By AHH

Please first read in order: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

SOARING

“We desire to bequeath
two things to our children;
the first is roots,
the second is wings.
— African Proverb

Felucca on the Nile

Gramsci’s understanding of Hegemony as “the moral and intellectual leadership” is dying in the combined West. Exhausted by the internal and external pillage of a millennium, dwindling in the childlessness of focused individualism and hedonism, discredited as hypocrites claiming to bring liberty and democracy to one destroyed Global South society after another, the West rapidly loses self-belief and its luster to outsiders. The unending corruption and scandals of their elites and celebrities, losses in Afghanistan and wider Arabia, and open societal dissolution repel. Glossy chic magazines showing tall, thin, and lighter-skinned models no longer draw moths to the flame. Hollywood quality and drawing power plummet at the same rate as competing Iranian, Russian, Bollywood, Nigerian, Egyptian and a myriad energized local cultural offerings flower everywhere else. No longer able to dominate directly, no longer able to mind-wash insidiously, no longer able to persuade compradore elites against their own interests, no longer able to fend off the Russian-Chinese-Turkish consortium taking sledgehammers to the very underpinnings and credibility of their former African fiefdoms, Africa finally turns like a ponderous but unstoppable super-tanker…

Western wooing ceased to have effect. In late June 2022, regional powers Senegal and South Africa were invited to the G7 at Bavaria, Germany. Too little too late. The days natives were impressed with an hour’s appearance at the Head Table are long passed. These two were among the most outspoken against unipolarity. The Senegalese President as acting head of the African Union body accused western sanctions behind the obstructed grain and fertilizer from the Ukrainian and Russian Black Sea ports. South Africa as a charter member of the BRICS stayed the multipolar course, hosting naval exercises with Russia and China off its coast. (Image 08: Russia, China & South Africa sign ‘Mosi’ naval drills)

South Africa ⁎ China ⁎ Russia

African leaders held firm in the year since the SMO. They were more resolute in the half-year since the incendiary breakout of the NATO grain fiasco. Whether the West merely intended to tarnish Russian reputation thereby or genuinely sought famine in Africa, it had the same end-effect. They refused to sanction or to cut relations with Russia as demanded by the combined West. Yoweri Museveni of Uganda made the pointed observation that, “Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, have supported Uganda and the African anti-colonial movement for over 100 years and have never caused the country any harm.” Why should he or Africans transform a people of goodwill into enemies due to incitement by a third party? Seven months later, his Foreign Minister Jeje Odongo reiterated these points:

“We were colonized and forgave those who colonized us. Now, the colonizers are asking us to be enemies of Russia, who never colonized us, is that fair? Not for us: their enemies are their enemies, our friends are our friends.”

Putin with African Union head Sisi, 2019

On February 18, 2023, Russian President Putin addressed the African Union gathering,

“For Russia, African states have always been and remain important and reliable partners. We are united by the desire to build a just and multipolar world order, based on true equality and rule of international law, free from any form of discrimination, forceful dictatorship and sanctions pressure…”

At the heart of new partnerships being forged between Africans and Russia – China is solving energy and food poverty, restarting development and modernization, and establishing the lasting stability and security necessary for those aims. This implied turning from intransigent former colonials absorbed in status-quo maintenance to partners with goodwill and tools adequate to the tasks.

A) Ensuring energy security. Eager to join the development and modernization drive of the Global South, and wary of western intentions to deprive them of fruitful avenues to acquire energy, three strategies percolate aimed at alleviating chronic energy shortages. First are increased imports from Russia, now chiefly to North Africa, as it increasingly diverts some of its petroleum products to Africa from former European customers. Kofi Anan’s dynamo Ghana is becoming a regional energy hub; it plans to build and ship LNG to other West Africans and just accepted to be a Russian oil hub and resupplier too. The lucrative game as middlemen of “non-Russian Freedom Oil” expands beyond Indians, Chinese, and traditional Greek shippers to the keen African foot soldiers of multipolarity.

The second is promotion of nuclear energy built by Russians, Chinese and South Koreans. This is an alternative to unreliable hydropower in regions with rolling droughts and variable seasonal water levels. Almost 25% of African countries already signed up for such development projects, committing to long-term partnerships with the Eurasian country constructing the project.

The third is increased intra-regional sourcing for mutual benefit, reducing middlemen and significant freight costs. As encouraging as West Africans Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria focusing on refining and becoming regional exportation hubs for the energy needs of all, there was the recent trip of the Ugandan leader to South Africa to seek their coal to produce more economical steel in East Africa. Connections long denied by geographical challenges or neocolonial barriers are being overcome via new technologies, infrastructure development, and most importantly, intra-African initiative and will.

Standing in the way in some regions are the systemic crises, legacies, and mindsets from colonial eras. Gross mismanagement, incompetence, and living off the fat of the past plague even the most industrialized country in Africa.

“South Africa has been suffering from an energy crisis, with intense blackouts hurting businesses and economic activity. The country’s largest producer of electricity, Eskom, has been slashing production as more than half of its capacity is unavailable due to frequent breakdowns at its ageing power stations. Eskom previously stated that the country needs an additional 4,000 to 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity to eliminate the supply-demand gap.”

Leaving aside the fundamental issue whether these continuing travails are a legacy of the 1990s post-apartheid misdirection by the Anglo-American “Big Brothers” of this Anglophone nation, who gave similar “beneficial and prudent advice” to Russia back then in the gangster-run 1990s, or the continuing cynical corruption of an elite base which chooses to stay stuck in a rut, these energy deficits were known two decades ago. Yet time and money were wasted on renewables and other inadequate short-term solutions. The downturn and loss in confidence has resulted in an unofficial employment rate nearing 50%!

Queen of Ife

Without good management practices and a sense of stewardship no nation can prosper and move forward. Observing the competence, diligence, hard-work and consummate professionalism of their Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Turk, and other interlocutors of the Global North, East and South, a new positive ethos and community of sovereign nations develops. The message starts to solidify the onus is on each to sincerely manage their affairs in the Brave New [Sovereign] World. There are no short-cuts. And no recourse, succor or good will to be had from the end-stage western Hegemon hell-bent on the devolution and degradation of all.

B) Ensuring food security. Current African grain imports and the top destination of Russian grain exports already overlap. It is anticipated Russian will to continue to conscientiously meet these food contracts (and exceed by providing for free at times!) will continue to bind Africans and Russians. Even with the unprincipled NATO shenanigans of the 2022 Black Sea grain blockades, Lavrov “highlighted that in total 10.5 million tons of grain, mainly wheat, has been supplied, with 60% going to Asia and about 40% to Africa.” Roughly a third of last year’s grain yield remains to be exported, stored in nearly-bursting Russian grain silos. As alternative logistics routes, payment systems and adoption of recipient markets of these new mechanisms develop, less leeway remains to the west to interdict short of open warfare on the rest of mankind.

During his State of the Nation address to the Federal Assembly on February 21, 2023, President Putin addressed the strong performance and success of their agricultural sector. He said Russia will increase grain exports to 55-60 million tonnes by the end of the current agricultural year

“As for agricultural production … Russian agrarians harvested a record amount – over 150 million tonnes of grain, including over 100 million tonnes of wheat. By the end of the agricultural season, that is, June 30, 2023, we will bring our grain exports to 55–60 million tonnes…”

This is welcome news as much of the Ukraine’s volume now leaves the market due to the war. The western countries will also have much lower yields due to high fertilizer, diesel, and fuel costs, not to mention disastrous droughts and irrational policies such as forbidding a third of Dutch farmers to farm in a global farming powerhouse due to deeply misguided carbon policies.

Multipolarity – safety in numbers

C) Ensuring sovereignty, stability, and peace. Undergirding energy and food security are sovereignty and peace. Without those, the proper functioning of food and energy sourcing and distribution, and a healthy hopeful society itself, are impossible. These prerequisites have their own criteria, evident from recent moves by various African states and the Russian – Chinese condominium.

1) Ensuring multipolar traction: 53 of 120 (44%) of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) members are Africans. 53 of 55 (96%) African countries (except South Sudan and Western Sahara) are members of NAM. The 120 countries of NAM consist of 4.6 billion people and 58% of the world population. They and other members of the Global South who formed NAM used its learned skill sets, connections, and valuable experiences to power silent resistance, even if not always effectual. Its hope promises to revive in the near term.

The West leaves no stone unturned in efforts to subjugate or dismantle the old civilizational states. As seen in the just concluded 2023 Munich Security Conference, it arrogantly brooks no neutrality. Where is the scope for non-alignment going forward?

“Is NAM still alive or is it struggling to be re-born, particularly at a time when a new Cold war is emerging at the United Nations—where veto-wielding permanent members, China and Russia, are aligning themselves against the US, UK and France.

The split has resulted in a deadlock over military conflicts and civil wars in Syria, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Yemen, and most recently Ukraine, among others, and is also politically dividing UN member states…

…NAM tended to be political with a tilt towards Russia, with countries like Cuba playing a leading role. As recently as 2019, Venezuela was the head of NAM and hosted the 2016 summit, which failed to get much participation at the heads of government or state levels.

“With the end of the Cold War, nonalignment lost its meaning in a unipolar world…” Currently under the leadership of Azerbaijan, it hasn’t had a resurgence, and it will be the turn of Uganda in December [2023] to try for a revival, which would be based on economic and development interests…”

Is multipolarity the new garb of nonalignment? It has now become not merely a trendy leitmotif, but a survival mechanism and necessity going forward. Russia, China, Iran-Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and North Korea broke open the unipolar golden billion egg. When the strident imperialist and neocolonial regimes flock to congregate in their own blocs, such as NATO, the EU, the G7, AUKUS, among other exclusive bodies, as force multipliers of their aggressive agendas, it is prudent for the targets as in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin to either “…all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” A related African proverb reminds, “sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.”

Thus, in the milieu of the current brutal global commons, the understanding is widely shared Africans must bloc. Where? The African Union is inadequate, both in current structure and in total heft even under optimal arrangements; to balance and have a chance, other regions are required, especially in Asia with its two heavy weights Russia and China, and their multilateral and welcoming body the BRIICS+. Africans’ historical inclinations and antipathy to imperialism, the current trajectory of history, and the expediency of survival against hegemonists determined to maintain unequal relations at all costs, indicate they will be key players helping enhance multipolarity in the near term.

RT Presence in Africa

2) Ensuring informational sovereignty: there is urgent imperative to get out of the western media bubble, the Matrix-like 360⁰ construct which brainwashes from the cradle to the grave. Media imperialism needs to be addressed. Most of the Global South media relies on three western-controlled newswires for informing its own staff of international (and often local) events and thereafter transmitting, usually verbatim, to their local populace: the New York City-based Associated Press (AP), the London-based Reuters, and the Paris-based Agence France-Presse (AFP). The published number of journalists for each are: AP 3,300; Reuters 3,100; and AFP 2,400, not including input from their considerable intelligence, political and commercial interests. Their pools of resource, diverse global reach and presence and number of bureaus dwarf all competitors. These set the Narrative assaulting mankind.

Local non-western sourcing needs to be developed, funded, and cultivated, circumventing the ideological binding of “media imperialism,” which is defined as:

“… the operation of the modern media to create, maintain and expand systems of domination. This concept is useful in articulating the manner in which global media systems operate as “transnational agents”, either as corporations or media industries, to direct the flow of media products on an international scale.

While old features of media imperialism, such as the control of ownership structure and distribution by Western powers are waning, the emergence of platform imperialism, as reflected by the US Big Tech giants, combined with a difficult economic environment, compels the local media to rely on Western news agencies for content of international news.

Even for developments that are within the African continent, due to lack of financial resources, national news agencies are forced to rely on Western news agencies for content. This includes the use of Western media platforms such as its global networks, newspapers and newswires as sources of news. In this way, dominant Western views are perpetuated and in the process hegemony is constructed.”

As Russia protectively tightened its media laws, holding publishers accountable for disinformation and serving foreign interests, the similar understanding and enforcement of informational sovereignty needs to become widespread. Ours is an age of unrestrained mindwars and undue external influence requiring considered protective mechanisms at the state level. South Africa and many Anglophone countries unfortunately followed in the steps of the Anglo-Saxon and Europeans and blocked transmission of Russian Television (RT). MultiChoice, the Europe-based global distributor of RT, within days of the start of the SMO cut its satellite service to all providers. This included 20 million paying subscribers throughout sub-Saharan Africa. At one fell stroke through one typical provider, the SMO was leveraged to disconnect at least 1 in 10 Africans from Russia’s premier voice. How many of Russia’s recent satellite launches included mechanisms for informational sovereignty, so as to never again rely on any western middlemen?

Going forward, among useful African metrics will be reversal of these deplorable decisions. Decrying motions by intelligentsia are insufficient. State action is essential. One additionally anticipates the banning of instrumentalized western social media, such as Meta which was declared a terrorist organization. It is anticipated the Russian and Chinese diplomacy and initiatives within the BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), African Union, and other multilateral organizations will draw attention to the imperative of informational sovereignty. The bungling and heavy-handedness of westerners in their coordinated deceitful media offensives further incentivizes Africans to take self-defensive measures against forces hostile to their national welfare and development. The gloves will come off soon on the part of the 90% in equal measure.

3) Ensuring corporate accountability: Concomitant with dedollarization, food, energy and sovereignty-stabilization, the rerouting of trade, supply routes, and basic cultural exchanges, will come the necessity of stripping transnational corporations (TNCs) of their exorbitant privilege. The implementation of international law (and ditching of “Rules-based International Bankster and TNC Order“) will see the increasing circumspection of their regime of impunity to-date: acquisition of communal resources and human services at rock bottom Economic Hitman prices and dumping environmental and social costs on the local nation. The internet has opened eyes, increased awareness, and built explosive potential.

By now, the operational model of western TNCs cruising shark-like in African waters is well-known:

Transnational Corporate Paradigm

In sum, the harms of the western model of TNCs have come to outweigh their benefits to the host African nation. They have not helped locals, whether in the economy, budgets, or in the development of infrastructure, knowledge, human or nonhuman potential. They imparted the culture of endemic corruption, bribery, and pessimism conducive to maintaining unequal extractive relations.

Most insidiously for generations, western TNCs fatally contributed to African underdevelopment through wastage of host time and energy in misplaced hopes. Local compradore elites, whether cognizant or not, served as agents against their own peoples’ interest during their unrequited romance with international capitalism. Rather than pursuing other fruitful avenues, most African states were reduced to continued dependency on the old parasitism, rebranded with a softer image. TNCs remain central to this legerdemain. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah in his book ‘Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,’ defined the new chic oppression as:

“The essence of neocolonialism is that the State which is the subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”

The TNCs work hand-in-glove with the Bankster, political and industrial elites of their home nations (“the Pirate base.”) Indeed, they became overtly supranational since 1991, predating on the west equally, seeing themselves as above Nation or Law. The chickens came home to roost. Tools and experiences of pushback against TNCs developed in Latin America and Asia, and in the West itself, have found their way into Africa. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) should become a trendy catchword in the winds of change from its former niche and largely ineffectual utility. Enforcement mechanisms are becoming mainstreamed, with the lawsuits and lessons of Africans themselves in the last decades coming to the fore; claimant lawyers became more effective and judges more socially responsive. The period of syphoning off the vast wealth of Africans with impunity and leaving social and environmental devastation in its wake nears its end.

In combination with non-existent colonial-era development and modernization, and continuing inculcated culture of bribery, nepotism, and oppression within artificial western-drawn borders between the various quarreling tribes, is it a wonder Africa never took off? However, every worthwhile uplifting journey starts with a single step. Evicting TNCs, dedollarization, and abrogating the predatory Washington Consensus paradigm maintaining neo-colonialism in Africa are three imminent mighty steps.

Atmospheric pressure builds on local elites. After the instructive western heist of Russian forex and oligarchical loot, formerly complacent African compradore elites find themselves fearful of storing wealth in western offshore havens, and less able to travel to an embittered and vindictive west which sanctions, loots openly and blocks their movements. What use are the dual passports?! Simultaneously, they are forced to demonstrate local utility in standards of living and good governance to stay alive.

Local elites are forced to rediscover the virtues of being good stewards and true servants of their African charges. Their very lives and futures depend on it, given dwindling correlation of forces against their peoples. One cannot fight both against external barbarians at the gates, and internal restive populations! The West, in pursuit of transcontinental chaos à la Rumsfeld–Cebrowski Doctrine, withdrew its former arms to enable proxy torching of state structures; Russians generously give defensive arms to those interested in sovereignty, survival, and multipolarity. Are the options and avenues of proceedings complicated?

Local elites thus start to become more assertive vis-à-vis TNCs, perforce dismantling neocolonial paradigms. Any western initiative, any involvement by interlocking and interfering westerners, indeed any westerner, becomes untenable and incompatible with future survival. The stakes become crystalized to all. Their reputation among the new community of “BRICS+” and other multipolar organizations, and the new competition for development heralded by the expanding Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), will serve as additional incentive. The priorities, loyalties, economic ties and very mutual tolerance between African and western elites diverge.

A Chef serves Solutions, 2011

4) Ensuring kinetic defense: What delectable servings come with the future? The peace must be won. Western technocrats and imperial functionaries find their prospects quite bleak. They bet everything on the Ukrainian Black Hole submitting Russia. Rather It devoured the entire West. They now sit cross-legged and near naked in soiled loincloths in candlelit dungeons within pentagrams chanting to dark abominations who long ago themselves fled at the rumor of the coming of the Russians. The famous Lines start to appear on the Wall…

Wagner promised to return to Africa in a big way after the Ukraine. Since the SMO, the gloves came off. Russia embarked on open anti-neocolonial agenda and the maintenance of global cultural, social, political, and civilizational diversity. People do not listen to the words of their president. He clearly enunciated the diagnoses and the solutions (more later).

“…the smoothing out and erasure of all and any differences is essentially what the modern West is all about. What stands behind this? First of all, it is the decaying creative potential of the West and a desire to restrain and block the free development of other civilisations…” 

Our Valdai communique at the beginning highlighted “there is no sustainable development without stability and peace.”

“Russia has played an important role in restoring stability and combating terrorism in a number of African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic. Russia has actively participated in peacekeeping forces in Africa. It is important to enhance Russia’s role as a guarantor of peace and stability in Africa. African countries rely on Russia as an honest partner that sincerely supports peace and stability.”

African states have ancient grievances against former European colonizers. They continue to prey on Africa to this day, using financial-monetary-economic tools. Their reflexive behaviors of using dreadful proxies such as Salafis in West Asia and Africa or neo-Nazis in the Ukraine delegitimizes them. It makes the West as hateful to the eyes of mankind as their numerous proxies. The West is in zugzwang. It created against Russia, the African Sahel, and its other targets these potent ideological proxies, firmly linked to them at this point, but has in the process lost the hearts and minds of the 90% Rest of Mankind. Now it has lost both the SMO and the fear-factor, fidelity, and basic respect of the Rest…

African Arms Exports

The deep desire for development, political stability and a win-win relationship with other regions requires safeguarding and kinetic tools. The existential decisions of strange cultures are often unaccounted for by material, self-absorbed and insulated technocrats. Passive reorientation not permitted by the West is being overcome. This is where the foremost benefit of Russia rises to the need of the day. With the rise of Putin to the presidency, Russia slowly returned to African arms market. In addition to being the clear African grain giant, “… within the last two decades Russia has managed to become the biggest arms exporter to Africa.” (Chart 07: African Arms Exports)

“Russia’s growing interest in Africa is defined by not only economic, but also political and strategic reasons. Russia sees Africa as a key potential partner in the vision for a multipolar world order.”

Old Soviet clients and all in Africa had more than 60 years to get the measure of reliable and affordable Russian weaponry, tactics, education and instruction in military science and above all the encouragement to help oust their western colonizers. These were quite successful. It effected the end of official western colonization. And now secondary neo-colonialism, based on endless hybrid war and chaos, under various pretexts of terrorism, militias, and other generated proxy, is similarly being circumscribed. The predictable success can be inferred by the metric of the hysteria and rising bile of impotent NATO alliance spokesmen, diplomats, and think-tank verbiage. It consumes their energies and is a waking terror. ““Wagner obsesses [the American officials],” said an Egyptian senior government official. “It is at the top of every meeting.””

The fear-factor of Wagner exists, now amplified by extinguished Ukrainian proxies who claimed of ghosts coming through walls and mined fields to hunt them. Prigozhin, who had recently been cheekily refuting the very existence of Wagner, acquired an incandescent swagger, trolling the west. A gastronomic Bond trolled from Russia with Love:

“Most world powers try not to clash with America. Those regimes that do fight back are usually declared anti-democratic, then criminal, and then terrorist. PMC Wagner is not a country or a regime; rather it is a young and unbridled force, which is why it’s so feared by the Americans. They tried to destroy this force at Deir ez-Zor [Syria] in 2018, but it has recovered its spirit and is able to look into the eyes of the personification of global evil without fear.

It is very important to note that we have never behaved aggressively towards the Americans, but, nevertheless, we have not accepted rudeness from them. On more than one occasion, we have caught armed groups and American intelligence officers who tried to harm the Wagner PMC and organized assassination attempts. Each time we kicked their asses and let them go in peace (there is plenty of video footage), and, before sending them home, we fed them lunch and dinner…”

The African Muslim Sahel

The criminalization and prosecution of formerly routine western behavior in Africa gathers pace. The Russian Foreign Minister served notice:

“The fight against terrorism is, of course, an issue for the other countries in the region,” Lavrov told a news conference in the capital, Bamako, [Mali].

“We are going to provide our assistance to them to overcome these difficulties. This concerns Guinea, Burkina Faso and Chad and the Sahel region generally and even the coastal states on the Gulf of Guinea.”

In the last year, we saw the grand spectacle of the eviction and fleeing of the French and allied European legionnaires and PMC forces from West African states. Mali, Burkina Fasso, Central African Republic, and other largely Muslim members of the Sahel ended their semi-disguised colonial ‘Operation Barkhane‘ (the ATO of west Africa) with serious support from the Wagner Orchestra. (Map 10: The African Muslim Sahel) There is rising anti-French sentiment throughout Francophone West Africa.

The Wagner private military company enjoys and brings to the African table the modern equivalent of “the Maxim or Gatling gun” and similar tools of war neutralizing undue western military advantage. In the Ukrainian SMO, they demonstrated full networking, integration, and supply from the Russian state military-industrial complex; tools at their disposal are truly astonishing and surpass the vast majority of global state militaries. The group reportedly trained national armed forces and engaged in security and counterterrorism tasks in at least the Central African Republic, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Sudan, South Sudan, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Other Russian PMCs are active in Africa. Wagner is merely one head of a new counter-insurgency Russian Hydra crafted by Patrushev, Shoigu and their teams. As the Ukie, Syrian and Afghan proxies of the Hegemon discovered, there’s such a new playing field that even the potent juggernaut of methamphetamine stimulant drugs, blind fanaticism, blanket media PsyOps, and western “instructors” become hopelessly inadequate to the task.

With the assistance of Russian helicopters, planes, and paramilitary trainers and fighters, Mali was able to successfully fight armed irregulars in the last three years. Less than 48 hours before Lavrov’s visit, the instrumentalized UN human rights (sic) envoy was declared persona non grata. Prigozhin of Wagner PMC recently asked his Foreign Ministry to declare France a sponsor of terrorism. As in the Ukraine, this portends a transition from the Russian state and its powerful diplomatic corps from deconfliction and surreptitious counter-insurgency work vis-à-vis the west to hounding them out of Africa via “the military-technical.” The means, will and political-diplomatic support to effect the end of eternal “Long Wars” are at hand. The hope and possibilities of Africa to enforce peace on its numerous territories have never radiated brighter in the last 500 years.