admindifferent approach to the economic organisation of African society. The only viable alternative to capitalism is total indigenisation and empowerment of the masses: the organisation of economic life under the transparent control of the people to serve social needs, not private profit.
The peasants of Ngezi who are now to benefit from platinum proceeds coming from deep down the bowels of their God given land should be applauded.
President Micheal Sata of Zambia also truly believes that African men and women should benefit from the resources of their God given land. Africans should unanimously call for an end to capitalism which relies on exploitation of man by man.
Capitalism’s social injustice and inequality is too much of a problem for the impoverished African masses not to stand up and fight for genuine people oriented rights.
Neo-liberal rights forwarded by dubious and untrustworthy profit making imperialist funded civil society groups and pseudo democratic parties (dispensers of false generosity) should totally and completely be done away with.
The fight for empowerment is the fight for genuine rights and freedoms. The indigenous transformation of economic life can never be achieved without a total nationalistic oriented struggle. History does tell us that the bourgeoisie will never give up their economic power and privileges (looted wealth) without a struggle.
The great forces for social change, for revolution, are the poor disadvantaged masses who embrace the overwhelming majority of the population. The vast majority of people live from hand to mouth.
Every African state must resist the capitalist system that has impoverished generation after generation of black people. To organise and unify these African struggles and direct them against the capitalist system, Pan-Africanism should be reinvigorated.
Opposition political parties and their capitalist sponsors want to dominate the continent’s politics as well as to silence and repress any genuine expression of the interests of the vast majority of the poor African people.
The calls for a redistribution of Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth during the constitution making process has been met with quite a lot of resistance by those parties which are serving capitalist interests.
Liberation movements and nationalist parties should spearhead the fight for the empowerment of the masses in a neo-struggle against Western sponsored political parties.
The pseudo-democratic opposition political parties use populist demagogy to mask hideous policies that uphold the interests of the white world. Over the years these false prophets of democracy have
been identifying themselves with popular protests against revolutionary and nationalist parties hoping to mask the real record of their own failures.
They take themselves as a “lesser evil” as compared to nationalist parties. With the aid of workers unions, civil society groups and Western sponsored NGOs they try to promote this fraud within various sections of society that they support the cause of the poor.
These parties from South Africa to Ivory Coast are, in fact, ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing, evidenced both by the millions of dollars they get from their Northern masters and more decisively by the neo-liberal policies that they follow. These pseudo-democratic parties are the graveyard of economic empowerment and indigenous policies.
The poor African masses should see through this veiled hypocrisy by totally rejecting the “lesser evil” deception through opposing these Western quislings and the neo-liberal system that they defend. It is only a pan-Africanist party that has the power to put an end to social inequality and reorganise economic life to meet the needs of the majority of society, rather than further enriching the bourgeoisie/ capitalists.
Capitalism has failed to address the needs of Africa’s majority populace. The pseudo-democrats have totally failed to provide anything meaningful to the poor masses as evidenced by the former MMD government in Zambia, the Orange Democratic Party in Kenya as well as the Democratic Alliance in South Africa.
The worst handicap that these groups face is that they are anti-indigenous as they are remote controlled from various imperialist capitals. They have no home grown projects, plans and programmes for the continent but only IMF and WB prescribed policies.
These pseudo-democratic parties should never be trusted in paving the future of the continent. They are what Frantz Fanon termed the intermediaries between their home countries and the capitalist world. Such a breed of political vampires should never be trusted to control the wealth of Africa.
The Libyan National Transitional Council before even coming into power (through very dubious and undemocratic means) had actually ceded a huge portion of Libyan oil to the Western capitalist companies.
This is the greatest dilemma that Africa presently faces; political parties which are prepared to give all the country’s wealth to Northern capitalists provided they are assisted by these powerful capitalists in coming to power. The assistance can be seen in the millions of dollars used to fund these pseudo – democratic vultures and even worse still in arming them.
The “Judas Iscariot Syndrome” has penetrated into the marrow of most Western funded political parties, media outlets, lawyers and all sorts of donor controlled civil society groups.
African politicians who wine and dine with the Western capitalists are a danger not only to themselves but to the entire African generations of the born and yet to be born.
These power hungry politicians sign clandestine deals which in the end will retard Africa’s development.
Take a look at how Chiluba ceded Zambia’s lucrative copper mines for a mere pittance and to aggravate it all he went on to scrap off some mining taxes as a way of attracting foreign investors. Northern companies benefited immensely from such anti-people driven policies.
It is a bit shocking and appaling that African pseudo-democrats still believe that by embracing capitalist neo-liberal economic and political ideas they can uplift the continent from underdevelopment.
Shallow minds are dangerous especially when one is to look at how these neo-liberal policies have led to demonstrations in Greece, Spain, America, Britain and Australia; they have also caused uprisings in Northern Africa and some parts of the Middle East.
The masses in Europe and America as Tafataona Mahoso correctly observes, are angrily pointing out that neo-liberal democracy simply means “rule of the one percent, by the one percent, for the one percent”.
Zambians voted against such an unfair political set up that deprived the masses a reasonable share of their country’s wealth at the expense of the few foreign investors.
The Movement for Multi-party Democracy had been spearheading such flawed anti-people and pro-capitalist policies ever since they came to power in 1990.
One participant in the Occupy Bristol Camp in the United Kingdom, which was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street in the United States of America, had this very interesting statement to make, “We are the 99 percent of the people that are being enslaved by the one percent. We are sick to the teeth of being robbed, sick of being lied to by the governments and banks and sick of bailing banks, only to see them spend hundreds of millions of pounds on bonuses. 99 percent of the population of this globe is absolutely sick of it.”
This statement is coming from a very bitter British citizen who is amongst the millions of disgruntled European and American nationals who are very angry at the way capitalism and the neo-liberal system have impoverished not only the North but almost all parts of the world.
This is the same failed neo-liberal system that African pseudo-democratic parties are proposing in its entirety for the future development of the continent. Are these leaders sincere and should people bank their trust in such individuals who lack a genuine vision for the development of the continent.
Africa’s future lies in indigenisation and economic empowerment of the masses. Frantz Fanon once said, true decolonisation/independence means that those who are first should be the last and those who are last should be the first.
This is exactly what the Occupy Movements in America and Europe are fighting to achieve. A country’s wealth should benefit everyone starting with the 99 percent which comprises the poor masses. Profit should never come first before the people. African pseudo democratic parties should not forfeit the continent’s resources for a few pieces of silver.
The abundant resources in Africa should benefit all including those generations yet to be born. A step is the beginning of a thousand mile journey and the Ngezi community has indeed taken the first step in Africa’s journey to benefit its own people from the proceeds of its abundant mineral resources.
- Darlington N Mahuku and Bowden BC Mbanje are lecturers in International Relations and Peace and Governance with Bindura University of Science Education
Online Reporter