By Professor Artwell Nhemachena

INSTEAD of counting how many resources or how much land has been recovered since the colonial era, Africans have been fooled to believe it is only important to count how many leaders have changed offices.

Besides, instead of counting how much land or resources have been recovered, Africans have been fooled to focus on the obsession with sexual orientations and wealth of sexual diversity and multiplicity. (Nhemachena 2023a)

Africans are now counting the wrong things that do not actually liberate Africa.

In the light of the foregoing, I would argue that liberal democracy is a democracy of ‘waithood’ insofar as it forces Africans to wait indefinitely for restitution and repa- rations.

It is a democracy of ‘waithood’ in that Africans are forced to wait for the transfer of material resources to indigenous people.

But, as they wait, they are advised to focus on counting changes of presidential office-bearers instead of counting how much of their material resources have been transferred back to indigenous people.

In this regard, liberal democracy offers, to Africans, not real hope but what Lauren Berlant (2011) calls cruel optimism.

Writing about cruel optimism, Berlant (2011, p. 1) states that: A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a political project. . . . These kinds of optimistic relation are not inherently cruel. They become cruel only when the object that draws your attention actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially. In the context of the foregoing, it is important to note that Africans have been waiting for the delivery of material freedom for several decades after independence, but they have not received anything.

There is also disappointment with liberal democracy in the former Soviet Republics (Pew Research Center 2011, December 5). In fact, in Ukraine, global capital is pushing for privatisation of land and State enter- prises which amounts to dispossession of the masses when their land and State en- terprises go to transnational corporations.

Liberal democracy takes away citizens’ material resources (which are privatised) and then extends liberal freedoms to the citizens.

Citizens should have their material re- sources even as they get liberal freedoms. The two are not necessarily inconsistent with each other and so they should share space. What I call African special ownership operation aims to recover African ownership and control of their resources. Instead of focusing on counting how many leaders have changed offices in Africa, what I call special ownership operation focuses on counting how much resources have been recovered and how much reparations have been paid to African victims of enslavement and colonisation.

Instead of merely counting election victories or votes, what I call special ownership operation focuses on counting resource-recovery victories.

Instead of focusing on counting minority rights, what I call special ownership operations focus on majority rights on a continent where minority colonialists and minority slave hunters have already enjoyed and abused their rights. Africans have never been minorities in Africa prior to colonialism. In any case, in their census- es, Africans have always counted their ancestors as part of the population of and in Africa. What I call special ownership operation involves recovery of genuine African cultures by going back to the cultural roots beyond the adulterations of colonialism.

While Western ideologies want Africans to believe that homosexuality was part of African culture and that, therefore, Africans must embrace homosexuality, or even that they must be forced into homosexuality, I argue herein that homosexuality was not part of African culture.

If Africans must recover or must be forced to embrace what was African, then why is it that the land, that is African, is not similarly being returned?

It is strange for Westerners to argue that Africans should embrace homosexuality or even be forced to embrace it because it was ‘part of African culture’.

Why then are the same Westerners grab- bing African land even as they claim that Africans must grab homosexuality because homosexuality is supposedly African?Even as they refuse to return the skulls,

skeletons and artefacts of our African an- cestors, the Westerners want to force Africans to embrace homosexuality supposedly because it was part of our African culture.

Even as they force Africans to embrace homosexuality, Westerners are establishing their foreign military bases on the African continent which is African. Even as the Westerners argue that the binaries between the private and public is Western and colonial in origin, they want to force Africans to adopt the binary between the private and public in matters of sexual orientations.

If Africans did not have binaries between the private and public, then it follows that the binaries are themselves colonial in the sense of originating from the West.

Since global capital thrives on dispossessing and exploiting other people and on grabbing other people’s heritages, it is in the interest of global capital to destroy African lines of descent and lines of inheritance so that African resources are widely open to the logics of grabbing without risking wars around heritages as constituted in terms of lines of descent.

If Africans have a human right to their heritages, how does it become a human right for an African to not have a line of descent along which they can humanely inherit or pass on property? If it is humane to pass one’s property to one’s offspring, how does it become a human right not to have descendants who can inherit one’s property? The foregoing speaks to what I call sexualities of erasure, which is to say sexualities that are meant to erase Africans much as damnatio memoriae speaks to the erasure of the memory of those condemned by empire. (Nhemachena, Hlabangane, and Matowanyika 2020)

Not having descendants amounts to era sure in the sense that not only the memory of one is erased but also one will not have descendants to inherit one’s property and carry forward one’s essence and name. By sexualities of erasure, I mean sexualities that are not reproductive. Such sexualities amount to voluntary extinction in the sense that one becomes extinct in the sense of not having descendants and the attendant memorialisation of one’s existence.

In context where people consider the ontological existence of ancestors to be real, the realm of privacy becomes contestable because one would never know whether the ancestors are present in the so-called private realm.

To argue that one has a right to, and is making an entirely individual decision when one has used, enjoyed, or inherited property from others is itself colonial.

This is why African States resist queer- ness. Of course, global capitalists disrupt African lines of descent and inheritance because they want to waylay African heritages and arrogate them to themselves. Human rights and minority rights are simply being weaponised by global capitalists whose mission is to continue dispossessing Africans.

Writing about ancestors and cultures, Bibb (2010, p. 23-24) observes that: On death the family of the deceased ensures that all the necessary funeral rites are carried out, together with ongoing ceremonies held at specific times during the following year(s). This not only allows the deceased to reach full ancestral status but also facilitates his/her being able to function fully in their new State. Often, a shrine will be built and strategically placed within the home thereby ensuring that the person is remembered, honoured. In such instances, the new ancestor will be seen as a guardian, a protector, someone who will look benevolently on his/her family members.

The point in the foregoing is that Africans need to be careful and notice the special cultural operations that the West is execut- ing in Africa to destroy culture, including disrupting lines of inheritance and lines of descent among Africans. (Nhemachena and Dhakwa 2018)

Babies can now be cloned and synthetic biology is gaining traction as a way to disrupt lines of inheritance and lines of descent. Babies can now be genetically edited as a way to disrupt lines of inheritance and lines of descent.

Humans can now be genetically edited and memories can be edited and deleted to disrupt lines of heritages and lines of descent. African bodies can be subjected to bio- hacking as a way to disrupt lines of inheritance and lines of descent.

African bodies can be subjected to synthetic biology and biohacking in ways that disrupt lines of inheritance and lines of descent. African minds are targeted for micro chipping and for brain net and neuro net using nano robots.

In fact, Africans’ minds are set to be nano technologically scanned and transferred to the meta verse or virtual world and away from the physical world such that they will no longer inherit the physical resources, including land and minerals, in the physical realm: they begin to live as minds in the meta verse without entitlements to heritages.

And, as Leuenberger (2022) suggests, there are also questions about memory modification techniques such as deleting or editing memories which threaten authenticity.

All this is happening in a context where Africans are already being dispossessed of their land and other resources in the 21st Century second scramble for Africa and in the context of resource wars.

In other words, as part of its wars for resources, global capital scans and transfers African minds from their biological bodies to the meta verse or virtual world such that Africans will no longer be entitled to and they will not demand or fight for their re- sources in the physical world.

In fact, biological bodies are set to be re- placed by silicon bodies which are noncar- bon and hence are depicted as not exacting pressure on the environment.

As part of their resource wars, global capitalists are forcing Africans to stop eating organic food and to eat genetically modified food which is depicted as not exacting pressure on the environment. And as part of their resource wars, global capitalists are demanding that Africans cease reproductive sex, resort to homosexuality, to humanoid robotic spouses or partners, to dildos and to technologies of masturbation.

In fact, it is argued by some scholars, such as James Lovelock (2007), that de- populating the world would save Gaia from pressure which is linked to climate change.

And as part of their resource wars, global capitalists are set to coerce Africans to em- brace human enhancements that turn them.