The Sunday Mail
Takudzwa Hillary Chiwanza
WHENEVER the term “international community” is mentioned, it carries connotations of dominance and exclusion.
By way of history, usage of this term has always implied that there is a small number of elite nations which coalesce around issues of asserting a universal brand of civility.
But the international community is a concept in international relations and geopolitics that has always been patently flawed, and Africa should radically revise its approach in relation to its global placement in this context.
Africa’s placement in global diplomacy has always been largely informed by its history.
And, in this, we refer to its colonial and post-colonial history.
The colonial paternalism of imperial powers always meant that Africa was perceived — and still is — as incapable of governing itself as per the organic wishes of its people.
This disdainful perception reigns supreme in the Global North.
Colonial history, and neocolonialism in the contemporary context, mean that Africa’s interpretation of good governance, democracy, stability and human rights in the political economy is shaped by the dictates of the West; of former colonial powers.
When African countries got independence, they inherited the colonial power structures of the colonisers without fundamentally altering them, thus perpetuating the dominance of capitalism to the detriment of the masses: the urban poor and peasantry.
The import of this is that Africa suffers from some form of inferiority complex, a phenomenon with uncanny ubiquity.
We are made to believe that Africa perennially seeks approval of the “international community”, and, in the absence of such misplaced validation policies, the political economy is deemed ineffective.
The global hegemonic rise of neoliberalism in the late 1970s through to the 1990s, largely purveyed through structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, strangled Africa’s capacity to flourish in its own organic solutions and ideas.
This was coupled with the rise of “multi-party politics”, parroted by the West as the sole benchmark of democracy in the globalised, neoliberal, imperialistic and predatory language of the West.
This was in the context of the fall of the Soviet Union and triumph of bourgeois (Western) liberal democracy, with the latter signifying a consensus that “history had ended”.
Africa had to discard the intricacies and nuances of its equally rich and bitter history for the purposes of fitting within this global hegemonic order.
Africa had to acquiesce to the dictates of the West to “develop — the “international community”. And in this, everything has to be approved by the West first for it to be deemed correct.
For instance, elections in Africa are contentious if the West says so, and, in most cases, both ruling and opposition parties are desperate for the West’s attention in electoral cycles.
This prevails without even considering that the same strand of democracy they look up to for validation is responsible for atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya; brutal economic warfare through sanctions and embargoes on countries such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea; political coups in Latin America, and so forth.
The list of Western atrocities in the world is endless.
Thus, the international community is a vague concept in international relations and geopolitics, which sanitises imperialism and exploitation.
The international community was summed up in this way by Martin Jacques: “The international community is the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term ‘international community’ is a way of dignifying the West, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable and more neutral.”
But a lot of countries do not agree with the West all times.
This is usually manifested in the United Nations General Assembly.
Even the conflict between Russia and Ukraine proved this, as some African countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe refused to condemn Russia in the face of Western pressure.
Yet, Africa’s voice in this war has been on the fringes, highlighting how the so-called international community is not designed to include Africa. In the 2022 Kenyan and Angolan elections, where results were contested as usual, what can be seen is a clear desire to gain the approval of the West that the elections were free, fair, credible, and that the victors in those elections are legitimate.
But premising legitimacy on Western validation is deleterious to the wishes of the majority.
What this, ultimately, means is that Africa should assert its voice in international relations, extricating itself from dependence on the international community – an elite grouping of imperial powers that has failed and destroyed Africa endless times.
As Africans, we must take our placement in the global world/ international relations much more seriously and understand that even that in the contemporary is not as equitable as it would appear.
It must always be made clear that the international community, with its attendant international law, imposed ruthless free-market liberal economics on Africa, which glorify individualism over community solidarity.
Africa should have the courage to revisit its history and build conversations about the present and the future with the goal of asserting its independence regarding its global placement in the context of international relations and geopolitics. The so-called international community has committed infinite human rights abuses in Africa, and, as such, it must not be listened to.
At the same time, Africa must confront its internal contradictions and hold its leaders to the highest standards of principled leadership: trust, empathy, accountability, transparency and a deep commitment towards improving the lives of everyone regardless of race, class, gender, faith or political affiliations.
