WHY IS IT SO EASY TO SPEAK ON BEHALF OF ALL AFRICANS

The tendency of some Africans to so generally speak for and on behalf of all of Africa’s inhabitants is, in my view, a sad development. In fact, I have had personal misgivings with the term “Africa” itself which, as an already large consensus has held, negates and dehumanizes the specific and contextual experiences that characterize the lives of distinct African persons. This position is clear and I need not speak on it further. I however wish to speak somewhat more on what I think is an additional problem with the term or the idea of “Africa” and even “African”. These considerations will finally lead me towards the comments I wish to express about problem with the tendency of some Africans to so generally speak for and on behalf of all of Africa’s inhabitants.

Firstly, I will contextualize my argument within my own experiences so as to avoid speaking generally. I have found from my own experiences – when I have been able to travel around the SADC neighborhood of Southern Africa – that the term African, in spite of all its historical heaviness accrued from the experiences particularly of colonization, remains a hollow and blunt political term that adds no real advantages, accords no real benefits or privileges, nor provides guarantees in both the formal and informal spheres of social life for many people. It would appear to me that to be African really entails an affordance to identify directly with a particular era of time – but without necessarily participating in any deliberately inclusive and fulfilling way in the practical contemporary issues of today’s Africa. In fact, the question about today’s Africa is largely left hanging, perhaps for the purposes of maintaining a permanent distraction away from “what is really going on – you know, the wealth amassed virtually overnight, the appalling states of governance and so on” – or maybe for the sheer enormity of the effort it would take to comprehensively encapsulate all of the African experience – historical and contemporary – into a beautifully worded definition.

And yet, this would be the problem, wouldn’t it? After all, hasn’t the struggle for African independence and African renaissance been characterized by its proponents as a struggle towards “African self-writing and self-profession”? Hasn’t one of the great atrocities against the inhabitants of the African continent been their total absence in the telling of their own stories, their histories – expressing and experiencing their cultures without external processes of moral vetting? (Speaking about themselves with someone else's consent and permission as it were). In fact, more recently (perhaps more so in the last 2 decades), we have seen renewed calls, rallying Africa’s inhabitants to pursue and generate knowledge that is drawn out of “authentic” African experience: the assurance of authentic being the local persons themselves actively involved in the articulation of their own experiences. Additionally, there is a definite call for scholars to turn away from an over-reliance on knowledge produced elsewhere, and to become emboldened to speak authoritatively about their own African-experience-centered research - and with this, the definition of Africa as a black continent has seen some extension affording non-black Africans as well the freedom and space to convey and channel their own sense of African-ness. Implicit within both these moods is the basic and fundamental rationale that every “African” gets to the place where they have the courage to raise their own voice and for that voice (among millions of other voices) to be counted a legitimate and a right voice airing the legitimate and valid opinion of its owner and her outlook. This in itself has greatly blurred the traditional view about what Africa's cultural boundaries are or ought to be.

And yet these authentic voices are treated as a nuisance or even silenced by the tendency to grand-narrate about what being an African entails. As such, Africans remain under a similar stranglehold of objectification when today, they still hear self-appointed authorities, most notably in but not exclusive to governments, begin to proclaim what the definition of African-ness is, and with it, what the rules of engagement should be with regards to those who do not ascribe to those definitions – and even towards those who do not fit within those definitions (that is, who is a non-Africans). This is also where the problem of citizenship creeps into the picture. I will illustrate this complex matter in a very brief and crude adumbration as follows: Upon this slippery culturally derived definitional basis of African-ness, which is almost always applied in order to safeguard and police political spaces, the various duties, responsibilities and obligations that States have to their citizens are accorded or denied to individuals and even groups of nationals. (Keeping in mind also that many African States see themselves as custodians of authentic African culture which then forms the canvas upon which other formal arrangements such as constitutions are written and ratified. This was their natural reaction to colonialism after gaining indepedence). This is also why, in the past, I have argued that while most “Africans” are nationals of various countries, they are not at all times always citizens of their countries especially if they are seen as transgressors of this unwritten cultural-political code.

And if I may just add an extra point while I am on this important tangent – I have never been granted admission to any country in Africa on the basis of being an African. All admissions I have received have been based on my birth-acquired identity of Malawian or a national of Malawi. It therefore follows that to be African is merely to identify with a particular narrative which itself is very much under constant reconstruction and contestation – but it is not a status of any real practical use in contemporary African life. Africa is a wide contested notion that virtually anyone can claim to belong to, and to which no one, at least within such a state of flux, can claim exclusive rights to. Nationhood, it would seem to me, therefore is what is important for functioning across Africa’s countries, while citizenship is what is crucial for functioning within a given country provided that status is maintained by the State to the individual against some enabling cultural basis as already argued elsewhere above.

And so, when citizenship is denied, persons filter across borders and acquire various legal statuses accorded to them on the basis of them being nationals of a given country: which country has “quietly” denied or abrogated them of citizenship. At least this is what appears to be the case from my point of view. My speculation is strengthened even more by the fact that while I was in South Africa for about 4 years, I was able to make demands of the South African government which I would never dare to make of my own government at home. The stability of a citizenship status in South Africa was much more concrete than a citizenship status accorded by the Malawi State – this in spite of the fact that legally I was and still am a Malawian without having ever been a South African citizen at any time while I was there (and this is precisely my point – citizenship seems often to be culturally designated within the social and political arrangements that construct relationships between States and their people. It is as such often arbitrary: in such cases, it is faintly legalistic).

And so, with all this in mind, what then accords any particular person from the African continent the right to speak on behalf of us all? I ask this question in response to an interesting article by a British-Nigerian journalist about African-Americans and their “supposed” tendency to appropriate African cultural symbols in order to look trendy and to identify with the so-called motherland. We do not even know the boundaries of who an African is within the present soul-searching as we gradually emerge from a difficult and turbulent past. Who are any of us therefore to prescribe what aspects of “our” culture is exclusively ours. In other words, who essentially is this “us” to whom any particular aspect of “African” culture belongs. 

And what about cultural appropriation within the African continent? Is it okay for Malawians, some of whom might know very little about “Kenyan culture”, to appropriate Kenyan cultural symbols in order to look trendy in Malawi or elsewhere? What is the fundamental difference between Malawians and African-Americans with regards to a cultural artifact in say, Angola – a country that might be equally little-known to both these nationals? Or is it that African-Americans are not Africans? In that case, and once more, who exactly is an African, and when does this African speak? (This question has already been problematized above in terms of some self-identification within some aspect of a historical narrative - which itself is potentially boundless).

And then what about tribes within countries? Is it okay for one tribe in Malawi or Zambia or Uganda to take the symbols of another tribe in Malawi or Zambia or Uganda without knowing fully what they mean and then appropriate them? (Clearly these groups are both "Africans", and are within the same country). And furthermore, what about cultural appropriation within the tribe? Who exactly within the tribe knows the exact meaning of that tribe’s cultural symbolism in relation to other members of that tribe? And if only that person (him or her) knows exactly what this cultural symbolism means, how then shall the rest of them find space for their voices to tell their own stories? Does this not seem all to familiar? Were we not silenced in this fashion before in some turbulent and dehumanizing past when people stood before us and told us who we were and were not? This takes us back to our original problem… “why is it so easy to speak on behalf of all Africans?” especially in light of our history in which violence was often perpetrated through this very mechanism.

In my humble opinion, there is no further room for this type of policing of cultural life. African-Americans have as much rights as any "African" to appropriate any symbols of their choosing. This will enable all the rest of us so called “Africans” to also do the same. This continent has greatly influenced the world even from its historical position of disadvantage and has borne many children and their descendents in that process. Its time for all of Africa's children to now speak and to do so freely.

Rantings about Malawi: Who we are

Malawi is truly a Post-Colony, and this is not merely because colonization was a real event of our history. I often like to listen attentively to what various experts and pundits have to say in their diagnostics of our Great Republic, and then I also like to listen to conversations amongst our other various groups who are never heard widely through our media outlets. In these conversations, there are numerous overlaps amongst the themes, but the eventual proposals of action are quite dissimilar. In the final instance, the difference in opinion amongst various experts, pundits and all other groups can be classified as follows: expert opinions are the result of (western) education with occasional tinges of Afrocentricism here and there, pundit opinions are broadly the views of an overburdened (professional) middle-class informed by the reader-, listener- and viewerships of newspapers, radios and television, while the other opinions are of the uneducated masses who supposedly don’t know what’s good for them. Conspicuously missing are the views of big business leaders because these tend to be disembodied through the institutional voices of say National Bank, or Press and other such large corporations without any real human face.

This is broadly how our society tends to classify opinions, and this is a typical hallmark of a post-colony: a society in which natives differentiate themselves into artificial groups through which violence (symbolic, systemic and physical) is appropriated, and suffering is legitimated. The veil beneath which violence in the post-colony hides itself is in how various groups respond practically to the real situations that confront them without a broader view of how their actions contribute towards the ongoing decay in the wider social setting. The postcolony is thus an association of seemingly disaffiliated groups conjoined in what appear to be isolated activities which nonetheless amalgamate into their collective decline.

In my humble view nonetheless – and indeed it is humble because this is a rather complicated issue – most discourse in Malawi is generated out of a general tension between two broad fronts which are the views of the experts/pundits on the one side, and the unarticulated desires of all the other groups on the other side, mediated by a middle consisting of a politicized state vis-à-vis a silent yet highly influential disembodied private sector run by the super (invisible) rich. This middle is also beholden to the colonial masters who essentially sustain through grants and loans their politico-economic and economic-political fortunes, respectively. Experts/pundits articulate the desires of a middle-class wanting to flourish in terms of vague freedoms, under a limited but developmental government while clinging on to certain sentimentalities of culture and even Malawian-ness (whatever that means). At the same time, all the other groups whose desires are unarticulated aspire at least to a basic middle-class existence of proper housing, satisfactory access to education, health and security, and of course, three proper meals a day. Their desires are thus truncated and distilled into middle-class aspirations for lack of a voice of their own since they are seen as uneducated.

However, as a prominent African scholar notes (Mamdani in Citizens and Subjects), middle-class desires in the postcolony are necessarily blockades to the realization of a more universal material emancipation. This is because rights which are at the core of middle-class aspirations, within a context of high inequality, protect those who have, and deny those who don’t have. From our own experience, we all know that the postcolony is a highly unequal place and primarily so by initial colonial design and continuous postcolonial implementation across material (politico-economic), institutional as well as symbolic (socio-cultural) overlapping spheres. This is why in the past I have commented that if we are to develop more intentionally and not wait on “trickle-down” economics (which is less likely to work in a climate of insatiable greed for nothing ever trickles off the plate of the greedy if not for purposes of patronage and politics of division) we must at least devolve rights to their basic minimums, and leave the tertiary matters for a latter period. But I digress.

More importantly, the question that begs our consideration is this: what are we to do in order to find a more wholesome articulation of the Malawian condition? That is, how can we get beyond our immediate practicalities that enable our own survival at the immediate expenses of collective well-being? Looking at this question will enable us to understand ourselves better, to look into our own soul so to speak – and perhaps even understand why secession (which is unfortunately being mistaken for federalism) has become a very hot matter.

I will end like this – very few of us, including myself, know what being a Malawian is all about even on a superficial level. Americans have their fictions such as “the land of the free” or “the free world”, a pretext so powerful that it has enabled them to turn a blind eye towards obscenely grotesque and dehumanizing violence against other peoples in the name of trying to liberate and democratize them [by force] (see Libya, see Iraqi, see Afghanistan which have all become hell-holes much worse than when the so-called liberators found them. Great Britain is perhaps the only “major” country which has decided that its creed shall be “to remain globally relevant by doing everything the Americans do” and when China begins to assert itself, their creed will become “do everything the Chinese do”, and indeed this may have already started to happen. It’s really quite pathetic, and perhaps this is why Scotland sought to leave them and narrowly lost amongst other things Westminster and Brussels related.

South Africans have rapidly developed their own fictions such as “the rainbow nation” even though certain colors of that rainbow are more visible than others: to put it mildly, the loudest color of the South African rainbow is male as their citizenship is heavily gendered, and we haven’t even talked about race yet. Oh, I forgot, ours is “the peace loving nation” – which to me sounds like telling people to condone all things in the name of peace even to their very own eminent demise. This is why we peacefully let MEC get away with murder at the last polls even though we are far less tolerant of “murder” amongst ourselves because this creed is about being beholden to the grace and excellence of our leaders by keeping others and ourselves in check (also known as Kamuzu-ism). But in the absence of some kind of national creed, countries are reduced to nothing more that territories of personal practicalities that contribute to the decay people through those same practicalities hope to escape. After all, nations are nothing more than constructs – but some fictions are closer to reality than others, and this is what I was getting at when I listed those other countries as examples. Next time, I hope to make another contribution in which I will present what I think would be the steps towards the more wholesome of such fictions. I hope to do so before the beloved north leaves us… that is, before it constructs itself into a new nation.

By the way, with regard to the Northern secession agitations, I do not know if I will be leaving or being left. This is because I belong through my extended families to both places – the north and the south, and recently I have developed new roots in the central region as well. I hope those of us with parents from the north and the south will we be allowed to have dual citizenship to both Malawi (main) and Northern Malawi. Or perhaps we can be constructed into some group of disadvantaged people towards whom large sums of compensatory money will flow… lol. But perhaps this too would in fact be a closer illustration of the creedless practicalities that continue to bedevil us: mere symptoms of the same problems.

Distorted Foundations: Malawi Elections 2014

So its been a while since the last time I posted to this blog. And this has been for the simple reason that there has been a lot to take in, reflect upon and process. It has also been a rather interesting period because of the tension between my own emotional sensitivities and the objective victories of the democratic systems for which I often so fervently champion.

 

I must admit though that in recent months - within this period of silence - have lost considerable confidence in democracy particularly as a system for development. That being said, democracy at least allows me to state my disappointments with it or its implementation openly; firstly because it allows for even the dimmest opportunities for a citizen to see what is going wrong in high places, and secondly that even in its distorted implementation, it enables a certain level of depersonalization which allows for institutional reform. The latter is important because it is easier to reform systems than it is to reform despots. On the other extreme, there is the developmental authoritarian regime which, unless it were filled with the good spirits of Ghandi or Mandela or Dr King and others (you will notice that the list is easily exhausted), is largely incapable neither to implement development with any kind of real objectivity aside from personalizations which impede reform nor to provide adequate room for systemic reform. Unless you are the Chinese miracle, authoritarianism is often the supreme law of the dictator... it is a dictatorship which crystalizes into laws and cultures that foment and perpetrate it. And so since I have such little faith in human beings including myself, I guess I am relegated by default to the role of a pessimistic democrat at best.

 

In previous blogs I have often spoken about the corrupted "spirit" of public life which makes it almost impossible for even the most objective and clear of regulations, laws and stipulations to be seen in their neutral manner. I have rather pessimistically stated that any law or contract written down to facilitate any number of interactions will be seen in light of this "spirit" rather than for what that law is objectively; and consequently, reason becomes nothing more than the rhetorical instrument used to accomplish unreasonable ends. And this of course is what has implied my usual stubborn position that unless there be a revolution of leadership at the top which fundamentally alters the relations of power and the discourses that enable its deployment, there can be no real hope to rapidly transform our society into something positive for the majority. This is because within the realm of interests manifesting as rhetoricized reason, there is no limit to which newer forms of interpretations other than the reasonable one can be created and implemented in accordance with the prevailing corrupt spirit of that time.

 

Anyway, so recently the democratic institutions, namely the Courts of Malawi came through, firstly by blocking the attempted annulment of the elections by former President Joyce Banda, then tying the Malawi Electoral Commissions' (MEC) hands for a period of two to three days when they attempted to recount the vote in view of what they said were serious irregularities, and lastly by forcing the Malawi Electoral Commission to announce the electoral results which 7 of their 10 commissioners had refused to append their signatures to. This is bitter-sweet for me because on the one hand I was moved deeply to realize that our institutions had grown mature enough to arbitrate, and block off interferences, in a serious matter such as a national election. But on the other hand, I saw once more the typical style in which we do things in Malawi, where what is obvious is shrouded in rhetoric while what is less obvious is clarified in a chorus of technocratic verbiage. I will explain.

 

What compelled the Courts to order MEC to announce the results which MEC itself as an independent body has called flawed with "serious irregularities" was a clause somewhere in the electoral law that stated that results were to be announced within 8-days of casting the last vote. The Court stated that MEC had the full authority to do whatever it wanted to do in order to verify results (that is to ascertain their credibility) but this was to be done within the 8-days. I am no legal expert but it is clear to me that this law does not require MEC to announce fraudulent results. Secondly, that this law does not mean to say that casting a vote is one event, while announcing the victor of the vote is another because this would be tantamount to charging MEC with the authority to administer elections and then decide by some corrupt collusion that a winner was some candidate arbitrarily selected by the group of commissioners. Furthermore, since swearing in traditionally happens within twelve hours of the announcement of the result, there is no way the public would be able to contend that decision before the new president was sworn in. But of course, the entire judgment or ruling didn't consider any of these matters. Perhaps MEC should have taken a step further to say that the entire vote was a huge failure and that another one had to be conducted; this was probably their only way out since maintaining that a physical audit had to be undertaken implied that these "serious irregularities" were not serious enough to offset who the eventual winner would be. Nevertheless, every vote should count. Elections in Malawi are not the business of compiling aggregates but rather the serious matter of ensuring that even the lonely dissenter's vote is captured on the tally.

 

More so, ideally, and as a nation that has undergone systematic repression since 1891 through the British and then the Kamuzu Banda colonizations, you would expect a little less naivety on the part of our, as we have all seen, very powerful Judges. The law, as I understand it in Malawi, is written in a bottom-up manner, with some laws speaking more closely about the fundamental premises upon which our nation was created post-1994, and others speaking more about the regulations governing secondary and tertiary matters of public and institutional life. What I mean by this is simply that: where all authority to govern is held by citizens and conferred by the vote to elected custodians, there can be no law that prevents the occurrence of that first fundamental pillar. In a narrow sense, the 8-day law could not have been upheld by a Court of Law at the expense of a legitimate handing over of power by Malawi's sovereigns into the hands of a president. The question that should have been asked importantly was rather "how long would a reasonable extension be as requested by MEC". And interestingly, MEC would have had a proposal that could have been challenged by the counsel of those who opposed it. The Court would have heard both arguments and decided on what, under those unique circumstances, would be a reasonable extension. For me, this was a monumental occasion that was missed by our judiciary's commitment to pedantry.

 

In a country where the majority are poor largely by systematic design, the courts of Malawi need to see that the laws fundamentally are held to the foundational pillars of reconstruction and redistribution of economic, social and political resources to those citizens. This is implicit in the writing of our constitution which beyond just reciting the Bill of Rights goes further to stipulate in various provisions equally important developmental rights in direct response to periods prior to democratic Malawi in 1994. As such, the law must be a living and breathing set of standards that ears and sees the condition of the people. The law cannot be read and interpreted with the attitude of finality, but rather in the attitude of continuous reconstruction and rebuilding; and this is the monumental task that was bestowed upon our very powerful Judiciary (recall also that the judiciary has the power to review any decision or action - not just legal - that is made by the executive for conformity to the Malawi constitution... need I say more?). But of course, so many other things that we developed well-meaningly in Malawi have now become a painful thorn in the side of their intended beneficiaries. In the end, nobody wins - rather, we all lose together as we adhere to continuously distorting our otherwise good foundations.

 

Nevertheless... Congratulations to my dear 5th President of Malawi... Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika... May this be the beginning of better days.

Revolution or Pragmatism from a Modest Malawian View Point

This essay will touch of several separate topics. The aim will be more to show how nuances of various topics have a role to play within the broader and tumultuous realm of politics. At this point in my life, I am convinced that we all are involved in politics, even when we have said to ourselves that we are apolitical, and this position is what currently drives me towards the conclusions I often make.

 

Revolution is a powerful word which captures the process of achieving the idealisms of the various groupings and factions that play their part in the dense political sphere. The dominant canons or discourses around which the definitional essence of that word are derived are embedded at least in the contemporary setting in a Marxian sense albeit no always within the Marxian conclusions. That sense is that revolutions entail that moment in which there is the realization of a critical mass of some awareness whose content manifests in a focused overthrow of an undesirable status quo. However, beyond the massive manifestation of that awareness' content upon the status quo is an undefined utopian space in which the shattered and yet remnant symbolisms of the previous order are arbitrarily designated into unequivocal, incoherent and generally unsystematic definitions about what a utopian existence actually should look like. This existentialist vacuum is in my interpretation what necessitates the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Marxist intellectual chapters, as well as an inherent intra-social resistances within the matrix of social actors generally towards revolution. More correctly, revolution isn't the object of disdain in and of itself - rather the lack of definitional exactness with regards to singular subjects following the overthrow of a status quo is.

 

An automatic solution therefore to this problem is a benevolent dictatorship or the dictatorship of Fidel Castro or more exactly, the dictatorship ascribed by a consenting proletariat. A dictatorship that is somehow geared towards total emancipation upwards even to the level of aesthetics, while maintaining a strong reformist position towards what are admittedly, even in Marxist and Hegelian doctrine themselves, the fundamental roots of all epiphenomenal human existence including aesthetics. This is after all the very reason why there is a lengthy and hostile critic of ideology within those same writings in which ideology is the manifest pacifier of endemic economic arrangements. Nonetheless, the imposition of a dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise, remains nothing more than an balancing stone to a very complicated question, and that question is, after the revolution that involves hundreds of thousands of people, from where then shall we draw a definition from which a utopian existence could be designed and implemented. This is precisely where Africa as a continent finds itself. Unlike its sister continents who through the processes of intentional but still nonetheless organic development (and I don't not say development to mean progress) have through the passing of time arrived at varying crystalized definitions of what life on those continents is about, and subsequently approximations of what is worth preserving. In Africa, the dilemma is ominous because the revolution is said to have already happened at independence; a revolution of political independence and self-determinism which however, within the very same decades of self-rule, had become subservient to the broader concerns of limiting economic circumstances. Or, to put it differently, circumstances that warranted self-rule in conjunction with continued economic dependence. This is of course for the simple reason that after independence was gained, the remnant symbolisms of State-ism and capitalism (or communism as its fierce opponent) had translated the revolutionary language pre-independence into ideals only realizable or imaginable within the precincts of the language or discourse of State-ism itself. It was either that as stepping stone for the political sustainability of the definitional dictatorships or the abyss of "the lack of utopian definitions".

 

Residually,  therefore the constitution of power which was required to reform or revolve that African condition remained in tact because of the absence of definitional exactness. In turn, this translated into a strange commitment to dictatorships even when the economic might of the State was clearly not within the control of the dictator per se but in the arm of the donating colonial-mother. The African revolution therefore in a practical terms was a vision whose viability was defined externally, but experienced and suffered internally - and to this effect, entirely experienced in a continuous juxtaposition with an abhorred and yet desired other. The definition granting powers of African executive branches defined only the modalities for maintaining the rights to twist and spin African definitions within an already prevailing language of dependence and its subsequent longings, while their true abilities to transform tangibly the lives of those they claimed those definitions were for was housed in London, or New York, or Berlin or other far flung places of African Longing. This tension, I claim in this essay, is visible today. But I also make another claim that may startle those who are often too militant about apportioning blame upon imperialism; that African dysfunction within such an arrangement is collegially of our own making.

 

I proceed as follows; even within the discourse of revolution, our continent's thinkers and politicians tussle over redistributing wealth, expanding services so as to engender socio-economic development, and other reforms that would materially - that is in terms of global/western definitions of wellness - improve the standing of African people. Revolution is thus laced everywhere within prevailing global definitions of wellness or betterment. There is also for example the naïve taking for granted of self-evident qualities and conditions that would universally speak to all of humanities desires and aspirations which are also fundamental universal doctrines about humanity which are western. They are the same self-evident criteria that are for example used to justify international acts of aggression and war. Now, the point is not to push for an alternative because clearly even if such an alternative could be produced, the argument I have presented so far attests to precisely the opposite of such an alternative. It seems clear that within our own dysfunctional marauding we are in fact all aspiring to - due to the historical outputs of our, call them, earlier induced or otherwise dispositions at independence and before - approximations towards the Western ideal anyway. And this is unsurprising because the Utopia, arrested by economic limitations, enabled by benevolent developed states whose acts of donation animate with life the wills of our political actors on our continent and our overall projects, are themselves imaginably the ideal. In this case they are donating as ideals, or financing the realization of an approved ideal. For we all know that violated ideals lead to aid cuts which often collapse political definitional powers eg. Malawi.

 

I find therefore that within that mess, arguments pertaining to what is essentially human in its origin or what is imbued as a consequence of an imposing other may be important to some, but my outlook is typically more modest. Firstly, we have a utopian desire that cannot be defined in any manner that could render it as a universal concept that reflected all aspirations. Our historical experience itself denies this. The utopian definitional vacuum only necessitates the need for a balancing benevolent dictatorship which masquerades as benevolent precisely because it sits in the vacuum of the absence of a definition. And lastly, we have the status quo rampant with currents of discontent and suffering, opulence and luxury, all of which a defined presently in various but nonetheless owned or conscious approximation towards western standards or antagonisms against those same western standards. Our own experience thus seems to force us to see the West as the only viable, resented or loved, alternative in the context in which a revolutionary future presents only a utopia with a void existentialist definition. So I ask, what then is the viable basis for any revolution anyway if its eventually is precisely the antithesis of the very aesthetic freedoms - or languages - we as Africans seek to protect; definitions which are blanketed in African rhetoric about a lost glory in a Western vocabulary.

 

I have many times before stated that such questions shouldn't have to matter at all if indeed we - and as our historical record has shown - have defined ourselves presently within the very things we claim to hate. Of what use therefore is this perpetual commitment to towards revolution when, even at this present time a pragmatic programmatic would be sufficient to heal the wounds of the unjustly suffering who predominantly already identify their betterment in terms of a Western vocabulary? The self-made aspect of our African problems have therefore more do with our own reluctance to see our circumstances for what they are, to be honest about the languages in which we speak or articulate them, and to move decisively to absolve them within a set of terms that are already present and rampant within the prevailing order - terms that are unfortunately western such as the State itself or even Citizenship. Visions about paradise are great, but Africa must come to terms with the reality that we are limited by what we can actually do. And that limited space of what we can do is much more fulfilling for all of us than what has been the case so far since independence in this longing for a utopia that we only know as a paradise but cant define in any tangibly existential manner.

 

The language that systems that function objectively within our own borders; that do not shield malpractice and offenders; and that attempt to symmetrically treat all citizens of States on the singular basis of their citizenships indeed echoes calls for a modernization of Africa. But we ourselves can begin to find the additional merits and demerits arising out of our own commitments to actualize a system of State to its very logical conclusions in manner that would permit us to transcend the western nostalgia, and arrive towards a cultural dictum that would define our own experiences. This would liberate us from this perpetual juxtapositional existence of always snaking around the central monolithic ideal in our ambivalent love for and hate of the West. The dysfunction brought about by high political powers designated to act as revolutionary prophets - or the quest for subsequent prophets following the pursuit of a new utopia - without the means to express their visions in economic terms and let alone in any fair terms always leave nations open to the appetites of those central personalities of power. Subsequently positions Africans to see the West as the ideal. Internal cohesion is therefore the first step towards any kind of decolonization effort. Revolution for me remains nothing but a revolutionary idea. What we need is Pragmatism - within the already rampant discourses, which follows into an honest realization of where we are, accounts for how we see ourselves there, and what practical affordances and limitations we face to better ourselves within those already rampant concepts.

 

 

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.