On a Monday evening in May 2020, officers from the Minneapolis Police received a tip-off from a convenience store clerk who reported that a customer had just paid for a packet of cigarettes with counterfeit money. The events that followed happened in quick succession. Tables turned, and the alleged perpetrator soon became the victim. His body soon lay lifeless on the ground next to his car, as an officer’s knee pinned him by the neck with two others put their weight on top of him. George Floyd’s gruesome death went viral, sparking countrywide protests that rivalled those of the civil rights movements in the 1960s.
The protests spread like wildfire, and within no time, more than 150 cities were experiencing civil unrest. Citizens from Europe and other countries would join the fray and held solidarity marches in their respective cities. In Belgium’s Antwerp, a statue of King Leopold the Second was set on fire by the rioters before being taken down by authorities. As in America, most of these solidarity marches were orchestrated and executed largely by young people of black descent. The George Floyd protests were soon having an unforeseen consequence: they brought a renewed focus on issues surrounding global racism and the role Europeans played in the colonization of Africa.
Africa’s Colonization
Africa’s colonization began in earnest in 1881 and effected in a near Domino-like fashion. Territories fell one after another to their respective European powers. Most of the European occupation happened according to the blueprint decided upon during the Berlin Conference (1884-5), where aspiring colonialists sat down and divided the continent among themselves. An extensive colonization campaign followed, and by 1920, virtually the whole continent was under European rule (Only Ethiopia and Liberia were spared). The political, social and economic ramifications were as extensive and far-reaching as were the expeditions themselves. Commercial interests often dictated European occupation and settlement in the continent. In Kenya, for example, the British hived off and occupied the most fertile and agriculturally viable land in the territory. By 1934, some 16,800 whites had carted off 16,500 square miles of land for commercial farming. Unfortunately, this was not uninhabited land. Local communities were evicted and relocated into squeezed settlement schemes (known as Native Reserves) set up by the colonial regime at the time.
This system was buttressed by unfair laws that ensured that the Africans could not be emancipate economically or politically. A similar model was used in South Africa, where gold and diamonds formed the main economic interest. Foreign mining companies were set up which thrived on the blood and sweat of the local population. The colonial government set up settlement schemes where the locals lived. They were only allowed out of these areas to work for the white man, either in their homes or the mines. This system of apartheid was designed to segregate both races and disadvantage the African. Poverty pervaded their homelands as they were denied access to proper education, healthcare and other basic services.
The Aftermath
For most African countries, Independence Day came with great hope and lofty expectations of improved lives and unprecedented economic development as governments set out to right the wrongs done to their people. Recent history shows that this has often been easier said than done, as most countries are still grappling with problems brought on during the colonial era.
In Kenya, the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, asserted that all land belonged to Kenyans, as his government launched a land redistribution campaign by purchasing more than 3000 farms from departing Europeans. Fifty-eight years on, inequalities in land access and ownership still exist. Why?
Land in pre-colonial Kenya was abundant and communally owned, and colonialism changed that. However, the introduction of title deeds and the annexation of land for European settlement and cultivation (as explained above). As independence dawned on the nation and the government set out to redistribute land among its people, its efforts were hamstrung by two factors. Firstly, most of Kenya is arid and semi-arid, thus severely curtailing the availability of cultivatable land. Secondly, a group of the Kenyan elite lined themselves up to cart off sizable portions of arable land for themselves. Ordinary farmers were forced to look for land elsewhere, leading them into forests and protected game parks and reserves where efforts are constantly being made to evict them to date. Others were forced into more arid regions which had been originally occupied by cattle herders, who were now pushed to even more unproductive land and so on.
A fairly similar narrative pervades the story of South Africa. After the abolishment of apartheid, there came a need to address the inequalities that had stemmed from the consistent denial of the native’s right to economic empowerment. The government thus conceptualized and implemented the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program which advocated for greater integration of black South Africans into the economy of the country. The program (at least in the paper) sought to get more blacks employment and upskilling opportunities, while also working to ensure that their businesses were supported adequately and the poor taken care of. As with Kenya, however, it emerged that the program was benefiting a small clique of wealthy, well-connected individuals, leaving millions languishing in poverty. The government’s response to this criticism has been to try and implement a turbo-charged version of the former, the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE), which some critics assert has had minimal effect in correcting its defects.
Most African countries’ political landscape still bears the fingerprints of their colonial masters. Back in 1896, Kenya was constructing the Kenyan-Uganda railway. This infrastructure influenced important things, especially with regards to the position of political-administrative units. Most administrative towns, Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu (except for Garissa) were located along the railway line. This created a concentration of power and resources around a certain radius that is disproportionate and skewed in favour of the aforementioned areas. Pockets of development were thus created that moved along the development ladder at a faster pace, leaving other areas behind (especially the Northern and North-Eastern parts of the country). In recent times, the country has sought to devolve power away from the ’centre’ through the newly implemented constitution (2010). While this is definitively a step in the right direction, most regions will have to play catchup in a race where many of the players already had a head start.
For countries such as Rwanda, the effects have been even worse. In 1994, the country went through its bloodiest period yet, when the majority of the Hutu tribe indiscriminately mowed down their fellow Tutsi countrymen. But what does colonialism have to do with all this? When Belgium colonized Rwanda, they favoured the minority Tutsi tribe, terming them as taller, fairer skinned and more intelligent than the Hutus. The former tribe thus enjoyed various perks in their social, political and economic lives that were denied the latter. This created animosity and increased tensions between the two tribes and when the Belgians finally left, the majority of Hutus took over the leadership. But they were slow to forget. The death of the then Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana in April 1994 proved to be the last nail on the coffin as militia groups began scouring every corner of the country, baying for innocent Tutsi blood.
It is thus clear that Africa still reels from the aftershocks that resulted from the colonial era. The deeds (and misdeeds) of her former colonial masters have left a legacy not easily reversible even from current affairs. The political, social and economic well being of her people often seems to have been jeopardized beyond repair. The boundaries were drawn up to define the various borders of her member states, most of the systems she inherited were imposed on her simply for the benefit of her captor. But while it would be foolish to ignore one’s past, is it possible to chart a different path for oneself? Is there wisdom in using past misdeeds as a crutch, asserting that you cannot succeed because of the former things? Where is the balance?
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