By Prof Artwell Nhemachena
IN the US, the Americans push their interests; and they prioritise American interests wherever they go in the world, but many of us have not even imagined the existence of African interests.
American corporations and businesses prioritise American interests while ordinary Americans similarly prioritise American interests and American leaders prioritise American interests.
Indeed, even American civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations prioritise American interests even as they pretend to be prioritising African interests and the interests of other people across the world.
Every race should map out its own interests so that it does not get overrun by the interests of others, including those who package and mask their own interests as the interests of everyone else in the world.
Individuals who do not know and have not identified their own interests risk being used as a means to achieve other people’s interests and goals. Similarly, nations and regions that do not have their own interests risk being used as a means to achieve other people’s interests.
The reason there are too many noisy variables in Zimbabwe and other African nations is not necessarily because all these States are failing but that the national and regional interests have not been mapped, shared and imbibed by all and sundry.
Of course, even spouses have got to have their own interests in their marriages because it is the existence of shared interests that accounts for harmony, co-operation and stability. Families should similarly define their own interests in order to be focused.
When spouses do not have shared interests as married partners, the risk is that they assume the status of shingle, difficult to pull together, and the marriages become precarious in the sense of the spouses pulling apart and risking stepping out in their brinkmanship and brinkwomanship. Indeed, spouses themselves become noisy variables when they do not share clearly defined and set common interests.
The success of a marriage, family, nation and region depends not on the excellence of individual leadership but on the existence of shared interests which prevent the emergence of noisy variables which prefer to spend time making noise than on co-operating in nation-building and development.
Variables always risk the folly of cutting tree branches on which they are sitting — kutema davi raugere. This is to say that often, we destroy, out of folly, the very marriages, families, nations and regions upon which we depend because we prefer to make lots of noise instead of co-operating in nation-building and development.
Americans prosper not merely because they have good leaders but because they all have shared interests which they keep, whether at home or abroad.
In the northern parts of the world, it does not matter that their leaders and ancestors have enslaved and colonised other people. Despite such histories of enslaving and colonising other people, citizens continue to share interests with their leaders and ancestors.
Indeed, their ancestors who were slave drivers and slave owners continue to be regarded as saints and the rest of us are even exhorted to kneel down and pray to these ‘saints’ who were slave drivers and slave owners.
Similarly, even as their own leaders continue to exploit and dispossess other people in the world, the citizens continue to regard them as democratic, philanthropic, humanitarian and progressive because they have shared interests in their countries.
Africans need to consider why, despite the very many changes of leadership in the elections over the centuries, all the Western leaders share interests in not paying reparations and compensation to Africans who were enslaved and colonised.
Leaders in the West may appear different to uncritical eyes and it may appear that the elections in those countries are bringing in new and different leaders on the face of it. But all those leaders across time are the same because none of them sees the necessity of reparations and compensation to those who suffered, and are suffering, the effects of enslavement and colonisation.
The commonalities and similarities among Western leaders are only explicable in terms of their shared interests. And so, none of them makes noise about the imperatives of reparations and compensation to victims of enslavement and colonisation. Denial is their commonality, even as we are told that they are democratic in the sense of electing different leaders into office.
The point here is not that they must not share interests, but that Africans must also share their own common interests whether they are at home or in the Diaspora.
It is high time Zimbabweans share Zimbabwean interests, and Africans share African interests.
Once each Zimbabwean and each African begins to know and value Zimbabwean interests and African interests, no-one will continue to foolishly cut the tree branches on which they are sitting.
Destroy your nation State, but know you are cutting a branch on which you are sitting; destroy your Africanness, but know that you are cutting a tree branch on which you are sitting.
Because of the noise, it may appear to be cleverness when we destroy our States, but it is utter folly for one to be cutting a tree branch on which one is sitting.
Of course, some even kill their spouses, their parents, their grandparents and their siblings, in addition to destroying their States. But the commonality among them is the folly of cutting tree branches on which they are sitting.
