Africa Must Pursue Ubuntu Policy

The U.S. attack on Iraq has altered the situation somewhat. South Africa played a key role in developing an anti-Iraq war position for the African Union and the Non-Aligned Movement, which came out with strong statements against the war. President Mbeki of South Africa is chairperson of both organizations. Almost all the African states took a position against the war. The only exception is the so-called "New Breed" of African leaders from Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Rwanda. All these countries are in internal and cross-border conflicts themselves and so it suits them to try to woo the U.S. in the war against each other. Moreover the anti-terrorism rhetoric of President Bush and the U.S. government also seems to help them to fight one another on the basis that they are against terrorism promoted by the other. This is non-sustainable.

The U.S. also did not play its Iraq war game well with some of African states. According to an investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, the C.I.A. Chief, George Tenet, told a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had sought to buy 500 tonnes of uranium oxide from the African state of Niger, which would have been enough to build 100 nuclear bombs. This so-called connivance of Niger with Iraq was later used in the British government "Iraq Dossier" to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The same "fact sheet" was cited by President Bush in his State of the Union Address on the issue of Iraq. It was used to "prove" that since it had tried to "cover up" this purchase, it was also lying about its program for developing weapons of mass destruction. According to the investigative reporter, this story about Iraq's attempted purchase of Uranium from Niger was used as "evidence" to convince the U.S Congress to endorse military action against Iraq.

In less than two weeks before the initial U.S. bombing of Iraq, the Head of the Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, decisively discredited the accusations that had all along been denied by Niger, but with no one paying attention. The documents, which were allegedly exchanged between the governments of Niger and Iraq confirming the deal, were proved to have been forged. The documents consisted of a series of faked letters between Iraq and Niger officials. One letter that was dated July 2000 bore an amateurish forgery of the Niger president's signature. Another letter was sent over the name of a person identified as Niger's foreign minister, when that person had left the position ten years prior to the date of the letter!

The selection of Niger--a poor African country with little voice internationally--as the fall guy was also intentional. According to Hersh, the forgers assumed that it would be much more credible to implicate a poor African country rather than any one of the other three leading exporters of uranium oxide: Canada, Australia and Russia. While these countries could have proved the charges false, Niger, on the other hand, lacked the means of persuading the world that the accusations were false.

It is very impressive that despite Africa's marginalisation and poverty, very few African states have been wooed to be part of the "alliance of the willing." Most impressive was the resistance by Cameroun, Guinea and Angola, at the time African alternate members of the Security Council, to accept U.S. bullying and bribery to support the alliance against Iraq. These examples go to show that small states can stand up to great power pressure and maintain a new human morality based on a democratic world order. What the U.S. wanted to achieve in Iraq with high-tech "smart weapons" was to demonstrate to all that whatever the U.S. says "goes." This kind of political behavior would not be a world order, but an attempt to create world disorder.

Africa should therefore stand firm in support of the United Nations and in solidarity with the Arab world in these testing times, despite the fact that some Arab countries participated in the enslavement of the African people and, indeed, continue to do so in Mauritania and Sudan. Africans continue to suffer at the hands of Arab enslavers, who are committing acts of genocide against them in these two countries. It is the duty of Africans to unite and continue to resist these acts of inhumanity and pursue claims for reparations against those Arab countries that participated in this trade and the continued acts of slave trade even up to the present moment. At the same time Africa must insist that these and similar acts, including acts of terrorism and state-terrorism against other peoples, be solved on the basis of internationally agreed solutions based on principles of international law and Ubuntu.

These principles include truth, acceptance of responsibility, compensation and reparation for wrongs against other human beings, justice, and reconciliation. Ubuntu draws deeply from African civilisational values. According to former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, later to become chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa:

Africans have this thing called UBUNTUЎ­ the essence of being human. It is part of the gift that Africans will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, willing to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up and inextricable in yours. When I dehumanize you I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary individual is a contradiction in terms and, therefore, you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own community, in belonging [Mukanda & Mulemfo, 2000: 52-62].

These philosophic values called Ubuntu also draw from other cultures and civilizations. It is the only civilized way we can manage problems and handle disputes in the twenty-first century, which should be a century of peace. Africa has therefore acted correctly in refusing to side with the U.S. in its war against Iraq. It is an unfair war. Such a war will have the fateful consequences of harming the interests of the Arab peoples, but also have adverse consequences for international security, which would affect African countries as well. Africa should also disassociate itself from the actions of the Bush administration in declaring Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to be the "Axis of Evil." African states should maintain contacts and relations with all these countries. Mzee Mandela gave a lead in responding to what the U.S. regarded as terrorism when it tried to isolate Libya over the Lockerbie aircraft-bombing affair. Mandela broke the blockade against Libya by visiting Tripoli against U.S. protestations. By so doing he strengthened the African states, which also resolved to end the blockade through the Organization of African Unity (OAU). This African action made it possible for Libya to cooperate more willingly with the international community in resolving the dispute through the courts and is now part of the alliance in the fight against terrorism under UN resolutions.

Furthermore, Mzee Nelson Mandela correctly refrained from endorsing Bush's blank concept of "terrorism" by qualifying it to not apply to genuine cases of peoples' discontent. He argued that the right to self-determination and other peoples' rights should not be confused with terrorism. He argued that it is by ignoring these rights, as in the case of Palestine, that acts of violence occur, which some people may prefer to describe as terrorism. He explained that these kinds of violence are the result of frustrations arising out of the non-recognition of peoples' demands for the right to self-determination and peoples' democratic rights. Later he called Bush a "bully" when he dismissed Iraq's unconditional acceptance of the United Nations return of weapons inspectors and called on the U.S. to respect the United Nations. He also condemned those leaders in the world who kept quiet "when one country wants to bully the whole world."

This is the way forward. We cannot keep quiet to the gimmicks of an outlaw behaving as if he were in the "Wild West" when it comes to the responsibilities of states to maintain peace and security in the world. While Saddam Hussein himself might have behaved like a bully himself, that is not the way he should be treated. The philosophy of "tooth for tooth, eye for eye" leaves all of us toothless and blind. We need a humane way of handling human affairs and a reasonable system of conflict management, control and resolution, which the Ubuntu philosophy offers. Therefore, the only civilized way of dealing with these issues is through the principles and spirit of Ubuntu in international relations.

The U.S. should emulate this African Ubuntu approach instead of following the path of violent confrontations with the Arab countries and Muslim political groups engaged in violence against it for causes that need to be addressed in a humane way. Violence begets violence and those who are more powerful should be more guarded in resorting to its use. As the English proverb has it: "those who live in glass houses should not throw stones." This truism holds for the U.S. as well. Instead the U.S. should acknowledge the right of all peoples' to self-determination, including the right of the Palestinian people, for whom the Bush administration has had little regard. We cannot afford to have one set of rules for the Palestinians and another set of rules for the Israelis. A completely new approach to the problems of the 21st century is required and the answer lies in ensuring security for all in all its manifestations.

We agree with Francis Kornegay of the Center for Africa's International Relations, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, when he suggests that Africa should be declared a zone of peace, which the African Union could monitor. This would be part of a doctrine in international relations based on the philosophy of Ubuntu in which African states and people commit themselves to be a continent that unites all the world's people by insulating the continent from becoming a battleground in the war against terrorism as has already happened in Kenya and Tanzania. In this direction, the U.S. has already named a number of countries in the Horn of Africa to be part of their strategy of fighting terrorism on the African continent. African states should not collaborate in this scheme and instead declare that the continent is "terrorism free" and a "zone of peace." But to do this, Africa would have to return to a strong commitment to the non-alignment movement in solidarity with the Arab world as well as other parts of the oppressed world.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that the attack on the U.S. on September 11th 2001 was directed at U.S. strategic interests, which it has developed since the end of WW2. The analysis here has shown that this policy has been developed against the interests of Third World peoples, whose resources are subjected to U.S. control and exploitation. The U.S. believes that as a leader of the "Free World" it has the responsibility to ensure global peace and security and to do this, it needs to develop the resources in the entire world on a "free trade" basis. But, as we have seen, this has been achieved through manipulation and the use and threat of use of force against its weaker opponents in the Third World. The U.S. claims that its actions are motivated by the interest of the whole world, although it also at the same time claims to be defending "civilization," which is a coded-word for western civilization and western interests.

Therefore while it calls on the whole world not to permit the al Qaeda to turn the present war against terrorism into a war of civilizations, it actually creates conditions that could ultimately turn such a conflict into a generalized conflict between civilizations on a global scale. The only answer to this conflict therefore lies in insisting that all problems between countries, cultures, and civilizations be resolved through dialogue and negotiations, which recognizes the interests of all as equally important. We have to use organs of global dialogue such as the United Nations, Global Summits and Conferences through which agreements can be reached and implemented. It is for this reason that the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, called for a dialogue between civilizations as a task of this century, if indeed the century is to be a peaceful one.

For the U.S. therefore to emphasize that the war against terrorism is not a civilisational one, while at the same time calling on the African states to agree that it is "a war of civilizations against those who would be uncivilized in their approach towards us" is to take Africa for granted and to try to use Africans against other peoples who may have genuine grievances against the U.S. It should be remembered that up to this point, the U.S. government still regards Africans and their descendants in the United States as being less than human beings and still treats them as uncivilized beings. Why? Because, alongside the other western powers and some of the Arab world, they refuse to consider demands for reparations for the exploitation and sufferings of those Africans who were enslaved by them and exploited as sub-humans in the building of the wealth which they now enjoy. Africa must push for the need to have dialogue on all these issues. The U.S. cannot have its cake and eat it. She cannot expect Africans to defend their civilization while at the same time refusing to compensate them for acts of inhuman behavior against them.

Global security of the 21st century requires that security of one country becomes the security of another and security in this new understanding must be understood in its broadened sense to mean human security for all. As the Social Science Research Council has come to recognize, security concerns should no longer be seen in the context of the geopolitics of the Cold War period. The field of security considerations has changed greatly since the early 1980s with the increasing realization that threats to security of individuals, communities and states around the world originate from a variety of sources other than the military dimension of great power competition and rivalry, which characterized the period of the Cold War. Such `small events' as localized wars, small arms proliferation, ethnic conflicts, environmental degradation, international crimes, and human rights abuses are all now being recognized as being central to the understanding of security at local, national, regional, and global levels.

The U.S., just like all countries of the world, must adjust to this new reality and address all these different concerns of security in order to create conditions for security for all. It has now to be realized and accepted by all of us on this planet that security for 'us' must mean security for `them' as well, otherwise there cannot be security for all. That must be the lesson we should learn from the events of September 11th 2001. In short, September 11th requires us to embrace and enhance a holistic security consciousness that should inform global security policy based onUbuntu.

 

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