African Unification Front
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Back to Conflict Page
INTERNATIONAL SOURCES OF AFRICAN CONFLICT
The TransAtlantic Agenda between Europe and America on Africa is potentially genocidal for Africans. It is laden with residual notions of neocolonial development. It is possible to overwhelm Africans with the forcible development...through the use of such instruments as SAPs, NGO and relief programs, globalisation, and other forms of development assistance are are threats not to be taken lightly.
A strong western focus on functioning political systems should not serve as a pretext for slashing aid budgets, or placing more conditionalities on African-Aphaean (non-African) relations. It should not even be a factor as it is a flawed way to relate to Africans. The use of western momentum and critical mass has ushed Africans to the edge of the abyss.
Ultimately, massive cuts in aid, increase in funds for peace-keeping and humanitarian assistance, are NOT remedial but rather are the residual manifestations of neocolonialism. What we require from Europe is fair trade terms and equality, not the programs of the Compassion Industry.
African conflicts are defined by the measures that the authorities communities adopt to preserve their power and privilege. The state implemented policies of control with methodical and brutal force. They made Africans nonpersons in their own country, forcing the resettlement of millions, destroying family life and undermining its social fabric, requiring them to live in underserviced and overpopulated townships, refugee camps or in ‘homelands’ (tribalised semi-autonomous communities with limited missions). Today nearly a decade after the fall of apartheid, most Africans are totally disenfranchised and denied any expression of their aspirations.
The west still defines African aspirations, providing us with 54 ‘homelands’ or 'bantustan' or republics called soveireign countries in which Africans can supposedly achieve our aspirations. Millions are forcibly confined, their migration and movement severely limited by colonial borders, so that they might enjoy the "benefits" of their colonial heritage.
The level of subordination Africans have had to endure and the harshness of the dominant system has reached the repression that the colonialists slavery imposed in Africa. The kinds of confinement and domination practiced and enforced in Africa are repulsive and hardly evil.
While there are common elements to the inequities between communities as a result of the legacies of past discrimination, injustices, and being deliberately disadvantaged — either through legislative measures or willful action on the part of the dominant group — the social and economic imbalances between different African groups are relatively insignificant compared with the imbalances between Africans and non-Africans around the world.
Moreover, the emphasis put on redressing these injustices will be strikingly different. Socioeconomic imbalances Africa will be addressed in the context of similar imbalances existing in other parts of the world. In Africa, the AUF is attempting to restructure the ‘molecular’ composition of society itself, to bring about a total transformation that will reach into every echelon of society through legislative means and within the broad boundaries of Pan Africanism.
STRUCTURAL CONFLICTS IN AFRICA
CROSSING THE BOUNDARY OF LEGITIMACY
In most conflicts, one party believes that another has "stepped across the line", has crossed the boundary between legitimate disagreement into illegitimate actions.
This violation of legitimate behavior causes the lack of trust and sense of threat that is part of most conflicts. If one of the parties in a conflict is no longer obeying the same rules that other parties believe in, the sense of safety is compromised, and the agrieved party feels that they can no longer predict the actions or negotiate a mutual understanding. Consequently aggrieved parties may then also feel justified in bending and changing their own sense of right and wrong in self-defense.
Action Chains are cultural "recipies" that have a sequence of actions leading to a particular goal (for example, building a house, passing a course, holding a meeting, building a state, receiving compensation). Parties to a conflict often expect particular action chains. They will have a patterned way of conducting an argument, of escalating conflict, of resolving it. Sometimes conflicts is rooted in structures beyond the control or fault of the particular individuals involved. Awareness of the historical concerns and subsidiary grievances that are part of the "recipe" or action chain can help peace mediators and negotiators achieve just settlements, by helping them put in place a process that is rich in detail and vision that does justice to all sides.
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