Maravi

(HERALD) Reason and the vampires

Reason and the vampires
Wednesday, 14 March 2012 21:49

The whole concept of democracy and civil libertarianism largely emanates from the celebrated works of Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century. Through the colonial legacy, Africa has been converted to a lapdog imitator of Western civilisation, pathetically feeding Western industrialisation with raw materials and natural resources, while celebrating the sucking of the blood of the continent by the vampires after whose civilisation we all strive, less for its benefits to us and more for our lost sense of direction and creativity.

Whenever Western civilisation is in crisis, which is most of the time, we in Africa are also in crisis, not because we have a meaningful part in the decisions that cause crisis, but because we are passive victims of our immense dependency on a system we will never own.

John Ralston Saul claimed in his book “Voltaire’s Bastards” that Western civilisation is in crisis because it is based on the concept of reason — itself the cornerstone of the Enlightenment era. While Enlightenment thinkers successfully rescued the masses from the arbitrariness of royalty and religion, the rule of reason has not been without its own arbitrariness and tyranny.

Saul defines reason as “an obsession with truth and falsity — an obsession with efficiency.” He argues that reason expresses itself through “control of structures,” being employed as the strategy to find “simple and absolute” solutions to problems. Reason is the centrepiece of technocratic endeavour, some of the time lacking both morality and ethics.

Some authors like AC Grayling argue that reason is “merely an instrument which, correctly employed, helps people draw inferences from a given starting point without inconsistency.”

Reason as measured by the imperialistic logic of democracy and civilisation has not liberated humanity, especially outside the populations of the industrialised democracies. Rather, the kind of reason preached by imperial powers today has enslaved humanity to bureaucratic corporatism which bleeds weaker nations unconstrained by any sense of moral purpose. Imperialism is the “unnu old vampire sucking the blood of the nations,” as Peter Tosh would sing.

The concept of civil-economic libertarianism is based on reason, and as such it is hard for anyone to disagree with anything related to this concept without being labelled unreasonable or unprogressive. When one attacks the imperialist exploits of Britain and the United States in Zimbabwe, they are portrayed in Western media as attacking reason — attacking the very concept of Enlightenment. Anti-imperialism is seen as a stance of defeatism and negativity by those who hail the values seen as attributable only to Enlightenment and Western civilisation.

It is hard for a writer to be taken seriously when they attack Western civilisation using freedom of speech, education, and access to information, technology, the English language, and other perceived advantages seen as stemming from Western civilisation itself. One is easily dismissed as a hypocrite, and this writer has been labelled as such on numerous occasions.

Criticism acceptable to those who subscribe to the notion of the supremacy of Western civilisation is criticism against those nation states that fail the conformism test — nation states that are independent minded like China, North Korea, Iran, and little but stubborn Zimbabwe, among many states labelled “rogue” by Western politicians.

Western civilisation liberated the Western world, and by extension its former colonies; from the arbitrary rule of monarchies and priests, only to replace such rule with the rule of minority tyrannies made up of technical elites — the powerful few that have converted today’s world into a fiefdom of imperialist dons.

We have come to a point where even owners of capital no longer have control of their own capital, relying on market forces that are manipulated by a few powerful corporate elites. Voters the world over do not control politics, and the political fate of the voter is controlled not even by the cupid and dishonest politicians contesting for the vote, but by powerful corporate elites only interested in electoral outcomes that will secure chances of profiteering.

In the West the prevailing reality is that of governments made up of lapdog politicians being pulled on the leash by powerful corporations, and voters in places like the United States have absolutely no say in who becomes their country’s president. All that happens is staged ratification of political choices made by powerful elites in the corporate sector.

President Obama did not come from the black people of America as we are told often, or from the Middle Class. He was elected first by powerful corporate elites like George Soros before he was presented to the people for ratification through a manipulated ballot system, a system that excludes anyone unendorsed by corporate power. In developing countries we have a similar prevailing reality, only that the puppet politicians are often stooges of Western politicians — themselves poodles of corporate power. In other words places like Africa are now largely ruled by poodles of poodles — the likes of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, who has able allies in Botswana’s Ian Khama, Kenya’s Raila Odinga, Cote d’ Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara, and a whole large chunk of other likeminded puppet politicians, commonly elevated to the political rank of democrats, not by their people but by the Western media speaking on behalf of imperialist politicians.

For the poor voter, the sad reality is that election victories are not shaped by morality or humane intention. The African politician in particular comes across without moral obligations, except when soliciting for votes.

Like their puppet partners in Africa, Western politicians are also amoral con artists surviving on the fictitious doctrinal distinctions which help sustain the Age of Reason, imaginary distinctions like the vainglorious principle of extremism, or the sensationalised threat of terrorism, or the media favourite topic of dictatorship and despotism in the West’s enemy states.

We have a US charity styling itself as Invisible Children doing a campaign to make Joseph Kony of Uganda “famous,” ostensibly to stop Kony from “turning children into soldiers,” and from committing “heinous atrocities”. African children are of course always the white man’s burden.

Except that Invisible Children is using them to make top selling films, making as much as US$8,6 million in 2011 — only using 32 percent of that amount for charity, while pocketing the difference.

While Joseph Kony’s idea of fighting for freedom is primitive and unacceptable, it must be noted that exaggerations and manipulating facts to create a monster out of him is unprofessional and plainly dishonest, especially when it is done only to whip up emotions from the public. The whole escapade smacks of the “white hero” syndrome, itself a key strategy of imperial hegemony. Put the timing of the STOPKONY campaign in the context of the recent discovery of oil in Uganda, plus the ever-failing US efforts to establish Africom on some central place in Africa, and you are forgiven for thinking that Kony is being “made famous” so the imperialist powers can create yet another Osama bin Laden.

Politicians all over the world can now get away with speaking absolute nonsense because what counts is the manner they make their utterances, and not the content of what they say. That is why Morgan Tsvangirai has lasted twelve years in politics without saying anything coherent. The man stands on the platform of the Age of Reason — thoroughly being sustained by a rather utopian sense of “change” and some frenzy idea of “a new Zimbabwe.” Zanu-PF’s misdoings, not Tsvangirai’s merit, are the cornerstone of the man’s political survival.

It does not matter much that Morgan Tsvangirai openly tells a journalist that his idea of a transitional Prime Minister is designer suits and luxury cars. Reason will say he is standing for democratic values and as such his utterances must be democratic, however nonsensical, they may sound. Western civilisation has created for us all governments that can brazenly continue despite their unabated failures — all because there is no more sense of responsibility, for as long people can be thumped down by fear-instilling propaganda or by the bludgeon.

In the West almost everyone is blinded by the culture of artificial heroes from Hollywood so much that hardly anyone cares about the world’s predicament. In lesser sophisticated countries the people are either blatantly denied the vote, or bludgeoned to vote a certain way, when they are not kept away from politics by the pre-occupying force of abject poverty.

Vote manipulation is not a preserve of election riggers and oppressive regimes. The vote is always manipulated in Western democracies, and that is by presenting people only with politicians that are pliant to the amoral goals of corporatism.
Those who run arms industries piously make emphatic pronouncements about peace and freedom, preaching peace while fighting alongside peace-destroying rebels in Libya — providing sophisticated weapons that flourished an unwanted war that destroyed the enviable livelihood of the Libyan people.

Now the juggernaut is in Uganda where we are told the mighty Americans are bringing rebellious Joseph Kony to a deserved tragic end. In the name of bringing peace to Uganda war is going to flourish, and more people than Kony could ever imagine of killing could end up dead, as what happened with the intervention in Libya, killing huge numbers of Libyan civilians — by far larger than Gaddafi could ever kill in all his life time.

Reason in itself will retain forever its nobility in the advancement of humanity. It is the greed, racism, supremacy and selfishness of those wielding imperial power that will torment us. It is reason that governs our spirit as a people. It is reason that regulates our appetite, it is reason that legitimises our faith; it is reason that governs our emotions, our will, our intuition and our experience.

But it is the same reason that has produced technocratic corporatism and its obsessions with selfish profiteering. It is reason that brings about the idea of civil and economic libertarianism — telling us that only the West can define the path of democracy, the way of growing economies, and even the culture of the world.

Imagine Jacob Zuma calling for Western countries to allow polygamy in their constitutions on the basis that it is no one’s business what a group of consenting adults do with their sexual lives. Certainly there would be an outrageous outcry in the West.

Such an approach only makes sense when it is the West telling African countries to embrace homosexuality in their legislation. Then we are told of the logic of not interfering with what consenting adults do with their sexual lives. It was the greed for oil and the selfish interests of the West, not the logic or reason the US, France and Britain applied to put their greed into effect, that caused the murderous bombing of Libyan cities — killing 50 000 innocent civilians in the process.

Equally it was the racism of the Nazis that resulted in the killing of six million Jews, not the logic applied to put that hatred into effect. This shows clearly that reason as a centrepiece of Enlightenment cannot in itself guarantee humanity peace and freedom, let alone advancement and prosperity.

It is the racist desire to preserve colonial hegemony over land ownership in Zimbabwe that led Britain to mobilise ruinous and illegal economic sanctions against the indigenous people of Zimbabwe, not the contrived logic applied by Western powers to put into effect the murderous sanctions regime.

It is the selfish quest for power that makes politicians from Zimbabwe’s senior generation use historical achievements to thwart political competition from political aspirants coming from the younger generation, not at all the logic applied in justifying the older generation’s quest for power.

The power of reason has indisputable nobility, but unfortunately reason is not invincible. Politicians have thwarted reason and will continue doing so for as long as we pursue the models of Enlightenment as passed on to us by Western civilisation.
Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

l Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.

Labels: REASON WAFAWAROVA

posted by MrK @ 10:52 PM