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)