Professor Edward Mitole: The Revolutionary Intellectual

In 1999 I left the University of Malawi a eurocentrically educated black man with a slavery mindset.

I then decided to embark on a journey to seek enlightenment. I gravitated towards knowledge.

I travelled the world, met revolutionary icons, sat at the feet of wise men, drank from their cup of wisdom.

I became restless. I had so many questions that needed answers. Dr. Bakili Muluzi, Malawi's first democratically elected president, decided to pacify me by appointing me deputy ambassador to Libya. I declined the offer. I trekked back home to my village in search of knowledge. In Namwera Masongola I visited Senior Chief Jalasi and helped him with translation services for free. I sat at his feet and listened to him as he shared with me the history of the Yao people, government neglect and lack of political will to empower the people through local government. I listened to him as he poured out his heart to me.

My field work during my assignments at the United Nations, UNV, UNHCR, UNDP, World Food Programme, GTZ, VSO, National Aids Commission and as adviser to the President of South Africa also helped to open my eyes to the evils of this Babylon system. I saw with my own eyes how the IMF and World Bank have worked to entrench poverty and neoliberal slavery on the African continent.

I began to travel throughout Africa and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for the horn of Africa, I have visited, to some extent, all the other African countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a eurocentrically educated black and later as a student seeking enlightenment, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our African homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming a famous UN field worker or diplomat or making a significant contribution to the UN role of peace building: I wanted to help those people.

I went out to the lake, streams and rivers and spoke to the local fishermen, village women and department of fisheries officers. I listened to the rural women as they poured out their hearts to me. I learned more from these rural women than I would have learned sitting in a classroom reading books written by bourgeois feminists.

No capitalist bank in Malawi was willing to finance my expeditions. So I had no option but to sell off some of my assets. I approached Lucius Banda and he bought my deep freezers. The only people with hard cash at the time were civil servants working as accounts personel. I approached them. A senior accountant in the Ministry of Agriculture bought my Lilongwe house. I sold my Mark 11 to an accounts clerk working for the Treasury. With the cash I bought flight tickets and embarked on my mission.

After enduring so many years of painful isolation from family and friends it pleased God to reward me with wisdom. God decided to use me to bring light and ubuntu back to a continent I love with all my heart.

I never went to any ivy league or oxbridge. But make no mistake. I am more enlightened than those who went to ivy league. Proud, stubborn, independent. I did not take the easy road to my doctorate. Instead, I attempted something that took me straight into the mouth of the guns. I presented a lengthy and closely argued dissertation on the IMF and World Bank and the myth of Debt in Africa - A treatise on "Predatory Capitalism". How corporations, banks & governments of "advanced" nations are able to extract resources and wealth from Africa - the Mother Continent of Humanity - by using military power and loan shark tactics... I found that beyond the narrative of supporting Africa's development, the economic landscape engineered by the IMF and the World Bank continues to support our compartmentalised societies.

Our value as Africans is not determined by our ability to produce African flavoured versions of Western convention and form. Such an approach will surely only ever leave us playing catch-up in a game the rules of which we did not write. That whole lifestyle of Sex And The City feminism, cocktails, designer clothes, handbags and shoes is not particularly liberating in an Anglo-American context, so I see no reason why we should import such models into Africa and declare it progress. I’m not saying there’s no place for such activities in the African context but it represents less of a departure from the behaviour of post-colonial elites than a repetition of same as it ever was.

So today, when I see African women at the airport dancing and singing for IMF and World Bank leaders, when I see fellow young Africans beating their chest proud of how their governments are securing loans from IMF and World Bank, I can't help but wonder how lost this continent is and makes me super sad that I can't reach all of these fellow ignorant Africans. Anyone who believes that IMF or world bank is trying to develop their country is a fool. IMF and World Bank thrive on sustainable poverty and poor economies. If all developing countries suddenly developed, the institutions like IMF and World Bank would cease to exist. Africa is IMF and World Bank number 1 client and they are milking us dry while we clap, swoon over them and parade our semi-naked women at the airports to sing and welcome them.

To call the present world-system “capitalist” is, to say the least, misleading. Given the hegemonic Eurocentric “common sense,” the moment we use the word “capitalism,” people immediately think that we are talking about the “economy”. However, “capitalism” is only one of the multiple entangled constellations of colonial power matrix of what I call, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, “Capitalist/Patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric Modern/Colonial World- System.” Capitalism is an important constellation of power, but not the sole one. Given its entanglement with other power relations, destroying the capitalist aspects of the world-system would not be enough to destroy the present worldsystem. To transform this world-system it is crucial to destroy the historicalstructural heterogenous totality called the “colonial power matrix” of the “world system” with its multiple forms of power hierarchies.

I am a living testimony of the liberating potential of Ubuntu education. The blinkers obscuring my vision and chains of mental slavery were surgically removed and replaced with a hunger for knowledge and a propensity to gravitate towards light.

I am a new type of citizen, a citizen who submerges self in service of community. I do not subscribe to Social Darwinism, this so called 'survival of the fittest' bullshit. I am an indomitable lion and luminary for humanity. Incorruptible, indestructible.

I can be described as a man firmly embedded in the present but with an ever wakeful readiness to reflect on the past and a vision firmly set on the future.

Many people I have met including comrades have said to me that I must be very brave to write about what I write because of the risks it entails. The African Renaissance Project itself stands poised as a countervailing force against neoliberal slavery.

But in response, I have often said that it is not a matter of being brave but an avoidable burden of responsibility. I might have fears about the implications of exposing the draconian systems and spreading light on the African continent - the fears are real and the consequences dire - but my conscience never walks away. I wish it could, but it does not. It is always there, making the point that I have a responsibility that no one but me can now discharge.

In this draconian system where those who receive the light of Ubuntu are dismissed as mad men and labeled lunatics it takes the spirit of selflessness to continue soldiering on while facing daunting challenges and insurmountable obstacles.

Tell our children. You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. Besides, it took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.

Give thanks to MaTseba.
MaTseba
MoKga-a-Bjwala