The poor man’s skin is hard calloused yet vulnerable still to blade and bullet
For several African nations, war and strife no longer signal a deviation from normalcy. Storms are supposed to be less frequent than clement weather. However, the storm upon these nations does not want to pass. It disobeys the natural rhyme of things because this storm is not comprised of wind and rain. This storm is of mortal make, a bilious cloud of greed, ambition and hate.
In these places, war has become the prevailing social institution and violence the foundational tenet of the political culture. War has seeped into the very spirit of these societies, afflicting all it touches. War and its consequences control and define the people; they no longer control or define the fighting. War has a life of its own. Whenever this happens, it serves as a harsh requiem for just governance and humane existence.
Societies bounded by war move no further forward. The movement promised to their burdened people is that of tripping backward to revisit tragedies that should never have occurred. For these episodes to be repeated in each subsequent stanza of a country’s history is a most evil refrain.
Africa wails because her children set upon each other with such hateful ruthlessness that they are blinded to a better way. Meanwhile, to fund the orgy of violence against ourselves, we sell the fruits and treasures of her soil to outside forces for a pittance. That which occurs within Black Africa countries is replicated in Black communities throughout the Americas. Rival groups battle to control strips of urban desolation where little prospers and much perishes.
Our miseducation has been so long-standing and thorough that we willingly instruct ourselves in ways wrong and injurious. Time passes. Much is lost. Little is gained. Nothing changes except the rising death toll. So enthralled with grabbing the immediate, small-scale benefits within reach, we see not the bigger picture. Masters of short-term tactics and cunning intrigue, we lose by winning. The purblind, dismal game we play has no victors. It merely has different categories of losers.
Thus, the African landscape is littered by conflict. South Sudan is oil rich and leadership famished. The fight is on. The Central African Republic (CAR) is replete with minerals and deplete of leaders. The fight is on.
In South Sudan, ethnic groups that allied for political independence from Sudan now fight each other. They lunge at each other because they never really fought together. They never strived for a common vision of freedom, equitable government and economic life; they merely combated the same foe. They agreed their pasts were terrible but never agreed how a better future might look.
Political independence is not the brook of unity. Cohesion proves illusory if political independence is not accompanied by a meaningful partnership wherein important constituencies agree to a just allocation of economic responsibilities and benefits among themselves. Otherwise, as in South Sudan, their unity will be a limited, negative one.
Once shorn of the common foe, the key groups began the dance of mutual reproach. The country was fated to civil war the day it gained independence. The countdown to strife was inevitable as if it fixed by the turning of an hourglass.
The media characterizes the civil war as an ethnic struggle, pitting Dinka against Nuer. To some extent, this is true. In a more fundamental sense, it is irrelevant. If not ethnicity, it would have been religion. If not religion, would have been region. If not region, it would have been farmer versus herder or city versus countryside or back to ethnicity again. The problem is not so much in us, such as the ethnic group or religion to which we attach. The problem is with us; it lies in how we think and act upon those narrow thoughts.
Peace talks are set in Ethiopia. But action on the ground belies the irenic quest. Government fighters march against a key town controlled by the rebels. Neither side will concede anything pending the outcome of this encounter. The victor on the ground will be better positioned to exert himself at the negotiating table. Each side should view this as the opportunity to forge the organic political economic partnership that escaped them at the onset of independence.
However, neither is possessed of the statesmanship embrace such a delicate notion given the martial atmosphere. Each side believes in the way of the gun for neither sees the other as brother compatriots. Thus, each prays for victory on the ground because no one wants to compromise. Both sides are shabbily armed and poorly maintained. But their self-deceived leaders see themselves as generals of strong armies that will shape history. They are neither fine statesmen nor military geniuses. They are the leaders of an armed rabble, the cruel scribes of prolific misery. They drink at the well of hubris. Their reward shall be infamy.
In CAR, religion allegedly catalyzed the mayhem. An alignment of Muslim groups, the Seleka, fights a medley of Christian militias for control of this parcel of poverty. This country of less than five million people has important diamond and mineral reserves. Given the small population and the amount of raw material underfoot, a decade of peace and credible leadership could turn this parade of desolation into a tableau of progress. Instead, the tragic miscalculation of those who aspire for control thrusts everyone and everything into the jowls of cataclysm.
Twenty percent of the populace is internally displaced or has sought refuge in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and even South Sudan. To run into South Sudan is not jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It is trudging from furnace to furnace. It is the destiny of people made wretched by the bellicose decisions of those who pretend to lead them.
Meanwhile, the outside world makes loud sounds of anguished concern but offers little material help. Business continues as usual. This eruption has taken place in slow motion.
CAR has been victimized by military coups and divisive governance for most of its post-independence existence. For CAR and other nations, the struggle for independence pales to the struggle of post-independence survival. Independence was granted not gained. Sub-national groups did not have to unite and coalesce to fight for a country of their choosing. They merely accepted the partners given them. They teamed together against the former colonial master in negotiations during the day; but, they were conspiring with the former master against each other during the night. Sadly, conspiratorial night has long lasted. Day seems to have disappeared.
Regarding current edition of crisis, the CAR was wracked by fighting throughout late 2012. Various attempts finally culminated in a cease-fire between then President Bozize and the groups that would form Seleka. The respite was brief for it was predicated on promises broken as soon as they were made. Fighters were to be paid to disarm. However, western donors could not find money in their bursaries to fund disarmament. Frustrated, Seleka regrouped, pushing Bozize from the capital. Seleka’s Michel Djotodia replaced him. Now with gun fire in the streets of Bangui, Djotodia has resigned, prompted by Economic Community of the Central African States. In the midst of anomie, the nation has no leader, only fighters. Somehow, this power vacuum is supposed to be adroitly filled in the midst of chaos. The chance of success is less than hair thin.
Strangely, those European nations that could not locate a farthing to finance disarmament manage to funnel arms into the torn country. CAR is one of the mostly poorly lit nations in the world. When the sun sets, CAR’s darkness is truly dark. One must carefully watch as they tread for they might step on a weapon. The place is awash in AK-47s. Medicine and food are dear but a firearm is as inexpensive as a broken toothpick. Life is costly but death is cheap and everywhere prevailing.
The incident of plenteous cheap weapons in an impoverished land is not mysterious. The answer is bright, hard and in demand: Diamonds. Instead of using mining revenue to usher in prosperity among the various constituencies, craven leaders short sell diamonds in a rush to buy second-hand weapons that their people may continue slaying themselves. Because of the distortions now institutionalized in their system, this process seems to be the lone road left. To them, their actions are logical. They cannot see the madness in it or in them.
Strong historic political and economic forces have brought these countries into the cradle of despair. Over the past several centuries, Africa was waylaid by the twin catastrophes of colonialism and slavery. The past fifty years of political independence is but the most recent chapter in larger book; it represents an ounce of inchoate liberty measured against the pound of subjugation the longer span of time represents.
So much learned, pent-up cruelty and injustice could not be washed away in an instant. Our nations did not break the colonial yoke. They merely renamed it. The colonial administration became the national administration. The “Colonial Office of Taxation and Sundry Matters” because the “National office of Internal Revenue.” The titles changed as did the skin color of those in office. But the soul of governance remained its moribund self. Government never became of and for the people. It remained on top of them.
Heavy responsibility must be apportioned to these historic antecedents. But to foist all blame on the foreign machinations of a wretched past is inaccurate and unilluminating. With each day that passes, this reason becomes a lesser one. It becomes more of a limp excuse than a compelling explanation. After fifty years in the driver’s seat, we should have learned more about vehicle and the road traveled. We should also have improved our ability to navigate the bends and twists of our forward journey. We have failed at this.
African countries and Black communities throughout the world are in tumult because our leaders fight each other with the desperate exertion of slave gladiators hoping to save their lone souls by pleasing their owners. If they have to kill their brother to do so, by all means let not the brother be spared. In essence, their spiritual family is the non-Black for they treat non-Blacks with greater humanity and more respect than ever reserved for people of the darker hue.
Miseducation of Black leadership is so severe the outside world no longer needs to deceive our leaders. Rarely do any of them see the larger game because they believe they are the only game in town. They are awash in self deception. The narrow political and economic education under which most leaders have been inculcated has produced succeeding generations of leaders incapable of functioning at the national level.
Actually, the problem is that they function at the national level but not at the level of the modern state. Most African countries are not nations; they are states shaped by foreign hand. These states were constructed to suit the purpose of people who never resided in them.
We inherited these constructs. Whether we like it or not, in general, the fact of their sheer existence now outweighs the flaws of their creation. More is to be gained by improving these entities than by splintering them. In this world, economies of scale matter. The small affluent state is an incident of a peculiar geography or circumstance that cannot be duplicated at will. Disintegration generally leads to greater destitution.
However, the challenge for Africa is to change the political education of our people. Too many leaders see their group or region as the nation to which they owe primary loyalty. Upon this atavistic premise, their actions and decisions are founded. To the larger nation or country, they give no more loyalty than an American or British leader would give the United Nations or NATO. When it suits them, the nation matters. When the national interest calls for their sacrifice, they hector at the thing, lamenting colonial contraption heaped upon their forebears.
Yet, Africa must recognize a strategic shift has taken place since the colonial stage. Then, the artificial unions advanced the administrative interests of the satrap. Today, disintegration of these units would better serve the former colonists than if these countries would functionally improve to become self-integrated modern nations.
Non-African states seek to enhance their industries and their export of finished goods. They need cheap raw materials. They also don’t need competition from Black nations with large pools of eager laborers. Excuse the mixed metaphor, but watching African nations disintegrate would be music to their ears. They pray for our nations to break and the outside world pays a handsome commission to those who would keep them dysfunctional. The chronic warfare that DROC has become is a blemish on modern history. This nation could fuel the economic revival of its sub-region and light most of sub-Sahara Africa. Instead, it is laid bare so that neighboring states and western mining firms can bite at her like a pack of hyena.
In the end, it is not that African leaders are ignorant. It is not that they can’t think. The tragedy is that they tend to think of the wrong things at the worst times. We need to wake to the challenge at hand. The old mold must be discarded. We must shift political orientation to the country or nation-state level and begin to downplay sub-national affiliations. This will take courage and vision as it violates the grain of convention. However, following convention is a rather quaint, unavailing exercise when it promotes cold disaster. This change must come even if uncomfortable. To fail at this is to fail the challenge of fusing political independence, economic prosperity and modernity in a way that suits our purposes and interests. This is the only way to gain the authentic freedom Africa forgot to claim when it picked up its half parcel of political independence. Recent history shows that political independence without an accompanying sense of nationhood is a recipe for damnable inertia. It is a self-imposed colonialism worse than anything the former master imposed. A people willing to descend into that hole is not a people at all.
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