Hii ni excerpt kutoka moja ya insha za marehemu Rweyemamu zilizochapwa katika kitabu chake cha kumkumbuka.... Powerful words.
Third World Options: Power, Security and the Hope for Another Development
Published by Tanzania Publishing House, 1992
Justinian F. Rweyemamu
Africa's Natural Resources and African Economic Development
Looking to the future
….. the time has come for Africa to act now; to undertake hard-nosed goal setting. The euphoria phase of independence when leaders could get away with rhetorical, simplistic, vague and inane objectives (of freedom, equality, participation), when they could afford to have contempt for hard facts and when they could keep calm confidence in their "revelation" to create a new humanity, that time is now irretrievable. This has brought African countries to disaster. Goal setting must recognize the universality of certain human attributes, the nature and implications of existing key socio-economic variables and the requirements of an economy producing for surplus. In any case objectives should no longer be set on a course aimed to placate externally generated ideologies, whims of fancies. Nor should objectives be made as if the rest of the world did not exist or matter.
The search for the elusive summum bonum might be an attraction which philosophers can ill afford to ignore; but its utility to men of action is limited, indeed. In my view, there is likely to be very little agreement at any one time, in any society as to what constitutes the summum bonum. There is however likely to be less disagreement on the proposition that human beings everywhere do not want life of suffering or misery – at least not for its own sake. I therefore submit that a commitment to minimizing the social causes of human misery may be a promising start to goal formulation. I may also add in passing that for better or for worse, human beings value what they must work for, not that they work for what they value. And so it is that the grievances of man or woman as a consumer appear to be more important than his or her concerns as a producer.
Secondly, African leaders must pay more than lip service to Adam Smith's dictum that wealth of nations depends on "the skill, dexterity and judgment with which its labor is generally applied". This does not mean merely the setting up of more schools, the responsibility that all African governments have not only accepted but carried out with vigor and energy. The school system tends to superimpose forms of knowledge on existing fold knowledge without necessarily deepening the latter. As a consequence little new useful knowledge is produced. There is need to establish mechanisms and institutions that will deepen and expand Africa's stock of knowledge. Peasants, for instance, are inclined to augment their knowledge primarily from the most successful practitioners of their occupation. What must be underscored is that the basic task of education is the transfusion of values, but values cannot help us much to pick our way through life unless they become our own, a part to say of our mental makeup. An educational system has to give the people of a given culture the ability to make the world and their own lives intelligible. It is through the creation of intelligibility that meaningful education spurs the outburst of daring, initiative, invention and constructive activity. Finally, each country must critically appraise the arrangements that exist for allocating and distributing its available assets, property, power, privilege, prestige and participation – among individuals and groups, since these assets largely determine the latter's well-being.
African governments must also realize that there can be no genuine development without basic freedom and personal security. They must appreciate the fact that leadership of a nation state cannot be confined to "political" leadership; it must be extended to include labor, youth, parents, women, church, business, and professionals. Leaders in these entities must be recognized and given proper mandate and power. These changes will help unleash people's freedom to innovate and experiment. Consideration should also be given to the reduction of prevailing economic control in these countries. But to reduce controls is not the same thing as surrendering to market forces. Of course, these forces cannot and should not be wished away, they should be harness and utilized to fulfill the desired objectives. What must be appreciated however is that every restriction benefits some people and hurts others. Equally important is the realization that almost every control mechanism is circumvented in implementation, more often by those who have access to higher echelons of authority.
… The completion of that [decolonization] process requires attainment of economic liberation from the curse of poverty and misery. This will require a new leadership to propel the requisites of change. There will be no substitute for arduous effort, perseverance and for unity, founded at the highest political level, to uproot poverty and economic subordination. The African people have never hesitated to make sacrifices for a worthy cause. Sacrifice, perseverance and unity freed Africa from colonial rule. I believe that the same forces can free her from the misery and economic subordination which also deprive her of her dignity.
(Rweyemamu, 1992, pp 153)
