Africa walking blindly to the edge of security catastrophe

21 May 2017 - 02:00 By Aziz Pahad
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Refugees and migrants wait to be rescued from an overcrowded boat by crew members from a Migrant Offshore Aid Station vessel on Thursday off Lampedusa, Italy. The number of people attempting the dangerous central Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy has risen since this time last year.
Refugees and migrants wait to be rescued from an overcrowded boat by crew members from a Migrant Offshore Aid Station vessel on Thursday off Lampedusa, Italy. The number of people attempting the dangerous central Mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy has risen since this time last year.
Image: GETTY IMAGES

In a changing and ever more dangerous world, safety demands that we be very aware of our country and our continent’s global positioning, writes Aziz Pahad

Millions of people globally are misinformed about the true nature of global trends, their impact on Africa, and their threat to regional and international peace and security, because of perception management and misinformation.

Therefore, the upcoming eighth Thabo Mbeki Africa Day lecture, "Africa and the Changing World" by African scholar Professor Mahmood Mamdani at Unisa on May 26, is an important and timely event, particularly for us Africans.

As Bertrand Russell once said: "Most of the greatest evils that man has afflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false."

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Edward Bernays, an expert on the power of propaganda, wrote: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power ... we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons ... it is they who pull the wires ... which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world."

The Pentagon's 2005 "Manual of War" boldly notes that the control and manipulation of information is a "soft power" weapon. The "strategic communications" that merges psychological operations, propaganda and public affairs is a critical tool kit in shaping and influencing public opinion in pursuit of national interests.

Today, the global reality is more dangerous and unequal than ever, with little or no regard for international law.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall, the "end" of the Cold War, ushered in a world dominated by policies of US exceptionalism and disregard of international law, where there is an increasing tendency by the US and some powerful European countries to reduce the complex and interrelated problems of the world to narrow national interests, often opting for a militaristic approach to diplomacy.

This tendency has largely given rise to religious fundamentalism, racism, xenophobia, narrow nationalism, right-wing and neofascist organisations and right-wing populism as reflected in the recent US, French and other European elections, and Brexit.

The UK's recent Chilcot and parliamentary foreign affairs committee reports on Iraq and Syria, the Hillary Clinton documents, the WikiLeaks documents, the Snowden reports, and many other US State Department and Pentagon reports confirm that many countries' foreign policies have led to instability, conflicts, regime change, extremism and terrorism, and growing anti-Western sentiments.

The global political, economic and social reality is today more unequal and dangerous, with the following just a few points of illustration:

• The unprecedented pace of globalisation and information technology, and the failure of neoliberalism resulting in growing poverty, unemployment and inequality between countries and within countries;

• Rapid urbanisation, cybertechnology, artificial intelligence and automation, the youth bubble, demography, climate change, water and energy crises, if not managed adequately, together with the unprecedented migration into Europe and its failure to deal with the root causes, including the brain drain that is one of the greatest obstacles to Africa's development, all present major threats and challenges to order;

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• The failure to find a negotiated solution to the just demand of the Palestine and Sahrawi people for self-determination; and

• The creation, funding, training and logistics support for extremist and terrorist groups by some major powers, the Gulf states and Turkey, and the internationalisation of terrorism in which thousands of recruits from the US, Europe, former Soviet republics, Chechnya, China, Asia and Africa have joined Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

South Africa and many other African countries are suffering the consequences of the "internationalisation" of extremism and terrorism, while sub-Saharan countries are experiencing growing links between terrorist and extremist groups from the Middle East and North Africa region.

An estimated 15,000 international troops have failed to stop the escalation of violence in the Sahel, and terrorist violence has escalated in Somalia and Nigeria.

A few days ago, a South African and Tanzanian dual citizen was arrested in Dar es Salaam. He was in possession of 15 genuine South African unused passports with photographs of people who are on the international terrorist watch list.

It is reported that many al-Shabab and Boko Haram terrorists have paid as much as R60,000 for South African passports.

There is growing speculation that extremism and terrorism, the escalation of tensions in the South China Sea, the crisis in Ukraine and Nato's military encirclement of Russia, the North Korean crisis, the increasing US and "Sunni coalition" threats of war against Iran, and the escalation of the conflict in Syria would set off events that could escalate into a military confrontation between the US/Nato and Russia and/or China.

The Russian General Staff has concluded that the US is preparing a nuclear first strike against Russia. President Vladimir Putin is quoted as saying: "Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me that ... if a fight is inevitable, you must strike first."

The Atlantic Council, a leading US geo-strategy think tank, in a report dated September 2016, warned that in the period 2020-30 the world will be characterised by spiralling inequality, economic and perpetual war, and insecurity.

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This world will be "marked by the breakdown of order, widespread violent extremism and aggressive large states".

The world situation will be driven by "unpredicted and unpredictable events including the possibility of a nuclear exchange".

The global political and economic realities are unstable and creating conditions for massive unrest and destabilisation of societies, and with the threats of a nuclear war there will be no winners and humanity will cease to exist.

Perception management, which Bernays prophetically warned us about, is largely responsible for the reality that the world is blindly walking to the precipice of a catastrophe.

Albert Camus said: "In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."

President John F Kennedy said we need peace - "not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women".

We ignore these profound words at our peril.

Pahad served as deputy minister of foreign affairs from 1994 to 2008

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