African special ownership operations: Part 8

...lawfare as opposed to rule of law

AS the English people say, when a man is sliding downhill, everyone gives him a push so that he slides down faster. Africans have been sliding downhill in terms of losing ownership and control over their natural resources since the beginning of colonialism, and colonialists have not assisted the Africans to recover their resources.

Africans have, of course, been given a push to ensure they slide downhill faster.

In order for Africans not to easily realise that they are being given a push downhill, colonial ideologies about sexual orientations have been designed, foregrounded and extended to Africans so that it would appear like Africans are being pushed uphill.

Similarly, colonial ideologies about fighting African dictators are designed, foregrounded, and deployed so that Africans get a false sense that they are being pushed uphill and not downhill. Colonial ideologies about fighting African ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘autocracy’ are deployed to give Africans a false sense that they are being pushed uphill when, in fact, they are being pushed down the hill of ownership and control over their natural resources.

Indeed, Africans must critically consider why the UN is quick to condemn African States that criminalise queer sexuality, but it has been silent, since its formation, on matters of restitution and reparations for crimes of enslaving and colonising Africans.

The UN itself is weaponised and it has become an instrument of those seeking to retain the colonial and imperial status quo —retaining land and other resources.

Of course, the UN itself is funded by money from transnational corporations, some of which have dispossessed and exploited Africans for centuries. The idea of the Global Compact (Orzes et al. 2020; Knight and Smith 2008) concretises the communion between the UN and transnational corporations.

Instead of launching a Global Compact with transnational corporations that have dispossessed and exploited Africans for centuries, the UN should have started by launching a Global Compact with those who were dispossessed and exploited, so that their grievances and rights could be resolved.

The upshot of the foregoing is that the UN is not only weaponised by global capital, but it is also impossible for the UN to unite a divided world.

In a world that is still divided by the absence of restitution and reparations following centuries of enslavement and colonisation, the UN cannot be united.

It is a fantasy, in such a divided world, to assume that there is unity between those that have enslaved and colonised others, with impunity, and those that were enslaved and colonised. The UN is built on quicksand that is being witnessed in respect of the Russia-Ukraine war.

As it is said in the Bible (Matthew 7:

24-27), a clever man builds his house on rock-solid foundations.

Humanity may have haggled over which race is more intelligent than the other, but there is no sign that humanity (collectively) is intelligent when it is trying to build unity on the quicksand of centuries-old injustices. Call it the UN, call it the One World Government, call it a World Federation, call it a Great Reset, call it globalisation and what not, unity will not stand on the sands of injustices of enslavement and colonisation.

The world may set up international criminal courts but to the extent that these courts circumvent and dodge centuries-old injustices of enslavement and colonisation, they speak more to weaponisation of international law and international relations than to justice and freedom for the victims of enslavement and colonisation. Much as colonial courts and jurisprudence were blind to colonial injustices, including dispossessing and exploiting the colonised, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is blind to the injustices of enslaving and colonising others. It has not, and does not, seek to address these injustices of enslaving and colonising others, yet it seeks to be an international court that would set itself apart from colonial courts.

The ICC does not even support those who struggle to recover reparations and resources that were stolen during the colonial era, and yet it seeks to address itself as a court in the post-colonial world that supposedly speaks to unity and globalisation.

Thus, when the late former President Robert Mugabe sought to recover land that was unjustly seized from Africans during the colonial era, we did not see the ICC intervening to help him and his fellow Zimbabweans.

Much like the UN, the ICC is built on the quicksand of colonial injustices that it refuses to address and redress.

Put differently, much like the colonial courts, the ICC is a victors’ court; it is not a court of the victims of centuries-old injustices (Zolo 2020; Schabas 2010). A victors’ court serves the interests of the victors while pretending to be serving the interests of the victims — it is a weaponised court.

It is a court that does not demand restitution and reparations from the victors whose interest it serves. In this sense, it is a court that is less about justice than about keeping up appearances of justice.

Because it is weaponised, it is a court that upholds the rule of lawfare rather than the rule of law.

For the reasons that the ICC has been unfairly targeting African States and disrupting the sovereignty of African States, African States have recently threatened to leave the ICC.

If transnational corporations that are funding the international courts are themselves complicit in centuries of enslaving and colonising other people, how can we be sure that the international courts are not bloody in the sense of subsisting on proceeds of crimes of enslavement and colonisation?

The problem is that courts, including the ICC, are not engaged in profitable businesses. They, therefore, rely on proceeds of the bloody global capitalist order, and this makes the courts bloody as well, even as they ironically profess to be premised on justice.

After centuries of enslaving and colonising other people, global capital is using the proceeds to set up and fund courts and international institutions that are expected to dispense justice despite relying on proceeds from enslavement and colonisation projects. The centuries of enslaving and colonising other people and the use of profits and proceeds from dispossessing and exploiting other people implicate the courts and international institutions in the crimes. If receiving stolen goods or proceeds of crimes is itself a crime, then all courts and international institutions that are established and run on the basis of proceeds or funds received from complicit transnational corporations are criminal. This could be one of the reasons real justice for victims of centuries of enslavement and colonisation is not easy to come by.

Real justice may only be attainable after restitution and reparations.

Perhaps, just like there is BRICS as an alternative to the Western economic system, there should be the equivalence of BRICS in the jurisprudential sense of having alternative jurisprudence to the Western capitalist system.

Africans need not be fooled that there is justice in courts that were established and that are subsisting on the basis of funding from global capital which enslaved and colonised other people in the global south.

The courts themselves may need cleansing because they receive proceeds or funding from centuries of enslaving and colonising other people. They also become unable to dispense justice even though they would be very capable of launching lawfare as their special legal operation.