AFRIKA CAN’T HANDLE THE EBOLA CRISIS! IT NEEDS FOREIGN AID! AFRIKA NEEDS BRITISH CHARITY IN ORDER TO HELP THE POOR DESTITUTE AFRIKANS!
These are just a few of the common ideas taken for granted in the British media discourse around Ebola and its impact. If these statements truly reflect the reality, the question “why” is often not explored and when it is within the vicinity of a sufficiently self aware Afrikan, the discussion inevitably centres on one word – COLONIALISM!
British media, commentators and politicians are well versed in all the responses needed for the most prolific of colonisers to maintain a semblance of moral high ground. The rebuttals usually begin with ‘So you’re still blaming the colonial masters’ or as Michael Portillo recently said to Ekow Eshun on BBC’s This Week:
“Colonialism has a legacy, which is partly I think good and bad. One of the things the British tended to put in place were systems of justice and systems of administration.”
So, Portillo expects us to believe that the British, who brought the inherently criminal and unjust system of Colonialism to Afrika, were seriously concerned with providing justice and governance for its natives. As well as this absurd and unintelligent notion, Portillo’s statement reflects the height of white supremacist arrogance, presuming that administration and justice were absent in Afrika before the arrival of white colonisers. All of this is done in order to paint an elaborate picture of a failing continent that not only requires, but begs for foreign assistance in managing every aspect of its development. As This Week host, Andrew Neil, would go on to say:
“But Sierra Leone… found despite the hundreds of millions that British aid has put in there, that its medical facilities were nowhere near good enough to cope with this.”
Robtel Neajal Pailey, expertly addressed these misconceptions on Sunday Morning Live, before putting a condescending Esther Rantzen firmly in her place, stating:
“If we really want to assist, change the WTO (World Trade Organisation) trade rules that adversely affect the continent. Change the neo liberal policies of the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) that adversely impact the continent in terms of its economic makeup.”
For the remainder of this piece, I will attempt to add context to Robtel’s, most pertinent observation, by explaining how these European nations have systematically destroyed many Afrikan nation’s capacity to be self sufficient, using these same said institutions. Here are just a few examples that speak to a much broader reality.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana
After Ghana came to independence in 1957, President Kwame Nkrumah’s government had the unenviable task of presiding over a nation ravaged by over a century of invasion, war and colonial rule. Reportedly, only three health care centres existed in 1951, and seeing the need for change, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) government immediately went to work trying to build the nation’s infrastructure. Within a decade they had tripled the number of hospital beds, partly through the building of 30 new clinics. In order to service the hospitals & clinics Nkrumah instituted a number of programs that would see the number of doctors quadruple.
Education was made free and Nkrumah went about developing the next generation of Ghanaian professionals, building 11 technical colleges, 47 teacher training colleges and 3 new universities, all accompanied by adult literacy programs and free scholarships that welcomed students across the entire continent. Nkrumah would also pay for students to study abroad especially in the fields of science, technology, medicine, law and engineering. All of the above were considered an investment in Ghana’s intellectual and skills capital.
Effective medical care relies on economic development in other areas such as architecture, agriculture and travel. The CPP government instituted measures in all three areas that would yield many rewards including the building of Ghana’s first motorway in 1964, four years prior to the completion of the first Motorway in Britain – the M1.
Now given the pronouncements of many British commentators, you would be forgiven for believing that Europe and America were complimentary observers of all of this growth and development. Sadly, this far from the case. As Nkrumah would write in a letter to USA President Lindon B. Johnson in 1964:
“the CIA, seems to devote all its attention to fermenting ill-will, misunderstanding and even engaging in clandestine and subversive activities among our people…”
It is interesting that Bill Mahoney, then US Ambassodor to Ghana observed that:
“Ghana was singular in the sense that it had everything. It had educated people; it had considerable infrastructure: 3 universities, schools, lawyers, doctors, it had everything going for it.”
So when a CIA/MI6 sponsored coup overthrows Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, a nation firmly on the road to self sufficiency is set back decades and now remains reliant on IMF, World Bank and other foreign “aid”. The significance of this is that Ghana’s program had sight far beyond its own borders.
Sekou Toure’s Guinea
French Colonisation was particularly vicious and the French did their very best through force and coercion, to hold on to their colonies. France attempted to impose an “Independence Package” on the nations under its oppression. The package included such provisions as paying some 40% of the Afrikan nation’s budget to the French annually and giving the French the right of first refusal on any raw material or natural resource discovered in the country. Many so-called francophone Afrikan nations continue to suffer the legacy of this pact; The only nation to totally refuse was Guinea, declaring itself independent in 1958, under the leadership of Sekou Toure. In response, the French administrators left, but not before throwing a monumental tantrum in which schools, nurseries, public administration buildings, cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments and even farm animals were killed and destroyed. They even raided the treasury and cleaned it out.
While Afrika is said to need foreign aid today, back then, it was Revolutionary Ghana (under Nkrumah) that was able to provide neighboring Guinea $10m in order to develop its infrastructure. Sekou Toure did his best to develop Guinea’s infrastructure, largely through nationalising the nation’s natural resources and putting the proceeds towards the development of schools, hospitals and various economic and cultural programs. In fact Ghana & Guinea alongside Mali, had signed an agreement that made them the foundation for the “Afrikan Union of States” that would see the cooperative collective development of the nations. It has since come to light that a similar agreement was signed, in secret, with Patrice Lumumba of Congo, who was so formidable, that a coalition of former colonisers as well as America’s moved to take him out within 6 months of his coming to power.
Contrary to the belief that Afrika needs France, French President François Mitterand is recorded as saying “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century” in 1957. This would no doubt explain why the French government tried their best to sabotage the government of Sekou Toure for the entirety of its duration. Sekou Toure is well known to have been intolerant of foreign acts of destabilisation masking as aid and assistance, expelling French and America offenders from his nation without apology. Ten days after Sekou Toure’s death in 1984, a coup was waged against the government, totally undoing the revolutionary reforms. Guinea today is one of the nations currently most affected by the Ebola Crisis.
Thomas Sankara’s Burkina Faso
Sankara came to power in 1983, a generation after the revolutionary/independence era. Within four years he completely transformed the nation. As well as reforms in Education and Agriculture, he developed a mass vaccination program in which no less than 2.5 million children were protected against meningitis, yellow fever, measles and polio. In addition, while 350 schools were in the process of being built in as many communities, by the people of those communities. Every village was called upon to build medical care centres.
Thomas Sankara’s foresight is probably best exemplified in his attempt to combat the growth of the Sahara desert. He involved the nations, from the children to the elders, in the planting of over 10 millions trees, combating desertification and having a monumental impact on agriculture in the process.
It is said that aid in Afrika doesn’t work becomes of corrupt Afrikan Governments. Well Sankara was well known for being “Incorruptible”. He did much to do away with corruption not only among his government, but in the involvement of western nations and institutions. It should be noted that by this time the IMF, World Bank, World Health Organisation (WHO) and the foreign aid culture was well embedded in Afrika, yet no nation receiving said foreign “benefits” could boast that kind of development. He rejected buying food from foreigners and effected land redistribution, markedly increasing the nation’s food production. He opposed even buying clothes from foreigners and developed textiles in Burkina Faso, encouraging the people and government officials alike to wear home grown cotton.
His stance caused various standoffs with the French and other governments who would eventually back his top associate Blaisé Compare in waging a coup that would end with the assassination of Thomas Sankara. So benevolent was Sankara, that he as his other generals sussed the plot before it went down, yet he refused, as he was being encouraged, to take out those who were plotting against him. The government of Blaisé Compare immediately received the backing of France, as he rolled back all the reforms made under Sankara, subjecting his people to a brutal regime and abject poverty.
Conclusion
It stands to reason that had all these efforts been allowed to flourish, Afrika would be in a very different position in managing any health crisis that may affects its nations today. It would seem that Robtel’s observation is correct and that European nations got rid of progressive Afrikan Leaders in order to create the reality we have before us today. Foreign aid and charity, along with the mindset with which it is carried out and pursued does more to inflate British sense of self importance than it does to help Afrika in anyway.
In 1965, one year before he was over thrown, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah wrote the book “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” in which he rather prophetically detailed the current state of relations between Europe, America and Afrika:
“In order to halt foreign interference in the affairs of developing countries it is necessary to study, understand, expose and actively combat neo-colonialism in whatever guise it may appear. For the methods of neo-colonialists are subtle and varied. They operate not only in the economic field, but also in the political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres.
“Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by‘aid’ for their development.
“Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.”
ShakaRa Speaks on It by Tafadzwa ShakaRa Mbandaka / @ShakaRaBKS for the british blacklist