EDITORIAL: Emancipating the African mind
The buzz phrase among development policy scholars is ‘context matters’. They argue that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to develop an economy.
They hold their puke every time they hear the term ‘global best practices’, saying development must be driven based on the context and circumstances of the particular country because all nations are unique in their own way.
Zimbabwean public speaker Joshua Maponga, speaking on The Evening Review last night, observed that Africa is being held back by the capture and enslavement of its mind, underlined by the desperation to emulate everything Western in order to avoid looking ‘primitive’.
As such, Africans have deserted all their values and replaced them with Western ideals, many of which are incompatible with our society and, in fact, place speed humps along Africa’s path towards total emancipation and self-determination.
For example, the context of access to land in Namibia differs from that of England. We can thus not, even remotely, borrow the English policies on land – or even housing – to address this emotive issue at home.
Our leaders are on record saying ‘we don’t do it the Zimbabwean way’ because they fear to be perceived as barbaric and backward in their approach. They would rather limp on with their good-as-dead ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ approach whose only success was enriching government leaders with farms while the masses remain squeezed on inches on non-productive land.
They hold their puke every time they hear the term ‘global best practices’, saying development must be driven based on the context and circumstances of the particular country because all nations are unique in their own way.
Zimbabwean public speaker Joshua Maponga, speaking on The Evening Review last night, observed that Africa is being held back by the capture and enslavement of its mind, underlined by the desperation to emulate everything Western in order to avoid looking ‘primitive’.
As such, Africans have deserted all their values and replaced them with Western ideals, many of which are incompatible with our society and, in fact, place speed humps along Africa’s path towards total emancipation and self-determination.
For example, the context of access to land in Namibia differs from that of England. We can thus not, even remotely, borrow the English policies on land – or even housing – to address this emotive issue at home.
Our leaders are on record saying ‘we don’t do it the Zimbabwean way’ because they fear to be perceived as barbaric and backward in their approach. They would rather limp on with their good-as-dead ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ approach whose only success was enriching government leaders with farms while the masses remain squeezed on inches on non-productive land.
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Namibian Sun
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