So I have had friends or at least academic classmates from at least four continents. And in no particular order, Africa, Europe, America and Asia. In the majority of cases all of my friends were halfway between being leftists and also being liberally progressive. They would hear me out on my Pan Africanist views and support them on the basis of the assumption that human
rights were universal.
More-so after Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States of America.
In conversation, we would argue late into the night about the meaning of a progressive universality of human beings and how we could consolidate it beyond race, color and class.
While keeping in mind the fact and reality of the global historical injustice that was not only colonialism but also the global resistance to the same. From the late 19th century home grown anti-imperialist struggles against nascent imperialism such as the Maji Maji In Tanganyika (present day Tanzania), the Mau Mau in present day Kenya or the Chimurenga in present day Zimbabwe to the multiple modern anti-apartheid movements’ in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique.
For many of my liberal friends, this history was of limited consequence in the present.
The narrative was one where progress after historical colonial injustices were a thing of the past and how I and my black African colleagues’ needed to “move on”.
And indeed we sought to move on. We argued about how the world had sort of found itself in a ‘progressive space’ even after the millennial invasion of Iraq. We assumed as Africans that liberal interventionism’ based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its attendant United Nations' infrastructural system would eventually make the world political and international relations system much more peaceful and progressive.
We were wrong.
Both liberal interventionism as a global domination strategy of Western superpowers and our own assumption of universal equality of not only nations but the principle of sovereignty was easily shattered by events that happened in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Egypt, Palestine and Burkina Faso.
And these examples are where physical warfare in one form or the other took place.
Also bearing in mind where economic warfare and sanctions remain intact in many parts of the globe for those that do not easily accept either the hegemony of the global West and its allies or those that would otherwise not tow specific UN General Assembly resolutions.
What we however did not realise was that this was not just international politics/relations at play. This was and probably will be for the foreseeable future, a direct result of domestic sentiment in the same said global superpowers.
All foreign policy stemming therefrom is almost now predetermined by domestic political sentiment.
Whether on the eve or aftermath of general elections which are now also surprisingly beginning to be disputed in their self-proclaimed citadels. And where racism and racist attitudes toward immigration have come to hold sway over a majority of voters in global north source countries.
To explain a bit further by giving an example of the #BlackLivesMatter movements that swept the United States and Western Europe in the last few years, we assumed that an anti-racist movement would lead to progressive politics in the global north. On the contrary, it appeared to exacerbate its opposite.
More right leaning if not right wing governments have either retained power or become more influential in domestic politics. And are worryingly still in vogue.
This can be taken to mean that the direct influence of domestic politics and international relations is much more organic in a more negative sense than we initially assumed. And that assumptions of global north exceptionalism are less about a foreign ministry’s approach but ingrained in the mindset of the country where that foreign ministry emanates from.
Where we thought ‘democracy’ or ‘human equality’ to be universal, we are beginning to read between the lines in our newfound global realities and wars that we are seeing or experiencing. Both as they relate to emergent forms of discrimination and nationalist gatekeeping in the global north as evidenced by electoral outcomes in a number of countries. As well as neoliberalism or its more direct form of resource capitalism as a potential reason why this is now beginning to be more frequent with every change of government or election.
These are conversations that fewer and fewer of us as Africans are willing to have for many reasons. The main one being that we are losing our critical consciousness of global events and how they are increasingly presented in a way that places us at the bottom rung of the global opinion shaping ladder. Unlike in the heydays of Nkrumah, Nyerere, Cabral, Machel, Neto, Nasser and others. And the other one being a form of self censorship in order to retain either the ability to get a visa or alternatively retain a job in one form or the other.
This has also been compounded by what I refer to as the “departure to leave” syndrome that we are daily confronted with when dealing with our young African colleagues. Almost as the equivalent of the “bright lights syndrome” that we had to read in Urban Geography about rural-urban migration.
A development that has been weaponised in the politics of the global north to either retain or gain power. Even as multitudes die in the Mediterranean Sea or crossing treacherous mountains, deserts and rivers in North America or the Sahel regions.
Africa needs to begin to find a brave voice and call out progressive cdes in the global north about the turn of political events in their own backyards. It may not appear to be as important now, but it will matter for posterity. And to paraphrase Nyerere on electoral politics with a my own personal focus on the global north, “The mechanisms of democracy are not always the meaning of democracy.” And without global exception.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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