ANC Today

Volume 4, No. 41 • 15-21 October 2004

THIS WEEK:

Wathint' abafazi: halala Wangari Maathai!

On 8 October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee informed the world that it had "decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004 to Wangari Maathai for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace."

It went on to observe that, "Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment. Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa. She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women's rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally."

Correctly, it said: "Wangari Maathai will be the first woman from Africa to be honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize. She will also be the first African from the vast area between South Africa and Egypt to be awarded the prize. She represents an example and a source of inspiration for everyone in Africa fighting for sustainable development, democracy and peace."

We must also add that her struggle challenges the international community to implement the decisions taken at the Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development.

As Africans we fully endorse the assessment of Wangari Maathai's contribution made by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. We warmly congratulate Wangari Maathai, a courageous and far-sighted African woman. Beyond that, we must draw the necessary lessons from what she has done, which won the accolades of the Nobel Committee.

We have to join her in the struggle she has waged for at least 28 years now, fully understanding that hers is a struggle for the realisation of the goal of a better life for all Africans, for the victory of the African Renaissance.

Interviewed in 1991 by the then senior lecturer in English at the U.S. Dartmouth College, Priscilla Sears, Wangari said: "Others told me that I shouldn't have a career, that I shouldn't raise my voice, that women are supposed to have a master, that I needed to be somebody else. Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong.

"African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence. The worst problem for both men and women in Africa today actually is unspinning the cocoon of Western stereotypes, within which people are confined by the internationalisation of Western culture's patronising and exploitative conceptions of Africans: 'decolonising the mind ', as Ngugi says."

Ms Sears began her article on Wangari with these words: "Several years ago I saw a performance by a touring company of women from South Africa called 'You Strike the Woman, You Strike the Rock' (Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo). It was advertised as a song of 'strength and endurance and joy'. I remembered it as I talked with Wangari Maathai."

Of course, as South Africans, we know this call very well. We know that, in full, it is - wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo, uzakufa! (You strike the women, you strike a rock, you will die!)

We know that this was the battle cry of the 20,000 fighting women who marched on the offices of the then apartheid Prime Minister, JG Strijdom, on 9 August 1956, demanding the abolition of the Africans-only identity document, "the pass", which was identified by our movement and people as a "badge of slavery".

It made the bold statement that the risen women of our country, who were continuing a struggle in which the women had been involved from the very beginning of the colonial period, were as indestructible as granite. It signalled the commitment of the masses of the women of our country to continue the struggle against apartheid until victory was won, a commitment they honoured.

As Ms Sears heard Wangari Maathai say it was imperative for the women of Africa "to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence", she was right to remember the message she had heard from Wangari's African sisters from South Africa - wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo! Through struggle, Wangari has given added strength to this message.

Though an intellectual and academic, Wangari Maathai has not been satisfied merely to analyse and interpret the role and place of the women of Africa. Rather, she immersed herself in the women's movement of Kenya, determined to help mobilise the masses of the women to become their own liberators. Active in the National Council of Women from 1976, she was its Chairperson from 1981 to 1987.

Indeed it was her involvement in the struggle for the upliftment of the women of Kenya that led her to start the world famous tree planting campaign, leading to the formation of the Green Belt Movement. A grassroots and basically women's mass movement, the Green Belt Movement related the protection of the soil and the environment to the improvement of the lives of women and their families. In a paper submitted to the UN Beijing Women's Conference in 1995, Wangari said: "The Movement therefore addresses the issues of wood fuel, both for rural populations and the urban poor, the need for fencing and building materials, the rampant malnutrition and hunger, the need to protect forests, water catchment areas, open spaces in urban centres and the need to improve the low economic status of women.

"It encourages women to create jobs, prevent soil erosion, slow the process of desertification and loss of bio-diversity, as well as plant and eat indigenous food crops. The organisation tries to empower women in particular and the civil society in general so that individuals can take action and break the vicious circle of poverty and underdevelopment."

Among other things and drawing on the example set by Wangari Maathai, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has identified the protection of the indigenous African tropical and rain forests, our soils, our rivers, lakes and water resources, our bio-diversity, our wild life and natural habitat, our coastal areas and oceans, as a priority task. We must preserve this environmental resource not only for ourselves as Africans, but also for humanity as a whole.

One of the most exciting developments in the ongoing process of African renewal is the mobilisation of women in the ways visualised by Wangari Maathai. It seems clear that the women of Africa will set the pace in terms of guaranteeing the involvement of the masses of the people towards the achievement of the objectives whose pursuit earned Wangari her well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, the same objectives that are fundamental to the success of the African Union and its development programme, NEPAD.

Anybody on our continent who chooses to stand in the path of the risen African women would do well to recall the battle cry Priscilla Sears could not forget - wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo, uzakufa!

Beyond the immediate and pressing matters to which Wangari has dedicated her life, critically her struggle is also about the most fundamental of human rights - the right to life. As reported by the BBC, she herself uses a biblical analogy to emphasise the relevance of the importance of the environment to life. She says: "God created the planet from Monday to Friday. On Saturday He created human beings. The truth of the matter is, in man was created on Tuesday, I usually say, he would have been dead on Wednesday, because there would not have been the essential elements that he needs to survive."

Our own Chief Albert Luthuli, then President of the ANC, was Africa's first Nobel Peace Prize winner. In his Nobel acceptance speech in 1961, he too addressed the issue of the relationship between society and the right to life. At the time he spoke, one of the greatest threats to human life was the danger of nuclear war, to which millions across the globe responded by engaging in a sustained campaign for nuclear disarmament.

In this regard, Albert Luthuli said: "Scientific inventions, at all conceivable levels, should enrich human life, not threaten existence. Science should be the greatest ally, not the worst enemy of mankind. Only so can the world not only respond to the worthy efforts of Nobel, but also insure itself against self-destruction.

"Indeed the challenge is for us to insure the world from self-destruction. In our contribution to peace we are resolved to end such evils as oppression, white supremacy and race discrimination, all of which are incompatible with world peace and security. There is indeed a threat to peace."

Wangari Maathai's struggle has communicated the same message, that the denial of democracy and human rights, the oppression of women, the perpetuation of the abject poverty of billions in Africa and elsewhere in the world, and the destruction of the environment, are all incompatible with world peace and security. Through struggle she is communicating the message that it is necessary and possible so to organise human society such that what humanity does should enrich human life, and not threaten its existence.

Even professionally, she is a combatant for life. A highly educated scientist, she has a doctorate in the biological sciences. Because of her qualifications and capability, she worked her way through the academic ranks at the University of Nairobi to become the head of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, the first woman to head any department at the University.

The example she has set should serve as an example to the African intelligentsia as a whole. She obtained her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at US universities, and carried our some of post-graduate studies in Germany. With every possibility to remain and work as a scientist in the United States, adding to the African brain drain, she nevertheless returned to her native Africa, obtaining her Doctorate at the University of Nairobi.

Already, a large group of young African intellectuals who graduated with Doctorates at US universities and are currently working in the US have constituted themselves into a Task Force working in various specialities, for the success of the NEPAD programmes. Like Wangari Maathai, these young African patriots have not waited to be invited to participate in the historic task of the renewal of their continent, but have voluntarily placed themselves at the centre of this process as conscious agents for change.

Proudly African and conscious of the imperative for the peoples of Africa to take responsibility for their destiny, in her Beijing paper Wangari Maathai wrote:

"Africans were de-culturised in ways intended to demystify, demean and devastate their personality, and leave them unclear about their identity, values and spirituality. Many foreigners even believed, and taught, that African culture and spirituality were an impediment to progress and should be discarded. This has given the African an inferiority complex, which, in turn, legitimates holding them in contempt and demeaning and discrediting everything about them. In the meantime, other people's heritage has been glorified and forced upon them as being spiritually and materially superior. Such heritage is given as the answer to their material and spiritual impoverishment.

"But this has failed to given them identity, self-pride, confidence and hope. At best it only provides them with a place to escape to and hide to survive.It is important that a critical mass of Africans do not accept the verdict that the world tries to push down their throats, so as to give up and succumb. The struggle must continue."

Halala Wangari Maathai, halala!

 Letter from the President
 

Approaches to Poverty Eradication and Economic Development I

Beware of the Natives!

As the Second World War ended, the uninformed would have been justified to think that all America breathed a huge sigh of relief. After all, the great danger had passed. The establishment of the United Nations by the victorious allies, with its Charter, and the adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, marked the dawn of a new age of world peace and freedom from fear.

In any event, except for the attack at Pearl Harbour, the costly war had not touched the shores of America. The German submarines, the battleships, the new rockets, and the Luftwaffe could not cross the Atlantic to do damage to the American mainland. Neither could the Japanese war machine overcome the Pacific barrier and descend on California and the State of Washington.

And now, the Axis Powers had been routed. They had had no choice but to surrender unconditionally. The victors occupied their territories. The future of their peoples would be decided by the conquerors. They would have neither the right nor the power to threaten world peace again.

Nevertheless, as the Second World War ended, a new fear gripped the United States - the fear of Communism. Nothing would stir American passions more than the alarm call - the Russians are coming!

In this situation, Senator Joe McCarthy elected to cast himself in the role of the super-patriot. He determined that some ideas and activities, as he decreed, were communist and therefore un-American. He therefore embarked on a crusade to identify and persecute those he considered un-American Americans. Some Americans applauded or snitched on fellow-Americans, driven by the fear - the Russians are coming!

Outside the United States, a multifaceted struggle against the post-war enemy was waged, based on the three objectives of deterrence, containment and destruction.

In time the Russians were defeated. What Winston Churchill had described as the Iron Curtain came down. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. Socialism in Europe collapsed. The United States and its allies had won the Cold War.

They had defeated their Second World War ally who had turned into their post-war enemy. The communist threat was no more. When and if the Russians came, they would do so as friends and as the vanquished.

The uninformed would have been justified to think that all America breathed a huge sigh of relief, content that with the fear of communism having been banished, there would not emerge another threat that would drive all patriotic Americans back to the barricades.

And, God willing, there would not emerge a new super-patriot like Senator Joe McCarthy, to threaten the civil liberties of American patriots, pretending to respond to the alarm call - the Russians (or other enemies) are coming!

But the new-hopefuls would have been as wrong as were the hopefuls of 1945. A new fear gripped the United States because new enemies were on their way. The new alarm call was - the terrorists are coming! And then with deadly intent and results, they came on 11 September 2001.

In their wake some evil-minded people used the US Mail to spread the poisonous anthrax, which claimed a few lives. This confirmed the alarm call - the terrorists are coming, armed with weapons of mass destruction! There was now no new United Nations with a new Charter, and no new Declaration on Human Rights to convey the assurance of world peace and freedom from fear.

And neither were the Atlantic and the Pacific too wide and too deep to block the arrival of the terrorists. Those elected to take charge of the United States decided that the new enemy had to be fought at home and abroad. At home the Homeland Security system was put in place and the Patriot Act passed.

For the rest of the world, the doctrine of pre-emptive strike was adopted and implemented. This time there would be no space for the pursuit of the objectives of deterrence and containment. The enemy had to be destroyed before it could deliver its own mortal blow!

The threat of the poor

But necessarily the question had to be asked and was posed - but whence the terrorists! And so it came about that the poor of the world began to emerge as a threat to those who have much to lose.

The March/April 2002 edition of the prestigious journal 'Foreign Affairs' published an article with the menacing title, "The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case of American Empire", written by Sebastian Mallaby, a columnist of 'The Washington Post'.

He wrote about poverty producing violent disorder in poor countries, with the disorder leading to further poverty, instability and violence. To this he added the impact of high birth rates and AIDS, which he said further threatened social disintegration and government collapse, leading to the emergence of failed states. All this, he said, offers opportunities to terrorists to find sanctuaries. To save themselves, the US and its allies had to learn to love imperialism!

Thus Mallaby made the firm suggestion that in addition to destroying the terrorists through pre-emptive strikes, everything had to be done to deny them their sanctuaries. Obviously greatly disturbed, he said the chaos in the world was too threatening to ignore. The rich man could not but carry the burden of its elimination, in his own interest.

And so by this circuitous route, we arrive at a variation of the policy of containment adopted by the US and its allies in its struggle against the Soviet Union and socialism.

At that time, containment included denying the enemy, the communists, any sanctuaries. The opponents of the Soviet Union determined that poverty and failed economies would inevitably result in restlessness among the poverty-stricken masses and their seduction by the promise of a bright communist future.

What had to be done to save the United States and its capitalist allies was to rescue the poor from failed economies and poverty. Thus would they and the world be saved from communism. The collective of hungry stomachs in particular areas of the world became the rich man's burden.

As a result of this, in the period since the Second World War, the world has experienced three successful development programmes specifically and consciously aimed at the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment. The results they achieved demonstrated that it is indeed possible to eradicate these social ills.

They also demonstrated that such success required the necessary political will on the part of the rich. They also told the plain story that for the rich to part with what they have, even in their long term self-interest, they needed to be frightened virtually out of their wits. And so we all learnt the lesson that a looming perceived defeat concentrates the mind wonderfully.

To ensure that Western Europe avoided the clutches of the communists who sat in positions of power in the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern and central Europe, and had a large following within the countries of Western Europe, the US poured resources into these countries through the Marshall Plan.

A US State Department document dated 26 August 1947, entitled "Summary of Department's Position on the Content of a European Recovery Program", said of one of the fundamental objectives of the Marshall Plan: "Basic objective of program is to move entire area progressively from present condition to working economy independent of abnormal outside support, taking full account of basic changes in European conditions such as political developments in Eastern Europe, altered position of former colonial territories, and loss of overseas assets, merchant shipping and other prewar invisible exports."

And, indeed, within a relatively short period of time, the economy of the entire area was moved from its immediate post-war condition of crisis, and re-established as a working economy, independent of abnormal outside support.

The same happy fate befell the Asian Far East. Again the overriding impulse to do in the Far East what had been done in Western Europe, was fear of communism. Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taiwan and other countries of Asia were seen as likely candidates for socialist revolutions. To contain any influence from the Soviet Union, China and North Korea, they too became beneficiaries of a development programme that resulted in the "Japanese miracle" and the emergence of the "Asian tigers".

The West European and Far East Asian Economic Recovery Programmes both met their goals and proved that it was possible to carry out successful development programmes to defeat poverty and underdevelopment.

The third successful post-war development programme, a direct outgrowth of the Marshall Plan, with its political objectives, is currently being implemented. This is the European Union Regional Policy, which is focused on the eradication of the poverty and underdevelopment manifested in certain regions within the Member States of the European Union (EU).

The 15-member EU had set itself the goal to achieve this objective in one generation. The 25-member Union says it will now achieve this goal in two generations, given the greater poverty and underdevelopment of the 10 new members.

Fear is the mother of invention

History has established the fact that fear is the mother of invention. It is therefore very tempting that we too, the African natives, should drive fear into the heart of the rich, to convince them to embark on yet another successful development programme to help rid our continent of levels of poverty and underdevelopment much worse than those experienced by the 10 new members of the EU.

To do this we would have to convince them about what they suspect already, that among us, because of our poverty, lurk many terrorists that are intent on causing them grievous harm. We would have to sound the alarm bell - the Natives are coming!

We would so pound the African drum that the rich would scramble to embark on a new Africa Recovery Programme, drawing on the lessons of the West European and Far East Asian development programmes, with no need to impose on us a new American imperialism!

This time round, we would propagate the message that what has to be done to save the United States and its rich allies from the new threat, international terrorism, is to rescue the poor from failed states and poverty.

However the idea that we would ever demean ourselves by assuming the guise of terrorists is repugnant in the extreme. The fact of our poverty does not make us terrorists. Our own experience of terrorism, including genocide and racist dehumanisation, make it impossible that we should seek freedom from want by defining ourselves as savages.

And yet it is commonly agreed that Africa constitutes the biggest challenge in the global struggle against poverty and underdevelopment. Mallaby said existing methods for dealing with the chaos on our continent have been tried and found wanting. He urged the introduction of a new imperialism, when all he should have done was to call for the adoption for Africa, of the tried and tested development path represented by the Marshall Plan, the Far East Asian programme and the EU Regional Policy.

The question must be posed and answered - what was done in these instances that produced the results which, strangely, it is argued are impossible to achieve in Africa, unless she is subjected to a new Scramble for Africa!

In his article "US imperialism, Oil, and Finance", Joseph Halevi of the University of Sydney provided one of the clues as to what was done and why. He writes: "Forrestal and Byrnes were, with George Kennan, the architects of post war US globalism. They are the ones who, after the collapse of the pound sterling in 1947 and the humiliating flight of Britain to non convertibility, decided to forcefully shift the US strategy away from Britain as a junior partner focusing it, instead, on Germany in Europe and on Japan in Asia.Their strategy was aimed at creating two regional growth poles both tied to the United States.The reconstruction of the world.fell exclusively upon the United States as a provider of credit, direct investment (in Europe not in Japan), capital goods, food, and as a guarantor of the supply of raw materials, oil above all."

** This is part one in a special series of articles about global approaches to poverty eradication and economic development. Next week: 'Rescued by the Marshall Plan'.

 
 
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