All countries on the African continent, save for Western Sahara have gained independence from the former colonial masters, however, the facts on the ground show that actually no African country is truly independent. The economic models, socio-political and religious systems we have, are all foreign and imposed. For long they have failed to work, and for a decade we have continued to try out several development ideas and economic models in an attempt to get a fit all solution to unending socio-economic and political problems intentionally created by the former masters to keep a grip on their lost colonies.
The reason all these economic models and political systems have failed is because they are not intended to make an African a master of his destiny but a source of cheap labor and the continent a source of cheap or free raw materials for the advanced nations, and also to act as guinea pigs in clinical tests for pharmaceuticals to try their drugs, and make a killing by selling the same drugs to us, of course this is after creating the same viruses they are treating.
However, there is one concept that if benchmarked and adopted can fit our social structure, environment, and cultural structures and ensure that our people harness their potential, become masters of their own destinies because it puts man at the center of everything. This is the Juche ideology that has been used to work wonders in Eastern Asia, transformed and sustained DPRK, even under the immense and radical sanctions from the western countries to the point of being a superpower in its own right. The same has helped China to rise to the level it is on today and has propelled Japan to its current position globally.
Ideology
An ideology is a collection of normative beliefs and values that an individual or group holds for other than purely epistemic reasons. In other words, these rely on basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis. It is the systems of ideas and ideals which form the basis of economic or political theories and resultant policies. In these, there are tenuous causal links between policies and outcomes owing to the large numbers of variables available, so that many key assumptions have to be made. It’s also a system of an idea that explains and lends legitimacy to actions and beliefs of a social, religious, political or corporate entity.
Juche roughly translates to “self-reliance” or “self-mastery “, is a doctrine which teaches that things should be independent and able to shape their own destiny. The ideology believes that man is an “agent” with the ability to act. As an agent, he must act to shape and carve out his own destiny and “must not be subject to the world around him”.
Juche is a “man-centered ideology” in which the “man is the master of everything and decides everything”. It is the official ideology in North Korea, which literally means “self-reliance”, and it implies an active subject who turns against its submission to destiny, thereby becoming the architect of its own history.
If we expand the meaning of this assumption and we apply it to our continent’s case, we can easily realize that the “active subject” at issue is the black people, who have continued to go through foreign domination, external influence and submission throughout their history, whose rights to self-determination has been abused for decades to unimagined levels.
The experience of the past foreign domination and of today’s actual neo-colonialism by the developed nations has deeply influenced our people’s mentality, and these two elements have contributed to the development of a sense of “wounded ultra-nationalism”. However, with Juche ideology, we can motivate our people to change the direction of their destiny, believe in themselves and drop self-pity and inferiority complex suffered by our people for generations.
Juche as an ideology is premised on three key points namely; Political independence, Economic self-sustenance, Self-reliance in defense — this is what Africa needs and the President of Uganda has been heard on several fora promoting this idea, unfortunately, he has continued to be a loner and also with unclear ideology to sell in order to achieve this vision. With Juche, his idea of self-reliance in defense and economy will bear fruits.
Juche ideology believes that “Man” is the most developed material being, a special product of the evolution of the material world. Man was already outstanding as he emerged from the world of nature. He exists and develops by cognizing and changing the world to make it serve him, whereas all other material lives maintain their existence through their subordination and adaptation to the objective world.”
Juche as a philosophy includes three basic elements: Nature, Society, and Man. Man transforms Nature and is the master of Society and his own destiny. The dynamic heart of Juche is the leader, who is considered the center of society and its guiding element. Juche is thus the guiding idea of the people’s activities and the country’s development.
With such a concept, our people would neither kneel before anyone for anything nor be forced to consume every concept without question. Our people will begin to believe in themselves, they will not surrender their wellbeing to a third party, and this will help us deal with the dependency syndrome that has killed our people’s innovativeness for decades and maintained the continent in a third world continuum for decades, thus an adoption of Juche ideology will, in the end, ensure self-determination and self-reliance for the continent.
Great leadership
This ideology can help in awakening the masses, to consciousness and organized in a revolutionary way, and motivates them to perform their revolutionary duties and historical mission, depending on whether or not they are given correct leadership by the party and the leader. However, the ideologies we have in place make our leaders believe that an awakened citizenry is a competitor for their power, so they have decided to dance to the tune of a weak and foreign-imposed system of democracy as long as it keeps them in power, since it legitimizes their stay in power through legalized percentages every election period, in which the citizens participate in showing how a leader is still relevant, the process notwithstanding. With Juche, e can avoid this wastage not only of people’s time but national resources.
The Juche ideology emphasizes a country’s political, economic, and military self-reliance, as the State ideology and sole guiding principle of the government. It asserts that the individual is the master of one’s destiny and encourages citizens to work as masters of revolution and construction. This political ideology is based on the idea that man is the master of everything and decides everything. Man is responsible for his wellbeing and development, not his leader, not prayers and his connection to anyone else, not his church leader, not relatives but himself, this is an ideology that we should be adopting in Africa and spreading, if we are to deal with the enshrined dependency that has led to underdevelopment and exploitation of our continent.
Juche combined with the Songun concept would put our continent in a better position in global politics. As it is in North Korea, these concepts will also mean that we avoid resource wastages every five years in useless elections, that spell violence and chaos in our countries, we can have a well thought out system that can ensure bloodless change of leadership after a while and also give leaders enough time to concentrate on development instead of worrying about the next elections.
Pillars
Juche as an ideology is carried out through the realization of three pillars: Political independence and self-government, economic independence and a foreign policy based on an independent policy-making and complete equality among nations.
The leader is tasked to comply with these three objectives, and its success depends on its achievements in this sense.
The last pillar of complete equality among nations is what can give Africa a better bargaining chip at the world scene. Unfortunately, that can only happen when a nation is totally independent, but we know that that is still a luxury for Africa; you need to ask yourself whether we have independent foreign policies, independent economies, independent policy-making bodies, independent political systems, or even independent leaders in Africa? The answer is a BIG NO.
So, how do we claim to be independent countries, when someone else decides who becomes our next leader and all our policies are dictated by someone else. And this is the reason a country is quickly declared a dictatorship and sanctions are imposed when people decide to do contrary to foreign dictates. We have many examples globally in this line.
When it comes to deciding global issues, our leaders are treated like school prefects that just attending UN (school) meetings with school directors and headteacher (real world leaders “USA, UK, France, Germany” etc.) for a photo opportunity and just to pick instructions for fellow students (citizens) to follow and failure to adhere to this may result into (punishment) sanctions and other punitive measures to the prefect (presidents) and the entire student body (citizens).
It is very embarrassing when a particular country can veto decisions taken by more than 100 countries, simply because it’s a permanent member of security council created decades ago and yet it has rejected all calls to admit new members into their league especially from African, a continent of more than 50 countries, but has no single member on that council, meanwhile the same council decides security issues of all countries.
And because African countries with their leaders are not self-reliant, they are contented with that unfair arrangement and no protest whatsoever, or walkouts when such vetoes happen. They simply shake hands and take photos and, on their way, they return to their tiny conclaves with new instructions to be implemented. For example, the famous evil so-called MDGs for heaven’s sake, how do you give people the same yardstick of development in total disregard of existing dynamics in individual countries and you expect the same results at the same time, that is total madness. However, it works since it keeps African leaders and their citizens focused on how to make these work instead of designing proper homegrown solutions to existing particular country’s problems and before they know it, the timeline is over and they run to the UN assembly for a new set of development agenda and then focus on that for the next 10-15 years and the cycles continue, meanwhile poverty levels keep stagnating or worsen.
Juche stresses that the nation should be ideologically “exclusive” from the rest of the world and that the inhabitants of a nation should formulate an independent “ideological consciousness” accordingly. What this means is that any country should shield itself from the influence of foreign cultures, ideologies and philosophies. To have an “independent ideological consciousness” thus means to think separately from the rest of the world and reject all other ideas, again on the premise that the regime cannot be dominated.
Accordingly, the application of Juche in state policy entails the following:
- The people must have independence in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense;
- Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction
- Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country
- The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically and mobilizing them toward constructive action, and this is why the early movement system that Uganda’s liberators had established in Uganda would have solved its problems, because it was a homegrown system that was responsive to the real local problems, but unfortunately it couldn’t be allowed, since it wasn’t a patented system by a prominent author from Harvard or Oxford University, and in that way Uganda lost its opportunity for a homegrown solution to local problems.
The Juche outlook also requires absolute loyalty to the party and leader and this should be encouraged by all Africans despite the negative propaganda about it from the foreign forces, who prefer short term periods, or term limits for leaders, they have de-campaigned and name-called countries that have scrapped term limits from their law books, and they are the same people that preach democracy, rights and freedoms.
So, why is it bad when the citizens of a country through their representative decide that that is the system they want to govern themselves with? If we had power through Juche ideology, we would do away with some of these foreign dictates, since we would be the masters of our destiny as a country, because as we stand now, someone else determines our destiny since he is our master.
Therefore, we can go Juche and awaken our people’s consciousness or perish in our misery yet we are a resource-rich continent with powerless citizens
For God and my country
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