Thought for the Day, 30 June 2008

Clifford Longley

Harold Macmillan once described how he asked the governor of a central African British colony - how long before the people would be ready for self-government? "A generation," said the governor. "Can we wait that long?" asked Macmillan. "No," came the reply, "we must give it to them now."

Patronising, you might think, but this was 1960. And it has surely to be admitted that the first generation of African nationalist leaders included more than a fair share of despotic tyrants, who regarded the national treasury as their personal property to plunder at will. Robert Mugabe is not unique.

A Nigerian moral theologian I met recently was quite frank about it: African culture has always lacked a developed sense of common humanity, of the solidarity that extends beyond village and family and which entails a commitment to the common good. This "us and them" mentality was not just tribal. The moral deficit explained, he said, how African tribal chiefs had felt no moral qualms about capturing slaves from neighbouring districts and selling them to white slave traders; and later, doing land deals with white settlers. Hence also Africa's propensity to turn to massacre and genocide such as we saw in Rwanda and Congo, and narrowly avoided seeing again very recently in Kenya.

This theory does not let the former colonial powers off the hook. The Europeans, the British especially, saw this African weakness and exploited it ruthlessly for profit. White slave traders couldn't see the common humanity of African slaves either, nor were white settlers famous for their solidarity with the natives they lorded it over.

One expression of solidarity is a belief in basic human rights, which all people possess equally. But that can become too individualistic, and let's face it, too legalistic. If we go down the road of religion rather than law, as this priest suggested, what Africa needs is something like the parable of the Good Samaritan, which was how Jesus answered the question who is my neighbour? The parable says it is above all the person not like me who I must love as I love myself. It demands an effort of the moral imagination, almost like a moment of conversion, before I can see the stranger as a brother, a fellow human. Looking out for people who are just like me is the easy option. Africans can be enormously warm and hospitable to their own kind.

For Africans to overcome this moral deficit in the solidarity and human rights department, this Nigerian Catholic priest told me, the churches and mosques of Africa need to promote and preach, day in and day out, a doctrine of the common good as a requirement of religion. On the basis of that, Africa would begin to immunise itself against tyrannical and oppressive rulers. And it would start to meet some of the basic requirements for economic prosperity too.