By Prof Artwell Nhemachena
CAPITALISM has weaponised multiplicities of individuals, institutions, organisations and States such that it is now dictating through these multiplicities and pluralities even as it blindfolds humanity into thinking they equal freedom and liberation.
Liberalisation, pluralisation and multiplicities are not necessarily liberating, particularly where the economy and natural resources continue to be owned and controlled by singularities.
When global capitalism has appropriated and weaponised the multiplicities and pluralities of humanity’s voices, one may easily be convinced that democracy has finally arrived.
Yet the multiple and plural voices would actually be coming from a single voice that relies on a brigade of other voices which constitute its proxies.
The world is not only witnessing proxies on military battlefields; there are also proxy voices at play as global capital deploys its voice brigades around the world.
When public voices are privatised by global capital, they become what I call capital’s voice brigades, appearing to be multiplicities and pluralities when in fact they are singularities.
Global capitalists speak and dictate through different voices and through different institutions which they own and control.
They dictate through banks and transnational corporations which they own and control.
They dictate through international institutions, churches and religious institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs), educational institutions as well as the UN which they fund and control, among others.
While all these organisations and institutions keep up appearances of multiplicity, plurality and liberalism, they are, in fact, speaking the same voice which is the voice of their owners, funders and controllers.
In the cacophony and polyvocality that has been mistakenly taken for democracy, the accents may be different and, of course, some may even be stutterers and stammerers, but the master voice from which they derive is the same and singular.
In other words, the capitalist liberal world order relies on force-multipliers or multiple proxies which it uses to hide the illiberalism of the liberal order.
It launches special operations through geo-positional and disparate multiple force-multipliers who, while having different morphometries, voices, accents, geographical positions, religious affiliations, cultural affiliations, faces and races, are nevertheless electrified by a singular force which they all serve.
The affective turn in social theory risks legitimising the affectivity of global capital which already constitutes a singularity beneath the multiplicities and pluralities that we witness in the world today. When multiplicities and pluralities speak in the world, wise Africans must search for the singularity beneath them.
Multiplicities and pluralities have been enrolled to mask singularities in the neo-liberal global capitalist world order.
When humanity operationalises liberal democracy, they become masks of the singularity of global capital that undergirds liberal democracy.
The singularity of the force that electrifies the multitude of global capital’s force-multipliers is evident in the fact that even the churches that populate Africa are not assisting Africans to reclaim restitution and reparations; the multitudes of NGOs and CSOs that populate Africa are not assisting Africans reclaim restitution and reparations; the multitude of banks that populate Africa are not assisting Africans to reclaim restitution and reparations.
Also, the multitude of international institutions, including the powerful World Bank and IMF are not assisting Africans reclaim restitution and reparations.
And the wealthy private foundations are not assisting Africans reclaim restitution and reparations.
All the multiplicities and pluralities are singular not in what they say and do but in terms of what they do not say and do not do.
Multiplicities and pluralities must not be judged in terms of what they say and do but in what they do not say and do not do in their multiplicities and pluralities.
This way, humanity will be able to see the singularities in the multiplicities and pluralities that are at the service of global capital.
Put succinctly, multiplicities and pluralities are not necessarily democratic when there is a singularity that overtly or covertly electrifies them.
In the light of the foregoing, I argue that liberal democracy is indeed inclusive, but it includes those who it intends to become its force-multipliers, that is, the multiplicities and pluralities who become electrified by the singularity running them. It is a façade of inclusivity.
Contrary to Western ideologies that want Africans to believe that democracy is gauged by listening to the multiplicities and pluralities of voices and actions, I argue herein that democracy should also be assessed by gauging the singularities of the silences and inactions of the multiplicities and pluralities.
It is not necessarily freedom of speech, expression, press, religion, movement, association, assembly and conscience which are important.
The most important thing is in what is not said and done by the multiplicities and pluralities — and why what is not done and said is not done and said.
One can be democratic by commission when one actively promotes democracy, but one can also be democratic by omission, that is simply omitting to proscribe freedom and liberty.
Similarly, one can be a dictator by commission when one actively commits dictatorial actions, but one can also be a dictator by omission when one omits to do the essential thing/s that free or liberate others.
When colonialists omitted to return ownership and control of natural resources to Africans, they became dictators by omission.
They omitted to do what is necessary for Africans to become free, liberated and to enjoy democracy, including in a material sense.
The argument is that, if one has been a dictator, as in the case of colonialists, for centuries, one becomes a dictator by omission if one omits to do what is necessary for the victims to revert to and enjoy freedom and liberation.
In this sense, Africans often suffer two kinds of dictators — that is, dictators by commission of acts of dictatorship and dictators by omission in terms of omitting to return what is essential for freedom and liberation to be realised and enjoyed.
The reason citizens continue to suffer even after the deposing of dictators in the global south is that humanity has so far failed to see that there are two kinds of dictators, of which when one is deposed the other may in fact become stronger and overbearing.
Thus, the deposition and assassination of the Libyan ‘dictator’ Muammar Gaddafi did not help the Libyans because they did not see that there is a different kind of dictatorship by omission wherein global capitalists have omitted to grant economic freedom to Libyans and the rest of the Africans.
They are, in this case, worst dictators than Gaddafi. Also, in Iraq, the deposition of the ‘dictator’ Saddam Hussein did not help Iraqis because they did not see that there were two kinds of dictatorships: they did not see that global capital dictates by omission.
Global capital has omitted to grant economic freedom to Iraqis and the rest of humanity in the global south and so, by means of such omission, it dictates economic conditions even as it ironically accuses political leaders of dictatorship.
I am inviting scholars of the global south to adopt inclusive conceptualisations of dictatorship such that it becomes possible to theorise economic dictatorship in addition to political dictatorship.
Although there are multiplicities and pluralities in Africa, resource ownership and control remain unsaid and undone.
Although there are pluralities of political parties in Africa, resource ownership and control remain the preserve of the singularity of global capital.
Although there are multiplicities and pluralities of churches in Africa, resource ownership and control remain the unsaid preserve of the singularity of global capital.
Although there are multiplicities and pluralities of CSOs and NGOs, resource ownership and control remains the unsaid preserve of the singularity of global capital.
In other words, although there are appearances of democratic multiplicities and pluralities even in the West, one thing over which they all remain singularly silent about is the question of African ownership and control of resources.
There is a singularity even in Western liberal democracy.
Liberal pluralistic democracy has fooled Africans to believe that it is important to simply count how many leaders or presidents have changed offices.