RENEGOTIATING CITIZENSHIP: TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM FOR AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT

PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS

RENEGOTIATING CITIZENSHIP: TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM IN AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT

This paper is an attempt to revitalize the debates on African development thought. Whatever shortcomings that may arise from the writer’s inexperience the paper would have achieved its aim if at its perusal the reader would stop and rethink Africa’s development or at least if at the end of it all the question : “Whither Africa?”, will ring in the reader’s mind. The overall call of this paper is for the revolutionizing of citizenship. The anatomy of the world this paper is calling to revolutionize is broadly made up of three groups identified as follows: the conservatives and reactionaries who are scattered across the globe [concentrated in the Western countries and in whose ranks belong the capitalist barons whose capital dominate the global capitalist system], the revolutionaries and ex-revolutionaries , and the world masses in whose ranks belong the world’s three-close-to-four billion poor.

Years ago I remember watching a vampire movie. What was particularly interesting was a conflict between the ‘pure bloods’ and those that were once human and had become vampires. The ‘pure bloods’ considered themselves more vampire than the other vampires. In the contest that followed the ‘pure bloods’, who occupied the leadership positions, were completely wiped out and a new leadership hierarchy, dominated by those vampires that were formerly human beings, emerged. The contest in the vampire world can be reduced to a contest for citizenship where one group of vampires sought recognition in a system which denied them that recognition. Though the leadership of the vampire kingdom changed the question of citizenry remained unresolved because the old divisions persisted and the process of change which had taken place was in essence a substitution of one form of tyranny for another. The vampire story though dissimilar with the African story in many respects provides an interesting starting point for an understanding of Africa’s current challenges, especially the challenge of citizenship in such countries as Zimbabwe and South Africa. The vampire story raises the following questions which are relevant for African development, [especially civic, political and economic development]:

1. What is the qualification for vampireship?
2. How should resources, leadership positions etc. be appropriated given the various and different ways that makes one a vampire?
3. Should these differences be used as justification to discriminate against other vampires?
4. Given the past where such discrimination was considered normal and in essence determined one’s access to economic and social goods resulting in entrenched inequalities can policy be neutral?

The answers to the above questions are especially important for Africa’s development given the various positions and statuses which the continent has enjoyed since her earliest interactions with the European Civilisations and their diasporas. Starting with the slave trade, through the advent of legitimate commerce, the evangelical missions of the 19th Century, colonialism, decolonization and the advent multi-lateral institutions and the much over-rated globalization, Africa has always come out second best. This observation should not be used as justification for reverse racism neither should neo-liberal thought take advantage of the condemnation of reverse racism to perpetuate inequalities which were deliberately constructed in the said periods of interaction.

In the African case issues of citizenship should be looked at from a global and local perspective; global in the sense that Africa has always interacted and continue to interact with the rest of the world; local in the sense that this interaction resulted in the rise of a variegated African landscape where ethnicity, language and race, politico-military and economic power among other variables continue to define citizenship.

THOUGHTS, JUST THOUGHTS!