Mutumwa Mawere

The decolonisation project was driven principally by a shared desire by all Africans to propel the continent beyond the civil rights issue. The most dominant issue facing post-colonial Africa apart from jealously guarding the gains of the national democratic revolution must be financial security for the millions of working Africans.

Africa Heritage Society (AHS) is a non-profit organisation made up of professionals and corporate members who share one common purpose of creating a new mutual founded on the noble idea that Africa belongs to all who believe in it and the future belongs to all who invest in it.

The management of progressive employee benefits plans is a critical issue facing our generation principally because the financial security of the majority was never a preoccupation of the colonial state. The working people of Africa are growing but the face of the financial services industry still remains the same.

The working people of Africa have an enormous but fragmented buying power that still needs to be harnessed.
The last 52 years of uhuru has created a pool of African professionals who have yet to come up with instruments to combine the employee benefit plans at the pan African level with a view to playing a critical role in assuring financial security to the working people.

The quantum of African employee benefits is staggering and yet there is no visible economic movement in the continent to convert this inert power base into real power. When the Diaspora community is included in the equation, the figures are even more staggering. If our spent or collective payroll was to be converted into national income, the African economy is undoubtedly one of the largest in the world.

The African economic power base suggests that we are not poor; we just make poor choices with our money. And as a result, we have not been able to acquire wealth at the same rate as others have in the global family of nations. Part of the reason lies in the fact that we have yet to understand that "The Liberation/Civil Rights Movement was never meant to Create Wealth." So, just what did the Liberation/Civil Rights Movement do? It opened the door for us to create a new economic heritage and an opportunity to acquire wealth. Therefore, it is time for us to move from "Civil Rights to Platinum Rights." Our generation is not blinded by the colonial past and yet we do not seem to know what time it is and what needs to be done to leverage our economic power into real and substantive power.

Once we adopt Platinum Rights as the dominant issue of our time, we can start focusing on the things that are preventing us from taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the national democratic Revolution/Civil Rights Movement- specifically the opportunity to acquire wealth.

The national democratic revolution has created economic opportunities, and now the Platinum Rights Movement must create the vehicle for capturing and seizing them. In the colonial era, the majority of Africans faced "dominant challenges" that former colonial masters were unwillingly to identify with and support. We were able to overcome these challenges through major movements guided by faithful, competent and unrelenting leaders.

In the post-colonial state the situation is no different; it too brings with it a "Dominant Challenge." But that challenge is not political or Civil Rights. That decolonisation battle has been won. The new issue is Platinum Rights (Wealth Acquisition) and, as we did during the colonial era, we must meet the dominant challenge of this century head-on with an Economic Movement or Platinum Rights Movement.

What is this Platinum Rights Movement? It is arming advantaged Africans with the knowledge and means to take full advantage of the opportunities to acquire wealth. We have accomplished a great deal over the last 52 years in terms of education, professional and political achievements. But we can ill afford to be complacent about our current economic position because the Chinese/Indian and Anglo Saxon appetite for African primary resources threatens our independence and prosperity if we do not take steps to organise ourselves in a manner that can complement foreign direct investment with domestic capital formation. Our collective future is exposed and our weak and parasitic political institutions will not be able to protect our future.

So this Economic/Advantage Movement has a sense of urgency about it because, right before our eyes, the world around us is undergoing profound changes, and the stakes are incredibly high. There is both anxiety and anticipation in the continent about the future of the continent in a global environment that is less charitable and inward looking.

Africa needs a sound economic agenda underpinned by genuinely African interests. Although the political kingdom is under the control of natives, the same cannot be said of the economic agenda of Africa. We must to focus on the importance of our generation to develop an Economic Movement with a new agenda that will enhance our ability to sustain a high standard of living, with good jobs and healthy communities.

To begin this Platinum Movement, we must ask ourselves tough questions. If the Civil Rights battle has been won, who is managing the bulk of Africa's employee benefits?

Why aren't we creating an economic democratic space for the majority?
Why are we still facing paralyzing social and economic inequities?
Why aren't we able to take the next steps and capitalize on our educational and political gains?
Who is to blame?

Yes, questions about how we got here are important, and so are questions about who is responsible. However, an even greater question is, "How do we forge a Wealth Creation Movement to achieve the kind of economic power that will transform Africa and benefit the greater African family in the diaspora?"
The answers lie in understanding the problems:

(i) An inability to value and grasp the opportunities won in our hard-fought national liberation/Civil Rights struggle. We cannot benefit from our history if we do not understand its importance and build on it.

(ii) A lack of leadership. We need new Platinum Rights Movement leaders, men and women who have the vision and passion to initiate an Economic Empowerment Movement that will truly transform our continent.

(iii) A lack of strategy. We need an Economic Empowerment Plan that will educate, motivate, inspire, support and sustain wealth creation.

Accomplishing this will require us to view wealth acquisition as a process and not an event. In confronting the challenges of employee benefits in Africa, it is important that a new conversation on key foundational principles required to underpin a sustainable and economically viable post colonial Africa is initiated. Post colonial Africa inherited a sophisticated financial system that we have not taken time to study and comprehend its true nature and context with a view to modelling to suit a non-racial and inclusive dispensation.

The future of Africa lies in our hands and the starting point required to construct a new Africa must necessarily begin with confronting the employee benefits challenges that confront the primary creators of African wealth i.e. the working people.