By K David Mafabi
This piece is written as a prelude to our discussion next week, of the “Challenge of Take-Off”. For that purpose, we have borrowed extensively from a paper we presented to an NRM Parliamentary Caucus Retreat in February 2014, titled, “The ‘End of History and the Search for a Nationalizing Ideology: Dilemma for Africa Today.”
We trace the current lack of interest in and, or, confusion about ideology amongst our political class and elite in large part to our sociological roots in the peasantry and his/her world of subsistence production and re-production. But there is an even larger and more debilitating problem – the all-pervasive impact of neo-liberalist thought that has bombarded the world in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War …
Prof. Stephen Gill, writing in “International Political Economy” (1996) captures very well the roots of today’s dilemma – in the era of contemporary globalization. He speaks graphically of: “a neo-liberal, laissez faire discourse … the agencies associated with this discourse are staffed with neo-classical economists who assume – in matters of social policy – the role of a modern priest hood. Deviation from their orthodoxy is viewed as a sign of madness or heresy.”
And that is how we arrived at: “
The End of History and the Last Man” (1992), written by American political scientist Prof. Francis Fukuyama, expanding his 1989 essay “The End of History?” At the risk of oversimplifying him, Fukuyama’s central argument is that Western liberal democracy signals the endpoint of humanity’s socio-cultural evolution and the final form of human government!
In his words: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
Consider also: “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time” (2005) by American economist, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs argues that extreme poverty can be eliminated globally by the year 2025, through carefully planned development aid. He presents the problem as an inability of very poor countries to reach the “bottom rung” of the ladder of economic development …
And “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century” (2005, 2006, 2007) – an international bestseller by journalist Thomas Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st Century. Friedman, who describes himself as a “flatist” chose the title as a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, where “all have an equal opportunity” …
Africa has had a very unhappy experience with the “End of History” – read the “End of Ideology”. Some years back, the African Union (AU) adopted the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). We discussed NEPAD in a paper we presented (at the invitation of then National Political Commissar, Dr. Crispus Kiyonga) to a Movement Study Group meeting in Kampala on the 25th February 2002. We disagreed sharply with the then South African Charge d’Affaires to Uganda, Compatriot Mohammed Cassimjee.
We said then (February 2002), “The point is that while the thrust of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, in terms of basic development strategy is accelerated political and economic integration … NEPAD is a strategic commitment in a completely different direction.”
“… the envisaged new direction in the form of a global partnership, constitutes NEPAD’s Achilles heel or soft underbelly. … through this Achilles heel or soft underbelly, the best intentions of its initiators regarding the African Renaissance may not see the light of day.”
We asked: “Has the inherent logic of capitalism and capitalist development changed? Has the profit motive suddenly mutated into altruism and love? Has the cut-throat and bitter struggle for cheap raw materials, cheap labour, markets and spheres of influence suddenly metamorphosed into shared responsibility and mutual interest – between … the G8 and the African people?”
Already by the middle of 2007, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal – one of the co-architects of NEPAD – was very explicit: NEPAD, he declared, “is dead!”.
The neo-liberal discourse and orthodoxy that accompanied contemporary globalization after the “End of History and Ideology”, is extremely diversionary, misleading and depressing. We are inhibited and gagged by an extremely narrow empiricism. From Atul Kohli, we mechanically pick the “Neo Patrimonial State”, from Francis Fukuyama “The End of History”, from Samuel Huntington “The Clash of Civilizations”, from Thomas Friedman “The World is Flat” – ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Instead of examination and analysis, we are treated to description. If the post-colonial African state is “weak”, why is it so? If it is fragmented, why is it so? If the leadership is corrupt, why is it so? Is the problem therefore, individuals?
We have, in a word, description without history. How a national consciousness, ethos and psyche developed elsewhere doesn’t bother us. How the development of internal markets for industry, agriculture, services laid the material and technical basis for the development of “democratic” government elsewhere, is of no interest to us. How national accumulation within some of the “older democracies” unfolded in the context of slave trade, plunder and pillage of the world, is of no interest to us.
How the Cold War formed part of the context for the development of the Asian Tigers, is of no interest to us. What part has been played by the Confucian mindset in the development of some of those states, doesn’t bother us.
The fact of the old fashioned “national” and “nationality” question in the states created by colonialism, does not bother us. Not even the fact of the continued integration of our economies in the current world division of work, does.
No, we are not bothered! Because our intellectuals and political class believe “history has ended”, and that we have now entered a new historical epoch of “truly universal values and truths”! They believe all we need to do is to find our “entry point” and “niche” on the gravy train of globalization, and all shall be well!
Next week we conclude this phase of discussion, by looking yet again at the “Challenge of Take-Off”!!
K. David Mafabi
Senior Presidential Advisor/Political Affairs (Special Duties)
State House.
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