By Abbey Makoe
AT A time of great global uncertainty and heightened tension that threatens an all-out World War III – characterized in particular by this week’s grossly provocative assassinations of Hamas leader and top negotiator Dr Ismail Haniyeh and Lebanese Hezbollah commander Faud Shukr – the disintegration of multilateralism couldn’t be more blatant.
Too many examples of competing geopolitical interests continue to pit nations and groupings against each other instead of uniting the international community under a common goal of peaceful coexistence.
As Israel expected retaliation for the assassinations of the spelt out above, Washington was dispatching a dozen warships to the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.
The legacy of slavery and colonialism continues to be felt across the Global South, where former imperial forces still hold sway in the domestic and regional interests across the globe. The powerful West in its collective – typified by the character of hegemonic designs and selfish interests – have become a catalyst for the fragmentation and conflict-ridden world due to their insistence on their “rules-based world order” to which all nations must either subscribe or risk demonic admonition.
For the Majority World, particularly the nations of the Global South, it is encouraging to note the latter-day determination to cooperate in a common vision to attain what the Chinese refer to as a “shared future”.
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In fact, as the world’s second-biggest economy, China plays a major role in the unfolding reconfiguration of the international world order that has drifted towards an agenda of unilateralism. A unipolar world order dominated by self-serving Western interests appears certain to be challenged by the increasing cooperation of the Majority World. The rising impact of BRICS in geopolitics is a case in point.
In autumn, China will host in Beijing the summit on the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). This is one of the major forces behind the remaking of an unequal, unjust and cruel international community that is dominated by sectarian interests of the wealthy Global North states that have never been held to account for history so aghast that includes slavery, imperialism and apartheid, among others.
For many nations across Africa Chinese modernization, “a development path charted by the Chinese people through 75 years of hard work stands as a new option” and inspiration for a brighter future based on mutual respect and shared returns.
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This “new way” is an antithesis to the Western modernization that rode rough-shot on the freedoms and liberty of the multitude of the conquered colonial subjects who were deemed to be subhuman. Sadly, such sentiments persist to this day and they manifest through a myriad of behavioural patterns too easy to spot.
Through FOCAC, developing countries want to maintain their independence of thought while growing faster together. Chinese modernization advocates common prosperity and win-win cooperation. It has become an express train that every African state wants to board and share in the opportunities created by China’s development through stronger cooperation that reduces reliance on Western institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, among others.
At the coming FOCAC majority of the African heads of state will hold direct talks among themselves and also with Chinese President Xi Jinping on how to take their impactful cooperation to the next level amid the rapidly changing international world order.
Beijing believes that the 21st century will witness a common development and revitalization of China and the African continent, which is increasingly looking to the East. Hopefully, the cooperation through FOCAC will lead to a faster African modernization fully supported by the world’s second-biggest economy that is China.
Africa will be heading to the FOCAC summit in the full knowledge that cooperation with the West has been sly and cunning. Cooperation with the former colonial powers has failed to bring about development in the continent or evidentially improve living standards. Instead, there has been mainly political instability, turmoil and wanton poverty perpetuated by external factors.
Examples are too many. The DRC, Burundi, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, among others, continue to experience persistent social and political upheavals largely sponsored from elsewhere.
As Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his 1963 book titled Africa Must Unite: “We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialized continent.”
The sentiment is valid, and it forms part of the framework through which African leaders will visit Beijing in autumn for the FOCAC summit. FOCAC represents a catalyst for the development of the Global South and for the South-South cooperation.
Under China’s mutual approach to geopolitics, FOCAC will most likely be guided and encouraged by the knowledge of a common history of colonialism, subjugation and disempowerment on a grand scale. Therefore the pursuit of independence in the truest form of the word will be at the centre of FOCAC.
In a post-Cold War era, the Global South has found it among its nations to stay united and cooperate for the greater good of its citizens and humanity.
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Africa and China have awakened to the wisdom of self-reliance. They have rediscovered the enlightenment of unity of purpose, of the power in unity.
They set their own agenda, and fund their own programmes. FOCAC is long overdue. It offers a ray of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel.
FOCAC takes place amid an era of significant global changes. The challenges to world peace are unprecedented and the opportunities to build a better tomorrow are also abundant.
In as much as global turbulence through Western-led wars is a constant possibility, we also live in an era of great hope – brought about by the sudden discovery of the power of self-reliance and cooperation.
Developing countries are rising as a collective, thanks to the leadership of China through FOCAC, among others.
