The case of one Rev Nevers Mumba, head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Electoral Observer Mission (SEOM), who even horrified his compatriots in the country of his own birth, Zambia, after unfairly denouncing recently held Zimbabwean polls, necessitates that we have a re-run of an abridged version of Prof Artwell Nhemachena’s article on colonial errand boys.
By Prof Artwell Nhemachena
DURING the colonial era, African men were not men but they remained boys whatever their real ages were.
African men were addressed and treated as boys because they ‘were cut out’ for running errands for the colonial masters who retained the privilege of being considered and treated as respectable adults.
As colonial boys, African men were neither children nor adults. They were liminal beings hanging in between, with neither autonomy nor sovereignty but ever ready to run errands for the colonial masters.
Even in post-independence 21st Century, African leaders have remained colonial errand boys.
A dim-witted colonial errand boy is one who can neither decide on, sustain his own agenda nor run his own errands but those of someone else.
Even before the master has finished giving instructions, the colonial errand boy is already nodding his head in agreement, ready to go.
Of course, colonial errand boys were taught by the colonial masters that the colonial agenda was also their own.
In this way, the colonial errand boys, with the zeal of disciples, ran the colonial errands in the dim-witted belief that they were running their own African errands.
The point that I am making here is that Africans must learn to make their own agendas and run their own errands if they are to graduate out of the colonial errand boyhood where they run colonial masters’ errands, however veiled as African.
Some agendas that 21st Century African leaders are feverishly executing are not African agendas in the sense of them originating from the African populace.
Africans do not want to elect leaders who have no qualms aborting the African agenda and becoming colonial errand boys.
In the 1960s when Africans were gaining independence, sages of African sStates, including Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Samora Machel and Kenneth Kaunda, among others, demanded restoration of African sovereignty over their natural resources so that they would be able to develop the continent.
But this African agenda has been ignored by the West since the time of its inception. Instead, Westerners decided to foreground, as the primary agenda, Western liberal democracy, ‘rule of law’ and ‘good governance’, among other platitudes which, sadly, do not translate to African sovereignty, especially over natural resources.
Instead of foregrounding African State sovereignty over natural resources, the West foregrounded it in ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, ‘rule of law’, ‘good governance’ and constitutionalism.
These have sadly come to be defined as the core African agenda such that the African, foremost, aims to recover sovereignty over natural resources. This has been conveniently foreshadowed and forgotten over time.
Liberal democracy does not have to precede African sovereignty over natural resources because, without material resources, neither democracy nor African life itself is possible on the continent.
Logic dictates, therefore, that anyone who is genuinely interested in promoting and enabling genuine democracy, peace, stability, rule of law and constitutional order in Africa must, first of all, ensure that Africans recover ownership and control over their material resources.
The key question, therefore, is whether Africans must prioritise the restoration of Western liberal democracy on the continent, or they must prioritise the restoration of sovereignty over natural resources to themselves?
Liberal democracy is a problem in Africa precisely because it has been put before African sovereignty over natural resources — this is putting the cart before the horse.
Africans have become, what I call, prisoners of democracy.
Western States, including France and the US, are lurking behind the crusades of Western liberal democracy – and they are not shy to declare that they want to protect their economic interests.
The African agenda is about restoration of African sovereignty over natural resources not the imposition of Western liberal democracy in Africa.
If 21st Century African leaders are to graduate from colonial errand boyhood, they need to prioritise the African agendas and errands.
The colonial masters’ democracy is not ultimately designed to serve the interests of the servants.
The colonialist’s peace is not designed to serve the interests of the servants, and this is why Western notions of peace do not help Africans.
It is paradoxical and even spiteful to suppose that Africans can have peace when they are being dispossessed and exploited by colonial forces.
Peace should not be narrowly defined in political terms because Africans are also suffering economic violence from the colonial forces.
The impoverishment, starvation, ill health and general privation among Africans speak to economic violence on a continent that has not known peace since the eras of enslavement and colonial plunder.
The African peasant who is dispossessed of his/her land in the ongoing transnational land grabs would not say there is constitutional order in Africa; the African whose oil, uranium, tungsten, diamonds, gold and land are stolen by transnational corporations would not agree that there is constitutional order and stability in Africa.
Of course, the colonialists’ order is one that enables them to continue looting and plundering African resources – dispossessing and exploiting the Africans.
This is the kind of order, stability and peace which colonial errand boys are wont to keep and to restore.
When the colonialist is able to dispossess, exploit Africans, loot and plunder Africans’ resources, he would obviously celebrate such an enabling context as peaceful, stable, democratic and orderly.
After all, even colonialism thrived on certain kinds of constitutional order, stability and rule of law which enhanced and enabled colonial plunder.
The recent sanctions on Uganda for criminalising homosexuality are, in fact, a cultural coup designed to depose Ugandan culture which forbids homosexuality.
Some coups come in the form of defence of human rights, economic development and regime change. But all coups have similar imports – to depose that which is African – be it polities, cultures, economies, societies and cognition.
Indeed, nobody likes coups, but we, Africans, cannot fight some coups while we ignore others; be they economic coups, cultural coups, spiritual coups, epistemological coups, social coups and cognitive coups.
What Ngugi wa Thiongo described as ‘colonisation of the mind’ is, in fact, what I would call ‘cognitive coups de’tat’ in so far as they depose African modes of thought and replace them with colonial modes.
Because some African leaders are dim wits, they still mistake the colonialist’s freedom for our own freedom, mistake the colonialist’s peace for our peace, mistake the colonialist’s order for our order, mistake the colonialist’s democracy for our democracy, mistake the colonialist’s prosperity for our prosperity, and mistake the colonialist’s stability for our stability.
The Westerners are stable because they own and control their resources; and so, Africans can realise order, stability, peace, democracy, rule of law and human rights once they assume ownership and control over their resources.
Democracy and constitutional order, stability and peace should not come through fiat but through restoration of African sovereignty over their natural resources, and this is very important for all African leaders to realise.
Instead of perspiring to execute the colonialist’s ‘democracy’ and ‘order’, African leaders must work hard to design a peculiarly African kind of democracy. Instead of sweating to restore the colonialist’s stability, African leaders must work hard to restore African stability hinged on sovereignty over resources.
