Rejoice Ngwenya, Man of Truth, Volume 17
Life is basically a three strata phenomenon. 1) You choose; 2) Someone chooses for you; 3) You have no choice.
The epistemological contextualisation of option three is aligned with birth and death. No single entity on this planet has the power to decide when, how and in what form to be born.
Yes, you can determine how but not when to exist. Just like you, I found myself in this world. I don’t even think my parents ‘expected’ a me, but of course they expected ‘someone’ who turned out to be me.
On the extreme end of the existential mystery, there lurks death as an inevitable occurrence. Whether or not to speed it up or delay it is entirely your choice.
Of course there are those that wield the power to terminate lives – legally or otherwise. Yet sometimes passive stupidity can end up being a choice of sorts, for example, colonialism.
Students of African politics will know that the foundations of (our) colonialism are largely firmly set in Otto Von Bismarck’s 1884 Berlin Conference, known euphemistically as ‘the partition of Africa’.
Looking in retrospect, a sensible person would ask a basic question: why and how did Africans, after centuries of independent and serene existence, allow themselves to be partitioned?
How it is that foreigners can travel by ship from thousands of miles away – a handful of them at that – to succeed in parcelling out and dominating a whole continent?
Who made the fatal choice of ‘accommodating’ van Riebeek, Livingstone, Moffatt, Selous, and Cecil John Rhodes?
It didn’t make sense then but now it does.
If you consider the way we Africans make choices in the face of imperialism – even in our current state of ‘enlightenment’ – you easily appreciate how the dark forces of foreign control can easily subdue us.
Our relationship with international banking institutions, multi-national corporations and as a more vivid example – China – is lopsided and submissive.
The manner that we praise and adore Special Drawing Rights, commodity exports, “working overseas” and Chinese “billion dollar infrastructure investments” just shows the extent we have not learned to choose how not to be colonised.
Not only that, it’s symptomatic of a continent with people who choose dysfunctional, greedy, self-centred leaders who lead them to the guillotine of imperialism.
We are so desperate for ‘validation’. Listen to the way Zimbabwean government and State operatives mourn about ‘illegal sanctions’. It’s as if there is no life outside ‘a relationship with Western countries’.
Even where it seems sensible to have ‘a relationship’ with China, we choose to receive crumbs off the able of partnerships, allowing them free reign to plunder our resources and exploit our labour.
Why in the first place do we even elect leaders who are so daft, greedy and blind to this?
The answer lies with poverty.
As Africans, we have not shifted from subsistence mentality. As an example, even where ultra-urbanisation is touted as the future of our continent, 70% of Zimbabweans still etch communal living in rural areas where they choose to be manipulated by corrupt ruling party ‘leaders’.
We have so-called ‘traditional leaders’ who thrive on ‘presidential input schemes’, dependent on State benevolence and happy to be gathered together for short term political benefit.
Just like any other typical rural Africans, they choose to be exploited in exchange of votes, so it makes sense for those they elect to keep them in a vicious cycle of obscene poverty.
Even when they harvest their maize or tobacco crop, the same ‘leaders’ whom they ‘chose’ will tell them where to sell the stuff, when and at what price. This perpetuates the catastrophic impact of food and income insecurity.
Imagine that in this 21st Century, we have villagers who still use ox drawn ploughs and ox drawn scotch carts – ‘equipment’ last used by the colonialists in the 1890s!
African governments call it ‘development’! By the way, in this whole cacophony of subsistence, these villagers do not even own that land.
They ‘choose’ to subject themselves to the whims of self-righteous village ‘chiefs’ and ‘headmen’. Honestly how do you expect to move from this state of underdevelopment? Apocalyptic!
Funny enough we have Africans that claim to be ‘educated’ but cannot even manufacture toothpicks and toothbrushes.
We have chosen government leaders who do not have a clue on how to industrialise our continent, turning our countries into giant flea markets for Chinese goods.
In Zimbabwe, we chose leaders who claim to have ‘liberated’ us, but they still preside over a population that imports wheat, soya beans, potatoes and tomatoes.
Look at this stupidity – we ask the Chinese to dig our rocks, ‘finance’ our tobacco and we sell them these commodities at heavily discounted prices.
These are the same things that are polished and packaged in Beijing then we use the little money we have to bring them to our streets, shops and supermarkets.
The Chinese make so much money from us they can afford to ‘build us’ roads, railways and power stations, then we pay them more for this ‘strategic partnership’.
Go all over Africa you will see our leaders shaking hands with Chinese on state television, praising the Oriental Imperialists for ‘strategic cooperation’.
Imagine to what extent the present and future generations will be indebted to the Chinese. Just like I asked how we allowed Europeans to partition and occupy us in 1884 and 1914, our grandchildren will ask how we allowed Chinese to colonise us in the 21st Century.
There is only once solution to this continental stupidity. Africans should now learn to exercise their choice wisely by electing only those people who abhor imperialism in whatever form.
Why should ‘mega deals’ and ‘foreign direct investment’ be underpinned with Chinese or Bretton Woods benevolence?
Why should we allow our leaders to promise jobs on the basis of ‘all weather friendship’ with Chinese?
Why do we choose to export raw chrome, raw tobacco, raw gold, raw diamonds and raw cobalt instead of adding value at source?
As long as we choose leaders who are greedy, we are caught in a perpetual poverty trap useful only to those that benefit from our ignorant choices.
Millions of us are born into poverty and will die poor because of bad choices. I write these things only because mina, I am a man of truth.
