The Simplicity of Greatness: A down to earth view of Mandela

Very little can be taken away from Mandela in terms of what he managed to achieve for his great country, and the ripples that swept various parts of our continent and indeed our world as a result of those achievements. At face value, the ideals for which Mandela stood - and was prepared to die for - did raise a few hairs on some backs particularly because of their implications as regards leadership on this continent and beyond. But a deeper view into Mandela's ideals reveals perhaps the workings of one of the most prudent political minds we have yet seen on our continent.

I think Mandela keenly understood the human condition, and firmly believed that the majority of human suffering was a direct consequence of mostly selfish and self-serving human actions. In respect of that realization, Mandela sought out to make the most of what such an unenviable condition could conjure up if only it were political configured in specific ways for its own internal egocentricities to consolidate into a form of cooperation and co-existence.

Of all the fights for self-rule on the African continent, no designated group of Africans ever cooperated with each other in order to inherit a bigger and wealthier economy than that of South Africa. And by extension, the shear promise of being in charge of such an monument of an economy naturally shifted that economy into a center of focus for the various racially differentiated factions of the South African "nation". In this regard, while the calls for nationalization and indigenization rang louder as their fore-running calls of Ujama and African communism declined, they did not dissuade Mandela into heeding them. For him, the bare pragmatics of the long awaited transition into self-rule that his organization alongside the many others who have today been overpowered by the ANC's liberation rhetoric, required the careful preservation of the common center of stakes which was the economy, tinged with the gradual and cautious transition that would enable Africans to slowly filter into its ranks. The logic for this move was simple: radical transformation would only be sustainable in the short and barely into the medium terms precisely because a destroyed economy which had become the focus and aspiration of the previously oppressed would only become a catalyst for rogue centers of power each of them committed to their own ambitions. But implement a gradual transition, then all you have to deal with are the on-going cries of those who felt the transition was moving too slow while the economy itself cushioned and soaked up some of the discontent as more and more people were absorbed into it. This is why for me, as much as many people cry foul about Mandela's handling of South Africa's transition, I think that their ability to cry and to feel like they have been heard has lot to do with the fact that South Africa is what it is today rather than what it would have been if there had been a radical shift at "independence". And to add more flesh to this argument, there is still not yet an African president who inherited a country at independence and didn't treat its inherited economy as a sacred-cow. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi did it, Mugabe did it (up until he became radical), Dos Santos did it, Kaunda did it and several others - albeit within the constraints of that characterized their times. The overt difference therefore between Mandela's transition and the transitions of others was simply this: while other African countries aspired for self-rule with less of an impression of the economies they would inherit because they were significantly smaller, South Africa's much larger economy made a deeper impression of the gains to be realized upon the realization of self-rule. And by default, the economy was the battlefield which Mandela, in his political shrewdness, quickly moved to de-militarize.

Now the questions that need to be asked within such a scenario can only be about the practicalities of implementing the vision of the South Africa so many seek to see while accepting the centrality of South Africa's economy in that entire process. After all, there is nothing else that, even within the vague definition of Africanness, acts as a distinguish-er between "Africans" as a whole and "South Africans" as a specific group of Africans other than the economic difference between other African countries and that of South Africa. And this is not to mention the place such an economy accords South Africa globally. Now, if the economy of South Africa is so central to the extent that it has demarcated and instilled African identity itself into two blocs namely "South Africans" and "Africans", what kind of a man would realistically implode such an economy upon which the very warring and radical factions themselves based their radical ideas? For me, Mandela saw an imperfect but prudent resolution to an enormous dilemma, and opted for it. He would preserve the economy, and champion a painstaking slow process of integration that would span several decades, fully aware that that very thing everyone was very radical about was the sole entity that gave a nation rising out of decades of conflict and violence any chance at cohesiveness and perhaps a shot at unity. And furthermore, if democracy would remain the aspired-for ideal, then radicalism could not be an option. The process therefore of building a nation sat squarely on creating the impression that given the de-racialized and objective systems that would come with democracy, the country then emerge de-personalized and as such united in a seemingly disembodied and automated economy... an economy that seemed to represent everyone and no one in particular with the grand effect of instituting a formative or an embryonic state of unity essential for holding the entire contraption, if you please, together.

But then a surface examination of such a prudent choice would point us to what remains the dominant criticism of Mandela which is that he was too good to the oppressor at the expense of his own people. There is always a certain level of substance in every argument but I am not so inclined to take such a criticism wholesale, because like I have argued above... South Africa's economy is its identity, as in a great sense the focus of its struggle, and today remains its basis of difference from the rest of the continent. It was therefore within the parameters of that economy that human dignity had been lost under the evils of racism. And as such, dignity would be restored largely through re-integration into it. Perhaps this is why the economy is concurrently resented and loved by its citizens on the basis of its exclusion and its rewards respectively. Radically tampering with it would no doubt have created a different South Africa. I am just not sure if that alternative version would have yielded greater levels of hope than we see presently.

But in a few weeks or months, who knows. I might be compelled to think differently about this entire topic. Sometime next week, I hope to post an argument about Revolution within the African context. I will pre-empt the following: I don't think that such a concept exists in the real world outside the realm of ideals.

The Inverse Relationship Between Patronage and Political Power

Last month I wrote a polemic in which I argued that the only way Malawi is to rise out of its debilitating state is to channel its antagonistic energies motivated by greed into a grand nation building formula. The arguments can be seen in that previous post entitled Reconciling Our Problematic Concepts.

This week, we have seen the president of Malawi heighten her efforts to consolidate power via the old formula of patronage. And this is an interesting one because as already demonstrated in previous posts, patronage is an inherently insufficient strategy to achieve the consolidation of power precisely because insatiable greed is the motivation at the core of most of Malawian business. The State which is heavily donor dependent has no means in and of itself to sustain that heavy weight of patronage and therefore, the more people the president calls up into her bloated team of patrons, the less resources are available to appease the vast majorities who are outside her circle to sustain the very power she craves. In the last instance, Malawi will revert to the same situation that undid Kamuzu, undid Muluzi, and was undoing Bingu. That situation occurs when the country becomes so polarized along the lines of “those within the gravy train” and “those outside it”. This formula simply does not work.

The only way to silence a country saturated by greed in the absence of a heavily greased military is to level the playing field, make transparent the business of the State, and effectively give people no reason to think that some are being offered more without merit than others. That simple formula automatically galvanizes two sets of activities;

Firstly, it raises the collective consciousness to a level at which there is an obsession with protecting the just order because only through that order can the greed of others be curbed. In this fashion we use the very venom of our greed to police ourselves into a just and fair order.

Secondly, it raises the agency level of the citizens because when everything is transparent, activities engaged by various actors are more ascertained, less risky and therefore more profitable to the greed motivator that induces those activities in the first place. Economists have expanded this basic Social Theory to generate the vast field of study Economics is today, looking at means and ends, demand and supply within a context of insatiable appetites and limited and contested resources. With less speculation, there is an automatic adherence to the status quo which in economics theory is called the equilibrium: there is no inherent tendency to want to alter it.

These two simple pillars would be the foundation of building a new Malawi.

Rhetoric about God and justice, good governance, and other ideals which do nothing to symmetrize the greed machine via the imposition of an institutional order that is everywhere symmetrically experienced by the citizenry will not take the country anywhere. They will only serve to continue to create ideological bases from which various forms of injustice can be accounted for as normal and acceptable. For instance, to fear God is to fear the leadership he ordains (check your Bible, or if you are like me, borrow one and check). Another for instance: to respect your elders is to be morally right in the numerous cultural forms of the Malawian nation. Usually the elder in this case is the president, our Amayi or Mother. In the end, these two randomly selected edifices only provide a basis for why citizens who feel cut off from or marginalized by the State should keep quiet and trust the God-given leader or respect the Mother of the Nation who knows exactly what she is doing. This is why, in my view, a State based on secular ideals is for me the best kind of State. It is realistic in the sense that it holds no ideals or sentimentalism higher than any others, it accepts the human condition for its rotten state, and seeks to institute regulations that must apply to everyone regardless of whether they worship Mbona, Allah, Jehovah or whoever they so please to.

So in returning to the crux of this topic, as the desperation grows within the party of the President, we must expect to see bigger and bigger webs of patronage which will be coupled by greater financial mismanagement, and ultimately a weakening ability of the State to render its core functions. As the State collapses in its abilities, we will see greater efforts to expand the patronage in order to consolidate power, which will go on to further weaken the State’s abilities. Ultimately, we will see a loss of power just as we have seen it in the past, and….and here is the thing; another one who promises a new future for Malawi will arise to whom we will all rally only to be taken back into the same cycle again. The principle is clear, a poor country cannot sustain any government on the basis of patronage. It can only do so by institution a form of indifference that makes everyone feel that they are equal to everyone else in terms of its regulations, its opportunities or whatever citizen affordances it bears on its written code.

The answer to our problem is thus staring us in the face. Patronage does not maintain power especially in a country whose development budget is almost completely donor financed. Malawi’s revenue is only barely able to keep up with its recurrent costs of salaries (inclusive of the luxurious living in high government) and operations in the state service. Development financing however is almost entirely sourced externally; that is the 40 per cent of the budget that is donor funded constitutes over 80 per cent of development expenditure, while the 60 per cent is predominantly recurrent State costs, such as State Houses and Allowances, and salaries. So Malawian taxes only barely cater for our recurrent budget, while roads, hospitals, schools and other assets that require capital investment are externally financed. Such is the enormity of our herculean crisis.

But we can trust Joyce Banda to follow the failed script to the bitter end whence from she too could meet her political demise. We just hope that that end will not take the entire nation along with her as seemed to be the aspirations of her predecessor, one Bingu wa Mutharika.

Reconciling our Problematic Concepts of Sovereignty, Nationalism and Culture within a context of Dependency

The title of this article is broad, and the questions that could ensue from a more comprehensive interrogation of the concepts named in that title could lead to lengthy discussions with little relevance to the immediate needs of troubled Malawi. As such, this article will attempt to make concise and direct linkages between the seemingly abstract aspects of the concepts involved with pragmatic outputs which necessitate collective political action.

Firstly, let me place the assumptions undergirding much of my thinking in the open. Paradoxically I consider myself an optimistic-pessimist, and what I mean by that is this - I do not think it is of much use to presuppose that any human being in most cases would opt to work selflessly in the interest of the collective when the opportunities to do the contrary are readily available. My proposal are thus informed by this rather cynical view, and often I attempt to find synergies within our rotten systems that ultimately synchronize the egocentric and self-centred actors of that system into complementary counterparts for positive change. If done right, I am convinced that the newly emergent stakes arising from a re-ordered social setup would motivate the inherent greed in humanity to protect against a compromise of that system which could potentially undermine the welfare of themselves as a collective - even though that itself would be motivated by an entirely self-centred attitude to preserve self and only just self. By being so modest, it means that my predications for a better society can only ever be understated, and that anything beyond the very basic expectations would be very great news.

Malawi, needless to say, groans with the hunger to be sovereign. The definitions of sovereignty abound, masquerading within the disambiguating terms of self-determination, self-reliance, self-validation, and even for the more liberal thinkers, greater global relevance. In a crude manner, sovereignty seems to be subtly presented as the grand eventuality of nationalistic pride emanating from the acquisition of a largely collective realization of a distinct civilization that accords members of that national society the right to be ethnocentrically arrogant. An arrogance emanating from a well-developed collective psyche rooted in self-validation, self-determinism, and global visibility.

Nationalism would thus entail not just the camaraderie that comes to envelope the members of the society in question, transforming them into a community of brothers and sisters who also inseminate each other while inviting external others to participate in the greatness of their communal life, but more critically the mutual cooperation in the protection of that which is considered central to the holding up of that particularly adored society. While there can be no consensus as to what fundamental pillars these protected social artefacts really are – even though the modalities through which material and to some extent immaterial needs are met within that society would constitute some of those central features – the various spheres at which individual members of that society find their stake and access into the material and immaterial opportunities of that society become the egocentric motivators for protecting and reinforcing the status quo. In which case, greed and self-centeredness within the right kind of societal setup would propel to varying extents fairness and justness – but not on account of a strong belief in that principle, but rather on account of the strong stake in the sphere from which one’s limited livelihood is drawn from and sustained. To that effect, a rewired society whose systemic tentacles extended deep into the many spheres and spaces from which various members obtained sustenance should, even against the very design of its members, accommodate symmetrical applications of procedures and stipulations that would necessarily benefit the whole. Indeed within this abstraction resonate the problem of change – that is the ability of a society to pragmatically deal with the changing circumstances under which it finds itself over the course of time. This problem is perhaps too large to be contested on this blog, and suffice it to say that it may be tackled to the best of my abilities in later posts. But, if the rewired society is sufficiently self-preservationist, then pragmatism propelled by that same essentially egocentric individualism should activate sufficient quantities of the social system to induce change.

And as such, the role of culture – another very problematic concept to even define let alone incorporate into developmental efforts – would become devolved into localities in which culture would be informed not by the ancestors so much as it would be informed by necessity; a necessity everywhere cognizant of the strict limitations that undergird the liberties that everyone symmetrically enjoys. To that end, the ordinary expectation of sovereign and nationalist arrogance is not intentionally an attitude towards others, but rather a focused and coordinated effort to preserve that which enables people to live similar to one another, and yet independent of one another – truncated inextricably into a binding nationalism obtained from an assuring set of societal stipulations and organizations which ultimately make the said people a proud sovereign.

Then comes the discussion having to do with the harnessing of greed into a system that transforms it into an energy for progress. The answers would obviously vary from place to place – or to put it more accurately from country to country. But in as far as Malawi goes my proposal is somewhat modest that, and even with the litany of a growing number of political actors, a political resolution is more than likely the most eminent origin. The greed engine continues to churn in Malawi and yet within a context of ever growing stakeholders to the political processes compounded by their increasing power to unsettle and potentially dethrone establishments, the greed of populism itself which in Malawi’s history has fed patronage and state-clientelism would attempt to prolong its place on the Malawian political scene by instituting adaptations to the system that promise a fairer share of the national pie, including power, to the litany of political actors. That is the first foreseeable automated positive outcome of greed. And through a set of unpredictable and greed-informed steps, the minor reforms should lead to other reforms with the impact of limiting the political space in the arenas of the elite while concurrently widening the space of the previously marginalized. Greed would do this in order to ascertain its own place within the societal setup. Indeed focused efforts will churn on in the back-and-foregrounds in the spheres of civil society and other non-state actors which would contribute to spurring on this one-dimensional progression of our society – I however refrain from declaring that even such humanitarian acts would truly be motivated by the need to serve others. My assumption is that while there are some people who do care about others, most of us do not – and so we must bank upon this parasite and pathological human condition to somehow work itself into a situation that enables more and more people who do not care to be accommodated into this new form of social organization which cares for all of us precisely because we do not and will not care.

The question of dependency – the seemingly perpetual affliction of financial self-insufficiency – works most powerfully within a context in which the very benchmarks whereupon a people can judge for themselves the progress made in their country are lacking. Depending on others for financial reasons could be the result of good and convincing reasons, and perhaps – even though the evidence is narrow – help put a country in a position to catapult itself onto a better and more sustainable trajectory. But while economic or financial dependency has numerous criticisms which have been extensively discussed by various political economists and economists alike, the social effects of dependency in as far as the national psyche is concerned in the absence of internal benchmarks means that a nation remains always divided as to the exact role that external financiers ought to play. And this is not to the very simplistic and narrow definitional connotations of what the previous statement reads, but more deeply in the spheres of livelihood which are largely sustained not by a wide and everywhere symmetric system but rather by patronage, exclusion and to put it simply “GREED”. In a consistent manner as applied to the earlier view, the wells from which one’s water is harvested and from which one’s bread is drawn directly inform discourse disguised as an objective plea to maintain, reform or scrap a particular arrangement which is yet only informed by the egocentric desire to protect one’s well. Thus, should the assertions mentioned above indeed culminate into a greed informed state of progress, dependency as the epiphenomenal outshoot of internal instability within a fierce contest of ensuring the preservation of livelihoods naturally loses its destabilizing impact and becomes a stench to the inhabitants of the particular social order whose maturity has allowed it a greater degree of self-reliance and global-significance. Dependency then comes to be seen as an warranted access into the cultural independence of that social organization which must be resisted and blocked – as seen in South Africa for instance even though its complexities are very unique from those of Malawi.

In essence therefore, the problematic concepts of sovereignty, nationalism, culture and aid dependency appear to me as the occasions under which ordinarily compatible concepts are misaligned by a missing and symmetrical stake that causes or accrues into a collective adherence. I do not see too many contradictions within the concepts themselves so much as I see contradictions within the mode of business as it is in the motherland and how these concepts fail to be appropriated into that largely undefined context. After all, while indeed the actions that surround such concepts are varied and versatile, the concepts themselves fix actions as loaded activities aimed at enforcing the more or less static implications of those concepts. And as such, those static features are what allow the greed-informed progress which conjures up a system as a popular stake to more stability adhere to the static expectations of such concepts. Even within this pessimistic view, should a political leader decide to fast track the processes leading up to such an eventuality, it would not offset the expected compatibility to these concepts and self-protecting features that would allow them to remain stable and yet attentive to environmental shocks – whatever they might be, social, political, economic or ecological – affecting the said society. As such, I remain optimistic within this pessimism that ours remains a country steadily primed to rise and become great.

Soberly Focusing on the Problem

Largely, Africans have been on the defensive. Perhaps not all Africans, but more especially their estranged politician representatives. We have been on the defensive about our sovereignty and our right to determine matters within our own borders; within our own regions, and within our continent. We have cried foul when the West has intervened, especially when they have intervened in a manner deemed politically negative or in the West's own interests.

 

This is perhaps best crystalized in the Al Bashir saga when Malawi, under one leadership thought it a show of African solidarity to allow him entry and exit into Malawi without arrest; and then under another, a show of defending the national interest to deny him entry to avert another wrangle with the already withdrawing donor community. It is indeed all within good reason to believe that indeed there is some agenda being pursued in the manner in which certain international organizations have dealt with African matters, and the ICC issue relating to AL Bashir of Sudan is no different. But in the midst of all this, we as Africans, be it within our national borders, within our regional groups and then as a collective across the continent seem to simultaneously turn a blind eye to other matters that are of equal or perhaps more importance when we deal with such external influences.

 

Take Malawi for example, July 20th arrives in 2011. This day has already been designated a day of nation-wide demonstrations against the political and economic postures being pursued by the incumbent and his party. The incumbent designates that same day as a day to carry out a public lecture, to "teach" Malawians what it means to be nationalistic and sovereign. While the president carries on in this manner at the State House, adding more rage to the explosive demonstrations outside which are in fact protests against that very tendency of the incumbent of seeing himself as "all-knowing and infallible", police proceed to open live-ammunition fire on protesters in Mzuzu (the northern city) and Lilongwe (the capital). In total, 19 or more are gunned down with clear bullet injuries, and several more are injured in the clashes. The SADC meeting for that year meanwhile is due to occur just several days ahead (I don't exactly recall if it was weeks or a month or two ahead) of this violent confrontation between the State and the Public. At that meeting, while Malawians wait with baited breaths to hear SADC condemn the violence, no reference is made to that issue at all. Meanwhile, the AU is more concerned with trying to organize its fruitless (in my opinion useless) annual conference in Lilongwe. It designates a great deal of its energy towards ensuring the security of wanted man Al Bashir at that meeting in a grand stand against western imperialism and witch-hunting on African leaders through the organ of the ICC. Like the SADC, the AU is mum on the events in Malawi.

 

Now, as already mentioned, there is evidence that could cement the argument that indeed the ICC and other organizations only truly represent disguised modes of indirect control over African affairs - and indeed this post is not dismissive of that view. But what is more seriously at stake in my view is the "banding together" of two very distinct issues under the same banner of "resisting imperialism". The first issue is in fact the one that is immediately apparent to the so called regional blocs as well as the African Union and that is the continued interference of external actors in African politics. The second however, and of far greater implications, is the question as to whether Africans are in fact being governed in a manner that is truly representative of their interests and, put loosely and generally, if the political leadership is truly an accountable, transparent leadership of various African nationals. This second issue is often obliterated by the politically charged and "post-colonially" sentimental rhetoric of "here they come again to colonize us once more!", thereby turning the attention away from the more relevant question of "but did you Mr President indeed order the police to shoot down protesters on July 20, 2011 in Malawi?" or "did you Mr Al Bashir oversee the murders of hundreds of people in various villages and settlements during various times of your tenure as a Sudanese leader?"

 

We cannot band the two issues together. To do so is to effectively defeat justice and fairness in the entire political process. Regional bodies like SADC or the continental body of the AU should match their militancy towards the west with a militancy towards ensuring that while the west is kept out of African affairs, African leaders are bound to uphold the rights of their citizens in their various countries. It is quite shocking that after the deafening silences of the SADC and AU, the first people to comment on and condemn the violence that had happened in Malawi where AMNESTY international and later the British  Parliament. The former issued a strongly worded statement which was served on the establishment and aired in various media houses, the latter instituted a commission of inquiry to visit Malawi and to find out what had happened on July 20th to ensure that British aid was not being given to a government that was undermining certain aspects or conditions underpinning that reception of that aid. Now in this case, imperialistic or otherwise, when the regional and continental organizations have both failed to act on a matter pertinent to the rights and securities of citizens of a member country, would one blame the people of Malawi for seeking redress externally? It is in fact precisely this ineptitude on the part of our regional and continental bodies that facilitates western interference. Their negligence over the real matters of just governance and constitutionalism for some silly pursuit of "sovereignty" from an imperial other is in fact only a ploy by these bodies to protect the interests of their brotherhood of "excellences" that sows the very seeds of interference. An objective SADC and AU which dealt with the very real problems of brutal dictatorships and political massacres would more effectively preserve African independence as it would legitimize itself as a relevant body committed to the pursuit of political solutions in Africa.

 

At the national level, similar disconnects are rampant. In Malawi, under Mutharika, to be nationalist or a lover of one's country was to rally behind the president in a confrontational drive against the west, and an unquestioning attitude over the manner in which he decided to drive the national development agenda, period. Meanwhile the added functions of checking the president, ensuring that the constitution was adhered to, that the law is symmetrically applied, that all citizens are entitled to the same treatment under the constitutional order regardless of ethnicities, gender, race and others are all annulled and set aside. And so to stand up to the west becomes unnecessarily truncated automatically with standing down to tyranny and abuse. Meanwhile, my whole argument is that it does not necessarily need to go that far in the first place. Standing up to the West or in national solidarity need not automatically mean to be subservient to a leader. Africans can just as effectively maintain sovereignty within internally robust and transparent political processes. Sudan can be just as nationalist by standing up to Al Bashir and demanding that he keeps within his legal mandates. Malawi can and should call Joyce Banda to account even in the absence of British presence. And where citizens are disallowed that space, regional and continental bodies must champion the plight of the governed and not side with the tyrant or ailing leader. After all the right to rule is bestowed and therefore revocable by the public even more reasons that could be seen as flimsy or unjustified. But to defend a leader without an inquiry into the manner in which that leader governs as a mark of African-ness is to deny the people justice, and it is this tendency that continues to open our continent up to extremely pervasive forms of external interference.

 

In short, the soberness that would necessitate a turn-around in our politics requires major demystifications of so many political symbols that continue to only enable Africans to expect or to act in certain predictable fashions. Leaders should just be leaders, bound by the systems of the establishment and accountable to the people. Leaders should not be fathers or mothers, or Ngwazis or Nkhoswe's or other names that are embedded in symbolisms of "all knowing, infallible, defender, visionary etc". Such symbolism only serves to elevate them to a status that allows them the space to personalize an entire state, dragging it into their own self-interested ventures. How about leaders just became employees, without mysticism or other visions of grandeur. And how about we focus on our sovereignty as a measure of our felt growing freedoms to think, to participate, to suggest and question, to be equally protected by the state, and so on. How about SADC focuses on whether leaders in the SADC region truly adhere to the expectations of their citizens. How about the AU focus on whether Al Bashir indeed orchestrated those killings in a show of solidarity with the Sudanese people. Once we begin to do that, we not only begin to lay the basis for our own thriving African civilizations and our own versions of modernities but we also provide little room for the type of overt interference we see on this continent. But keep the political landscape as it is, and we leave floodgates open for all manner of interferences masked as interventions. And of course the inherent human condition of greed and opportunism twists up the already murky waters of African political development ever so intricately. We owe pragmatism to ourselves. Corruption is not the answer to imperialism.

Conversations with Moses [Mphatso] by Khumbo Soko

 

Fumbo: who benefits from societal order?

Interesting thoughts…on the male control of the female body. Maybe to simply reduce the argument to ‘men controlling the woman’s body’ is to pay scanty attention to the other rather pervasive and equally important power players in society. Because when you think about it, our bodies, yes both male and female, are subject to some sort of societal strictures. It might as well be that the inhibitions placed on the female body are indeed more pronounced but it doesn’t change the fact that Society would ‘flog’ me if I paraded in my village square naked. So maybe we need to interrogate the basis of societal order. Who stands to benefit more from a well ordered society with conventions on even mundane matters like dressing? Where do we place political and religious interests in all this? Do I hear someone say that it is even patriarchy which stands behind these systems? But what of systems where females have traditionally been very important power brokers? Can we not say that they are also in that regard beneficiaries of a well ordered society of which the ‘control of the body’ is but an aspect? I would love to hear your thoughts on where the ‘man’ stands in a matrilineal set-up…My point is, at the end of the day, we might as well find ourselves concluding that in some instances it is the woman who controls the male body! Quite outlandish, huh?

Of “us” and “others”…

On this I fully concur with you and I have nothing useful to add. I posted on my FB wall a couple of weeks ago that the “‘There is no chewa, tumbuka, sena but Malawian’ is a refrain of dubious accuracy.” There is nothing objectionable with racial/ethnic [and whatever] diversity. Heck! There is nothing we can do about being born Tumbuka, Chewa,, black, brown etc is there? The problem arises when we use these differences to disentitle others and to favour our own. I have always told ‘northerners’ who agitate for cessation on the basis of discrimination that “ah just dare do that and you will soon see what will happen. After the cessation Tumbukas will start discriminating against ngondes and Tongas against lambyas and so on and so forth. Before we know it, every village will be its own country if the solution to ethnic discrimination will be cessation.” I would love to see how much this othering has set us backwards as a people. We compromise on putting the right people in the right places because they do not belong. We would rather an inept homeboy occupied the office. Poor us…

“At what precise pace should a black man walk to avoid suspicion?”

 

I was watching Andersoon Cooper’s Townhall Meeting Special on Race & Justice in the US yesterday July 18, 2013. This whole Trayvon Martin travesty feels me with a great sense of frustration and anger. Let me start by acknowledging that it might as well be the case that the case, merely looked at from its “merits” was correctly decided. I believe it is the law in the US that if a jury entertains any doubt about the culpability of the accused, then it must resolve the same in his favour. In this case, we do have evidence that Zimmerman did in fact sustain some injuries on the material day. We also know that there was someone between the 2 of them who shouted for help. In other words there was some compelling evidence to suggest that in the minutes leading up to his fatality, Trayvon was in fact the aggressor. Now throw in Florida’s stand your ground law into the mix and you really have a hopeless case as a prosecution. After all, we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by our momentary anger to the fact that it is for the State to prove the guilt of an accused. The bar to clear is rather high in this regard. The evidence must be such as eliminates any reasonable doubt from the jury/court’s mind. That can hardly be said to have been the case in this case. Sadly, however, that’s not all that there is to the Trayvon travesty. The criminal justice system is not simply an assemblage of rules, procedures and system for enforcing a state’s penal laws. It also encompasses the unwritten attitudes of the people who run it, from the penal lawmaker through the cop who stops and frisks to a sentencing judge. It is informed by the policy objectives of any given polity. And it is not value free. And because we entrust it to human beings, they bring to it their prejudices and biases, both acknowledged and subconscious. Now it is a notorious fact that a young black man has got more chances of ending up in a penitentiary than he has of say a community college. If you are black, you are more likely to be stopped by the Police. You are more likely to be arrested. You are more likely to be shot by the Police and you are more likely to be at the receiving end of a long custodial sentence than would be the case if you were a white Defendant. Am saying nothing new here. These are well researched observations. Now this is the system that ‘processed’ Trayvon. You are right when you say that paper justice was served here. Zimmerman had his day in court and he carried it. But we all know better, don’t we? If Trayvon had been white and Zimmerman black….How I wish this was a Stephen Lawrence moment for the US. But somehow, I just have a depressing feeling it won’t be. Racism in the US is too institutionalized. It is a centuries-old machine that may never be fully dismantled. But that of course, is no excuse for failing to ask the tough questions.  Again I must agree with you that paper justice was served here. But we all know that the young man was screwed by the system…

 

Acknowledgements and other details

 

This entry was sourced from Khumbo Soko's blog at;

http://kbsoko.blogspot.com/2013/07/conversations-with-moses.html?showComment=1374153859167

 

Visit his blog for more interesting perspectives on a variety of social, political, legal and even popular matters.

Politics of Sexuality, The "Color" of Evil, and the Treyvon - Zimmerman Case

Weird title indeed. Well as a disclaimer, this post will be made up on 3 distinct themes. The first will be about sexuality especially as it pertains to the politicization of the female body; the second will be on the distraction afforded by the racial "colors" that seem to underpin societal perceptions of evil; and lastly I will comment on the Zimmerman case which I think exposes the nexus between legality and justice, the former representing the procedural and in a way material standardizations brought about by law, and the latter, the ideal of justice whose definition can only be partisan amidst diversity and pluralism.

 

SEXUALITY AND FEMALE BODY

 

A vast amount of work has already been written around the politics of the female body - a body that has become the subject of the great violences of control. I wish to provide a rendition of similar analyses particularly with regard to Africa and how over time we have accepted an absurd mystification of the female body, ascribing to it the definition of oddity even pertaining to features of its natural design.

 

Presently, the female body is locked away and kept outside the public sphere underneath the comprehensive traditional attire and other kinds of clothing. The carrier of that body presents her face as the disembodied interface through which she engages with the male dominated public sphere. The female face is perhaps the only part of her body which is also constituted within the definitions pleasantness and beauty but which carries no connotations of nude [oddity] or "inappropriateness". The rest of her, particularly from the neck downwards is the object of control bound up in definitions of appropriateness.

 

This keeping out of the public domain of the female body does not only represent an oppression on the part of the female person but also affords the society with a basis upon which the exposure of that same body can attract physical and emotional harm which in those instances hides itself from the term "violence" behind the apparition of that regulated female body. Jointly, the society comes to view the act of violence as the result of the coming-to-the-fore of the female body which facilitated the occurrence of a disruption  in the prevailing social order. The fallacy is that controlling the female body is but one fundamental aspect of the various pillars of social organization and order. Hence the rampant arguments about how "loose" dressing is an affront to the cultural traditions of Africa; and hence an underminer of African social order.

 

The male body however continuously seeks to keep itself apolitical. By being apolitical, and deviating body politics towards the female body, the male body ascribes upon itself the neutrality that permits it to "naturally" venture into the ever expanding spaces of the social and political world. It therefore becomes only nature for men to explore, while it remains unnatural for women to be adventurous. With each new venture, discovery and enterprise,  the male body reserves to itself the right to be the first to experience it, categorize it and then pass it on to the politicalized female body as an already made and classified artefact. The female body's first task at best must be to overcome its own political "decorum" in order to fancy a shot at the new venture, discovery or enterprise. At worst, the female body amalgamates within its prescribed conventions with the conventions of the passed own artefact.

 

In some of the more apparent gestures of just how much violence the female body endures with regard to various social, political and economic avenues, the female body emerges naked to the public sphere selling razor-blades, sports cars, perfumes, exotic holiday resorts and other items that are considered to be of value by men, and therefore by women. These cases demonstrate a power nexus of control between the "wrapped up" female body and the public space. This is how it is done. Because of the established conventions that regulate how the female body is presented in the public eye, and the collective understanding that no appropriate woman would ordinarily "disclose" her body to that public eye; the naked bodies that accompany the advertisements of various items depict a powerful key in the hands of the men with the ability to unlock and make accessible that otherwise hidden female body. Also, it teaches women just what the keys to their bodies are, thereby instilling within them the fallacious value of exchange of social benefits for sexual access to her body. On the other hand, the woman whose body it is that has been unlocked is for that moment temporality excluded from condemnation. She is allowed to display her obtained freedom to all, including other women whose own bodies are locked up. This woman has been allowed access to the social, political and economic life dominated by men, and she has been granted her citizenship to that sphere by men themselves.

 

In the last instance, women go about life waiting to be liberated and set free by men through the things that men own, the money that men have, the power that men command, and the wealth that men amass. My solution to this huge atrocity on women is that their bodies be set free. That their bodies come to populate and fill up the public spaces. Once the regulations on the presentation of a the female body are broken, the accompanying commodification of those bodies will also be broken. Their bodies will become depoliticized, and avenues will likewise be available to them in the same manner in which such avenues are available to male bodies. Women would be misinformed to think that reverting to tighter controls embedded in traditions would serve to protect them from the sexual and other violences they are put under. I say the opposite is true. The more we see a de-regulation of the female body, the more we will see a de-politicization, and the more we will erase its accompanying violence.

SATRICALLY PUT: FREEDOM OF DRESS IS THEREFORE GOOD!!!

 

The Color of Evil

 

People have indeed visited great atrocities on others based on some imagined characteristics for othering. In much of Africa, colonialism othered on the basis of race. In Europe, perhaps it was on the basis of ideology, or ethnicity and even race itself. I am no professional in the subject matter of ethnicity, tribalism and racism but I do think that while various distinctions for othering do create "us-es" and "them-s" it also creates a false sense of rightness within those who become either the "us-es" or indeed the "them-s". This subtle distinction will be come clearer below.

 

When the "them-s" - that is, Africans - finally overcame their prior political conditions into eras of self rule, they very rapidly began to engage in state patronage, ethnically charged divide and rule postures, cultural and political hegemonization and outright authoritarianism. Now, the arguments prior to self-rule mostly centred around admonishments about "we are all humans and no one should be segregated on the basis of race, colour, gender or creed" and similar highly noble calls. However, step into government and with the "them-s" becoming the "us", the very features that constituted the marks of evil during the prior political organization become alright because "hey, it us our turn now" to enjoy.

 

It is in this sense that I largely feel that Africans after acquiring self-rule have failed to transcend the very obstacles that halted the colonial and apartheid projects. This is because, while the so-called "whites" where in power,  the evil they propagated towards the African was at once evil and good based and anchored around that fluid terminology of "them" and "us". Bad things were bad when they happened to "us" and were good and permissible when they happened to "them". And this posture has not changed in modern Africa in which various forms of "us" and "them" punctuate the entire political process. Corruption becomes okay for us to do it, but prosecutable when it is done by "them". Disobeying court orders is prudent for "us" and tolerable for "them" to do it. Or more emphatically, to dominate Africans is bad for the "Europeans - them" to do but okay for other "Africans - us" to do it, as was the case with Kamuzu Banda.

 

The problem with this simple distinction between "them" and "us" is that it reduces the African political process down to the status of the same people we called evil during our oppression. The devil is the devil whether or not he is working in your favour or in the favour of your imagined enemy. Unless we transcend this duality, we will remain as we are for the foreseeable feature.

 

Zimmerman: The Triumph of Law and the Crucifixion of Justice

 

Protests are running throughout some of the major cities of the United States due to the acquittal of Zimmerman who killed Treyvon on that fateful day. I have experienced family loss myself and so I have a sense of what the family is going through.

 

This case was interesting because it is hinged upon the very values that found the nation of the United States. The constitution of the United States and the manner in which it has been interpreted by congress and more especially by the Supreme Court largely approximates towards a vision in which "all rights not accorded to the States remain the rights of the citizens of the United States". And what this means is that the individual American as a citizen, while having duties to their country, is accorded the full protection of the law pertaining to matters of that individual citizens entitlements and rights. Such a posture also implies that the modalities by which justice could be arrived at can not be embedded in sentimentality but rather in the symmetrical and equitable application citizen rights and entitlements to all citizens of the United States. It raises the status of due procedure over sentiment and other grand visions of morality. After all, it is only precisely through this elevation of procedural equity that all citizens can at once be allowed very wide and expansive rights, too numerous to name or count.

 

In the Treyvon and Zimmerman case, the procedural processes of trial were observed; the court process was spot on in as far as such procedures were concerned. The court took into consideration all the evidence presented, and disregarded all the other suspicions as well as sentiments that were aloof. The jury deliberated, and arrived at the verdict of "not guilty". Some of my lawyer friends tell me that the prosecutors fielded a very poor case for Treyvon's family, and that the defense showed up with a superior argument and case. I too, having seen the various footage agree. But moreover, I particularly was more concerned with the possibility of a court of law issuing a verdict based on matters that were not presented as the material facts of the case in question, because to do so would be to invite a precedence in which the verdicts and judgements of the courts become the substance of vague and prejudicial visions of justness and justice.

 

While the Law is indeed an instrument through which we hope to arrive at justice, the most immediate function of the law is procedural fairness, and that means, the law and its procedures must be capable of being scrutinized, evaluated, and assessed. That is how fairness especially as it pertains to citizen rights can be ascertained. In this case, all such expectations are met, and a re-reading of the court procedures will show that all stipulations were indeed followed regardless of race, gender or creed. But by extension, it also means that where the facts or the evidences coming into the case are wanting, then legal fairness will not always translate into the provision of justice because to do would be to require the law to temporarily uphold the rights of one citizen and undermine those of another. Therefore, Americans are better off with a procedural system such as the one they have, than to call for a sentimentalist system which not only puts procedures and other standards of fairness into flux but also pushes out verdicts on the basis of sentiment that can not be assessed, accounted for and scrutinized because such as system would undermine the much touted citizen rights that Americans are already so proud of.

 

Treyvons death is a tragedy, and most likely he was murdered that day. To that effect, justice was denied to Treyvon and his family. But in as far as the Court system adhered to the procedural requirements of American law, then the case was a "disguised" triumph of that country's legal order. However, America would have to decide if what they want is procedural fairness or arbitrary justice.

 

Our prayers and thoughts however remain with Treyvon's family.

Shortly, I will post an article in which I discuss in more detail the problems with certain legal entitlements such as gun-ownership for instance, and the sorts of crimes that come before the courts following those legal entitlements. The conclusions will suggest interesting that the court process merely becomes a system of re-calibrating prior verdicts which are pre-issued and accorded to the perpetrating citizen once those laws and their entitlements are enacted. As such, the courts will only ever see typically a certain kind of criminal representation in their courtrooms, and therefore are more likely to issue out certain kinds of verdicts, the root cause of which are the priory enacted laws in the first place. But more next time.

 

 

A Renaissance of Control: Africa and its false Trophies

Reading a popular Zambian online newspaper the other day, I came across a comment apparently posted by a South African who said and I paraphrase, 

I am a South African and I have never been to any African countries but I have traveled widely overseas…. [in relation to the Zambian Vice-President’s outbursts about the South African president and the South African government] I don’t understand why these Africans who do not like us keep jumping our borders to come to our Country. After all, what can Zambia give us? All it is, from what I see, is a run-down third world country with nothing but poverty…

The lengthy comment went on, following the same line of thinking more or less. I puzzled over this for a few hours while taking my regular think-walks, mostly focusing on the many dichotomies or binaries that we Africans, as a collective, have come to imbibe. There is Pan-Africanism which in my view is a response to the torn-up communities of what are our visions of a once united and peaceful African continent used to be prior to imperial and colonial invasion. And then there are discourses of development, densely decorated in abundant vocabularies about regional and global economic integrations, the vast majority of which are Keynesian and even Adam Smithian economics language albeit tinged here and there in newer discourses about the environment, gender and so on. However, the exact pragmatics of pursuing such, call them, ideologies are desperately at odds. On another entry I will reflect on some of the difficulties associated with ethnic, traditional, nationalist, regionalist and finally, Africanism sentimentalisms. In my view, such –isms are inherently incompatible, and the definition for an African Renaissance does well to free itself from such futile attempts to consolidate them.

But the very interesting thing about the comment I have quoted above (and which I have paraphrased to reduce the more crude and offensive language the commenter used when they posted it) is as follows; South Africa in 1994 emerged out of close to 5 decades of Apartheid, preceded by 350 to 400 years of colonial rule. We are therefore looking at just under 5 centuries of oppressive ruled in which the direction of the country more and more, as the oppression grew stronger and stronger from its inception, became the outcome of intentions or wills of people other than the natives themselves. By 1994, when the second and more significant independence happened, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town (to mention the most prominent cities) had already been established as major metropolitan areas not only in relation to just other African cities but even in relation to other cities in the globe generally. In those days, South Africa’s economy, in spite of its dehumanizing and ruthlessly segregative orientation, was nonetheless already a huge, albeit largely isolated, force on the continent. It therefore becomes striking when this “monument” of an economy, built via the deliberate instrumentalization of a dehumanized “racial other” seamlessly becomes grafted in by an African commenter on a Zambian online newspaper as a beacon of South African supremacy and a standard for “othering” other African peoples.

Some would argue that it was in fact African labor that built those monuments, and yet the superior argument would for me be that any artifact or monument built in the absentia of the will of the concerned people is an affront on their humanity. Which is precisely why, even with South Africa’s huge economy, it was not enough for Africans to simply stare and marvel at the tall buildings and the big highways. Rather they aspired for self-determinism via the philosophy of democracy in which the trajectory of their nation would reflect their “wills” as a collective. These contradictions are not isolated to the South African case, for even as early as 1964, only eight months after the establishment of an independent Malawi, Kamuzu Banda (Malawi’s ruthless dictator) begun to imprint his very personality onto the Malawi state via the use of the very monuments of power that had characterized the colonial period.

Now, these very sketchy considerations make us aware of boarder, cross-cutting conditions of the self-ruled African dispensation after the collapse of the colonies. This dialectic of castigating the colonialists, while at the same time celebrating about the very monuments which should rightly only be recognized as witnesses to our oppression, has permitted the entry of a dual discourse which can only function within the diameters of an acutely oppressive political supervision. What do I mean? Discourses about freedom from an oppressor cannot naturally exist alongside the practices of celebrating the monuments set up by the oppressor which themselves remind us strongly of the oppression we lived through. As such, the liberators (that is the so-called freedom fighters) ascribed unto themselves the roles of deciding what makes up the narrative of a free Africa and what does not. And therefore, the selection of things to be adopted into what we could loosely call African culture falls precisely upon their laps to arbitrarily decide what constitutes an African rebirth and what doesn’t. This in turn facilitates the further creation of board concepts such as nationalism as ideas born out of the continuously unfolding actions of the liberators themselves, occasioning in the first place, the early instances of control masked in performances of unification, and in the last place, open declarations about what constitutes a cultural nationalism definition and what doesn’t, thereby furthering the othering of dissenting Africans. This is in a nutshell the long and short of the Kamuzu Banda dictatorship of independent Malawi.

When considered closely, it is understandable as to why then a rather politically active population responsible for the tearing down of oppressive systems prior to independence, become docile and susceptible to totalitarian control by a movement led by freedom-fighters. The overcoming of an oppressive system not only challenges the political establishment but it is also hinged upon the ideals of something that was lost or denied, something only sentimentally and vaguely envisaged but not concretely defined. That something to which the Africans of the colonial period aspired was taken over, in its definitions, by their liberators, thereby occasioning the sort of cultural definitions that only suited those in power and allowed them psychological control over the African people. I find this condition perhaps nowhere better established on the African continent than in present day Zimbabwe where somehow a full dictatorship operates side-by-side with a Judiciary and a National Assembly. For me, the mechanism works as follows. The idea of a Zimbabwean democracy is only elaborated by the incumbent president, and all other arms of government must operate within that prescribed definition handed down by that president. Zimbabwean culture is therefore handed-down. Zimbabwean nationalism is similarly handed-down. All in favor are true Zimbabwean nationals, and all dissenting are the others who have lost their African roots. The political vocabulary is frozen within that simple but immensely powerful binary whose one side is filled with abundant “handed-down” vocabulary, and whose other side is merely defined as “unAfrican” and therefore, intolerable. 

Furthermore, in examining this condition more closely, it is not surprising that other definitions pertaining to, for instance, how specific aspects of African culture ought to occur within the “dictated” democracy are similarly handed down and practiced as prescribed. However, the very deep sentimentality brought about by the initial pre-independence galvanizing messages of the liberators depicting our independence as being a return towards a something lost do not only permit for the passive reception of these forms of control but also short-circuit the other silenced implications of an African renaissance, namely, open debate and more importantly, the right to create and institute as a living people within very unique circumstances, relevant systems of culture as well as broader definitions of a post-colonial African experience. After all, if Africanism was defined by Africans of a prior generation, they themselves having acquired that from other prior Africans, why can’t today’s Africans be afforded the similar right to decide their own customs and traditions? Some of the blackmail for offsetting this sure consistency has been leveraged upon a politically strengthen narrative of ancestral spirits as being the ones who expect it of all Africans to live a certain way; that way itself being described and defined only by our liberators. The freedom of narrative was thus reduced to the mere re-telling of stories of our strong men during the fight for independence alongside folklore tales of ancestors, African prophets and spiritualists, elephants, hyenas and rabbits (hares) aimed at instilling a power friendly discipline into our young ones and ourselves. The African imagination became reduced to a politically-blunt object, designed only to receive definitions about what we ought to do today, and re-telling those tales of a handed-down or dictated history as if it were an “openly-deliberated” and consensually agreed definition of African culture, traditions, nationalism, and general experience. In conclusion therefore, African de-colonization was merely, by and large, a re-entry into an alternative form of colonization setup by the political freezing of our numerous objects and symbols of culture and experience.

In much of the SADC region, to varying degrees and with the notable exception of Botswana (even though it two shows several parallels), we find that culture and nationalism, when tracked back to the hay-days of independence, emanated as handed-down definitions for the supposed purpose of national unity building. Today, these ideas are shoved down the throats of other Africans as gospels of a re-found African experience. As such, for me, it is clear that control aided by the celebrating of our false trophies speaks of a general political fear to allow the African to experience and define for themselves what orientation they ought to acquire or develop in order to be better compatible with the things that confront them. And so women are, for instance, tightly kept to a strict presentation of what an African woman ought to be, and rape, which is in my opinion the work of person who has intended in his own heart to violate another human being, comes to be seen as an incidence arising from a woman whose demeanor violated that African woman’s presentation of herself. In a twisted way, therefore, every act of violence against women, in spite of the political rhetoric about how bad and evil it is, ferments the problem further, instilling more powerfully the misinformed position that certain kinds of women who violate the cultural code invite upon themselves this “lesson”. Indirectly, the person who perpetrates the crime – who might be arrested if they are truly unfortunate – is only symbolically sanctioned officially via the performances and discourses of the state set up, while in the domain of a strictly monitored process of how African culture ought to unfold, such incidences on further the false-expectation that if only we could all revert to that thing we lost during colonialism, these things would automatically melt away. When in my opinion, the problem arises from the very “colonizing” of what African culture ought to be by our liberators.

In returning back to the quotation I opened this brief and sketchy discussion with, this taking for trophies the very marks of our oppression highlights just how largely false our liberation was, and how furthermore, we have allowed ourselves to be doubly inflicted by not only the dehumanizing features of our past colonies, but the also the further colonization under the banner of an African Renaissance. Daily we are reminded to be Africans in our mud huts and broken schools by people riding in convoys that are nothing but modern. We walk barefoot to rallies to be addressed by leaders who live in State Palaces which are modern. We trustingly subject ourselves to traditional and cultural rituals, wallowing in dehumanizing poverty, to – in the evening – turn on our battery powered radios to listen to budget presentations quoted in figures and articulated in modern economics theory. And somehow, we are not yet able to see that cultural sentimentalism is an othering force, empowering us only to the extent to which we are only able to police ourselves into an politically acceptable order; while disempowering us from our place as Africans ready to question and demand more appropriate visions for our present conditions. Our resistance towards freeing ourselves from these crippling definitions about who an African is, to the extent that we disallow others in our societies to be whatever they choose to be, resembles only a form of political and social surveillance in my view. And it allows us to misguidedly “other” other Africans in that false-enlightened manner of the author of that scathing comment about the people of Zambia. The troubling thing is, however, that we all seem inflicted by this quest for a gone and dead African authenticity, and therefore prone to removing ourselves from open debate aimed towards the creation of a more applicable agreement of what being an African in 2013 ought to look like.

Ubuntu/Umunthu and Malawi's Aspiration for a Democratic Order

Ubuntu or Umunthu is very roughly an idea that spouses the view that there cannot be a "me" without an "us". This very simplified expression of Ubuntu carries with it various connotations with cross-cutting and very often inter-penetrating implications. However, because of the Ubuntu concept's deep rootedness within the bedrock of the Bantu people's very social fabric especially as a campus for navigating within a social and material world with some sense of morality, very often the contradictory aspects of this concept are generally downplayed as misinformed or misappropriated usages of the Ubuntu philosophy itself as a vague code for the existential navigation of the community embedded African as opposed to being acknowledged as the very indications tension within the pragmatics of Ubuntu itself as a life philosophy.

As a moral campus, in this case particularly pertaining to one’s continuous sense of responsibility towards the community, Ubuntu looks at social cohesion and an interdependence sustained within and by a flourishing communal system. Furthermore, the fibre that sustains this Ubuntu communal system is relational; that is, inter-human relations essentially what give the Ubuntu communal system its life-force or energy. The nature of these relationship may not and need not imply deep personal and emotional relationships. Rather they require a deliberate framing of a communal worldview or a sharedness of perspective pertaining to the character and nature of the material as well as immaterial world which then informs the basis whereupon a distinctly characterized communal system can be developed, and organized by human relations in order to exist meaningfully within the parameters of that [or those] envisioned world[s]. That is, a constructed togetherness or we-ness or us-ness.

The utopia that accompanies the Ubuntu philosophy or ideology [or even concept] is that the individual is acutely aware of the 'fact' that their existence is without meaning in the absence of others, and secondly, that in working together as a collective a lot more can be achieved, and thirdly, that the benefits of such achievements can be evenly [perhaps fairly] redistributed to all as determined by the relational networks. The implicit perception of which further implies that all human beings or persons within that social fabric are valued and treated as equals because of their selfless contributions to the communal system as well as their intrinsic value by virtue of being human. These would connote very beautiful and wonderful things as the outcomes of this very truly selfless ideology of Ubuntu whose morality seems to stem from the very pragmatics of living as human beings amongst other human beings amidst a world that is not fully comprehensible to any one mind. The communal pragmatics of Ubuntu therefore permits the finite mind to transcend the limitations of an individual human being by generating the existential experience of being amongst others, and seeing one’s contributions, albeit obscured within the mysterious mechanics of communal system vis-à-vis the external world, contribute to collective progress as well as the ‘colonization’ of that rampant, not completely comprehensible world.

On the flip side, Ubuntu’s philosophy is riddled with contradictions. Right within this blissful communal fabric which is relationally based and determined, emerge loci of power and authority, presented and masked as overseeing and guardian entities of the Ubuntu spirit. These entities are not themselves exempted from relationship as very often they are held by individuals who belong to the communal fabric itself. Their ability to render this oversight function often rests upon their demonstrated mastery, however defined, of various elements of the Ubuntu philosophy, and their ability to arbitrate amongst lapses in the communal system or fabric is both as a result of some historical pedigree as well as certain amount of mystery necessitated by the initial recognition of the finite mind of the individual, and the deity-like pragmatics of the fully functional Ubuntu philosophy as it is acted out by members of communal system. This condition necessitates the creation of illegitimate forms of power and authority and material accumulation – and indeed this critique about power illegitimacy emerges from within the Ubuntu philosophy itself which would, if exactly articulated, reject any kind of notions of differential importance amongst human persons. Furthermore, the material accumulation by those in authority also becomes masked within the ultimately unknowable rewards system of the relation based Ubuntu system.

What is of paramount importance to me however is that the Ubuntu communal system is all the time a system that is activated by the continuously conscious political animal called the human being – who, even when not intending to cause harm, is keenly aware of [or at least free to act into] the spaces opportuned to him or her by the varying depths of the different relationships within that complex Ubuntu system. An obviously, these complexities of relations carry within power connotations. That awareness comes with it abilities to act and mobilize various resources of the communal system from the very tangible material things right into the very complex and intangible symbolic things of that communal system. What then comes to be seen as pragmatic contradictions as a result of misappropriated and misunderstood Ubuntu obligations and responsibilities for the person to carry out, are in fact, the mere instances of impracticalities within the very Ubuntu system itself, stemming directly from its relational basis for [apparently organic] communal organization. This is not to mention, the very active role of individuals with considerable influence within the communal fabric to begin to activity prescribe meanings and contribute to the creation of symbolic conventions that further cement, within ambiguities of the Ubuntu communal system, their positions of continuously growing privilege.

The exact application of Ubuntu as a philosophy is in fact the reluctance to hold anything – symbolic, real or both - to any measure of exactness preferring rather to allow the relationship between any two persons to preside over the characterization of that incident with the vary wide goal-posts of inter-relational preservation on the one hand, and communal interests on the other. Here, relational or communal interests or both then determine what description will be accorded to an incident, albeit within the specific cultural system of that communal system. Any designated description, varying upon who is involved, makes different contributions to the culture code within which the Ubuntu philosophy operates. To those who see Ubuntu as the creator of culture itself, it is important to mention that unique historical experiences induce differing implementations of this very benevolent philosophy, and thereby creating unique cultures out of, to sensationally put it, what was initially a uniform philosophy of Ubuntu [if such a thing ever existed at all]. By extension therefore, Ubuntu designates the occurrence of a counter State, counter modernity, and consequently counter democratic practises. Ubuntu’s practical application necessarily would most likely than not create precedence for patrilineal political orders as evidenced in Malawi, both from the inherent description-of-incidences haggling tendencies as well as the brutal instrumentalization of the philosophy itself to maintain or develop privilege. This distinction in my mind is only analytical, otherwise, the logical outcomes of such developments ultimately lead on to the same conclusions already asserted above.

The reconciliation of Ubuntu to the democratization efforts of Malawi therefore entails an acceptance of some core themes coming from the adoption of democracy itself as a foreign system to the Ubuntu one on the one hand, and also accepting an adaption of Ubuntu philosophy one the other hand. In the latter case, the goals of Ubuntu’s philosophy are not foreign to the goals of State or the goals of democratic values. However, the mechanics through which such goals are realized are fundamentally different. Democracy as seen as the custodian of modernity embraces the deliberate articulation and codification of specific practices that sanction the various activities that occur within that system. And therefore the guard against a disruption to the state of affairs is impersonal, and always acting uniformly toward all members of that system who transgress or conform to it in those codified instances. Ubuntu, however, requires for a relational arbitration, that prescribes or imbues an incident with approximated relationally-informed descriptions, and their resultant consequences. The vein of this rendition is not to presuppose that Ubuntu is inferior or superior to Democracy, but rather that Ubuntu need not necessarily be based on relationships especially over the governance of huge social systems such as Nation States as its practice is ultimately inextricably linked to forms of governance that would in the last instance undermine its very spirit. It is important to note that democracy as an adopted system was arguably preferred because it seemed to silently champion the values of Ubuntu.

However, and particularly in post-independence upheavals for democratic transitions, the democratic model of governance was adopted in order to check or curtail the excesses suffered from an overbearing locus of power that seemed to undermine the vast entirety of the Ubuntu communal system at the national level. In which case, democracy was the preferred and silent critique of a rogue relation-dependent system which would serve as an add-on to this philosophy of community. I imagine that it would not be impossible to affix this brief analysis to Malawi’s historical archive, and to then see vividly how, intentionally and/or unintentionally, a benevolent philosophy such as Ubuntu could readily contribute, in its pragmatics, to the creation of dysfunctional states such as Malawi, Africa’s Warm Heart.