By Takura Zhangazha*
The United Nations (UN) recently held its annual General
Assembly (UNGA80.)
It was its as social and mainstream media generally advised
us the 80th anniversary of its founding. As Africans we remain grateful for the UN and
its role in our own struggles for national liberation. Despite the contemporary reality of the fact
that we do not have any veto power in the United Nations Security Council
(UNSC).
Not for a lack of trying.
Even Zimbabwe is trying to at least get a rotational role in the same
global organ and for now appears to be doing a lackluster job of it.
Watching and listening to the speeches made by various heads
of state and government at the UNGA80 one could be forgiven for asking the
abstract question, “is the World at a crossroads?” Particularly in relation to what we had
assumed was a universal world order based on democracy and human rights?
The speeches were relatively poor beginning with the host
nation the United States of America (USA) whose president Trump was more concerned
about escalators, tele-prompters and the invincibility of his country’s global hegemony.
Other states were more focused on the genocide occurring in
Gaza and their newfound recognition of the state of Palestine. With the African states referring to the need
to reform the UNSC (one that still falls on deaf ears) and the important challenge
of the impact of climate change. Or in a
few cases the capitalist and cultural impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
and its primary owners.
All in all, the UNGA80 did not have any peculiar global
resonance as in the past when it was addressed by the likes of for example,
Fidel Castro, Kwame Nkrumah, Nikita Khruschev, John F Kennedy, Samora Machel, Julius Nyerere and even our very own Robert Mugabe. It did not give any aura of a sense of
progressive global egalitarianism and the universality of human rights.
Instead it appeared to be more about a new global strategic
repositioning around superpowers. In a nostalgic “Cold War” sense. Where again countries were being pitted
against each other with regards to their loyalties to the east or the
west. With questions emerging on whether
your country is with Russia or Ukraine, Israel or Palestine? Or simply put, a question on whether your government is with
Putin or with Trump? One that many African and global south governments rarely
answer directly.
What is evident with the rise of new nationalisms and what
Trump referred to as a necessary closure of borders by member states of the UN
is an increasingly polarized world where and when we look at the ‘never again’
principle of preventing world wars.
Instead there is continual escalations of conflicts/wars
based on exploitation of mineral wealth (Sudan, Democratic Republic of the
Congo). While geo-political interests
between the European Union and Russia, China and the USA continue to take center
stage around tariffs, trade and military technology/. Inclusive of emergent culture wars that are
emerging from techno-feudalists and AI.
What is apparent is that we are in a global age of the end
of a neoliberal global dream of a false equality. And this is not an easy point to make. The re-emergence of capitalist motivated
nationalism and racism, cutting of global solidarity international aid and the
face offs between the USA and China/Russia indicate an evident change in the
previous comfort zones of global politics.
We, as Africans at least should have seen this coming. And now again we have to leverage our natural
resources and peace against at least three global superpowers, namely Russia,
the USA and China. And their variegated subordinates in the form of the Middle East’s
Emirs and Kings.
All the while facing a volatile political and economic environment
where our governments are perpetually squabbling with their citizens and
attempting to mimic ‘mafia style’ politics of perpetuity in power for either
oligarchs or long-standing ruling parties.
In the assumed name of electoral democracy. As recognized by the UN and other pro-democracy
international bodies.
What we may need to be more honest about as Africans is the
fact of our placement in the global order of issues, commerce, capitalism and
the Livingstonian assumption of ‘civilisation.’
What the UNGA80 showed is that the revolutionary progress
made for human equality and national sovereignty is under serious threat. And that there is a clear hierarchy within
global world politics. With the West
moving to reassert its capitalist dominance and ensure historical revisionism
that deliberately makes the world unipolar again.
Because of these developments we need to return to a more
robust and historical Pan Africanism.
While non-alignment has helped in our economic development programmes in
one way or the other, Africa’s engagement with eh rest of the world needs to be
more grounded in our own value and less global capital’s interests.
In the final analysis, while we have new nodes of African
consciousness as shared on social media, the realistic questions are around
Africa’s placement in the contemporary global events as they are occurring. We have to grasp the reality that we are low
rung interests to the USA, China or Russia.
And that we regrettably remain exploitable politically and economically. Hence we are led to our own deaths in the
Sahel and Mediterranean sea. Even if we
were to become football stars in major European or North American sporting
clubs.
We just need a serious reality check after the UNGA80. It is
no longer the UN we grew up knowing. Its
global egalitarian values are being diminished.
And while we cant stand up with immediacy and ask that this be stopped
we may need to redraw our placement in global politics. As Africans.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
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