I can see the day of redemption!

With my own eyes, I beheld the great day of glory. Oh, how great and mighty it was, when the Afrikan people loosened their mental chains, and like a bird freed from its cage, spread their wings in freedom flight!

Yes, I saw that day! And I will live to see it come to pass.

Already the pieces are falling in place, albeit spontaneously.

I was enthralled this past week by the four-day state visit by Angolan president João Lourenço for a four-day state visit to China, during which he signed cooperative documents with President Xi Jinping and visited the Province of ShandongContrary to Western propaganda, China’s cities are clean and heavily secure. You can walk in the streets at any time of the day or night without looking over your shoulder for a thug, thief or mugger unlike in most countries that pride themselves as ‘democratic’.

Food prices and basically any other product on sale in stores here, are affordable. No one goes to bed hungry, I have not seen a beggar on the streets and contrary to popular belief, the streets are not congested.

The roads are wide, with provision made for bikers, and pedestrians. All services can be accessed online. All you need is a smart phone to do basically everything. Everyone minds his or her business as they go about their chores.

But it’s not indifference. They will gladly come to your assistance if you ask for help. It is a completely different atmosphere that we were not prepared for!

We learn that all these are a result of the deference the People’s Republic of China has for the Communist Party of China!

Professor Wang Yiwei tells us in his epic lecture, ‘Building a Global Community of Shared Future: From Chinese Modernisation to Global Modernisation for All’ – that China’s impressive achievements are a consequence of careful planning by the Communist Party. That is why you cannot claim to love China and hate the Communist Party, because everything that you see in China is a reflection of the Party. In-fact, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China states explicitly, that China is a ‘socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants’. Democratic dictatorship? Isn’t this an oxymoronic contradiction of epic proportions?

Yes, it is, for a student of Western politics, who’s been chained in the colonial belief that America and the Collective West represent everything that is good. But for a radical liberal or a Pan Afrikanist, who has analysed his conditions and understands the tactics of his oppressor, he will not see any contradiction. In fact, he will ask the questions, what is democracy, or what is dictatorship?

Now, if a people can, based on the prevailing conditions of their land at any given time, resolve to fashion for themselves a system that will guide their development and progress of life based on their culture, that for me, is Democracy. Sadly, the whole of Afrika has been so duped to the extent it accepted hook, line and sinker, its colonial masters’ political systems, notwithstanding the harm they have brought upon Africa post-independence. The five-year elections ritual my dear brothers and sister don’t equate to democracy. In any case, the electoral process is in itself not a fool-proof exercise. It is subject to the whims and caprices of the power wielders!

They can adjust the rules and structure of the process at any time to extract their desired outcome!

But even without debating the merits or demerits of the Westminster political system, we begin from the premise that the dominant political systems operating in Africa, are foreign concepts, and have wrought countless miseries for Afrika. It is time for Afrikans to devise their own political, economic and social system – One that is uniquely African, that respects and defers to Afrika’s indigenous cultures, mores and norms, that respects the Will of the Afrikan people and that projects an Afrikan imagery.

And this is without any apology to any colonial master. I see that our brothers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are on a clear path towards this goal, but I don’t know the extent to which the assistance they are receiving from Russia will help or exacerbate their cause! Afrika needs to stand back, regroup and reclaim her position in world civilisation. China has done this, thanks to holding steadfastly to the people’s belief in the three gods – Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism!

The resultant peaceful existence has produced conditions conducive for Socialism, or the pursuit of social justice thereby propelling the nation from a poor country to the world’s largest economy today!

Independence is about meeting the needs of your people first. Any other consideration is secondary.

The mistake, as Professor John Henrik Clarke has observed, is that at independence African countries got caught up in ‘democratic phraseology’ talking about ‘one man, one vote’ and non-racial government – as though there’s any non-racial government in the world, when in fact, they should have insisted on African rule.

Just as France is French-ruled, and Britain is British-ruled, America is American-ruled, Russia is Russian-ruled, China is Chinese-ruled, Africa should have insisted on African-rule and dealt with the colonial masters in the way that the Germans dealt with the followers of Hitler after the Holocaust!

The colonialists don’t know how to share power. it is not in their DNA, they want it all and they want to rule over you.

Africans, Prof Clarke has insisted, should have demanded at independence to share Africa with the colonialists to the extent that they will share Europe with them. This is the same rallying cry that Marcus Mosiah Garvey advocated – ‘Africa for Africans, as Europe is for the Europeans and Asia for the Asians’ at home and abroad. We should have paid attention to these Pan Afrikanist stalwarts – the likes of Yosef Ben Jochaanan; Cheik Anta Diop, James Baldwin etalthey had the interest of Africa at heart and should feature in every African school curricular.

I appeal to Botswana to copy what Ethiopia has done with China in the leather and hides industry. Today, Ethiopian shoes are flooding the world market, thanks to Chinese support.

This is the type o support Botswana requires for her leather industry to take off. I hope that as we seal the beef sale deal with China, we also think about our leather industry. I hope that the FOCAC Summit, due this September, will provide the President, his team and the local chamber of commerce – Business Botswana- which has since opened an office here in China, the platform to ventilate these thoughts.