Keeping hope alive

There are so many pessimists about Africa around the world that it seems there is nothing Africans can do that can change their mindsets. Otherwise how does one explain a very common question that any talk of Uganda in many circles outside Africa still prompts: Idi Amin. The fact that Idi Amin was booted out of power in 1979 seems to have passed many people by! On seeing my name tag, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Pan African Movement, Uganda at a huge international conference, only two years ago, a delegate came to me at Tea Break and asked: How is Idi Amin? He seems quiet these days!

I had grown accustomed to these daft questions so I gently broke it to him that the Field Marshall had been out of Uganda for sometime, lodging in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, since 1979. I thought the questioner would walk away quietly in diplomatic embarrassment but he shot another question at me: so what does he do these days? Since he could not get the message it was my turn to walk away from the embarrassing conversation.

But the Afro pessimism is not just from outsiders. So many Africans; many of the educated elite class who are allegedly supposed to know better, are guilty of the same pessimism about Africa and Africans. A religious fundamentalist acquaintance even tried to convince me that our woes were because of many sins that we have committed and unless we return to God in penitence there can not be any respite from our multi legged afflictions, from AIDS to bad governance. I asked him if our disobedience to his God is worse than that of any other peoples on this planet and he was adamant that it was. So if Africa is to continue to suffer all these problems what will God do to those who enslaved us, colonised us and continue to rig the international rules of trade and commerce against us with the active collaboration and grotesque submissiveness of our leaders who are really dealers.

Of course blaming the victim is not a new trick from those who benefit from any system of oppression and exploitation. That is why many of our leaders assume the mantle of ‘father of the nation’ (who does no wrong) as soon as they enter state house and with time they become theocratic asking us to return to God in order to be governed well. They become the chosen ones by God but somehow God’s message is not for them but for the poor hapless citizens. Didn’t colonialists and Slave dealers before them declare their murderous enterprise as ‘civilisation’?

However as the Late Walter Rodney once declared Africa has an incredible capacity to surprise both outsiders and the natives. Amidst all the gloom and doom we see flickers of hope and rays of sun shine here and there, keeping hope alive that our peoples have it within them the capacity to change their conditions for the better. Outsiders can and may help but the duty is that of Africans.

While not denying the challenges we must also put our victories in perspective and build on those good practices of things that work in Africa by African efforts.

South Africa has just concluded its third post apartheid general elections without the much-predicted mass violence especially in Kwazulu Natal. Even Chief Buthelezi is reaching his sell-by-date and is no longer capable of destabilising the democratic order.

Yet just ten years ago there were all prophets of doom about the inevitable catastrophe that a post apartheid South Africa will become. Enemies of Africa now say the ANC has won too much votes and that is supposed to be dangerous for democracy. Does that mean that Tony Blair whose party has a overwhelming majority in the British parliament without overwhelming votes across the country should have shared it with his Liberal and conservative opponents?

Another unsung development is the decision by President Sam Nujoma and SWAPO that finally this term is his final and final term. No more tinkering with the constitution to prolong the rule of one person.

The system should be able to cope with the exit of its founders, veterans and pioneers and move to another person and another generation.

Africa’s enemies will be further proven wrong if and when the same message echoes from Kampala, Harare, Addis Ababa and Asmara. President Thabo Mbeki has made the same declaration in Pretoria as indeed President Kagame (though he still has many years ahead) in Kigali. We have to help those who have seen the light beyond state house and also help those who are yet to that there is more to enjoy outside of it instead of remaining prisoners to power. Some leaders like Eyadema (who is beyond the pale of any democratic pressure) we have to pray to the ancestors to fastforward his recall to the higher house. The next phase in the very painful transitions in many African countries will require being liberated from our liberators.

Let us keep hope alive, Afrika Yetu!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda and also Director of Justice Africa, based in London.