In a recent interview with Aljazeera, President Ruto reiterated the words of Kwame Nkrumah on Africa’s stance on diplomacy, this time making it Kenya’s position on global diplomacy. “We face neither East nor West, we face forward”, the president said to the chagrin of Redi Tihabi, the interviewer, who had sought to cleverly portray him as a US stooge. The conversation served to calm the seismic waves that had for days gathered in the ocean bottoms of diplomatic waters with Ruto’s state visit, one given to an African president in 16 years, as emphasized, being termed as the coronation of the new Western puppet. It has been a tradition that many Pan-Africanists or those who want to bear that title have prided themselves in an isolationist policy, especially to their Western erstwhile colonizers and associates of the West. It is therefore not surprising that the world, used to monikers, and a West vs East, duo-political demarcation finds itself grappling with titles to give Kenya’s envoy at Washington.
But, to be so caught in such ideological waters is to cut ourselves short of emergence as players. It is to say that we are not as sovereign – as we hold onto any grudges of a colonial past, now gone. It would besmirch Machiavelli to think that any nation can blackmail another to get into any favors; as it would spite any lover to be gaslit and blackmailed into cooperation. The West owes Africa nothing, other than a hand of new opportunities and exploration of a shared future. Africa’s entitlement through its victim mentality born out of a saintly colonial past is now a bygone era zero-sum woe-be-gone nanny noise. Thus, Africa must now in this new world era hold of its own accord to be a player in the global affairs – a global era where your contributions is what matters. If I look the world over, the history of the past 80 years has been a mass of atrocities, with the strong pillaging the weak and the wounded strong rising to re-establish themselves. Japan from the ashes of nuclear dust rides high in glory like a phoenix, Israel from the holocaust trauma rises to the realms of the savage, and Russia from the humiliation of the fall of the Soviet Union asserts itself on the world stage like a bulldog.
All this being a testament of a new world order where strength, cunning and sheer will to create rules. And let’s not forget China, the weakest and unseen of the ancient powers, long hidden, in 50 or so years, emerges from obscurity to dominance by the power of its determination and discipline. Hence, Africa should admonish herself twice, before she is pillaged over as she plays second fiddle to Western and Eastern hegemonic plays. Now, as Nkrumah, Africa’s foremost Pan-Africanist, asserted, Africa is itself an identity that the others, too, should look at – and should seek an alliance with. Away with the binary tussles that Africa sells herself as, either a Western or Eastern ally. These lenses which are often moralistic try to judge each by the front they serve the world with. On one hand: be a democracy else I bomb you, or let’s do trade default I own your ports, on the other. All this being ‘not like us’ diplomatic bars in a no-win war for Africa.
History in its pragmatic sense is the story of the brute eating the lunch of the weak. Beyond the savvy statements of human rights and democracy among other 21st-century diplomatic monikers, the narrow interests of the global players run as deep as their imperialist pasts in regime change efforts, aid, and loans with strings attached, among other unseen interests. So, in such a scenario, the ideological viewpoints of good and evil belong to the uninitiated. The West and the East, like any other power, shall in self-interest, pursue relations with the nations they consider to serve them and to continue asserting their power. In this game of moving chairs, Africa brings her seat and dances to the rhythm of her interests. That is what looking forward means. Maybe it is time we ceased from pyrrhic ideological wins, as it serves not the person, once a slave, to change hands from one colonial master to the next but to be free.
Free in her engagement, and so face forward. Forward is the look – with new negotiation terms, among these Africa’s comparative advantage in green energy global transition, mineral, and human resource capacity, a major consumer market, and new financial architecture where the tools of commerce such as debt are on equal terms. A plain playing field and equal exchange relationships. Else what shall it benefit a nation to be used only as a pawn to level the other? Dumb it must be, and willing slave must it be. As Nelson Mandela once admonished the US, when questioned on South Africa’s stance on the Palestine-Israeli issue and South Africa’s clamor for a two-state solution, “Your enemies are not necessarily our enemies too”. Africa must learn not to inherit enemies. We must face forward.
