Ademola Araoye

Africa’s flag independence process was thus more driven by the strategic landscape of post World War II and the dominant anti colonial policy of the United States than the rambunctious nationalist rabble rousing of local heroes, who largely turned out to mere opportunists who have largely taken Africans for a ride. Unfortunately for Africa, sixty years after, the politics unleashed by Trump’s campaign is here to stay and his ascent to power locates the United States at the front of a global right-wing surge. The global pendulum wing to the right has caught Africa, dominated by unending line of egomaniacs with visions of self and family glory, with its pants down. Africa has been led by mostly controversial and kleptomaniac characters leading dubious political entities that have failed in their pretentious claims to statehood. These states have survived mainly as dependencies and only at the grudging extensions of hands outs from the stolen loot of African looders (looting leaders) from liberal Europe. African states, its states system and undiscerning society are thus not primed to face the challenges of a right wing Euro-America. In the face of tectonic shifts in political orientations, Africa is vulnerable as presently constructed and led.

The failure of the 56 mostly African rag flag states has rendered Africa prostrate and largely unprepared for the terrifying realities of the ascendancy of white nationalism in the United States of America and the rolling back of liberal sentiments in Europe. The construction of the social spaces, in particular the acquired religious orientations of Africa, poses existential challenges, given the disturbing realities set in motion by the rise of Trumpism and Islamic militancy with our contemporary day and times. Already, Africa, including Nigeria, has suffered from the ascendance of radical Islam. The so-called fundamentalist Christianity, along the lines of which most African charismatic spiritual money mongers are modeled, are the same forces advancing the inferiority of black humanity. So Africa is in double jeopardy in the systemic clashes of hegemonic faiths. It is also potentially in jeopardy with the rise of white extremism in the political and social realms.

At the political level, Africa must radically alter itself structurally by consolidating its weak systems to build a modicum of collective capacity to confront the evolved danger. Africa must assert its autonomous character and its distinctive being from both the destructive claims of Arabo-Islamic and Christian hypocritical affinities with black Africa. This would be integral to the holistic emancipation of the people of Africa. Africa must begin to instigate processes that should in the medium to long term lead to the consolidation of the fictive sovereignties of its 56 mostly rag flag states into ideally one continental state that would be taken seriously by the world. Meanwhile, all African states should liberalize their citizenship to accommodate all blacks from anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, Nigeria and South Africa, working together with a few progressive states, should establish a Concert of Progressive of African States, whose membership should be strictly based on very high and ethical parameters of the public spheres of these countries.

In the immediate term, Nigeria and South Africa should create credible joint platform constituted not by the usual political jugglers and bureaucratic jobbers but serious African and black analysts from all over the world to engage more closely in developing common interpretations of global developments. Global pan-Africanist black platforms should proliferate to provide legal and political direction. These analyses, including the outcomes of the investigation of non Governmental think tanks should provide critical inputs into comprehensive policy templates to guide Africa’s navigations of this new uncharted terrain. The two countries must at all costs avoid the temptation to go it alone in the name of their largely fictive sovereignties. The evolved situation calls for a solid front from a more serious Africa. In fact, one would expect that Abuja and Pretoria would have by now undertaken tentative preliminary assessment of the evolved post Obama situation. It is expected that by now they would have set their policy advisors, in direct contacts with South Africa, to work on developing a common template to confront this millennial challenge.

African civil societies, including Think Tanks endowed and funded by black individuals of means in and out of the continent, and corporate African institutions and foundations, should be established. These bodies with an explicit mandate to advance the cause of black humanity would establish close linkages with black and progressive Afrocentric bodies at home and in the Diaspora with a view to developing concrete platforms to engage and articulate policies on the way forward for African states and societies to counteract the activities of anti black movements both in the Diaspora and in Africa. For example, an enlightened appreciation of the historical role of the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, in dehumanizing black humanity should have ruled it out from Africa. Yet, there are African Mormons! Talk of an anti Semitic organization with a branch in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

The evolved situation calls for a solid front from a more serious Africa. In fact, one would expect that Abuja and Pretoria would have by now undertaken tentative preliminary assessment of the evolved post Obama situation. It is expected that by now they would have set their policy advisors, in direct contacts with South Africa, to work on developing a common template to confront this millennial challenge.

The role of an African media is primary in this struggle. A pan African newspaper with continent wide coverage and circulation is imperative. An African Al Jazeera or CNN is an inevitable institution in meeting the challenges of the black humanity of our age. Its first task would be to disabuse black humanity of its sense of the inferiority of his comprehensive being: his understanding of the cosmos and the re-appropriation of his worth. The African does not need the hyped validation of any foreign god to live and prosper. Self repudiation, a pervasive virus in Africans, is the single most debilitating impediment to the holistic emancipation of black humanity every where. It is this our alienation from our true selves that is fueling the feelings of superiority of the all the external global Others, Europe, Asia, over Africans.

Perhaps though, as Christian nationalism is a euphemism for Apartheid, the question arises as to the locus of black humanity in the warped Christian Cathedral. As John Mattison notes, all the key theoreticians of racial separateness are agreed that by suddenly breaking up people into language groups, God revealed his will that people should live in separate cultural-ethnic units. Ultimately, that is the foundational biblical theology of Trumism. With its travails in the encounters with the hegemonic Other, Africa should be the first to sniff the danger in the polluted air of humankind!

Ademola Araoye is a former Nigerian diplomat and a retired official of the United Nations. Currently a Visiting Professor associated with the SARCHi chair on African Diplomacy and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Araoye is author of critically acclaimed books including Cote d’Ivoire: The Conundrum of a Still Wretched of the Earth and Sources of Conflict in the Post-Colonial African State. He is a regular contributor to TheNEWS magazine