The Nation Feb 5, 2014

Page 54

THE NATION WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2014

56

The Midweek Magazine

E-mail:- ozoluauhakheme@yahoo.com

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N his book, ‘Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation’, aspects of which we have been reflecting on for the last two weeks, the South African political economist, Professor Patrick Bond, exposes the sheer intellectual laziness, mental lethargy, ideological bankruptcy and shameful hypocrisy of contemporary African leadership. Reading this book, it becomes obvious that unless there is a radical change in the nature and character of African leadership; the emergence of thinker-leaders who can break out of the underdevelopment-generating mould of intellectual dependency on western imperialism, the Continent’s presumed desire for positive transformation will remain a mirage. The current crop of African leaders certainly do not measure up to the high standard of mental rigour and independence of thought exhibited by the immediate post-independence leadership such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kenneth Kaunda, Sekou Toure, Obafemi Awolowo, or Jomo Kenyatta to name a few. Of course, this does not excuse the weaknesses of many of these earlier leaders, which, in any case could be blamed on the continuing after effects of centuries of brutal slavery and colonial imperialism on the most abused people in history – the black race. Not even the venerable Nelson Mandela and the supposedly progressive leadership of the radical anti-apartheid political movement – the African National Congress (ANC) were spared the scathing critic of Professor Bond. A party like the ANC, whose history of anti-racist and imperial struggle should have positioned it to show the light for Africa to find the way to true mental, political and economic liberation turned out to be just as intellectually famished and ideologically sterile as others across the continent. For instance, according to Bond, Nelson Mandela in 2003 was unsparing in his condemnation of George Bush’s decision to attack Iraq. In Mandela’s words at the time “All Bush wants is Iraqi oil…Their friend Israel has weapons of mass destruction but because it’s (the US’s) ally, they won’t ask the UN to get rid of them…Bush, who cannot think properly is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust. If there is a country which has committed unspeakable atrocities, it is the United States of America”. Other ANC leaders like Kgalema

Segun Ayobolu sms to 07032777778 segunayobolu2@yahoo.com

Africa and the economics of continued exploitation (III) Motlanthe and Thabo Mbeki echoed Mandela’s vitriolic sentiments but it all turned out to be empty posturing and pointless hot air even if Mandela was more sincere than his ANC colleagues on the issue. Bond calls the rhetoric of the ANC as nothing but “talking left but walking right”. How does Professor Bond prove his point in this respect? In his words “…in early 2003, at the same time as Mandela’s outburst, the ANC government permitted three Iraqbound warships to refuel in Durban, and the state-owned weapons manufacturer, Denel, sold US$ 160 million worth of artillery propellants and 326 hand-held laser range-finders to the British army, and 125 laser-guidance sights to the US Marines”. Despite strident protests by a coalition of over 300 Anti-war organizations in South Africa against these arms sales, “Pretoria refused the Coalition’s demands to halt the sales”. Of course, it is pertinent to wonder if any other army in black Africa could muster the capacity to manufacture and sell such sophisticated weaponry to the military of such world powers as the US and Britain. Is there, one must ask again, a racial tinge to the debilitating technological dependency of Africa? Is there a link between the industrial/technological capacity of South Africa relative to other parts of the continent and the several years of white supremacy rule? But then, that is just an aside. Professor Bond’s point is that South Africa plays a crucial role “as Washington’s subimperial African power”. Professor Bond contends that once the

ANC elevated self-interest above principles compatible with genuine African liberation, then its leaders like Mandela and Mbeki were drawn close by western leaders and South Africa itself was enabled to play key roles in major international bodies like the UN Security Council, the board of governors of the IMF and the World Bank and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development etc. Perhaps because he is South African, it is understandable that Professor Bond focuses especially on South Africa’s complicity in the subversion of Africa’s interests in the contemporary global political economy. It is through his scathing critique and exposure of the utter hypocrisy of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which pretends to be a homegrown policy platform for the transformation of Africa, that Bond demonstrates the hypocritical collusion between the African leadership and the neo-liberal global elite for the persistence of a mutually beneficial but undesirable present condition of Africa. Incidentally, the major architects of NEPAD included Thomas Mbeki and Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo who ran administrations pathetically enslaved to neo-liberal policies that have failed in Africa for over three decades now. As a policy document, many believe that NEPAD is infinitely inferior to the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) drawn up by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1980. Bond shows that rather than the African people, it is actually international finance

Jos Festival of Theatre opens with Soyinka’s The Lion …

Ebedi admits three women writers

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HE Eighth Jos Festival of Theatre 2014 will open with a pre-festival play, Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and The Jewel, on February 22. For the third year running, the United States (US) Mission in Nigeria will support the festival, which will host a week of performances at the Alliance Francaise, Jos, Plateau State. A statement by the organisers said the presentations would be a combination of plays from the Nigerian repertory, a new Nigerian play and plays from the international repertory. “Apart from the support by the US Mission, Nigeria, the Embassy of Spain and the Czech Embassy will also feature plays in the festival. All the plays would be performed by talented actors with the introduction of two new directors into the festival organisation”, it said. This, the statement added, has followed the pattern in the last two years of the festival where the festival has witnessed the introduction of two new directors each in the last editions alongside an array of young and talented amateur and professional actors. On Wednesday, February 26, Federico Garcia Lorca’s The Shoemaker’s Wonderful Wife with the collaboration of the Embassy of Spain, Nigeria will be on stage while on Thursday, February 27 it will be the turn of Charles Fuller’s Zooman and The Sign. August Wilson’s Two Trains Running will mount the stage on Friday February 28 and Ladislav Smoljak And Zdenek Sverak’s The Conquest Of The North Pole a

capital that gains from NEPAD through “large construction opportunities on the public-private-partnership model, privatized state services, on-going structural adjustment, intensified rule of international property law and various of NEPAD’s sectoral plans, all coordinated from a South African office staffed with neo-liberals and open to economic and geopolitical gatekeeping”. Among other limitations of NEPAD identified by Bond include its neo-liberal economic policy framework, the complete alienation of the African people from any part in its conception, design and formulation, social and economic measures that contribute to the marginalization of women, its overdependence on foreign donors and its under-emphasis on the external conditions fundamental to the creation and sustenance of the African crisis. In the same vein, Bond is critical of such Civil Society Groups as The Global Call To Action Against Poverty (GCAP), Make Poverty History and Live 8 campaigning which simplistically assume that the G8, World Trade Organization (WTO), Bretton Woods institutions and Third World state elites can be part of the solution to the African crisis when they constitute a fundamental part of the problem. Thus, he decries the illusory perception of such groups that the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for instance, can make any appreciable dent on the gargantuan problem of poverty in Africa. He quotes approvingly the following devastating gender-centric critique of the MDGs: “I do not believe in the MDGs. I think of them as a Major Distraction Gimmick. There is evident widespread awareness of their limitations: their inadequate targets and indicators; their restriction to indicators that are quantifiable, when much of what is most important – such as Women’s Equality and Empowerment – is not easily quantifiable…In fact a major problem of the MDGs is their abstraction from the social, political and economic context in which they are to be implemented – the ‘political economy’ of the MDGs”. But what are the alternative grassroots initiatives that Bond believes can truly help make poverty history in Africa? That will be the focus of our concluding part next week.

•A scene from one of the plays last year By Ozolua Uhakheme

FESTIVAL performance in collaboration with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, will hold on Saturday March 1. On Sunday, March 2, there will be the presentation of Akolo James Anthony’s A Toast of Triumph In the tradition of the previous festivals, there will be workshops on arts manage-

ment, salsa dance and directing/acting. The 2014 festival is also being supported by Grand Cereals and Oil Mills Limited that have supported the festival consistently since 2004, the Jos Business School, the French Embassy, Nigeria and Julius Berger PLC as well as other corporate and individual supporters. The festival, being one of the activities of the annual African-American History Month celebrations in Nigeria will shift to Abuja in March and May, this year.

By Evelyn Osagie

BEDI International Writers Residency, Iseyin, Oyo State, has granted residency to three female writers. They are Jumoke Verrissimo, Gertrude Uzoh and Funmi Aluko who have resumed for the January/February edition of the programme. Verissimo, who is a recipient of the Chinua Achebe Centre Fellowship, is an awardwinning poet. Her book, I am memory won two national awards and got an honourable mention from the Association of Nigeria (Poetry) prize. She has participated in festivals across Nigeria and in Europe. She holds a Masters in African Studies (Performance) from the University of Ibadan and BA Literature-inEnglish from the Lagos State University. Her works have appeared in Migrations (Afro-Italian) Wole Soyinka ed., Voldposten 2010 (Norway), Ann Arbor (USA), Livre d’or de Struga (Poetes du monde, sous le patronage de l’UNESCO) among other awards. She will be using the residency to complete a collection of short stories. Aluko, another performance poet, participated in P.L.A.Y. 2009 and 2010 –a PanNigerian Poetry Festival among others. It was directed by Ben Tomoloju and sponsored by GTBank. (P.L.A.Y means Poetry, laughter, arts and you). She also participated in poetry segments of Black Heritage Festival 2010 and 2012. Funmi who has a B.A in Communication and Language and an M.A in Performance Studies both from the University of Ibadan will be completing a new poetry collection at the Ebedi Residency. Gertrude Uzoh is a 2006 Computer Science graduate of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka whose debut novel, One Love, Many Tears garnered rave reviews when it was released in 2012. Gertrude who has continued her dedication to creative pastime, will be spending time in Ebedi to finish work on another novel.


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