How the ruling
against Uganda presents Africa a golden opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of
ICJ
THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | The decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Uganda for “looting” (among other crimes) the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be celebrated across Africa, Latin America and those nations of Asia and Oceania that were colonised. It has set an important precedent that, although unlikely to bear fruit, provides considerable grist for the demand-for-reparations mill. It will also help expose the court’s role in protecting the interests of the powerful against those of the weak.
Western
nations carry an irritating sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness.
They feel entitled to lecture other nations on how to be good global citizens.
They have made it their duty to intervene in other nations using moral
persuasion, ideological indoctrination, financial bribes and in extreme cases
military intervention to reshape these societies according to their fancies.
Yet the bigger challenge for poor countries is local elites have swallowed,
with remarkable naivety, Western pretentions to moral leadership.
The
decision of ICJ came when I was reading Thomas Piketty’s second major
work, Capital and Ideology. Somewhere, it deals with the end
of slavery by Britain, France and USA, the advent of colonialism and the
ideological justifications advanced to end the former and begin the latter.
This sequence was no accident. We shall return to this to show how the end of
colonialism marked the beginning of neocolonialism, cloaked as development
assistance.
Great
Britain was the first country to abolish slavery in 1833. Because slaves were
private property, abolishing slavery meant forceful expropriation. But British
ideological teachings, and therefore British law, treated private property as
sacrosanct. The government decided to fully compensate slave owners up to the
market value of their slaves. Some 20 million British pounds were paid to 4,000
slave owners – an amount equal to 5% of the UK’s GDP at the time. If this were
done in 2018, it would have cost UK $136 billion or $30 million for each
expropriated slave owner.
However,
the slaves were never even considered for compensation for centuries of unpaid
labour and/or the many physical and psychological abuses they suffered. On the
contrary, once freed, slaves were forced to sign “relatively rigid and
undercompensated long-term labour contracts which left most of them in
semi-forced labour for long periods” after emancipation.
The
case of Haiti, now labelled a “failed state”, is most illustrative. Slaves on
that island nation rebelled and in armed confrontations defeated the army of
Napoleon. In 1804 they declared independence. In 1825, France threatened to
invade Haiti unless its government agreed to compensate French slave owners for
their “loss of property.” It imposed an economic embargo; the French fleet
imposed a naval blockade and threatened a military invasion. Haiti agreed to
pay France 150 million gold francs, an amount equivalent to 300% of her GDP at
the time or $45 billion in today’s dollars.
Writes
Picketty: “With financing at an annual interest of 5%… not even counting the
juicy commissions bankers did not fail to add in the course of numerous partial
defaults and negotiations over the subsequent decades,” this meant that Haiti
was forced to pay 15% of its GDP every year to France, indefinitely. And this
was only payment of interest without even beginning to pay down the principle.
Yet we hear that Haiti is poor because of “bad governance” by its corrupt leaders
who “do not care about their people.” Yet Haiti spent 125 years paying France
and later USA bankers (who bought the French loans). And all this for what?
Simply because its people did not want to live forever as slaves.
Some
African leaders, to wit Idi Amin in Uganda and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, have
tried to redress these colonial wrongs. But they were forced to pay a steep
price. Western powers reacted to these leaders’ expropriations of colonially
inherited privileges and riches with economic sanctions and sabotage. Their
economies were wrecked and their successors forced to surrender.
Can
the DRC sue Belgium for the loot and genocide that lasted 80 years and actually
continues today? Can all other colonised countries that suffered from
extortionate taxation, land expropriations, genocide and forced labour under
European colonial domination sue for reparations? Can African Americans sue the
U.S. government for compensation for centuries of unpaid wages under slavery?
What would be the ruling of ICJ and the U.S. Supreme Court?
Western
nations claim these crimes were committed by their ancestors and therefore the
current generations bear no responsibility. But Haiti continued to pay its
obligations to France and USA until 1950. Germany and France up to this day
compensate Jews who lost their property during the holocaust; the U.S. has
compensated families of Japanese it interned during World War Two – over 75
years ago. ICJ cannot rule against Western nations for their lootings and
genocides because this is a question of power, not justice.
Otherwise,
even if we accepted the claim that colonialism was “long ago”, poor countries
can sue for Structural Adjustment Programs imposed on them by IMF and World
Bank backed by Western powers. Here, national assets built out of the savings of
citizens, were sold to multinational corporations for a song – under duress
from IMF on governments not democratically elected. Many multinationals
stripped these companies of their assets and shipped money to their
shareholders abroad.
Yet
Africa’s real problem is the colonisation of the mind of the African elite.
They believe their main problem is their leaders. They ignore the external
forces that rob the continent but claim to represent its emancipation. The
African Union commission chaired by Thabo Mbeki, former South African
president, found that 70% of money Africa loses annually is through illegal
activities of multinational corporations – via transfer pricing, tax evasion,
smuggling, etc., only 5% is by African-leader thieves. Yet Africa’s “intellectuals”
kill each other over this 5% and ignore the 70% – talk of chronic ideological
bankruptcy.
Steve
Biko, that great anti-apartheid hero-activist, once said that the biggest
weapon in the hands of an oppressor is not their military but the mind of the
oppressed. The African intellectual is mentally colonised. Western powers
intrude into our affairs claiming to seek to liberate us from ourselves using
democracy and human rights, which they spice with small gifts of economic aid
(which they give with one hand and immediately take with another). Yet this
messianic mission is a smokescreen for commercial motives. If European powers
represent justice for Africans, let our nations sue at the ICJ seeking justice
over all the looting, pillaging, genocide, etc. that Europe has committed on
this continent – including in Libya only ten years ago- and we hear the
verdict.
****
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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