Standing by Thabo Mbeki
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The
effect that the opinions of leading news agencies have had on
my psyche, in defaming Thabo Mbeki's stand on the issue of AIDS,
became apparent to me when I hesitated in finding a fitting
title to this article in defense of him, wishing not to seem associated
with his ideas, the reason I wanted to defend him notwithstanding.
I chose one title, then dropped it, then another, and, because
of this, almost came to the point of giving up, like so many
have done.
I never have problems finding catchy titles for my articles.
The realization that I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't
tell of the opinions I share with him, and also knowing, like
no other, the power of the written word, made me shake myself
free of this grip. I started making notes and as I went along,
I became more resolute and freer in my rendering.
Then
fear gripped me, the same kind of fear I used to have in my
younger days, when I felt naked in front of an overwhelming
power, as I realized yet again how easy it is to be led astray,
how powerful, as I have said already, the written word is when
well and often rendered. Then anger gripped me, as I saw the
evil cowering behind in the shadows, the evil that has thus
far done a good job in preventing us from examining, in time,
the positions of the Thabo Mbekis of this world properly, and
I knew then how I would head this article.
I am a true born African, and I have experienced the entire
gamut of life in Africa. I was born at the dawn of independence
so the only knowledge I have of the time is written and hearsay.
All evidence, however, points to the fact that life conditions
took a gradual decline from then, till the mid seventies, the
time that I have my own recollections of, up till today. This
is true of all African countries even though the decline may
have come earlier in some countries than in others.
I
have walked around Lagos in Nigeria, and seen violence for a
few naira, dead bodies left lying in the streets, and talked
to street vendors, or street thugs standing around waiting for
a chance to make some money. Almost all were tales of sheer
hardship, almost all were coping strategies invented in the
fire of poverty.
I
have waited for busses at the main bus station in Zambia's Kitwe,
sitting long hours in the blazing sun with a bus that just won't
go anywhere until a certain number of passengers is reached,
and seen beggars without a chance, thieves scheming, and women
making their living selling scones and fruits, and ultimately,
themselves.
I
have slept in Zimbabwe's squatters, and woken up broke like
everybody else, without money for a trip with a minibus into
the center of the city, if that was the nearest place where
I could find sustenance. I have found it imperative to trek
on foot, ten to thirty kilometers at a time, to the place where
I can find bread, on an empty stomach, and experienced, maybe
for a few days, what those around me experience much too often,
if not daily.
I have experienced this reality from Kenya's Nairobi, Soweto
in South Africa, to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. It goes without
saying that the situation in almost all of Africa is bleak indeed.
Let
us agree on one thing; that health is hard to come by if one
is forced to live in such circumstances. Once this position
is accepted, we will stop and think of this situation before
we stuff vitamins into the mouths of these people when we see
them ail. On an empty or malnourished stomach, pure vitamins
in the form of tablets can be toxic. We would think twice before
we concoct antiviral toxins to give to these people. We would
think twice before erecting gigantic, modern hospitals in these
regions because, even if a hospital is a blessing, it will be
a good thing, and is a blessing for only 1% or less of the well
off in these countries because medical remedies are only fully
effective on a well-stuffed belly.
It
is useless trying to heal a man who ate well only two weeks
ago, and has had to make it on a 500 calorie per day diet, if
not less, since then, trekking from one point to another, tens
of kilometers at a time, torturing his body by the day. The
only thing that will be good for such a person is a painkiller,
and ultimately food, glorious food, and good food at that. When
this is assured, we can start thinking of the other basics,
and once these are also guaranteed, we can go ahead and build
as many heart transplant theaters as we desire.
The
sad fact about the African situation is that this reality has
largely been ignored. That economic advice, medical and technical
help to Africa has ignored this fact is plain to see. It is
actually quite easy to see, and this simplicity is probably
the reason that "complicated thinking" African intellectuals
are missing the point. Poverty and its effects rule the day
and the majority are unhealthy because of this. People in this
state will not respond to medication, and this is precisely
the point that Thabo Mbeki is making.
The realities that these people are experiencing daily are what
is making our heroic leader so mad. He is standing up for you
and me, for those in the majority who have to suffer so much
daily. He has not forgotten, nor will he forget us, from the
looks of things, and in this he should be commended. Too many
become divorced from this reality when they make the high office.
Let
us be civilized about our situation in Africa and not let the
western media lead us astray. They know this reality like nobody
else. They, and only they can recognize this reality at first
sight because they can compare the reality they see in Africa
with their own, even before they have landed at an African airport,
unlike Africans who are the fish who will find it almost impossible
to see the water they swim in.
Africa
smells of poverty and underdevelopment from way up in the skies,
from the windows of an airplane.
Westerners
are the last people to criticize Thabo Mbeki. They know better.
In fact, after going so far with writing this letter, I have
freed myself enough to step into contentious waters and state
openly that I think the only reason they are doing this is because
they have an agenda for Africa, a plan for the continent.
Let
us consider this part of their own history. When the plague
hit Europe in a previous century, it wasn't removed from the
face of the continent with vitamins, with medicines, with technology,
but by cleaning up Europe. The squalor in which Europeans lived,
ignorance and the general health of the population, was the
cause of the rapid spread and scope of the plague. The plague
was not eradicated by acceptance of the reality itself either,
i.e. "by not being a dissident of the plague theory",
and though this is the essential first step, as opposed to a
non scientific approach, it still isn't the cure.
We
shouldn't forget here that Africans have never needed westerners
to accept that disease is part of life, and also knew of medicines
long before westerners set foot in Africa, and the need of medication
to cure disease. I know I speak for many when I say that I find
traditional medicines the best remedies I have used. In fact,
if we go further back in time, we will find that Africans, or
Asians, outdo Europeans in the number of traditional medicines
and remedies they had developed for diseases, which actually
worked, and still work wherever they are still popular. There
is actually more to the story than meets the eye, or can be
done justice to in a single article like this. The idea of a
placebo, for example, is not a product of western scientific
methods, but an invention of the very people considered as trapped
in unthinking mysticism.
If
anything, the west outdid the entire world in public executions
of witches, and attributing witchcraft to disease in the centuries
gone by. In Africa, the execution of witches was rare and far
removed. Individuals who were considered malicious to society
were simply isolated to prevent them from doing harm to the
general population. The evidence is there for all to see. Europeans
are actually the first people to use disease as a weapon of
war, an act only a witch was associated with in former, even
present times, in African and Asian societies, and that today,
western establishments held in high esteem by their citizens
(the CIA, and especially the former, notorious South African
apartheid secret service, etc.) owe some of their successes
to biological warfare waged on unsuspecting citizens.
AIDS
remains an incurable disease, a disease that hits right at the
most vulnerable spot of any society because the reproductive
potential of the group, the only reason we live on as a species,
is jeopardized. As such, we have to be very careful how we go
about eradicating it. The best of a society's physical and intellectual
resources have to be mobilized to eradicate such a dangerous
scourge, and I am sure that a man of Thabo Mbeki's intelligence
knows this fact. The only problem here is; how do you mobilize
people who are in no state to actively partake in such an activity
because of other inhibiting factors in the design? How do you
set your priorities when you are confronted with other factors
which also need urgent attention? How do you tackle such a disease,
when the symptoms of the disease you are battling are so universal,
similar to symptoms of prolonged stress, acute alcoholism, kidney
or liver failure, anaemia, adult malnutrition, and the rest
of the package you get with poverty, knowing full well that
it is almost impossible to distinguish the microscopic virus
itself? Why would you be led to believe that making the fighting
of this disease your main priority will be your long awaited
release from all your woes?
Many
people who get lame immune systems do not necessarily have the
virus. Some athletes get AIDS because of the strenuous demands
of sport. Virgin daughters of kings in affluent climes have
been reported to have the condition. An experiment carried out
in Nairobi, Kenya, found that the men who had been suspected
of suffering from the disease were actually not carriers of
the virus, but had the condition purely because of the unhealthy
life styles they led, and these were men with jobs and means
to more bread than the average citizen. They were international
truck drivers.
Why
is there such certainty about a little known disease on the
continent, and only on the continent of Africa, because in the
west, every so often a doctor comes on the screen advising people
not to panic if they notice such and such symptoms because the
cause could be something other than they may be led to believe?
Why are western medical experts giving different advice to Africans?
Everybody knows that wanting to get well is usually half the
battle when a person is ill, but why are we taking away the
need to live in Africans by telling them in one callous statement:
"There is no hope for you. Just come and take some medicines
to prolong your life, but, ultimately, your life is over",
but encouraging the same in the West?
It
is one thing to launch a campaign of prevention, and quite another
to make people lose hope of life, the only thing they have.
But
then this truth is only useful if a person can digest it and
see the implications, and make useful connections. If a man's
mental apparatus corresponds to what Ralph Ellison described
as the mechanical man, in his book "Invisible Man",
the world becomes a really complex place indeed, as revealed
by president Arap Moi's speech in which he described the thatched
hut, roadless, foot path crisscrossed contour, tribalism trapped,
banana republic entangled, shackle-on-good-sense hugging, ideologically
impoverished, naïve, politics-of-the-belly prone, nepotism
bent, inarticulate, apathetic, easily controlled neo-colonial
face of Africa as a "complicated place". This is not
to say that complexity does not exist in Africa, but the context
in which Arap Moi says this is what makes his statement flawed.
It
is not true that Africa lacks control today. Africa lacks control
by Africans. African control on the continent is restricted
to a kind of gangland guarding of territory and the resources
therein, reserving the resources for others to plunder. This
is how the African controllers get paid. Arap Moi's statement
is actually typical of the modes of thought of those who live
in the darkness of gangland, thinking small, as others hover
above them pulling the strings. In this parochial universe of
the gang, the other gang, or country's rulers, the other tribe,
the poor, are mysterious phenomena. Such a mentality cannot
fathom how foreigners can manage to control a continent that
is so complex, let alone make the realization that if a bunch
of multinational companies can control Africa, then Africans
can do it too, if they only thought as big as the others are
thinking, if they stopped being puppets, and looked up and learnt
how the other party is still managing to breast feed, and control
their complex selves.
Africa is controlled by the same powers that control the rest
of the world, but, unlike the case with the rest of the world,
they are not discrete about the issue in Africa. Consider Taylor
of Liberia, or the late Kabila of the then Zaire, who was signing
contracts with mining companies long before his victory was
assured, before he had even conquered the capital, while Mobutu
still sat in his "rightful" throne. Such impunity
is impossible with the Pakistanis, the Punjabis, the Russians,
or the Americans.
It
is not only in Africa where an oil company can have an activist
removed, but only in Africa where it can be done so blatantly.
Imagine the backlash if the incident in Nigeria a few years ago
was in England.
A
letter in our press section (which,
by the way, is the main motivation behind this article), of
an erudite African who blames Africa's problems on a lack of
logical thought, and competent leadership, as he feels is the
case with Thabo Mbeki's stand on the issue of AIDS, is quite
revealing, and very frightening considering the interested parties
looking for lackey leadership in Africa, and know that Africans
are easily impressed by academic qualifications.
In
his article, Tarty Teh, a Liberian living and working in America,
with a Ph.D., makes the age-old mistake of equating erudition
with wisdom or common sense, seeming to think that the latter
flows automatically from the former. He also makes another common
fallacy. He projects personal inferences, decisions and judgements
made by individuals, on the rest of the concerned community,
taking it for granted that if "Jim" can do this, then
"Sam" will also do it. Summed up, his article takes
various, disconnected statements and makes them support a preconceived
judgement, a judgement conceived, unfortunately, without an
understanding of the nature of the human mind, or of reality,
for that matter.
Man's
need to know is universal, a condition the west does not have
a monopoly on. This need to know is ignited in light of the
chaos of information confronting a sentient being, which he
has to make sense of to survive. Much of this information will
never be fully comprehended. Some of it will get shortcut explanations.
Mysteries, like life and creation itself, have often been reduced
to a few myths. Mysticism is actually a sign of a higher intelligence.
It says that the beings have left the animal state and are capable
of reasoned thought. Though this may imply stages - a primitive
intelligence as opposed to a higher one - it would be wrong
to see it as such. What this means is that our friend Tarty
Teh fails to see in Europeans the very mysticism he so readily
recognizes in Africans. The man is actually, blatantly denying
himself his own ability to see. He is implicitly saying that
this gift is a freak occurrence among his own kind. The very
man criticizing his fellow Africans is an African himself. In
what kind of cranium is the mind that makes him see these wrongs
encased? What color of fingers does he look down upon when he
is typing such articles. It would do him a lot of good to stop
complaining and go about finding a way to create a society that
rights wrongs created the way he so aptly sees, a task confronting
Africans today, a task that is also ongoing in our western counterparts'
homes, whom Tarty Teh would so much like to emulate.
It
should not be forgotten that Christianity, for example, is not
so far removed from mysticism if one knows its nature, and we
would all be advised not to think we are the sole sane beings
living among a bunch of insane, unthinking, primitive beings.
This is uncultured, unacceptable, and actually, outright rude.
We are made aware yet again how easy it is for some on our side
to lose touch with the harsh reality experienced daily by the
majority of our people on the streets, an experience I am sure
Teh is familiar with. It doesn't take a presidential position
to trigger this at all. But then Teh is also very young, and
sidetracked; a product of this century's best, enforced dreams.
This is evident from his letter. All I can do is wish him luck
and success in his search for true African intellectuals. They
might just be the same men he is estranged from on the streets,
or the ones he helps crucify. There are a lot of hurdles in
life and failing or falling is part of the parcel that comes
with this process.
Let
it be known that Thabo Mbeki is not alone, nor is he the last
of his kind. We shall take up the mantle where he leaves it
when they have crushed him into the ground, crushed, unfortunately,
by those who should have supported him, those whose welfare
is in question, those on his own side who are just too obdurate
to understand him, so obstinately obdurate that they make for
this African complicatedness whose eradication is a simple gift
of seeing eyes, and the removal of the others who have hidden
agendas and have successfully made a black sheep out of the
Thabo Mbekis of this world.
Are
we going to do it again? Are we going to let other, self interested
parties lynch, crucify one of our bright ones like this, while
we stand aside and watch, even joining in and throwing the stone?
Where does it stop?
Lumumba's pertinacious determination earned him enemies on his
own side, who were led to actively participate in his downfall
and assassination, because a similar campaign was waged against
him by others who were not interested in the needs of the local
population, and they won, to the chagrin of Africans.
He
has been proven right, a little too late, however.
The list of names is endless, but the tactic has been the same,
from Kwame Nkruma to Steve Biko, from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm
X, to mention but a few.
Do
you know these stories? Were you there when they crucified these
men? Because if you were there then you would notice similarities
with the present campaign against Thabo Mbeki, then Tarty Teh
would know why our intellectuals, especially the males, are constantly conspicuously
absent.
As a necessary move, before the actual handing over of power
"to the natives", any occupying force that still needs
the territory it occupies buys security by eliminating
those they think will stand in the way of their interests. This
process often continues into the period that the territory is
considered sovereign. It will go on as long as there is a "one
way dependence". Chris Hanny of South Africa, Lumumba of
Congo, Kwame Nkruma of Ghana, are good, well known examples,
but you can bet that there are many, many more, who are unknown
to you and me, who were much brighter, much more intelligent
than you will ever want to believe, all over the continent, and into the
Diaspora too, who were, and continue to be victims of this strategy.
We
should not let this be the case with Thabo Mbeki. Let us stop
wallowing in certitude, and mobilize ourselves behind him and
investigate the situation further like he proposes. Let us give
him the benefit of the doubt he deserves as a man who has an
entire South African intelligence agency behind him, a man with
more information at his disposal than you or me. We may just
come up with answers that we didn't expect, which will surprise,
or even scare the living daylight out of us. We might just discover
that the truth he knows is the truth those who are fighting
him want hidden from naive African eyes, that the truth he so
vehemently defends, a bit selflessly too, might just mean our
salvation, if revealed, and salvation is precisely what we need
in face of the intractable scourge of AIDS that is slowly, but
surely, like the shadow that comes with dusk, decking Africa,
and will ultimately be our bane if we do not forget that we
eventually have to get into bed and go about the business of
self propagation.
Mukazo
Mukazo Vunda.
If
you believe this, if you understand this, then you should not
miss a related, relevant topic, entitled "The Basics",
here.