We are no longer interested in exporting raw materials, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema recently told the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Hinting that Africa has “now awakened and is no longer interested in exporting raw materials but yearn for discussions that lead to adding value to its economies”. Adamant and boasting that the continent is now speaking one language and wants everyone including ordinary citizens to feel the benefit of its mineral endowment.
“We don’t want to talk and keep attending conferences and yet the man in the street can’t feel the benefit of the mineral endowment that we have. We want to trade in investments together, we produce, we process, we market, we sell for mutual benefit,” determines President Hichelema.
At the recent 39th Summit of the African Union, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, was equally vocal and unequivocal that the era of the exploitation and plunder of Africa’s natural resources must come to an end. Who was echoing who between the two? Guterres indeed must have been echoing what Africa for more than six decades now, since the presumed end of colonialism, has been doing. Presumed end of colonialism because all that has been happening is the would-be end of colonialism in Africa, by word, acclamation and worse just imagination and self-assurance but not in deed and reality. For how can and could colonialism have ended with all its visible vestiges and remnants, real and imaginable, still all around us in most of our African countries? Much visible and without any trace of concern among those who in the first instance pledged that never again shall African be colonised. Making us believe that independence and freedom is here and never will and shall Africa ever be colonised. Taking it for granted that the political and/or flag independence is the alfa and omega. With all other things coming by themselves and falling in to place. Whatever else should have accompanied the political kingdom.
Be that as it may with the assumed political freedom, there’s one thing that has not been assumed and shall never be assumed. The economic freedom. In fact for Africa, not excepting Namibia, it looks like economic freedom was never meant to be part of the political freedom package, at least for the majority of the indigenous populace. Who continues to be condemned to the fringes of the free capitalist world most of the world over with few exceptions if any, including Namibia.
For the residents of most of the African towns and cities, Windhoek, Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, you name them in the case of Namibia, economic welfare and wellbeing is and has been an illusive dream. These cities and towns, more than anything, not only perceived eyesores that are and have been. Not only a normality for the indigenous masses, the Africans and/or blacks matter facto, but actually and practically a virus of some sort in an otherwise decadent and opulent existence of the would-be prosperity frontrunners and their fellow conspirators in the continued exploitation of the country’s natural resources and their export to the metropoles of the world.
A situation that the Hichelemas and the Guterres of this world making us believe is coming to the end soon than later or rather later than sooner as it increasingly has been appearing to be the case. Notwithstanding time and again the clarion call at opportune by the usual trumpeters for imminent change. But a change that has been becoming more remote after each public pronouncement by each and every would-be advocate of change. Pronouncements that have been seeming time and again like a cry in the wilderness that seems not find any echoes at all be it in terms of the necessary consequential action. For those who have appropriated Africa’s natura resources have not repented by an inch and have no intent whatsoever. Instead upping the antes of the exploitation of these natural resources at every opportunity and by any means necessary. A case in point is the kidnapping of Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, by the United States of America (USA) military forces. The essence of which is access to Venezuelan oil.
The unbearable socio-economic conditions in which the majority of the masses of Africa, people, including its working people and those of the entire world of the find themselves is to say the least intolerable, inhuman and dehumanising. An an abnormality but made to be seen and accepted as a normality by Capitalism. For its sustenance and survival. Actually the very oxygen of the capitalist system. Rather than the designed conditions being red flags and constant reminders of the vagaries of Colonialism and Capitalism.
But not all unbecoming and undesirable socio-economic situations prevalent today in most of Africa’s economic backyards and rural hinterlands, still home exclusively to the formerly exploited and socio-economically neglected, attributable to Colonialism. As all that those who have been duped and deceived into taking over the reins of political power have done, is to become political proxies for the former colonisers and Colonialism. As indeed it’s corporate entities and handlers.
Unlike in colonial days, when Colonialism, and Capitalism, were at their rawest and crudest stages and forms, these days they have simply been refined and given a local indigenous finesse and fabric whereby former liberators are made to feel as being in control, duped into political control but hardly in any control, if at all never in charge. Let alone ever in any position to transform and translate their presumed political control into economic control.
As the former colonisers continue to pull the strings, directly or remotely as it may be imperative, in this regard. The ground in this regard having been prepared by the former colonial-capitalist masters, indeed with the collaboration, connivance and if you wish simply tooling of the former liberators and/or their remnants. As indeed some new hitchhikers. Thereby betraying the trust of the people and the Revolution. Employing and deploying all imaginable political and economic jargons like democracy, development, partnership, rule of lwa constitutionalism and what-have-you. Establishing in the process neo-colonial edifices and fortresses. To buttress their hold and grip and grab on economic power through the control of the economy by appropriating, exploiting and exporting the African countries natural resources for their exclusive use. One such edifice, in the case of Namibia, being her
Constitution, that has been hailed as a model. But that has proven hitherto, more than anything, as a
model in the continuous economic subjugation, exploitation and oppression of the Namibian her masses. Hence their pertaining and prevalent state of to poverty, misery, squalor and marginalisation, political, economic, cultural and otherwise. Not to mention their continued mental enslavement akin mental deprivation of the colonial era.
Thus, when politicians-cum-leaders on public platforms posture about and preaches to the world about the necessary change in the world economic order, so that Africa becomes a better place, such pronouncements cannot and are not to be take on face value. As often, they have proven that they are and have been, playing to the galleries of the world. Thereby merely appeasing the African masses and workers. But the ultimate yardstick lies in the ideological belief and conviction of those making such calls!
