By Dr.David Matsanga in London
In my struggle for Africa I have wondered why a continent with vast minerals has the largest number of Western-backed Non Governmental Organisations. Most Africans flying out to Europe talk about meeting an NGO boss on the ground. They go and gossip about Africa to earn a living back home.
Most of the African intellectuals have studied on scholarships of these Western NGOs in Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, Yale and other Western institutions. I am lucky that I struggled on my own with God helping me to study in the UK and remain with an African spirit.
The major question is whose interests are these civil societies serving. Prior to Africa’s independence, there wasn’t any civil society championing the case of Africans. Why now the emergence of organisations funded by former colonisers or their erstwhile allies.
During the 1945-91 US-Soviet Cold War era there wasn’t a huge influx of these civic societies in Africa and the third world. There were a lot of political conflicts which were a result of the power play during the cold war era between Eastern Europe and the West.
Most African nations which were pro-Eastern block had wars whose main sponsor were the Western nations for example the Angolan Civil war, Murder of Patrice Lumumba, Mozambican Civil War etc and the West tried to destabilize these nations as they didn’t promote the type of governance they preferred.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the world was ushered into a new era of a unipolar world and those nations who were pro-Communist were heavily punished and the likes of Yugoslavia collapsed. Cuba had its economy in a mess.
The emergence of unipolar changed the approach of the West as they started to sponsor a new form of destabilisation through the funding of Non-Governmental Organisations which acted like monitors of African governments.
The issue of Human Rights and good governance was ushered in though they ignored violation of Africans’ rights by governments that supported the West’s agenda. The Civil society became the new destabilisation strategy as Africans were no longer keen to be used to fight unjust civil wars.
The same civil societies started to export ideas like same-sex marriages which were a taboo in African cultures and those nations which allowed these diabolical acts were given funds as they were labeled observers of human rights. The civil societies were ushered in to cause Africans to hate their cultures and religion thus losing their identity which is a curse as our moral fabric was torn apart.
Through these civil societies, Africa was made a laboratory of western medicines and the destabilisation agenda was further cemented through the imposition of sanctions on nations that embarked on programs to sustain their own economies. The ideas of the likes of the Late Col Gaddafi, Hamel Abdel Nasser, Ben Bella, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and others were bastardised as they were seen as a threat to the survival of western economies which were premised on looting resources.
The emergence of civil societies was premised on letting Africans not to seek economic independence by becoming donor-dependent. When there was genocide in Rwanda, non of the NGOs were there for the people of Rwanda, when the Banyamulenges were terrorising the people of DRC there was deafening silence from these NGOs.
Then there is ISIS now wrecking havoc in the northern parts of Mozambique but none of the Western-backed NGOs has raised a voice to condemn these acts as they are part and parcel of the terrorists.
With the emergence of a new cold war between US and China, Africa is not going to be spared as the West has already started pouring billions of dollars to promote the bastardisation of China’s policies in Africa through sponsoring of scholars who are paid by these NGOs to discredit African governments programs of engaging China and Russia in their economic programs.
African governments need to enact policies and laws to monitor the activities of these NGOs otherwise we will be plunged into a new crisis as the West seeks to protect its interests.
Civic societies in Africa are not pushing African Agendas. They are pushing regime change. They must be told to push African agendas by working with the governments not against Governments.
NGOs need to respect ethos and values of African cultures. We are Africans not because we were born in Africa but because Africa is in Africa. We have special cultures based on strict creed of God. We respect all so we must be respected.
God bless Africa
The writer is a Political Scientist and International Relations with Conflict Resolution Expert bias, an investigative Journalist and a Pan African based in Surrey London, the United Kingdom.
Twitter @Dr.David Matsanga
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