Winning in the Game of Nationhood
Great leaders are excellent persuaders. The art of statesmanship is based on the ability to persuade others to adopt one’s point of view without diminishing the value of their own. It is founded on the “sweet science” of reason. Mahatma Gandhi used it to gain independence for India. Dr. King used it to gain civil rights for African-Americans in America. In the mother of all persuasion, in the 16th century, The Reverend Martin Luther used it to expose the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church and birth the protestant movement, against all odds of his escaping papal power and the menace of the inquisition. Persuasion is a powerful art form.
Fig 1 Persuasions is an indispensable skill of leadership
The president of Zimbabwe’s recent speech to the AU was a perplexing glimpse into his parallel universe. It telegraphed that the old Lion of Africa has totally missed the boat of the “game of nationhood”. A process whereby leaders advance their country’s interests by gaining support from all the stakeholders he or she needs to achieve it.
The speech itself was a vituperative protestation against perceived ills committed by nations of the western alliance. It did not address the ills committed by African leaders against their own people. Since independence it is incontestable that the greatest injustice visited on the peoples of the continent of Africa is the economic and physical violence through corruption and civil wars perpetrated by the leaders of the respective countries. The speech left no doubt that he will carry the bitterness to his grave unless he accepts grace to excavate and relegate it to the ash heap of experience.
Land Reform in Zimbabwe, a Classic Case of Mismanaging a Good Policy
The tap root of President Mugabe’s angst against the West is the sanctions imposed on his country. However, the evidence is overwhelming that there has not been any introspection on his part; to comb the process and to study if perhaps a different course could have yielded a different result. One can argue that he gummed up the works in the (extra-national) politics of land reform which was United Kingdom’s angst against Zimbabwe that led to the sanctions. Because there is a powerful precedence for land reform carried out by the pre-eminent nation-state in the Western alliance, the United States of America.
If the late General Douglas McArthur, then-Allied Commander in the Pacific and Viceroy of Japan, was able to sell his land reform in Japan to the United States Congress, President Mugabe could have and should have invested the time, energy and politicking needed to sell land reform in Zimbabwe to the world’s community. In the backdrop of the anti-apartheid protests, political optics favored President Mugabe and his country. It was then and still is utterly defensible that the people of Zimbabwe needed land reform at least as equal, if not more, than the need in Japanese society after WWII. Given the precedence set by Gen. McArthur in Japan, it would have been sheer hypocrisy for Zimbabwe to not have been allowed land reform after making the compelling case of precedence and grave necessity to the world. The process would have involved some “horse trading” but he would, in the end, have had his way because of the power of his position. President Mugabe won the battle for independence of Zimbabwe but lost the war of the game of nationhood.
In the audience were the heads of governments of all the heads of government of members of the African Union, their handlers and chief ministers. The enthusiastic applause suggests that the tempestuous rhetoric found receptive ears. And in it reposes the challenge for this iteration of African leaders and their abused, misrepresented and misled people.
Fig 2 A Lesson in the traits of Great Leadership from an Icon of Leadership
Trade is the Foundation of the Modern World
The greatest challenge facing African countries contrary to popular belief is not lack of money or products to export. It is the dearth of leaders who understand the purpose of nationhood as defined in the post-medieval era. A nation is definable as an aggregation of people of varying sizes, united by common consent and living in a land ascribed to them by heritage under a government that they own. The various and sundry aggregation of peoples in the world in their respective lands under their respective governments makes up the global community of nations. What happens within the extra-national arena, between nations which make up the global community, is the game of nationhood. It started in the era of navigation and global trade known as the “Age of Discovery” with the Portuguese discovery of the Atlantic Archipelago of the Azores, the western tip of Africa beginning in 1416-1419. The “Age of Discovery” was ushered in by the desire of Portuguese and subsequently, European monarchs to advance the economic interests of their people and nation by trading with distant places. It was formalized in 1297 when King Denis of Portugal began an ambitious campaign to export Portuguese products to places beyond Europe.
Improvements in maritime technology led to longer voyages culminating in Vasco da Gama’s trip around southern Africa to Asia, which opened up a new trade route with Asian cultures. Before da Gama’s voyage, the Spanish entered the fray and sponsored major voyages, including Christopher Columbus’s epic voyage in 1498, that culminated in European awareness of the “new world,” present day Americas, in the futile attempt to find a new, shorter course to Asia. The driver of all of the risk of limb and treasure was trade. The world as we know it today was forged from the intense life and death competition that ensued between European monarchs to control trade routes and trade with particular cultures. Most of the initial improvement in European armament and techniques of waging modern warfare derives from the period. It’s all there in the historical annals of the activities of the period. The first public-private partnerships (PPP) started in the era and trade was the motivator of it.
If one is seeking to understand their place in the world in the 21st century, this is a good place to begin. It has shaped and rigidified the template of global prosperity. Only the Asians (viz. the Tiger economies) have successfully emerged almost unilaterally, from the initial template cast in the period. European diplomacy or external politicking was borne from the effort of nations to one-up the other in the matters of trade. Diplomacy was the language with which nations discussed the business of trading (business) with each other and if that was insufficient, then war would be the arbiter of which nation decided how things would be done. A vivid example can be found in the Opium Wars. During which the public private partnership comprised of the British Parliament, Queen Victoria and principals of the British East India Company, successfully deployed British naval power to compel China to allow the company to sell opium to the Chinese against the wishes of China’s Qing dynasty’s Emperor. In China and in most of history, the conflict is referred to as the Opium Wars. In the United Kingdom, it was known as it was sold to the public and debated in parliament, as the war for free trade. It is the game of nationhood.
Fig 3 The World’s most prosperous countries are the top exporting nations. Source. Statistica.com
The Grand Game of Nationhood
The game of nationhood is one in which skillful visionary leaders bend extra-national and intra-national wills, policies, economic activity and politics towards cognitive cooperation in ways that empower their nation and people to achieve social-political-economic equanimity. Think about the decision of Park Chung Hee’s government to nationalize South Korean banks under the concept of “guided capatitalism.” Another example is Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew’s policy of pragmatic capitalism and non-alignment in the teeth of the cold war. In both of the situations the leaders were able to gain support from countries and world community for policies that contravened accepted norms philosophically and in practice.
The struggle to bring prosperity to people in its’s realm is the game played by one government and people with other governments and nations. To paraphrase U.S president, Calvin Coolidge’s “the principal business of the American people is business,” the principal business of nations of the world is business. When founding leaders of the Asian Tigers pivoted to the transcendent reality that earning enough income to feed their people, create a prosperous society and defend their country was the principal duty of government and its leaders and not self-enrichment, it produced the Asian Tiger economies.
Fig 4 A crucial trait of Leadership is to Learn from the Led, per Mandela an Icon of Leadership
Mao Zedong concentrated on internal politicking and lost the game of nationhood because he was unable to hold two conflicting views in his consciousness. That China could revise economic methods using capitalist methods to ensure economic prosperity and still maintain the government structure of communist party rule. Zhou En Lai and Deng Xiaoping on the other hand did not have the same inhibitions to the idea and China is better for it. Under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership and inspiration, China has prospered in a capitalist command economic system. It was aided and abetted by philosophical and ideological enemies of China, Western nations. That is an example of how you win in the game of nationhood. Deng Xiaoping succeeded in getting nations with which China disagreed on virtually everything about economic policy and government to agree sufficiently to ensure that economic cooperation, capital and know-how flowed to China to enable China to develop and prosper. Compare the outcome to that of President Mugabe’s land reform and the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe.
African leaders have concentrated on internal politicking, in the art of perpetuating their hold on power. To the absolute neglect of how to feed their people, engender socio-political-economic equanimity and defend their nations. Mugabe’s speech concentrated on the disrespect being paid by Western nations to Africans in not allowing African nations a stronger voice in the United Nations through membership in the U.N Security Council. The reality is that it is incontrovertible that an overwhelming number of African nations including Zimbabwe depend on the largess of Western and other nations-China, for instance- to survive and pay their bills. His speech therefore is a classic conundrum of “biting the hand that is feeding you.” There is a time and place for everything under the sun. This is the time for African leaders to master the game of nationhood. To develop economic strategy that will enable their nations to feed their people, engender socio-political-economic equanimity and defend their nation. In due course, with job one accomplished, African nations can assume their place. Respect like a ripe fruit will fall. See China and the Asia Tigers.
?John I. Akhile Sr. is President and CEO of African Trade Group LLC.,www.africantradegroup.net and author of two books. The newest one, “Unleashed: A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World,” is available on Amazon.com or at www.unleashafricantrade.com