(Translated from Spanish to English, by Iris Bühler,
kindly assisted by Carl Zimmerman)
PART II / III
(TO READ THE FIRST PART, SEE THE PREVIOUS
ISSUE OF PANDEMONIUM REVIEW)
PART II
B. Some Noteworthy Aspects of the African Continent and its "Future"
1. The Economic Destruction
Currently, the actual population growth rate of Africa
is up to a 3%; higher
than the population growth rate of China. If it
would continue increasing like
that, the African population would surpass within
20 years the population
number of China. Already for quite a while the whole
world is talking about
the danger of the demographic explosion and about
the future nutrition
crisis. Nearly nobody is worrying about the already
existing crisis of misery,
poverty and hunger.
There are strong suppositions that in the "International
Headquarters" are
existing plans for reducing the world population
of 6 billion to some
"controllable" 2 billion by the half of this century,
approximately in the year
2050. Amongst many explications and evidences there
might be given for
the existence of such planes, yet nobody mentions
with any word, that in
reality we are dealing here with a dynamism of the
very same capitalism in
its post-industrial, post-physical-labour phase,
which, by the exploitation of
Intellectual Labour-Power, is leaving at the margin
of the production
process billions of workers who don't possess anything
else to offer to the market
than their Physical Labour-Power which is already
obsolete.
The liquidation of a "global reserve army" of physical-labour-forces,
which, in the
present phase of globalization are now worthless,
useless, rubbish for the system in
its totality, will be accomplished in the first
place exactly by poverty,
misery and diseases, to which they necessarily will
succumb to, and furthermore by
food manipulation and the deliberate releasing of
diseases like AIDS, which
is a synthetic "virus" of the US war laboratories,
having been delivered to
Africa precisely by means of the immunization programs
of the World
Health Organization (WHO). (see: New African,
October 1999)
Let us have a brief look at Africa's participation
in the world market in
terms of labour-force and international trade. Africa
provides on a world
scale primarily physical (in this case, agricultural
and mining) Labour-Power
and participates in the commerce of the world market
only with a rate of
1%, which is below Latin America, which participates
in the world trade
with an estimated 2 or 3% of the overall volume.
The volume of the
inter-African commerce, i.e. between the African
nations, expressed in
American dollars is less than the annual profits
of a multi-national
corporation, e.g., the Japan-based Mitsubishi or
Exxon Mobile based in the
USA. (New African, March 2000). In
contrast, there is not a single remotely
competitive multinational corporation based in an
African country.
The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
the massive foreign
debts of the African countries and the economy policy
of Neoliberalism, all
squeezing into the famous globalization, have yet
obliterated and ruined all
African economic exertions already. Within the last
decades, finally, these
organisms, including the formal and legal rules
established by the WTO
(World Trade Organization, formerly GATT - General
Agreement on
Traffics and Trade), completed the destruction of
the delicate African
agricultural and economical bases which ever since
had been essentially
inhibited already by the forced imposition of foreign
economic structures
into the unfortunate African history.
PART III
2. The Military Annihilation
It is ironic that in the current crisis of Sierra Leone, the country is flooded by a wide variety of weapons, whilst at the same time it lacks all economic conditions for producing even a single bullet. Furthermore it's equally ironic that the five permanent members of the United Nations' Security Council, supposedly the watchmen and guarantors of "world peace", are the biggest and most important producers and traders of arms and armament on a world scale. Their arms equally attack and defend "democracy" in Africa, thus bringing the business of the new century to blossom on the African continent.
The very same, post-apartheid, democratic and reconciliatory South
Africa has entered this
armament business scenario, producing and trading weapons all over
Africa. Nelson Mandela
and Thabo Mbeki, who have so sharply condemned the "arms race" and
the increasing armed inter-African conflicts, preside over one of the most
important armament producers and traders
on the whole African continent.
Apparently, they have learnt too rapidly from the marvelous world of
business á la USA,
France, Germany and Great Britain. Long live the reconciliatory South
African democracy!
Long live the dead and assassinated of the age of Apartheid, in the
name of capitalist
giga-profits! This is the South Africa for which they have ruined
their precious lives and died!
In Africa, the military ambition compared to the international
panorama has no importance
whatsoever. The overall armament machinery of all national Armed Forces
on the African
continent is all for nothing at the hour of a foreign military invasion
of any Great Power. The
African people, apart from the myths of Chaka, historically have not
been prepared for wars,
neither in Ancient Egypt, nor in the African Empires of Zimbabwe, Ngola,
Mali, Bakongo, etc.,
and even less during the epochs of European colonialism and of Yankee
neocolonialism.
Since Ancient Greek and medieval times, war has essentially been
a European monopoly.
For the first time in the history of Africa, Patrice Lumumba
of the Congo -- the African José Martí
and Simón Bolívar -- and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, in the
1950’s and 1960’s, proposed the construction of an African continental
army, an idea that Europe, the United States and the United Nations
didn’t appreciate. Consequently, by means of their respective intelligence
organisms and
covert operations, each effort of this kind has been suffocated by
inhibition or assassination of
the promoters of such ideas. Today, the sterile Organization of African
Unity (OAU commences recovering its memory of Africa's revolutionary 1960's,
and, although it is already too late, it is trying to resurrect the dream
of a united African military defense.
However, the OAU does not know that Africa has already lost its quota in the "Challenger" towards the epoch of Informatics, Intellectual Labour and Globalized Militarism. Also, the "sacred" Pan-African desires of Patrice Lumumba and of Kwame Nkrumah to found a United Nations of Africa have vanished into the Nothing of the era of globalized capitalism; the agenda of globalized capitalism excludes the unification of Africa, on the contrary, it includes the disappearance of Africa from the map of the world.
PART IV
3. The Political Liquidation
African Nationalism, which was born after World
War I and is
still surviving in the South Africa of Mandela
and Mbeki, was
always characterized as "anti-imperialist", "pro-capitalist",
"pro-Stalinist", "pro-liberal", "pro-democratic",
"pro-Gandhist" and "anti-Trotskyist". Also, today,
it is the
most retarded, obsolete and reactionary African
policy.
After World War II, during the epoch of de-colonization
which in
reality was the era of neocolonization -- on
the one side -
economic independence, but actually Yankee economic
dependence - and on the other side -- Pan-Africanism
with its extreme
left of African Socialism (Nkrumah, Nasser, Sekou
Touré, Obote).
In his book, "Africa Must Unite," Nkrumah
described the following
essential goals of Pan-Africanism:
For Africa:
. A Common Market
. A Common Currency
. A Currency Zone
. A Central Bank
. A Continental Communication
System
. A Continental Armed
Force
Similar to the case of Lumumba and other radical
African leaders, Nkrumah was
attacked in the bourgeois world press as a megalomaniac
and authoritarian politician.
Finally, in a joint covert operation involving
diverse intelligence agencies, including
the CIA, and various organizations of military
conspiracy, he was destituted by
means of a coup d'etat. Sadly, all liberation
movements on the African continent -- in the
Congo, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau,
Zimbabwe, Namibia, etc., --
terminated in the same virulent political, economic
and social corruption, against
which they pretended to fight.
C. Conclusion
Finally, let us conclude with a brief description
of the situation in Africa and its
future vis-a-vis Globalization using the following
example:
In the 1950's, various European and USA multinational
corporations
collaborated with the United Nations, and with the
military and
intelligence services of various countries of the "free
world" to
spoil Patrice Lumumba's emancipatory efforts to liberate
the Congo politically
and economically. Lumumba, the popular leader, was
massacred in cold blood,
and substituted by the notorious imperialist tyrant
and puppet, Mobutu Sese Seko,
who, during the Cold War, was ordered to suffocate
any Communist
revolutionary intentions in Central Africa.
After more than 30 years of Mobutu's loyal compliance
to
destabilization, and after the Fall of the Berlin
Wall, he lost his
political utility, and his masters dropped him
like a hot potato.
His former European and USA pay-masters operated
by military means
from Rwanda and Uganda in supporting the new
substitute, Laurent
Kabila. When Kabila showed that he wasn't a valid
performer of
the political puppet role, the Western interests
turned
against him, operating once more from and through
the same
countries, Rwanda and Uganda, targeting his overthrow.
At the end of the millennium, a Pan-African
war broke out,
involving the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe
and Angola
(New African, October, 1998). Probably,
and similar to the case of Sierra
Leone, the United Nations' military force of
rapid execution (their
"peace corps" or "blue helmets") will have to
intervene in the near
future. The carefully contrived economic, political,
social and
military chaos which is ruling the African continent
may be a
mirror of what is to be expected in other parts
of the formerly named
"Third World", currently called "Emerging Markets"
- which
should rather be called "markets in emergency."
For Latin America, as well as
for Africa, it may be too late to review the
priorities in its integration
agenda.
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