For Chinua Achebe and for Eritrea and Ethiopia

What Good is a United States?

“The disease – the breaking-up of that community – has taken centuries and centuries, thousands of years. Most of our people do not even wish to imagine any such possibility of wholeness. If you talk to them now of unity of all the earth’s black people they stare at you like idiots. Some can understand, but even they are confused. The healers are also confused; not about the aim of our work, but about the medicines we may use and about what may look like medicine but may end up being poison.” – Ayi Kwei Armah, The Healers* (1978)

Armah’s story is as old as I am, but the talk of uniting Afrika in order to work out our problems and effectively defeat known enemies goes back about another 30 odd years. One may quickly retort by saying we achieved much during the decades of independence from 1959 until the South African Rainbow National miracle of 1994. 

But all honest seekers of this dream of unity have their opinions concerning the efficacy of our governments, the powers of neo-colonialism and the consistent presence of imperial powers throughout the developing world. We all have our opinions about the role, power or powerlessness of the Organisation for African Unity, now called the African Union. 

While many are disappointed and even utterly frustrated by the AU’s lack of initiative, political will, financial and military clout; many more are optimistic and can count on its many achievements and even legislative victories. But all these are subjective and do precious little to explain to the ‘born free generation’ what significant gains have been achieved by the heads of states and bureaucrats who gather yearly under names such as NEPAD, MAPP, SADC and African Renaissance and even the BRICS summits. All agree that there is still way too much conflict and underdevelopment in the richest continent in the world.

Last night I spent some time with some brothers from Eritrea and Ethiopia, but they now work and study in South Afrika and are avidly learning local languages. After long conversations that ranged in different topics from God, Religion, Sex and Political Will, we ended up speaking about common languages and the necessity to learn from each other and make conscious efforts to simply ‘Be’ with each other.

Later as Tesfu* and I were headed home in a taxi cab, he began explaining to me why the unity between Eritrea and Ethiopia is just another dream in a Rastaman’s head. He gave me a very accurate history of how these two countries which were once autonomous provinces of the same nation with various ‘nationalities’ and principalities united at the ancient border by the sacred city of Axum came apart.

 He was at pains to explain that Eritrea was never really part of what we now know as Ethiopia before 1855. But the most insidious presence through-out East Afrikan history was the British imperial powers who competed for the Afrikan prise with the Fascist Italians. Hence Eritrea was colonised for many years by the Italians until they were defeated by the British who promised that they would relinquish power to the natives as soon as peace and socio-economic stability was established. 

That reminded me of all the modern countries who were invaded by the western powers in the name of democracy and human rights. The new victors always stayed over much longer than what was originally agreed and that further exacerbates the problem. 

White supremacy always seeks to treat black people like children or blind people who require constant guidance and surveillance, lest we ponce upon each other and commit repeated genocide.

Afrikans the world over exist as if we are under a spell forcing us to be unable to think and act independently. This of course is not some mumbo jumbo, supernatural spell, but it is akin to the ‘Culture Bomb’ that Ngugi Wa Thing’o is talking about in his seminal text; Decolonizing The Mind. After trying the many prescriptions that have been used all over the world to make revolutions that more often than not, turn out to be false starts or disappointing and costly failures, it is time for Black Afrika to earnestly work out its own destiny, using our own instruments to navigate the past, present and future.

Just a quick quotation from the back-page of this book The Healers*: “A century ago one of Africa’s great empires, Ashanti, fell. The root cause of that fall, symbolic of Africa’s conquest, was not merely Europe’s destructive strength. It was Africa’s disunity: divisions among kindred societies; divisions within each society between aristocrats, commoners and slaves. Even then, some saw this disunity as our people’s deadliest disease, and they sought the only possible cure: UNITY. These were the Healers. This is their story, a novel centred on th curative, creative vision of African unity. A story of the past, it speaks calmly to the present, and looks clearly to the future.”

This idea of unity, whether new or ancient is a very attractive one and it is so mainly because it seems plausible enough. The question is whether it is achievable or not. Can anyone or any institution successfully unite the various and distinctive ‘nations’ and tribes within nations in all their heaving and largely wretched mass? What of the glaring religious differences and what about the scars of post-colonial conflicts?

I admit that these are not plain black and while issues and that there are expansive and time warped grey areas which complicate and hinder the seekers of unity. We all agree that peace and reasonable dialogues are not only necessary but are the only way that any progress can be made. 

There are thousands of non-governmental organisations, thousands of conflict resolution initiatives and countless workshops and therapy sessions are held in communities from Alexandria to Khayelitsha, all amid the squalor and depressive slavish conditions that largely black Afrikans exist under. One cannot say that none of this work matters. 

There are obvious problems even within these ‘healing’ and often heroic exercises, but there are also problems of human frailty, such as corruption, greed and abuse of power. Perhaps those are just unavoidable troubles that are part of the human condition, but that is where a book such as Armah’s is important or even truly indispensable. 

Yet we all know that our highly educated liberation leaders, our heroes have mostly read the whole African Writers Series, they have even scoured the whole classical Greek, Western literature, East European versions of what constitutes true egalitarian societies, such as the whole communist catalogues from Hegel to Stalin and all the way to Fidel Castro. But what good has come out of such higher learning and affiliation?

The so called ‘clever blacks’ remain slaves to a system that seeks to further destroy anything that we may proudly say is our own. The Thabo Mbeki’s may quote speeches from Leopard Senghor, Jean Paul Sartre, William Shakespear, Soyinka or Wordsworth and Lincoln, yet none of those sweet and prophetical words serve to unite us in one vision. This illusive and precarious vision of Afrikan unity, the world that we know must emerge. But perhaps I am being cynical and must give our fathers their proper respect. After all, without their speaking truth to the powers that be, I wouldn’t be sitting here on the ‘holy mountain’, Howard College at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, writing freely and un-harassed.

If I may just allow myself to be uncharacteristically sceptical and ask: How do we know that this beautiful, peaceful and much desired Afrika can actually transpire, how do we know that it is achievable and not just another utopia? One answer would be that we know that the many heroines and heroes of Afrika did not defend our sovereignty in vain. We also know that our scholars, anthropologists, political, community leaders and advocates for justice were not stupid. They were healers and some were fearless warriors whose very blood coursed with the fire of truth, the truth that Afrika was once peaceful and culturally united.

So how does one explain the source of the pre-slavery and pre-colonial disunity if the European and the disease of white supremacy is not the only one to blame? Was there an intrinsic or home-spun virus that conspired with all that is evil in the world in order to decimate us from the head to the foot? Many writers have attempted to answer that question and even Armah does his best to describe the special circumstances that transpired in West and Northern Afrika. Chinua Achebe (who I am hearing through social networks has DIED today 22 March 2013 …may the Black Gods accept his chi, his ba and his ka, may he live forever and his healing work transpire) - did his best to describe how things eventually fell apart in Nigeria. His most famous novel resonated through-out the continent and touched many people all over the world.

 But despite these highest achievements, countless books and tours, films and all manner of creative efforts to assist Afrikans to pick ourselves up and realise the need for unity, we seem to be crumbling at the seams of globalisation. We have largely succumbed to ‘westernisation’ from our cultures, dress-codes, languages, political theories and even the most basic of everyday lifestyle habits.

For what good is a political unity if culturally, economically and ethically we are divided. Afrikans today are some of the most ubiquitous and vociferous advocates of democracy, socialism and communism. All these are great ideas which are really wasting space in Black people’s heads. Afrikans require the ‘Afrikan Solution’ that has been spoken about by everyone from Lembede, to Haile Selassie I, Kwame Nkrumah to Robert Sobukwe, Thomas Isidore Sankara and countless others. Yet some of these heroes were highly influenced by socialism and ideas of democracy and even the teachings of the Bible and the Quran, it is not such a far-fetched idea to say that this reliance on western and Middle Eastern more’s or moral codes was their very weakness.

 Did Sankara need Marx to figure out that his people are in socio-cultural bondage. All he learned from the East Europeans was the type of political theory that allowed him to name and shame his problem. But I doubt that if he had immersed himself in Afrikan history, whether through the Oromo system of the Gadaa or the Kemetic way of Ma’at this enemy wouldn’t be named and even more affectively defeated.

So the natural question is what exactly is keeping us apart? Here to it appears as if we are divided both ideologically and even in praxis. There are those who advocate for a complete disassociation with any western powers, who view complete and determined Black-Power Pan Afrikanism is a logical solution. Then there are the gradualists, the assimilationists and the neo-liberal ones who claim just as the founders of the African National Congress have said all along, ‘we cannot even imagine surviving ourselves, without the help of the white man and the Chinese man’, therefore we must keep applying political pressures, keep on trading and cooperating with our former oppressors, as human beings with mutual needs and benefits. But this is ridiculous and it is the reason what we find ourselves still producing the raw materials with no significant gain as we buy everything back and still continue to pay for loans forced upon us by imperial powers.

The work of the healer according to Armah is not easy yet it is not as impossible as many perceive.  He writes:

 “’Only our confusion comes from merely from impatience. The disease has run unchecked through centuries. Yet sometimes we dream of ending it in our little lifetimes, and despair seizes us if we do not see the end in sight. A healer needs to see beyond the present and tomorrow. He needs to see years and decades ahead. Because healers work for results so firm they may not be wholly visible till centuries have flowed into millennia.’” – (p.84 )

With these words in mind, would it be apt to assume that despite their mistakes and even questionable actions and ideas, people such as Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie I, Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, Julius Nyerere and countless other luminaries in Afrikas rich past of leaders, are actually the Healers. If their work such as that of the Jewish Messiah called Jesus speaks to millions years after their demise, must be seen as the healing work?

But who does it benefit if the suffering masses endure the most dehumanising atrocities today? Who is going to take care of today?

Unity of Afrikan states is one thing but how can we hope to unite the billions of blacks and Afrikans when we are struggling to find unity within the ‘nations’. The Sudan has recently been split into South and North, there is sporadic conflict in Mali, DRC and Lybia is still trying to recover from the fall of the beloved tyrant Muamar Gadhafi (the country is still divided along ethnic and class lines).

The Egyptian so called Revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak is also undergoing serious threats of regression and the people on the ground are disillusioned and conflicted over the role that their new leader should be playing. There are seriously worrying fractures between leaders and factions within South Afrika’s ruling ANC.

Although they may seek to play it down as a necessary and democratic process where anyone is free to contest and express opinion and redress, it is clear that our ruling elites are immune to criticism and they use every form of psychological and systemic intimidation to maintain an air of infallibility. But the situation especially among poorer communities remains terrible and it is still a matter of “white man’s heaven, black man’s hell.” The masses of landless, poorly paid and under-serviced blacks are growing more and more resentful. 

I have just learned that some mine and farm workers have decided to abandon all government related unions and have started their own party called Workers Socialist Party or WASP. I wonder whether their sting is going to be more lethal than the plethora of already existing socialist organs.

Another example of how it is difficult to maintain unity intra-nationally is that of Zimbabwe. After losing a relatively free and fair election in 2008, Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front agreed to share power with the election winner Morgan Tsvangirai.

It was an unpopular and highly contested decision, but here is what the notoriously loathed and equally loved Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratc Change had to say in 2009:

“Don’t think of Mugabe as a madman and Zimbabwe as a country in flames. And don’t seek rebellion or assassination – that’s precisely what has hobbled Africa for 50 years. Instead, try showing your enemies respect and turning them into colleagues.

Leave the old arguments and conflicts where they belong: in the past. Try peace. Try the future. This is not a revolution. This is an evolution. The trouble with evolution is that sometimes it can be slow and frustrating.” (Time magazine, interview by Alex Perry, August 3, 2009)

Wow, such benevolent speech, such forgiveness, such a great patience and perspective coming from a man who has been persecuted and crucified by many Afrikans within and outside of Zimbabwe. A man who has been called a puppet of the imperialists of the world and of the United Kingdom in particular. Is Tsvangirai; applying for the Nobel Peace Prize, is he reciting these words on the famous Idols competition? Or is he being genuine and displaying the true characteristics of the true leader, a selfless man. In a continent where greed, patriarchy and corruption threaten to tear the whole countries to pieces, it seems that we need to hear such words of hope and gradual state evolution.

But many Afrikans are also calling for urgent systemic overhaul. As many might still support Mugabe despite his questionable human rights violations record, many more wish that he and many other long-serving former liberation patriots should now just step aside and let the younger generation forge ahead towards the great work of healing the half dead soul of Afrika. We are calling for nothing short of Revolution. But due to the many different ideas of what this revolution should entail or look like, we continue to be divided and we move further away from the Nkrumahs dream of a United States of Afrika.

Scholars have rejected the idea as ridiculous, just as they had rejected Marcus Garvey’s ideas of international Black capitalism based on shared interest, our blackness and our irreversible situation in the western state of being. But these uniters of Blacks are still evoked in every conference, they are quoted far more than Mandela or Desmond Tutu are. Nkrumah’s idea of a Political and Economic Kingdom is still as attractive to this generation as it was to our parents then. So when will we find the time, daring and sheer audacity to do things on our own without capitulating to the United Nations, World Bank and other western forces?

Is there such thing as patience when it comes to making a revolution. Where would Cuba be today if Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the others were patient with imperialism? What would be the legacy of Cabral if he and his comrades were patiently negotiating with the racist Portuguese powers?

I guess we must try to strike a balance between the vision and work that has to be done in the meantime. So the healers work is to also find the right words, works and instruments to keep the people interested in the ultimate result – unity – while still offering solutions for the pressing challenges of What Now.

Menzi Maseko ©