Politics
Now it is Mozambique . The government in Mozambique has been fighting an Islamic insurgency that is threatening to control large swathes of its territory and , if not stopped , march to Maputo . Mozambique has been pleading for support only to face months of dithering . When it reached out to Rwanda , it found a partner ready to put paid to the rhetoric of pan-Africanism . Rwanda immediately deployed a force of 1000 soldiers and police officers . South Africa ’ s Defence Minister , Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula , reacted thus : “ The issue of Rwanda deploying , that ’ s a bilateral matter between Rwanda and Mozambique . But of course , it is unfortunate that that deployment [ of Rwanda ] happened before the SADC had deployed because whatever bilateral between Mozambique and Rwanda , you would have expected that Rwanda would be going in support of Mozambique in the context of a mandate that would have been given by the heads of state of SADC that there should be intervention in Mozambique . So , it ’ s unfortunate ; it ’ s a situation we have no control over .” Clearly , anyone who has the interest of Africans at heart would not be primarily concerned with who “ should have been there first .”
“ Who should be there first ” is a question of consciousness . The contention over who should arrive there first rather than the prioritisation of the protection of the people of Mozambique demonstrates a lack of higher-order consciousness . In the seminal work “ Colonialism and the two publics in Africa ,” the Nigerian intellectual Peter Ekeh writes that Africans are yet to develop a national consciousness of the post colonial state because they are emotionally attached to their ethnicity . The two publics are the public sphere of national citizenship and the private sphere of ethnic belonging . Without attachment to the former , people exist as moral agents who are reluctant to preserve and protect it . They steal from it and take to the private sphere where they exist as moral agents , ready to protect , preserve and even die to ensure it thrives . In other words , in the subsconcious of Africans the colonial state belongs to colonizers . Ironically , even the colonizers still behave as if it is still theirs , to dictate to , and they are not prepared to let go . The challenge of leadership , therefore , was to transform the colonial state to the kind that Africans could identify with as theirs , for it to become an African creation .
It is indeed the paucity of leaders of a higher-order consciousness that the state remains colonial and retains the exploitative and violent instincts , which in turn reinforces feelings of ethnic rather than national belonging . It has been too much to ask of a leader whose consciousness is still at the private realm to embark on the task of forging indivisible national citizenship / consciousness . A higher-order imagination for regional and continental integration in Africa has been near impossible . Further , a leadership without a transcendent consciousness could not be expected to nurture a critical mass to preserve the African way of life in the face of a persistent western onslaught . On the contrary , far too many African leaders have encouraged those whose actions suggest that the African way of life is pathological and who see themselves as divinely mandated to cure Africa of this pathology by remaking us in the western image , itself a pathology of Eurocentrism that is trotted around as a noble contribution to humanity . It is treasonous that African leaders continue to entertain this circus that delays the emergence of the critical mass needed to preserve the African way of life as a valid and worthwhile endeaveor for which Africans ought to be prepared to live and die , in similar fashion as their emotional commitment to what Ekeh calls “ the private realm of ethnicity ”.
Ekeh ’ s thinking is instructive in understanding the response to the unfortunate events unfolding in Mozambique . Leadership at the national level that is unable to expand the horizons of consciousness to the regional or continental level is partaking in an amoral private endeavour . It cannot be expected to confront challenges that require a higher-order consciousness in the moral realm . The Chinese – for whom it is currently in fashion to talk about emulating – have a system of governance that prevents the rise of civil servants to leadership positions that are above the consciousness they are able to muster . A lot of damage would have been avoided had Africans thought of the same . It ’ s never too late .
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