By Henry A. Onwubiko
The secret of life is to have no fear – Kwame Nkrumah
Not long ago, in the resurgence of another variant of the COVID-19 contagion, Tedros Ghebreyesus Adhanom, a brother, and Director-General of the World Health Organization, from his African experience, lamented over the unusual attention paid to Ukrainians and their European counterparts in the United States-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) proxy war in Ukraine against Russian aggression. He fearfully crooned (and wisely too) over the delusive standards meted to black people in their African homeland and the diasporas, including Ukraine where they were made to give up their bus seats to white passengers as refugees fleeing from the war. Such delusive standards were also applied to the distribution of vaccines, the caring for the welfare of refugees, accounting for migrants crossing the Mediterranean sea, victims of famine, and the utilization of various accessories of international relief.
This leads to the overwhelming question on why the United Nations seem most inclined to manage the secondary effects of providing shelter, clothing, medicine, peace-keeping and the feeding of refugees, and famine victims but pays little or no attention to preventing their primary cause which in Africa are the nascent and incessant wars that are invariably funded covertly by western mining agents and other commodity merchants through the perfidious African leaders of these neo-colonial states. For instance, the key functionaries and donors to the United Nations, with the United States as the highest donor, either view these punishing wars in Africa in their interest or do not appreciate the significance of ending the wars in Africa as the solution to abolishing hunger and famine, but are quick to echo the western propaganda to gain African support for the Ukrainian war that Africa needs to tackle its famine by importing Ukrainian grain under imposed retaliatory sanction by Russia. Where was this Ukrainian grain in the initial period of the present famine that had already claimed millions of victims? For Africans, the United Nations remains a delusion if it cannot prevent these wars which are the primary cause of famine, refugees and other secondary effect among its highlights. These wars which are responsible for the significant displacement of people from their home towns, villages and farms; provide the potential reservoir for the steady supply of aimless youths recruited into terrorists organizations such as Boko Haram and El Shabaab, by interfering with the normal cultural cycle in agriculture of clearing, tilling, planting and harvesting of crops that prevent the African people from feeding themselves under western ridicule. With malnutrition and famine, the wars have also brought disease such as kwashiorkor.
There are increasing numbers of African youths from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, parts of Somalia, Sudan, and far away Haiti who as beneficiaries of the United Nations are calling for an end of the delusions, cessation of activities and its withdrawal from their territories with its peace keeping mission. To further their cause they recently staged demonstrations and protests against the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of Haiti, Congo and other nations. These youths view its international relief as a narcissistic delusion to calm the oppressed with the strategies of instigating wars while continuing the robbery of their natural resources and cheap labour powers, thus paying them back with unending genocide. Are the youths of Rwanda and Congo, who are the unemployment reservoir not the victims of the war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the M23 Rebels – equipped by western agents and arm dealers through the perfidious Paul Kagame of Rwanda? To them, the United Nations in the globally managed soft power of the US-led Western hegemony; equipped to induce in the African People historical amnesia by camouflaging and cushioning the cumulative suffering from colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, and above all, these incipient wars.
However, Tedros under this tight situation, deserves a pass mark of courage for his appropriate afrocentric criticism which drew global attention to the prejudice experienced by Africans and the genocidal implications of vaccine imperialism from a leading Blackman pointing a finger at the racism-tinted greed of free enterprise emanating from some of the richest and most powerful western nations. The development of COVAX to thwart vaccine inequity and encourage vaccine availability to poorer nations and its development in Cuba through technology transfer, add to his courage and that of his colleagues.
Certainly, his cautious conviction is in contrast to the fear, cowering spirit and utterances of some well known contemporary black leaders and their predecessors who from their fear of the all pervasive declining American-led western hegemonic power had out-heroded Herod in their reactionary stance against the social liberation and economic development of their African homeland and its diasporas. How about Paul Kagame from Rwanda — the Don-Xiote of Africa — who Boris Johnson, the boozing British Prime Minister, offered a few pounds on the head of black asylum seekers to Britain, to deport them against their will to a welcoming Rwanda – Mr. Johnson’s final solution to enslaving and colonizing the black man as a necessity in building the declining Western Imperialism whose solution calls for nothing less than the erection of a new multilateral and egalitarian global leadership now in sight. The emerging multilateralism is not only to be embraced in trade relations but a learned universal principle of cooperation required to tackle the eco-catastrophic challenges and emerging infectious diseases that threaten humanity such as the overheating of the earth from trapped green house gases such as carbon dioxide that intensifies the unsettling impact of Africa’s myriad wars.
The decline of American-led Western hegemonic rule has raised various geopolitical tensions across the globe in the balance of trade and social production, the challenges of military power and space rendezvous among new rising nations. Already, under the western rule of free enterprise, African nations share a history of colonialism with China, an often ignored factor, which has boosted the volume of trade, construction of infrastructure such as rail and motorable roads and development of new supply chains and the ease of borrowing at low interest rates for investments, when compared to most western nations. It is noteworthy to study the impact of past despised colonial culture, when the western nations intentionally avoided linking African nations together through intra African trade but wickedly linked the colony directly to the colonizing metropolis.
Without question, the future of China and Africa trade relations’ will yield great dividend not only for Africa but China and other nations. While many African nations look forward to joining the Belt and Road Initiative, some expect to join the BRICS bank set up with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa as partners in development as they are forced to abandon the Bretton-Woods Institution, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that have kept them in debt, borrowing and servicing loans at conditions of intolerable suffering to the African masses.
These tensions not only summon black leaders to trial but presents African history as the judge. Kwame Nkrumah who led the fight for African Independence against Western colonialism and neocolonialism, and founded the Organization for African Unity (OAU) had stated that “the secret of life is to have no fear”. Yet another faint-hearted African leader of recent history was Kofi Anan of Ghana, who never overcame his conditioned fear of western hegemonic power and became weary when it came to fighting for the geopolitical interest of Africa and Pan Africanism, but as Secretary-General of the United Nations, became energized and frightened enough to embrace and disseminate the Western propaganda that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. This false accusation became the pretext to the western invasion of Iraq and wasted a rising developmental challenge which it had correctly diagnosed as a catalyst to its inevitable decline.
Indeed black turn-coat leaders from fear, tinted with opportunism have in various epochs of African history served as strategic pawns for the West in resolving geopolitical tensions against the interest of Africa. In the case of Barack Obama, he was brought forward to save the American-led western hegemony which had globally sunk to its lowest ebb to reset its grotesque image and made the first Black President of the United States. For fear of offending his white electorate, Obama rejected his invitation to address the United Nations on the Conference on Racism. He also rejected a visit to Nigeria from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where there is no pretence to democracy, on the basis that Nigeria required more lessons on democracy. Furthermore, under him as Commander-in-Chief of NATO, the military wing of the hegemony, he directed the most destructive bombing in Africa in Libya and this devastation leading to the killing of Moamar Ghadaffi, its charismatic leader and among the foundation members of the African Union. This was the same NATO that some perfidious African leaders would later consider voting for in the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations on the Russian invasion of Ukraine over its complaint on the Eastern expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a threat to its security by the newly armed military wing of the US led western hegemony that would have been dissolved after the end of the Second World War as its Warsaw counterpart which included Russia, but instead had remained active to be engaged in the invasion of a number of sovereign nations, including the African Nation of Libya devastated by NATO with its youths scattered aimlessly across the Sahel in search of any means of survival including joining armed robbery, Boko Haram, El Shabaab and other terrorist gangs still to be known.
The question is whether African nations should support their colonial and neo-colonial western masters while still held in bondage by endless strategic nascent wars that have dissolved agriculture in Africa and brought famine, kwashiorkor and the narcissistic international aid of helping the so-called ridiculed and helpless by the United Nations. Of course all African Nations must utilize their non alignment and vigilance to reflect on the possibility of the geopolitical rearrangement of the world and emergence of freedom from new routes, new friends, new supply chains and new trade relations that could lead to the rapid development of Africa. While 17 African countries aligned with their history and abstained in the spirit of non-alignment, unfortunately, 28 African nations including Nigeria, the largest in population voted from fear and perfidy to support and hopefully be rewarded by the U.S led western hegemonic NATO warriors in its proxy war in Ukraine.
South Africa led the 17 other sovereign nations to uphold the African banner of liberation. South Africa, through President Cyril Ramaphosa had also condemned in the strongest measure, the obnoxious, predictable and corresponding insult from the U.S House of Representatives in the form of a bill referred to as H.R7311 or Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, which will undergo further ascension before it becomes law. The Act openly opposed to by the comrade of the African National Congress (ANC) is directed at inducing fear in Africans by threatening to punish any African who engages in transactions on activities not viewed to be in the interest of the United States. Such a law not directed to their British, European kindreds or Ukrainian proxies diminishes the honour of every African or their descendants. Those African leaders whether in the United Nations, their countries, people of African descent or the African Union who have not condemned this racist Bill that shames international jurisprudence and human rights are the perfidious western victims of the infectious disorder of historical amnesia.
South Africa, in these times of trial has done well to rise above the fear of this once mighty but declining hegemony. In response to their panic over the geopolitical tension on trade relations, that they have lost the African market to China, Russia, Brazil and other BRICS nations, western imperialism has wrongly taken the military decision to impose and guard African trade, commerce and freedom without the will or free invitation of the African people to surround the African continent with its military command known as the AFRICOM, under its propaganda of protecting democracy from terrorists, Chinese communism and Russian dictatorship. The AFRICOM could not have been organised without the few perfidious Black turn-coat leaders who being summoned by the Central Intelligence Agency to a Conference on Democracy and Democracy Parties funded from the profits of oil multinational corporations that this year alone run into billions of dollars despite the COVID-19 pandemic. They are ready to complete their parties with disco dances in the warships of the circling AFRICOM commanders. Not South Africans, but Nigerians are punished by western agents, monitoring their democracy and elections as to their compliance to its’ immutable taste.
Not South Africa, but the Nigerian government that functions as the junior servant to the war games around Africa, organized by the American-led Western hegemonic rule and its military wing of NATO and AFRICOM, should plead to the South African host to participate in the South African-led war games, nick-named operation smoke or “mosi” that is also designed to be a warning to the adventurous armed klansmen from Virginia and South Carolina who are out for the hunting and lynching of the teeming numbers of aimless migrants and unemployed youths of Africa dislocated by wars in search of their livelihood, but are condemned as terrorists. By his heroic example, Comrade Ramaphosa has reminded us that all Africans fighting for freedom, honour and dignity should have no fear as Kwame Nkrumah, whether at home or abroad. Day-by-day, they form the building blocks of the developing African National Congress, and by their defiant and fearless actions to seek freedom have enabled the African people to catch a glimpse of the egalitarian and multilateral world for the peaceful coexistence of humanity now in sight.
•Henry A. Onwubiko is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka