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.