Persistence

The hardest year for me by far has been this one. For more than a decade or so I have managed to constantly come out on top, despite the circumstances, from being an unemployed hawker on the streets of Maseru to being a Fulbright scholar in the best institution in the world studying International Development. I have always had the biggest chip on my shoulder but I liked it that way. My drive was immense because I knew that I had no one else to rely on. I thought that was all I needed to take on the world.

But 2023 kept me down, I had people steal my ideas without even as much as a admission of concept, I had clashes with best friends, contentions with peers and teachers - It took my spirit away, the constant rejection letters from organizations I sought to collaborate with, the isolation, the social anxiety. Its actually quite funny now that I think of it. My partner told me to blog about it, so I am choosing to. Not for attention, or even empathy. But for truth and release. With everything that happened, what most took my energy from me was when a peer or should I rather say a teacher questioned my approach to the development field - they had called me to inquire if I had the right mindset as it seemed that everything to was hinged on the 'dependency theory,' they to me were saying, 'life is more than what has happened to Africa in the past...' I was taken aback, I had sensed that this particular individual in their mind saw me as a 'relic' from the past - my words, not theirs. That I seemed to question progress by stating and postulating on intonations of a neocolonialism as referenced by Kwame Nkurumah. I was hurt, simply because I had always wanted to give context on the situation of Africa as it is today. You see, in as much as I am in the development field, the issue of history and even present circumstance stemming from the past misdeeds of the Global North are not lost on me.

I might be called a lot of things, but I liar I try not to be. The reason why this hurt me to my core was because my Africanness can not allow me to speak on so called 'development' without making note of multinational interests which are in most cases the reflection of colonialism and also still symbols of oppression. They will readily admit that we are by far the richest continent on Earth but never state why we remain so poor, they 'intellectuals,' will readily pin it down to mismanagement, as if to say that the African was never supposed to be corporately intelligent, all we know is herding cows and wearing blankets.

They will never speak on the De Beers https://www.debeersgroup.com/about-us/our-history which I believe is a corporation reminiscent of the acts of oppression by Cecil Rhodes, they will never speak on how a Nigeria was bought and sold as a company or how oil companies literally funded a civil war (Biafra) that took the lives of thousands through starvation, children. This is the context I want to bring to the table whenever my name is mentioned.

Such that when a peer speaks on a Congo and asks us to simply decentralize as if Africa were America then I could ask who is funding the rebels, who is making the funds available to rebel groups so that it is essential for them to keep a Congo destabilized, how come Dell, Apple and the Alphabet company https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths have not been pressured the same way as we are when it comes time to solve 'our own problems!' Also, are they problems of our own, of our own making, if so always look at who is profiting on the other side.

Ask yourself why a British Petroleum funded a Nigerian government against the people of Biafra, when did corporations ever engage in war - The answer is always. Ask yourself why the most respected economist of our time Jeffrey Sachs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoHxpoH60cc readily admitted that a worldpower(s) assassinated a Patrice Lumumba because he wished to nationalize the countries natural resources. If Capitalism is the answer why then does Nestle make billions probably from child laborers https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face-landmark-child-slavery-lawsuit-in-us while the majority of the children and workers remain poor - I am sure if you to look at the pay divide between the highest Nestle executive and the cocoa laborers you would be shocked...

What is Development if we can not speak on our life and what affects our origin countries, why am I here as a Fulbright scholar if I can not tell my story...? So the truth of the matter is that no one wants to take Fucken responsibility, intellectual sensibilities will readily admit that humanitarian aid is so important but never ask themselves why the Global South can not have NGO's in the North, are we not all humans in need of aid in times of trouble? Power and Power dynamics are intrinsic to the perception of what development is and can be and while I will admit that I am an African scholar in the North I can not by virtue of my own morals readily accept western ideology without context as gospel - Because again, who is gaining from my "bowing of the head..!??"