African Unity and the Myth of Sovereignty
I was starkly reminded of the widening gap between Africa`s political and economic elites and the people living in poverty across Africa, when departing from the Lilongwe airport in Malawi on Friday. The red carpets had been laid out and the entourage of President Joyce Banda was in full preparation for her departure to Addis Ababa, to attend the AU summit.
Joyce Banda had been in the news for all the right reasons having sold the presidential jet and a fleet of Mercedes vehicles in order to appease International Donors (Donors make up about 40% of Malawi`s budget and had reduced aid to Malawi by up to 80%), who had objected to the purchase of the jet by her predecessor Bingu wa Mutharika in 2009. This gesture of austerity by the new leader of the struggling East African country was immediately rewarded by its major donors and soon aid dollars and pounds were filling the coffers of the state. Some commentators quipped at the time “that Malawi was transforming from a "God-fearing country" to a "donor-fearing country".
What struck me on Friday, as I watched the pomp and ceremony unfold, is that despite the grand gestures of austerity, African leaders thrive on surrounding themselves with the trappings of power and prestige. Her entourage of over twenty luxury vehicles, the red carpets, close to a thousand people who had been bused in to bid farewell to the “austere” leader, the presidential guard, army bands and TV crews, all belied the claim of austerity which has been imposed on the people of Malawi who has one of the lowest per capita income rates in the world and where its people live in poverty, suffering and struggle.
This reality is true for most political leaders across the world, but especially relevant to African leaders, whose citizens, despite slight progress in addressing poverty, is still by far the most deprived and economically destitute. In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having "Low Human Development" on the United Nations' (UN) Human Development Index were in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. In many nations, GDP per capita is less than USD$200 per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less. In addition, Africa's share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does.
The Future is bright they say. Yet, to the majority of people living in poverty, the benefits of Donor Aid and economic progress is yet to be felt as African Leaders monopolize the wealth and income of the countries they are supposed to lead out of poverty.
In their haste and greed to enjoy the trappings of power and wealth, African leaders have made grand gestures of political unity but have failed to make the grandest gesture of all, political autonomy. Kwame Nkrumah`s vision for “one continent, one people and one nation”, was to be the political sugar that helped the economic medicine go down, even though it was Nkrumah who argued that colonialism had merely made way for a type of neo-colonialism. Nkrumah argued that the “essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it, is in theory, independent and has all the trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political system is directed from outside”. Fifty Years after the formation of the OAU, Africa remains firmly in the grip and under the burden of the International economy. From the weakest and poorest states, to the “sub imperial” states such as South Africa, whose economic and trade tentacles have reached into and across Africa, the agenda of development and economic progress is still set and determined from outside. South Africa`s close links to the IMF and World bank has been well documented and its critics have pointed out that its National Development Plan has largely been predicated on the Neo Liberal policies of the World Bank and IMF.
Perhaps this then is the reason African States, and heads of states in particular, feel the overwhelming need to announce their prestige and power to the world by splashing out on presidential jets and fleets of luxury vehicles. Perhaps it is their lack of real sovereignty over their economies that dictates the over emphasis on pomp and ceremony. If only African countries would stand up and be counted in the matters that really count to their people, then perhaps we could shake the shackles of neo colonialism and truly achieve the vision of a united Africa.
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