By Prof Artwell Nhemachena
IT is time for African scholars of politics and international relations, government studies, political sociology and political anthropology to stop tinkering with theories that do not advance African interests.
Advancing the African condition requires theories premised on African priorities and interests beyond mimicry and parroting.
Advancing the African condition and interests requires theories that are based on African dreams.
The problem is that, so far, Africans have lived other people’s dreams, agendas, conditions and interests. When one lives someone else’s dream, one becomes a shadow of someone else and will neither grow out of the dreamer nor grow out of oneself in the sense of realising one’s own hopes and aspirations.
Africa requires dreamers of African interests, and it requires Africans who believe in their African dreams; who hold on to them and advance them in the same way colonisers had their own dreams which they held onto for centuries.
It is often the case that those who seek to prevent Africans from inventing ideas ask Africans not to reinvent the wheel, but then, if Africans have been robbed of their wheels, why must they not reinvent them?
If Africans can invent or reinvent dreams, why must they not invent and reinvent the African wheels? Admonitions against reinventing the wheel are in fact apologies for living in someone else’s dream.
Africans need to rethink and re-theorise democracy, constitutional theory, political theory, international relations, jurisprudence, economics and society in ways that speak to African dreams.
Re-theorisations from African perspectives
In order to rethink and re-theorise from an African point of view, it is necessary to view the world in terms of several complexes of which critical examination will help Africans understand their positions better.
First, I would propose looking at the world in terms of health-industrial complex of which critical examination sheds light on connections between global health interventions and the global industrial complex that seeks to profit from not only global pharmaceuticals but from new invasive technologies that are set to be implanted, inserted and injected into human bodies in the One Health, One Digital Health, Planetary Health and EcoHealth interventions.
A critical look at the health-industrial complex exposes the real architects of global health policies behind the facades of international health institutions such as WHO.
Secondly, it is necessary to understand the world in terms of the sexuality-industrial complex to discern the connections between human sexuality and the global industrial complex that is profiting and seeking to profit from human sexuality.
This will expose the real architects of global policies and interventions on sexuality and sexual orientations from which global capital is profiting.€
This will expose the fact that sexual orientation rights are not necessarily about freedom and liberty, but they are about the profits that global capital makes out of the sexuality of humans.
This will also make it possible to understand why sexual revolutions are favoured in a world that opposes Marxist revolutions, for instance.
Thirdly, I propose theorising the African condition in terms of politics-industrial complex.
This will make it possible to see the connections between African politics and the global industrial complex that controls African politics.
Looking at the African condition in terms of the politics-industrial complex makes it possible to see that there is no freedom in African politics insofar as it is controlled by the global industrial complex. Fourthly, I propose looking at the African condition in terms of what I call the technology-military complex.
This will make it possible to glean the connections between new invasive technologies and the global military complex that is set to ultimately profit from the Internet of Things, Internet of Health Things, Internet of Humans, Internet of Battlefield Things, and Internet of Everything.
Looking at the African condition in terms of the technology-military complex helps Africans to see that the new technologies are not necessarily provided to offer freedom or liberty but to connect humanity wirelessly or otherwise to the global military complex in what is being called the Internet of Battlefield Things.
Fifthly, I propose looking at the world in terms of the environment-industrial complex.
This will assist in understanding the fact that environmental policies are made in the interest of the global industrial complex rather than for the benefit of the environment itself or the indigenous people.
In other words, looking at the world in terms of the environment-industrial complex helps scholars to see that international environment policies and practices are connected to global capital’s groundwork for the oncoming resource wars rather than in the interest of the environment itself.
I also propose looking at the world in terms of what I call the body-industrial complex.
This will expose the connections between the human bodies and global industrial complex that seek to profit from applying their new technologies to human bodies.
This way of looking at the world enables a deeper critique of the new technologies, including synthetic biology, silicon bodies, biohacking technologies, genomics, gene editing and human enhancement/augmentation technologies which are simply aimed at boosting the profits of the global industrial complex.
I propose looking at the world in terms of food-industrial complex.
This will expose the connections between global capital-sponsored ideologies about the necessity of environmental sovereignty and independence of nature.
In other words, the fact that techno-science can now manufacture meat and other food stuffs from factories using biotechnology accounts for the ideologies about the necessity of environmental sovereignty and independence from human ownership and control.
In order to force humanity to rely entirely on biotechnology, including factory-produced food, global capital seeks to persuade humanity to leave the environment alone.
Conceptualising the world in terms of these complexes makes it possible to understand why sexual revolutions are supported by global capital even as resource redistribution revolutions are utterly opposed.
It makes it possible to understand why global capital supports African sexual orientations but it opposes land orientations.
It also makes it possible to understand why global capital opposes political revolutions, including Colour Revolutions, but it opposes economic revolutions in Africa and elsewhere in the global south.
It also makes it easier to understand why global capital supports industrial revolutions but opposes resource redistribution revolutions in Africa.
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To keep Africans happy in a world wherein they are thoroughly dispossessed and exploited, global capital offers them liberal freedom, including rights to sexual orientations, which keep them busy and away from demanding ownership and control of their resources.
Post-modern liberalised sex, including homosexuality, is designed to provide relief to the dispossessed and exploited; it is designed to provide moments of euphoria for the dispossessed and exploited in the world.
Post-modern sex is also designed to be, similar to Marx’s observations about religion, the opium of the dispossessed and oppressed; a sigh of the disposed and exploited creatures in the margins of the empire.
Put differently, global capital provides the dispossessed and exploited peoples false senses of arrival through ideology and through post-modern liberalised sex which offer opportunities for sighs of relief and a false sense that one has arrived.
Even liberal democracy itself is designed to provide a false sense of arrival, a moment’s sigh of relief after which the dispossessed and exploited realise again that they haven’t actually arrived — and they start off again.
This is why global capital supports sexual revolutions while opposing resource redistribution revolutions.