Top Posts


01 April 2014

Excerpt:  Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, Kufikiri ni Kuumbao To Think is to Createo Afrocentric Critical Analysis, Creative Thinking & Creative Reconstruction: Re-Awakening Afrikan Deep Thought (Iringa, Tanzania.: A. Dukuzumurenyi, 2014)

“…To change this situation Afrikans must fully engage in the continuing development of AFRIKAN COUNTERVAILING POWER, through progressive populist political-economic engagement in the communities of the Afrikan Diaspora113 and in the Nations of Continental Afrika. To begin with the type of substantive progressive policies which must be enacted include:

1) active Afrocentric action through strategic delinking from the current International Political System and the forming of regionally and Sub-Saharan integrated closed domestic economies secured politically and militarily by sub-Saharan political confederation under the Afrikan Union and shielded by protectionist economic policies, along with resource nationalization and a substantive rewriting of the current laws of conducting business throughout Sub-Saharan Afrika by removing so-called tax break incentives for foreign corporations doing business in Afrika, which are in reality nothing more than a means of passing the burden of doing business away from the Multinational Corporation and onto the grassroots Afrikan populations who are in theory supposed to be benefiting from this example of Foreign Direct Investment and resource development and there also must be a removal of public policy hindrances to worker unionization, the elevation of craft and trade unions to government ministries and the subsidized elevation of worker pay to life sustaining levels;

2) the implementation of egalitarian measures such as a progressive graduated taxation on the wealthy Afrikan Comprador Class and Foreign Corporations, justified by considerations on the nature and methods by which that wealth was acquired, over centuries namely through murder and the exploitation of Afrikan labor and lands in an economic system which privileges Ulaya mabila over Afrikans even in Afrikan lands,

3) a policy of extensive government investment in rural health and education, along with the subsidization of rural small farmer agriculture through programs aimed at women farmers working through formal and informal local women cooperative organizations, and the establishment of a guaranteed income,

4) the immortalization of the Rights of Nature through the setting down in stone in the manner of the Wahenga and the placement throughout the nation of markers commemorating the enactment of communal laws enshrining Rights of Nature and the protection and expansion of indigenous forestation;
5) the enactment of laws protecting the sustainable, holistic use of the land, respecting the sanctity of the earth and, forbidding non-Afrikan land ownership and use as well as enshrining communal land ownership and social land guardianship in honor of the NTR, in remembrance of the Wahenga and on behalf of the Beautiful Ones Not Yet Born;

6) extensive state and local coordinated infrastructure development, infrastructure maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation utilizing Afrikan technical expertise and local labor only;

7) state and local coordinated industrial policy centered on inter-Afrikan manufacture, inter-Afrikan trade and mutual inter-Afrikan development and the subsidization of industries such as artisan and textile manufacturing;

8) the limitation or severe constraining of capital export and a revaluation of Afrikan currency theory and the foundations of exchange rates along with the creation of a gold backed sub-Saharan wide currency minted from gold and used in all transactions involving Afrikan Nationalized Natural Resources and all other economic exchanges and serving as the reserve currency of all Afrikan and Afrikan Diaspora peoples, such a currency will shift the balance of global power to sub-Saharan Afrika as under such a currency the wealth of a nation would center on gold reserves as opposed to the current system which determines wealth based on the total amount of U.S. Dollars exchanged as the U.S. Dollar along with the European Union Euro is in high demand with the U.S. Dollar being the current reserve currency globally;

9) the setting and enforcement of minimum import levels;

10) the unified invalidation and nullification by Sub-Saharan Afrikan grassroots of the Afrikan Comprador initiated debt which is a tool of neo-colonialist control of Afrikan resources through the subtle methodology of western centered international finance and imperialist controlled international trade; and

11) the total rejection and complete abandonment of imperialist foreign aid. These public policies recognize that Afrikan nations must follow a course of action which leads to the extrication of Afrikan economics from the fallacy of Free Market discipline, while advocating and implementing high levels of domestic market protectionism.

The colonially imported, militarily imposed Ulaya doctrine of Free Trade and Open Market Economics is centered on the economic fallacy that Consumption is the basis of national prosperity. This idea is a fallacy with regards to neo-colonies which have had their internal economic structures destroyed or coercively altered from the doctrine of national self-sustaining, self-sufficiency to that of imperial economic dependency. In point of fact economic consumption is intimately connected with economic production and economic production is the actual basis of national economic prosperity. When a government, for example a developing country government, centers its economic public policy on the theory of consumption, that government is automatically focusing the economic well-being of the grassroots of the nation on the current, present consumption of currently existing commodities, goods and services. In a neo-colony or developing country which has an economic infrastructure designed to export raw resources to former colonial imperial masters there is either an unprotected small scale industrial sector, such as textiles for example or no existing internal small or large scale industrial structure with a supporting educational system thus all or the vast majority of existing commodities, goods and services are of foreign origin. As all economic policies are designed to support Free Trade, which means that there are no economic barriers in place to protect local enterprises from well-developed multi-national corporate enterprises of North America, Europe, Asia and increasingly South America the local Afrikan economy becomes a dumping zone for cheaply produced goods, which are also of a poor quality when compared to locally made handicrafts.
On the other hand an economic public policy designed around economic production is future oriented. Such a public policy gives careful consideration to both the details of the production of commodities, goods and services as well as to the circumstances under which commodities, goods and services can be sustainably produced in a continuous fashion at unvarying intervals and are therefore conveniently accessible for grassroots consumption in the long term. A long term economic public policy centered on production also gives careful thought to the rate of consumption of commodities, goods and services over time by the grassroots as it is interdependent on the rate of production of commodities, goods and services, to the average rate of growth of the grassroots population, to long term procurability of commodities, goods and services by the grassroots or the distribution of such items among them, as well as to resource availability in the event of the probability of natural and man-made disasters which can severely cripple or totally annihilate the resource base and industrial productive capabilities of a nation. Hence natural prosperity and the well-being of the grassroots is dependent on the state of development of productive capacities and its related industries, those that feed into the industrial system and those that depend on the product as the basis of their business activities and not on an economic public policy of consumption. Free Trade is a policy best adapted and applied only with regards to the internal trading relations of the grassroots of a political community and not to external trading relations among nations, especially amongst nations that have imperfectly developed internal economic structures. As an economy is the outgrowth of a culture, any culture that seeks to utilize a particular economy must adapt it to fit the norms and values of their culture. Free Trade is born of an expansionary hegemonic culture and is a belief under the larger theory of Savage Capitalism, the ideology of catastrophe. For Free Trade Capitalism to be used by Afrikan societies it must be adjusted to fit the cultural norms of traditional Afrikan Mabila.

Additionally, the protectionist economic public policies here advocated enshrine into contemporary Afrikan Law:

1) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies designed to ensure the right of each member of each extended Afrikan family to a self-reliant, socially oriented, psychologically and spiritually remunerative community-enhancing profession in the industries, crafts, trades , agricultural arts or national mines of whichever Afrikan nation they reside without prejudicial regard to ethnicity, religion or gender;

2) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies brought forth to guarantee the opportunity of each member of each extended Afrikan family to produce or earn enough to provide optimally adequate food, clothing, and shelter;

3) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies established with the intentionality of protecting the right of every Afrikan farmer to raise enough food to feed the extended family and to provide a surplus for the community and nation as a means of making certain that Afrikan society consistently maintains a state of food security, with the farmer being able to sell his surplus products at a government subsidized price which will provide the extended Afrikan family with a dignified living;

4) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies evolved by the Wahenga to secure the inviolable right of every Afrikan Social Entrepreneur, both those of large scale and small scale enterprises, to trade in an communal atmosphere of Uhuru, which is devoid of government corruption, unharmonious competition and domination by local or foreign monopolies with local monopolies being restricted in size and foreign monopolies being totally excluded from Afrikan Market participation;

5) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies founded by the NTR to assure the sacrosanct right of every extend Afrikan family to an accommodating, environmentally sound family-compound/home;

6) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies protected by NTR and Wahenga and confirming the right to optimal medical care and the right to nutritious foods which make certain the achievement and enjoyment of quality optimal health;

7) the Customary Sacred Rights of Life of Afrikan Communal Societies existing since the beginning of autochthonous Afrikans and guaranteeing the right to a free, quality optimal Utamaduni Mkubwa ya Mwafrika education and vocational schooling.

What is being suggested is an Afrikan oriented program designed to provide a self-sufficient, sustainable livelihood, standard of living to all Afrikans by redistributing the common-wealth of the Afrikan nation among all of the people throughout all segments of Afrikan society. The Ethics of such a program stems from the moral reprehensibility of an Afrikan government allowing ANY of its citizens to be reduced to a status of impoverishment, i.e., to be forced by be without optimally adequate food, clothing and shelter even while the country is a net exporter of food and clothing is abundant but priced out of their ability to pay and optimal housing is unavailable as a result of a lack of income. All of these symptoms stemming from a violent economic system of structurally induced genocide born of domination and exploitation. This is an economic system which transgresses customary Afrikan law which is based on honor and obligation. It violates the sacred nature of life a value common to all Afrikan peoples. Most importantly such a system of economics upsets the natural order and harmony of life; dispossessing Maat in favor of Isfet. The current economic system of domination and exploitation is an extremely destructive force sparing no one, crushing woman and man, girl, boy and infant, young and old and the Beautiful Ones Not Yet Born. The established socioeconomic and socio-political structures murder Afrikan people by the millions. The enslavement and colonization of Afrikans and the enslavement of women & children for forced labor and sexual trafficking today are socioeconomic institutions which are supported by socio-political institutions and murder millions through political and economic violence. The economic policies, supported by political violence or the threat thereof, which allow the ruthless exploitation and murder of billions across the world by Market-Oriented Multinational Corporations and political elite collaborators in all countries is yet another example of how the legal structures of Ulaya domination can be and generally are sadistically violent. As Jacques Ellul stated:
“Unjust economic systems can be as violent
as rampaging armies: “All kinds of violence
are the same ...the violence of the soldier
who kills, the revolutionary who assassinates;
it is true also of economic violence-the violence
of the privileged corporate owner against his
workers, of the 'haves' against the 'haves-not';
the violence done in international economic
relations between Western Nations and those
of the developing world; the violence done
through powerful corporations which exploit
the resources of a country that is unable to
defend itself.”114

The affluence of the Western Nations depends on unjust economic structures that make the West rich and Afrika, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and internal Afrikan colonies within the Western Nations, for example, American Afrikans in the United States, diseased, hungry and impoverished. Land throughout these areas is used to grow export crops to sell to the Western Nations. That land ought to be used to feed the grassroots in those countries, but it isn't given that the masses cannot pay and the Western Imperialists can. By their consumption based lifestyles, the economic structures they blindly participate in which support those lifestyles and the political system which they maintain by participating in system preservationist symbolic politics, i.e., voting, the citizens of the West participate in murder. The economic straits, in which Afrikan nations find themselves due to the voluntary participation of the Afrikan Comprador Class, also result in the skewed distribution of resources within Afrikan society. Afrikan countries and communities have a wide disparity between the small comprador elite wealthy class and the grassroots. Economic reconstruction of Afrikan society is an economic and political impossibility as long as between 80-95% of the nation’s wealth is concentrated in the possession of between 1-15% of the population.

To obtain the goal of providing a self-sufficient, sustainable livelihood, standard of living to all Afrikans a ceiling should be set for annual income, net worth and inheritable wealth by the design and implementation of a progressive graduated income and inheritance tax. Furthermore, the Nationalization of Natural Resources and the tax on the revenues generated there from will be an additional source of revenue to finance the social programs. The taxes generated will used for:

1) public works infrastructure development and maintenance such as of dam, road and bridge construction;

2) providing Wazee over a certain age with a superannuation fund;

3) providing Afrikan families which have an income below a set income floor with a guaranteed family income stipend which will allow for the provision of certain communally determined life necessities on an annual basis;

4) state subsidized primary, secondary and university education and vocation schooling and employment programs;

5) Military Service Veterans and National Service Stipends;

6) creation and maintenance of state subsidized network of free public hospitals, free health clinics and immunizations programs for the impoverished, and

7) price ceiling on public utilities such as electricity and water, and the regulation of enterprises which provide other fundamental goods and services such as commodity production.

This course of action will transform the Afrikan citizen’s perception of the role of the government and of their role as government officials and as citizens. It places the government into the role of a servant, provider and protector of themselves as in a communal society the people and the government are one and the same. These programs when implemented will substantively reduce the cost of living for Afrikan people especially the impoverished majority. For Afrikan citizens will no longer be required to pay for certain life necessities, such as quality education and optimal healthcare, which the majority cannot afford and therefore do without thus dramatically increasing future impoverishment, disease and death. 115 In the final analysis:

“In the contemporary world of affluence and
poverty, where man's major crime is murder
by privilege, REVOLUTION against the
established order is the criterion of a living faith.
...Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of
the least of these, you did it not to me
(Matt. 25:45). The murder of the Christ
continues. Great societies build on dying men.”
[James Douglass]116




Notes:

113 The election of President Barak Obama as President of the United States of America does not represent substantive political economic engagement on the part of the grassroots of the Afrikan Diaspora and it is not real change. Instead, the elections are nothing more than apparent change and are merely an example of elite manipulation of the grassroots for elite ends. American politics is primarily Plural-Elitist in nature, which means that competing elites who agree on the basics of the social order as well as on the projection of hegemonic power but who disagree on the methodology of implementation engage in structured political campaigns or combat. Each is represented in general by one of two parties, and each sets the rules of political participation so as to eliminate the development of any real mass oriented populist parties. The Plural-Elites choose candidates that agree on the basic rules of the social system and fund them placing them before the mass public and to varying degrees opening the corporate media them. The grassroots are allowed to choose among safe interests as defined by Plural-Elites. The sudden ‘rise’ of Barak Obama through the American political system is akin to the placement of Enslaved Afrikans as Generals in the Arab armies of conquest, even when these enslaved Afrikans seized power they ruled in accordance to Arab cultural paradigms. The power structure, which includes the ruling ethnic[s] group[s], any police apparatus, governors, bureaucrats, kwk, serve, manage, administrate, enact, enforce the policies of the ruling class in a country in any historical time. If they seize power ‘illegitimately or obtain it ‘legally’ they rule according to the dictates of the dominant culture, seldom if ever do they do otherwise. None of the Enslaved Afrikans who were made generals or who became Caliphs, Viziers and the like used their power for Afrikan Liberation. The Afrikan Septimus Severus who became Emperor of Rome 4443-4452 KC [202-211 CE] was an excellent Roman Emperor ruling according to the rules set down by Rome from is inception as a regional power in 4750 KC [509 CE] He did not seek to liberate conquered Afrikan lands. President Barak Obama during his two Presidential Administrations has continued the economic and military policies that were implemented by President George W. Bush. At best President Obama has engaged in pseudo-symbolic political action towards Afrikan people. During his administration the fundamental sociological, economic, political, psychological, historical, and religious relationships between Eurasians, Americans and Global Afrikan people has not changed. It is still defined by domination. To go a step further the idea that the Executive office of any nation is the center of power is obsolete in an International Political Economy where Corporations weld enormous economic power and paramilitary capabilities and mass produced sophisticated military weaponry. The actual core of power more appropriately resides in the G8 Finance Ministers and the Central Banks of the economic powerhouses of the Triad composed of the United States, the European Union, China and Japan.  
114 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes Trans. Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner (New York: Knopf, 1965)  
115 “Poverty: A hellish state to be in. It is no virtue. It is a crime. To be poor, is to be hungry without possible hope of food; to be sick without hope of medicine; to be tired and sleepy without a place to lay one's head; to be naked without the hope of clothing; to be despised and comfortless. To be poor is to be a fit subject for crime and hell. The hungry man steals bread and thereby breaks the eighth commandment; by his state he breaks all the laws of God and man and becomes an outcast. In thought and deed he covets his neighbor's goods; comfortless as he is he seeks his neighbor's wife; to him there is no other course but sin and death. That is the way of poverty. No one wants to be poor.” From: Marcus Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Ed. Amy Jaques-Garvey (New York City: UNIA, 1923)


116 James W. Douglass, The Non-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1968)  

No comments:

Post a Comment