African Recalcitrance
Well meaning public figures in the West, from government to NGOs and the neighbour down the street are anguishing over the dire straits so many African countries find themselves in; from civil war to neighbourly hostile invasions; massive agricultural failures to epidemics of AIDS and malaria. Support groups, raising money to fund primitively sustainable village projects in Africa; the building of elementary schools and primary health clinics abound. Retiring high-ranking world politicians pledge to use their free time and past contacts to work unstintingly toward helping African countries.The needs are both obvious and greatly daunting. Ranging from potable water sources, the teaching of sound hygiene in village situations plagued with endemic, life-threatening diseases, providing DDT-impregnated sleeping nets for children vulnerable to the scourge of malaria, supporting poverty-stricken grandmothers desperately raising their parentless grandchildren in the AIDS-ravaged country, among many others. Attempting mediation between rival countries, or those whose tyrannical, self-serving dictators busily ruin their countries' economies while also incidentally butchering segments of their populations.
The still-sharp memory of the West's historical exploitation of that continent compels this drive to assist, to assuage an indelible sense of guilt. Witnessing the self-destructive scenarios ongoing in various parts of the continent, the conscience-stricken onlooker feels responsible for delaying the social maturity of the continent, enabling by default the behaviour of various African states, failing their people time and again. And so strenuous efforts are conducted, great sums of money transferred to the coffers of political kleptocrats, loans forgiven as additional legs-up, expert medical teams, policing experts, law professionals, civic-management teams, are loaned out to emergingly-hopeful democracies for assistance in development.
The result is often enough some measure of gratitude, but alongside that, the normal enough human reaction of resentment. Like humans everywhere the more concern and assistance that are brought to bear on a seemingly intractable lack of advancement, the less the receiver seems concerned with helping himself. Yet the constant urging by the West to take charge, to respect human rights, to abstain from socially harmful practises, to seek accountability from heads of state toward their populations, the more Africa stands up and avers they will not be bullied.
Happy enough to receive the massive assistance that the West, through the auspices of the United Nations, and through intervention from Western-based charities and NGOs, Africans do not take kindly to unsolicited advice - urgings and solicitous recommendations for improvement of their lot. African nations don't feel they need to feel constrained to live up to any expectations other than their own; the need to face their problems and seek solutions internally; taking on the self-determination to alter obvious and crisis-prone social, civil and cultural practises and behaviours. A sense of national and cultural pride is pricked, resulting in a resentful sense of grievance.
The need to live up to a donor's anxious desire to assist beyond the gifting of funds, securing a sense of assurance that aid will not be a wasted effort, added to the completely natural response of thoughtful and compassionate well-wishers, eager to help the most needful in the world community. African has chosen a peculiarly African way to demonstrate to the West that they can and will take charge of their own destiny, thank you very much, and stop pushing and shoving us, we'll make it on our own - even if our own way runs counter to yours, and even if our own way will be built upon the foundation of your gifts - because we haven't forgotten the past.
Scott Baldaut, reporting from South Africa for The Christian Science Monitor lays out the case for African resentment, describing their electing of Robert Mugabe, that paragon of human rights abuse and economic mismanagement as their choice to head the new United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development as a slap at the West, defiance of their attempts to isolate Zimbabwe for human rights abuses. Much as an embattled family will assemble protectively around one of their own accused of incest. This is their way of signalling that they're fed up with the the imposition of development policies they see to be harsh and intrusively not to their liking, but linked to aid by the West.
Western reaction to the excesses, sordid human rights abuses, and socially and economically destructive behaviour of the Zimbabwe government under Robert Mugabe is seen to represent classical neocolonial habitude, and African countries appear to have collectively agreed they will no longer permit themselves to be governed by the dictates of the West. In fact, many of Zimbabwe's neighbours have looked on approvingly at the confiscation of white-owned farms in the country, linking those actions to long-needed social justice, in the process obviously overlooking the brutal elements of violence that accompanied them, including murder and the displacement of large segments of the population, along with the consignment to starvation for the rural poor, a result of agrarian neglect.
According to Peter Kagwanja, a senior researcher for the Human Sciences Research Council in the former Pretoria, there are many African nations for whom the past is still very much present, as they see themselves struggling to overcome the economic/political legacy of the racist colonial regimes they suffered under in the not-so-distant past. It is these bitter memories that bring them squarely in support of Mugabe, despite the suffering his actions have caused to the people of Zimbabwe. Looking for intelligent introspection simply isn't on here, a classic case of cutting one's nose off to spite one's face. The resentment runs that deeply. Caution still does prevail however, in that while many other African leaders would enjoy emulating Mugabe to some degree, they still acknowledge their indebtedness to and future support by the West, and as such withhold similar behaviour as rashness certain to lead to economic destabilization.
African leaders, among them Sudan's Arab Islamic leaders whose own bestial treatment of their black population has earned them the reputation in the United Nations and Western circles as genocidal murderers, prefer to do business with countries like China, itself happy to invest in energy-rich countries, and eschewing any attempt to place conditions on their loans for economic or political 'improvements', let alone apply pressure on humanitarian grounds.
South Africa, latterly seen as the potential leader for the face of a new Africa, has seemed to alter course with the departure from the political sphere of Bishop Desmond Tutu and former freedom-fighting President Nelson Mandela. South Africa has demonstrated at the highest levels its ignorance in the fight against AIDS; in its time on the UN Security Council it voted against sanctioning Burma and Zimbabwe, and backed Iran's efforts to stave off UN sanctions as a result of its uranium-enrichment, nuclear-armaments-seeking programmes.
South African President Thabo Mbeki insists on African unity: "The fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all. Today it is Zimbabwe; tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, it will be Angola, it will be any other African country. And any government that is perceived to be strong and to be resistant to imperialists would be made a target and would be undermined. So let us not allow any point of weakness in the solidarity of SADC, because that weakness will also be transferred to the rest of Africa." With his passionate support behind Robert Mugabe and his murderous regime, Thabo Mbeki effectively silenced any other African leaders who might have expressed their critical perception of Mugabe's destructive decision-making.
An allied front is presented, one of defiance against the intrusively annoying nuisance factor represented by Western expectations of African nations not yet secure enough in their still-fledgling nationhood to strive toward fair and even-handed representation of their peoples' needs and priorities. Their conflicted excess of fear and resentment has impacted their moral sensibilities. They've become enablers, assenting by their failure to object on pure humanitarian grounds in the corruption of a peoples' hope. The moral authority that attained and tutored the region through Bishop Desmond Tutu's piously good offices, through President Nelson Mandela's deep understanding of human need has been contaminated by hatred, and by reverse racism.
Pity.
Labels: Political Realities, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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