IMPERIALISM
The Proprietor of the Independent News Magazine, Andrew Mwenda is not a vulnerable person who warrants my defence on matters of geopolitics. He is capable beyond doubt, to run down his critics and haters, verbally and in writing, moreover with much ease. But vengeance, and not systematic intellectual rebuttal, only fuel the mediocrity that has afflicted our everyday life. However, the social media onslaught on the character, rather than the issues raised by Mwenda in his Al Jazeera opinion piece titled: "Obama, mind your own business", should require someone to stand up for objectivity before it dies from amidst us.
People who have feasted on social media by lambasting Mwenda, appeared to not have read Mwenda's article critically. That they could lash out at the Messenger is typical of African tradition. Some would rather kill the messenger, instead of dealing with the delivery or the enemy who sent the message. Little wonder that the risk averse job of "Messenger" has not attracted payment as a profession, given the over reliance on word-of-mouth in African society.
Indeed, Mwenda's article carried nothing new and spectacular that warranted such global anguish, except for those in denial of the ugly truth in it. It appeared to me that commentators took issues more with the character of the writer, than the content of his writing. In the process, they ended up revealing their own contempt for the man. In essence, they exposed the very vice that Mwenda and Timothy Kalyegira have always written about – lack of emotional and intellectual depth.
While I acknowledge that Andrew Mwenda has been overly dynamic and indulgent with African despots, one would accord due decorum to the fact that Mwenda, just like everybody else, has evolved from the favourable image of him as an activist, to the one who is a ferocious apologist for tyranny. In his own previous discourses, Andrew Mwenda recognizes his own growth by acknowledging that he has evolved from an idealist, to a realist.
While I acknowledge that Andrew Mwenda has been overly dynamic and indulgent with African despots, one would accord due decorum to the fact that Mwenda, just like everybody else, has evolved from the favourable image of him as an activist, to the one who is a ferocious apologist for tyranny. In his own previous discourses, Andrew Mwenda recognizes his own growth by acknowledging that he has evolved from an idealist, to a realist.
The problem is that we are stuck with a favorable image of an idealist activist, Mwenda, sitting and peeving from behind the jail-bars as a victim, and expected him to have grown into a hateful and subjectively repulsive of the tyranny.
To the contrary, Mwenda has tasted the perks of power through his activism. He has become an independent businessman, who is fully fitted in the neo-liberal parlance where the trade in ideas is lucrative. His connections to the tyrants, arises from his appreciation of the mismatch between idealism of being none state operator, with realities he sees with state operators. And, every trader has to be paid. And, every businessman has to show loyalty to his clients. Those are the basic rules in business that Mwenda has had to contend with.
On his blog, "Rising Continent: Lions on the move", Francis Xavier Ndagabamye Muhoozi takes exceptions at Mwenda for appearing often, and sitting through Rwanda's Cabinet meetings chaired by what he called "the most vicious tyrant". We are not told why Mwenda sits in Kagame's Cabinet meetings in as much as former British Premier, Tony Blair. What we know, is that Rwanda is better governed than Uganda.
Critics of Mwenda should desist from going personal and appearing trivial in the process. People need to understand that everyone who writes, or participates in public discourses, does so for personal interests.
Therefore, irrespective of Mwenda's known capitalist ambitions, and what others may consider a flip-flop on key policy positions, his works have profound importance in the struggle against neo-colonialism of Africa and challenges the systematic brainwash of Africans.
Mwenda raises critical issue of moral discrepancies in respect of how US foreign policies on Africa are designed. They are racist, denigrating and continue to perpetuate suffering, rather than liberating. Mwenda highlights the way America treats its blacks and indigenous population there, annihilating other races and dominating survivors everywhere. Using statistics, Mwenda demonstrate how the US has incarcerated nearly three-thirds of its black population, and kept the other two thirds in utter humiliating poverty and deprivation. The racist police with a penchant for killing blacks on the daily, have not made the living conditions for blacks in America any better than it was back in the days of lynching and slavery.
Andrew Mwenda reminded us that the same US that now castigates African leaders for becoming life Presidents, is the same power that provides them with the muscle – arsenals and coverage to achieve their ends. They funded terrorist organizations such as UNITA, assassinated progressive African leaders like Patrice Lumumba; blacklisted ANC and Nelson Mandela as terrorists, openly supported apartheid regime in South Africa; benefited from slave trade and has never apologized, nor compensated Africa for that. In retrospect, the white Americans are so paranoid and hateful of blacks as if it were the blacks who enslaved, colonized, and annihilated the white race.
I concluded that Andrew Mwenda was spot on. His critics were indeed, the pseudo-intellectuals who have internalized the ideology of the conquerors and have become the engine of apology for the empty rhetoric of the conquerors. For sure, Mwenda's article was not an indictment of President Obama, per se, it was a reflection of the riff-raff predatory relationship that USA has with Africa. Their policies installs and sustain bad governments, escalate human rights abuse, hasten environmental degradation, alienates and annihilate indigenous peoples with their cultures, etc. Now, every freedom fighter is tagged a terrorist and yet it is the US spending billions of dollars to strengthen the military used to suppress black Africans by US allies (dictators), so that US military footprint in the continent is kept at bare minimum.
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