adminGreat Issues of Race from 4500BC to 2000AD” he or she can see that across history, there is a visible process that has been implemented in order to create a global power structure with its centre in the western countries that drives Africans to the lower echelons of this global structure.
Then when one reads WEB DuBois “The World And Africa: An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history”, it becomes clear that in fact there are many significant times when Africa was looked upon as a global power and that the information has been systematically destroyed and undermined by those who created and implemented the current global superstructure.
It was a political move that was meant to shut Africans out of their history and make them forget their culture, otherwise the doctrines and practices which were used during colonisation would not make any sense. The principal idea behind colonisation was that Africans are backward and that colonisation would actually be in their favour because it would modernise them. Yet history does not confirm this.
The entire theory of white supremacy is a lie and it was a propaganda designed to condition the minds of people into believing that Africans were inferior. Thus an affirmative action approach is very important to challenge these socially constructed falsehoods of an inferior African person. Zimbabwe has been pursuing this route to lift the people from the historical debasement ushered in by colonialism and create a people with means. If these falsehoods are challenged, then it is clear that one can now challenge the different assumptions on which the design of global structures depend on.
One can see that affirmative action put the people in their rightful place to reclaim their dignity and carry on even without violence. It is just about claiming what is our own and taking charge of our destiny. In explaining the centre-periphery structure it became one of the foundations of Andre Gunder Frank’s theory of the Development of Underdevelopment.
Frank identified and outlined an elaborate metropolis-satellite structure. The structure comprises of a system of metropolitan centres and peripheries which are organised systematically from the global to the local national levels. Frank portrays an entire chain of constellations of metropolitan and satellite systems.
At the top are international metropolitan centres in Europe and/or the United States and then followed by the national metropolis made up of local elites who are connected to the global metropolitan centre. Beginning with the national level, the structures influence, penetrate and configure every aspect of economic, political and social life of the inferior.
Systematically, the process continues until every national and local metropolitan centre is designed to impose and maintain authority under a monopolistic system which systematically promotes unequal and exploitative relations that serve the interests of the few people who sit on top of power at the different metropolitan centres.
In other words, the upper limit of the development of any satellite is determined by the constellation of power and interests at the level above it. On the other side, the development of global centres of the metropolitan systems is not affected in any way. It develops as it pleases. This is because it depends on the structures that they have systematically built and codified into law.
This is in sharp contrast to the development of the world metropolis which is not a satellite. The relationship between the satellites and metropolitan centres is not healthy for the development of the satellite. In order to support this thinking, Frank gave empirical examples of the experiences of satellite entities which achieved their greatest economic development and expansion “If and when their ties to the metropolis are weakest”.
Frank derived his evidence from the cases in Latin America. He cites the periods of temporary isolation between Latin America and the global metropolitan centre which derived from the crisis of war among the metropolitan powers as well as the depression.
In his data, he chose five solid cases to effectively confirm the hypothesis namely, European depression of the 17th Century and the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, 1930 Depression and World War II.
During these periods, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Chile experienced growth in terms of economic development, GDP and industrialisation. However, after World War II the recently implemented national industrialisation of Latin American countries suffered from metropolitan invasion. Brazil is the country which suffered the most. The re-engagement of the satellites to the global metropolitan centre had the effect of reversing the increase gains and growth in GDP.
Re-engagement also reversed the gains and growth rates of industrialisation which had just taken place throughout Latin America. Once again the region became a satellite after the bigger powers resumed calm and control of international economies.
The West continuously seeks a metropolis — satellite relationship with the rest of the world, which the latter has to reverse. Zimbabwe has been actively pursuing affirmative action as a way to debunk the status quo.
Dr Guzah is the president of Affirmative Action Group.
Online Reporter