Colonialism is back; bold and unashamed. The West has
decided to reclaim leadership in Africa. Only last week, I watched US Secretary
of State, Mrs Hillary Clinton, give instructions to Kenyan politicians on how
they should manage the affairs of Kenya. She demanded that the democratically
elected ruling coalition in Kenya create a tribunal to try the perpetrators of
last year’s post election violence. If not, she threatened, the International
Criminal Court (ICC) will take over.
A significant section of the Kenyan society think there
should be a tribunal. But the Kenyan cabinet, composed of both the ruling party
and the opposition parties debated this matter. In their wisdom, they decided
it is better to pursue political reconciliation as opposed to punitive criminal
justice. I share this view, like many Kenyans do and others don’t. And that is
the beauty of democracy; once a decision is taken by the governing body, all should
respect it.
It is unwise to pursue punitive criminal justice when
seeking to resolve violence born of political disagreement. This is especially
so in circumstances where the balance of power between both sides to a conflict
is close to an equilibrium. Under such circumstances, any criminal prosecution
process would tend to reignite violence. Why? Because criminal justice tends to
demonise ‘the other’! This drives the accused persons
to resort to violence in self defense. The best path is political reconciliation.
This was the basis of the success of Nelson Mandela in post
Apartheid South Africa; Paul Kagame in post genocide Rwanda, even the United
States after its civil war in 1864. In all these cases, the perpetrators of
political violence were brought back into the political process through tough
bargains. Decision making is never a choice between right and wrong. It is a
product of serious trade-offs. But why did the US hail Mandela but is
condemning Kenya for seeking a similar path?
Unlike 19th century colonialism which involved the direct
presence of colonial officials to implement colonial law, the new colonialism
(Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah called it neocolonialism) relies on lectures,
instructions, intimidation and blackmail. It has put international institutions
in place to specifically deal with African leaders ‘ the best example being the
ICC. NATO air strikes in Afghanistan are killing civilians in droves. Please
watch if there is even a whisper about the culpability of any Western leader ‘
America’s Barack Obama or Britains’s Gordon Brown.
Old colonialism understood the importance of a combination
of material and ideological incentives in recruiting local allies. So it
Christianised Africans and provided minimum education for catechists and clerks
in order to create an intellectual class in support of colonial rule. But it
also provided material incentives ‘ salaried employment, land grants, and other
forms of colonial-state patronage.
The agents of the new colonialism are secular missionaries
promoting democracy, human rights and justice as is sang by the master i.e.
without context. They refuse to acknowledge that pursuing them in complete
disregard of context can produce results at odds with the intended purpose. The
US refused to jam radio Mille Collines during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994
saying such action would violate the principles of free speech. The genociders
enjoyed their freedom to mobilise for mass murder.
The agents of the new colonialism believe that Africa’s
future lies in handouts of foreign assistance ‘ financial, military,
ideological, technical etc. By speaking in the master’s language, their
supporters among local elites sound civilized and get accepted in the master’s
councils. By promoting Western ‘assistance’,
they get the jobs paid for in foreign aid projects.
If previously the West lacked an authentic voice to convince
Africans that they need to be treated like children, now it has that voice in
Obama. Since he is considered black, he is the perfect instrument to tell us how
to manage our affairs. African elites, with a deeply rooted peasant mentality
of identity as the basis of cooperation, believe that since Obama is ‘black’ then he represents their interests.
Yet regardless of his African ancestry, Obama is an American
president. His primary obligation is to serve American interests. Over the last
century, the US has intervened in other countries not to promote democracy but
its national interest. As experience shows, democracy has not been
America’s allay in the pursuit of its interests abroad.
Consequently, America has removed democratic governments and
replaced them with its favored dictatorships ‘ in Iran in 1953, Chile in 1974,
Congo in 1960, etc. It has always used its military and intelligence services
to bomb, invade or carry out clandestine missions in other nations. In none of
these cases has democratic government come as a direct result. Instead, often
democracy has developed in opposition to American interference.
The US and other Western nations have always advanced the
values of liberty, freedom and social justice only instrumentally when it
serves their interest. But these values have never been meant to inform real
Western practice. That is why the West pretends to be more concerned about
democracy in Iran when it is in bed with some of the worst dictatorships in the
Middle East ‘ Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc. It seems to me that the use of democracy
and human rights is the ancillary one of image-making.
The urge behind the West’s increasing intrusion into Africa’s
governance seems to be a desire to dominate the continent. This is now being
expressed in the writings of two of the scholars receiving most funding for
their work on how the West should ‘help Africa’ ‘
professors Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia and Paul Collier of Oxford. Their work has
become very explicit in their contempt of Africa’s internal ability to reform
itself. Increasingly, they are publishing works suggesting that the solution
for Africa’s internal problems is ‘international’
(actually read Western) assistance through foreign financial aid and military
intervention.
I will return to Collier’s bold suggestions about how
countries of the ‘bottom billion’ need
international military intervention and governance instructions to become
solvent in another article. Suffice it to say that if our founding fathers like
Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba who passionately believed in our sovereignty as a
people came back today, they would not believe that half a century later,
colonialism is making a comeback.
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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