On November
15-1884, one hundred and thirty-five years ago, the “Scramble for Africa” began
with a diabolic meeting of the minds when representatives from 14 European
nations met to carve up the African continent. This infamous “Berlin
Conference” lasted until February 26-1885 and when the dust cleared the African
continent had been carved up and colonized by several European nations. Decades
of colonization of the African continent followed, along with theft of African
land, the disenfranchisement of Africans on their land and the underdevelopment
of Africa. The masterminds of this atrocity included representatives of
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (unified from 1814-1905),
Turkey and the USA, who decided to carve up the African continent for their
benefit. At the time Britain, France, Germany and Portugal had colonies on the
African continent, so the other European tribes wanted the opportunity to
exploit Africans and Africa. Chattel slavery, the 400-year European plunder and
brutalization of Africans was almost at an end (at least on paper) so these
parasites were seeking another method of leeching off of the human and other
resources of Africa. With no regard for African culture or history, no
consultation with any African, this group of White men drew borders that
separated families and forced together groups that traditionally lived
separately with a delicate balance of keeping peaceful relations by their living
arrangements.
His
Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, the late Emperor of Ethiopia spoke about the
European ravishment of Africa and the effects, at the launch of the Organisation
of African Unity (OAU) on May 25-1963: “The events of the past hundred and
fifty years require no extended recitation from Us. Africa was a physical
resource to be exploited and Africans were chattels to be purchased bodily or,
at best, peoples to be reduced to vassalage and lackeyhood. Africa was the
market for the produce of other nations and the source of the raw materials
with which their factories were fed.” In his 1972 published book “How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa,” African Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney wrote: “Colonised Africans, like pre-colonial African chattel
slaves, were pushed around into positions which suited European interests and
which were damaging to the African continent and its peoples.”
For decades after the infamous “Scramble for Africa” the
continent was occupied by Europeans who stole African land and not only kept
the most fertile land for their use by displacing the Africans but they also
passed laws forcing Africans to provide cheap labour on the farms/plantations
the Europeans established. Africans were brutalized by Europeans who were
protected by well-armed European military personnel provided by the various
European nations. The White farmers needed cheap labour for the large-scale
farming that enriched the minority White population but the Africans refused to
work on the farms. In Kenya, for example, to ensure that Africans were a cheap source
of labour for the White colonial settler population, the British government
passed laws which forced the Africans to work for the White people who now
occupied their land. The British army was on hand to ensure that White farmers
and the stolen African land they occupied were protected. The passing and
enforcing of the “Masters and Servants Act” (1906) ensured that a caste system
of all White people as masters and all Africans as servants was firmly in
place. In his 1974 published book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” Guyanese
scholar and historian Walter Rodney wrote: “From the beginning, Europe assumed
the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An
excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law
which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but
European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many
instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them
only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at
sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could
claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power
was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with
European needs.” Much of the wealth that gives European dominated nations the
status of “developed” countries was derived from the unpaid labour of
generations of enslaved Africans who were routinely worked to death so that the
Europeans could accumulate undeserved wealth.
The “Scramble for Africa” was powered by the invention of the
machine gun. The invention of the Gatling gun (1861) gave Europeans an
advantage of superior firepower to slaughter Africans who resisted their
encroachment. The Gatling gun and later the Maxim gun (1884) were used to steal
and occupy African land and subjugate Africans on the continent. The Africans
armed with spears and a few rifles were no match for these machine guns. Richard
Jordan Gatling received a patent for his machine gun on November 4-1862 just in
time for Europeans who had mostly ended the enslavement of Africans (the
Portuguese in Brazil were the last in 1888) in the “New World” to turn their
attention to possessing and exploiting the African continent and those Africans
who lived there. Not being content with brutally robbing the continent of its
people and their talents for centuries these evil, covetous, unconscionable
people left their homes in Europe to invade and seize vast amounts of African
land. Africans did not sit quietly and allow the White interlopers to reign
supreme. There were several acts of African resistance.
One of the most famous acts of resistance was led by an
African woman in Ghana. Nana Yaa Asantewaa is considered an African freedom
fighter who led her people in resistance to the oppression of the colonizing
British. Following the “Scramble for Africa” where members representing 14
white tribes decided to carve up the African continent to colonize and exploit
the people living in those places (Ethiopia being the sole African country they
were unsuccessful in colonizing) the British tried to subdue the Ashanti nation
of Ghana. In the first Ashanti/British war in 1823, the British were soundly
thrashed by the Ashanti warriors. Keeping in mind that there was no invasion of
Britain by the Ashanti or any other African nation, the British were at an
advantage because they could keep importing soldiers from a country where
people lived in virtual peace while the Ashanti and other African nations were
in a constant state of turmoil with Europeans invading their territories,
slaughtering, kidnapping and enslaving their citizens. The British driven to
extreme greed by the knowledge of gold in the Ashanti Empire (which they later
named the Gold Coast) attacked the Ashanti in 1826, 1873, 1893-1894 and
1895-1896. In 1896, the British government annexed the territories of the
Ashanti after the 24-year-old Asantehene (king) Prempeh I, supposedly directed
his people not to resist, which is hardly surprising since by this time the
Ashanti had been resisting British attacks for 73 years. In 1900 not only did
the British exile the kidnapped Asantehene to the Seychelles islands, the
British governor demanded that he be allowed to sit on the sacred Golden Stool
of the Ashanti, which not even the Asantehene was allowed to sit on. This was
the final insult and after the meeting with the British governor (which
supposedly took place on March 28, 1900) when some of the chiefs of the Ashanti
were reluctant to fight the British to rescue their king, Nana Yaa Asantewaa
took matters into her own hands. She is credited with rallying the men of
Asante with this speech: “Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward
to fight for our king. If it were in the brave days of, the days of Osei Tutu,
Okomfo Anokye, and Opoku Ware, chiefs would not sit down to see their king
taken away without firing a shot. No White man could have dared to speak to
chief of the Ashanti in the way the Governor spoke to you chiefs this morning.
Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more? I cannot believe it. It
cannot be! I must say this: if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then
we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight
the White men. We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.”
The struggle for decolonization gained
momentum after the second European tribal conflict which lasted from 1939 to
1945. Many Africans were forced to fight in what was a battle between mostly
European nations at war with each other. Following that conflict which was
mostly fought in Europe, the Africans who returned to their continent realised
that White men were not all powerful or immortal and died from bullet wounds
just like the Africans the Europeans routinely killed. His Imperial Majesty
Haile Selassie I said on May 25, 1963 in his greetings to the delegates of the
first gathering of the independent African nation states at the launch of the
OAU: “We seek, at this meeting, to determine whither we are going and to chart
the course of our destiny. It is no less important that we know whence we came.
An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality
and our identity as Africans. This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was
born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe.
Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes,
talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults. Thousands of years ago,
civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with
those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free
and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their
cultures truly indigenous. The obscurity which enshrouds the centuries which
elapsed between those earliest days and the rediscovery of Africa are being
gradually dispersed. What is certain is that during those long years Africans
were born, lived and died. Men on other parts of this Earth occupied themselves
with their own concerns and, in their conceit, proclaimed that the world began
and ended at their horizons. All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own
pattern, growing in its own life and, in the nineteenth century, finally
re-emerged into the world's consciousness.”
In the 21st century the struggle continues when
egregious acts of brutality against African people are committed by White
police officers or others powered by White skin privilege in White supremacist
cultures/societies. The brutal, vicious attack on African Canadian youth
Dafonte Miller is an example. The orbital bones (eye socket) of Dafonte Miller’s
left eye were broken (among several other serious injuries; broken nose, jaw,
wrist and damaged right eye) and his left eye burst and fell out of its socket,
during the vicious, barbaric attack by two white men on December 28-2016. The
attackers of Dafonte Miller are Michael Theriault (off duty member of the
Toronto police force) and his civilian brother Christian Theriault. Not
surprisingly, it took six months, the intervention of a lawyer, several
community members and organizations to get information of this attack made
public and for the authorities to seek justice for Dafonte Miller. This is the
21st century, 135 years after the Scramble for Africa and we
continue to struggle against white supremacy.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/news/ Black Lives Matter!
Murphy Browne © November 12-2019
