THE KUSI IDEAS FESTIVAL – TOP DOWN EXPERTS LECTURE AFRICANS ON THE NEXT 60 YEARS
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| the Rwanda Genocide is an African Catastrophe. Africans continue to suffer the aftershocks of Rwanda Genocide |
The Kusi Ideas Festival has come and gone. Hosted at the
swanky Intare Conference Arena the two day event was headlined by His
Excellency Rwanda President Paul Kagame and graced by the luminaries of the African
industrial, political and intellectual firmament. The Nation Media Group
treated the audience at the conference centre and those online to the ideas of
the saintly headlined speakers. Saintly because in their pre-event media blitz
, the keynote speakers were haloed like the saints that the church used to halo
as a marker of their sanctity and sacred beings. The keynote speakers and the select
audience were the elite of Africa. These are the ideas merchants of the continent.
Into the belly of the beast
GENOCIDE is a sonnet sequence on the life and death of Rwanda's last Queen who perished in the genocide
And, judging by the reactions of the live and the online
audience the ideas that these idea merchants were hawking were truly well
received. Among the resonant ideas which the headline speakers purveyed was
that of the African economies as “lion economies”. I think this idea is a take
on the Asian model of the “tiger economies.” The idea of the African
“lion- And during the Kusi Ideas Festival the state
was very much in evidence in the top-down “I-know-what-is-good-for-you-so-take-it-or-take-it”
approach of the heralded speakers. This O so subtle tone was a little bit
puzzling – until one went to the chat forums online and then the shoe dropped.
That ‘Aha’ moment then revealed who these ladies and gentlemen saints were –
they were Plato’s Statesmen, Plato’s Philosopher Kings.
economies” did not prove as resonant as the Mahathir Mohammed driven “Asian tigers” and “tiger economies” one. There is awkwardness in talking about these African nations as “African lions” and “lion economies.” One wonders why. The debate reminded one of the heralded Thabo Mbeki-driven “African Renaissance” ideas. The headliners of the African Renaissance turned out to be monsters who expected Africans to dance in their glory – or else be disappeared into the belly of the beast which is the African state with all the fearsome technological might of the almighty African state.
As Plato’s African Statesmen and Philosopher Kings these African
luminaries already had the answers to Africa’s problems. So the Africans out
there in the vast reaches of the continent were expected to receive the ideas
ever so eloquently, ever so graciously brought to them by these luminaries of
the African industrial, political and intellectual firmament. The speakers at
the Kusi Ideas Festival were the African experts, the African solution
providers, the Africans who knew all the answers. Surveying sixty years of a
past in which the unwashed African masses were lectured and hectored by African
political, economic, intellectual and cultural experts one had to just ask the
question. If these luminaries of the African industrial, political and
intellectual firmament were the African experts, the African solution
providers, the Africans who knew the answers – then what were the problems that
needed solutions? What were the African problems, the African questions which
needed the solutions, the answers being provided by these African experts, African
solution providers, these Africans who knew the answers?
The Kusi Ideas Festival - Plato’s Philosopher Kings
Africa has been here before. The idea of the highly educated
highly privileged elite which knows Africa’s problems and which has the answer
to Africa’s problems is the idea which has driven the African narrative in
colonial and post-colonial Africa. The motive force which gives these African
elites their sense of certain, their Messianic conviction is the Platonic idea
of the Philosopher King who knows best for his subject peoples. And Africa’s
problems are apocalyptic in nature: from climate security to time-bomb
unemployment to explosive urban spaces riven by disease and crime, to biblical
plagues to poverty that makes African lives not worth living – African problems
are as vast and as dire as can be. And when the Philosopher King has all the
answers to these dire challenges facing his subjects – does that then not make
the Philosopher King the Messiah? The Saviour?
the false, failed, staid authoritarian nineteen sixties
The Rwanda Genocide led to a devastating Civil War and then to a continental war in the Congo former Zaire which has been called "the forgotten genocide"
The idea of these keynote speakers at the Kusi Ideas
Festival as the Messiahs of the continent come forcefully to mind when one went
to the chat forums affiliate to the Kusi Ideas Festival. There the followers of
these elites, these Plato’s Philosopher Kings had gotten the message very
clearly. And dissent was not going to be tolerated. You were either a believer
or you were out. And suddenly this sense
that if you disagree you were cast out forcefully brought back to mind the
ethos of The Nation Media Group organizers of this major African ideas event.
At The Nation Media Group the journalist who dissent will not work there for
long. And this fact mirrored the ethos of the elites headlining this Kusi Ideas
Festival in Kigali Rwanda. These African luminaries are people whose visions do
not allow for the possibility of dissent, of doubt, of not having all the
answers. Leaders like the Rwanda President His Excellency President Paul Kagame
are leaders with whom to disagree is to
contemplate very chilling prospects indeed. Perhaps this is why the ideas at
the Kusi Ideas Festival had such an echo chamber feel to them. I am sure that
the most of Africans alive now were never there in the nineteen sixties but if
you read the African Economic commission reports , communiqués and position
papers the ideas at the Kusi Ideas Festival sound as fresh, as new as the
false, failed, staid authoritarian nineteen sixties Africa. If the next sixty
years in Africa are about totalitarian nineteen sixties Africa – then one can
see why the idea merchants at the Kusi Ideas Festival in Rwanda sounded so
insistent, so dogmatic, so Messianic in their ideas. And thus, that light-bulb
moment – the Kusi Ideas Festival was the Philosopher King/s of Africa bringing
down perfect ideas from on high like Moses coming down from the Sinai with the Ten
Commandments already cast in stone.
Africa is a patient continent. The vastness of time when you
contemplate the African vista is what gives one that unique African patience.
For the Africans for whom these Kusi Ideas Festival ideas were being churned
out for were patiently going about their daily lives not ten kilometers from
Intare conference Centre, Kigali, Rwanda. As the African Philosopher Kings were
writing out the newest Ten Commandments for the next sixty years the Africans
were eking out rock-bottom poor lives just but a few kilometers outside swanky
Intare Conference Centre. And they Africans knew that after the Philosopher
Kings had done their Ten Commandments thing they would want their photo op
moments too. So the Africans waited in rural Kigali or at airports all over the
continent to welcome back their Moses-returning-with-the-ten-commandments
leaders from Intare Conference Centre, Kigali Rwanda. The next sixty years – it
all sounds so familiar to these patient Africans. For before the Africa of the
next sixty years there was the Africa of food, water, education etc for all by
the year (insert your favourite year frame here). So the Africa of the next
sixty years is a vision which the patient Africans outside the power centers
have seen before. And the dogmatic
“I-know-what-is-good-for-you-so-take-it-or-take-it” tone is something that is O
so familiar to Africans. And behind the dogmatic tone there waits the violent
enforces, the detention centres, the headless bodies, the disappeared. So Africans
will welcome back their “I-know-what-is-good-for-you-so-take-it-or-take-it” Messiahs
with patience and stoic acceptance.
Africa is not Asia. So there will be no African tigers;
there will be no tiger economies in Africa.
There will be no African tigers because the African finds it highly
offensive when the elites talking on behalf of Africans rigidly insist that it
is them, the elite who know the African way. For to the Africans the African
way has been another tool used to ruin their lives and take away the future of
their children from them.
FREE EXPRESSION IS THE GUARANTOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS
There will be no tiger economies in Africa, no African
Renaissance – because the elites and the Philosopher Kings are looking at Africa
like all elites do. To the Philosopher Kings of Africa, the African is a being
without worth. He is an empty vessel. A tabula rasa for the African the
Philosopher Kings to write on. Even the
vaunted African constitutions do not place any worth on the African. That is
why these constitutions, however so laboriously made, are always so easy for
the next Messiahs on the scene to cast aside so casually. All the big ideas in Africa
are elite driven – and that is why these idea fests are always so refreshing,
so exciting - and yet so ephemeral in the end. These big elite fests in Africa
– conferences, referenda, reforms, constitution makings, conventions, change movements,
change ideas – these elite fests come with such seasonal regularity in Africa, that
they are so are so predictable. If one cared to listen to the Africans for whom
these big dos are meant then one would come to understand why Africans are so
patient with their leaders. The patience, the stoicism comes from the vastness,
the depth, the profound awareness of how sweeping are the tides of time here in
Africa. Time erases all in Africa.
His or her worth questioned and ultimately erased by the
Messianic sense of mission of the elites, the African knows that the only way
to endure, to survive, against the fearsome might of the almighty powers of the
African state which the elites command is to learn from ones ancestors. Learn
their patience when the ancients were faced with days as dire as these that Africans
face now. Patience, stoicism – in the face of the direst of times: slavery,
colonialism, post-colonial totalitarian overreach, genocidal hubris, poverty
that has snatched away the future even before the young ones were born, hellish
non-lives in Africa’s urban infernos. The African know deep in the bone that
these periodic elite excitements are meant to excite yet at the same time
zombify Africans. So when the elites gather for the latest song and dance the Africans
will do the obligatory cultural song and dance – if invited. If kept out by the
high walls, the wall of guns, the armies in full warrior array – if kept out
the African stoically shrugs and proceeds to the daily chores of life in
immemorial Africa. For these elites will come. They will muscle their way unto
the arena. They will overstay their welcome. Then the next Messiah will come
and dislodge them from statehouse – and the cycle goes ever on. The one thing that
the African does not accept is that the worth of the African is something of no
value. African lives matter.
African lives matter
Human worth, African worth is not something that can be
bought at any marketplace. Even when the current the Philosopher King has ruled
African lives as only worthwhile when dependent on the Philosopher King Africans
know different. The value of human life, human worth is a deeply African value.
Regard for others is a deeply African ethos. It is the horror of Africans as they
witness the cavalier disregard for their lives which keeps them silent as the elites
talk one way to Africans and call it dialogue. The Nation Media Group has gathered its elite
in Kigali Rwanda and the spectacle which has transpired there the elites have
branded the exchange of ideas. Like the Intare Conference Centre which will
crumble into dust and disappear, the spectacle which The Nation Media Group has
presided over at the Kusi Ideas Festival will disappear into the sands of time.
For Africa is patient.
Africans are patient enough that even when cruel elites
combine forces to desecrate that which is sacred for all Africans they are still
patient enough to bid the guests and their elite hosts a gracious fare thee
well.
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