Southern Africa’s Historical Legacies as Barriers to Global Democratization

Dr Zambara starts his talk by quoting Barack Obama, who said that Africa does not need strongmen, but it needs strong institutions. This was said by President Obama in his speech to the Parliament of Ghana in 2009. Dr Zambara articulates the importance of strong institutions for Africa’s development and also adds that it is the combination of strong leaders and along with strong institutions that result in the prosperity of a region. He then sets out to explain pre-colonial Africa, where he disagrees with the historians who categorize pre-colonial Africa as pre-historic Africa and that the history of Africa started with the advent of the Europeans in Africa. He highlights how the European colonizers divided Africa among themselves in 1884 and 1885 at the Berlin Conference hosted by Otto von Bismarck, and no African leader was invited. The borders that exist in Africa today are relics of colonial legacy and the potential of Africa to exist as a single country was there. He points out that apartheid was the highest form of colonialism that existed in Southern Africa. He believes that the colonial legacy of apartheid has shaped the current socio-economic structure of Southern Africa. The condition of Africans in South Africa has not changed. Seventy percent of land in South Africa is owned by five percent of the population that is white. Inequality continues to exist even today. Africa has also witnessed several cold-war conflicts on the continent for resources. Bringing in the concept of Dependency Theory, he explains how Africa has become the periphery while the West remains the core. The benefits of globalization, according to him, have not reaped for Africa partly because of the colonial legacy. There is an influx of MNCs into Africa which have exploited the resources of Africa with the natives getting little incentives. The negative impacts of globalization have been a loss of economic control by the government, the growing influence of monopolistic entities in Africa, the rise of China in Africa, and the degradation of the environment in Africa. He concludes by suggesting that Africa must enhance its south-south cooperation to achieve mutual development of the Global South in times of growing protectionism in the West. Report compiled by Yaqoob Saleem MA (International Studies)