Contemporary Africa’s politics is an exploitative and disingenuous enterprise that thrives on the maintenance and weaponization of imperial systems of colonial governments for the benefit of the political elite and their allies while conditioning the public into a perpetual victim mentality and away from finding solutions. The colonialism of Africa is appropriated as a weapon of choice to hamstring Western governments that dare question the shenanigans of African leaders.
Genuine problem-solving to real problems afflicting citizens is not on the agenda of many African leaders – both in government and the opposition; the political objectives are either to retain power or to take power for personal benefits that come with holding political power and influence in Africa.
It is unsurprising that excuses have become convenient and cozy psychological lounges where Africans from all walks of life gather, not to find a way out of all forms of challenges faced by the continent but to absolve the leadership of all responsibility for the failings.
An idea has been sold to the public that Africa’s problem is the West, and that the failure to address Africa’s problems is due to the Western imperialist agenda. Sad as it sounds, the public have bought to that lie. Instead of objectively scrutinising prevailing conditions, diagnosing the problem accurately to find answers, Africans are wallowing in victimhood and blame game in which everything going wrong in the African continent is blamed on Western imperialism.
Reality clearly shows that most of Africa’s problems are birthed within the continent and in the process, foreigners are invited in to bolster different factions’ interests. We cannot blame poorly funded education systems and poor funding on science, research, and innovation on the West, but we need to bear full responsibility for failures in that sector.
Gender inequality, continued trade in cheap unprocessed raw materials, internal armed conflict over religion, corruption, tribalism, oppression of certain population groups, unfair exploitation of natural resources and other local leaders’ self-interests cannot be accounted for by imperialism than by local leaders and followers.
While Western imperialism did have a negative impact to development in Africa, it does not explain the resistance to change, and improvement of systems displayed by our leaders. There is a deliberate marginalisation of ordinary Africans from decision-making processes which has nothing to do with the West but all to do with African politicians and the elite. It has become obvious that African leaders will do anything to escape accountability.
There is literally no appetite, among the political elite, in promoting systems that risk promoting the organic growth of a democratic ecosystem within the African continent because of the obvious benefits of despotism and its friendly accommodation of order without justice hence the existent brutal, tribal, and cultic political culture.
Democratic institutions are an anathema to the African political elite as they are viewed as posing an existential threat to despotism and its enabling environment; democracy is thus an unwelcome introduction to the political space whose very foundation and driver is cultism and the suppression of individual rights.
What comes with democracy are institutions that demand of society transparency and standards of accountability and a set-up of institutions to create a response-able society. In other words, democracy raises expectation and a sense of responsibility to the whole population thus focuses on building leaders and not just followers in people.
Checks and balances are the foundation of democracy and what Africa requires to create formidable institutions that will help optimise its economic and political potential, human and natural resources. Besides constitutional provisions, the importance of civil society and non-governmental organisations in overseeing government activities cannot be underestimated.
Foundations to solutions to Africa’s problems are in Africa, not the West. We have a young population and natural resources to exploit. No number of excuses will save Africa from its current socioeconomic and political precipice. In the absence of accountability, the African trajectory will be a self-distractive downward spiral. We will continue to experience an extractive economic system, deepening poverty, poorly funded social welfare systems unable to protect individuals and communities from the impact of poverty, widening inequality in society, and exploitation of natural resources by the elite.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 