June 4, 2014
(Author’s note: This commentary appeared on Pambazuka.org on May 29, 2014 as part of a mid-century outlook on possible scenarios in Africa. I make my “predictions” debating myself as a political scientist and a defense lawyer.)
Is there light at the end of the tunnel for the “Dark Continent”?
“Making predictions is hard. Especially about the future”, said the famous American baseball player, Lawrence “Yogi” Berra facetiously. Likewise, predicting whether there is light at the end of the tunnel in 2050 and beyond is hard. Especially about the Dark Continent. Making predictions about Africa based on the facts of the last half century will surely make one a doomsayer. Not looking in the rear view mirror would make one a soothsayer. I am neither.
As a political scientist, I am grudgingly guided by the reputed “founding father” of “modern” political science, Nicolo Machiavelli, who instructed that “Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times.” Machiavelli took a dim view of the human capacity to learn from mistakes. He must have believed man is doomed to incorrigibility.
As a lawyer, I take cue from Jean Paul Sartre who unabashedly declared, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” Sartre was preempted by his intellectual forbearer Jean Jacques Rousseau who proclaimed, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.” Are Africans condemned to be free and live under the rule of fair and just laws; or are they damned to perpetual slavery in the service of African tyrants who are themselves enslaved by their former colonial and neocolonial masters?
In making “predictions” about the future of Africa mid-century, I am guided by two questions: Is Africa’s “future history” determined by its “past history”, or is it yet to be written by free Africans yet unborn? Will the cradle of mankind become the graveyard of freedom and human rights in 2050 and beyond?
I shall use neither a rear view mirror, a crystal ball nor mathematical models to predict Africa’s future. I will leave that to the professional futurists and turbaned seers. I choose to look into Africa’s future as a “political lawyer”, a human rights advocate looking through the opaque prism of justice, freedom, rule of law, equality and other such sublime virtues. The question for me is not whether demographics, economics, sociopolitical change, the environment, and human development factors will shape and determine Africa’s future in 2050 and beyond. These factors are unquestionably decisive. My concern is how the rule of law and good governance in Africa can avert the doomsday scenarios of socioeconomic, political and ecological collapse in Africa.
