Africa’s familyhood on the rise

“Ujamaa’’/African Familyhood’’ is rooted in ‘’LOVE’’ of members of the  extended family and humanity.  Each member of the family must ‘’WORK’’ to support all, including: children, the elderly and the sick. The product of that labour must be SHARED for need; including mothers having good nutrients to support healthy pregnancies; having strength to deliver babies […]

“Ujamaa’’/African Familyhood’’ is rooted in ‘’LOVE’’ of members of the  extended family and humanity.  Each member of the family must ‘’WORK’’ to support all, including: children, the elderly and the sick. The product of that labour must be SHARED for need; including mothers having good nutrients to support healthy pregnancies; having strength to deliver babies , and breastfeeding their babies and children till they become effective adults. Each new generation of youths would later sustain familyhood.
The relevance of Africa’s familyhood has increased with the spectacle of post-Cold War governments in Europe throwing millions of citizens out of work; denying them health care and housing, and police baton-bashing demonstrations by protestors. Democracy’s dividend is dead.
In Africa’s history, familyhood suffered from massive and sustained slave trade deporting millions of victims.  Coastal communities still lose loved ones to Atlantic and Indian Ocean storms while out fishing with canoes. Isolated feudal economic, political and social relations popped up. European rulers imported feudal s forms of owning land; established racial dictatorships in Algeria, Kenya and from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to Angola. In Rwanda and Sierra Leone, administratively manufactured hate relations between groups were run by degrading social relations like Tutsi chiefs at beer drinking sessions standing on backs of Hutu men and urinating on their backs. Such degradations fuelled ferocious massacres.
Liberation wars lasting from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, notably: in Algeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde held seeds of reinstating African familyhood into modern governance. Leaders of liberation movements conducted intensive dialogue with ordinary people about giving them better lives; giving their children schools; providing modern healthcare services in bush clinics. Guinean propaganda films aired to audiences on American university campuses showed militant doctors performing surgeries under cover of tropical forests as hostile Portuguese aircrafts flew above. Eritrean militants were shown conducting mass education classes under shrub bushes; and Eritrean women fighting on front lines to affirm their responsibility for winning freedom from Ethiopian enslavement. ‘’We must treat history as it was so that we can have a proper attitude towards the future’’, a voice has intoned.
 Cold War diplomacy supported military coups to derail politicians who ended colonial exploitation; promising to refurbish African familyhood.  El Nimeiry’s military regime destroyed calls for social justice by the Sudanese Communist Party. Al-Bashir’s military rule has used the claim of promoting Islamisation to undermine the old clan politics in Khartoum/Omdurman; and bloodied demands for independence by Southern Sudanese populations. Idi Amin’s military regime in Uganda (1971-1978) was infected by the Nimeiry/Bashir virus; also disrupting Obote’s drive to establish a socialist economy. African familyhood became drowned under blood-stained power.
In Kenya, the tradition of ‘’IT IS OUR TURN TO EAT’’ (or using control of political power to corruptly monopolise economic benefits), was started by European Settlers. It provoked the Mau-Mau armed struggle; while under Jomo Kenyatta (1963 – 1978) it animated repression against socialistic opposition by Oginga Odinga’s party. It infected Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year regime. The accumulated discontent would yield a ‘second Mau Mau’ post-election violence of 2007/2008. Its positive result, however, was a 2010 constitutional referendum which decentralized executive control of national revenues; gave women more access to being elected to national and regional legislatures; and sent a sitting president to the ICC.
Enthusiasm by the International Criminal Court has had the merit of arousing a trans-African discourse over ending abuse of political power to terrorise local populations with impunity.  Tanzania’s invasion of Uganda and chasing Idi Amin from power had domesticated the principle of ‘’the right to intervene’’ invented by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to end racial dictatorships; declaring South Africa’s apartheid system a crime against humanity.  Calls by Kenya’s parliament for the ICC to try sponsors of the post-2007election mass slaughters, was initially widely welcomed locally as an opportunity to transcend impunity by local elites. The voice of African familyhood was re-asserting itself in Kenya.
In the 2010 referendum and 2013 election campaigns in Kenya; as well as the 2003 t0 2014 election rhetoric in Nigeria’s State and national elections, promises to ‘’serve’’ the welfare of the people resumed vigorous visibility. In Ethiopia, a military coup and armed revolution terminated imperial greed, cruelties and impunities; gave land, rural roads, and health clinics to a people perplexed by a phenomenon of service to them by the state. In Nigeria, news reports showed senators seeking re-election exporting capital to foreign economies through distributing motor cycles; NAPEP vehicles; cars for use as taxis; cassava-grinders to local communities – all as evidence of ‘’taking democracy dividends’’ to constituencies. In South Africa, the ruling ANC struggles to remain loyal to African familyhood to millions of poor or jobless blacks. Slums hum: ‘’Aluta Continua!’’