Some compatriots are still unable to comprehend that ideological clarity is an absolute necessity in our struggle to transform Uganda and Africa – especially on the part of the political and technical leadership cadre. These compatriots erroneously, think that ideology and Economics are mutually exclusive and opposed … They erroneously think that there is no link between ideology and Technology. They incredibly declare, that with humankind advancing into the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions, there is no need for ideology in our society! They tell me, “Youth do not eat Ideology” … Etc.
Sometimes, they sound rather like American Political Economist Francis Fukuyama in his 1989 article, “The End of History?”, when he triumphantly announced the “death of Ideology”, as the defunct Soviet Union imploded!
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Francis Fukuyama, 1989.
This dilemma today about the place and role of ideology, pushes our thoughts back to the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Program – when it became clear by 2007, that all was not well. At the time, the former Chief Executive of NEPAD Prof. Wiseman Nkuhlu warned of its impending demise “… if the leadership crisis that is dogging it is not addressed”.
We differed with Prof. Nkuhlu at the time, and said so. We agreed that NEPAD was not doing well (apart from its Peer Review Mechanism) but that the reasons clearly went beyond “African leaders ducking responsibilities”.
The OAU Lusaka Summit of July 2001, which adopted NEPAD (at that time known as the New African Initiative) with its “new approach”, and simultaneously ushered in the African Union, inadvertently sent out mixed signals.
While the thrust of Constitutive Act of the African Union in terms of basic development strategy was the accelerated political and economic integration of Africa at both Continental and regional levels, NEPAD was a strategic commitment in a diametrically opposed direction.
While the Constitutive Act of the African Union reflected the idea of building the collective strength of the African people which had been at the heart of previous initiatives under the aegis of the OAU, NEPAD pointed us in the direction of a “new global partnership based on shared responsibility and mutual interest” as the heart of our development strategy!
In paragraph 59 of the programmatic NEPAD document published in October 2001, a bold but factual assertion is made: “The New Partnership for Africa’s Development differs in its approach and strategy from previous plans and initiatives in support of Africa’s development although the problems to be addressed remain largely the same”.
The content of the “new approach” was not explicitly stated anywhere in the document, but was clearly discernable in the name of the initiative – the idea of a NEW PARTNERSHIP with what we euphemistically call Africa’s friends!
As we had repeatedly pointed out since 2002, ‘The “new direction”, in the form of “a global partnership”, constituted NEPAD’s Achilles heel, its soft underbelly. For, had the logic of capitalism and capitalist development changed? Had the profit motive suddenly mutated into altruism and love? Had the cut-throat and bitter struggle for cheap raw materials, cheap labour, spheres of influence, suddenly metamorphosed into shared responsibility and mutual interest – between Japan, the United States, the EU, the then G8… on the one hand, and the African people on the other?’ A young friend pointed out then, 2002, that the “New Partnership” looked suspiciously like a partnership between hyenas and goats!
‘Similarly, democratic governance is a vital component in building sustainable development. However, is the absence of “democracy” the major explanation for Africa’s debilitating reality? Are the “development partners” genuinely concerned about democracy or the lack of it in Africa? And, how do we build genuine and sustainable multiparty democracy amidst our multiple structural problems? Are we talking about single events, acts of creation or historical processes?’
NEPAD as a Continental economic program, was mired in ideological dissonance from day one. Its pretensions to be a “ground-breaking, home-grown initiative” had walked straight into the debilitating, containing and constraining ideological disorientation of the post-colonial African state.
About the same time, we experienced the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2008. Prior to the 2020 COVID-19 recession, many economists considered the 2007/2008 crisis the most serious since the Great Depression of the 1920s. Our particular point here, is to once again disagree with the related “dominant” view in 2009 – that the global economic crisis “was unexpected”! This erroneous view was an inevitable outcome of the stifling neo-liberal orthodoxy which has suffocated critical thought and reflection in the post-Cold War and “post-history” world, a la Fukuyama, Friedman, etc! After all, “ideology is dead”!
Yet, even a cursory glance at the work of the classical economists would have reminded us about the very predictable and cyclical nature of the crises of capitalist development – Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, and others. Cycles of crisis are part of the DNA of Capitalist development.
“Crisis” underlies the journey from Mercantilist Capitalism, “Free” Capitalism, Imperialism, through the Great Depression and the subsequent New Deal, the establishment of the Bretton Woods system – to Contemporary Globalization, to the 2007/2008 credit crunch around financial instruments and the products called derivatives, etc.
In all this, we are dealing with the need for us, the African people, to think for ourselves. We are dealing with ideology. We are pushing back against the neo-liberalist and “post-modernist” orthodoxy at the global level – which translates into pseudo-liberal development paradigms amongst our emergent peoples. We are pushing back against the inhibition of our creative faculties and innovations for fundamental socio-economic transformation.
This is first and foremost an ideological battle – critical to overcoming, transcending and superseding 600 years of externally imposed structural handicaps of enclave and stunted capitalist development.
K. David Mafabi
Senior Presidential Advisor/Political Affairs (Special Duties)
State House
