"Globalisation" or "Global Capitalism" has become the new tyranny by
which the entire world must be 'managed' by transitional corporate power
and insatiable greed. Along with the so-called Free Market, this
phenomenon is sold to the world as immutable divine truth which must
underpin the success (or failure) of every society. The single
mindedness, unrelenting pressure and comprehensive terror with which
this new law is being imposed on the world has, dialectically called
forth a counter movement to demystify ii so that ordinary human beings,
especially in the 'South," can see that it is not necessary to lie
prostrate before this global terror and that it can be defeated.

Simple Questions By Non-Pompous People

The basic approach taken in this paper to demystify this phenomenon is
taken from lessons received from my so-called ordinary friends, from
both poor rural and deprived urban settings. These non-pompous women
and men, living ordinary lives, seeking merely to find their way through
the dense fog of impoverishment thrown around them by their ruling
elites, have a very simple way of conceptualising and capturing most
phenomena with which they have to contend. They proceed from their
direct micro-level experiences, asking questions about those phenomena
that present them with confusion. In response to their questions, and
in a collective setting, we try to tease the problem issues into their
constituent strands and examine each strand carefully, linking it with
the others to try to understand the whole fabric. In such an encounter,
simple questions such as the following are presented to the "collective
mind" for consideration:

If we say that we became independent in 1960 (in Nigeria), how
come we still cannot rule ourselves according to our own long tested
systems of governance - which definitely worked well for our forefathers
- and must now look to Europe and America for systems of governance?
If we say that we are trading and development partners with the
people of Europe and America, why are we always having to buy more and
more expensively what they make with their machines while selling them
in return, more and more cheaply, only those products that we harvest
from the land - and we cannot make our own things and also sell to them?
If our forebears did not have to depend on other peoples for
their food, why are we now in a situation where we must import more and
more of what we eat? Is it that we have become indolent and incapable
of producing our own food?

From our own experiences, if a farmer grows yams in abundance,
his family must have the right to eat as much of yams as they may wish
to - without having to pay for this commodity the same way the family of
a farmer who does not produce yam does in the market. How come that we
are forced to pay for those gifts that God blessed us with at home here
as if we were strangers seeking to buy these things from our own
government? Or what is all this about other peoples forcing our
governments to remove what they call subsidy from all those services
that our people need so badly?

What justice is there in asking that gifts of nature, like
petrol, which we have in abundance here, must cost the same here as it
does in all other countries of the world whereas, the income of the
worker here is about one hundredth of that of the worker in the US, for
instance?

Why does our government accept that bigger and richer and more
experienced manufacturing companies from Europe and America, can now
come into Nigeria and compete on the same terms with smaller and poorer
companies owned by our people - with the result that the Nigerian
companies go bankrupt and lay off masses of workers?

Why are our rulers pretending to rule or to have power when it
is becoming ever clearer daily, that the policies that they enforce on
us are made outside this country and rammed down the throats of other
people through their own rulers?

Those of us who know anything about farming know that if corn
planted on a piece of land has matured and grown tall to cover the soil,
one does not then plant anew, under the tall and older plants, fresh
ones that must just sprout and reach for the sun.the smaller ones would
definitely not receive any sunshine and must die off. Why do our
governments seem not to recognise this simple law of nature and are
asking our own weak and young manufacturing outfits to compete on equal
basis with better and longer developed ones from outside this country?

What sort of help are we getting from Europe and America if all
the people that we train as doctors of medicine, engineers, etc., leave
our country to go to these foreign countries in order to earn what their
counterparts there earn - incomes that they cannot earn here at home?

Why is it that it is only these highly qualified 'workers' on whom we
have spent so much money and whom we need very badly - not ordinary
workers like ourselves - that are allowed or even encouraged to come to
these foreign countries?

Why has our history so abandoned us to the dictations of other
such that everything we could be or have must be determined from outside
our country to the extent that even our children look, feel, think and
act more and more like Americans, for instance, than Nigerians or
Africans, for that matter?

Why, in spite of the fact that we work very hard, from dawn to
nightfall, not spending anything on ourselves or our children, not
having any luxuries, in fact, not eating enough at any time, why do we
continue to be so poor?

How did we get into this human trap called World Bank - IMF, and
how do we spring this trap? Why should it be possible for two man-made
organisations - we learn that those who sat to invent them were actually
men, not women who know the pains of childbirth and would not easily
create monsters to terrorise their off-springs - to enforce their
devastating programmes of so-called adjustment on whole nations?

We do not understand the meaning of 'National External Debt,
There is no time when the people, that is us, gathered and instructed
our leaders to go borrow such huge amounts of monies that we are now
alleged to be owing. What did our governments do with these monies?

What did they tell their lenders they were going to do with the monies?

Did the money lenders make sure that the monies were actually applied to
the purposes stated at the time of borrowing? Is it true that even the
interest rates charged on these loans changed from time to time without
the agreement or even knowledge of the borrowers? Should we really be
repaying such 'corrupt' loans forever and at the cost of our national
livelihood?

Does it mean that without the so-called Aid from Europe and
America, our nations cannot develop? Is this how it was with those
countries that have developed themselves? From all that we hear, is it
not really our poor countries, almost according to the Christian Bible
that give aid to the developed countries - from he who has nothing, even
the little that he has, would be taken and given to he who already has
much?

If two financial organisations can dictate to the rest of the
world and make decisions for us all without our participation, what is
the meaning of the democracy that those who direct these organisations
recommend to us?

With all these problems and injustices that seem to be permanent,
are we not correct to ask: just what are we poor people and nations
doing here.in this 'their world'?

Globalisation: An Enforces Unity or An Undermining of Cultural Diversity?

Many questions like the above crop up in these discussions of ordinary
people as they seek to understand their difficult life experiences and
the way the larger world and its ways impact on their own micro-level
realities. Effective and appropriate answers to these and many other
questions are, we find, very important for the proper development of the
will and capacity to resist this comprehensive enslavement by a
civilisation whose principal goal is wholly selfish. In demystifying
the reality that so confuses our peoples, we do not resort to the
standard technical explanations which anchor themselves solely in the
realm of academic theories of economics, politics and the social
sciences in general.

We reach for the daily lives and experiences of our peoples themselves,
encouraging them to capture in their own terms, the images that might
best communicate what they feel and question. In dealing with what
exactly this animal called globalisation really is for instance, we
offer that the clearest way of explaining it to people is to say that it
is a kind of unity on a global scale - enforced unity whose goal is to
ensure a uniformity of the terrain on which global business would be
conducted. Once it is thus explained, the people themselves take hold
of it and begin to examine it more thoroughly. In most encounters, they
insist that:

Coerced unity is no longer unity that is worth having since it
over-rides the free will of partners to the unity and reduces them to
mere objects of an agenda that is not theirs.

Enforced unity is necessarily an instrument of oppression since
it does not admit of any real participation by all concerned in
determining its main characteristics.

When unity is enforced in a condition of pre-existing gross
inequalities, the outcome must necessarily be the perpetuation of these
inequalities and even their accentuation and, when the strong partner is
only a small minority, genocidal impoverishment is the ultimate outcome.
Uniformity that not only ignores but actively undermines the
cultural diversity on which the beauty of the world rests, must lead to
a most debasing cultural fascism since it would kill variety, the very
spice of life - with the active connivance of the victims themselves.

If uniformity cannot be achieved on the basis of shared and
aspirations as well as of equal rights and responsibilities, then it is
the urging of the acceptance of a state of enslavement - on a global
scale and with global, fruitful consequences.

Our people generally round up these conclusions by holding that: given
that anything is possible, a cat could actually genuinely desire unity
with mice, but it is the cat's insatiable palate that would make a
mockery of such desired unity and mice would be profoundly ill-advised
if they take this 'love' and partnership seriously. Unfortunately
however, the wisdom exhibited by our so-called ordinary people in not
uncritically taking for granted the bona fides of this much vaunted
partnership, is not shared by the leaderships that we have had in
Nigeria or, in the main, in most countries of Africa or indeed, the
'South'.

I have chosen to examine this burgeoning genocidal autocracy called
globalisation, not from the perspective with which we are all familiar -
that of people privileged to be counted amongst the intelligentsia in
our various countries and disciplines - but from the depths of confusion
and pain imposed on the lives of ordinary people. It is at this level,
the level of its effects on the lives of people who do not understand
its claims to validity and world hegemony, that the myth holds the
fastest. For, like a previously unknown plague that strikes an ignorant
world, it is apt to be ascribed to the wrath or will of God and borne
with religious fortitude instead of being fought and defeated once its
mythical garb has been rendered through clear, critical knowledge.

One more reason why this perspective of the ordinary people is important
is because with all our erudition and new theories, we cannot defeat
this disguised vampire unless the so-called ordinary people are
mobilised, both by change catalysts and by themselves, to resist the
corrosion of life, both human and non-human, on earth by this terrible
product of minority greed.

When is Enough is Enough?

Our cerebral rejection of this monstrosity must be replaced or, at least
powerfully reinforced by a gut level revulsion ad repudiation that issue
from the bellies of massive social movements that say ever more loudly:
enough is enough. We must stimulate our peoples to commensurate
self-activity as they say:

Enough to the arrogant self aggrandizement that allows a minority
in the world to decree that its word shall be law to the majority;
Enough to this deceptive unity, which only serves the interests
of the ruling elites of the powerful, so-called developed nations of the
world.

Enough to this new "World Parliament", called the World Trade
Organisation (WTO), and all its statutes/decrees - TRIPs, TRIMs, GATs,
MAIs, etc., - which is not more than the instrument used by rulers of
the 'North' to flagellate the majority of the world's peace loving, hard
working and solidarity seeking peoples;

Enough to the mystification which passes off a brutal
re-colonising missions as an effort to rationalise and equalise
opportunities for trade and cultural exchanges;

Enough to the wholesale degradation of nature in the pursuit of
profit maximisation and perpetual growth by a handful of TNCs (Trans
National Corporations) - with all the horrors attendant upon such
wholesale abuse of natural bases of human survival here on earth - using
their home governments and the institutions floated and controlled by
them as the bludgeon with which to whip the rest of the world into line;

Enough to the erasure of hope for untold numbers of generations
yet unborn in the 'South' and, ironically, in the 'North' as well;

Enough to destruction of the self-respect and dignity of untold
numbers of women and men across the entire world as they are duped into
the bottomless depths of unemployment and misery;

 

Enough to the 'mass anomie' etched into the lives of people, young and old, in the North as
life is more and more drained of real, value-based meaning by this
insatiable market;

Enough to the destruction of real, human solidarity amongst the
peoples of the world - who are yearning to truly find one another, to
embrace each others variety and difference in pursuit of greater mutual
fulfilment;

Enough to famines and fratricidal wars created by the
destruction of national and individual livelihoods - as stable systems
of national survival and food security are assaulted by the bogey of
liberalisation enforced in globalisation - which serves the interest of
giant food-controlling TNCs, causing insufficiency, internecine
conflicts and a general scramble for ample resources now made scarce;

Enough to the ravages visited on human history by a civilisation
that seems to have exhausted the goodness contained in it and now mainly
dispenses wars, famines, conflicts, fear, hopelessness, terror, and the
rumblings of an inevitable and impending holocaust.

The main thrust of this brief paper is the advocacy: that is in such
emotive terms - not in the cool, objective, rational and sedate terms of
academic discourse - that the wakeup call to our peoples must be couched
in order to produce the tremendous and sustained groundswell of energy
that we need to overcome this menace. A great deal of analyses has been
done by concerned and committed scholars around the world; much has been
written; innumerable workshops and even 'Summits' have been held in the
effort to demonstrate that what passes now for globalisation, based on
so-called 'free-market forces,' amounts only to gratuitous injury to a
world sorely in need of healing. The midwives of humanisation of our
world have clearly won the argument on purely theoretical grounds but we
cannot hope to win the war using rational arguments alone, against the
protagonists of market-driven globalisation.

An Alternative Peoples' Globalisation Programme

It is my ardent belief and hope that what we need to, and can work for,
is to uproot and replace this injurious globalisation - of - and - by -
ruling elites - which serves mainly the greedy and insatiable interests
of ever dwindling numbers of TNCs - with an Alternative Peoples'
Globalisation Programme on a world scale. We can do this, starting from
this our own global solidarity that should constantly seek to be more
and more inclusive.

Some of the tasks we need to carry out, linking up wherever possible
with other ongoing initiatives of the same kind as well as with other
global movements, are:

The development and continuous upgrading of Nodal Knowledge
Banks (NKBs) on Free Market Globalisation (FIVIG) as well as on
Alternatives Peoples' Globalisation Initiatives (APGIs), regionally and
sub regionally, depending on the availability of committed 'agents';

The development and vigorous pursuit of an ever widening
programme of civil society stimulation with the material in our NKBs,
targeting, not only the traditional NGOs but also and more importantly,
POs (Peoples' Organisations), Social Movements - particularly women's
movements given their incredible energy and tenacity, Youth Associations
and Clubs; etc. We also need to stimulate Government functionaries,
especially those who, are saddled with the responsibilities of
representing their governments in global fora;

The establishment, as a matter of urgency, of a Peoples' Global
Solidarity Initiative (PGSI) to bring together, at regular intervals,
representatives of ordinary citizens of the world as we develop a
Peoples' Global Forum of the future;

The establishment of a People's Globalisation Development Fund
(PGDF) earmarked for the strengthening and general support of peoples'
initiatives that foster the basic characteristics of APGIs:

* Promotion of the self-reliant, self-fulfilment enhancing,
micro-livelihood supporting initiatives of the people;
* Promotion of people-to-people solidarity in mutual respect,
sharing, caring and mutual celebration;
* Promotion of hope-renewal for the Youth of the world;
* Promotion of stimulation-through-learning experiences and
exchanges among peoples;
* Promotion of justice, fairness and equity among peoples of the
world irrespective of race, creed, age, physical status, or sex;
* Promotion of humaneness and sustainability rather than mere
profit maximisation;
* A strong sense of responsibility to the rights of unborn
generations and of their future world;
* Celebration of variety and 'difference' rather than
discrimination and exclusiveness.
* Establishment of people-to-people - actual grassroots -
friendship associations in different countries of the world; etc.