Africa,where are we and where are we going ?

Africa is an amazing continent, considering that it is believed to be the cradle of mankind, has abundant natural resources and is a habitat to hardworking and hospitable citizenry, yet it is poverty ridden, war riddled, affliction racked and is reeling under debt over-hang. it is a pity and regrettable that the continent has since time immemorial been subjected to horrendous plunder. Slavery robbed it of strong, able bodied, young and hardworking people, colonialism plundered and looted its natural resources and neo-colonialism in cahoots with greedy and blinkered African political leaders is perpetuating western hegemony and subtle subjugation of African people. Kofi Anyidoho could not have described the state of Africa as a continent better when he said;

"Africa is a homeland that history has often denied and contemporary reality is constantly transforming into a quicksand; a land reputed to be among the best endowed in both human and material resources and yet much better known worldwide for its proverbial conditions of poverty, Africa the birth place of humanity and of human civilization now strangely transformed into expanding graveyards and battlefields for the enactment of some of the contemporary world’s worst human tragedies."

This is a sad and pathetic scenario which should invariably jolt us as a continent into a sincere introspection and soul searching exercise such that we identify where we are getting it all wrong.

On the other hand, if we are certain that our erstwhile detractors and exploiters are behind our suffering and snail-like development that has come to characterize the continent then let us collectively and decisively deal with them in the same manner we unshackled ourselves from the fetters of colonialism. Let the embers of African regeneration, an ideology sown by Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, Julius Nyerere and Patrice Lumumba among other Pan-Africanists, be rekindled.

However, a cursory look and analysis of why our beloved continent is quarantined into the abyss of poverty and recurrent civil wars can confirm that this is due to both the skeletons in our cupboards and the invisible hand of neo-colonialism.

It is also frightening and disturbing to note that some of our political affairs and decisions are still very much influenced or determined by those who partitioned and parceled Africa during the Berlin Conference in 1884 and went on to loot our resources. This is indeed detrimental to the development of the continent given that the West has never abandoned its tactic of 'divide and rule' which effectively worked for them during colonialism.

Some African states which have abundant mineral resources and crude oil have never tasted peace due to the devastating effects of civil wars 'For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, rich in mineral resources, has never tasted peace ever since it gained independence from Belgium in 1960. The invisible hand of neocolonialism is fomenting civil wars in order to continue plundering minerals. Nigeria, Sudan and South Sudan are some of the African countries rich in crude oil and again these states continue to be ravaged by civil wars. A group coordinated by white mercenaries wanted to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea, a country rich in crude Oil, only to be intercepted by Zimbabwe.

The devastating effects of Civil wars in Africa are written on the wall and are in fact ghastly contemplate.War destroys the infrastructure, drastically reduces investor confidence, disrupts production, wastes productive personnel which is normally thrust at the war front, not mentioning the loss of precious lives. The ultimate consequence of this is humanitarian crises manifesting through abject poverty, mass displacement and violations of human rights. We should, however, also look into ourselves since some of the civil wars are as a result of greediness and selfish tendencies on our part.

This Eurocentric assertion that Africa needs hand handling from the West has been vigorously propagated by the Bretton Woods, institutions such as the World Bank and the international Monetary Fund. The consequence of this domineering stance manifests through prescriptive economic measures and policies such as the ruinous Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes forced on African and other development countries. Our governments are told to leave developmental issues to the invisible hand of the free market, privatise public utilities and (parastatals), allow free trade and throw welfare programmes into the dust bin.

l believe most of us are a living testimony to what happened when Zimbabwe adopted, them in the early 1990s. SAPS have failed everyone, mass job retrenchment: were the order of the day, poverty increased, prices of goods and services increased, debt skyrocketed and the economy retarded rather than blossoming as alleged.

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