Kagame, Ramaphosa are Not Being Honest With Africans

 I have a number of friends in private business and by dint of the same, in private capital. Some of them are exceedingly wealthy. Others are in between. 

They have phases where they are thoroughly rich and phases where they sort of get by. But maintain their exorbitant lifestyles. 

This is all fair and fine. Even from the viewpoint of a leftist Zimbabwean like myself. 

Except when recently African heads of state met in West Africa, Ivory Coast at what was called an African Chief Executive Officers Forum (ACEOF). 

I watched South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandese president Paul Kagame have a Cable News Network (CNN) mediated debate about the importance of private capital and investments in Africa. 

The moderator of the debate, a Kenyan journalist was pretty good at his job (I will not name him for fear of being sued). Except for the possibility that he was embedded in what one can refer to as 'performance journalism'. One in which you moderate a panel of very powerful people and have to follow a specified, unjournalistic script. 

But that is not his fault. He has to get paid. 

Listening to Ramaphosa and Kagame one could also tell that there was some sort of 'performance politics' around the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) conflict. 

Moreso given the fact of the withdrawal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) peacekeeping force that had been led in the main by South Africa. 

I had an impression that this meeting was of limited significance. Mainly because Zimbabwe's president did not have it on his itinerary. But also because it appeared to be another entrepreneurial junket meeting for wannabe African capitalists. 

And I am sure sure it will, in the final resolutions of this particular meeting, fit into either the African Free Trade Continental Agreement (AFTCA) perspectives or the African Unions (AU) Agenda 2063 narrative. 

The catch however is the fact that Ramaphosa and Kagame do not agree on the future of the eastern DRC. Mainly because of national economic interest reasons and the direct interference of North American and Chinese rare earth mineral concerns. 

The speculative game being played here is to almost cancel the DRC out of the general (not popular) narrative. Almost as what we are doing with Sudan and South Sudan. Two countries that are endowed with oil and gold among other undeclared rare earth minerals. While at the same time being in the midst of one or other form of civil war and major human rights violations.

As Africans we need to think through this type of high level continental forum where you have African CEOs hogging the attention of heads of state and governments directly. 

I generally refer to such events as 'fake performance politics'. All the while understanding that all politics is performance. Except that there is an organic performance to meet the minimum better livelihood requirements of the people or countries you purport to lead. 

In this I might be stretching it a little bit but Ramaphosa and Kagame are not bedfellows in the European historical usage of the term. 

Not only because they are dishonest to each other and their economic interests in eastern DRC but more because they are now being hand held by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and the United States of America on matters of vested economic interests. 

And this is before we discuss the complexities of South Africa's relationship with Ukraine and Russia. Or Rwanda and it's linkages with France, Belgium and the broader European Union.

But I will revert back to my initial point about private capital.

We are in a period in which most of us black Africans (male and female) believe that personal greed rules the global economic day. Without understanding how the system really works.

And we refuse to see the fact that what happens in Rome does not always stay in Rome. It gets mimicked and spreads globally. 

So, sure I would love to be an African Chief Executive Officer of a private company or even a commercialised or corporatised non governmental organisation (NGO) attending the vaunted ACEOF in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. 

But I am neither a president nor a corporate functionary. 

I am just an African who can read between the lines. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com 

Admiring What We Should Not: Africa’s Populist, Tragic Inferiority Complex

 By Takura Zhangazha*

 A colleague asked me recently, “What is the source of globally progressive ideas?”  It was a very casual conversation and I replied that history provides key lessons of what can be considered ‘progressive’.  By this, and with hindsight because the conversation did not last as long as it should have, I have had to think a little bit deeper about the question posed. 

Indeed what is the source of progressive ideas?  Globally and nationally?  I think in the first instance I was correct to indicate that history, global, continental and national is the primary source of progressive ideas of universal human equitability. 

Following in this is the question of what is considered ‘progressive’.  Even if only based on the occurrence of history.  On this one the answer is relatively easier.  Progressive ideas tend to be those that uplift all of humanity.  Based not only on historical experiences such as world, regional or national wars but also a specific idealism that seeks a better future for all of us. 

And this is something that should be universally accepted as a given.  Except that it is not.  Particularly from an African perspective.

The main reason being that historically (here I go again with history and progressiveness), Africa was always viewed as the dark continent. Quite literally and metaphorically.  You can crosscheck the first European/Portuguese maps of the continent in your local National archives or museum.  And then after that you can also revisit colonial cultural (literature, music, zoology and education)materials on Africa to come back to the realization of where we are placed in the imagination of global superpowers.  And their populations.

The key issue however is now in the contemporary.  Based both on assumptions of a universal equality of all nations and human beings while simultaneously retaining nodes of racism that should have been discarded a long historical time ago.  Particularly after the Second World war whose victories against the German and Italian Nazis are being celebrated this week across Europe.  

Awkwardly for not quite clear ideological reasons Zimbabwe’s current president Mnangagwa is part of these victory celebrations in Russia as they are occurring this week.

And I am yet to see a global north leader, in recent times, attend a victory parade in Africa against how we defeated colonialism.

But that is a debate for another day.  

The main debating point of this article is the fact of our continued historical and also ‘ahistorical’ inferiority complexes as Africans.

In our aspirations to be considered modern, successful and materially ‘arrivalists’ we have tended to ignore the fact of what academics have referred to as ‘mimicry’.   

When you mimic other societies or even seek to belong to them you lose the essence of your own historical being.  With or without national historical ceremonies such as a National Independence day commemoration ceremony. 

What has since emerged is a a cultural and socio-economic conundrum.  Part of it historically deliberate based on colonial historical dynamics and part of it based on our own African complicity (by way of governments and individual materialistic aspirations). 

Basically we, as Africans are admiring what we should not. This is in at least three respects in the contemporary.

The first being our admiration of society in the global west/north where in the final analysis we are not wanted beyond our basic skills.  Hence the evident rise of anti-immigrant and in particular anti-people of  of colour immigrants  governments in the aforementioned societies. Yet we still want to go there and regrettably suffer and die in for example the Sahel, the Mediterranean trying to get there. 

The second example relates to our lifestyles as Africans and in particular as Zimbabweans.  This is as it relates to a generic question as to what makes one and one’s family happy?  Is it the big kitchen?  The Trip to Dubai or Cape Town?  And why are any of the above the definition of happiness?   Or whether a child writes a United Kingdom (UK) Cambridge versus a Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) examination?  

In this the catch then becomes whose lifestyles do we intend to mimic?  And why if not for our own cultural, political and economic inferiority complexes?

The third and final instance of where we should stop admiring what we should not is the fact of a complex historical existence. One that is found in the legacy of colonialism and post-colonialism after variegated liberation struggles (violent and non-violent).  It is a history that cannot be wished away.  No matter the Rolls Royce that one may drive or be driven in.   A history that we perpetually need to be conscious of at the back our minds.  No matter the new economic or political trends that can topple or keep a government electorally or otherwise on the African continent.

I will conclude on a slightly anecdotal note. I have a few friends that admire current American president  Donald Trump and what he is currently doing with his evisceration of global aid and putting his country first. 

And others too who admire the current Russian president Vladimir Putin for how he is demonstrating defiance in the face of acrimony in the face of global disapproval.   In our conversations I tend to ask the rhetorical question, “so what does it mean for Africa?”

This is because global politics is not a movie.  Its not “Rambo” coming to save us in Africa.  Or an attempt to prove our knowledge of what is real imperialism and its post imperialistic tendencies. 

Nor is it about us trying to mimic the Trumpian “The Art of the Deal” or observe what essentially is the Machivellian “ 48 Laws of Power”. 

It is about us rising above the parapet of the narrative of the global north, as colonially and racially defined. And to rise above mimicry of the same without material fear of the consequences.

Is there an alternative one might ask.  As always there are many solutions to our inferiority complexes.  And they begin with our capacity to understand our weaknesses. 

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com) (takurazhangazha.com)