MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 6 – (Nigerian Nightmare & Congolese Chaos)

~ Che ~ 12 Comments

(Lessons from the first (mis)steps following modern Africa’s independence)

Nigeria’s case, considering her human and natural resource potential, is especially pathetic. One of the most mineral rich countries in the whole world and probably the most educated nation-space in Africa, high hopes were pinned on her future. Before he died in 1946, Herbert Macaulay had already for more than two decades championed, stoked the fires and laid the political foundations of Nigerian nationalism. But Nigeria’s greatest strength was also her most paralysing weakness: Diversity in number. A mind-blowing total of over three hundred tribes speaking as many or more languages, additionally split between Christians, Muslims and Animists, with a long pre-colonial history of competition, are indigenous to the most populous black country on earth. As victory in the push for 1960 independence from British rule approached, politics blatantly and shamelessly degenerated into ethno-regional-religious do-or-die contests. Macaulay’s successor, Zik of Africa, eventually abandoned the national canvas and, following the examples of the other regional leaders, retreated into ethno-regional partisanship. From all sides of the federation the message was clear and unambiguous: Pan-nationalism and one-nigerianness were henceforth dead and buried. Political leaders, including the Prime Minister, were seen each by the other regions as simply representing the interests of their regions, tribes or religions. From then on, the Nigeria project became purely a treacherous, mistrustful, coalition poker, a serpentine dance on shifting sands, a volatile cake to be unevenly divided or stolen whole, a mad dash for power. Corruption and selfishness flourished. Nigeria’s stupendous mineral wealth turned into a curse. In the contest for political, economic, resource and military advantage, there was no loud, strong, unifying, pacifying, blending voice. Instead there was a deafening dearth of Will to see themselves as one great people, to detribalise and de-religionise the nation-space, to inculcate national values, to forfeit any right-to-rule mentality, to foster trust amongst one another. There was no leadership effort to awaken in the peoples a sense of being one people, a purpose to being one people, a will to become one people in an equity-based democratic independent African nation. Like an unstable atom, Nigeria wobbled and broke down. Rigged elections, violence, coups, pogroms, civil war, military dictatorships, failed democracies, tribalism, religious violence, calls for cessation from all sides, annulled elections, distrust, disunity, accusations and counter-accusations, all underlined by corruption and financed by Nigeria’s oil reserves – this would consequently be Nigeria’s fate for the next forty years after independence. Wounds and positions from the past still plague the national dialogue, unreconciled, even to this day. Great problems need great minds. Great opportunities require great courage. On independence morning, Nigeria’s leaders proved themselves unable to dream big and visionary, to grasp the spear of destiny inadvertently handed to this unique black nation and to overcome the temptations of regionalism. Nobody was willing to be the one to forfeit regionalism in the interest of nation-building. No-one was brave enough to bell the cat. Nigeria was not plagued by one lifelong dictator; she was and is plagued by one lifelong streak of power-lust and plunder.

Congo, another stupendously mineral-wealthy country, did not even make it past the first few months of independence before intense internal disunities thrust it into the path of civil war, coups and dictatorship. Lumumba, quite simply, never had a chance. Belgian interests and American intelligence were bent on his demise. In the face of outside opposition, the only chance of survival anybody ever has is the unity, support and backing of his people. But, of all the independence era African leaders, probably none was a greater victim of the internal disunity of his country’s tribes and peoples than was Patrice Lumumba. But he was not victim alone. His fiery, fearless and forthright nature – his greatest asset as a freedom fighter and anti-imperialist champion of independence – became his tragic, if heroic, Achilles’ heel once the Congo attained independence and was left to itself, with him as its executive head. Not reconciliation and de-escalation were his modus operandi – such were not in his revolutionary nature. His message was resistance, retaliation, elimination and conquest. His fazit: Congo was full of local and foreign enemies, and they all had to be eliminated or booted out. Fullstop. When the U.N. – whose peace-keeping troops had, at his behest, come into his country with lightning speed – seemed unwilling to help him squash his enemies in the manner he desired, he loudly turned to communist Russia for help, inadvertently touching a raw nerve in global Cold War politics. He was punching way above his weight. Thus, his fate – and that of the Congo – was sealed right from the start. His fellow Congolese, aided by Belgian troops, captured him, held him without trial, tortured and executed him, and hacked his body to pieces; but that too brought no peace. The rest is history. The Congo, alias Zaire, has since then been the plaything of coups, interventions and dictatorships, the most infamous – but not last – of which was under Mobutu Sese Seko. After once suffering and surviving the dark horrors of Belgian oppression and exploitation, the mineral-rich Congo today still remains a tricky multi-ethnic hotbed of internecine guerrilla activity, civil war and internal disunity.

Independence, again and again, is followed by national disorientation and national soul-searching, by disagreements, civil strife and civil war. Even after the fight for political liberation has been won, the acteurs march on in the same spirit of war – hunting saboteurs, persecuting opponents, sidelining adversaries, undermining competition, underdeveloping out-of-favour regions, and taking revenge on defeated former oppressors. In Africa, rather than triggering a united, popular, constructive march towards self-dependent development, political independence exposed and fed a glaring unwillingness or incapacity to unite, to make use of the various strengths of the various components of the nation, to apply the pragmatic common sense and make the tough sacrifices and compromises required to achieve a functional political unity. What became visible was a frightening failure to grasp the concept of the one, big, strong, united Whole, shared by everybody and not just dominated one-sidedly by a few. An integrated Whole to which, and for which, each individual is responsible and free. Instead, under the conditions as they were, all that could flourish were OPPRESSION and CORRUPTION, DISTRUST, CONFLICT and, eventually, DISINTEGRATION. Independence, in the cruel irony of the ways of fate, brought with it more challenges than colonialism ever faced us with, and we were not prepared for them at all. Just as today also, despite the benefit of historical hindsight, South Sudan too was not prepared for the internally disruptive forces that are always set free by independence.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

… continued in 7 of 11:
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 7 – (Ugandan Up-n-down)

Preceding Chapters:
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 1 (Preamble)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 2 (Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 3 (Tunisian Troubles, Libyan Losses, Ethiopian Woes)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 4 (Sudan and South Sudan)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 5 – (Ghanaian Black Holes & Ivorian Time Bombs)

KINDERAUGEN

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Ihre Augen sprechen eine Sprache
Die meine Empfindung begreift
Aber nur sie, diese innere Flamme –
Mein Verstand nicht.

Oft stehe ich frustriert, verwirrt
Abends an ihrem Hochbett und höre zu
Wie sie mir lebhaft-müde ihre Eindrücke
Des Tages in Kindersprache übermittelt

Wer im Kindergarten wen geärgert hat
Daß ihre Puppe bald Geburtstag hat
Ob ich heute schon beim Sport war
Warum die Jäger die Tigermamas erschießen

Aber während sie kreuz und quer redet
Sagen mir ihre Augen liebevoll, daß sie mir
Etwas ganz Anderes eigentlich sagen möchte
Für das sie noch keine Worte hat.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THE RIVER

~ Che ~ 6 Comments

Time could be a river
If I were standing still
Or a dream, if I
Had taken a sleeping pill –

But awake I meander
Through dreams which I fulfil
So I must be the river
And time is standing still.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 5 -(Ghanaian Black Holes & Ivorian Time Bombs)

~ Che ~ 8 Comments

(Lessons from the first (mis)steps following modern Africa’s independence)

There is a brief moment of opportunity, in the hour of freedom and liberation, when the momentum that is presented by the formation or regeneration of a nation-state gives to its chief policy-makers, its opinion-shapers and its mass-leaders the rare chance to hammer a brave new impulse deep into the orientation-seeking psyche of the nation and shift it unto a path of mutually supportive and constructive upbuilding. It is a moment in time, a window of opportunity. If missed, a sequence of events is set into motion which makes it progressively difficult to recapture the momentum and the opportunity. If grasped, however, the same occurs, in the opposite, positive, direction. Nelson Mandela and South Africa recognised it and took a chance on it. The leaders of South Sudan, so far, seem blind and immune to it. South Sudan has simply joined the long list of African nations in which independence was followed by disorientation, dis-unification, breakdown and destabilization. Examples, as I said, abound.

In Ghana, Africa’s black star, Kwame Nkrumah weathered hefty colonial resistance and, even from within the walls of his unjust imprisonment, forced and triggered Ghanaian independence, and then came to power in a blinding blaze of glory that inspired nationalistic fervour all over the continent, further fuelling the thirst for independence in Black Africa. Nkrumah’s impact on the socio-political psyche of Black Africans then and now cannot be over-emphasized. No other African independence leader so charismatically inspired, articulated and harnessed revolutionary zeal, Black intellectual nationalistic self-confidence, and absolute disdain towards all forms of dependence and imperialism like Nkrumah did. He championed the search for innovative solutions to Africa’s economic problems and went ahead trying to implement his. He recognised the danger of tribalism and put forward policies to reduce its detrimental effects. He was the very spirit of pan-africanism, a driving force behind the forming of the OAU. But, while calling for pan-african unity on the continental stage, in his own country he banned opposition political parties, nationalised as much of industry as he could, put price controls in place, centralised power and placed his faith, like his friend Nasser did, in his own indigenous socialism hybrid. The toast of praise-singers and sycophants, he trusted no-one and placed the entire country under his personal control. He sunk huge sums into forward-looking industrialization schemes, but most got mismanaged by a dizzying number of state corporations that sprung up like mushrooms. Convinced that these and other unilaterally decreed measures would lead Ghana to the promised land, he never wavered in his fervour. The speedy decline of the Ghanaian economy which followed in the ensuing years was staggering and painful to all lovers of Africa and Ghana. Six years after independence, Ghana’s reserves stood at a shocking £500,000. Patronage and corruption flourished, discontent, division and internal resistance grew, the unwanted was ostracized, opposition elements imprisoned and silenced. There was no blueprint for an alternative solution or for a reshuffling of executive responsibilities. In Ghana, all roads led through Nkrumah. Less than ten years after his triumphant entry, in a country that had become riddled and debilitated by corruption and poverty, Nkrumah was unceremoniously overthrown in a coup d’etat, which was followed by another coup d’etat… then eventually by another… and Ghana was spiralling down a pit of retrogression unimaginable as at the time of her trail-blazing independence in 1957. It took decades before Ghana understood the painful lesson of the bitter pill of militarism and one-sided pseudo-democracy, and gradually began to build anew a new truer democracy, a wasteland of wasted decades scarring its history.

In Cote d’Ivoire, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, feeling himself to be ideologically superior to Kwame Nkrumah, made a bet with Nkrumah as to which of their two nations would be better developed within the decade that was to follow. And, at first he might have seemed to have won the bet. He avoided communism like the pest and predicted, already way back in the sixties, the Chinese invasion of Africa. He was one of the few independence era leaders who went the way of economic liberalism. Spurning nationalistic zeal, he stayed in close contact with the French, his country’s former colonial masters, and gave French capitalistic endeavours a freehand in the Ivory Coast. Apart from that, he did nothing different from all the rest. The self-acclaimed Crocodile kept a steely grip on government, permitted only a one-party state, devoid of democracy. He made no attempt to anchor democratic principles of equity, opinion-sourcing, power-sharing and broad engagement. No empowered participation, rotation of responsibility, the sharing of leadership responsibilities, socio-political unification of differing tribes and religions, the internal blending of a nation into one people. For twenty years no elections were held in Cote d’Ivoire, as Houphouët-Boigny cleverly left the country under the hypnosis of French economic control while perfecting the art of neutralising his opponents and critics by giving them tantalizing little morsels of pseudo-power in a system utterly dominated by him and him alone. For over two decades it seemed to work. When the collapse came, it was swift, brutal and sobering. Global prices of Ivorian exports like cocoa and coffee plunged. Oil prices shot up. French businesses repatriated their money to France. The Ivory Coast was bankrupt. Inspite of all his efforts, Cote d’Ivoire’s economic self-reliance never materialised; and now that the bubble had bust, the missed opportunities in true political and democratic maturation became apparent. As Houphouët-Boigny’s health declined, “heirs” to the throne began to jostle for position. By his death, in office, in 1993, as the third longest serving leader in the whole world as at that time, the long ignored internal chaos and disharmony was all he left behind. What had once seemed like a model became exposed as a mirage. It was simply a case of delayed reaction. Cote d’Ivoire too eventually went the way of Nigeria, Ghana and so many others – coups, corruption, unrest, civil war, militant dictatorship, ethnic enmities, religious rancour, and division. Neither Cote d’Ivoire nor Ghana was better than the other. They were in the same boat.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

… continued in Part 6 of 11:
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 6 – (Nigerian Nightmare & Congolese Chaos)

Preceding Chapters:
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 1 (Preamble)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 2 (Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 3 (Tunisian Troubles, Libyan Losses, Ethiopian Woes)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 4 (Sudan and South Sudan)

MUT UND FREUDE

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Da bist du
In den Kilometern verborgen
Machst dir Sorgen
Über Morgen

Da sind wir
In den Jahren verloren
Ungeboren
Erfroren

Da bin ich
In den Träumen gefangen
Voller Verlangen
Und Bangen

Wo ist geblieben
Unser Sinn für Gegenwart?
Uns war doch einst egal
Welche Todesart
Beim mutigen Gehen unseren Weges
Auf uns harrt.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

NOBODY ELSE

~ Che ~ Leave a comment

A thought of mine
Well-saddled, gallops on
Its hasty steed
Like a need seeking another need
For the ache has become
A part of my memory of you
And my needing to be needed by you
Has become too, too heavy to share
With anybody else but you.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

TWICE IS NOT ENOUGH – pt. 5

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

Loneliness, heart
Time breathes, in out
Endless time
One foot ahead of the other
The foot you left behind,
Drags
You lift it
Place it ahead of the other
With life, breathe, in out
Pain, unbearable, becomes bearable

Loneliness?
The earth, not our home
We make it homely
But sooner or later
We feel again
Loneliness?
Homesickness?
Loneliness, heart
And the loneliness won’t leave your heart.

As Ngozi watched Ada reading some papers in front of her, she felt again the old loneliness creep back into her heart as thoughts of Tony came floating back, whisp by whisp, into her.

Oh, Tony.

Since they broke up, life had seemed quietly dismal to her. Empty, barren, not so much like night – which, when clear and lit up, is beautiful – as like a sunless, hueless, dreary day. A touch, a smile, a face, a voice… oh, how these could so make a difference in one’s existence! Everything had changed after him. She needed a way out or in, she didn’t know which. Going or coming? She felt trapped in an irresolute destiny. That was when she had started reading Sylvia Plath. Only there had she found a temporary home. And temporary had been long enough. Who needs forever when temporary can do the same job in a fraction of the time?

Why waste forever on the temporary? We will live on.

But, inspite of that, without Tony, the unfriendly world had become and remained even unfriendlier. She could take it, but it was still like a slap in the face. Harsh, stunning, demoralising. But sometimes it could be a clarion-call to action.

Like now!

She touched Ada resolutely a third time on the shoulder. Everybody around her secretly held their breath and guardedly watched this odd spectacle between these two young women.

Ada did not appear, for a second, to have felt the touch on her shoulder. Then she, with deliberation, turned her beautiful head to the man sitting to the right of Ngozi and spoke directly to him.

“Please, could we exchange seats.”

Clearly the man was taken by surprise. His big eyes opened wider on his lean, black, bony face and he sputtered:

“Eh… er… okay.”

Ada stood up, squeezed past the woman on her right and, as she stood in the aisle, waiting for the man to slide past her, became – or rather, her legs became – the objects of general, if mixed, attraction.

Finally, though, the switch was concluded. The woman that had been to her right and thus on the edge of her former bench, had slipped into the position she had just vacated, in the middle, leaving the man to again be on the edge, like he had been in his former bench.

Ada, meanwhile, on this bench, indicated to Ngozi that she would like to sit in the middle, and Ngozi acquiesced. Side by side, they looked at each other.

Then, with a smile, they shook hands.

This indeed seemed, to the spectators around them, like an unexpected but pleasing dramatic finale to the live-show; an unconscious tension that had lain over each person broke and lifted and suddenly everybody burst into smiles as if a bubble had burst, a cue been given, a story found a worthy, happy ending. And everybody likes to know how the story ended. When it ends well, people smile.

Even the man who had taken the seat in front to make space for Ada beside Ngozi, turning just at the right moment with a bemused look on his face, also had to smile, although (which had prompted his turning around) the two fat-bosomed, big-bottomed women to his left were now forcing him to all but perch precariously with barely half of his buttocks on the tiny space they grudgingly allowed him on the very edge of the bench. Too late he had realised that his former seat was much more comfortable, but the damage had already been all but done. He thought immediately of asking for his former seat back, but you know women; the young lady would begin to talk upside-down jargon and by the time he managed to get his seat back, if at all, they would already be at their final destination.

Such were the thoughts going through his vexed mind when he turned round with that bemused look on his face of which I earlier spoke. When, however, he saw the two young women smiling handsomely and shaking hands, looking as though they would soon be hugging each other at any moment, although he had no idea why, the altruistic part of him was suddenly touched and, magnanimously contented, he turned round again with a transformed countenance and bore his fate on his new bench with a noble silence.

to be continued…

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

Part 4
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

Enjoy the full Story hereamazon cover copy twice is not enough 2015

MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 4 – (Sudan and South Sudan)

~ Che ~ 11 Comments

(Lessons from the first (mis)steps following modern Africa’s independence)

Those who have a knowledge of post-independent Africa will, sadly, not be surprised by the turn of events in South Sudan today. Macabre, but true. Indeed, they would have expected it and, like Mandela and his team, and they would have prepared for it, to try and avert it. South Sudan’s road to independence has been long and winding. She began her life in the modern African world as a region of an arab-dominated Sudan which was herself the joint colonial property of Egypt and Britain. Even before their first modern independence – that of Sudan from Egypt and Britain – Sudan was divided into an arab-speaking islamic north on the one hand, and on the other hand a south full of a myriad black tribes speaking different tongues, mainly Christianised, partly adherent still to ancient African religions, and basically lacking a sense of united nationhood amongst themselves. What united them was their wariness of the north in the face of a long history of slavery and jihadic wars; whereas the north itself was focused on achieving independence from its external colonisers. And independence indeed eventually came, but it did not bring peace with it. Acrimony between military and politics, disputes between Marxists and non-Marxists, moslem-christian religious animosities, and the distrust between north and south, ensured that years of coups, civil wars, genocide and violent disunity would follow. Decades after independence, seemingly unable or unwilling to find a lasting workable peace between north and south, in 2011 they parted ways acrimoniously. Soon after, in the newly independent and sovereign South Sudan, the very same quarrels, accusations and maneuverings that had plagued newly independent African countries five decades earlier, reared their stubborn heads here too and South Sudan degenerated into a hydra-headed civil war. Finally, the tribes of the South, lacking any other external adversary, seemed all too willing to turn their guns on each other and destroy what it now seems that they never had nor ever really tried to cultivate during the decades of tribulation: internal Oneness, inter-tribal political unity. And, unfortunately for them, it seems that they, too, have no Madibas amongst them.

Take any African region, north, west, east and south, and study its collective post-independent or post-liberation history. Examples abound, enough of them. The wound cries out like a disjointed pack of scattered wild voices screaming from a burning house: the lack of reconciliation; the lack of representative, inclusive democracy, of socio-political unity. Some will call it the lack of national common sense. In Africa, for some reason, political office is not voluntarily terminal, whether or not the constitutions stipulate such, and power is not shared. Leaders seem to love only the concept of their country, the fact of having a country, but do not also love all the peoples of the country, their welfare, their liberties and their peacefully united future – not if it requires that the rulers and their support groups themselves equalise themselves with the rest of the country and subject themselves to a rule of law that stands above everyone. Instead, everybody wants to grab the crown, and sit on the throne, and then ostracize, under-develop and punish his enemies. No matter what effects this has on the country in the long and short run.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

… continued in Part 5 of 11:
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES: 5 -(Ghanaian Black Holes & Ivorian Time Bombs)

Preceding Chapters:
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES : 1 – (Preamble)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES : 2 – (Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs)
MANDELA, LEARNING FROM OTHERS’ MISTAKES : 3 – (Tunisian Troubles, Libyan Losses, Ethiopian Woes)

KÄMPFEN

~ Che ~ 15 Comments

Nicht, wer kann mir helfen?
Sondern wie kann ich mir selbst helfen?
Das ist die Frage, die einzige Frage
Weiter bringt dich keine Klage.

Wie viel Geld brauchst du
Um aus der Unterschicht heraus zu klettern?
Genau so viel, um es gut zu
Haben in der Unterschicht Brettern.
Wenn nur diese Gedanken nicht da wären
Stolz und Schmerz lassen sich nicht erklären.

Überleben ist eine Funktion der Wahrnehmung
Das Gleiche, Hoffnung. Das Gleiche, Lähmung.
Das Gleiche, kämpfen ohne aufzugeben
Und mit allem klar kommen in deinem Leben.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

DAWN BEFORE DAWN

~ Che ~ 5 Comments

The light that comes
Comes from within –
Sun, moon and stars
Are stars in your own inner film
Morning comes with distant murmurings
Trains and cars and birdsongs gurgling
Silence broken by the rain
And swallowed up in silence again.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.