A sermon to African leaders
The dream is to have an African at the helm of many an international institution. But we betrayed the dream. That is not only the dream we have betrayed. We have betrayed the African Renaissance dream.
THOSE who love the Bible please go to Mathew 23:1-36. In this Scripture Jesus talks about the rulers of the people being hypocrites. He says that they don’t practise what they preach. They put heavy and cumbersome burdens on the shoulders of the population which they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move. Someone say Amen.
You see, here Jesus was not in a great mood. He was preparing to curse those who rule the people. Of course, his context was religious but this week, this column will deal with the same indictments that Jesus pronounced against the then leadership and bring it against African leadership.
Before carrying on its best to first express sincerely felt commiserations to a friend of the Zimbabwean Diaspora and the potential Diasporan who was not.
On the May 12, 2017, Zimbabwe and its Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Walter Mzembi were betrayed by some African countries.
The African Union chose him as their candidate but it’s known that Kenya, Morocco and Tunisia broke ranks. It is some of these Jesus spoke against when he said, “be careful of what they tell you . . .”
As you follow the scripture towards Matthew 23:7 you will find he talks about leadership that love to be placed on pedestals.
They want to be called “shefus” and wear ostentatious clothes. If there were cars those days, there is no doubt he would have included a few SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) there. By the time you reach verse 13 Jesus is now pulling no punches.
This is where he pronounces the famous “Seven Woes”. As this instalment was coming together it started as seven woes to African leadership but being the superstitious lot they are, they would have taken this as a curse or negative oracle and ended up keeping the tsikamutandas (exorcists) busy. So it just ended up being a rant against African leadership for betraying the dream.
The dream is to have an African at the helm of many an international institution. But we betrayed the dream. That is not only the dream we have betrayed. We have betrayed the African Renaissance dream. In 1970 Africa contributed 3 percent to all the goods manufactured in this world.
This is 47 years ago. Many African states became independent after that date. Both those have seen productivity shrinkage as they consolidated their sovereignty. By now Africa should be contributing about 15-20 percent of all goods manufactured globally, but Africa now contributes a pathetic 1,5 percent. Where is the African dream?
But de-industrialisation is such a big issue. How about the simple vision of a common or at least harmonised foreign policy?
Why has it remained only a mirage? The African Union is still a very loose association with some self-serving nations. Those who find this harsh have to explain how come there was a resolution to interfere in Libya when South Africa was on the Security Council?
Who can forget that South Africa was a major beneficiary of Libya’s own attitude towards African solidarity? Was that not a derailment of the dream?
But some say we don’t eat politics. Fine. The hand is forced back to industry.
There is no industrial programme all over Africa. Today some countries are just celebrating the making of their own home-grown car. Many, of course, have nothing. What we are not celebrating is the discovery of the best irrigation system in the world.
We are not celebrating the discovery of a drug in Africa to cure diseases that kill our people. We are not celebrating an Industrial Revolution that mesmerises the world. We rant against foreigners when they threaten our positions. But we so much love their tastes. Is this not a failure of our African leadership?
We now have in Africa some leadership that treats its people with utter contempt.
Citizens that criticise them are given labels of hate. Labels are the starting point to massive character assassination and whatever that follows. Give a dog a bad name and hang him.
Stinking kleptocracy rises all the way to some of our highest offices while the common person is used as political fodder. We abuse our own citizens in the name of home-grown democracy.
While it is good to have a model of democracy suitable to one’s cultural and social context, why is it that the only home-grown thing our leadership advocate is accountability and transparency. We import everything else from those we love to hate?
Nothing in the homes of our leadership is home-grown. If it is local, it is considered too common because the masses have access to same. The leadership wants to be distinguished by material possessions and never by the vision they have.
They love being the new royalties at the expense of the people. But if Africa contributes a paltry 1,5 percent to world products output doesn’t it mean we have become poorer?
Africa fought hard to gain independence and control its resources. But still sells them as raw materials like when we were ruled by foreigners. Whatever we get we don’t bring back to our countries for development. Most is stashed away elsewhere.
How can a continent that is home to most of what the world needs for its industry fail to use these resources for its own industry? The figures above show an embarrassing de-industrialisation. A treacherous betrayal of a dream.
Even as we continue to let our raw materials be plundered for a pittance, we have failed to control the world commodity prices. Most of our countries depend on mineral exports for our incomes.
This is dangerous because it is an extractive industry and one day we will run out. But we don’t change. It appears like we don’t know what to do with our own minerals so we sell them to those that know how to use what they don’t have.
Instead of building an industrial base in Africa, we have built a political class. This is an elite only interested in primitive accumulation of private wealth. There is absolutely no interest in serving the masses. This is so commonplace that one leader in the Zimbabwean opposition saw nothing wrong with telling potential voters that she was in politics to make money!
That is how desensitised the political class has become to the expectation of a public office.
To them public office does not mean public service. But private access to the public purse.
The interest of this political class in infrastructural development is only getting access to the tender system and perpetuation of office through gimmickry. Their first question in anything is, “what’s in it for me?”. The disappointment of the African dream.
Patriotism is love for one’s country. It is not the protection of a corrupt political system that works against its own people and the interests of a nation. But the leadership has a new definition. Patriotism is now taken as an indifference to the calls of the people for sensitivity from the leadership. Sovereignty in a democracy is embodied in the constitution and the institutions it founds.
Independence in African states came with a lot of enthusiasm, euphoria, hope and goodwill. But now, the fact that there is a debate on whether one country was better under colonialism or not is an indictment on the leadership. That question should never arise because it should be so obvious.
People should experience the gains of independence in their lives.
Whether manufactured or not, Africa should not be moving from one economic crisis to another. If it is not economic then it is a political crisis. If not a political crisis, then it’s a natural disaster. If it’s not a natural disaster, then it is a man-made disaster!
African citizens used to be hunted like animals, captured and transported across oceans into slavery.
Now they even pay to cross the Sahara Desert, pay to be crammed onto unsafe vessels like sardines to cross the Mediterranean Sea and voluntarily go into slavery. If this is not the betrayal of the African dream, then what is?
African leadership owes it to the African people to give them their dignity back. There is no dignity in people dying in ships trying to follow the colonisers to their own lands after chasing them from your own country.
There is no dignity in living far away from one’s people and community.
This is just an indictment on African leadership. It is against such that Jesus pronounced his Seven Woes and called the rulers “a brood of vipers”.