A MANIFESTO FOR RENEWING THE STRUGGLE SYSTEM TO MAKE THE LIBERATION PROMISE A REALITY: THE REAL THUMA MINA. Vol.1

African Nationalist movements have created modern day African states, and citizens of these states are in one way or the other turning against these movements, or what they have turned out to represent. In creating these states the movements etched their state formation paradigms on a nationalist outlook restrained by ideologies whose origins are non-African. The originative-historical-context instructing to these ideologies has a concept of sovereignty that ends at the south-most tip of mainland Europe. It has thus only been liberalism, socialism and communism, or any other -ism if it is ideationalized within a context that super ordinates whence from it was first labelled.

 

In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) and/or ANCness sustained a struggle system that got formalized in 1912 when it was formed. This system  registered a negotiated political democratic breakthrough in 1994. The breakthrough is, and unfortunately so, still choked by a stubborn extractive and coloniality templated economic system, that seems to be unable to redefine the frontiers of opportunity and a better life for all. The obstinacy of this economic system to yield to calls for its transformation, is an abstraction of the general in most previously colonized states, with Africa at the apex of the coloniality pyramid. As a consequence, the theory of liberation for Africa, if any, remains etched on a skewed interpretation of the very liberation’s end state, as a result of such a state being conceptualized in a paradigm that demands the negation of lived experience.

 

The discontent about nationalist movements inspired political democratic breakthroughs, places Africa in the throes of outright rebellion against the ruling elites, that are perceived as corrupt, service delivery averse, non-visionary and without a thesis of an African State imagined outside the context of what it should not be. The 60 years of ‘liberation’ since Kwame Nkrumah’s attainment of Ghanaian independence, continue to represent a period of misgovernment and dysfunctional economic development, that is spasmodically punctuated by fictitious GDP growth computations that are supportive to the extractive character of the economy, and trapped in a no-job creation quicksand.

 

Further to this, the truncating of the African liberation ideals by a global cold war, delayed her ability to focus on creating a own paradigm of growth and development. The evidence of this remains a preponderance of a cohort of African leaders that rely on foreign direct investment (FDI) as the prime catalyst for any economic growth, without interrogating the substructures that insulate ‘the foreign’ to always be a determinant for Africa’s growth. The ideological contestation playhouse role that Africa has been playing, during the Cold War, has now advanced into ‘monopoly board’ for the world rich to compete on who passes the ‘proverbial development begin’ in order to collect from the global financial system what is due to them, as they purchase African States as real estate to mortgage in the corridors of geopolitical power displays, and at the behest of those in charge.

 

As Africa recalibrates her (geopolitical) affiliations in a polyvalently nuanced capitalist global economy, whose continuum is now defined from that which is state driven to one that is private sector driven, she needs to be sensitive to the conjured model of economics that seeks to make her a world raw material supplier. Africa needs to establish a ‘universal commitment’ to the ideational and innovative dignity of its people, the sustainable markets that they can become, and a hub of manufacturing that they are ready to be. The current geopolitical trade wars which are in the main inspired by a competition to control global natural resources and markets, should be seen as a sieve within which Africa can redefine itself as a market and net exporter of manufacturing surplus driven by its primary industry potential prowess.

 

In their conceptualization of  post-colonial Africa, her founding fathers created Africa in the image of Europe, not through a considered choice but as a result of conditionalities imposed by the established political systems during colonization years. They embraced the operating system that came with coloniality and thus perfected its extractive heritage and euro-landlordism that got institutionalized in a multilateral governance architecture that aggregated coloniality into a global system. This system remains undergirded by a global financial system of collateralization and title deed recognitions that are supportive to the dispossessional character of the colonial economy.  As an ‘assimilated’ elite by the various non-African modes of human civilization and learning, they became volunteering collaborators within a context that positioned them to be in control of how they collaborate in the chronic underdevelopment of Africa.

 

The absence therefore of a socialism, capitalism, and liberalism with African characteristics as  an ideological plank from whence all policies and development imaginations could be ideationalize is  the greatest of Africa’s shortcomings on how she thinks about her development. The characterization of the many -isms that seem to be shaping the outlook of many a nation should have made Africa to interrogate the vexing questions of -what are its means of production- what is its capital- what constitutes its capital formation path- what defines it notarial regime- how does Africa collateralize what it considers its assets- what constitutes its democracy- what defines the good in its good governance- who is the public in and of Africa- and what constitutes service in its public service.

 

These questions, notwithstanding what answers they have generated thus far, are not only the inheritance newer and younger generations of leaders got from what the founding fathers ideationalized, but foundations from which they should focus their work on the practical reform of an African State. As new generations quarry answers to the foundational questions defining a liberation, they have to find their own ‘path, theory and system’. The path must define the end state of the liberation ideal, its theory should provide navigational co-ordinates across generations, and the system should mutate into institutions of leadership spawned from the arrangements made to guarantee the quality of what is bequeathed to next generations.

 

Given the advancement of Africa into its own notion of intellectualism and scholarship, including her general command of what defines her past and thus epistemological assumptions, her intellectuals should now afford to redefine themselves outside the boxes that legitimate them as being qualified. As they recertify and re-legitimate themselves within a context they are (or must be) creating, they will not only reimagine the economics that must undergird Africa’s growth, but will create knowledge that allows future generations to have reference points of Africa and not about Africa. The nodes of excellence that co-ordinate the various alumnus from a myriad of institutions and traditions should be melted into a characteristic that define the original-historical-context-complexes within which ideationalization about development could begin.

 

The embracement of the rule of law, civil rights, market driven economics, public accountability and transparency, representational democracy and the free market system as the positive outcomes of the assimilation process of the past 60 years, must be given an African character. In the same breath, the best practices of command or vertical democratic experiments, state-led capitalism, and one-partied-democratic systems should be woven in the new African ideological plank. In  this integration of Africa with -isms from elsewhere, Africa needs to know that ‘political philosophies cannot live by their past glories: they must also promise a better future’, and therein lies the ideationalisation conundrum.

 

These create ructions within the concept of state in Africa. The mind of such a state should not be thinking of another state and yet act on the African State. It is the instability of the mind of the state about the state that its citizens are rejecting, for at many a given opportunity, the citizenry participates in the legitimization processes with the hope that the ‘new wine in the old bottle might change the structure of the bottle itself’, the bottle is a foreign construct designed to suit aesthetics of unknown dinner tables. The proliferation of Africa-based strategic think tanks and institutions that broadly pool ideas in society, and somewhat with a view to re-ideationalize, is a sure indication of a new mind emerging and yet does not have the requisite content to fracture paradigms and collect pieces that are not fitting to a puzzle in a new newness.

 

Nationalist movement inspired ‘revolutions’, ‘rebellions’, ‘democratic breakthroughs’, and ‘compromise engraved’ settlements that emerged between 1960 and 1994 as a response to the relentless coloniality driven exploitation of Africa, opened space for a new wave of change to slot Africa into her space as a missing piece to complete humanity. The fact that Africa never invested in the smashing of what she had during colonialism, and replacing it with the new, provides an opportunity to redirect system flows to in-Africa streams of innovation and ideationalization. The time for revolutionary, reformist and/or otherwise rhetoric has gone by. Pragmatism is the new path, the new theory, and the ultimate system.

 

In this context Africa calls for a new generation of leaders, citizens and consumers who would be ready to be sent-off into its many destinations. The message they should carry should impact the continent in ways that all its people would sing the clarion call of Thuma Mina. In the next instalment we will deal with the what of the Thuma Mina Brigade that should be sweeping the continent.

 

TO BE CONTINUED