Posted by TheBlackList on July 23, 2008 at 10:20am
Colonialism and Imperialism: Outdated Scapegoats?
by Ms. Oluyemi O. Ige
As a first generation American, I was born in the States and never learnt the mother tongue of my parents – Yoruba. But even as a child, I was curious, thirsted for knowledge about this place that I was always identified with because of my decidedly non-American name.
I have pursued knowledge of Africa. East, West, North South, I have seen her heroes and villains through the eyes of the American education system, history, professors and other Africans. I have studied her failures and successes, and have come to a conclusion that despite media reports and howls of the European sins of the past – Africa is not a victim.
Take the case of Robert Gabriel Mugabe – “president” of Zimbabwe and power behind the throne since 1980. Ever since the fight for independence, he has aimed at consolidating power into a one-party system. From the beginning, it was a Marxist regime, then a government with socialist underpinnings dusguised as democracy. All this was allowed initially by the people in the quest for stability and equality and now by neighboring African leaders under a misguided attempt at African unity, to protect their own regimes from criticism.Most notable has been the tacit support from South African president, and regional leader, Thabo Mbeki.
No one denies the great things Mugabe helped usher in – leading the charge against the white minority government of Ian Smith and supporting the African National Congress (ANC) during apartheid. But those days have passed, those obstacles overcome. It is time for those revolutionary leaders to lay down their arms and pass the baton of governance to a new generation in the mold of Senghor in Senegal and Mandela in South Africa. Both, you can note, were extremely effective once they stepped down and continue to be admired well after their terms in office.
No longer are the cries of imperialism and neo-colonialism enough to rally a continent. The causes of Africa’s problems cannot so neatly be laid at the door or the “white man”, or the “yellow” with the ascendance of Asian, namely Chinese, influence on the continent.
Zimbabwe after independence was hailed as a success, a model for Africa. It not only produced its own food, but had a surplus to export to neighboring states and, most of all, it gave hope to those who struggled under white rule. But no, not everything was perfect as white commercial farmers still dominated economically, taking up large tracts of the best land and marginalizing African farmers on less productive land. But there were compromises that could be made, that were being made led by Mugabe himself.
But could a man who said, “It could never be a correct justification that, because the white oppressed us yesterday when they had power, that the blacks must oppress them today because they have power (1980)” tolerate the seizure of private property, successful productive land, as well as the torture and intimidation of farmers and civilians? Ever since that seizure, the country has become bankrupt, the economy has failed on all levels and violence has erupted all over the country. There are millions of displaced persons searching for safe haven in neighboring nations, disrupting their social services as well.
It’s no longer enough to claim that the problems of Zimbabwe specifically, and Africa more widely, are caused solely by the West and foreign influence. Mugabe is an African, steeped in the African liberation movement and yet he is a dictator who refuses to allow freedom of the press, has engaged in racist policies and had remained belligerent in the face of much needed change. Mubarak of Egypt, an Arab or African country depending on what is advantageous at the moment, is now serving his fifth-term in office. Lasana Conté of Guinea has been in power since 1984. These are not paramount chiefs, installed by the West to act as puppets. Foreign governments, may have, and may continue to provide secondary support but all of these leaders have gained hold of the reins of power by their own determination.
Africans are not stupid, at least no more or less intelligent than other peoples from around the world. What they lack, what they have yet to find is a cohesive will to take control of their destiny. As a continent full of resources, Africa will always be in play between foreign governments and business. The key is not to be used by these interests, but to use them. We, Africans not only from Africa but throughout the Diaspora have the power to take control of our destinies and operate from a position of power.
We have often shot ourselves in the foot by being appeased by short-term gains at the expense of long-term progress – look at the Nigerian Delta for example: when oil exploration first began, who could have imagined the influence oil would have on the world market? And for what is Nigeria a servant to the large oil companies – polluted waters, ethnic violence, ruined fields, substandard living conditions? Look at others around the world and what they have achieved because they have demanded more and better for themselves. You would never see the conditions in the Niger Delta region of the Gulf of Mexico or in the Texas oil heartland.
Wake up, Africa, seize your destiny.
by Ms. Oluyemi O. Ige
The African Executive
http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=3347&magazine=186
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Chinweizu is partially correct in discarding Mugabe's age or length of office as major problems. But he is wrong to claim that Mugabe is fighting economic colonialism against Britain and imperialism. Mugabe gave in to (i) maintaining the coloniali structure and its plantation capitalism and (ii) to kleptocracy. The major colonial structure of the Zimbabwe economy, external connections and favoratism to locally privileged people did not change in a big way. Mugabe and the ZANU-PF and their immediate economic beneficiaries decided to replace privileged whites and to continue the colonial economic but now for their own benefits and the colonialists outside. The reign of terror, the military in Zimbabwe are now used to protect the privileged position of Mugabe and some of his immediate supporters and beneficiaries of the kleptocracy...
The reign of terror in Zimbabwe is not their to defend the intersts of the majority of the population...While it looked good to grab the land from white people the distribution of that land was politically selective and Mugabe claimed four of those plantations for himself.
Zimbabweans were very patient and optimistic under Mugabe earlier on....but when he decided to maintain the colonial structure and transform the economic oppression into the oppression of Black capitalism at home, and he decided to freeze the wages, enlist the colonial support of the IMF and its structural adjustments, moved on to suppress the labor unions, maintain plantattion capitalism which deprived the majority of the people from any meaningful benefits form the economic colonialism, then terrorize First the Ndebeles and then the Shonas into submission to one Party -rule...then this is not what Cabral called genuine decolonization..Kadaffi and Castro have had many years of domination but their economic achievements are admirable--they genuinely nationalized the economy and they genuinely did away with plantation capitalism--Mugabe did not. The British, the USA and the EU among others are in part responsible for the neocolonial situation in Zimbabwe but Mugabe and ZANU-PF have also contributed to the perpetuation of the crisis of neo-colonialism and its plantation capitalism.
Outdated scapegoat?
But those days have passed, those obstacles overcome. It is time for those revolutionary leaders to lay down their arms and pass the baton of governance to a new generation in the mold of Senghor in Senegal and Mandela in South Africa. Both, you can note, were extremely effective once they stepped down and continue to be admired well after their terms in office. –Oluyemi Ige
Comment by chinweizu [29July 2008]
May I submit that the correct Afrocentric issue in Zimbabwe is not “democracy” or Mugabe—his age, length of tenure etc—but rather economic colonialism/ neo-colonialism and how to fight it and win.
To appreciate my point we need to start by observing the camouflaged fact that colonialism is not over yet but simply changed its dress at “independence” from White Expatriate Colonialism to Black Comprador Colonialism. It wears a mask that has us confused. Similarly, Imperialism, for which colonialism is an agent, is still with us, alive and well and waxing stronger in the last 50 years of our fake independence. It now operates in the collective form of UN Imperialism.
Grasping this basic fact of camouflage is the key to a correct appreciation of what has been going on in Zimbabwe. We are wrong if we exclusively blame our continuing woes on White Expatriate Colonialism (which has been dismantled by the African independence struggles); we are also wrong to blame all our continuing woes on Black Comprador Colonialism alone, when the imperialist structure constrains what even the most Afro-liberationist Black Comprador Colonialists—such as Kwame Nkrumah was-- can do. We must therefore take into account both the BCC factor and the UN imperialist factor when we try to understand what has been happening to us these last 50 years. But, that said, we must accept that it is entirely our responsibility to liberate ourselves and reshape our future, regardless of imperialism’s contribution to our plight. And to do that, we must first correctly understand our plight.
The central fact that we must grasp is this: The hard core of colonialism is economic colonialism—that’s what political and cultural colonialism were invented to service. Economic colonialism, which Nkrumah named Neo-colonialism, is still alive and well everywhere in Black Africa, untouched by the political decolonisation achieved in the last 50 years. And it is this core that Mugabe is struggling to liberate Zimbabwe from. Kwame Nkrumah diagnosed and named it in the 1960s; Mugabe is fighting it in this decade. Mugabe is the first Black African leader to challenge Economic Colonialism since Dessalines did so in Haiti in 1804 and was assassinated for his efforts. Mandela didn’t have the guts to take it on when he was president of South Africa. Which is why he remains a saint to the imperialists.
So then, how should we understand Zimbabwe from our own Afrocentric standpoint? To help show the way, here follows my paper Zimbabwe: The fundamentals.
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Replies
Zimbabweans were very patient and optimistic under Mugabe earlier on....but when he decided to maintain the colonial structure and transform the economic oppression into the oppression of Black capitalism at home, and he decided to freeze the wages, enlist the colonial support of the IMF and its structural adjustments, moved on to suppress the labor unions, maintain plantattion capitalism which deprived the majority of the people from any meaningful benefits form the economic colonialism, then terrorize First the Ndebeles and then the Shonas into submission to one Party -rule...then this is not what Cabral called genuine decolonization..Kadaffi and Castro have had many years of domination but their economic achievements are admirable--they genuinely nationalized the economy and they genuinely did away with plantation capitalism--Mugabe did not. The British, the USA and the EU among others are in part responsible for the neocolonial situation in Zimbabwe but Mugabe and ZANU-PF have also contributed to the perpetuation of the crisis of neo-colonialism and its plantation capitalism.
But those days have passed, those obstacles overcome. It is time for those revolutionary leaders to lay down their arms and pass the baton of governance to a new generation in the mold of Senghor in Senegal and Mandela in South Africa. Both, you can note, were extremely effective once they stepped down and continue to be admired well after their terms in office. –Oluyemi Ige
Comment by chinweizu [29July 2008]
May I submit that the correct Afrocentric issue in Zimbabwe is not “democracy” or Mugabe—his age, length of tenure etc—but rather economic colonialism/ neo-colonialism and how to fight it and win.
To appreciate my point we need to start by observing the camouflaged fact that colonialism is not over yet but simply changed its dress at “independence” from White Expatriate Colonialism to Black Comprador Colonialism. It wears a mask that has us confused. Similarly, Imperialism, for which colonialism is an agent, is still with us, alive and well and waxing stronger in the last 50 years of our fake independence. It now operates in the collective form of UN Imperialism.
Grasping this basic fact of camouflage is the key to a correct appreciation of what has been going on in Zimbabwe. We are wrong if we exclusively blame our continuing woes on White Expatriate Colonialism (which has been dismantled by the African independence struggles); we are also wrong to blame all our continuing woes on Black Comprador Colonialism alone, when the imperialist structure constrains what even the most Afro-liberationist Black Comprador Colonialists—such as Kwame Nkrumah was-- can do. We must therefore take into account both the BCC factor and the UN imperialist factor when we try to understand what has been happening to us these last 50 years. But, that said, we must accept that it is entirely our responsibility to liberate ourselves and reshape our future, regardless of imperialism’s contribution to our plight. And to do that, we must first correctly understand our plight.
The central fact that we must grasp is this: The hard core of colonialism is economic colonialism—that’s what political and cultural colonialism were invented to service. Economic colonialism, which Nkrumah named Neo-colonialism, is still alive and well everywhere in Black Africa, untouched by the political decolonisation achieved in the last 50 years. And it is this core that Mugabe is struggling to liberate Zimbabwe from. Kwame Nkrumah diagnosed and named it in the 1960s; Mugabe is fighting it in this decade. Mugabe is the first Black African leader to challenge Economic Colonialism since Dessalines did so in Haiti in 1804 and was assassinated for his efforts. Mandela didn’t have the guts to take it on when he was president of South Africa. Which is why he remains a saint to the imperialists.
So then, how should we understand Zimbabwe from our own Afrocentric standpoint? To help show the way, here follows my paper Zimbabwe: The fundamentals.