How post-colonial Africa lost its way – by Andrew Kenny

Key topics:

• Post-independence Africa plagued by corruption and economic collapse

• Tribal divisions, not addressed post-colonialism, fueled violent conflicts

• Socialism crippled economies while elites thrived, people starved

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By Andrew Kenny*

“Look what’s happening in the north! Look what happens when the blacks take over!” In South Africa, in the 1960s, this is what I heard over and over again from white people, when I tried to argue for giving black people the vote (which would mean black rule).

I never knew how to answer. Nor did most anti-apartheid white liberals. They tried to avoid the subject; they found it too embarrassing. The tragic failure of independent Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important subjects of the 20th Century and one of the most ignored. Why did so many countries south of the Sahara fail so badly when the colonists left (not all: Botswana did well), and why did they fail in the same way? In so many African countries, independence celebrations were followed by bloody conflict and economic collapse, leaving ordinary African people worse off than they had been under colonialism. What went wrong?

50 years ago, on 25 June 1975, Mozambique became independent. This was a momentous day for southern Africa, with profound consequences for Rhodesia and South Africa. Mozambique’s Frelimo government wants celebration, but many people wonder what there is to celebrate. Mozambique is a beautiful country, richly endowed with natural resources, including an enormous gas field in the north, but after half a century of corrupt Frelimo rule her economy is one of the most underdeveloped in the world and her people are miserably poor. In the 1960s, under Portuguese rule, Mozambique was regarded as a lazy, easy country, jolly to visit, with a relaxed Latin culture that was a blessed relief from the grim Calvinism of South Africa under the National Party.

The capital, then Lourenço Marques (LM), was regarded as a place to go to for sin. Apartheid had the disgusting Immorality Act, which forbade sex between the races, while Mozambique had no such restriction. South Africans used to say about LM, “White men go there for the black women, white women go there for the black men, and Jews go there for the prawns.” The Beatles were banned in South Africa (because John Lennon had once said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus; he was lamenting the fact, I think, not boasting about it). But you could hear the Beatles on LM radio, so we all listened to LM radio instead of local stations. Then came the revolution in Lisbon in 1974, the end of white rule in Mozambique and the start of black rule.

The worst

I should rate the horribleness of different colonial rules as follows. The worst was the private rule of King Leopold II of Belgium over the Congo from 1885 to 1908. He was brutally cruel, a sadistic barbarian, bent only on plunder. Next came the Germans, with their atrocities against the Herero and Nama in German West Africa. Then Spain and Portugal, with Portugal having far more African colonies. These two countries began the Atlantic slave trade. Then the French, and finally the British, who were probably the least cruel of all, although massively arrogant, with Cecil John Rhodes leading the way.

There were many and mixed motives for imperialism. Lenin’s theory that it was the last stage of capitalism is complete nonsense, like most of his theories; the Soviet Union later reigned over an enormous non-capitalist empire in Asia and East Europe. Inter-European rivalry for status was one motive for imperialism; other motives included missionary work, adventure and careers for the second sons of the ruling classes, and pure greed. Many of the colonies, maybe most, ran at a loss for the colonial power, which would invest in railways, electricity and modern technology in Africa without getting much in return. Portugal had vast colonies in Africa and emerged as one of the poorest countries in Europe. Switzerland had no colonies anywhere and emerged as one of the richest countries in Europe.

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The first Sub-Saharan country to gain independence was Ghana in 1957 under Prime Minister (later President) Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah set a pattern for African liberation leaders. He gave lofty sermons about Pan-Africanism and seeking the “political kingdom”, while wrecking the rule of law and establishing a corrupt one-man dictatorship. He ruined perhaps the most economically successful of all the colonies and drove the country into poverty. He was finally ousted in a coup in 1966, unlamented by the people Today he is celebrated as a great African hero. “Ghana would have been a thriving African country today if only he hadn’t been overthrown by – “(name some evil, imperialist, colonialist, counter-revolutionary, capitalist force). The same goes for the dreadful Patrice Lumumba, who became prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960. He was overthrown by the even more dreadful Joseph Mobutu.

Awful bloodshed

The Congo, enormous in area, fabulous in natural treasure, very quickly plunged into awful bloodshed. Nigeria, which gained independence in 1960 too, soon fell apart through tribal conflict and eventually a civil war that was waged from 1967 to 1970, killing between 500,000 and 3 million people. In Uganda, which Churchill had called the “Pearl of Africa”, the ghastly Milton Obote was overthrown by the ghastly Idi Amin, who slaughtered around half a million people belonging to different tribes from his own and kicked all the Asians out of Uganda. Angola was taken from the Portuguese by the MPLA liberation army in October 1975. There was soon civil war there too.

Eventually the MPLA triumphed and turned Angola, which has huge oil reserves and massive natural resources, into one of the most corrupt countries in the world and one of the poorest. In Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere, perhaps the most sanctimonious sermoniser in Africa, wrecked the Tanzanian agriculture with his Stalinist farm collectives, which he called ujamaa or “African Socialism”. The collective farms were at first voluntary, as in communist Russia, but as nobody volunteered, as in Russia, people were forced into them with all the violent enthusiasm of Stalin in the Soviet Union or Verwoerd in apartheid South Africa, shoving the blacks into the homelands.

But I have only given a few examples of African failure. There are many, many more. Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda all have their horror stories and tragedies. Elsewhere there have been wars and bloodshed, coups, economic disintegration, grinding poverty, and black people trying to flee from the countries of their fathers. Why?

The tribal conflicts are the easiest to explain. Humans, like the other apes, are extremely prone to war between groups. The Common Chimpanzee, our cousin, is even more tribal and warlike than we are. Humans are always divided into different races, tribes or nations (depending on your definition). Europe is divided into tribes but has two advantages over Africa in this regard.

Forced together

First, the different tribes usually separated or joined themselves freely. In Africa, the European colonists, oblivious to the wishes of African people, carved up the boundaries of their colonies without any regard to the traditional areas of the different tribes. The result was that the same tribes were divided into different colonies or, far worse, different tribes were forced together. The colonists kept the alien tribes together but as soon as they were gone, the tribes fell on each other. The problem is made far worse by the fact that Africa has far more tribes than Europe, with far bigger racial differences. So the disastrous conflicts after de-colonisation are hardly surprising. What can we do about them?

The first thing is to recognise the reality of tribal differences and tribal identity. Those woke whites who pretend that tribalism doesn’t exist do great harm. Then we must get people to talk to one another. It can be done. To a considerable extent, the two world wars were fought between different European tribes, between Germans and French (“Teutons and Gauls”). There were wars between English and French (including a war that lasted over a hundred years) and others. Now Germans, French and English get on just fine, thanks in part to the European Union. Pan Africanism is a good idea, if it can be made practical rather than just rhetorical.

The prime reason for the economic decline of Africa is easy to explain. It is because Africa chose socialism over capitalism. By socialism I mean state control; by capitalism I mean free enterprise, where ordinary people may do business among themselves as they please. Many of the failed countries above have been ruled by Marxist-Leninist parties, such as Frelimo in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola. Communism is guaranteed to fail the people. It has done so in every single country where it has been tried. But African dictators who want to keep all power in their own hands choose communism, because it allows them to do just that. They don’t care whether ordinary black people are impoverished or even if they starve. After all, they might say, the great white comrades in Russia, Lenin and Stalin, made millions of white people starve to death.

In 1974, the Derg, a revolutionary movement, took over Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam, who instituted Leninist-Marxist policies, including a red terror that murdered hundreds of thousands of people. His policies led to the terrible drought in Ethiopia from 1983-85, which caused up to a million people to starve to death. This did not bother the communists at all. In 1984 they had lavish 10-year celebrations, with millions of dollars spent on  imported champagne, fine wines and spirits, and all the most sumptuous and exotic foodstuffs that the capitalist world outside could provide. This further explains why communism is so popular among African dictators and aspiring dictators: it might make ordinary people starve to death, but it brings enormous rewards for the Leninist-Marxist elite.