Professor Samir Amin headlined the Second Annual Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week. He lectured on the history of monopoly capitalism with special emphasis on the Bandung Conference as the first attempts by newly independent African and Asian states to resist all forms of imperial expansion. He reiterated the need for continued resistance, while predicting the inevitable collapse of an unworkable system: monopoly capitalism. He brilliantly wove events of history to highlight his point about the constant fight of the peasantry to assert influence on the monarchies and governments and to cut their heads off if necessary. Samia Nkrumah daughter of the Late President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and a newly elected member to Ghana’s parliament, spoke about the work of her father and gave some insight to the kinds of things needed to recapture the fervor and direction of an earlier Africa: the time of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. It was Dr. Utsa Patnaik, author of “The Republic of Hunger”, who addressed what I believe to be the burning question: The Agrarian question. By extension this is a question about peasant rights today and who owns the land and the water.
Professor Fantu Cheru in his introductory remarks preceding Dr. Patnaik mentioned his youth as a sheep and goat herder in Ethiopia before his accidental discovery of formal education. So farming is a very real concept to him. Then as he mentioned that the agrarian question was central to the African revolution, the rain began to fall: as if on cue and to drive home the points. Then Dr. Patnaik outlined her arguments using some very technical graphs and studies that sought to recalculate the idea of underdevelopment. This she did by looking at the neo-liberal idea of growth, development and poverty against her own position which required a look at the food/caloric intake of poor people and that model led to a much higher percentage of people below the poverty line and showed increasing poverty. With a clear and simple style reminiscent of Dr. Walter Rodney, Dr. Patnaik challenged the WTO and economists in the developed world to look again at their models and to see that “free trade” has come at an extraordinary price to the peasantry who still make-up the majority of the world’s population. If you did not understand the graphs and studies then you certainly understood the picture she drew of a man in London, in a cotton shirt, reading his morning newspaper, drinking coffee, with sugar, at a desk of mahogany and taking notes with a pen. She pointed out that the cotton, coffee, sugar, mahogany, and ink all were manufactured in, and/or from raw materials sourced from, the southern hemisphere: Africa, Asia and South America. She added that this was so because the South enjoyed, at least, two growing seasons each year while the north only one. Yet, despite all this production and labor, the south remains mired in underdevelopment and the north industrialized.
For a break from the high technical language of the conference, I visited the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam for the championship game between its top two soccer teams: Simba and Yanga (Young Africans). Before a crowd of about 45,000, Simba triumphed 4-3. It was a see-saw battle but Simba always looked the better team. They had the better buildup, more creativity up front and, I believe, more talent at more positions. The latter fact is crucial for winning anything requiring a team. When I look at some of the people heading up key positions in the governments of the south and the match-up against those of the north, I see reason why we continue to loose in the battle for our resources. This is not to ignore all the past tactics described by Dr. Rodney in his book, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”. But when we look at the African Union and see some of the talent asked to match up the talent at the European Union, WTO, IMF, we are overmatched. It isn’t that the talent doesn’t exist. If you had attended the Second Annual Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week, you would have seen the talent. But the best talent never seems to make it to the positions that matter. This is neo colonialism. Soon, we will see Dr. Patnaik representing the south along with the ideological progeny of Dr. Walter Rodney. This is what we lost and this we must regain.
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