Africa, ordinarily, is a blessed beautiful land in terms of good climate and natural resources. But her emancipatory trajectory, from time immemorial, has been replete with paradoxical systemic paralysis. A paradox accentuated by Adamic forces within more than those outside our shores. Historically the African conundrum is one fraught with progressive failure to keep a date with great destiny. A combination of factors had conspired to keep mother Africa down including those self-inflicted.
Talk of the black gold, oil and gas; talk of coffee and cocoa, all deposited in our rich arable lands yet these natural resources have not translated into riches for the masses. Nigeria, for example, has a huge deposit of oil wells yet fuel scarcity often rears its ugly head. We do not even have refineries to refine the petroleum products because the ones built for that purpose have been rendered useless by rampant corruption. We export crude oil and import refined products, some sub-standard!
We export coffee and cocoa seeds but import chocolate in return! Our arable lands allow seasonal growth of yam, cassava and maize but the majority of our people die of hunger. With indebtedness, poverty, hunger and diseases threatening even the existence of millions of our people, the prosperous working world is watching in awful disbelief.
Here is a black continent blessed with abundant natural resources by Providence but which has seen neither development nor social emancipation due to arrested development, one caused more by leadership ineptitude. As serious countries are embracing industrialisation and mass education we are content breeding more and more children as if the future does not matter.
The former US President, Bill Clinton, has only one child, a daughter named Chelsea. Ex-President Barack Obama has only two daughters, Sasha and Malia. President Emmanuel Macron of France is not yet a father even though he is legally married to a biddy his mother’s age! Having kids for the French charismatic leader is out of the marital equation for now. Examples abound of child birth control in the developed world.
But in Africa a grave-digger, artisan or an unemployed hoodlum can boast of half a dozen children or more even while living in the ghetto. Bearing children in this indigent environment becomes a ‘trophy’ won by many! Since sex is free Africans are very good at having it even when the stomach is empty!
As we love praying, worshipping God, dancing and doing other mundane non-intellectual things so we love making love. When it comes to sex then the average African is alive to his responsibility.
The problem with the black man, many critics had argued, may not be found in his environment but in his genes! We are not our brothers’ keepers. We are selfish, obtuse and wicked. Even when we have nothing to offer the international community in terms of ideas for human evolution we tend to be foolish and unintelligent in our behavioural patterns.
Nigeria is destined to lead the struggle for Africa’s renaissance with her abundant material and human resources but she remains a giant with the feet of clay! Like most countries she still gropes in the dark unable to steady her feet on the ground. Leadership has been the major problem half a century down the line. We have experimented with petty dictators and pseudo democrats all to no avail!
Last week the Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis, undertook a week-long tour of Africa which took him to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. The South Sudan trip was an ecumenical one involving his Eminence and the head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Justin Welby, and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Rt. Rev. Lain Greenshields.
It appears that both the DRC and South Sudan are very dear to the Roman Catholic leader. President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his arch-rival Vice President, Riek Machar Teny, must give peace a chance in their oil-rich country.
Prior to the ecumenical papal peace voyage to Juba, Pope Francis had landed from the Vatican to Kinshasa where he dropped a bombshell that reverberated across the world. He sounded characteristically like a friend of Africa, a friend of the poor; one genuinely concerned and pained by her story and history. Story and history of colonialism, of neo-colonialism, çf imperialism, of conflicts, of mass indigence, diseases and illiteracy.
In Kinshasa Pope Francis delivered a speech full of stinging condemnation of the exploitation over centuries — not just of this country, but also the continent.
“Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa, it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered!”, he thundered to a loud ovation. He talked of political strangleholds giving way to “economic colonialism”, which he said was equally enslaving.
Now, in terms of endowment with natural resources the DRC is about the richest country in Africa. But many factors have contributed to the blessing turning into curse. For one, leadership has, since independence from Belgium, been in its vacuous and diffident best element.
Perhaps, if the late assassinated Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, had been allowed to implement his revolutionary programmes and policies Congo would have fared better. Alas, the imperialists and their local collaborators (led by the late Mobutu Sese-Seko, made sure that Lumumba’s star was extinguished early enough.
Mobutu the kleptocrat came and stole the soul of Congo, stealing as much as was available and installing a regime of terror that lasted decades. The late Laurent-Désiré Kabila whose rebel forces chased away Mobutu out of power and into exile never lived long before a rogue bodyguard, 18-year old Rashidi Kasereka, pulled the trigger inside the Presidential Palace killing him instantly!
Buried, his son, Joseph, succeeded him. But instead of providing purposeful leadership liberating the Congolese from the shackles of oppression and misery Kabila the son had another personal agenda, one of dictatorship and plundering of resources.
By the time Joseph Kabila left power reluctantly following a rigged presidential poll billions of Dollars had been stolen! In an elaborate investigative effort by a consortium of international journalists “Congo Hold-up” was uncovered, a systematic high-wire corruption. It was like a staggering mafia-like state heist involving Kabila and his stooges and cronies!
Today President Félix Antoine Tshisekedi presides over the Congo with uneasy challenges, one of which is legitimacy issues. He never won the presidential election of 2018 but was imposed on the Congolese by the then out-going President Kabila whose anointed candidate failed woefully to make any headway.
President Tshisekedi is confronted in the eastern flank of the vast country by a rogue rebel army, M23, aided and abetted militarily by the Rwandese President, Paul ‘Putin’ Kagame. Chaos and anarchy are daily staples as millions are displaced. The heavily-armed rebels are steadily advancing towards the city of Goma.
Unless and until Africa gets its leadership right, development will continue to elude her. Inhabited by a majority young and mobile population it is unfortunate that the black continent is being run aground by old, vile and wily men.
Gerontocratic dictators abound from Malabo to Yaounde to Kampala. Obiang Mbasogo, Paul Biya and Yoweri Museveni have personalised state power that only the ultimate leveller could put an abrupt end to such despotic nonsense. Besides, there is this recurrence of coup-plotting (especially in Francophone West African states), something that is making the situation more complex to manage.
Add the Jihadist war of attrition to the mix then the scenario of ‘futurelessness’ is established.
Pope Francis talked about a continental tragedy told and foretold. Yet the truth of the matter is that indeed we are faced with a monumental tragedy but like an Athenian tragedy of yore it is one without the majesty of the Greek drama!
SOC Okenwa
soco_abj_2006_rci@hotmail.fr
