Africa 2009 – Bridging the knowledge divide – human rights

CONVERSATIONS WITH MAWERE

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- Mutumwa Mawere -

Africa 2009 – Bridging the knowledge divide – human rights - Part 9 of 30

Posted on December 17th 2009

When we the members of Africa Heritage Society www.africaheritagerivonia.com designated Tuesday, as a Human Rights Day, in our weekly calendar, we were acutely conscious that Africa's better days can only come when not only a number of fundamental rights and freedoms are encoded into law but a new culture is developed in respecting the rights that citizens are entitled to.

Without the law, human civilization would be no different from the civilisation characteristic of the animal kingdom where might is right.

Societies that do not guarantee basic rights and freedoms to their people are incapable of attracting talent, creativity and innovation.

History has shown that free minds are capable of accomplishing extraordinary outcomes.

Article 1 of the Unites Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Although we are all born free and freed from the means to discriminate among human beings, in life we invest more in distinguishing ourselves than in establishing common ground based on mutuality and purpose.

Through our own inability to act against human rights abuses as along as such abuses are targeted at someone else, we encourage a culture of abuse that is detrimental to our mutual progress and development.

In the political market, those that are privileged to compete and hold state office, it is not unnatural that they end up thinking that their rights are superior to the people they preside over.

Competition while healthy is not easily encouraged in the political space. Surely, any person who holds political office for a long time must know that such action undermines human rights and distorts policy choices in favour of those connected to power.

As we reflect on our past, we must appreciate that the model of governance that has dominated the post-colonial era, has not produced the intended outcomes.

The right to life and liberty is yet to be democratised in Africa.

Citizens do not have the same rights in practice.

The few that are in power have a better right to life and liberty than the majority of the citizens.

In the animal kingdom, life is easily perishable and there are many countries in which human life is also perishable.

Without the rule of law, life itself has no meaning as any stronger person can terminate the life of the weaker person with Law

impunity.

When we think of African heritage in terms of human rights, what comes to mind? In the pre-colonial era, what kind of order did we have as Africans? What was the attitude towards human rights?

The justification for colonizing Africa apart from trade and commerce appears to have been a notion that African civilisation was barbaric and unorganised.

In fact, the settlers genuinely thought that native Africans were less human and, therefore, not entitled to fundamental human rights in as much as animals could not be entitled to such rights.

The construction of contemporary Africa was, therefore, based on borrowed concepts of human rights that can be traced back to a recent European history.

A lot of what we know about human rights is derived from European experience.

During the colonial era, native African rights were regarded as subordinate to settler rights.

Equally, in the post-colonial era, the rights of descendants of settlers are regarded as subordinate to the rights of natives.
The colonial project did work as its fruits are there to be seen.

The transformation of Africa into a continent of laws and institutions can be traced directly to the interface with imperialism.
The settlers who adopted Africa as a new home were motivated principally by a desire to improve their standard of living and in so doing convert their new environment into a little Europe.

As we reflect on our heritage, we also cannot ignore the impact of the men and women who pioneered the transformation of the continent into what we see today as Africa.

These men include, Mr. Cecil John Rhodes, whose views on human civilisation and the role of Great Britain in shaping it is instructive.

Rhodes once said:"I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race...If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible..." It is clear that he believed that English people were the first race in the world and this belief informed his actions.

In hindsight we all may have our views on Rhodes' beliefs and yet without such strong beliefs the development of our part of the continent could very well have been different.

The founding fathers of what post-colonial African inherited were men driven by passion, pride and prejudice.
In their minds, holding the view that it must have been God's true intention to make other human beings of less value than others was justified. In fact, they were evangelical in their pursuit of race-based policies as they thought that they were fulfilling God's promise.

Human rights could, therefore, not have universal application and the denial of franchise to native Africans could not be considered to be a violation of human rights.

We cannot change the past and our heritage must be inclusive of the ugly and good of the past.

We are all products of the actions of those that came before us.

The freedoms that many take for granted were institutionally denied to the majority and the lack of progress on the human rights front in Africa must be critically examined from the foundations of colonial Africa.

The psychological impact of policies and programs that were race-based has proven difficult to eradicate.

Post-colonial administrations have seamlessly stepped into the shoes of yesterday oppressors.

Just like the colonial administrators who felt that it was God's intention that the self-evident truths that all men are created equal were not so self-evident. They played God by assigning roles and responsibilities on the basis of skin colour and the new Gods in Africa are behaving no different.

It is only when all God's children taken responsibility for the future that the self-evident truths can have meaning.
We simply need a new declaration of independence as the independence we thought we were going to have has proved to be a mirage.

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