The Zimbabwe I want: Culture, politics and land reform

The Zimbabwe I want: Mandivamba Rukuni on culture, politics and land reform

Amanda Atwood, Kubatana.net

March 04, 2010

"Africa has been declining over the past 50 years over every area – politics, economics, environment, socially. What has happened that we are declining in all of these areas? The good news is that if we’re failing generally, it is likely to be for one key reason. I believe the reason is that we do not have a cultural foundation to development strategies in Africa. A cultural foundation is what our ancestors had laid down for us, but we abandoned it. We had strong families, and strong communities. There was no nation in Africa that was built on weak families and weak communities. Today we are stuck in the colonial paradigm. But the colonial powers did not need strong families and strong communities – they were industrialised. Africa is 70% rural. A rural population needs strong families and strong communities in order to thrive. We are assuming, incorrectly, that a strong state and strong government can solve our developmental challenges. I don’t think that will happen.

There are four causal reasons why we are running into these problems:

1. Organised politics
2. Organised religion
3. Formal education which is totally irrelevant to people’s lives
4. Economic policies based on greed, individualism and selfishness

I believe we should modernise Africa, not Westernise it. It will take more than 200 years to Westernise it. It will be much cheaper, easier and quicker to figure out what kind of African society we need at family level and community level, and modernise that."
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