African leaders should be the ones wearing The Josker faces

THE Industrial Development Corporation threw a R500,000 farewell party for its chairman Wendy Luhabe last year and then rehired her two weeks later. Now what’s wrong with this picture?

The IDC is state-funded, meaning our money.  First a R500, 000 party is obscene in any language, let alone rehiring the person two weeks later. This IDC outfit’s mandate is to fund business start-ups.

I am not making this up. This mess up came out in parliament today from Rob Davies, the minister of trade and industry, who submitted a written response to a parliamentary question from Freedom Front.

Minsters are spending millions on luxury cars, and they are buying them in pairs, mind you; one for Cape Town and one for when they are in gauteng. I don’t give a toss what people spend their hard-earned money on, but splurging on luxyries with taxpayers money when there are protests around the country due to lack of service delivery (allegedly due to budgetary constrainst) just does not make sense. Many projects have not been completed, because we are told there is not enough money in the government kitty. Where the hell then does the money to buy R1.2-million beemers come from – cash-in-transit heists or drug-dealer friends like Agliotti?

Africa is this poor because of this practice where politics is just a ticket to personal riches. What is frightening is that Africa has been trying to get its act together since 1900. Several conferences, pledges and whatever else later, the continent is still an unequal partner in the global playing field. More of a begger than a partner.

In November the world meets yet again to debate global warming and what concessions the developed and developing nations should make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 Developed countries will once again get away with doing very little while demanding more from developing countries.

 I imagine America and Britain representatives standing up and telling African countries “we will do our part in reducing carbon emissions by relocating some of our factories to your countries, and you must do your part by telling your village people to cut less firewood”. And they will all second the motion and adjourn.

 Developing countries have no greenhouse gas emitting structures of their own to talk about because all the guilty industry players are imported multinationals. But African leaders will nod their heads and agree to anything in exchange for aid. After all he who pays the piper calls the tune.

I don’t see any African country effectively controlling what multinational do or penalising them for non compliance because dictator needs the money to support their lavish lifestyles and to strengthen their armies to suppress their people.

The same goes for all so-called world conferences whether they be on global economic transformation or trade. We are just there to rubberstamp what the developed world’s decisions.

This I accept for beggars cannot dictate how much money a donor chucks at them. For as long as our existence is defined by the begging bowl in our hand, we have no say in the greater scheme of things. Unless we are prepared to do something about it like other developing countries like China, India and Brazil have done, we have no reason to complain.

Asia and South America emerged from the same history of colonialism as Africa, but they have made great strides in consolidating their positions to be where they are now. What stops Africa from pursuing the same route?

Former British prime minister, Tony Blair once described Africa as a “scar on the conscience of the world”. And frankly that’s exactly what we are – an ugly scar.

For some strange reason many Africans were offended by this statement.

During colonialism Africa was a place where being black was a lifelong curse, and being white meant living in perpetual fear and harbouring a hidden rage. Not much has changed.

What it will take to get Africa moving forward and becoming a force to be reckoned with in global politics remains a mystery to the current generation as it has been since the first Pan-African Congress organized by a Trinidadian Lawyer, Sylvester Williams in 1900. The Seventh Congress was held in Kampala, Uganda in April 1994.

Asia and South America realised the truth in the old saying that unity is strength and worked together to build their economies by trading with each other first before venturing out into the big wide world.

But it seems we just don’t get it. Africa is in different stages of development which gives the better developed countries an opportunity to make money from less developed countries in the continent.

We are content with flooding Europe and America with goods they don’t need, and complaint when they are not bought. There is very little intra-trade happening between African countries, and that just boggles the mind.

Not only is Africa very far from unity politically and economically, it is also the most marginal, denigrated, poverty stricken, exploited and unstable continent in the world.

I wonder what happened to the Pan-Africanist notion as so well articulated by Patrice Lumumba , Sekou Toure , Kwame Nkrumah, Modibo Keita, Frantz Fanon and Nnamdi Azikiwe.

Nkrumah so believed in the African unity for the better good of the continent that he even declared in a radio broadcast on March 6, 1960, that he was willing to “surrender the sovereignty of Ghana, in whole or in part, in the interest of a Union of African States and Territories as soon as ever such a union becomes”.

Nigeria was in the forefront of countries that opposed Nkrumah’s vision for Africa, reducing it to personal ambition. So it was like dejavu when our former president Thabo Mbeki found himself only backed by Nigeria and Senegal when he wanted to revive the dream through his African renaissance project. Other countries half-committed and played a wait-and-see game, also labelling it his personal project.

Nkrumah’s vision was later rewarded with a mediocre formation in 1963 known as the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Mbeki also ended up with a new and alas less improved version called the African Union – also sans teeth and this time with infected gums to boot.

Agreements signed between the Southern African Development Community and the European Union in 2000 have stabilised trade and investment arrangements for Southern Africa. But there can never be real local benefits when we need more from them than they from us. It merely reduces these to consumer agreement.

The only ventures worth anything are those with China, India and with Mercosur, the South American customs union consisting of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Chile and Bolivia as associate members.

Linking up with these economies offers opportunities for economic growth and development in Southern Africa.

Experts have also argued that Africa’s ability to integrate its markets is hampered by the fact that its monetary systems remain fragmented. Africa should regionalise as a matter of urgency to help make its economies more globally competitive.

Africa has been a major beneficiary of China’s voracious appetite for raw materials, and the closer partnership between Asia and Africa allows both regions to better address the challenges of globalisation.

“All of what we do has to be linked to building the necessary capacity to take the continent away from poverty,” Mbeki told a World Economic Forum meeting in 2007.

In the same year, former Nigerian education minister and current World bank’s vice-president for Africa, Obiageli Katryn Ezekwesili, also advised that the continent should raise the bar and pursue an even more ambitious “internally driven” development agenda.

It has been argued that the premise of the African Renaissance was the acknowledgement that the continent has the capacity and the responsibility to master its future, and calling for the mobilisation of resources and the integration of efforts of business and government through continent-wide partnerships.

Many analysts have warned that failure to bring about the African Renaissance would ensure the final collapse of many already failing states.

Today, Africa resembles a 15th century village compared to Asia and South America, and remains exploited, denigrated and a source of racist jokes. And our leaders continue to rob the kitty for personal comforts.

Maybe we just don’t get it.

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