We Need to Talk About Africa

Tom Young

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786070647
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

If you boil a kettle twice today, you will have used five times more electricity than a person in Mali uses in a whole year. How can that be possible?Decades after the colonial powers withdrew Africa is still struggling to catch up with the rest of the world. When the same colonists withdrew from Asia there followed several decades of sustained and unprecedented growth throughout the continent. So what went wrong in Africa? And are we helping to fix it, or simply making matters worse?In this provocative analysis, Tom Young argues that so much has been misplaced: our guilt, our policies, and our aid. Human rights have become a cover for imposing our values on others, our shiniest infrastructure projects have fuelled corruption and our interference in domestic politics has further entrenched conflict. Only by radically changing how we think about Africa can we escape this vicious cycle.

1

GUILT

THERE IS A STORY THAT THE West tells about Africa. It has been ethically persuasive, psychologically and politically powerful. Like all good stories it comes in different versions and appeals to different audiences. It can be made more or less complex and it links emotionally charged themes and images to wider ideas and agendas. Also, like all good stories, it contains elements of truth. But unlike a novel or a play, it is not simply a work of imagination. Social and political stories, the kinds of stories we tell to make sense of our interaction with others, are rarely based on fabrication; they are about selection and presentation and plausibility. So, unlike fiction, social and political stories have many authors. The mainstream Africa story has been produced by writers (academics, journalists, activists) and organisations (policy institutes, governments, international organisations). It has been popularised and publicised by politicians, lobby groups, political movements, even entertainers. It has found its way into university and school curricula, images, memorials, ceremonies and indeed fiction. All of those involved in producing it have seen themselves as presenting a truth. So the mainstream Africa story is not in any simple sense ‘false’, nor is it a ‘myth’, and for that reason it cannot be ‘refuted’. But that story does contain omissions and distortions, and unless they are challenged by other stories, they will have damaging consequences. The three main elements that make up this story are colonialism, race and slavery. These are, of course, very large topics, and my concern here is not with explaining their historical development but with clarifying the orthodoxy. The aim is to make sense of what they say, and what they leave out or gloss over, and to see how that fits into the overarching story or narrative. It will then be possible to understand the political effects of the story.

COLONIALISM

Colonialism is the most important element in the story for two main reasons. The first is that the colonial conquest of Africa was achieved, unlike most other parts of the world, remarkably quickly and completely. The second is that this conquest was justified by the idea of a ‘civilising mission’. Around 1800, European powers possessed little more than footholds in Africa and were almost entirely ignorant of the interior. Between about 1880 and 1910 there was a ‘scramble for Africa’ which brought the whole continent, with the exceptions of Liberia and Ethiopia, under European rule. Britain and France took the lion’s share, but Portugal, Belgium and Germany all occupied considerable territories, while even Spain and Italy had a share. Remarkably, during this process, the colonial powers agreed to avoid conflict over these territories and publicly justified their occupation partly on the grounds that they were abolishing slavery and bringing progress to a ‘backward’ region. Powerful states have often used lofty claims to dress up self-interested actions, but at the time, and indeed for some time afterwards, colonialism was seen as a noble endeavour. Many of the most prominent critics of colonial rule in the nineteenth century, those who had for example helped to bring to an end the Belgian King Leopold’s vicious regime in the Congo, were not against colonialism in principle but rather the deficiencies in its practice. Even many on the political left shared these views. Karl Marx, never one to pass up a chance to denounce the brutality of British colonial rule in India, nonetheless saw it as historically ‘progressive’, and likely to bring about positive change in the long term. His comrade-in-arms, Friedrich Engels, said much the same about the French annexation of Algeria and even the American annexation of northern Mexico.^* Many others, while they shared misgivings about the brutality and destructiveness of colonial conquest, reluctantly conceded that a complete absence of rule might leave populations vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by private interests, as had already occurred in the Congo. Until well after ‘the scramble’, almost no one in Europe was against colonial rule in Africa.

Barely a hundred years later, colonialism is an unspeakable crime. The idea of colonialism as ‘progressive’, much less the assumption of even partially benign motives, has become not merely unthinkable, but derisory, indeed part of the history of colonial oppression itself. How can we account for such a dramatic turnaround? First, the pace of progress in the colonial territories, even by the rather modest standards promised, was extremely slow. The British government started talking about ‘development’ (in its modern sense) in the 1920s, but the resources devoted to it were extremely limited. Claims that colonial rule was essentially benign or progressive came to ring increasingly hollow. More importantly, the Second World War had required both massive military and ideological mobilisation against a Nazi enemy, an enemy which had explicitly proclaimed an ideology of group domination. Even during the war, the Allies had begun to express their war aims in terms of human equality, terms which were incompatible with alien rule over whole peoples. After the war, as the horrors of the Third Reich became more widely known, any sort of view which condoned, even temporarily, such rule, became irredeemably discredited. The very self-confidence that made colonialism possible was already collapsing, even if colonial rule itself staggered on for a few more years. As institutions and practices became more and more suspect, the testimony of colonisers became ever more dubious until it came to seem self-evidently false. If the colonisers said they encountered widespread tribal warfare, they must have been lying, perhaps even engineering such warfare in order to legitimate their rule. If the colonisers reported widespread slavery in Africa which they were concerned to abolish, that was the fault of colonialism (and the slave trade). If the colonisers said they aimed to improve the physical condition of African populations, they were only doing so in order to mislead humanitarian opinion back home, or insofar as conditions did improve, it was only intended to further the exploitation of Africans.

It is not difficult to paint a very grim picture of the colonial period. Colonial conquest was often brutal, made more so by the rapid development of new kinds of firearms in the late nineteenth century, such as rapid-firing weapons and mobile artillery, which opened up a huge technological gap between European armies and others that no amount of courage could compensate for. At the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, British forces killed some 10,000 Sudanese fighters for the loss of some 50 of their own. At its very worst, colonial rule was little more than a reign of terror, as for example in Leopold’s Congo. The German massacre of the Herero in South West Africa in 1904 resulted in thousands of deaths due to lack of food and water. Less well known, and on a smaller scale, are the depredations of more or less psychopathic individuals pursuing their own sometimes demented agendas. Aside from such premeditated violence, colonial conquest had many unforeseen consequences, such as the spread of disease and the disruption of traditional forms of husbandry. In colonies where there was white settlement, Africans were driven off their land. Colonial states did not hesitate to resort to forced labour for public works projects, such as railway construction, where fatality rates were often very high. Some colonial powers coerced African labour into working for settlers, or imposed forced cultivation of certain crops.

All these points add up to an indictment so powerful that for many they make further comment superfluous. But, however compelling we find this evidence, everything we know about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Africa suggests it was already an extremely violent place. Incongruous as it may seem, large-scale inter-African violence was effectively brought to an end by colonial rule. Colonial authorities did, from time to time, turn a blind eye to low-level raiding in marginal areas, but the one thing they did do was enforce peace. Of course, they had their own reasons for doing so, but the imposition of peace had beneficial side effects. First was the simple fact of increased personal security. Population statistics provide evidence for this. Although colonial rule had often been brutally imposed and was sometimes extremely costly in terms of African life, once it was consolidated African populations grew quite quickly, even in the Belgian Congo. Another side effect was that enforced peace made possible greatly increased mobility – not just of people, but of goods. Markets could now function more effectively, and areas of food shortage could now be more easily supplied. There is some truth in the argument that colonial states tried to prevent Africans exploiting economic opportunities, but it is often overstated. The fact is that, under colonial rule, new technologies became available, towns expanded, movement became easier and more secure, and economic opportunities, both for work and trade, were widened. It has been argued that such developments served only to enhance colonial rule, and exploit colonial economies. That is of course true, but how could it be otherwise? All states seek ways to utilise resources and generate revenue. In that sense, independent African states have been no different from colonial ones. The real issue was the division of the rewards, and while it is certainly true that colonial rulers skewed the benefits towards the colonial state and Europeans more generally, they could not, and in many cases did not wish to, entirely exclude Africans. A road can be used by anyone, as can a safe market or a currency.

Africans often seized the new opportunities available to them. The explosion of cocoa production in the Gold Coast or the development of plantation agriculture in Côte d’Ivoire between the wars was not engineered by Europeans or colonial states but by African farmers responding to demand. In 1900 virtually no cocoa was produced in Gold Coast. Thirty years later, total production reached 250,000 tonnes, and the Gold Coast was the world’s largest exporter. In time, colonial states came to see the value of this economic activity and sought to encourage it because it produced tax revenue.

Colonialism brought with it a great deal of cultural baggage as well and, no less than material technologies, the effects of this were mixed. But Africans could not be wholly excluded from exploring opportunities in this sphere either. Colonial rule was also literate rule. Out of necessity colonial states needed literate African employees, initially as clerks and translators, later as teachers or lower level officials. In the more prosperous colonies, such as Nigeria and the Gold Coast, there was a fairly rapid growth in the number of Africans with professional skills such as medicine and law. An increasingly literate African population began to exploit the possibilities of literacy in all sorts of ways: the creation of an African press led to the cultivation of ‘public opinion’, both of which led inevitably to debate on social and political matters. Much of that reflection and debate turned to new ideas that came with colonial rule, notably the idea of ‘the state’ as a unified, territorial entity to which all citizens owed allegiance. It was these ideas, among other things, that encouraged the beginnings of African nationalism and demands for independence.

If the mainstream account of colonialism as nothing but a system of oppression and exploitation is misleading, in what other ways does it obscure some of the truth? For all its championing of Africans, it does so in ways which actually marginalise them. The mainstream story attributes implausible degrees of malevolence and power to the colonialists while attributing similarly implausible degrees of benevolence and powerlessness to African peoples. The history of colonialism becomes a morality play, little more than an endless saga in which evil white men do unspeakable things to good black men and women. This is not to treat Africans as equals at all but to treat them as somehow unsullied, and it flies in the face of historical evidence. Much of that evidence suggest that Africans, or certainly their rulers, were just as ready to engage in the violent conquest, destruction or absorption of other groups and cultures as any other society. These tendencies were so pronounced that some historians talk about an ‘African scramble for Africa’. And there is plentiful historical evidence to suggest that African rulers were eager to pursue projects of conquest in alliance with Europeans, where they might gain an advantage. The Ethiopian monarchy in the nineteenth century was imperialist, annexing territory to the south of its heartlands. Usman dan Fodio founded the Sokoto caliphate (in what is now northern Nigeria and Niger) through active conquest and made it probably the largest state in nineteenth-century Africa. Samori Ture was perhaps the most famous of the West African empire builders, feted now as a hero of African nationalism, but whose war-making involved constant raiding, military conscription, enslavement and forced religious conversion, so much so that it sparked resistance by other African societies that made the eventual French conquest of what are now Guinea and Mali much easier. Indeed, even after European military and political domination became overwhelming, tacit arrangements could still be mutually beneficial and did continue under colonial rule. For instance, the Mourides (Islamic Brotherhoods) of Senegal collaborated closely with the French colonial authorities and instructed their followers not only to accept colonial rule but also forced labour and military conscription.

So the mainstream story obscures historical realities which show the similarities of many kinds of conquest, as well as excluding the complex political calculations that entered into the various forms of colonial rule. The hard truth is that, almost everywhere, colonial rule was a collaborative enterprise. Colonial states could usually bring decisive force to bear in emergencies, but Africans were not prostrate before some all-powerful colonial leviathan. Aside from anything else, colonial states were desperately short of workers. Vast territories were managed by very small groups of officials, whose primary responsibility was to keep the peace and, if possible, to collect taxes with the absolute minimum of force. While overwhelming force could be mobilised, its use carried severe political costs back home where it was not popular with metropolitan governments or public opinion. So, in practice, maintaining peace and collecting usually modest taxes required some degree of cooperation and compromise.

RACE

Everywhere in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European powers annexed huge territories. Even where annexation proved impossible (China, Turkey, Persia, Siam) such territories were often reduced to a subordinate status, under the ‘influence’ of one or more of the major European powers. So what makes Africa so different? Why should colonialism form such an important part of the mainstream story about Africa? We do not have to look far for clues. In public discourse, colonialism is associated with one of the most emotionally charged issues of our times: race. What makes colonialism in Africa so incendiary, so different from everywhere else, so potent a weapon of denunciation even now, is that it seems to be not only about economic exploitation but also a form of specifically racial oppression. Colonialism can be seen as one of a whole cluster of practices that denigrate black people. There has been widespread cultural contempt for, and hostility towards, Africans throughout Western culture. Indeed, some of the greatest European thinkers espoused views that are, by today’s standards, offensive and ‘racist’.^* The great Scottish philosopher David Hume once wrote:

I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences… [T]here are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; tho’ low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.

The German philosopher Hegel asserted, in his Philosophy of History, that ‘Africa proper, as far as history goes back, has remained – for all purposes of connection with the rest of the world – shut up; it is the Gold-land compressed within itself – the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of night’. Even Charles Darwin, whose lifelong hostility to slavery is common knowledge, stands accused of racism in his great work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, and various remarks in his Descent of Man suggest that ‘the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world’. The suggestion that such quotations are indicative of a deep-seated racism is often made in the strongest possible form, dismissing the idea that such thinkers merely shared the common prejudices of their age, and asserting rather that racial thinking was an integral part of their understanding of the world, that they were not only complicit in, but also actively helped to legitimate, racial oppression. In the middle to late nineteenth century, attitudes did harden and judgements about African peoples became harsher. Much of this was shaped by the apparently huge disparity between the technological accomplishments of European and African societies which, combined with a kind of lazy evolutionism, suggested to many contemporaries that such social differences were deep-seated, possibly ineradicable. Colonial practice tended to follow these attitudes and all the colonial empires practised forms of racial distancing, whether they acknowledged it or not.

So at first blush, an overwhelming body of evidence allows us to say that racism has long been a pervasive part of Western culture, inflicting physical and psychological damage on Africans. What else can there be to say? I would add a caution that people are reluctant to question the words they use, particularly if they carry a powerful critical charge – think of words like ‘fascism’, ‘oppression’, ‘pro-choice’. These are words that have become politically powerful, and their function is psychological: they work to identify an enemy and to mobilise energies. So what questions should we ask about ‘race’ and ‘racism’? Both words are highly ambiguous, not least because they occupy that rather tricky area between biological and social science. It seems impossible, in the light of modern scientific knowledge, to imagine that there are different races in any fundamental, genetic sense. But there are what biology calls phenotypical differences (skin colour, hair texture and so on) which people use as classifiers in everyday social interaction, and in modern times are used by states in pursuit of policies like affirmative action. These usages slide into what social science calls ‘ethnic’ differences, that is to say notions of culture, including beliefs and practices and so on. While such distinctions may not be useful for biologists, they have shaped our social reality. Much the same difficulties and ambiguities recur when we question ‘racism’. At its most vague, ‘racism’ can mean virtually any kind of negative value judgement about the physical features, cultural practices or beliefs of a human group; at its most precise it combines the notion of racial hierarchy of superior and inferior groups, combined with an urge on the part of supposedly superior groups to exclude or dominate supposedly inferior groups.

Such considerations should give us pause for thought in the face of strident accusations that whole societies or whole theories are plainly and simply ‘racist’. To return to the writers discussed above, the accusations of racism rely on a tiny proportion of texts, presented without context or explanation on the assumption that they are self-evident indictments. The dispute about Hume turns on one footnote, some few lines of text, which appeared in one version, not all, of one es...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Guilt
• 2. $22,000 for eighteen cups of tea
• 3. Turning a blind eye
• 4. The punitive turn
• 5. Imposing rules
• 6. Changing conduct
• 7. A failed project
• 8. Changing direction
• Reading guides
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Copyright