It has become phenomenally difficult to retain any level of optimism regarding African politics these days. It’s as if the new wave of cynicism is overshadowing anything positive taking place including an event which at any other time in history would have been cause for enormous celebration throughout the continent. But the removal of the oldest statesman in the world to date, President Robert Mugabe, by the country’s military has been received with mixed emotions. As young Zimbabweans took to the streets in Harare and other major cities around the world celebrating being able to finally hoist and wrap the Zimbabwean flag around their shoulders with pride – an army of writers, political analysts, historians and arm-chair critics also took to their screens drafting opinion pieces warning the long-suffering nation not to claim easy victories; the newly installed president – Emmerson Mnangagwa – is a ruthless crocodile after-all.
A protégé who had only good things to say about the outgoing President.
In South Africa, ANC presidential candidate Cyril Ramaphosa’s New Deal speech which he practised at the ANC Johannesburg Regional Economic Colloquium in Soweto ten days ago– was overshadowed by the winds of change sweeping over Zimbabwe. Even though the South African press which is only now catching up to the story, were present to report on it, they would have found, like financial journalist Duma Gqubule nothing new in it.
“I was disturbed by my former boss’ speech. It said dololo (nothing) on what he would do to get the economy out of its worst post-apartheid crisis. I got the impression he so badly wants to be president he cannot think of anything else. He will decide what to do with the economy when he is elected.” Gqubule went on to share similar sentiments expressed by a former ANC friend who opined in a chat group that; “Not just about the economy, it says nothing about everything. I don’t know what’s wrong with us about detail. It’s drivel, waffle and pointless verbiage. Ramaphosa’s running mate for the ANC presidency Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma who is promising “radical economic transformation” did not inspire confidence in Gqubule either, “ I also listened to NDZ’s interview on ANN7; she also said dololo (nothing) about what she will do to get the economy out of its worst post-apartheid crisis.”
Mervyn Abrahams director of the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action (PACSA) shared a similar, though more detailed analysis of Ramaphosa’ New Deal – One million new jobs plan.“It’s not bold” he said,” It is a small vision which does not respond to the economic crisis,” he said in a statement released shortly after his speech.
Good For Few; Bad For Many
“With 8.4million black South Africans already unemployed and with an untenable expanded unemployment rate of 41 percent: a target of one million jobs over five years is an inadequate response in terms of the depth of the economic crisis we’re in.” he added that “ one million jobs over five years translates to the creation of 200,000 jobs per year over the next five years”.
The latest jobs statistics out of Statistics South Africa for the third quarter show that while 723 thousand South Africans joined the labour force, 366 thousand became unemployed in the last year.
He also notes that since 2015 poverty rates have increased (reversed) with three-thirds of the black population (64%) living in poverty.
If you are anything like me, perhaps you are starting to see a pattern emerge – a global pattern which has been the mainstay of African politics, almost without exception, since the winds of change swept the continent in the 1960’s.
This pattern is better explained by US Major General Smedley when he appeared before the US congressional to tell what he knew of activities (business plot) which he believed might lead to an attempt to set up a fascist dictatorship in the US by corporate America. “ A plan which was outlined to me was to form an organization of veterans, to use as a bluff or a club at least to intimidate government and breakdown government and our democratic institutions. The upshot of the whole things was that I was supposed to lead a group of 500,000 men which would be able to take over functions of government. My main interest in this is to maintain our democratic institutions I want to retain the right to vote the right to speak freely and the right to write if we maintain these basic principles our democracy is safe. No dictatorship can exist with suffrage, freedom of speech and the press” he said during a press conference circa 1933. Whether or not Corporate America ever managed to execute this plan, later on, is debatable. But the correlations of this plot with what’s been happing in African states and more recently both in South Africa with Ramaphosa as the highly favoured future president or in Zimbabwe, with Mnangagwa taking over the reins.
I would like to believe that our past, current and perhaps even future presidents succeed or fail on their own terms; that they are not operating at the behest of global multinational corporations with nefarious narcissistic interests, who decide through a variety of blackmails, debt and violent tactics, who stays and who goes. I would love to believe that we are truly independent.
But I would be dangerously naïve.
