to its advantage just as China and India are trying to do today. The same will apply to any serious African country that emerges as a global power. In short, it has always been the practice and business of old and emergent powers to organize the world to their benefit. There is nothing new about this. What is perhaps new is that the present world system due to the advances in transport and telecommunication technologies is much tighter. 5. But this does not make the world or global system a prison-house. 6. Leaders and peoples even in Africa are quite capable of achieving breakthroughs as effective economic and social actors and makers of the system to the extent that they are driven by a a fairly clear understanding of the global system, a consciouness of its potential and actual constraints on them, and are willing to mobilize and deploy national psychological resources to the project of self-transformation. 7. It is true that Africa has experienced the loss of its autochtonous spiritual, religious, linguistic anchors as the animating motive force of its self-direction; but his loss is not total and at that this stage the lamentation of this loss is neither here nor there. 8. The point is, what will Africa as a unit and its countries do to participate in this world system as effective self-directed societies that relentelessly pursue national and continental objectives with little regard to the the constraints of the present global system. Or how can the continent or more correctly its key and potential vanguard countries organize to become makers of the global system. 9. Finally, however much we debate "Africa" from the distant or even from within, if the terms of our perception and description are derived from the defective conceptual simplifications of the world system; and not from the ideological and political and practical complexity of "actually existing Africa" much of what we say and debate will be side-tracked by the outcome of "actual African history in the making" that is not reducible to the familiar lazy constructions of Africa in terms of "corruption", "poverty" and "incapacity". Ehiedu Iweriebor  -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.    For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue    For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html    To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-         unsubscribe@googlegroups.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.    For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue    For previous archives, visit  http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html    To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-         unsubscribe@googlegroups.com

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