Now, the light at the end of the tunnel
Not quite. And not so fast. The regenerative capacity of the human species and its ability to transcend unpropitious circumstances remain a tad short of the miraculous. It is when
Not quite. And not so fast. The regenerative capacity of the human species and its ability to transcend unpropitious circumstances remain a tad short of the miraculous. It is when humankind has its back to the wall or comes short of expectations that stuff happen and magical possibilities begin to open up. Recent developments in the most unlikely of places suggest a pushback against rightwing extremism and rabid xenophobia. The taming of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian populist demagogue and authoritarian ideologue, in an electoral landslide and the return of Rumen Radev, an old doctrinaire leftist and former air force general, in Bulgaria suggest that it may be too early to count out idealism and humanitarian politics. Idealism and leftwing heroism represent a worthy antidote against pragmatic devilry and the hardnosed self-idolization that have dominated global politics in recent times. Humanity may be rediscovering the magic of dreaming big all over again. It is this magical self-recuperation that has made a country like Spain and its gangling prime minister stand and walk tall in the pushback against American self-aggrandizement.
While Britain, France, The Netherland, Germany and the northern European countries have been measured in their opposition to American war-mongering, Spain has been vociferous and militant in its dismissals. It is as if the Iberians have fashioned out a secret weapon for dealing with America's rampart militarism and infinite capacity for proactive violence. This is the reward for moral clarity in a time of universal stress. The stalemated quagmire in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is the unimpeachable proof that a fractured, fragmented and bitterly fissured world can no longer be ruled by raw power and force of arms. Such is the pull and push of contradictory values and regnant ideologies that a repressive and regressive regime like the fascist clerisy in Iran has gained considerable international traction and widespread sympathy as a result of its heroic resistance and anti-American nationalism.
All of which is to suggest that the world is in a state of dynamic flux with no one in a position to foretell the outcome as contending ideas collide and hitherto coterminous philosophies of existence take on an autonomous life of their own making it impossible for them to be reassembled under an hegemonic template. Brazil has been lucky to have a man of vision and compassion like President Lula under whose watch the country's institutions have been able to withstand and resist anti-democratic pressures such as witnessed in the Capitol Hill invasion in Washington in January 2021. South Africa lists and limps on, like a badly damaged ocean-going vessel. Under the watch of the stolid and sober Cyril Ramaphosa, the land of anti-apartheid avatars struggles to cling on to the heroic emancipatory vision of its founding fathers although damaged economically and politically. Cuba, after decades of heroic and futile grandstanding, has finally called in receivers, a particularly bitter and galling pill to swallow. After radical surgery, it will have to streamline its economy to be in alignment with the harsh and brutal realities of modern economic Darwinism.
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That leaves the Pope as the last man standing against what he himself has described on a recent eleven-day whirlwind tour of some African nations as the hopelessly compromised nature of our existence. As we have argued in this column when he was first elected by the Catholic Conclave,(See The Pope of Good Hope 2025) Pope Leo XIV may well turn out as the greatest political revelation of our age; a huge moral ballast in the struggle against injustice and a spiritual and intellectual bastion against oppression and racism. As usual, the deep, dramatic irony of Pope Leo's ascendancy was lost on Donald Trump when he averred that the new pope might have been elected because of him. He was dead right but for the wrong reason, as he is finding out in his frantic and panicky reactions to the pope's astringent criticism. No one would have thought of this development with Trump's rampaging reentry. It is like a Deus ex machina, except that this one is perfectly logical and in consonance with the internal trajectory of events. America is commodious enough to contain every imaginable contradiction. But in the turbulence of ceaseless self-surpassing contradictions cancel themselves out. Old and harmful ideologies die out or are modified and the world is created anew.
In this Homeric theatre of war and permanent confrontation of ideas, there are victors and victims. The world has no time for losers. This is why the situation in Africa is particularly distressing. For the past six hundred years beginning with the internationalization of slavery, Africa, the founding continent and cradle of civilization, has been at the receiving end; a passive receptacle of ideas, projects, religions, spirituality and modes of governance conceived elsewhere and only tangentially related to the needs of the indigenous people of the continent. In the process of being an object of history rather than its active subject, the continent and its people have suffered greatly. Whether it is in the modes and manner of enslavement itself, imported religions without any connection with the ontological needs of the people, modes of governance particularly injurious to the African psyche and traditional capacity for self-governance, pedagogies of the enslaved and epistemologies of deliberate retardation, Africa has been left holding the short end of the stick. In the intervening epoch, no African elite group or national political class has been able to register in the universal consciousness either as a force for societal innovation or political advancement of the nation. A void can only produce a vacuum.
It is important for the new generation of African leaders and producers of ideas to address this fundamental impasse without which the continent is going nowhere. The pope has been merciless in his strictures and broadsides against corrupt, inefficient and authoritarian leaders who seem to be the bane of the continent. But like the cripple carrying a crooked load will retort, the problem is more fundamental. Until Africa develops its own unique and authentic identity through rigorous and sustained self-interrogation, its intellectuals will continue to be middlemen of other people's ideas and mere distributors of ideological labels. It is now the time to end this travesty and conflation of destiny so that Africa can assume its rightful place in the comity of continents and the Black person can breathe. This is the beauty of the current global commotion.
