A New World Order: Occupy Yourself First.

Lots of high profile people have kicked the bucket this year, haven't they? It's like the globes social polarities are in flux. Ghaddafi's death, thinking about Libya and governance and the challenges facing African countries in the coming decade or so has got me all twisted up in political theory again. Don't laugh, but I have been wandering around Wikipedia's political portal in a kind of shopping spree. Picking an ideology has been even harder than choosing a political party* : libertarian socialism, or anarcho-communism? Does egalitarianism make my behind look fat? Does Civil Rights come in summer colors? How does one combine the absolute freedom of choice of the individual with social justice and the welfare and functioning of the collective? Quandary.

There is only one thing I am sure of, and that is that African citizens need to go active and keep claiming their rogue governments. Coming to an East African near you:

"There is no Peer Review Mechanism, Treaty or African Leadership Prize that can address this level of social organization, let alone influence it. Those schemes, perhaps they are effective but from the bottom looking up they reek of technocratic impersonality, removed from the sugar and salt of daily life. Tanzania, for example, is hardly new to the idea of peaceful presidential transitions: we're on our fourth administration and counting down towards the fifth when we may or may not flirt with changing parties. But even in this relatively stable environment it, is clear that there is deep crisis of faith brewing. We are looking for someone or something to believe in, and clearly the Big Man model is severely compromized in an age of increasing transparency, affluence and access."

One good read I have enjoyed on the Ghaddafi story is this sideways glance from Charles Onyango-Obbo talking about how the revolution will be Tweeted. Watching journalism cope with new media has been absolutely riveting. Heh.

And then, there is the Occupy movement. We have a local activist trying to get it off the ground in Dar es Salaam- as of last Friday I believe. The resounding silence has been... instructive. I threw a comment up on there, let's see if the blogsite is dead or alive. To readers who have been saying the revolution is necessary and just around the corner etc... what do you make of this? After all, Occupy is a global movement now. Can it work in Bongo? I'd say we need to Occupy ourselves long before it makes sense to Occupy anything else, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

We Live In a Post-Ghaddafi World Now.

Muammar Ghaddafi, Revolutionary, Brother Leader, Despot is no more. I am disappointed at the manner of his demise simply because I don't believe in rapid execution/murder, and I think he had a few questions to answer in a court of the people. The official position is that he died of wounds sustained during battle. Mh.

I was no fan of his, and no amount of "but Libyans have the highest GDP/capita, levels of education, standard of living, etc" argument will convince me that his rule was justified. Benevolent despotism is simply about building a gilded cage: you might "enjoy" certain "perks" but you are still a slave, and a prisoner. Anyways, that's what revolutions are for: to decapitate a polity so that it can hopefully grow a new head that is keeping with the values of the time. A form of social pruning, if you will.

Ghaddafi's death marks the beginning of the end of the independence movement era in Africa. As one of the chief Pan-Africanists, I think he has shown us how hypocritical and compromized many revolutionary leaders of the era turned out to be. They spoke the language of freedom and brotherhood, they practiced control, corruption and murder. They made promises with breath that smells of the blood of their own people. They leave their children and grandchildren names to be ashamed of in public. I can't imagine what they were thinking but I have heard that power corrupts and in the end Big Men are just men. Nothing more, nothing less. So can we get over our African penchant for Bigmanism already?

Let's see what Libya is going to do now that the man who built a nation in his own image is dead. I don't hold out much hope, it looks like the institutions of governance have to be reconfigured and that always results in opportunistic political conflict. But I wish them every luck and success. In the meantime, Mahmood Mamdani's piece for Al Jazeera says all there is to say about the other problem that Libya is suffering from: intervention.

Lord Palmeston said it best, and I paraphrase: in international relations there are no friends, yo. Yeah: the other playaz will play you, given a chance. There are those who are cheering Africa's "emergence" on the world stage*, but I am not one of them. Put simply, every time "the world" takes a deep interest in Africa, we seem to get royally shafted six ways from Sunday. The secret to China's success on the continent is their model: no BS, just barter. Seems to work. Now that Libya is firmly intervened with, and they have oil, they might want to look over at Afghanistan and Iraq which seem to have developed a severe neo-colonial infection. Their occupiers just can't seem to leave... (all that free oil behind...)

*ati emergence? We never went anywhere to begin with. Is this one of those silly things, like the way colonial explorers had a habit of "discovering" geographical features that the locals had always known were there? Mxiii. Let's call this what it is: the rest of the world now thinks we're cool enough to hang out with. Structural racism is taking a hit.

The Weekly Sneak: Lean, Green and Mean

I have had bicycles on my mind lately. I like bicycles. As inventions go, this one was a good one. They are fun. They make sense. And they are useful. And there's been a lot of depressing news lately flowing around locally (Jairo!) and internationally (Ghaddafi!) none of which is conclusive or comforting in the least. Time for something uplifting, like bicycles. In the East African:

"A reader asked recently why the fuel crisis did not result in a search for viable alternatives. Maybe we just didn’t look at the right t-shirt slogans."

And that's it. See you in the comments section sometime next week, I hope.

The Passions of Old Soldiers

So with the fall of Ghaddafi, my interest in the peculiarities of African despots has been reignited. One of the duties of an accomplished African despot is to develop a quirk that is so...so... well, that it leaves observers speechless. It is hard to outdo the ones who have gone before, between Mobutu and Bokassa the standard has been set extremely high. But this is a vast continent with many countries and there are plenty of interesting behaviors to be observed. Obvious things like gold fixtures in the palace bathrooms are de rigueur and cannot win you points- one must aim for originality where possible.

Not all artistic yearnings must be vulgar either: I just found out today by eavesdropping on some folks' Twitter conversation that Museveni apparently sings to his cattle*. And that he does so slightly ineptly. The thing about despots is that you have to resist the urge to humanize them because then you start rolling down the slippery slope of empathy... but this is a rather appealing hobby to have. Not to mention stylish: it takes a certain cultural refinement to embrace difficult and dying old artforms. Sigh.

Ghaddafi, on the other hand. What a disappointment. It's like we've seen this movie before: the tasteless palace, the defiant son, the delusions of grandeur, the parting of company with reality. For a guy who has literally pitched his tent everywhere to the delight of people who appreciate small acts of defiance, I was expecting something really rather interesting. But not this interesting. Ghaddafi's crush on Condoleeza Rice was... is... wow. And here I thought the Jheri Curl was the worst of it.

A man's image cannot survive certain revelations about his character.

*Cattle singing is a gorgeous old practice with a whole history behind it and I have always wanted to know more. Anyone know of resources out there?

The Pan-African Thing.

It is not politic to be anti-Pan Africanist. I know this. And for my sins, I was soundly rebuked recently when I was informed that "You might not need Pan Africanism, just as Pan Africanism doesn't need you." And here I am soundly rebuked again.

Bring it.

If it makes folks happy to come together under the African shade tree of their own free will, I got no beef with that. Part of the fun of World Cup 2010 is watching the pervasive marketing scheme, ati "Africa's World Cup" complete with celebrities* flown in from across the continent and the world (mostly black, of course) to help celebrate things with a nice cultural mash-up. But didja know that Africans have, like, the worst record for intra-continental travel? Those of us who can afford a certain lifestyle would rather go to London or New York for recreation than, say, Cairo or Antananarivo...

Anywho, my problem is with imposed collectives, which is why for example the East African Federation doesn't work for me. Especially not with Museveni's extremely naked ambitions to crown hisself King of East Africa if he's given half a chance. Likewise, the African Union idea is being peddled hardest by... Muammar Ghaddafi? Um, no thanks?

These things don't need to be forced, especially not when the major agenda behind political collectives is to stroke the egos of some imperially-minded Presidents For Life. We've been doing modern nation-states for all of half a century, and the relative frequency of explosive political situations all around indicate to me that we're still finding our feet. This One Africa business will best be engineered by private sector initiatives (like Zain's really useful multi-country thingy) and regular folks travelling around for school, for jobs, for business. I figure we'll get there in a healthy manner, especially if the political collectivists stop trying to push us around.

*You know what wasn't right? Having superb musicians like Bra Hugh and Femi Kuti on the stage for 30 seconds only during the opening ceremony and then letting that R Kelly guy do a whole song. Puke.