Editor, RE: “Is the West unsettled by Rwanda’s homegrown development path?” (The New Times, August 23). All music to my ears. Always a good feeling when I see fellow Africans rebuff neo-colonialism en masse and on an emotional level. Mwene Kalinda, you are doing such a noble job in fomenting this dislike. Having read Varoufakis’s Global Minotaur not so long ago, I am torn between race supremacy and self-centeredness as the West’s arch driving force in all her dirty manoeuvres globally. At the heart of all Western ills is consumerism, and not any kind of consumerism, but rather Veblen/Giffen consumerism. Yes slaves were in effect commoditised goods, “tradable property” so to speak, just like diamonds, coltan and copper. And we have been led to believe it was all about white supremacy over the lesser races. But something rather unnerving is simmering underneath all the current wave of automation, artificial intelligence, augmented/virtual reality, machine learning et al. Karl Marx had this all figured out when he proffered that capitalism’s nemesis would be the withering away of aggregate demand once capitalists continued shifting profit away from labour onto capital. He argued that this would create excess capacity and thus, a mis-allocation of capital. First, their vampire squid tentacles where firmly cathetered into Mother Africa (slaves, gold, copper etc). Lately, the squid’s reach is unbounded once the sorcerers at Wall Street saw it best to bump together all of us global minions into one pen under the globalisation theme. I would posit this capitalist moneyed class is supping all manner and colour of blood: African, Asian, Neptunian or even kith and kin. Cannibalizing whatever crosses their path, their own not exempt. So perhaps not only is the West growing jittery about Rwanda’s emancipation and renewal—admittedly a new sense of self-empowerment and ambition that could easily catch on elsewhere on the continent—they are more worried about their fodder in general. “Kagamismo”, to coin a phrase, is whittling away their captive markets in Africa inch by inch, yard by yard. And that’s the rub behind their media foul play in Rwanda. Food for thought. Ggwanga Mujje
