Pan-Africanism stripped bare

Pan-Africanism stripped bare

24/12/03
(VISIT ARCHIVE OF MATHUTHU'S PREVIOUS COLUMNS)
FORMER Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda recently came out in the open to throw his weight behind his recalcitrant and disgraced compatriot Robert Mugabe, and defended him as an African patriot.

He ranted in comments published on this website: "The ugly faces in the Commonwealth which are against Zimbabwe's land reforms will be defeated. I would advise my brother Mugabe to keep his cool".

Contemptuously dismissing the reporter he added: "If something is wrong with his tactics go there and advise him he will listen if you are genuine".

Barely a year after Kaunda implored his lost comrades to cease chasing colonial shadows and fight present evils such as HIV and AIDS he has shown himself to be working hand in glove with Mugabe and company.

How does one explain this kind of behaviour by a man we recently applauded for separating between opportunistic and sinister anti-imperialist rhetoric from genuine crusades?

In the answer lies the danger which also explains Africa's tragedy. The African people have for long been led by insincere and untrustworthy people.

Colonialism had so weighed them down so much so that any opportunist walked in to claim the space of a saviour. This is the space occupied by former Malawian veteran tyrant Kamuzu Banda, Mugabe and Julius Nyerere all of whom believed in the principle of central authority and never in shared power and competition.

"Pan-Africanism sounds like a dictatorial edifice committed to thwarting difference and competition"

MTHULISI MATHUTHU

So deep is this characteristic of insincerity and deception that even a man like Kaunda, even as he is fully aware of Mugabe's hypocritical and imagined crusades, he feels comfortable to use his renewed image (as a soldier against HIV and AIDS) to try to renew that of his sinking compatriot and companion in deception.

Questions arise.

How is it possible that where the world sees murder, deception, rape and hypocrisy other men will see African patriotism and genuine revolutionary activity?

Where, for instance, is the connection between heroism and the murder of 20 000 civilians in the Western part of Zimbabwe by President Mugabe's shock troops and the decline of the economy to a world record in just two years?

What is Pan-African about the seizure of the national broadcasting space to deploy insults to the very same people whose taxes sustain the operation of that same facility?

Will Kaunda be able to draw a connection between the arrest of journalists committed to weeping for the nation and the rewarding of those camouflaging pillaging and murder?

This African thing has been used as a tool to pull wool over our faces and to black mail inquiry into misrule and the genuine demands for accounting. Those who see blood and bones are branded as sell-outs while those who see green fields and wage their bottoms (even when there is nothing in the fields) are high quality patriots.

What is Africa, patriotism and Pan-Africanism in the first place? Will the proponents of these Siamese twins stand up to defend these for what they have shown themselves to be? That is refusing scrutiny, frowning at moral questions, defending blood letting and blackmailing progressive enquirers while nursing graft?

Pan-Africanism sounds like a dictatorial edifice committed to thwarting difference and competition.

Even as it tries to draw a difference between Banda, Mugabe and Mobutu it essentially isn't doing so. Instead it is just changing colours to suit the interests and demands of those talking about it at that very particular time.

It is a falacy that seeks to deny the difference between Mengistu's comfort in Gunhill suburb in Harare and the poverty experienced by an old lady in Gugulethu Township in Cape Town.

It tries to make us believe that Mengistu's fears are the same as those of a poor old woman in Gugulethu because they are both black and African.
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