A London café conversation

update by Vanguard

By Obadiah mailafia

I AM writing this piece from cold, wet London. Last night it rained cats and dogs. Yesterday late afternoon a friend invited me to a café in the old Borough of Richmond where I once lived and lectured in the nearby American University. As we sat to reminisce on the good old days over tea and scones, some two African guys next to our table picked interest in our conversation. Smiling, the younger of the two, turning in my direction, asked me point blank if I came from South Africa. Smiling, I answered No.

I explained that my friend and I both come from Nigeria. But I told him that I have had to live with being mistaken for a South African even in South Africa. I was once in a clothing store and a young man standing next to me started rattling away to me in isiZulu. I turned to him perplexed. He then asked in English why I don’t speak isiZulu. I replied that I am Nigerian. He was astonished. In any case, he said I looked so much like them that he has decided to give me a Zulu name immediately. Today, I am known in South Africa as Dingiswayo, Shaka’s half-brother.

Our two new friends in the café happened to be from Somalia. The younger one I would call Ahmed while the older gentleman we would call Egal. They told us they were both business people working on import-export. They were articulate and well. The discussion soon turned on why Africa is faring so poorly. Egal confessed to me that they are making good money exporting from Europe to Africa, but that the ideal would have been to set up production plants in our continent and manufacture for our domestic needs while exploring local and international markets. He lamented how our centuries-old relationship has brought us nothing but tears.

China was another big topic that we discussed. Ahmed noted that the West are envious of the new Chinese inroad into Africa. They complain of Chinese “colonisation” and Shylock loans. But they were hypocrites who have done nothing to advance Africa. I replied that, much as I would be sceptical of Western opinion of Africa’s political economy and our relations with the Chinese, prudence requires that we relate to them with our eyes wide open. I noted that the Chinese are not in Africa for reasons of charity. They are in our continent because it makes business sense to them. It would be in our interest to beware of some of their sharp practices and the fine writing with regards to loan contracts and their conditionalities.

The subject of their country Somalia came up. I told them that when their former President General Siad Barre was overthrown, he was given asylum in Nigeria. Our Federal Government gave him a grace and favour house in Ikoyi, where he was the next door neighbour to a relation of mine, now late. Somalia is known in the Bible and Qur’an as the ancient Land of Punt, one of the great Cushitic kingdoms of ancient Africa. It was a great civilisation. Egal told us that Somalia had been self-sufficient in food as far back as 1970. Siad Barre and one of the foreign ministers, Umar Arteh Ghalib, were champions of pan-Africanism.

The West became alarmed and decided to sponsor all sorts of rebel groups. The Italians had theirs as did the Americans and the British. Somalia has never recovered to this day. It would seem there is a deliberate effort to make some of our countries permanently gridlocked to failure. Examples that came up were Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We both agreed that Muammar Gaddafi was indeed a nasty piece of work, but he created one of the best welfare societies in the world. Mobutu, on the other one, was a creation of the West. Throughout his thirty-year rule, he did not construct a single hospital, clinic, road or school from where the Belgians left in 1960. The only exception was the palace, road and airport in his home village of Gbadolite.

I explained that when I went to the DRC a few years ago, I was deeply moved to the point of tears. I was privileged not only to see a great deal of the capital of Kinshasa; I made a trip into the interior. The DRC is arguably the most blessed country on earth. It is three million square kilometres, about the size of Western Europe. Even as you land in the airport you notice that the soil is black. It is a sign of fertility. The present value of the mineral wealth of the DRC has been estimated at over $24 trillion, which is in excess of the total GDP of the United States. We all agreed that there is an international complot to keep the DRC permanently disabled so that international mining vultures can steal the vast wealth of this incredibly blessed country. I told my friends that I saw poverty in Kinshasa that I have never seen elsewhere on the continent. It broke my heart.

Before we departed, the Big Question that came up was Nigeria. Both Ahmed and Egal were deeply troubled. They believe that Nigeria is the one country that has the potential to lead the process of Africa’s transformation. They asked us why Nigeria has been such a disappointment. From the depth of their feelings, I could feel the pain and disappointment. It was a difficult question.

I tried to explain as best I could. I told them that I see leadership as the biggest problem. We have not been blessed with leaders, but, rather, political jobbers who always put narrow individual, ethnic, regional and religious interests above the common good.

Secondly, and drawing from the above, we have not had the capability of generating sound economic policies. I believe that the greatest need of the hour is to enhance productivity, build a national system of innovation and unleash a mass industrial revolution. We need science and technology for national transformation. We need to transform the agrarian sector, plan our cities, design fast trains, revamp our infrastructures and build a world class economy that unleashes jobs and massive business opportunities for our teeming youths. My friends agreed with me that the late Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore, Mahathir Mohammed in Malaysia and Sheikh Zayyad in Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Makhtoum in Dubai provide excellent models of the kind of leadership and new thinking our continent needs.

As we bade ourselves goodbye, I left with a deep feeling that whoever becomes president of our country must also see himself as de facto president of Africa and indeed of the black race. Africa is looking up to us. We are the only hope of the black race – from the concrete jungles of North America to the inner cities of England; from the forests of Bahia in Brazil to the ghettoes of Haiti far-flung islands of the blue Caribbean Sea. It is for us that the bells of the new millennium have tolled. We, therefore, cannot afford to fail.

The lion sleeps tonight.  When she wakes, the earth will tremble.

Source:https://samueljackson12.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-london-cafe-conversation.html