Opinion
Why is Africa Still Held in Contempt?
The factors that played a key role in Africans gaining independence included:
– the continued resistance by the African people, this time led by the African nationalists and not by the ethnic chiefs and kings;
– the intra-European wars – the so called 1st and 2nd World Wars – in effect intra-imperialist wars for the re-division of the colonial possessions – i.e. ourselves; and
– the support of Socialist Countries – the Soviet Union, China, Cuba etc.
It was these three factors that forced the Imperialists to retreat in Asia (India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc.), Africa and the Middle East.
Did we use our new found independence to insure ourselves against future recolonization, marginalization and arrogance?
The answer is, unfortunately, no. The former imperialist powers are still messing up Africa by promoting wrong and criminal schemes. In Uganda, they, for instance, sponsored the coup of Idi Amin in 1971. That mistake cost Ugandans 800,000 people extra-judicially killed between 1971 and 1986.
Elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in Congo was killed in 1961 – imperialist powers have all been accused in the involvement of his death. This assassination has cost the people of Congo almost 50 years of turmoil which they are now trying to conclude.
In Rwanda, the meddling by external forces caused the death of almost 1 million Africans in 1994.
The meddling has not stopped – during the Libyan crisis in 2011, an aircraft carrying African Heads of State on an African Union mission to help resolve the situation, was prevented from landing in Libya by NATO war planes over African soil. African input in the Libyan crisis was totally ignored. Libya is presently gripped by a crisis that threatens to tear the country apart.
There are even attempts to attack the “core African values” on the family in, for instance, the matter of homosexuality. Indeed, in the West, they, for instance, criminalize polygamy by law. In Africa it is and has always been part of our way of life. Yet we do not complain. When, however, we legislate against homosexuality, in response to the provocation by Western sponsored organizations vis–à–vis our “traditional values”, we are threatened with sanctions.
