Water From An Ancient Well

Water From An Ancient Well

“The invention of the nation state and of modern government in the closing years of the of the 16^th century was certainly one of the most successful innovations ever. Within 200 years they conquered the globe. But its time for new thinking. The same holds true for economic theories that have dominated the past 60 years or so. Government, not businesses or non-profits- is going to be the most important area of entrepreneurship and innovation over the next 25 years.” – Peter F. Drucker in Managing in the Next Society (1996)

The quoted text is from a paper written in 1996 while the book was published in the year 2002. While there are many questions that the experienced author answers concerning the nature of Capitalism, Business, Entrepreneurship and the general flow of innovations, it is the point that he insist on a change of attitude within the predominantly western leaders that excites me about the book.

This talk of change appears to be one of the reasons why the people of the USA today boast of being lead by an African-American president. While there is a lot that can be said about how this leader utilised both social media and a shrewd management of huge amounts of dollars to ascend to power, the narrative that seems to have captured peoples minds is that he promised a fundamental change in the way things would and should be done in his country. Yet it is besides the scope of this essay to speculate on the success or failure of this man and his government, what is important is that he appeared to epitomise most of what people like Drucker have been saying all along which is ‘Adapt or die.’ In other words, Obama and his team played their cards right, they knew what to say, when to say it and how to achieve their goals, the rest is history.

Now, I would like to turn our attention to the role of African leadership in this adventurous endeavour for change. It is safe to say that despite all the reasons why African governments and their nations are lagging so far behind their contemporaries, there is a recognition that the time of mimicry is long gone, the puppet and the autocratic leader has long run out of time and as the winds of revolution continue to sweep through North Africa and the Middle East there is an understandable nervousness overtaking the rest of the leaders who know that the old fashioned style is obsolete.

The impetus now lies with the so called civil society leaders, the managers of movements and organisations that are said to speak on behalf of the needs of ordinary people.

But to lay all the work in the hands of organisations would be another mistake and a failure to outgrow the old routines and patterns of thought.

What I advise is akin to what has been alluded to by the Jazz and Hip Hop generations, the Freestyle or in Jazz terms; Improvisation.

One of the most influential groups in Hip Hop’s large and impressive Hall of Fame was cleverly called, A Tribe Called Quest, these skilful wordsmiths and sound scientists brought a fresh and unprecedented mixture of adventure, imagination and creative articulation of various ideas of Black Consciousness, 5% Islam and generally positive thinking to the music and business of Hip Hop, while influencing a whole generation of MC’s ( Master of Ceremonies…) after them as they continued to have fun and ignore the faddish propensities of the Gangster Rap generation.

In the height of the capitalist based and generally tabloid style of the Gangsta rappers domination of musical charts, the Questers who also spawned a group called Leaders of The New School released an album with a song called ‘Peoples Instinctive Travels And the Paths of Rhythm’, and although it took a few years before I could even hear or understand what that meant, I instinctively gravitated towards the ‘Path’ and the album covers that I saw in the expensive white owned African American magazines have stayed with me until now.

What I mean to illustrate with this is that even governments and other institutional leadership collectives can have such a great and positive influence on their people’s psychological developments if they could focus on the basics and how to administer them, controlling the flow of information and business influences through sound policies.

So what do people basically want what have they always wanted?

It is acceptable that in South Africa, we wanted freedom, the freedom to do as we please in the land of our foremothers/fathers; and after that had been won (politically) we started wanting jobs but in our constant wanting and struggling, we have not been trained or inspired to insist on particular qualities in our freedoms, our jobs and even our spirituality.

What this has done is perpetuate the same kind of pathological ignorance and lack of environmental consciousness that is required if we are to become social or even technological innovators.

The author and publisher Ayi Kwei Armah wrote in his book Two Thousands Seasons: ‘We are not a people of yesterday…’

In my own interpretation he meant that we as Africans should not be satisfied with the history of our subjugation and enslavement, we should not be just happy with stagnant traditions and tribal borders since we are much older than they say we are, we are capable of more since we have rich experience of being alive and therefore we should know and do better.

In IsiZulu, the sentence could be rendered as ‘Asibona oMafikiolo…singo-Makade ebona.’

But there lies the challenge for us and our governments. There is a wealth of experience that remains ignored or unutilised.

The government can invest is creating the kind of policies and infrastructures that can allow us to drink deeply from the ancient wells of our own achievements while we keep a keen and active eye and hand on the developments of this and future ages.

I am not saying that these are easy things to do, but they are not very complicated and so far fetched. It is again the attitude that needs to change, we have to move away from what others have called the culture of entitlement, the tendency to keep asking for more hand-outs, favours and help when we can help ourselves.

The other more critical challenge is that our governments are almost totally dependent of the stifling and dying capitalist model of doing business; At the expense of local and subsistence economies which can be improved, we continue to follow each and every Western trend.

This was what thwarted the otherwise excellent counsel of former President Thabo Mbeki and the political kingdom of Kwame Nkrumah.

While both these leaders sought to Africanise the way we thought about ourselves, they too, just like Obama succumbed to the idiotic force of the monotonous and failed economic theories that can have only furthered the intellectual and physical poverty of their peoples. In other words, instead of being revolutionaries who could have innovated or even improvised within a neo-socialist format, they opted for the easy way out, the neo-liberal model which backfired rather nastily on them.

Some will say that it is a futile exercise to insist on a new order or at least to work towards the reinstatement of a more Africanised basic education system, but these short-sited individuals seem to ignore the fact that the current educational models have not yielded any fruitful outcomes for the people of Africa. Black people still suffer the same social ills that plagued them ever since the colonial and apartheid era’s, perhaps even worse. We continue to invent nothing yet invest all our savings in useless Western ideals and most of what White people now consider boring and valueless, we continue to buy straight hair and anoint ourselves with petroleum jelly while guzzling their alcohols and dreaming year after year of a White Christmas, a White Wedding and lifestyles which bear no resemblance to our humanity. A people who are acknowledged as the custodians of Ubuntu and the first people are now dehumanised.

Finally, here’s what the Poet and one of the former presidents independent Senegal had to say:

“In Black Africa, ethics is active wisdom. It consists for the living man in recognising the unity of the world and in working for its ordering. It is not a catechism which is recited: it is ontology expressed in and through the society, and first of all in oneself.” – L.S. Senghor*

What this man was saying is no different to what Tribe Called Quest was rapping about when they said ‘Inside the ghetto or in the sunny meadow/ I’m gonna make you move, whether woman or fellow…I got the medals and the moves filled with respect…’”*

And so Once again, there is a time for everything and right now is the time for us to move towards a unified purpose with our leaders, or else why are they our leaders if they cannot lead us out of slavery?

How we intend to influence them all depends on whether they are able to become one with us, whether they are willing to listen and act according to the will of the so called workers.

If they cannot, they should let us determine our own destiny, instinctively and without politics.

And by politics, I mean the methods used by the creators of this fucked up system.

The new African should at least find a way to get the government to live up to the basic expectations, to do according to their words and promises made during the stupendously expensive political rallies.

If they cannot live up to their promises, they are simply not worthy of their high thrones, their degrees and PhDs’. Even here in the most promising country in Africa, a peoples rebellion is not unthinkable, but I insist that that rebellion has to be followed by an earnest revolution and revolutions require leaders that will steers them towards the right direction, and in my opinion, the right direction is a decentralised network of community governments driven by the need to be self sustaining and trading within the country and only exporting as little as possible from the West.

This can only be done if the central government pulls out of the so called free market and capital intensive monetary system which continues to be proven ineffective.

We can always learn from our thinkers and leaders who have given us the roadmaps to our emancipation; their example is our shining beacon of hope, we do not have to be embarrassed by the speeches of Marcus Garvey, the contributions of Mangaliso Sobukwe, the works of Sol Plaatjie, Aime Cesaire and many others.

In his collected essays, Makhosezwe Magubane reminds us of the critical observations of W.E.B. Du Bois who famously remarked that “the problem of the 20^th century will be the problem of the colour line”, but unfortunately yet not surprisingly there are many of our scholars who now feel that we should no longer deal with addressing this problem, citing that the politicians and general society is abusing the race card in order to further personal ambitions.

While that may be true, it is also important to recognise that this very racism was not invented by us so called Africans and that it is now left to us to unchain ourselves from it as it not only cripples us emotionally and psychologically, it also has a many economic overtones.

This is what Du Bois had to say as far back as 1936.

“The abolition of American slavery started the transportation of capital from white to black countries where slavery prevailed, with the same tremendous and awful consequences upon the labouring classes of the world which we see about us today. When raw material could not be raised a country like the United States, it could be raised in the tropics and semi-tropics under a dictatorship of industry, commerce and manufacture with no free farming class.”

To insist on multiracialism and the efficacy of free market capitalism is an insult to the memories of many African slaves and the labour force which still continue to suffer for our comforts and freedoms today. Many like to praise the Mandela’s and the Ghandi’s of the world without stopping to think about the consequences of these leaders actions.

Their self sacrifice is used as an excuse for maintaining the western inspired idolatry and perpetuation of the same old story, which is the selling of peace and love while sacrificing truth and justice. But we are not to be so easily fooled; we can choose the quality of our freeness without it being prescribed by the doctors of doom and decay. We are not a people of yesterday; we have ancient wisdom which will work well with our children’s Fresh ideas.