IT was bound to happen: one of our soothsayers — sangomas or ngakas— was bound to stumble upon “the truth”: Europe and the United States are paying the price for looting Africa’s resources and for slavery.
Their current economic woes were linked directly to their past crimes against Africa.
Most of us were aghast at this prognosis. If the Eurozone and US economic woes continue, Africa would suffer more deprivation.
Didn’t our ancestral spirits know this? Punishing Europe and the US now would eventually unleash Armageddon on the continent.
Their reaction was eloquent: this matter was out of their hands.
How could the Europeans and the Americans, who invented the bicycle, the train, the motor car and the airplane, fail to run their economies today?
These people had been to the moon.
How could they not add two and two?
How could the Greeks, who gave the world Pythagoras, fail to balance their books?
How could the Greek prime minister, a descendent of the great Greek orator, Demosthenes, fail to convince his people that he was right?
He had shown he was no better than Zorba The Greek, who could dance but had no other talent to speak of.
Moreover, how could these people, descendants of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others be so dumb they couldn’t calculate that their bloated public service would bankrupt their coffers?
The Italians ought to have known better than to believe in La Dolce Vita.
Wasn’t this the same love for pleasure that led to The Fall of the Roman Empire?
But these experts on the power of the Supernatural insisted the misfortune of the Europeans and the Americans were their incredible past cruelties to Africans.
Was there a demand for reparations, perhaps? Would their punishment end after they had paid something to atone for their sins?
Yes: Give Barack Obama a second term as president of the United States and all would be forgiven.
Seriously, there are Africans who believe the crisis in Europe and the US confirms that an economic system pegged on the basic needs of the people was better than capitalism.
These people will not accept that Communism failed because it was founded on a fantasy — that the human soul was all good and no evil.
It is pointed out that China, whose communism is no longer that which was promoted by the Great Helmsman, has become part of the capitalist system.
It is willing to lend money to both Europe and the US to bail them out of their present crises because all that would promote trade among them.
Trade is the magic word for China: it is willing to do business with anyone, including the smallest dictatorship in Africa, as long as all that can, in the end, promote its trade with the rest of the world.
It may not overtake the US as the richest country in the world, but it won’t be the economic backwater that it was during Mao’s communism.
For Africa, of course, the primary purpose of government must be to end poverty.
Governments must not treat poverty as something that ought to be paid attention to only after everything else — the presidential palace, the defence forces’ bloated wages, a bigger, glitzier Parliament building, obscene allowances for the cabinet
ministers and the MPs — has been tackled . . .
In that case, there will always be loud calls for someone’s head to be chopped off as punishment for allowing poverty to continue when it could be ended by a judicious allocation of funds to create jobs.
This could result from a policy that really allows foreign direct investment to pour in without the risk of being gobbled up by corrupt ministers.
Corruption is a reality in Africa — as it is in other countries.
What makes it worse for our continent is that we were once exploited by Europe and the US.
There is not a chance they will ever return to us the resources they gouged out of our soil or the lives lost at sea during slavery.
But it is sickening that we be robbed by our flesh and blood.
Bill Saidi is a veteran writer based in Harare.
