What Africa can glean from Mazrui’s take on capitalism

Never in the history of African scholarship has so much been owed to so many by so few. Today I would like to salute a fallen icon. Someone who challenged, stimulated, irritated and enlightened me as a fellow African and a scholar. I salute Prof Ali Mazrui.

I came across his epic book The Africans: A Triple Heritage, as a 10-year old in primary school. The book interrogated my assumptions then as it still does today. My favourite was chapter 11.

Prof Mazrui sought to unpack Africa’s journey in search of self-reliance. He titled the chapter Capitalism without winter. He starts by tabling evidence of how post-colonial Africa has to walk a tightrope between the abyss of decay and the sea of dependency.

Nkrumah’s Ghana and Nyerere’s Tanzania tried to put up a fight against dependency and found their economies condemned to decomposition.

To date Francophone African countries such as the Ivory Coast exist but on considerable dependence upon France, the former colonial power. They even keep their federal reserves in Paris. And that is where the punch line comes in.

He argues that winter has had a role to play in creating a predisposition to plan among those western countries which later evolved a capitalist ethos. Before the west developed a culture of industrialist capitalism, it had to develop a culture of calculation and anticipation.

In Africa, we have continued to go for capital-intensive and expensive projects rather than for labour intensive strategies that need local workers.

Whenever mechanisation has come to the African countryside, women have become more deeply marginalised. The work ethic in Africa continues to be bedeviled by factors which have ranged from the legacy of forced labour to the contradictions of western literary education.

You see, many years ago, Japanese fishermen had a big problem with the fish they were delivering to their customers.

By the time the fishermen made it back to land with the fish they had captured, the fish were dull, tired, lazy and lethargic. As a result, they lost their fresh taste.

After many years and tonnes of lost fish, the fishermen discovered the best method of delivering fresh fish was to place them in a tank — along with a small shark. During the trip from the deep blue sea back to the mainland, the small shark would eat a few fish.

Academic icon

But the rest of the fish that survived would make it back to the mainland fresh, energetic, lively and amazingly tasteful because they were challenged in the tank.

The shark challenged the fish in the tank, so they constantly had to move around to stay alive — the sharks kept the fish fresh.

The same is true for African economies. We must first strengthen our capitalistic foundations and then deal with the relevant antagonistic factors.

As I mourn our departed academic icon, I would like him to know that 50 years on, Africa is still in search of a functional equivalent of winter.

We are still in search of a fertile ground for capitalist innovation and production. Our quest for self-reliance is still on.

But what if our climate refuses to freeze, shall we keep groping in the maze of climatic and colonial impediments? In my heart of hearts, I hope it’s not a winter Night’s Dream.

Prof Mazrui, you were right. Capitalism still has everything to do with snow.

Mr Waswa is management and HR specialist and managing director of Outdoors Africa. E-mail: [email protected]