Africa the richest, its bitter truth and civil society

Ignoring the achievements of industrialization and capitalism in Europe, South America and North America and the thriving economies of countries in Australia and Asia, it is without doubt that the reader’s first position is to employ skepticism and consider it awkward, lack of knowledge, driven by insanity and slow-footed intelligence for the writer to say Africa is the richest continent. Your thoughts are true and your skepticism is of virtue, but people have to know where Africa goes wrong. I had questions straight from high school. The questions were emanating from the social issues in my water problems, load shedding, lack of proper sanitation, poor health care, dilapidated buildings and conditions that make crime and violence successful. My questions grew bigger as I found out it was not just my compound but as a community, as a city, as a country and to a macrocosm that is Africa.
Geography has told us Africa is blessed with abundant mineral resources ranging. It alone carries the bulk of the world’s diamonds. According to George B.N. Angola alone contains an estimated 11% of the world’s known diamond reserves, second in quality only to Namibia and 12 times more valuable than Australia’s. Zambia is one of the world’s biggest producers of copper. Africa has in addition millions of acres of untilled farmland and attractive tourism sites with so much potential. Indeed there is no such continent blessed with so much abundance and diversity as Africa.
Paradoxically the rich Africa faces deprivation and houses not developed countries but developing countries. Poverty is a most-talked and most-wanted monster haunting the homes of the ruled on a rich continent and research indicates it is also the largest recipient of foreign aid. A more awkward truth is that the developed countries in continents with little or no mineral and other natural resources are called rich because of developing countries in Africa. Developing countries in rich Africa export their minerals to the developed countries who later sell them as finished products at a much higher price. History states and predicts that the fall of the greatest civilizations is when the gap between the haves and the have nots becomes too wide. Income inequality is at its perpetual peak; there is little trace of an existing middle class in Africa; this is a problem emanating from the unequal distribution of wealth, mismanagement of resources and the biggest of them all, corruption.
Africa, with 54 countries, is the least developed region of the Third World despite its vast mineral wealth and natural resources. “Instead of being exploited for the benefit of the people, Africa’s mineral resources have been so mismanaged and plundered that they are now the source of our misery,” said the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan at the July AU summit in Lome. There are two views - Externalists and Internalists – which try to explain. Asked why corruption is in Africa? The externalists have asserted that it is the foreign businessmen to blame. They say that the foreign businessmen say, “I am selling you this at US$1 000 but US$200 is for you to open a Swiss bank account”. The internalists assertion on why poverty and who to blame for corruption is the direct opposite of the externalists’ view. I am personally not for the assertion of the externalist who put the blame on the western world for enticing African political leaders to engage in corrupt practices. This is tantamount to the husband who blames his unfaithfulness on his woman because of women being too beautiful. Such a leader should resign and give up his seat to a more trustworthy individual. But it is of course inevitable to reckon the endured colonialism and the current neo-colonialism as an external part of the many vicissitudes Africa continues to fight. Africa has not failed but stolen from its own. The problem of corruption is difficult to solve because it occurs in secret. However, the law seems to be blind and the perpetrators go free. Ubuntu is no more in the political arena and putting total trust in leaders is an endeavour of our ancestors in Africa.
This is why it is the role of the civil society to expose and put the law into effect. Civil society and opposition parties in Africa must know that they are in some way to blame, it is their role to calculate government expenditures and received aid. They have to rationally demonstrate and demand transparency and democracy if uprightness is contaminated. Martin Luther King Jr said, “Our lives begin to end the day we begin to be silent about the things that really matter.” Civil society on paper is a group of independent organisations but civil society in action is you and me and if we keep our opposition to ourselves, the leaders maintain theirs. To the leaders, God has blessed us with abundant resources so that through human activity with them we can make a living in a seemingly inevitable capitalist world. Let us not love Africa because of its resources, let us love Africa because of humanity for only then will we know that what might seem to be our gain is someone and his family’s loss. Leaders must take responsibility for they are not ruling at their own will and determination but on the trust of the people. We are Africa.

*Goli Banda is a third-year student studying towards a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Political Science and Sociology at the University of Namibia.