The tyranny of human rights organizations

These lofty claims were not without justification. Most of Africa was still poor and backward and needed trade and commerce. Many Africans lived under the tyranny of custom and the despotism of local chiefs and warlords. Some of our religious practices were oppressive to women and children, some encouraged human sacrifice or the killing of twins. Many Europeans involves in the scramble for Africa were well intentioned individuals with a genuine desire to change the lives of natives for the better. Regardless of their cultural hubris and racism, their belief in the need to emancipate the souls of natives was sometimes driven by noble intentions. However, the road to hell is always pave with good intentions. Indeed, many of these lofty goals also served to disguise and justify racial domination and economic exploitation.

The anti colonial movement was an attempt to reject this narrative and bring the voice of the African at the center of the debate on his/her future. Western paternalism was exposed as arrogant and brutal. Africans needed to shape their own destiny. The period 1950 to 1990 was the era of this ascendance; the attempt by Africans to define who we are, what we want and how we want to achieve our goals. Our civic rights were to be realized through political struggle, not humanitarian assistance.

We were not victims waiting for the kind and generous to save us. We were to become active participants in shaping our destiny. The actors and heroes of this effort were to be African revolutionaries mobilizing, organizing, inspiring and leading the African masses. The names of Livingstone, Stanley and Rhodes gave way to Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral and Ben Bella. This is the period when colonialism was in retreat philosophically and literally.

The political and social movements that had emerged during the anti colonial struggle evolved organically from our communities. They were membership-based organizations rooted in our existential needs – hence farmers’ cooperatives, political parties, trade unions, student movements, professional and occupational associations – for drivers, lawyers, teachers, traders etc. These demanded direct participation in the political process. They rejected the notion that African interests were to be articulated by kind Europeans.

This was the first flowering of democracy in Africa. Armed struggles like the Mau Mau, PAIGC, FRELIMO, MPLA, and later NRA, EPLF, TPFL and RPF carried a similar attitude. Even in the church, the colonial stranglehold over our souls was challenged by Christian revival movements. Our emancipation was to come from our own political struggles, sacrifices and compromises and NOT as charity from altruistic Europeans.

Beginning in 1980s but especially after 1990, western attempts to re-capture this initiative from Africans gained momentum. It came in the wake of prolonged failures on the continent and therefore seemed to be justified by immediate necessity. So the workers’ unions and the cooperative societies were deliberately strangled by Structural Adjustment reforms promoted by the IMF and World Bank. In their stead, a new “peoples’ representatives, the western funded NGO took center stage; the revolutionary politician gave way to the aid worker. Yet the NGO is disarticulated from the society it serves. It survives by begging from abroad to pursue an agenda designed and developed from elsewhere.

Thus, when you visit Africa today, our public policies are designed by the IMF and World Bank, the hungry are fed by World Food Program, the ill are treated by Red Cross and Doctors without Borders, refugees are cared for by UNHCR, those in conflict are “protected” by UN peacekeepers, our Malaria is fought by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, our story is told by The New York Times, our poverty is fought by Jeffrey Sachs and Bono, our crimes are tried by the ICC, our public serves are financed by a generous international aid community, our debts are cancelled, our press freedom is defended by Reporters without Borders and CPJ, our human rights are promoted by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Our heroes are Angelina Jolly and George Clooney, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy.

The tragic thing is that we African elites have been complicity in these processes to usurp our sovereignty and democratic rights. Whether this has been due to opportunism or ignorance, naivety or ideological bankruptcy or the sheer weight of our accumulated failures, we have actively aided and abated these developments. The challenge of our generation is to resist this neocolonial project dressed in the old language of human rights that seeks to demote us from citizens actively fighting for their rights to mere recipients of international charity and hence relegated to playing the role of spectator in the struggles shaping our destiny.