By Frazer Potani, Lilongwe, Malawi

The Scramble for Africa: Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 to Divide
Africa Meeting at the Berlin residence of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
in 1884, the foreign ministers of 14 European powers and the United
States established ground rules for the future exploitation of the
"dark continent." Africans were not invited or made privy to their
decisions.

The French dominated most of West Africa, and the British East and
Southern Africa. The Belgians acquired the vast territory that became
The Congo. The Germans held four colonies, one in each of the realm's
regions. The Portuguese held a small colony in West Africa and two
large ones in Southern Africa.

After colonial rule was firmly established in Africa, the only change
in possessions came later after the World War 1. Germany's four
colonies were placed under the League of Nations, which established a
mandate system for other colonizers to administer the territories.

The Congo Free State, conceived as a "neutral" zone to be run by an
international association in the interest of bringing science,
civilization, and Christianity to the indigenes, received the Berlin
Conference's blessings.

The European colonial powers shared one objective in their African
colonies: exploitation. But in the way they governed their
dependencies, they reflected their differences. Some colonial powers
were themselves democracies (the United Kingdom and France); others
were dictatorships (Portugal, Spain).

The British set up a system of indirect rule over much of their
domain, leaving indigenous power structure in place and making local
rulers representatives of the British Crown. This was unthinkable in
the Portuguese colonies, where brutal, direct control was the rule.

The French on the other hand sought to create culturally assimilated
elites what would represent French ideals in the colonies.

However, in the Belgian Congo, King Leopold II, who had financed the
expeditions that staked Belgium's claim in Berlin, embarked on a
campaign of ruthless exploitation.

His enforcers mobilized almost the entire Congolese populations to
gather rubber, kill elephants for their ivory, and build public works
to improve export routes. For failing to meet production quotes,
entire communities were massacred.

“Killing and maiming became routine in a colony in which horror was
the only common denominator. After the impact of the slave trade, King
Leopold's reign of terror was Africa's most severe demographic
disaster. By the time it ended, after a growing outcry around the
world, as many as 10 million Congolese had been murdered,” said Adam
Horchschild teaching writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at
the University of California Berkeley and in 1997-98 was a Fulbright
Lecturer in India now based in San Francisco, USA.

He added that in 1908 the Belgium government administrators and the
Roman Catholic Church each pursued their sometimes competing interest.
But no one thought to change the name of the colonial capital.

“It was Leopoldville until the Belgian Congo achieved independence in
1960. In the second half of the nineteenth century, after more than
four centuries of contact, the European powers finally laid claim to
virtually all of Africa. Parts of the continent had been "explored,"
but now representatives of European governments and rulers arrived to
create or expand African spheres of influence for their patrons,” said
Horchschild adding that competition was intense.

Spheres of influence began to crowd each other. Bismarck wanted not
only to expand German spheres of influence in Africa but also to play
off Germany's colonial rivals against one another to the Germans'
advantage.

“The Berlin Conference was Africa's undoing in more ways than one. The
colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African Continent.
By the time Africa regained its independence after the late 1950s, the
realm according to Horchschild had acquired a legacy of political
fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate
satisfactorily,” said Horchschild.

He added: “The African politico-geographical map is thus a permanent
liability that resulted from the three months of ignorant, greedy
acquisitiveness during a period when Europe's search for minerals and
markets had become insatiable.”

The former Ghanaian diplomat C.O.C Amate said one of the major reasons
why the pioneers of African Union (AU) [then Organization of African
Unity (OAU)] Sylvester Williams, E.W. Burghardt DuBois, William Marcus
Garvey and leaders of African descent domiciled in the West Indies and
the USA was to break Africa from chains of colonialism.

“During a congress in 1900 in London Burghardt DuBois introduced the
topic of Independence calling on Britain and other colonial powers to
give the right of responsible government to the black colonies of
Africa and the West Indies as soon as possible,” he said adding that
Sylvester Williams died shortly after the congress.

“But the work he had begun did not die with him. DuBois took over
from where Sylvester Williams left off and organized a series of five
Pan-African Congresses, which earned him the name ‘Father of
Pan-Africanism.’ DuBois was a journalist,”said Amate.

He disclosed that with his journalism skills DuBois established and
ran a chain of newspapers in which he persistently called for the
granting of what would today be described as basic human rights to the
black people in the Americas, the West Indies and Africa.

“The best-known of the [news] papers was the Crises,” said Amate.

During the an AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia earlier this year [before the
recent meeting which was shifted from Lilongwe to Addis Ababa after President Joyce Banda
and her government announced that it was not ready to host Sudan’s President
Omar Hassan Abashir] late president Bingu wa
Mutharika emphasized the need for Africa to do away with all forms of
colonialism and start believing in herself if the continent is to
achieve sound social-economic developments at all levels to overcome
rampant poverty currently outweighing its people.

“Africa should forget about achieving its goals unless the continent
decides to wake up and stop eating, thinking, dressing and even
smiling the colonial way. It would for example be senseless to promote
‘Boosting Intra-African Trade if Africans continue to be jealousy of
each other and promote a wrong perception that only good things come
from Europe,” he charged.

Late Mutharika gave an example that in his own village was heavily infested
by colonial ideologies whereby a mother of two would describe one of
her own children who grows fat that ‘akukula chizungu’ (growing in a
European way while another one in the same family who is thin and slim
will be described as ‘akukula chikuda’ (growing in an African way).

“This is very unfair and detrimental to our social-economic development
to eradicate poverty on the continent and we have to change this mindset
if we are to be serious on the continent’s development agenda,” he said.

Peter Henriot, a Catholic born in Tacoma Washington, is a member of
the Zambia-Malawi Province Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

He has since 1990, worked at the Jesuit Centre for Theological
Reflection (JCTR) in Lusaka, Zambia.

The JCTR is a project of the Zambia-Malawi Province of the Society of
Jesus, founded in 1987 to assist the local church and other groups in
matters of political, economic and social justice concerns, through
research, education, advocacy and consultation.

Their work includes studies on constitutional reform, good governance,
poverty eradication, debt cancellation, education for justice and
theological reflection.

Henriot said although African states attained Independence from Western
countries there are to date some forms of colonialism still taking
place that have been contributing to the continent’s snail pace
social-economic development including fuelling poverty.

“In order to understand the significance of globalisation in the
African context, there are two premises that I believe focus the
debate more realistically,” he said.

Henriot added that the first premise is that it is important to understand
that today's "globalisation" is actually the fourth stage of outside
penetration of Africa by forces which have negative social
consequences for the African people's integral development.

“This outside penetration has occurred over the past five hundred
years in a variety of forms. The first stage was the period of
slavery, during which the continent's most precious resources, African
women and men, were stolen away by global traders, slavers, working
for the benefit of Arab, European and North American countries,” he said.

The priest disclosed that estimates vary from two to ten million slaves
extracted from the continent, with disastrous economic, social and
psychological effects.

“I come originally from a country, the United States of America, whose
industrial progress in the north during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries depended upon agricultural progress built unjustly,
inhumanly on the backs of African slaves who toiled in the fields of
the south,” said Henriot.

He further explained that the second stage was the period of the
actual colonialism itself when British, French, Belgium, Portuguese,
Italian and German interests dictated the way that map boundaries were
drawn, transportation and communication lines established,
agricultural and mineral resources exploited, religious and cultural
patterns introduced.

“Whatever minimal benefits might have come to Africans because of
colonialism were far outweighed by the many negative consequences of
economic exploitation, environmental degradation, and social
dependencies. Indeed, many of today's ethnic conflicts which attract
international attention trace their origins back to colonial
stratagems,” said Henriot.

The Catholic priest further said the third stage has been described as
"neo-colonialism," what the late Pope Paul VI also called "the form of
political pressures and economic suzerainty aimed at maintaining or
acquiring dominance."

“The independence struggles begun in the late 1950's may have brought
local governmental rule to the many nations of the continent but did
not break the ties -- subtle and not so subtle -- that bound Africa's
future to outside influences,” said Henriot.

He added that trade patterns, investment policies, debt arrangements,
just but mentioning a few all reinforced earlier conditions that were
not beneficial to Africans.

“Another striking example was the political manipulation of African
states as bargaining pawns during the Cold War, with the resulting
legacies of armed conflicts, for example, in the Horn of Africa and in
southern Africa,” said Henriot.

He also expounded that presently we have entered the fourth stage, the
period of globalisation, characterised by an integration of the
economies of the world through trade and financial flows, technology
and information exchanges, and movement of people.

“The dominant actor in this stage is the free market. The globe is
conceived as one market directed by profit motivations of private
enterprises that know neither national boundaries nor local
allegiances. In this stage, Africa experiences both minimal influence
and maximum consequence,” said Henriot.

He explained that the second premise is simply the statement of an
obvious but not always acknowledged fact: globalisation is not working
for the benefit of the majority of Africans today.

“While globalisation has increased opportunities for economic growth
and development in some areas, there has been an increase in the
disparities, and inequalities experienced especially in Africa,” said
Henriot.

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