The start of the second decade of the 21st Century felt for a short while like the happy warm feeling of hot chocolate on a rainy day. This was to be the year that world football came to Africa bringing new hope and recognition for a continent always on the outside. But the warm glow has quickly faded as the smell of gunfire still hangs in the air. The events in Cabinda may have dampened hope for peaceful sports in the face of political and economic insecurity but the broader feeling of global hope and a new world in a new decade fell with the buildings of Port au Prince.
From the lukewarm do-something-almost-good ending to Copenhagen to the end of Obamination in the liberal east coast, maybe 2010 is just going to be more of the same. For the world, the transitioning power bases in the East and West bring to the fore unexpected confrontations – all while pretending that the assumptions of the capitalist free market liberal democratic order is still the only alternative for economic growth and stability. While the international financial institutions, the likes of the G-7 and World Bank, still preach free market development, families around the world are trying to hold themselves together in the face of a global recession, which might not quite be over yet.
Economics aside there are still wars to fight and troops that can be committed to bolster a military solution to problems that everyone can recognise are not military problems. Building peace in Iraq and Afghanistan through the blood of the occupiers and their puppet governments - this is a lesson in democracy. In the age of collective security, global governance and eroding sovereignty the lesson is that cross border raids do not count as aggression if conducted by unmanned aerial vehicles and under the auspices of the global uni-power. Above all, we have leant from the Middle East and Afghanistan that the world of the realist military power oriented political regime still holds relevance.
The developing world still limps on in the periphery of global order. Some things work and others just don’t but all in all, it doesn’t seem to matter much – unless of course you happen to be living in Gaza or Yemen. The new lines in the global war on terror are being drawn and the axis of evil seems to be gaining more ground than the forces of Team America. The race to be top global pariah is hotting up as Kim Jong-Il (who may or may not be dead) seems to be playing friendly neighbours, China too big to upset too much, Khartoum is laying either a good ruse or an intention to be a friendly neighbour and Mugabe is playing a nice game of time wasting under the guise of power sharing.
But if we think about pariahs in the original sense of the word as the lower caste – those who are not entitled to benefit from political and economic opportunities - then the real global pariahs, like much in the post modernist world, are falling outside of the boundaries of the state. It is the millions of unemployed youth spread across Africa and the Arab world. It is the half a million women who die every year giving birth in developing countries. It is the more than 30 million people around the world living with HIV. It is the more than 40 million children in Africa who will not get the opportunity to go to school. It is the 1.6 billion people who live in extreme poverty. The people of Africa are in many senses the global pariahs.
What can 2010 bring for a continent in desperate need of some hope? A desperation that led us in 2009 to claim the victory of Obama as a victory for us all. A desperation that leads us to place the hope of a continent on a series of football games. What can 2010 bring to renew the belief that change is possible, that humans can be better people and that what is right does actually matter?
This needs to be the year that African solutions for African problems actually begins to mean something and that we start to see more solutions than problems. Maybe this year, fewer women will be raped in the DRC or less children will be conscripted into the LRA. Maybe this year, SADC will act against Mugabe and force him to step down in the interests of his people. Maybe in 2010 the crops will flourish in Malawi and someone will tell Julius Malema to shut up (and he’ll actually listen). Maybe this year, solutions to piracy will be sought in Somalia and not in waters off her coast. Maybe this year, millions of our fellow Africans will not die because they do not have access to clean drinking water. Maybe 2010 will be the year that some of the more than four million refugees on the continent will be able to call someplace home. Maybe in 2010, politicians and parliamentarians across the continent will sacrifice the new car or house in favour of building schools and hospitals. Maybe this year, we could all do something to make someone else’s day better.
But then again, maybe not.
