Kae Matundu Tjiparuro
IT is mindboggling how many times African leaders have to read the writing on the wall, which has been there since the days Imperialism and Colonialism, for them to realise that they are on their own.
Regarding steering and shepherding African societies towards genuine economic emancipation and/or the whatever after Kwame Nkurumah’s political kingdom which all of the African countries have obtained. But since the dawn of political kingdoms not much have been happening and is happening to reach what should be the promised land. Economic emancipation.
That few if any of these countries can ever claim to have attained, let alone if only having moved be it a quarter and/or halfway towards it. With many of them remaining stuck in the political kingdom and to and for whom the nominal political kingdom now seeming to have become the destination. With the would-be liberators and emancipators now willing, obedient and benign hitchhikers in the vehicles driven by former colonisers, today’s so-called development partners. While these development partners are no more than like in the colonial era nothing else but front women and men for Capitalism.
With the destination crystal clear, which is and has been no more and no less than Capitalism. Living in its throes, that is after the extraction of raw minerals, the communities from where extractions are taking place and have been taking place, at best impoverished communities and at worst communities in ruins, ravaged by internecine wars fueled by the very same masters of Capitalism pretending to be development partners-cum-philanthropists.
This Capitalist template, which has been playing and recurring all over Africa, and to which African has lately been reawakening as exemplified by Burkina Faso under her leader Ibrahim Traore, has lately been flagrantly applied to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Where Capitalism’s present day foremost overlord, Donald Trump, President of the United States of America (USA), himself a warmonger as proven recently with his ordering and commandeering of the bombardments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, has proven.
All in the name of incapacitating Iran in terms of her nuclear capability. While it is known and has been known that the USA’s actions against Iran are orchestrated by her ongoing trade wars with China. China, with Brazil, India and South Africa, in the emerging economic bloc of Brics, are destined to break America’s economic stranglehold, whereby the world has been beholden in transacting trade in the US Dollar.
The finer points of the so-called peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda are yet to be known and seen for what they are. But it is not difficult to know and seen that it has all the hallmarks of Trump’s, to make America Great Again. By continuing to siphon off the rich mineral resources of the DRC in the best interest of the USA. Because Trump has not been mincing his words that the interests of America and the American people come first. Not only this but he is and has been ready to make America Great Again by any means necessary. Hence her wars being currently fought on her behalf in the Middle East by Israel.
While that being the case African leaders have never been losing any opportunity to cow and pamper themselves to Imperialist countries. Not only this but condoning everything that the Capitalist countries do. Which has been exclusively in the interests of these countries and their people. And never to the mutual benefit of the South, let alone Africa. While pretending any deals the North is and has been striking with the South, including with Africa, has been dangled in the African faces as in their best interests. While it is and has been clear to Africa that whatever the Imperialist Capitalist countries do with regard to especially Africa, and the whole so-called developing world, is only siphoning off the natural resources of these countries with little if any benefit at all to the countries naturally endowed with these natural resources. Which practically speaking the African countries do not own but are owned by multinational corporations from the metropoles of the Capitalist countries.
The latest case in point being the “deal” which the US President apparently brokered between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. It seems for the USA and fellow Capitalist countries African natural resources and the extraction thereof is legitimate and beneficial to African when it is being done by them but not by the Africans themselves and fellows. Just like in the case of Rwanda which is and has been accused to fueling the internecine war in the DRC to its own benefit because of the rich endowment with natural resources. It is only baffling how and why one African country cannot and should not benefit from the resources of a neighbour. Is this not what trade between and within African should and must be all about as per the African Continental Free Trade Area?
Which is all about the creation of a single market for goods and services facilitated by the movement of persons in order to deepen the economic integration of the African continent. Surely Africa’s natural resources must also be part of this equation. For what could is the agreement without keeping the continent’s natural resources within the continent. Extracting and processing them within for the benefit, foremost, of the continent’s people. This is why all over the world there are regional economic blocs. To ensure that natural resources are to the benefit of the respective regional constituents and their peoples.
But when it comes to Africa, it is and has been clear that the beneficiaries has been more, if not only so, the Capitalist countries and their peoples. While Africans have been grossly short-changed if not overly exploited. Yet Africa has been eagerly clamouring for the others’ economic blocs instead of cementing their own. The purpose of the other economics blocs which have not been well meant but to continue to plunder African natural resources thereby continuing to under-develop the continent. A case in point being the European Union relationship with Africa. That has been pretended to help Africa industrialise. More than 60 years after, there’s nothing to this effect that African can be proud of in terms of its strides towards industrialisation. Yet the chorus remains industrialisation which nowadays have been re-coined to scupper Africa’s industrialisation dream. To replace it with beneficiation. Meaning continuing to serve Africa with crumbs from its own natural resources.
