My outlook for Africans

My outlook is that Africans should be aware of the global predicaments happening across the globe and should not be caught dozing, and my stance is that we should not watch approaching catastrophes as if immobilized. What is at stake requires a realistic look at the African position without resorting to demagoguery or confused thinking. We must take into account the concrete reality that confronts most of our countries here and now (not idealized), and paying attention to the aspiration of the people, we must assess, without any exaggeration, our true capability to influence events at home and abroad. There are several political as well as social and cultural issues to be taken into considerations, but while such issues should not be ignored, it is the economic base that must be a starting point. These events call for a sober assessment of how to restructure our economies away from conditions that condemned our countries to be wholly dependent on, and heavily indebted to the world system.

The universal reality for most of our countries is that we have a proliferation of weak and self-seeking leadership who have helped to disrupt the development process and placed us firmly at the mercy of foreign interests. The African leadership and the elite where this leadership emerges from must wean itself -- as if a child dissociating from the bottle in order to grow -- away from the whole gamut of thinking that sees aid donors, creditors (financial speculators), and multilateral agencies as the only way to pursue development. This thinking and vertical structure for integrating our economies to the world has left us inherently weak and structurally unfit to take part profitably and benefit from the world market.

Africans at home and abroad should perform a self-examination that is wholesome to consciously cultivate a new African person - confident, unapologetic about who he/she is, knowledgeable about African history and conscious about the world and what role to play in it. These foundations will check on crude individualism and greed; low self-esteem, which makes people vulnerable to vices like bribery; ignorance, which can make a neighbour to slaughter another at the command of corrupt politicians; and the kind of self-hatred that brings disregard to other humans who look like us. The bottom line is that the African ruling elite and the circles from which they come (the educated and the rich), should go through a new thinking process in their world view if things are to change. When people change the way they look at things, the things they are looking at will also begin to change.

If we leave to others to perceive critically the themes of our time, thus fail to intervene actively in our reality, we will be carried along in the wake of any change. We can see that the times are changing but feel powerless to intervene or be part of that change; we feel submerged in the changes and fail to discern the dramatic significance of the important events of our time. This is what happens when we conform to anonymous authorities and adopt a self that is not ours. The more we do this, the more powerless we feel, the more we are forced to conform, and we gaze towards approaching catastrophes as though we are paralyzed.

Courtesy of Esau Mavindidze