The theft of Decolonisation in Africa

THE present political and economic condition of Africa might be a true indication that, in a way, the world system is a system of economic sorcery and political witchcraft. The failure of decolonisation and political independence to lead to liberation in Africa amounts to an epochal scandal. To refer to it as a squandered opportunity would be an irresponsible simplification as Africans are not entirely to blame for the failed states, continuing underdevelopment, corruption and diseases that continue to eat the continent up many decades after the countries became politically independent. The mass of ordinary bread-eaters of Africa are also not wholly responsible for the calibre of leaders that Africa has been blessed or burdened with. More importantly, so called post-colonial relations between former colonies and former colonisers in shape of African and European countries have effectively been neocolonial relations that are not free of coloniality. What Jack Goody in 2006 called “the theft of history” is the political and intellectual way in which Eurocentric historians have written history in a manner that blames Africa and Africans even for problems that Europe and America have caused for Africa. To distort history, misrepresent it and embellish it to cast Africa in the dark and white-wash the West is a political and intellectual project of theft. By the “theft of decolonisation” in this article I refer to what other decolonial scholars have called “the colonisation of decolonisation.” The colonisation of decolonisation referrers to how world powers in shape of the Euro-American Empire managed the political independence of African countries in such a way that decolonisation would not lead to liberation. Decolonisation as in the political independence of African countries was engineered to lead to neo-colonialism and not liberation. There was a Grand Plan in the West to free African countries in symbolic and ceremonial terms that would not deliver liberation. Political independence became a token rather than an actuality in Africa. A conspiracy to keep Africa and the entire Global South in colonial subjection exists and is ingrained in globalisation and the entire regime of international relations in the present world order.

An African Dream

Most African political activists and scholars are enthused by the example of Kwame Nkrumah and Ghana as examples of the optimism of liberation that Africa once held. Indeed, Nkrumah’s orations and essays on African liberation beyond simple decolonisation were a cause for great enchantment. In this article I wish to draw attention to Patrice Lumumba and the African dream of liberation that the Congo once held. In the speech that Lumumba delivered on the event of the independence of the Congo from Belgium on 30 June 1960, Lumumba fleshed out a decolonial dream for the African continent. He did so right in front of the King of Belgium that was in attendance, and there Lumumba might have committed suicide by making it clear to Empire that he was not going to be a stooge. After that speech, Lumumba’s obituary was as good as written.

That “We are going to make the Congo the centre of the sun’s radiance for all Africa” was Lumumba’s Pan-African pledge. That “we shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty” was a promise to deliver black and African excellence in economics, culture and politics. That “we shall see to it that the lands of our native country truly benefit its children” was Lumumba’s declaration that the resources of Africa must benefit the mass of Africans not imperialists and their black local elites that eat on behalf of the populations. That “we shall stop the persecution of free thought” and “eradicate all discrimination” was a vow to ensure intellectual freedom, freedom of expression and the end to racism, tribalism, xenophobia and nativism in the Congo. “I ask you to sink all tribal quarrels: they weaken us and may cause us to be despised abroad,” Lumumba pleaded with nativists and tribalists in the Congo. That “we shall revise old laws and make them into new ones that will be just and noble” was a decolonial declaration to decolonise the constitution and abandon oppressive colonial legislations. Emphatically, Lumumba declared that the Congo was to be part of the whole world and not an island, Belgium the former coloniser was told to learn the lesson that the Congolese will be citizens of the world not as slaves but dignified human beings. Yes, Lumumba espoused decolonial critical cosmopolitanism, standing firm in Africa like a rooted tree and spreading the branches of life throughout the whole planet, belonging to the world in dignity not in servitude.

What Lumumba portrayed and clarified in the brief but punchy speech was a decolonial vision of a liberated, not just decolonised African country. Lumumba spoke optimistically and maybe post-politically. Colonialism and imperialism were not ended. Some black Africans, politicians, business people, soldiers and intellectuals that were in that huge independence gathering had other plans that were different from the vision that Lumumba fleshed out. Liberation was not to be. And Lumumba was to die a painful death and so his decolonial vision for the Congo and Africa. How such a glorious vision as Lumumba’s got to be sold out, auctioned by some black Africans and their white imperialist networks is a true story of political witchcraft. And that is the general story of most parts of Africa. A few powerful witches and sorcerers make it a career to auction the dreams of the continent and its people. The diamonds, rubber and minerals of the Congo, worth in the billions, were to be siphoned from the country for the benefit of some powerful opportunists and imperialists.

Coloniality as witchcraft

On 3 February in 1960, the British Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, Harold McMillan addressed the South African parliament and gave a grave warning. He spoke of “the winds of change” that were sweeping the whole world as colonised countries were achieving their political independence. White countries, including apartheid South Africa were not supposed to resist the change but manage it properly, ensure that they give independence and not liberation to the blacks, that is. Importantly, McMillan warned that African countries should not be allowed to fall under the control of communists Eastern Europe. As early as the 1940s and 1950s the US administrations of Truman and Eisenhower were determined to permit Western countries to free their African colonies but not allow them to align with the East. Aid was used as a bribe to keep Africa attached to the West. African despots took advantage of the Cold War climate to sell their countries to the West for massive personal wealth and lucrative kickbacks from investors. Imperialism had a name change. Clever western scholars such as Anthony Giddens popularized the name globalization to suggest an inevitable and harmonious internationalism when it was good old imperialism. The global media and education systems came to be used for colonial and imperial propaganda and instruments of cultural imperialism and the brainwashing of black Africans. Cultural industries, the media (especially Hollywood), the world academy and religion were used to complete what became called the coca-colonisation of Africa in terms of Americanisation. What is celebrated as the Fourth Industrial Revolution is, in many ways, the techno-colonisation of the world.

Nativists, Afro-fundamentalists and other small minds think that decoloniality, therefore, means boycotting the world, abstaining from technology, returning to the precolonial past and practicing primitive villagism. It does not mean that. It means understanding how the world works, unmasking coloniality as a kind of witchcraft, opposing both First World and Third World fundamentalisms as Ramon Grosfoguel has forcefully argued. Resurrecting the beautiful and powerful dream of Lumumba does not only mean confronting White supremacists and imperialists such as Donald Trump but also dealing with African black fundamentalists in shape of despots, corrupt tycoons, racists, tribalists, xenophobes and nativists that pull Africa back. Recovering Lumumba’s lost and stolen dream requires a confrontation with coloniality as witchcraft practiced by insiders and outsiders of the black African family. The decolonisation of Africa, fall of tyrannical regimes and rise of developmental states will mean nothing beyond rhetoric if Africans do not confront the enemy from within and without. Superpower contestations over the control of Africa that were part of the Cold War have not really ended. Western and Eastern powers of the world use money and political power as bribes to control governments and political regimes in Africa. Political stooges like Moise Tshombe, who sold Lumumba out, are given power so that they allow looting. Criminal world powers promote civil wars and fund political unrest to create a climate of disorder and chaos that is conducive for looting and international black marketeering. Meanwhile, the real losers in all this are the poor majority of black Africans that have no access to education, healthcare, housing, road infrastructure and other basic necessities of life. True witchcraft is when a few economically and politically powerful black Africans team up with foreign powers to siphon resources from the country and deprive the poor majorities of basic life. Empire listened to the warning of Harold McMillan. Up to now African countries remain “spheres of influence” of superpowers from the West and the East.