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. |