The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
How the European intellectual domination of the African mind keeps our continent weak and divided
THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Ask any African elite what impedes our continent’s development, and they will list a litany of locally generated problems: corruption, lack of democracy, disregard for human rights, weak institutions, etc. Whether it is businesspersons, politicians, academics, civil society activists, or journalists, the problem will be local. Not one will talk about external factors such as poor terms of trade, elicit transfer of resources out of the continent, policies that benefit multinational capital at the expense of local capital, etc.
Consequently, political struggle in Africa is conducted over foreign ideas. These ideas are presented as neutral and universal. Government and the opposition will fight each other not over the substance of these ideas but over who is the best agent for their implementation. Debates in civil society, academia, and the mass media follow a similar pattern. Even local businesspersons will focus their struggle on mundane local issues, impervious to how the policy environment is rigged against its development.
Steve Biko, that great anti-apartheid activist, made a great contribution by saying that the greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is not his armies and police with their cannons and tanks. It is the mind of the oppressed. It is the reason Bob Marley sang that Africans should liberate themselves from mental slavery. Outside Africa, the intellectuals of the oppressed made this argument. One such intellectual was Antonio Gramsci, who propounded the concept of hegemony. The other was the Latin America scholar, Paul Freire, in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Hegemony refers to the sum total of beliefs, explanations, perceptions, and values that a dominant social group develops and subordinate social groups accept as the norm i.e. the normal way things are or should be. Hegemony is therefore the universally dominant ideology that justifies the existing social, political, and economic status quo as natural, normal, inevitable, and beneficial to everyone. Yet the status quo is actually an artificial social construct developed by and for the benefit of the dominant social group.
In Africa, we believe that the social arrangements (economic systems, political institutions, public policies, and cultural norms) of the Western world are universal and that everyone should adopt them for their own good. The counterpoint to the assimilation of this ideology is the belief among African elites that our own systems are archaic and backward. That is why we are quick to condemn everything in Africa or African—our leaders, our political practices, our ways of doing things, etc. This is not always an entirely wrong accusation, even though it is an overly simplistic one.
In 2011, the African Union appointed a committee chaired by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, to study elicit (illegal) transfer of resources out of Africa. They found that our continent loses $68 billion per year, 70% as a result of illicit activities of multinational companies like tax evasion, smuggling, etc. African leader-thieves took only 5%. Yet we think it is our leaders who “loot’ the continent. We fight each other in titanic political and dialectical battles over this 5%. Let me even predict: every reader of this article will attack me, accusing me of protecting our leader-thieves, and no one will attack multinational capital.
We are conditioned to always see the enemy within, however small and insignificant, and be blind to or ignore the larger enemy from outside. Stanbic Bank bought Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB) for $18 million. However, it inherited all its assets, such as government bonds and a huge collection of real estate. Within the first year, they sold the headquarters of UCB, now Cham Towers, for $21m. They also sold off many of the branches the bank had. Basically, they used the assets of UCB to buy UCB. Hardly a whisper of protest was registered in our veritable parliament or media.
If a Ugandan politician or businessman had bought UCB in a similar fashion and done what Stanbic did, they would have been hanged in the public square of public opinion. This is partly because such a person would have a name and a face to denounce. Multinational capital is not an individual known to us to condemn. But the real reason is deeply embedded in our conscious, subconscious, and even unconscious mind, i.e., the conviction that multinational capital is very important for our development. Indeed, the most venerated people in Africa are “foreign investors,” whom we promise red carpet welcomes. Yet it is impossible to find a country that developed because of foreign direct investment (FDI). Tell me one.
Beliefs are powerful. They make us see the world through their lenses. Once ideas become hegemonic, it becomes ever more difficult, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to change people’s minds. For instance, our belief in FDI as the elixir for our poverty boggles my mind. Colonialism was FDI proper. It was also the European promise to change our continent for our own good. Europeans took over our societies, created countries out of them, then set up political institutions, put in place public policies, hired personnel, and ran our affairs for 70 years. They said they were introducing commerce and civilization; they would end the tyranny of our customs and the despotism of our chiefs. After 70 years, they left us poor or even worse than they found us.
Even today, Europeans claim to be in Uganda to make us better. They fund our hospitals, schools, roads, farms, firms, etc. We applaud them for bringing in the much-loved foreign exchange. What Africans do not see, and even if they saw it, cannot address, is that there is much more outflow of dollars and euros out of Africa to Europe, North America (and today increasingly to China, India, Turkey, and the UAE) than comes into our continent. Readers of this column always say we depend on these countries for money.
Yet rich countries take out of our continent much more than they bring in. We give their companies free prime land, tax exemptions, subsidized water and electricity; they use skilled manpower educated in schools and treated in hospitals by the taxpayer, they use roads and ports for free and enjoy a legal system and a security environment paid for by us. When they do not pay their fair share of their taxes, the net benefit to our countries is negative. We cannot see this because we are consumed by the belief that the real problem is local. Africa needs the liberation of the mind. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know.
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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug
Eh Mwenda,
I thought you would be more cautious than state:
“Whether it is businesspersons, politicians, academics, civil society activists, or journalists, the problem will be local. Not one will talk about external factors such as poor terms of trade, elicit transfer of resources out of the continent, policies that benefit multinational capital at the expense of local capital, etc.”
Some of us perhaps do not belong to your gross categorisation!!!
For example after working 15 years (1987-2001) for different multinationals, I got first hand experience of how the West ‘blind us’ to transfer resources from our mother continent. I even almost paid dearly in 1989 when as a young innovator, I suggested in a management meeting to develop local fertlisers for company ‘X’.
Today, I am fortunately an independent innovator/inventor, and have no qualms openly declaring how pan Africanist I am and that I work for some level of technological independence of African societies.
There are so many others like me on the continent. So, please do not include us in your sweeping categorisation.
It is very frustrating to read how Andrew consistently fails to offer a deep or balanced analysis. For starters, capitalism does not reward laziness, ignorance, or incompetence. Much of the resource exploitation we see today has been enabled by the very people meant to protect national interests — our own African leaders.
Take Uganda, for instance. President Museveni has systematically dismantled local industry and pushed out domestic investors, making the economy increasingly dependent on foreign players. I could name over 500 major Ugandan investors who were deliberately sidelined. Even when the government takes back control of key services such as the recent nationalisation of UMEME the underlying motive often appears to be centralising economic power within Museveni’s inner circle, particularly his family. This is the root of the problem. Andrew overlooks this reality. He dismissed leaders like Magufuli who at least tried to assert African ownership while idolising Museveni, who has overseen the erosion of Uganda’s economic sovereignty. Yes, Africa was colonised — as were many other countries that later developed. But we cannot keep using colonialism as an all-encompassing excuse. If we lack the agency to shape our own future, no foreign power will do it for us.
Thanx Mr Mwenda for the story so you get to know that self driven was handed to Africa in a series of time perhaps long ago but the already thirsty leaders that appeared take over colonial rule to liberate African resources rather initiated more deals with the colonisers to gather more precious goodies for their interests ✊✊🇺🇬🇺🇬🙏🙏