Tuesday, May 28, 2013

PAN AFRICANISM IS A DEAD IDEOLOGY

There was something called NEPAD,New partnership for Africa's Development.The main agenda of NEPAD was an economic regeneration and a political integration.What objective did it achieve?Is it still there?Now I'm hearing about the rebirth of a racist term called Pan Africanism.When Kwameh Nkrumah and African black scholars such as W.E.B Dubois popularized the term Pan Africanism,it was to mobilize all Africans to fight for independence -to free themselves from the york of colonial oppression.It was to decolonize Africans' minds to set them on the path of thinking for themselves .It was about self reliance not self pity.It was about economic empowerment of ALL Africans not pocket empowerment of a few people.

Since African countries have all achieved their independence,pan Africanism is a dead ideology that cannot hold any water in an increasingly globalized world.It has long been dead as Kwameh Nkrumah ,Leopold Sedar Senghor and W.E.B Dubois have been dead.

The major problems that have plagued Africa are ethnicity,bad governance,corruption and religious intolerance.A Nigerian can't still see anything good about a fellow Nigerian beyond their religious differences.The country is tottering towards the brinks of collapse.Sudan disintegrated just recently and I guess,will disintegrate further.In 2007 Kenya was at war with itself.Kenyans can't live together as brothers and sisters without the mistrust of tribes.Somalia is a failed state.In Uganda,the government has monopolized violence and manufactures for its citizen, the words they say.Zimbabwe is still reeling back from its own engineered economic collapse.South Sudan got independence to allow its citizen to starve to death in freedom.In CAR,the rebels said enough is enough and that it was their time to eat-they overthrew the government .

These and so many other gloomy stories best describe African feeble journey .This's a journey that most African countries started together with the Asian Tigers.As Asian countries are moving at jet like speed ,achieving full economic,social and political liberation for their citizens and entering the coveted club of the newly developed countries,Africa is still lagging behind and moving at tortoise speed retaining the tag 'least developed' countries or third world countries.But our leaders are contented and think they have achieved a lot and deserve a pat on their back.

Africa is a continent of many paradoxes.Children and women still starve in the midst of plenty.Our women still have to die when giving life to the next generation of African leaders.Zillions of shillings have been spent in aid to Africa by the West since 1960's with no tangible results to boast of.Though there are few success stories ,for the more than 50 years Pan Africanism has been in existence,we have witnessed more disintegration than integration,more wars than peace,more economic degeneration than regeneration,more division than multiplication,more corruption than development,more mouth to feed than food to feed them,more job-seekers than jobs,more patients than drugs and hospitals and more problems than solutions.
We're yearning for freedom.And yes, we got freedom.But the black man can't eat freedom alone.Freedom without economic empowerment has been the most unpalatable menu in S. Africa,Kenya,Ghana and many other African countries.

Africa renaissance is the re emergence of African new crop of dictators like

Museveni,Mugabe,Kagame,Teodore Obiang................. .