Tag: reparation

The anti -colonial movements that swept across Africa and Asia transformed world politics, creating a new Third World the emergent countries. At that time, a radical mind was vehemently critical of the colonial powers. In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon exposed the economic and psychological degradation of imperialism and pointed the way forward by violence that would ultimately lead to socialism. He recognized that colonial domination is total and tends to over- simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by negation of national reality by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power and banishment of the natives and their customs to the outlying districts by colonial society.

By appropriation and by the systematic enslaving of men and women, this thought provoking historical analysis of colonialism given by one of African revolutionary minds; gives us a peep into the chequered history of Africa. The plight of African continent can be traced down time line; the slave era. Although slavery was one of the admixtures of productive labour relations practised in many nations in Africa long before the adventure of Arabs slave merchants and subsequently their European counterparts. The lust for black skin by these two slave merchants race signalled the precursor of what became the Trans-Atlantic slave trade that lasted over four centuries. More than four centuries of dehumanizing any human race was enough to truncate and stagnant its natural evolution in all ramification. As slave trade came under scathing castigation by the capitalist in the early stage of industrial revolution, they used the church to propagate its moral burden on nations trading in slaves. The frontier of dehumanization was systematically extended to encompass acquisition of colonial territories outside the mother countries. This was another phase of domination by ruling the freed people in their own continent.

This phase saw the scramble for African continent by European nations. The unfair balance of economic, military and technology might was always in favour of the conquerors against the conquered people. As the conquering nations grow richer and more powerful due to their new mode of production, they seek foreign markets and also natural resources to feed their industries. The capitalist had to look no further than where their fore-bears looked (Africa) to get their needed resources. Their grandfathers came to buy or catch black skins; they too came to expropriate the riches in Africa’s soil. Pockets of resistance by angry, humiliated and dehumanized Africans were met by brute force made possible by the use of superior fire arms.

According to Frantz Fanon, the colony’s economy was organised in order to complement the economy of the different mother countries. Colonialism hardly ever exploits the whole of the country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it extracts and exports to meet the need of the mother country’s industries. There by allowing certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich while the rest of the colony follows its path of underdevelopment and poverty or sink into it more deeply.

Immediately after independence, the people who live in the more prosperous regions realise their good luck and show a primary and profound reaction in refusing to feed the other people. African unity, that vague formula, yet one to which the man and woman of Africa were passionately attached and whose operative value serve to bring immense pressure to bear on colonialism takes off the mask and crumbles into regionalism inside the hollow shell of nationality itself. The national bourgeoisie, since it is strung up to defend its immediate interests and sees no farther than the end of its nose, reveals itself incapable of simply bringing national unity into being or of building up the nation on a stable and productive basis. The national front which has forced colonialism to withdraw cracks up and wastes the victory it has gained.

Not long ago Nazism transformed the whole of Europe into veritable colony. The government of the various European nations called for reparations and demanded the restitution in kind and money of the wealth which had been stolen from them. Cultural treasures, pictures, sculptures and stained glasses have been given back to their owners. There was only one slogan in the mouths of the Europeans on the eve of the 1945 V-day; Germany must pay.

In the same way, we may say that the imperialist state would make a great mistake and commit an unspeakable injustice if they contented themselves with withdrawing from our soil the military cohorts, the administrative and managerial services whose function it was to discover the wealth of the country, to export it and sent it off to the mother countries. We are not blinded by the moral reparation of national independence, nor are we fed by it. The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too. Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries. Latin America, China and Africa from all these continents under whose eyes Europe today raise up her tower of opulence, there has flowed out for centuries towards that same Europe. Europe is literally the creation of the third world, the wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland and docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialised in Negro slave trade and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hands on his chest that he must come to the help of the poor underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves; it is our just reparation which will be paid to us. Nor will we acquiesce in the help for underdeveloped countries being a programme of sisters of charity. This help should be the ratification of a double racialization. The realization by colonized peoples that it is their due, and the realization by the capitalist powers that in fact they must pay for it through lack of intelligence the capitalist countries refuse to pay, then the relentless dialectic of their own system will smother them. It is a fact that young nations do not attract much private capital. There are many reasons which explain and render legitimate this reserve on the part of the monopoly.

As soon as the capitalists know that their government is getting ready to decolonize, they hasten to withdraw all their capital from the colony in question. The spectacular flight of capital is one of the most constant phenomena of decolonization.

This distillation of Fanon’s narrative and the historical trajectory of western capitalist exploit in underdeveloped nations of the world in general and Africa in particular gives an insight into what obtains today. From the epoch of conquest and slave trade to colonial domination and imperialism, they keep perfecting their art of domination and control. Great African leaders like; Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Sankara, Patrick Lumumba, Amilcar  Calbra, Samora Machel, Julius Nyerere, and others  would be shuddering in their graves if they were to witness the plunder that has ripped Africa to bits, thanks to the convenience of leaders whom transnational corporations, ventures philanthropists and international financial advisers have led by the nose. Sankara illustrated the African spirit needed to realign the continent away from economic and political poverty and towards liberating ideas and people’s sovereignty. According to award winning activist Nnimmo Bassey in his book; ‘To cook a continent’ ‘some people think Sankara was an idealist and thus left his flank open to deadly bullets from guns wielded by friends.’

The western powers in their Machiavellian control of world economy are adept in the use of blackmail, deception, intimidation, agent provocateur, conflict and crisis instigation and wars to maintain stranglehold on underdeveloped nations of the world. Today, carbon trading has crept into the socio-economic relations in international politics. As usual, African continent has been targeted to bear the burden of climate changed caused by industrial nations of Europe.

This among other forms of control and domination is what we in the progressive left term second slavery era. We must align with present day activists and others spread across underdeveloped countries of the world to resist any form of neo-liberalism which is new era of imperialism. The imperialists have carted away uncountable able bodied black Africans. They came back for her rich soil resources and plundered it. Now, they are back to uproot Africans through wars and terrorism. Their corporations despoiled and degraded our rich eco system through oil and mineral explorations. They are buying our forest now in their bid to grab our lands in the name of a phoney carbon trading deals. Just like in the days of slavery, our greedy self-centred and unpatriotic leaders always connive with them as accomplice in all the dehumanizing trade relations. Renowned revolutionary writers like; Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, and Afro beat legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti have pointed the way forward. It is left for us in this generation to fulfil their patriotic aspirations and rescue Africa from being  a sleeping giant.

• Ameh is the Founder of Generation for Change in Africa and Organising Secretary, Socialist Workers League Abuja branch.