admineasy pawns for this new Northern project. Ever since the de-colonisation of Africa, it has always been a Western strategy to re-colonise the continent through Western educated African intellectuals and the brainwashed neo-liberal university educated indigenous black academics. A full dosage of neo-liberal principles of good governance and advancement of human rights did the trick.
It was in the late eighties and early nineties that most African universities were given millions of dollars in grants to carry out research based on Western political and economic thought. This funding was approved by African nationalist governments as they wanted to gain Northern trust and to be given aid. The Western democratic cancer began to infect the nationalist marrow of pan-Africanism from the 1990s onwards.
Research based on pan-Africanist scholars such as Amilcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah and many others gathered dust in library archive sections.
Western intellectuals who included university professors and doctors (on sabbatical leave) were sent to many an African university to preach the gospel of democracy and human rights. Amongst this coterie of Western neo-liberal prophets of democracy were lawyers, economists, political scientists and culturists.
The agenda was to recolonise Africa through a more sinister and subtle way which was based on false intellectual generosity. The liberation struggle was discarded as a true avenue that had brought about the rights of the oppressed and repressed African populace. Instead human rights groups led by lawyers and bogus human rights activists were preferred as the genuine liberators of the people – women, girls gays and lesbians.
The neo-liberal human rights movements aimed to replace the liberation movements and nationalist parties with their false claims of being the true liberators and fighters for people’s freedoms. The part played by the liberation movements and nationalist parties in waging protracted wars and in some cases in carrying out violent demonstrations to dislodge the oppressive, suppressive and repressive white colonisers was quickly buried and was never to take a central role in university discourses.
African university students were made to define their ontology in the neo-liberal perspective ignoring other paradigms such as the radical approach/dependency theory in helping them to explain the condition Africa finds itself in. The neo-liberal approach heaped all the blame on Africa’s underdevelopment and abject poverty, disease, hunger and many other social ills on the nationalist liberation movements but they did not mention anything on slavery, colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism, settler exploitation, racism and apartheid. It is as if these vices had no negative impact on the continent’s development.
Osabu-Kle correctly observed that most of the leaders in Africa have been sponsored and sustained by the North. He points out that the allegation that Mobutu was a corrupt leader itself had political roots. The fundamental political issue was not the corrupt attitude of Mobutu per se, but who was responsible for placing such a character at the helm of affairs in the Congo.
However, the same international political and economic forces interested in controlling the economies of Africa to their advantage worked to both assassinate Lumumba and to entrench Mobutu as their puppet.
The same Mobutu who was praised as “our man in Africa” by the West was described after the demise of the Cold War by the same West as corrupt. He was then assessed to be more of a liability than an asset.
The nationalist agenda of bringing about social and economic rights to the masses was hijacked by the neo-liberal programme. Through heavy Western funding these newly initiated disciples of neo-liberal thought soon turned against their nationalist governments. The Sadc Tribunal had a composition made up of such jurists. They attempted to reverse Zimbabwe’s nationalist oriented land reform programme. The irony of it all was that African jurists had come up with such a flawed judgement. This judgement was meant to undermine the nationalists’ radical stance of redistributing the country’s resources to its rightful owners.
The donor funded media is at the forefront of rubbishing and undermining the gains made by the nationalist parties since independence.
However, Tendai Chari critically points out that all media is propaganda. He claims that: ” . . . it is easy to see obvious propaganda from “enemies” while veiled propaganda in our favourite media is not easy to unmask.” It is taken for granted. Chari further observes and questions why in these so called papers the ones deemed purveyors of the gospel truth they employ propaganda techniques such as loaded language, name calling, glittering generalities, bandwagon, insinuation devices, and terror-photo techniques.
The African neo-liberal journalist believes that he is immune to bias as he claims to report as it is. He believes by defending Northern liberal thought he is upholding the truth.
Claude Mararike rejects the notion of a free press pointing out that journalists and the whole editorial board write what the owner of the media wants. He concludes by saying, owners of the media are in most cases interested in a political agenda. Their reasons for setting up newspapers are to promote their political agendas and those of their friends or particular groups of people.
In essence, according to Mararike, there can be no thing as “independent” or “free” media. All media serves particular view points and interests. This bears a lot of truth in the 21st century if one is to look at the number of Western funded newspapers which have mushroomed almost everywhere in Africa in the name of democracy and media pluralism. The independent media in Africa is a complete extension of the North. It is driven by the desire to belittle or demean liberation movements and nationalist parties while forwarding the North’s imperialist agenda.
The public media which is usually nationalist controlled defends the pan-African stance while the “independent” or “private” media which is foreign funded does not hide its support for neo-liberal views. The nationalist media usually champions stories on land redistribution; black empowerment; the equitable distribution of resources; human rights for all citizens irrespective of their standing in society and pan-African ethos and ideals.
The neo-liberal “private” press supports pseudo-democratic principles centred on rule of law which actually serve those in Northern funded opposition political parties, politically oriented civil society groups, NGOs and their Western funders; it defends property rights which include ownership of Africa’s fertile land by the white minority as is happening in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Ivory Coast and other African countries ; highlighting issues on human rights that mainly focus on a few individuals which include opposition party activists and politicians and also the white minority group.
The neo-liberal African media has totally failed to support the advancement of the majority of the people of Africa rather it has largely centred or mainly focused on few individuals in donor funded political parties, civil society groups, NGOs and the Northerners who fund some of the private media houses. The neo-liberal media has proved to be pro-propertied class and anti-poverty stricken masses. The private media is the anti-thesis of nationalism. It propagates imperialism in its entirety.
Questions one may ask are that: Whose bags is one carrying? Whose path is one following? Whose space is one occupying? The path followed is a neo-liberal one which aims to disposes his poor black brother of the fruits gained at Uhuru. The neo-liberal black lawyer, intellectual/academic and journalist are a companion of the North. He defends the white man in various court cases, academic discourses and newspaper articles. These include cases on land rights, ownership of mines and other means of production as well as issues against his vulnerable poor fellow black man. The white man aware of such treachery gives the neo-liberal black brother (turned traitor) various awards of bravery, peace, defender of minority rights, being a beacon of hope in a dark continent and the list goes on.
These groups have become the defenders and bidders of the white man’s interests on the continent. The space that they occupy is unAfrican. It is a total negation of what pan- Africanism stands for. It is the anti-thesis of nationalism. It is the white man’s space that they occupy. The white man’s space creates a monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for private profit alone. The profit only benefits the North at the expense of the black man. Professor Shivji calls this imperialism.
It is now the duty of the neo-liberal African lawyer, academic and journalist to consolidate and propagate white rule on the continent. Such a treacherous job is rewarded very handsomely. These rewards include trips to Northern capitals were one is served in the white man’s best hotels enjoying the services and pleasures of white prostitutes.
This is termed as white hospitality for a job well done. Children of the pseudo-democrat are given scholarships to study in Northern universities where they are also fed with heavy dosages of liberal literature as for them to sustain neo-colonial rule in future years.
Articles in various Western sponsored journals in Africa have basically centred on very negative research work on liberation movements and nationalist parties. Most articles accepted for publication show a heavy bias towards neo-liberal thought. The greatest threat to all independent African states as well as to African political and economic thought are these neo-liberal African scholars who through imperialist funding have now become ambassadors and defenders of Northern political and economic thought.
Many African researchers have admitted that through consultancy work they have been requested by the Western donors to change their findings as to suit what the Western donor wants. Failure to comply will mean that the work will never see the light of day and neither will it be published in these Western sponsored journals.
A good case in point is the seminar held in South Africa to discuss Marange diamonds. The seminar brought in neo-liberal funded Zimbabwean NGOs and pseudo-academics who presented one sided papers full of lies about what is really taking place in Chiadzwa.
The African pseudo-democrat is the greatest threat on the continent as he works in cohort with the former coloniser to dismantle the whole pan-Africanist agenda, replacing it with a pseudo-liberal one that protects the white man at the expense of the indigenous black man. The danger posed by this pseudo-African democrat is a double one: he wants his African brother to assimilate Northern culture and he also wants the continent to follow the Western developmental path. Such thinking is not surprising given the pseudo-democrat’s neo-colonial roots and his anti-pan-Africanist mission.
The African academic, lawyer and journalist must join their own people in their daily struggles. If they fail in this, then it spells disaster for the future of the African continent. Frantz Fanon is quick to warn Africa from taking such a disastrous path when he says: Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry . . . We have better things to do than follow Europe . . . We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. In other words Africa should never be the blueprint or portrait of the North.
China has become what it is today because it took its own development path. Africa should do the same.
- The writers Bowden B C Mbanje and Darlington N Mahuku are Lecturers in Peace and Governance and International Relations at Bindura University of Science Education
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