November 15, 2004 marked the 120th anniversary of an infamous meeting with far reaching effects. At the urging of Portugal and invitation of Otto von Bismarck, representatives from fourteen western powers, including the US, gathered in Berlin to discuss the rules for the partitioning of Africa. Naturally, no African nations were present. At the conclusion of the series of meetings in 1885, the brutal age of African colonization officially began.

The parties ratifying the agreement (the US did not) established rules of engagement for each other in order to reduce European bloodshed and the distraction of war from their true objective of economic exploitation of Africa and Africans. Waning colonial powers like Spain and Portugal were given relatively small slices of the African pie. Fledgling powers such as Belgium, Italy, and Germany were given a little at the table. France and Britain feasted. All eventually realized territories many times larger than their native lands with the natural resources, cheap labor, and forced non-competitive markets necessary to continue the growth of the European industrial revolution. After the loss of direct European control of the resources and markets of the western hemisphere, then in the emerging U.S. sphere of influence, the domination of Africa was not only convenient, it was necessary for the maintenance of the European “way of life.” Africa, decimated by the centuries of the slave trade, was ripe for the picking.

Europeans secured their lives through the blatant disregard of the lives of others. The stories of brutality and resistance in the years that followed the Berlin agreement are too many to mention. From the German genocide against the Herero and Nama in Namibia, to the barbarous tactics that lead to the deaths of 5 to 8 million people of the Congo while under the rule of Belgian businessman/monarch Leopold II, direct European involvement in African affairs led to disastrous effects that are still being felt on the continent. Imposed national lines in Africa, often designed to divide kingdoms and tribal homelands, created multi-ethnic countries perfect for the long-standing principle of “divide and conquer,” a staple of European rule. The conflict in Rwanda and the on-going Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict are rooted in European machinations.

However, today, as then, Africans are fighting back. Just as the Ethiopians successfully repelled Italy to become one of a handful of African nations to maintain its independence in the age of colonialism, Africans in Africa and in the Diaspora are seeking to repel the vestiges of neocolonialism from its dominant influence on their daily lives. Christopher Nsoh, Organizer of the 2004 Berlin Anti-Colonial Africa Conference, demands that Europeans “stop all forms of war business” with “no intervention of troops from Europe or other countries in Africa or elsewhere.” When asked about intervention in Sudan, Mr. Nsoh reminded that the Europeans have only acted in their best interest in Africa, no matter the pretext, citing France’s current escapades in the
Ivory Coast as a prime example. Nsoh hopes the conference will serve as a springboard of cooperation among all who wish to break the yolk of colonialism leading to a world where Africans, in and outside of the continent, have the same opportunities to succeed in life as Europeans in Europe or America.

Hyacienth Nguh Tebele of the Brandenburg Asylum Seekers organization agrees. “Now many Africans leave to seek opportunity because there are very few left in Africa.” Little wonder that after decades of underdevelopment and exploitation at the point of a gun, some Africans see possibilities where so many of their natural resources are, in the hands and homelands of Europeans. Years of conflict and warfare in Africa have made life difficult for some of the best and brightest among us simply because they were born to the least favored people in their European-established “country”. Ethnic caste systems in Africa facilitated the elevation of a chosen few Africans for controlling the majority. Now as some Africans, not among the chosen, seek to emigrate as an act of resistance or to escape crushing poverty, they face the closed doors of the very beneficiaries of their years of sorrow.

Yet it is not always so simple. The beneficiaries often find themselves in a state of conflict. European countries seek to sooth their consciences with words of invitation for refugees from the very conflicts they inspired while making it next to impossible for those refugees to settle into a stable life in Europe. All over Europe, economic pressures and the “war on terrorism” inspire countries to close boarders, create offshore detention centers, complicate asylum systems, raid neighborhoods, and limit rights of undesirable foreigners. “Those who are strong of mind are confused,” Tebele noted, “the average go crazy in this [refugee] system.” I wonder how many Haitian refugees stuck in American detention centers would say the same.

The conference hosted representatives of many African countries and German organizations dedicated to righting the wrongs of the present and the past through direct action, the sharing of information, and the acknowledgment of stories of discrimination and hardship that often go unnoticed in European society. The relevance to the struggles of blacks and other oppressed people all over the world was obvious. For example, American tobacco companies control the vast majority of East African tobacco production and profit immensely through generally poor economic conditions. They can get away with paying East African farmers bottom dollar for the leaves and tobacco processing plant workers $2.00 a day. Certainly, it doesn’t take a directly affected North Carolina tobacco worker to recognize the outsourcing opportunities and their impact on American workers.

More importantly, the universality of struggle presented by the conference, from past to present, served to strengthen the hearts of all present to continue the march for justice. In large and small ways the march continues. Congolese constantly struggled against the atrocities of Belgium’s Leopold II, the assassination of elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, Mobutu’s over three decades of American and European supported dictatorship, and the decades of European economic exploitation that continue today.

• The government of the Ivory Coast continues its struggle against French economic and cultural imperialism that includes fighting against the French use of military force to protect French interests.

• Today, Senegalese women boycott to keep inferior French food products out of their stores, products that are not allowed to be sold in European stores.

• Nigerians all over the country protest the fact that prices for gasoline are higher there in a state that exports oil than in the foreign countries where their exported oil is sold. Nigerian oil workers in the southern delta strike to curb the political power wielded by their multinational corporate employers.

• According to Mohammed Apdel Amine, of Togo, doctoral candidate at the prestigious Humboldt University and researcher of original documentation of African resistance, African countries, against severe pressure by the US and other European countries, forced the UN to declare the African slave trade as a crime against humanity. Colonialism was also on the table for reproach but Western forces were too strongly unified against its criminal recognition. Western diplomats were equally resistant to inclusion of language referring to reparations for the crime of slavery.

• According to Namibian activists Israel Kaunatjike and Billy Katjatenja, Hereros and Namas vow, “never to forget” by annually commemorating the heroes of their struggles and calling for recognition and developmental reparations from the German government. The resulting cultural pride has created a generation of young people in Namibia willing to resist economic conditions that concentrate 70 percent of the country's wealth largely in the hands of their former colonial masters.

As African Americans face increased economic and targeted political disenfranchisement, we can draw strength from past and present struggles in the US, Europe and Africa. Our position as a targeted community worldwide in a system built and maintained through our exploitation requires us to be as aware and informed as those who continue to use our lives solely for their personal pursuit of happiness. The night before Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by a Belgian firing squad, he wrote to his wife stating, "I prefer to die with my head unbowed, my faith unshakable, and with profound trust in the destiny of my country." We now face a daunting future of smokescreen issues dominating the political and cultural scene of the US while poverty and despair increase in black communities at home and all over the world. We face European governments concerned with their ability to remain relevant at home and abroad using issues of immigration and race to appease cultural nationalists and manipulate a workforce with declining economic status. We should keep in mind the lessons of Africans past and present, on the continent and in the Diaspora: we are victorious in saving our humanity if we continue to struggle for justice, regardless of the outcome.

James Culver Jr. is an author and award winning freelance writer living in Germany. He can be reached at [email protected]

Copyright James Culver Jr.