Palestine’s challenge to Africa 

Yusuf Serunkuma writes that Israeli’s occupation and murder of Palestinians in Gaza today is the British in Kenya, India, and Zimbabwe, Germany in Namibia, the French in Algeria, and the Americans in Vietnam. The on-going slaughter of Palestinians ought to wake us up to the urgent search for a home-grown language upon which to set our dreams. Notions such a democracy, or the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have been exposed, once again, as a sham and a lie, revealing nothing but western self-interest –which captures neither our realty nor aspirations.

By Yusuf Serunkuma

There are many lessons to take from the ongoing settler colonial violence in Palestine. One of these lessons—especially for the African intelligentsia and political elite—is the reiteration that the analytical anchors and conceptual tools we often deploy in understanding our political-economic reality—and setting our aspirations—are nothing but distractions from the reality of the limitlessness of the extractive colonial machinery.

Once again, it has been profoundly demonstrated that the current frames and language games in which we negotiate our politics and economics are distractions from the raw power and violence of the superpowers: concepts such as democracy, human rights, international law, and private property. These are terms through which we have continued to discuss and imagine Africa’s postcolonial present, and aspire for a “brighter future” but each has been exposed as hollow, as Israel continues to pound Palestinians—people from whom they have slowly, steadily, violently, grabbed land for the last 75 years, and run a system of apartheid for decades.

What we are witnessing in Palestine – in both Gaza and the West Bank – is a more contemporary replay of colonialism and its manifestations: apartheid, violence, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Indeed, Jewish economic theorist, Karl Marx was right: historical events are bound to happen twice (Maybe, more times, actually!) The first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce. But this second (and subsequent) time—as theorist Herbert Marcuse added—is often more frightening than the first.

Israel in Palestine today is the British in Kenya, India, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), and several parts of the colonised world. Israel is the Germans in Namibia, the Boers and British in South Africa, the French in Algeria and Haiti, the Belgians in Congo-Zaire, or the Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America. There was no social media then to relay these crimes in record time, but as scattered and censored records show, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder were the order of the day.

Even supposedly negative terms such as “fake news”, autocracy, and Africa’s “monsters” that are commonly used to describe the supposed failings of African leadership have, once again, been exposed as useful and more valuable terms to the western world, yet meaningless at the same time. Ironically, these terms—fake news, autocracy, violence, racism, dichotomies such as “us” and “them”—are on full display as the absolute ingredients of Euro-American moral locus and domination: “We are more important than them”, “Our violence against them is justified, theirs against us is just evil.”

This is the project of so-called international law. As Siba Grovogui has written, Europeans and Americans are the complete “sovereigns”, and there are some “quasi-sovereigns,” and then the lowest rung is composed of Africans. This means that the lives of the quasi sovereigns and “the Africans” are worthless. What seems like their property—their land and gas and marine resources—actually belong in the western world who are free to take them whenever we wish.

While I have written about Africa’s coup-democracy dilemma, to underscore the meaninglessness of these language games and power-plays, journalist Richard Medhurst gave us a compelling analysis about how the scramble for resources (in the form of the proposed Ben Gurion canal) is driving a ‘textbook case of genocide’ in Gaza.

As we witness raw power at an industrial scale—war crimes, genocide, clan cleansing, apartheid—unfolding on our television and smart-phone screens, I cannot imagine how useless and helpless decolonial scholars, democracy activists, and human rights enthusiasts, among others, find themselves. I know our silence is deafening. I cannot imagine the feeling of uselessness of these scholars and activists especially if one crafted an entire career imagining and pointing at the United States, or Western Europe (Germany, France, and the UK) as examples of these idealisms.

It should be an even more disturbing feeling for beneficiaries of western European “benevolence”—often in the form of project cash—to intellectualise and work to promote these idealisms. What once appeared to be true is now thrown out through the window. These idealisms are exactly and precisely, the ‘useful deception’ and liberal lullabies for Africa’s sprawling elite as their resources are quietly, methodically looted.

Our challenge

It is disappointing that years after colonialism, we have failed to reclaim the agency to define notions that capture our reality.  Consider, for example, ‘Ubuntu’ among the Bantu people; ‘Xeer’ among the Somalis, or the ‘Ummah’ in the Islamic tradition. These and many other useful concepts and systems of African humanity—and equitable resource sharing and governance—remain secondary to the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration, which is often shamelessly and selectively applied (and more often, completely discarded).

While these home-grown notions have attracted some scholarship (most memorably, Uganda’s Dani Nabudere, Jamaica’s Marcus Garvey), they have remained largely marginal as defining notions of Africa’s postcolonial present. We still talk about Africa’s knowledge systems, philosophical traditions, notions of governance and (herbal) medicine hypothetically—oftentimes, like beautiful museum pieces—without actually seeking to name them and integrate them into our daily political and economic ecosystems.

I often wonder why it is so absolutely necessary to change leaders periodically – the so-called hallmark of democracy – instead of developing an intellectual and political infrastructure that ensures leaderships actually work for the people. (By the way, despite being designed to benefit selfish interests, especially arms dealers and extractive capitalists, Europe and North America are run with non-changing structures. They may change presidents for the sake of public relations, but domestic and foreign policies remain unchanged). Consider this puzzle as another example: How does the Islamic tradition of ‘Ummah’ –  feeling each other’s pain despite no blood connections, with people we may never meet – actually work?

What set of belief systems enable these connections and how can we harness some of them to ensure that our communities have different talking points – different from the so-called ‘democracy’-chanting chorus—about building humane futures and political systems. What does ‘Ubuntu’ mean for the economy? How does ‘Ubuntu’ translate into a justice system? How does Islam imagine economies and economics, a banking regime, insurance, etc? 

Navigating conscription

As a student of David Scott—Conscripts of Modernity—I am fully aware that we are conscripts to this continuing exploitative colonial modernity, where the reach of our imagination is already circumscribed. We are products of the colonial school, which is bent on simply keeping us in bondage. And since we are in the weaker positions—militarily, financially—it might appear difficult to imagine ourselves dreaming and developing an entirely new language, and system of doing things.

While I appreciate these constraining limits, it is my sobering contention that we have even failed to exploit the limited space available to exercise our agency. Yet, there is still legroom in these small spaces. Consider for example, Rwanda’s decision to scrap all visa requirements for Africans entering Rwanda in 2018. Why haven’t all other countries followed the example? (It should be shameful that Europeans and Americans enjoy relatively free travel across the African continent, while fellow Africans are systematically hindered from journeying across their own continent).

While I understand ideas of nationalism and borders – often problematically articulated in the language of security – we ought to understand that it is our poverty (mostly, perpetrated by the western world) that makes borders appear absolutely necessary.  Borders in Europe are only enforced for poor countries within and outside Europe but are generally absent in the European world. Have we not seen ‘EU Passports Only’ or ‘Europe Residents’ signposts at airports and other border crossings indicating easier entry and exit for fellow Europeans!

Dear Africans, if Iraq and Afghanistan have not opened our eyes, if the carpet bombing of Libya by Nato ‘for democracy’, Africa’s then richest and debt-free country, which effectively turned it into a slave market, has not woken us up, or if the coup against a democratically elected President of Egypt, Mohammad Morsi also didn’t open our eyes, then Palestine must now awaken us from our deep slumber.

The language of democracy, or the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights (without there being anything universal about them) is not only alien, but outrightly insufficient to capture our collective humanity. They use these claims explicitly and shamelessly for their interests – and we are stupidly beholden to them. Their so-called competitive democracy and multiparty politics will never answer our governance challenges unless we find a uniting thread—a common and resilient humanity that answers the question of why we need leadership in the first place. As we spend entire lifetimes building parties and competing against each other—to the point of killing each other for democracy—the coloniser is here exploiting these rifts for own benefit.

If we could learn anything from the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine and the intent to commit genocide expressed by the highest-ranking Israelis officials, it is that so-called international law is simply raw financial and military power and control.

Palestine must now awaken us from our deep slumber!

A version of this blogpost appeared as “Palestine and Africa’s political-intellectual quagmire” in The Pan-African Review.

Yusuf Serunkuma is a regular contributor to roape.net and a columnist in Uganda’s newspapers, as well as a scholar and a playwright. In 2014, Fountain Publishers published his first play, The Snake Farmers and it was received with critical acclaim in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda.

Featured Photograph: Protests in South Africa’s Durban against Israeli bombardment against Gaza (4 October, 2014).