Opinion and Analysis
By CAROLE MUSYOKA
A few weeks ago, I was the guest of the Government of
Poland at the European Economic Congress held in the southeastern
Polish industrial city of Katowice. I arrived on a cold and blustery
spring mid morning into Warsaw’s Chopin International Airport.
Surprise number one: The world-renowned composer and piano
virtuoso Francois Frédéric François Chopin was actually born in 1810 as
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin in Warsaw and became a musical child prodigy
before moving to Paris at the age of 18.
Poland, his country of birth, never forgot him and
has awarded him the national honour of naming its gateway into the
country after him. (Eleven years after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize
in 2004, there is no visible memorial that Wangari Maathai originated in
Kenya. None whatsoever).
I must say that I was ecstatic when I bumped into a
former colleague who had undertaken his university studies in Poland
and was also part of the entourage.
It meant that I had a familiar guide who, I
erroneously thought, would help me navigate 100 per cent Polish-speaking
territory. Surprise number two: I didn’t need a Kenyan Polish-speaking
guide to move around.
All the signs in the airport were in both Polish
and English. Now, in this part of the sun-kissed African world, mention
Poland and it immediately conjures up images of a grey, undisputed
card-carrying member of the former Soviet-driven Eastern bloc.
But Poland’s long and tortuous road to becoming a
jewel in Europe’s crown began over 40 years ago. And it is this journey
that convinced me that many African countries have hope for economic
transformation within a single generation.
In the 1970s, Edward Gierek, the First Secretary of
the Polish United Workers’ Party racked up an unsustainable debt to the
West. Coupled with an unproductive and centrally planned economy, the
country was unable to handle the debt payments leading to an economic
crisis.
Basic goods started disappearing from store
shelves. As one fairly young speaker at the Congress stated when he
heard an African contributor lamenting about poor economic policies in
his country.
“In Poland in the 80s, if one found people standing
in a line, one would join the queue and only find out what was being
sold at the end of the queue. We have now transformed into the sixth
largest GDP in the European Union. You can do it as Africans too!” The
African contributor slunk back into his seat quietly.
Anyway, back to Poland’s interesting history. By the 1980s, the economic crisis had grown spurring multiple protests.
An independent trade union known as Solidarno (or
Solidarity in English) became the main force behind the protests with
many workers as well as intellectuals joining it.
At its height the trade union had well over 10
million members. In the face of social opposition and a deepening
economic crisis, the troubled communists began the famous round-table
talks that resulted in the first democratic elections in the Eastern
Bloc taking place in 1989 in Poland.
If you are a purveyor of conspiracy theories, you
would greatly enjoy a book by Gordon Thomas called Gideon’s Spies: The
Secret History of the Mossad.
In the fairly well written book, the writer reveals
a number of Mossad operations and discoveries, a key one of which is
who ordered the miraculously bungled assassination attempt of Pope John
Paul II, himself of Polish descent.
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