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If I were the Chief Domestic/Foreign Policy
Advisor and Public Policy Analyst to the President-Elect: An Exegesis of the
Practicality of Impracticalities in a World where Sanity is Insanity[1]
Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, Ph.D. Public Policy Analysis
“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’” [George Bernard Shaw]
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;
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 land use as well as enshrining Afrikan communal land ownership and social land guardianship in honor of the Creator, in remembrance of the Wahenga na Wahenguzi and on behalf of the Beautyful Ones Not Yet Born; [4]
10) The unified invalidation, nullification and repudiation by the new government in conjunction with the grassroots representative organizations of the Afrikan neo-colonial comprador initiated foreign 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. For Debt is as Mhenga Thomas Sankara informed us:
“We think that debt has to be seen from the standpoint of its origins. Debt’s origins come from colonialism’s origins. Those who lend us money are those who had colonized us before. They are those who used to manage our states and economies. Colonizers are those who indebted Africa through their brothers and cousins who were the lenders. We had no connections with this debt. Therefore we cannot pay for it. Debt is neo-colonialism, in which colonizers transformed themselves into “technical assistants”. We should better say “technical assassins”. They present us with financing, with financial backers. As if someone’s back could create development. We have been advised to go to these lenders. We have been proposed with nice financial set-ups. We have been indebted for fifty, sixty years and even more. That means we have been led to compromise our people for fifty years and more. Under its current form, that is imperialism controlled, debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave, of those who had been treacherous enough to put money in our countries with obligations for us to repay. We are told to repay, but it is not a moral issue. It is not about this so-called honour of repaying or not… Debt cannot be repaid, first because if we don’t repay, lenders will not die. That is for sure. But if we repay, we are going to die. That is also for sure.”[5]
The enslavement and colonization of Afrikans and
the enslavement of women and children for forced labor and sexual trafficking
today are socioeconomic institutions which are tacitly supported by
socio-political institutions and murder millions through political and economic
violence. The socio-political economic public 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 Afrikan neo-colonial comprador collaborators in all countries is yet
another example of how the legal structures of Eurasian 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.”[7]
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) The setting of a 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.
For Afrikan citizens will no longer be required
to pay for certain life necessities, such as quality system and
optimal healthcare, which the majority cannot afford and therefore do without
thus dramatically increasing future impoverishment, disease and death.[8] 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] [9]
Our nation to a great extent must lead the way
for all Afrikan nations and become a closed socio-political economy which means
that it should compellingly delink from the Eurasian contrived and controlled
global economy through a redefinition of their current role as raw material
exporters; a complete rejection of free market discipline and other capitalist
principles. These are necessities as the actions of Eurasian countries are
nothing short of hypocrisy. Consider the
following statement by President Yahya Jammeh of the Republic of the Gambia:
“The West has only been ungrateful. Abject poverty drove Europeans to Africa. And they exploited her for four hundred years. In those years there has never been any elections. They were no parliamentary systems. After four hundred years of looting Africa, some of us had to take up arms to kick them out. Now they have come around to give us lectures about democracy and human rights. When in their own countries there’s no democracy. Where’s the democracy for Blacks in the UK or Blacks anywhere in Europe? The so-called skin heads or neo-Nazi or the Far right, if they were in Africa or in the Gulf States they would be called terrorist organizations. Why are they not being called terrorist organization and being dealt with? …They are all anti-human. They hate humanity. But why are they not called terrorists and being bombed…like the Islamic extremists? The KKK in the United States are called Far Right or white supremacist. White supremacist against who? I am not anti-West. I am anti their hypocrisy and their racism…The British never built a high school in this country in four hundred years…Democracy is respecting the will of the people…Who do they think they are that they have to teach Africans democracy when we’ve never colonized anybody? The Western democracy is a fallacy. It doesn’t exists.”[10]
Further actions should focus on implementing protectionist socio-political economic and cultural public policies, which greatly reduce capital export and product imports; and redesigning socio-political institutions along authentic Afrikan democratic and egalitarian traditions. One key area here is in the implementation of policies of political economic coordination of industrial and infrastructure reconstruction. Finally, there should be massive socio-political investment in health and education.[11]
The national education system is especially important for this is the key socio-political economic institution which will take the lead with competent personnel in the awakening of the critical and creative consciousness of the people. This is the socio-political economic institution which by being centered in the Afrikan socio-historical cultural experience and focused on the key power constants can develop the type of spiritual, cognitive, affective and psycho-motor physiologically aware Afrikans necessary to carry out a program of Afrikan socio-political economic reconstruction through disengagement from Eurasian institutions and thereby exemplifying true liberatory Afrikan Agency.
Having on the eve of political economic power reiterated all of the previous I would then turn again to Niccolo Machiavelli and quote: “But to get a clearer understanding of this part of our subject, we must look whether these innovators can stand alone, or whether they depend for aid upon others; in other words, whether to carry out their ends they must resort to entreaty, or can prevail by force. In the former case they always fare badly and bring nothing to a successful issue; but when they depend upon their own resources and can employ force, they seldom fail. Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.”[12]
As we are now, under the leadership of the President-Elect, about to assume the high offices of the national civil administration we must come into the office with the zeal of the prepared armed Prophet.
These
xenophobic terrorist groups are peopled in the main by impressionable,
disgruntled youth who are disillusioned at the lack of substantive change in
society, thus our immediate public policies must focus on the causes of
increased recruitment e.g., extreme poverty, traditional Afrikan cultural
deterioration and political-economic corruption. These causes requires that we must enhance the
domestic economy through textile, agricultural and residential construction
initiatives and must forego free market myths and protect agriculture and its
forward and backward linkages.
Furthermore, we must aggressively and with extreme prejudice pursue an anti-corruption agenda with severe penalties against the guilty such as confiscation and redistribution of all of their material wealth and where necessary, such as in cases of theft from the government and by inference from the commonwealth as a whole, public execution.
These public policies must be conducted simultaneously with a strong, strategic and determined military offensive against the separatist elements carried out in the field of battle, politically, economically and spiritually. The standing military being supported by the arming of the people in the sense of the Paris Communes.[13] Concomitant with this military policy is the capture, adjudication and where required execution of all perpetrators of the vile, anti-social acts of kidnapping and rape.
And they stay the necessary course even in the face of economic sabotage by Western government’s intelligence agencies and in the lethal downturn in the Global neo-liberal economic system. Those nations are the Republic of Cuba, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Plurinational State of Bolivia the State of Eritrea. The Republic of Cuba has a health and education system[14]that is second to none in the world, while the Plurinational State of Bolivia along with the Republic of Ecuador have become the first nations in the contemporary age to enshrine into law the rights of nature and that the Plurinational State of Bolivia has taken the lead in creation of a defensive mechanism against Western Imperialist machinations led by the arch-imperialist regime of the United States [15] and let it be remember that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has over the past fifteen years begun a transformation of a highly stratified nation opening opportunities for many who were under previous American dominated administrations economically and educationally marginalized and exploited, if this nation has had any failures it is in the slow nature of diversifying the national economy so that it is not so overly reliant on the energy sector and its chief export of oil.[16]
“THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four. In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time. In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if everyone went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea. It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda. Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized—the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life. As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”[17]
Of the State of Eritrea the honored Mhenga, Pan-Afrikanist and Zanzibar Marxist revolutionary Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu in 1985 stated:
“Living, working and eating with these staunch revolutionaries I am tempted to echo the famous quote: “I have seen the future of Africa and it works.” This is not an easy statement to make after so many political, social and economic shocks that we went through in the post-independence Africa. Who can be enthusiastic in the midst of the political chaos of military coups and counter-coups and the economic pains of bankrupted and heavily indebted nations? Of the humiliating and degrading experience of dependence on the very imperialism that cost Africa’s lives and hardships to be rid of? Of the pathetic call of despair for a dream-world of failed politicians known as the New International Economic order? But experiences with liberated Eritreans give you confidence in the capacity of the African masses to take history in their own hands during the challenging journey from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. Where in Africa today would you see doctors, engineers, mechanics, technicians, all of world standards, inspired enough to flock back home enthusiastically from foreign universities and institutions of learning to serve their country without pay? Where in Africa would you see mature community minus the pompous party functionaries, insensitive bureaucrats and overindulged diplomats? In short, it is a unique experience of the absence of the exploited or exploiter, of the true equality between man and woman, experience of witnessing normal human beings free from hang-ups, engaged in an honourable struggle to liberate the rest of the country on the basis of self-reliance and independent of external power.”[18]
1) “Eritrea registered success,
substantial achievements, in what the United Nations defines as ‘Millennium
Development Goals’, in particular ensuring primary education for all,
free-of-charge; ensuring women’s emancipation and equality of women in all fields.
In healthcare – it achieved a dramatic reduction of infant mortality, as well
as the reduction of maternal mortality. In this regard, Eritrea is considered
exemplary in Africa; few other countries have attained that much. So, despite
all the obstacles that the country faces, the picture is positive.”
2) “Eritrea continues on the national independent path. It has progressive view in building national unity. Eritrea is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. It has 9 ethnic groups, and two major religions: Christianity and Islam. Two religions co-exist harmoniously, and this is mainly due to the tolerant culture, that the society has built. There is no conflict or animosity between the ethnic groups or religious groups. The government and the people are keen to maintain this national unity.”
4)
“Big powers do not want the Eritrean example
to be replicated in Africa. I say again, Africa has huge natural resources. Big
powers are now trying to grab these resources. What will happen if other
governments in Africa were to try to follow Eritrea’s example? It would
definitely not be beneficial to great powers.”[19]
“Anyone who takes aid is crippled. Aid is meant to cripple people… Governments in Africa and elsewhere are not allowed to write their own programs. And when it comes to implementing programs, it deprives you of building institutions and the capacity to implement your programs…We need to write our own programs in the first place. We need to articulate on the projects we write. We need to have a comprehensive strategy, plans on how to implement those programs…Unless we do that on our own, we can’t possibly imagine that we are achieving any of the goals – millennium or non-millennium…”[21]
His sentiments on foreign aid echo those of the illustrious Mhenga Thomas Sankara, the assassinated former President of the west Afrikan nation of Burkina Faso:
“We represented a wondrous condensation, the epitome of all the calamities that have ever befallen the so-called developing countries. The example of foreign aid, presented as a panacea and often heralded without rhyme or reason, bears eloquent witness to this fact. Very few countries have been inundated like mine with all kinds of aid. Theoretically, this aid is supposed to work in the interests of our development. In the case of what was formerly Upper Volta, one searches in vain for a sign of anything having to do with development. The men in power, either out of naiveté or class selfishness, could not or would not take control of this influx from abroad, understand its significance, or raise demands in the interests of our people. In his book, Le Sahel demain [The Sahel of tomorrow], Jacques Giri, with a good deal of common sense, analyzes a table published in 1983 by the Sahel Club, and draws the conclusion that because of its nature and the mechanisms in place, aid to the Sahel helps only with bare survival. Thirty percent of this aid, he stresses, serves simply to keep the Sahel alive. According to Jacques Giri, the only goal of this foreign aid is to continue developing nonproductive sectors, saddling our meager budgets with unbearably heavy expenditures, disorganizing our countryside, widening our balance of trade deficit, and accelerating our indebtedness… The diagnosis was clearly somber. The root of the disease was political. The treatment could only be political. Of course, we encourage aid that aids us in doing away with aid. But in general, welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political, and cultural affairs. We chose to risk new paths to achieve greater well-being. We chose to apply new techniques. We chose to look for forms of organization better suited to our civilization, flatly and definitively rejecting all forms of outside diktats, in order to lay the foundations for achieving a level of dignity equal to our ambitions. Refusing to accept a state of survival, easing the pressures, liberating our countryside from medieval stagnation or even regression, democratizing our society, opening minds to a world of collective responsibility in order to dare to invent the future. Shattering the administrative apparatus, then rebuilding it with a new kind of government employee, immersing our army in the people through productive labor and reminding it constantly that without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal. Such is our political program. On the level of economic management, we’re learning to live modestly, to accept and impose austerity on ourselves in order to be able to carry out ambitious projects.”[22]
On another occasion President Isaias Afwerki in an interview gave the following responses on the State of Eritrea’s chosen path:
President: Isaias Afwerki: It's a perception of those who would like to see Eritrea isolated. Facts on the ground will tell you that we are more and more joining the region and friends all over the world.
Interviewer: But there's very little foreign trade or importing/exporting. Diplomatic relations are strained with several countries. Many foreign aid groups have left or been kicked out.
President: Isaias Afwerki: It's a matter of how
you see it. This is a very young country. You can go and see the social
services we offer, the quality of life, the improvements that have occurred in
the past 10-15 years, and objectively compare that to older countries who have
not achieved what we have [in] a very short time. If you take that as a
measure, it definitely tells you that we are not isolated. We believe we are
part of a regional and global economy and would like to survive and strive
within that process by developing an economy that can grow and be sustained.
But to be part of it, we have to be able to produce something and sell
something, so we can buy something. We need to do things that enable this
country to stand on its two feet and do business with other countries. We have
to be able to produce enough to feed ourselves and then go beyond that to sell
in the market. Do we live on food aid? Do we live on handouts?
Interviewer:
Eritrea in recent years has rejected hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign
aid. Why?
President: Isaias Afwerki: It's
not a matter of rejecting support from outside. It has to be seen in light of
what I mentioned. How can we buy and sell in the marketplace if we depend on
food aid? Isn't it wise for people to think they need to produce what they are
eating? What's wrong with that? To be part of the region and trade with others,
we need to work hard and produce, and depend upon our toil. . . . Self-reliance
is perceived as isolationist. But self-reliance is a means, not an end. It's a
means of taking you to the bigger market and the biggest markets. How can I do
that with handouts?[23]
So the practicality of the impracticalities
is quite pragmatic and necessarily sane in a world defined by insanity!
Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, Ph.D. Public Policy Analysis
13 April 2015
Map: Afrikan Orientation of the Globe
“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’” [George Bernard Shaw]
If I were the Chief Domestic/Foreign Policy
Advisor and Public Policy Analyst of the President-Elect of any Afrikan nation
that need not be named, I would undoubtedly, in order to have attained the
positon, have had a long and most likely warm, relaxed and confidential professional
relationship with the President-Elect and thus would have garnered a high level
of trust on both the personal and professional level.
In
such a congenial situation in which we were comrades on both the professional
and socio-political economic ideological levels, on the eve of her/his
ascendancy to the highest office of state to take her/his mandated place as the
first public servant of the people, I would have reminded the President-Elect
in whose confidence I rested that given her/his campaign winning strategy on a
platform of just change, the eradication of policies of impoverishment, transparency,
accountability and egalitarianism s/he should ever keep in mind the salient dictum
proffered by the esteemed Italian political theoretician, philosopher and
strategist Niccolo Machiavelli in which he stated:
“And let it be noted that there
is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more
dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to
set up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who
are well off under the existing order of things, and only
lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the
new. This lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of
adversaries who have the laws
I
would then bring up and passionately restate those compulsory regulations which
must be implemented and maintained and those that are an absolute necessity if
the long awaited campaign pledges are to be kept and in so doing we are to
thereby retain the sacred trust of the people through circumspectly fulfilling
our honor, duty and obligations to the nation as ministers and thus servants as
the elevated title suggests.
I
would remind her/him that to change the deep sense of cultural malaise,
economic degradation, political corruption and national insecurity that
prevails we must fully engage in the continuing redevelopment of national political-economic
power, setting an example for the development of continental Afrikan power,
through progressive populist social, political and economic engagement in our
rural and urban communities. Righting the wrongs that resulted from conquest,
colonization, subjugation and cultural mis-orientation.
Fundamental Public Policy Initiatives
The type of substantive progressive public
policies which must be enacted to begin this process of transformative
socio-political economic change in the institutional structural basis of the
nation include:
1) Active Afrikan socio-political economic
action through strategic delinking from the current international political
economy and the forming of regionally and sub-Saharan integrated closed
domestic economies secured politically and militarily by a sub-Saharan
political economic confederation and shielded by protectionist political
economic public 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 developed
multinational 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. 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 progressive graduated taxation on the wealthy Afrikan neo-colonial comprador
class and the revocation of all tax credits on foreign multinational
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, lands and resources in a political economic
system which privileges Eurasians [3] over Afrikans even in Afrikan lands; after all to finish first in a rat race still makes you a rat;
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 na Wahenguzi [Kiswahili: Glorious Ancestors] and the
placement throughout the nation of granite-markers commemorating the enactment
of communal laws enshrining the ‘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 land use as well as enshrining Afrikan communal land ownership and social land guardianship in honor of the Creator, in remembrance of the Wahenga na Wahenguzi and on behalf of the Beautyful Ones Not Yet Born; [4]
6) Extensive national and local coordinated
infrastructure development, infrastructure maintenance and infrastructure
rehabilitation utilizing Afrikan technical expertise and local labor only;
7) National and local coordinated industrial
policy centered on inter-Afrikan manufacture, inter-Afrikan trade and mutual
inter-Afrikan reconstruction and 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 Afrikan gold and used in all transactions involving
Afrikan nationalized natural resources and all other socio-political economic
exchanges and serving as the reserve currency of all Afrikan and Afrikan
Diaspora peoples. Such an Afrikan 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 maximum
import levels to protect local industries;
10) The unified invalidation, nullification and repudiation by the new government in conjunction with the grassroots representative organizations of the Afrikan neo-colonial comprador initiated foreign 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. For Debt is as Mhenga Thomas Sankara informed us:
“We think that debt has to be seen from the standpoint of its origins. Debt’s origins come from colonialism’s origins. Those who lend us money are those who had colonized us before. They are those who used to manage our states and economies. Colonizers are those who indebted Africa through their brothers and cousins who were the lenders. We had no connections with this debt. Therefore we cannot pay for it. Debt is neo-colonialism, in which colonizers transformed themselves into “technical assistants”. We should better say “technical assassins”. They present us with financing, with financial backers. As if someone’s back could create development. We have been advised to go to these lenders. We have been proposed with nice financial set-ups. We have been indebted for fifty, sixty years and even more. That means we have been led to compromise our people for fifty years and more. Under its current form, that is imperialism controlled, debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave, of those who had been treacherous enough to put money in our countries with obligations for us to repay. We are told to repay, but it is not a moral issue. It is not about this so-called honour of repaying or not… Debt cannot be repaid, first because if we don’t repay, lenders will not die. That is for sure. But if we repay, we are going to die. That is also for sure.”[5]
11) The total rejection and complete
abandonment of all imperialist foreign aid and expulsion of all
non-governmental organizations.
Thomas Sankara [1949-1987]
Fallacy of the ‘Free Market’
These public polices recognize that the nation must follow a course of action which leads to the extrication of Afrikan socio-political economics from the fallacy of so-called 'Free Market' discipline, while advocating and implementing high levels of domestic market protectionism. Putting the nation on a sound path of self-reliance and ensuring the sovereign autonomy of the domestic economy from the vagaries associated with the Global economy.
The
colonially imported, militarily imposed, Afrikan neo-colonial comprador managed,
Eurasian 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 socio-political 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, socio-political economic consumption is intimately connected
with socio-political economic production and socio-political economic
production is the actual basis of national socio-political economic prosperity.
When a government, for example a so-called developing country government,
centers its socio-political economic public policy on the theory of
consumption, that government is automatically focusing the socio-political
economic well-being of the grassroots of the nation on the current, present
consumption of currently existing commodities, goods and services of which it
has few to none.
In a
neo-colony or developing country which has an socio-political economic
infrastructure designed to export raw resources to former colonial and now
neo-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 social system thus all or
the vast majority of existing commodities, goods and services are of foreign
origin.
As
all socio-political economic public policies in the neo-colonial setting are
designed to support ‘Free Trade,’ which means that there are no socio-political
economic barriers in place to protect local enterprises from the well-developed
multi-national government subsidized corporate enterprises of North America,
Europe, Asia and increasingly South America, the local Afrikan socio-political
economy becomes a dumping zone for cheaply produced foreign goods, which are
also of a poor quality when compared to locally made Afrikan handicrafts.
On
the other hand, a socio-political economic public policy designed around
socio-political 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 Afrikan grassroots
consumption in the long term.
A
long term socio-political economic public policy centered on production also
gives careful thought to the rate of consumption of commodities, goods and
services over time by the Afrikan grassroots as it is interdependent on the
rate of production of commodities, goods and services, to the average rate of
growth of the Afrikan grassroots population, to long term procurability of
commodities, goods and services by the Afrikan 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 Afrikan 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 a socio-political economic
public policy of consumption.
‘Free
Trade’ is an imperialist public policy best adapted and applied only with
regards to the internal trading relations of the Afrikan grassroots of a socio-political
economic community and not to external trading relations among nations,
especially amongst nations that have imperfectly developed internal
socio-political economic structures.
As a
socio-political economy is the outgrowth of a culture, any culture that seeks
to utilize a particular socio-political economy must adapt it to fit the mores,
norms and values of their culture. ‘Free
Trade’ is born of an expansionary hegemonic Eurasian culture and is a belief
under the larger theory of Savage Capitalism,
i.e. the Eurasian ideology of socio-political economic catastrophe. For so-called ‘Free Trade Capitalism’ to be
used by Afrikan societies it must be adjusted to fit the cultural norms of
traditional Afrikan communities.
The importance of Afrikan culture in the
national project cannot be overstated and therefore is best captured here in
the words of Mhenga Amilcar Cabral:
“Culture, whatever the ideological or idealist
characteristics of its expression, is thus an essential element of the history
of a people. Culture is, perhaps, the resultant of this history just as the
flower is the resultant of a plant. Like history, or because it is history,
culture has as its material base the level of the productive forces and the
mode of production. Culture plunges its roots into the humus of the material
reality of the environment in which it develops, and it reflects the organic
nature of the society, which may be more or less influenced by external
factors. History enables us to know the nature and extent of the imbalances and
the conflicts (economic, political and social) that characterize the evolution
of a society. Culture enables us to know what dynamic syntheses have been
formed and set by social awareness in order to resolve these conflicts at each
stage of evolution of that society, in the search for survival and progress. Just
as occurs with the flower in a plant, the capacity (or responsibility) for
forming and fertilizing the germ which ensures the continuity of history lies
in culture, and the germ simultaneously ensures the prospects for evolution and
progress of the society in question. Thus it is understood that imperialist
domination, denying to the dominated people their own historical process,
necessarily denies their cultural process. It is further understood why the
exercise of imperialist domination, like all other foreign domination, for its
own security requires cultural oppression and the attempt at direct or indirect
destruction of the essential elements of the culture of the dominated people. Study
of the history of liberation struggles shows that they have generally been
preceded by an upsurge of cultural manifestations, which progressively harden
into an attempt, successful or not, to assert the cultural personality of the
dominated people by an act of denial of the culture of the oppressor. Whatever
the conditions of subjection of a people to foreign domination and the
influence of economic, political and social factors in the exercise of this
domination, it is generally within the cultural factor that we find the germ of
challenge which leads to the structuring and development of the liberation
movement. In our view, the foundation of national liberation lies in the
inalienable right of every people to have their own history, whatever the
formulations adopted in international law. The aim of national liberation is
therefore to regain this right, usurped by imperialist domination, namely: the
liberation of the process of development of the national productive forces. So
national liberation exists when, and only when the national productive forces
have been completely freed from all kinds of foreign domination. The liberation
of productive forces and consequently of the ability freely to determine the
mode of production most appropriate to the evolution of the liberated people,
necessarily opens up new prospects for the cultural process of the society in
question, by returning to it all its capacity to create progress. A people who
free themselves from foreign domination will not be culturally free unless,
without underestimating the importance of positive contributions from the
oppressor’s culture and other cultures, they return to the upwards paths of
their own culture. The latter is nourished by the living reality of the
environment and rejects harmful influences as much as any kind of subjection to
foreign cultures. We see therefore that, if imperialist domination has the
vital need to practise cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily
an act of culture.”[6]
Amilcar Cabral [1924-1973]
Social and Civil Rights Public Policy
Initiatives
Additionally,
the protectionist socio-political
economic public policies advocated will
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 na Wahenguzi to secure the inviolable right of every Afrikan
socio-political economic entrepreneur, both those of large scale and small
scale enterprises, to trade in an communal atmosphere of Uhuru [Kiswahili: Freedom], 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 Creator 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 the Creator and Wahenga na Wahenguzi 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 SBЗ/Seba and vocational schooling.
What we are implementing is an Afrikan
oriented national 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. We are replacing the current oligarchic structure of Elite
direct democracy with popular grassroots direct democracy. 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 to 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. Allowing this simply drives the grassroots
into the escapist institutions of narcotics sales and use with utilization
leading to addiction and swelling the ranks of broken families and neatly
mandating prison construction and crowding.
All
of these symptoms stemming from a violent socio-political economic system of structurally
induced institutional genocide born of Eurasian domination and exploitation. To
facilitate domination the current neoliberal educational, political, economic
and religious regimes were implanted with the purpose of inflicting structural
violence through the neoliberal political-economic privatization of every
aspect of society. This is a socio-political economic system that transgresses
customary Afrikan law which is based on sacred concepts of honor and
obligation. It violates the sacred nature of life a value common to all Afrikan
peoples.
Most
importantly such a system
of socio-political
economics upsets the natural order and harmony of life; dispossessing that
which is right in favor of that which is unjust. The current socio-political economic system of Eurasian 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 Eurasian socioeconomic
and socio-political structures murder Afrikan people by the millions.
“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.”[7]
The
affluence of the Eurasian Nations depends on unjust socio-political 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 their affluence is based on such crimogenic
institutions makes them unfit to serve as models of development and
socialization.
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 socio-political economic structures they
blindly participate in which support those lifestyles and the political system that they maintain
by participating in system preservationist
symbolic politics, i.e., voting, the citizens of the Eurasian countries
participate in murder.
The socio-political
economic straits, in which Afrikan nations find themselves due to the voluntary
participation of the Afrikan neo-colonial comprador class, also results in the
skewed distribution of resources within Afrikan society. Afrikan countries and communities have a wide
disparity between the small neo-colonial comprador elite and the grassroots. Socio-political economic
reconstruction of Afrikan society is a near 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 will 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.
Social Welfare and Infrastructure Public
Policy Initiatives
The taxes generated will be used for:
1) Public works infrastructure development
and maintenance such as of dams, roads and bridge construction;
2) Providing Wazee [Kiswahili: Elders]
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 that
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;
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.
“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] [9]
Thus there is both an egalitarian and moral
rationale that underlies the necessity of Afrikan socio-political economic
grassroots development through an authentically Afrikan social system.
“The West has only been ungrateful. Abject poverty drove Europeans to Africa. And they exploited her for four hundred years. In those years there has never been any elections. They were no parliamentary systems. After four hundred years of looting Africa, some of us had to take up arms to kick them out. Now they have come around to give us lectures about democracy and human rights. When in their own countries there’s no democracy. Where’s the democracy for Blacks in the UK or Blacks anywhere in Europe? The so-called skin heads or neo-Nazi or the Far right, if they were in Africa or in the Gulf States they would be called terrorist organizations. Why are they not being called terrorist organization and being dealt with? …They are all anti-human. They hate humanity. But why are they not called terrorists and being bombed…like the Islamic extremists? The KKK in the United States are called Far Right or white supremacist. White supremacist against who? I am not anti-West. I am anti their hypocrisy and their racism…The British never built a high school in this country in four hundred years…Democracy is respecting the will of the people…Who do they think they are that they have to teach Africans democracy when we’ve never colonized anybody? The Western democracy is a fallacy. It doesn’t exists.”[10]
Further actions should focus on implementing protectionist socio-political economic and cultural public policies, which greatly reduce capital export and product imports; and redesigning socio-political institutions along authentic Afrikan democratic and egalitarian traditions. One key area here is in the implementation of policies of political economic coordination of industrial and infrastructure reconstruction. Finally, there should be massive socio-political investment in health and education.[11]
The national education system is especially important for this is the key socio-political economic institution which will take the lead with competent personnel in the awakening of the critical and creative consciousness of the people. This is the socio-political economic institution which by being centered in the Afrikan socio-historical cultural experience and focused on the key power constants can develop the type of spiritual, cognitive, affective and psycho-motor physiologically aware Afrikans necessary to carry out a program of Afrikan socio-political economic reconstruction through disengagement from Eurasian institutions and thereby exemplifying true liberatory Afrikan Agency.
Transitional Public Policy Initiatives
Having on the eve of political economic power reiterated all of the previous I would then turn again to Niccolo Machiavelli and quote: “But to get a clearer understanding of this part of our subject, we must look whether these innovators can stand alone, or whether they depend for aid upon others; in other words, whether to carry out their ends they must resort to entreaty, or can prevail by force. In the former case they always fare badly and bring nothing to a successful issue; but when they depend upon their own resources and can employ force, they seldom fail. Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.”[12]
As we are now, under the leadership of the President-Elect, about to assume the high offices of the national civil administration we must come into the office with the zeal of the prepared armed Prophet.
We
shall inherit all of the pressing problems of the previous administrations
which must be satisfactorily solved forthwith.
These have to do with the pertinent issues of internal and external security
of the women and children of the nation in the face of foreign funded and
backed internal terrorist organizations determined to undermine the stability
and functionality of the nation. Of equal importance is xenophobic behavior in
the populace growing out of cultural mis-orientation and manipulated and
perpetuated by Afrikan colonial comprador class.
Furthermore, we must aggressively and with extreme prejudice pursue an anti-corruption agenda with severe penalties against the guilty such as confiscation and redistribution of all of their material wealth and where necessary, such as in cases of theft from the government and by inference from the commonwealth as a whole, public execution.
Additionally
we must immediately reinstate African communal land rights and other associated
institutions in a national policy of land reform. To fund these initiatives we must
heavily tax the extractive economy industries of oil, gas, precious stones, minerals
etc. and must further redress and compensate victims of government sanctioned acts
of state terrorism and political-economic negligence.
It
will be necessary to carry forth a policy of the democratization of the
commanding height of the economy, of the government, of organized religion and
of the University to reverse the pernicious effects of their present
embourgeoisment by the bourgeois and petty bourgeois. In the democratization of the University and
secondary education there must be the eradication of class-oriented processes
and procedures for the curtailing of the eligibility of large segments of the
society for admittance, such as archaic imperialist entrance examinations, and
exorbitant fees for registration and books.
Each of these are techniques born from the commodification of education
and the reduction of the university to the preserve of first the settler
colonialists and now Afrikan comprador neoliberal technocratic specialists.
We
must also maintain strict surveillance of business and military elites that are
currently vested in the old order and who are thus internal weak points and in
some cases are voluntarily willing to serve as proxies for external elements
desirous of overthrowing our populist regime and maintaining the current
imperialist backed regime ideology of public enterprise privatization and the
continued revocation of social welfare and labor union public policies. All in an effort to perpetuate the
sub-integration of the national economy into the neo-liberal global economy. These internal oligarchic subversives will
callously utilize strategies of political violence and military coups, social
propaganda through all forms of media and mis-information. All of their acts
being freely financed by imperialist powers who in conjunction place economic
sanctions on the international sector of the national economy and therefore
attacking through the multiple defective stress points of the economic infrastructure
also engage in the external financing of counter-revolutionary electoral
opposition groups.
These public policies must be conducted simultaneously with a strong, strategic and determined military offensive against the separatist elements carried out in the field of battle, politically, economically and spiritually. The standing military being supported by the arming of the people in the sense of the Paris Communes.[13] Concomitant with this military policy is the capture, adjudication and where required execution of all perpetrators of the vile, anti-social acts of kidnapping and rape.
Epilogue
Some may read all of these policy proposals
and call them unrealistic, impractical or lacking in pragmatism and you would
be correct given your point of view in a neo-colonized existence and the social,
political and economic experiences that you have undergone as a result.
But
lest we forget that all reality is socially constructed and reified in the
cognitive culture and lived experiences of the people.
Even
more important though is an obvious ignorance of contemporary reality that such
a perspective reveals for many of the policy proposals recommended herein have
been and are being successfully implemented in the face of relentless pressure
from Western Imperialists by nation’s intent on carving out a self-reliant
existence.
And they stay the necessary course even in the face of economic sabotage by Western government’s intelligence agencies and in the lethal downturn in the Global neo-liberal economic system. Those nations are the Republic of Cuba, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Plurinational State of Bolivia the State of Eritrea. The Republic of Cuba has a health and education system[14]that is second to none in the world, while the Plurinational State of Bolivia along with the Republic of Ecuador have become the first nations in the contemporary age to enshrine into law the rights of nature and that the Plurinational State of Bolivia has taken the lead in creation of a defensive mechanism against Western Imperialist machinations led by the arch-imperialist regime of the United States [15] and let it be remember that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has over the past fifteen years begun a transformation of a highly stratified nation opening opportunities for many who were under previous American dominated administrations economically and educationally marginalized and exploited, if this nation has had any failures it is in the slow nature of diversifying the national economy so that it is not so overly reliant on the energy sector and its chief export of oil.[16]
Now
more than likely many will hold that these nations are pariahs and failed
states in the international arena. This
inaccurate opinion is derived from biased propaganda which passes as news from
corporate sources and is intended to shape and control public opinion. As Edward Bernay’s wrote in 1928:
“THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four. In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time. In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if everyone went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea. It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda. Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized—the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life. As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”[17]
Incidentally,
Edward Bernays is a part of the required reading for college students at those
global Universities where women and men are being prepared to rule the world,
as opposed to the fact that he is nearly unheard of at those Universities where
women and men are being prepared to be ruled. This has a most negative impact
for Global Afrikan peoples and thus and most importantly for continental Afrika
and the future of Pan-Afrikanism, for such corporatized information keeps truth
about the Afrikan nation, the State of Eritrea, highly distorted.
Eritrea: The
Quintessential Afrikan Model
Of the State of Eritrea the honored Mhenga, Pan-Afrikanist and Zanzibar Marxist revolutionary Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu in 1985 stated:
“Living, working and eating with these staunch revolutionaries I am tempted to echo the famous quote: “I have seen the future of Africa and it works.” This is not an easy statement to make after so many political, social and economic shocks that we went through in the post-independence Africa. Who can be enthusiastic in the midst of the political chaos of military coups and counter-coups and the economic pains of bankrupted and heavily indebted nations? Of the humiliating and degrading experience of dependence on the very imperialism that cost Africa’s lives and hardships to be rid of? Of the pathetic call of despair for a dream-world of failed politicians known as the New International Economic order? But experiences with liberated Eritreans give you confidence in the capacity of the African masses to take history in their own hands during the challenging journey from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. Where in Africa today would you see doctors, engineers, mechanics, technicians, all of world standards, inspired enough to flock back home enthusiastically from foreign universities and institutions of learning to serve their country without pay? Where in Africa would you see mature community minus the pompous party functionaries, insensitive bureaucrats and overindulged diplomats? In short, it is a unique experience of the absence of the exploited or exploiter, of the true equality between man and woman, experience of witnessing normal human beings free from hang-ups, engaged in an honourable struggle to liberate the rest of the country on the basis of self-reliance and independent of external power.”[18]
And
today this same Afrikan nation, after having waged a thirty year war of
national liberation and now in the face of unjust international economic
sanctions instigated by the Western Imperialist governments led by the
arch-imperialist regime in the United States and while having nearly 20% of its
sovereign land illegally occupied by its formal colonial power in staunch
disregard of internationally arbitrated treaties to the contrary, continues on
the path of self-reliance. The peoples and leaders of the State of Eritrea have
chosen to pursue a self-determined course of self-directed development in the
face of massive odds that may be summed up in the popular phrase Hizbawi Mekhete [Kitigrinya: Popular Resistance]
Of
the self-reliant State of Eritrea today in the year 2015 it has been reported
that:
2) “Eritrea continues on the national independent path. It has progressive view in building national unity. Eritrea is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. It has 9 ethnic groups, and two major religions: Christianity and Islam. Two religions co-exist harmoniously, and this is mainly due to the tolerant culture, that the society has built. There is no conflict or animosity between the ethnic groups or religious groups. The government and the people are keen to maintain this national unity.”
3) “Eritrea is not a
neo-colonial state. Eritrea is an independent state. Eritrea does not host
any military bases, any external forces. Eritrea has the vision, and not only
for Eritrea, but also for the region. It is also promoting self-reliance and
regional integration. It is also built on the ideal: ‘let us use our own
resources, and let us build our independence. It means elevating the life of
Eritrean people, particularly those in the rural areas. This approach was
considered in the West, as Chomsky said, as ‘a rotten apple’.”
5) “In
Eritrea, the cardinal principle governing mineral resources is that they
unquestionably remain the property of all
Eritreans – both present and
future generations. While numerous developing countries have seen their
resource revenues disproportionately repatriated by foreign firms, Eritrea’s
progressive mining legislation policies aim to ensure that Eritrea itself is
the prime beneficiary of its own resources. Quite impressively, Eritrean mining
laws stipulate that for all mining activities and projects, Eritrea may attain
upwards of a 40% equity. Also, unlike many other countries that have witnessed
a flood of cheap foreign workers taking local jobs, infrastructure and mining
projects in Eritrea are almost exclusively manned by Eritreans. For example, in
its 2013-14 report, Nevsun Resources Ltd. notes that Eritreans make up over 90%
of the employees and represent nearly half of the management positions at the
Bisha mine (other projects boast similar figures).”[20]
Furthermore, the President of the State of Eritrea, the
Honorable Isaias Afwerki has stated unequivocally that:
“Anyone who takes aid is crippled. Aid is meant to cripple people… Governments in Africa and elsewhere are not allowed to write their own programs. And when it comes to implementing programs, it deprives you of building institutions and the capacity to implement your programs…We need to write our own programs in the first place. We need to articulate on the projects we write. We need to have a comprehensive strategy, plans on how to implement those programs…Unless we do that on our own, we can’t possibly imagine that we are achieving any of the goals – millennium or non-millennium…”[21]
His sentiments on foreign aid echo those of the illustrious Mhenga Thomas Sankara, the assassinated former President of the west Afrikan nation of Burkina Faso:
“We represented a wondrous condensation, the epitome of all the calamities that have ever befallen the so-called developing countries. The example of foreign aid, presented as a panacea and often heralded without rhyme or reason, bears eloquent witness to this fact. Very few countries have been inundated like mine with all kinds of aid. Theoretically, this aid is supposed to work in the interests of our development. In the case of what was formerly Upper Volta, one searches in vain for a sign of anything having to do with development. The men in power, either out of naiveté or class selfishness, could not or would not take control of this influx from abroad, understand its significance, or raise demands in the interests of our people. In his book, Le Sahel demain [The Sahel of tomorrow], Jacques Giri, with a good deal of common sense, analyzes a table published in 1983 by the Sahel Club, and draws the conclusion that because of its nature and the mechanisms in place, aid to the Sahel helps only with bare survival. Thirty percent of this aid, he stresses, serves simply to keep the Sahel alive. According to Jacques Giri, the only goal of this foreign aid is to continue developing nonproductive sectors, saddling our meager budgets with unbearably heavy expenditures, disorganizing our countryside, widening our balance of trade deficit, and accelerating our indebtedness… The diagnosis was clearly somber. The root of the disease was political. The treatment could only be political. Of course, we encourage aid that aids us in doing away with aid. But in general, welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political, and cultural affairs. We chose to risk new paths to achieve greater well-being. We chose to apply new techniques. We chose to look for forms of organization better suited to our civilization, flatly and definitively rejecting all forms of outside diktats, in order to lay the foundations for achieving a level of dignity equal to our ambitions. Refusing to accept a state of survival, easing the pressures, liberating our countryside from medieval stagnation or even regression, democratizing our society, opening minds to a world of collective responsibility in order to dare to invent the future. Shattering the administrative apparatus, then rebuilding it with a new kind of government employee, immersing our army in the people through productive labor and reminding it constantly that without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal. Such is our political program. On the level of economic management, we’re learning to live modestly, to accept and impose austerity on ourselves in order to be able to carry out ambitious projects.”[22]
On another occasion President Isaias Afwerki in an interview gave the following responses on the State of Eritrea’s chosen path:
Interviewer:
Eritrea has become increasingly isolated over the past 10 years. Why?
President: Isaias Afwerki: It's a perception of those who would like to see Eritrea isolated. Facts on the ground will tell you that we are more and more joining the region and friends all over the world.
Interviewer: But there's very little foreign trade or importing/exporting. Diplomatic relations are strained with several countries. Many foreign aid groups have left or been kicked out.
In
the final analysis there does come a time when we must cease asking why and
instead pursue with determination the path of why not. It is a matter of divine
duty that as Afrikans we take our destiny into our own hands others be damned
as necessary!
Only
the neo-colonized slave thinks otherwise!
“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in
relative opacity.” [Dr. Frantz Fanon]
“Some men see things as they are and say,
why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” [Senator Robert F.
Kennedy]
Ambakisye-Okang
Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, Ph.D. is a citizen of the United States of
America and expatriate resident of the United Republic of Tanzania. Dr. Dukuzumurenyi is a graduate of Grambling
State University, in Grambling, Louisiana, USA with a Bachelors of Arts in History
and Masters of Public Administration in Public Administration with emphasis in
Health Service Administration and of Southern University A & M College
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA with an earned Doctorate of Philosophy in Public
Policy Analysis from the Nelson Mandela School of Public Policy and Urban
Affairs. He is an Afrikan-centered educator, public policy analyst, public
administration scholar, political scientist, and public lecturer on Afrikan
education, Nation-building, history, economics, politics and spirituality
emphasizing systems design and strategic planning in the development of Afrikan
political, military, social and economic agency. Additionally, he has served the Afrikan
community as an Afrikan American Studies, Geography and Economics teacher in
the East Baton Rouge Parish School System of the United States for nine years,
as an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Southern University A & M
College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for one year and as Associate Director of
Research and Publication, Editor of the Journal of East Afrikan Research and
Lecturer on the Faculties of Education, Cultural Anthropology and Tourism,
Business and Development Studies at the University of Iringa in the United
Republic of Tanzania, East Afrika for two plus years. He is also the founder
and director of the University of New Timbuktu System SBЗ/Seba
Press. The guiding influences for Dr.
Dukuzumurenyi have been the works of Dr. Amos N. Wilson, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr.
John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochanan, Dr. Marimba Ani, Mwalimu Julius
Nyerere, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Minister Malcolm X, Stephen Biko, Shaka Zulu,
Mangaliso Sobukwe & Ptahhotep to name only a select few.
Notes
[1] Portions
of this article are taken from: Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, Revolution: A
People’s Methodology of Regime Change Essays on a Theory of
Afrikan Socio-Political Economic Liberation with an Exposition on the first
Black War of National Liberation: Kushite KMT/Kemet & the Expulsion of the
Kushite Kanaanite Hyksos c. 2681-2706 KC [c. 1560-1535 BCE] [Iringa, Tanzania:
University of New Timbuktu System SBЗ/Seba Press, 2014]
[2]
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994) pp.
20-21.
[3] Here
the term Eurasian is used to include all Europeans from Western and Easter
Europe and their descendants in the former European colonies throughout the
world, such as in North America, New Zealand and Australia.
It also includes Asian peoples such as the Japanese,
Chinese and Indians. For example, if you
would know what the Chinese International Political Economic intentions are NOW take a look back at the
Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979. During this war China made a decisive foreign
relations and ideological break with the Communist Block Countries and all
other Socialist and non-socialist countries of the Non-aligned movement and in
the developing world in general and began its economic transformation and interaction
with countries such as the United States. It may NOW look as if China and the United States are battling for control
of Afrikan resources, but as always LOOKS
CAN BE DECIEVING!
[4] The
name is derived from: Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
(Johannesburg, South Africa: Heinemann Publishers Ltd., 1968)
[5] Thomas
Sankara, Speech delivered before the General Assembly the Organisation of
African Unity, July 1987.
[6] Amilcar
Cabral, “National Liberation and Culture,” Speech delivered at Syracuse University,
Syracuse, New York, 20 February 1970 [http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/cabralnlac.html]
[7] “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)
[8] James W. Douglass, The Non-Violent
Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf &
Stock, 1968)
[9] Ezili
Danto, “U.S. NGOs Kicked Out of Eritrea: Foreign Aid Is Meant To Cripple People,”
5 April 2015 [http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-ngos-kicked-out-of-eritrea-foreign-aid-is-meant-to-cripple-people/5441367]
[10] Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel,
Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (New York: The New Press,
2002)
[11]
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994) pp.
21.
[12] Karl
Marx, The Paris Commune, (New York: New York Labor’s Company, 1871)
[13] Martin
Carnoy, Cuba’s Academic Advantage: Why Student’s in Cuba Do Better in School
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007)
[14] Richard Fidler, “Bolivia’s cogent responses to recent
provocations from the Empire,” October 2013 [http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2013/09/bolivias-cogent-responses-to-recent.html]
[15] James Petras, “US and Venezuela: Decades of
Destabilization and Defeat,” March 2015 [https://libya360.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/us-and-venezuela-decades-of-defeats-and-destabilization/]
[16] Edward
Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Horace Liveright, 1928) pp. 9-11.
[17]
Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu, “Eritrea: Its Present is the Remote Future of
Others,” African Events 10 October
1985
[18] Andre Vltchek,
“Eritrea: An African Ideological Ebola for Imperialists,” 12 December 2014 [http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/12/african-ideological-ebola-for-imperialists/]
[19] Merhawie, “Challenging
African Dogma: Eritrea’s Path to
Economic Independence,” [http://www.myth2014.com/2014/05/14/challenging-african-dogma-eritreas-path-to-economic-independence/]
[20] Ezili Danto, “U.S. NGOs Kicked Out of Eritrea: Foreign
Aid Is Meant To Cripple People,” 5 April 2015 [http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-ngos-kicked-out-of-eritrea-foreign-aid-is-meant-to-cripple-people/5441367]
[21] Thomas
Sankara, We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolution, (New York: Pathfinder
Press, 2002)
[22] Edmund Sanders, “Q & A with President Isaias
Afwerki,” Los Angeles Times October 2007 [http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-eritreaweb2oct02-story.html#page=1]
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