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“The new Cold
War spells trouble for Africa,” says Aljazeera
E.
Ablorh-Odjidja
March 15, 2022
The writer
says, “After Russia invades Ukraine, the West has little reason
to even pretend it cares for defending democracy in Africa.”
I’m greatly in
sympathy with the writer’s assertion.
But has the West ever cared?
The West has
played fast and loose with Africa’s history throughout the past
five centuries and beyond and predictably will do so for as long
as it wants.
The only
problem is would Africa ever get wise to the machinations and
the ways of the West?
It appears that
as wise as this writer’s assertion is, he has a blind insight
into Fukuyama's thought on the evolution of ideology in
history.
He says,
“People paying any attention to world affairs have known for
years that Francis Fukuyama jumped the gun when he declared “the
end of history” and announced that the world has witnessed “the
end-point of humanity’s ideological evolution …after the fall of
the Soviet Union.”
Fukuyama didn’t
“jump the gun.” He
was celebrating the downfall of the Soviet Union when he thought
the West had won.
Fukuyama could
not have predicted with certainty the evolutionary course of
ideologies into the future, but he understood only what had
already transpired.
His side had won, or so he thought.
The “End of
History” prediction in 1992, was when the “Cold War” was thought
to be over and the only ideology left standing was that from the
West.
The Cold War
started at the end of WWII as an ideological and geopolitical
struggle between predominantly the United States and the Soviet
Union, now Russia. But the notion that there would be no further
compelling ideological struggle between nations was
short-sighted and wishful because even then there was the
specter of a rising China.
However,
Fukuyama's wishful thought propelled enormous celebrations; the
prospective chance that the West would project power over the
world for the next phase of history.
This urgency to
project power, mostly in the former Soviet Union domains of
influence, was what has brought the war to Ukraine.
One may have a
perspective from either West or the East, but the cause for the
war in Ukraine is about the dominance of ideology.
Whether in the
past or present, the
urge to project one form of ideology over another has been
present in world affairs.
Only this time, the tension produced is very grave.
History, in this sense of ideological evolution, continues. And
most of the time results in proxy wars.
One has only to
look at Africa now, where citizens could have lived in peace
under native systems, but for the sake of alien power lust, this
continent has never been left alone but forced to live in
turmoil for decades, under ideas projected mostly by others.
For some, the
collapse of Fukuyama‘s wish may have spurned some anguish. But
Africa should be spared the anguish.
That history
was supposed to die and never did should not be a tragedy.
History for Africa so far has been the tragedy.
History would
never die because Fukuyama said so.
And governance in Africa would not improve solely on the
Western liberal ideals that Fukuyama predicted.
Dominant powers
from the East and West have imposed their will on Africa.
And the clash of ideologies has produced tensions because
each side sees the other as hostile in the fight to maintain
self-interests and objectives.
Thus, the
processes of power in Africa have been the same historically;
from slavery, through imperialism and colonialism to
neo-colonialism.
Nothing has changed, except the labels.
Africa is yet
to understand fully the misleading minds of the West.
Nor the guiles from the East.
History is not dead.
The only certainty is that power comes to Africa from the
outside.
We need to
relate to Fukuyama’s "history is dead" through Nietzsche.
Long before
Fukuyama, it was Nietzsche who said, “God is dead.”
Nietzsche’s
statement was not misleading.
It was a rhetorical charge but can also serve as a
reflection on Fukuyama’s thoughts.
“God is dead,”
declared Nietzsche.
So, man would replace the Almighty. Were Nietzsche to be alive
today, he would not be disappointed.
The West most
of all has transformed itself into a god, the ubermensch, a
Nietzschian thought.
And the same drive for power through ideology continues, though
Fukuyama had declared history dead.
In short, the
spirituality that Nietzsche hinted had gone out from the souls
of men has found a home in the hubris of powers from both West
and East.
And the
projections of power from these two blocks of power continue to
fall on poor countries.
For instance,
"liberal democracy," with no native cultural underpinnings, is
being projected as the ideal form of governance for Africa, just
as NATO is trying to do for Ukraine.
Even if the
sentiments of "liberal democracy" are ephemeral or crippling, it
wouldn’t matter. Of course,
it wouldn't because the tenets or principles were
conditioned to change on whims alone.
Shock and awe
in Iraq and you would be augmenting God's mission, but
Ukraine? No!
Perhaps, Africa
could do better by observing the ongoing war in Ukraine.
But it should first learn to operate through its native systems
of governance that are ultimately more humane and natural to the
culture.
We can come to
this point through experiments, not wars. And attempts
have been made in the past. Unfortunately, the attempts
have been aborted by coups because they were not sanctioned by
the ideologies of the West or East.
Long before
Ukraine, there was the scramble for Africa. Exploitation by
commercial interests from the West started. Alternate help
offered recently by the East has turned out to be as predatory
as the imperialist appetites of the commercial interests from
the West.
There are
ravages left or ongoing in Africa that has never been owned or
apologized for by both West and the East.
So, no need to
be too emotional about Ukraine. Today, Mali and Burkina Faso are
in turmoil, with France on the sidelines meddling in their
affairs. Africa in the 21st Century is still under the
thumb of colonialism.
Before
Fukuyama, we had a single face for Colonialism in Africa - the
West. Now we have
two - the West and China.
One day soon, this double-face jeopardy will result in
the next Cold War.
And the resulting confrontation will leave Africa’s history in
more than a messy situation.
E.
Ablorh-Odjidja, publisher, www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC,
March 15, 2022.
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