Tag Archives: neoliberalism in Africa

Humans of New York: an immigrant from Congo speaks out

Humans of NY August 21 2014

From “Humans of New York” album: For many people in the US, the most common vision of Africa is the depictions of starving children which are wrenching but give a narrow view of that vast continent. Many think Africa is a country; many are surprised to hear African countries have cities, that people wear tee-shirts & blue jeans & not grass skirts, have rich cultures & immense artistic & cultural achievements. If American school kids were taught the truth about Africa they might begin to question the baloney that passes for Black history in the US. And that might give them a whole new take on news from Ferguson.

Neoliberal colonialism is advancing in African countries led by the US, Canada, India, China, Israel, France, the UK, & other regimes. They make devil’s deals with corrupt African regimes to outright steal natural resources & impoverish millions who are then forced to immigrate. AFRICOM is the NATO-like military apparatus set up by the US to force compliance with colonial plunder & it is already operational in several countries.

It seems certain the crescendoing alarmism about Islamic jihadism is the propaganda face of US military aggression not just in the Middle East but in Southeast Asia, & Africa. We need to inform ourselves so as not to be hoodwinked by stink tank lies.

This young immigrant in New York puts his finger on the problem with the pictures of starving babies because formerly whole generations of Blacks in the US only knew slavery as their history. If they had been taught about Nubia or any of the other great civilizations of Africa they wouldn’t have had to plow through life with racist impedimenta. Though even the ugly encumbrance of false history could not hold back the tsunami of the Civil Rights & Black Power Movements.

This young man from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo said; “We don’t like pictures like this. It is not good to deduce an entire country to the image of a person reaching out for food. It is not good for people to see us like this, and it is not good for us to see ourselves like this. This gives us no dignity. We don’t want to be shown as a country of people waiting for someone to bring us food. Congo has an incredible amount of farmland. An incredible amount of resources. Yes, we have a lot of problems. But food is not what we are reaching for. We need investment. We need the means to develop ourselves.”

(Photo by Brandon Stanton, founder of HONY)

Anti-colonial thinkers and understanding neoliberal predation in Africa

You can’t really figure out what’s going on in the conflict between Sudan & South Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Central African Republic, et al, from media reports. Without understanding the politics & sectarian differences between militant armed groups ostensibly propelling civil war, without knowing the history of ethnic or religious divisions, without a clear view of the pernicious legacy of colonialism & the insidious meddling of neoliberalism, most of us are lost. And that confusion is entirely intentional. The point of historical & media obscurantism is to make African peoples appear primitive, unable to resolve ancient conflicts peacefully, & renders justification for colonialism & neoliberalism–which are becoming indistinguishable.

Politics are complicated everywhere but not more so in African countries than European ones. Most don’t have the time to investigate, few have reliable sources, & the bonds of international collaboration with African social movements have long-since been severed by repression, ignorance, racism, distrust, & that ugly white savior crap of the Bono & Geldof sort. There are however important anti-colonial thinkers whose writings & lives are of the greatest consequence. Many became known in the 1960s with the tsunami of anti-colonial movements throughout the world–from the Caribbean to North & South America to Africa & Asia. Their time has come again & we need to again study them. To name only a few: Eduardo Galeano, Amilcar Cabral, Walter Rodney, Franz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Steven Biko, CLR James, Jose Mariategui, Chinua Achebe–& many others & likely new ones.

For many without time for study, it’s only necessary to know where justice stands. They don’t need to know the entire geopolitical history; they just want to know why the conflict is happening & who to support. This is not a defense of anti-intellectualism but an acknowledgement of reality. People want to do the right thing without getting a PhD in colonialism.

Anyone who’s tried to sort through the current war in Central African Republic (CAR) & occupation by French & African Union troops comes up against a wall of scholarly deceits & media obscurantism. So until African writers & activists can unravel most of that for us, let us present what the occupation is really all about. CAR is a region immensely rich in natural resources & neoliberal predators want to get their filthy hands on it. Much of the sectarian conflict is fomented by disreputable & despicable agents of neoliberalism. We don’t have to invent conspiracies; there’s a long colonial history to draw on.

Here children gold miners, whose profound misery is etched in their faces & postures, are sitting just a few days ago next to a gold mine in the village of Gam, CAR, where gold mining is a primary business. When you want to know what that civil war is all about, think neoliberal plunder. And oppose the presence of foreign troops under the guise of stopping genocide.

(Photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images)

Belgium’s legacy of colonialism lives on

This shifty-eyed cop has every good reason to be suspicious of the camera catching the Brussels constabulary removing a woman & her child from begging in Grand Place, the central square in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium has ratified or acceded to every convention & protocol in international law concerning human rights. On paper the country looks like an international exemplar of justice. But a country doesn’t just walk away from it’s wretched colonial past by signing a few abstract & unenforceable documents. Colonialism requires a thoroughgoing historical & political accounting. Belgium & other countries are unwillling to make that accounting because it will expose their past criminalities & continuing exploitation & treacheries. That’s why finding decent history books on colonialism is so damn hard.

Belgium has been cited repeatedly in the past several years for violating the human rights documents it has ratified. It’s been cited for abuses in the prison system, in particular for prisoners with mental disabilities & refugees, including children refugees; repeatedly for discrimination against Muslims, in the courts & in the public streets; housing discrimination against Travellers; forcible evictions of thousands of Roma; racist practices toward Black citizens. A picture is shaping up here of a country reproducing its colonial relations within its own borders against anyone who isn’t white. Does that explain why Grand Place is called a “white sepulchre” by Marlow, the protagonist in the 1899 novel “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad?

Conrad, the Polish writer, worked for a Belgian colonial enterprise in Africa & well knew the racist depredations of European imperialism in Africa. Regrettably his experiences led him to misanthropic conclusions & his politics grew quite sour. He’s of the same generation as Mark Twain & shares the political problems of Twain, including racism & misanthropy in their senior years. They both lived in the heyday of colonialism & did not look to the colonized peoples as agents of their own emancipation. This is not the place for excuses like “they were products of their own times” since others were cogently analyzing & excoriating imperialism & colonialism.

Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian writer (most notably of “Things Fall Apart”), delivered a famous critique of “Heart of Darkness” in a 1975 lecture entitled “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Achebe was a thoroughgoing analyst of European colonialism & called Conrad a “thoroughgoing racist.” This offended quite a few & stirred up quite a literary & political controversy–in precisely the same way as criticisms of “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.

The pending US intervention into Nigeria requires that historical accounting & puts colonialism, neoliberalism, & racist, xenophobic practices under the glare of exposure. It is important that we listen less to the voices of racist historians & writers & more to the voices of Africa.

No US intervention in Nigeria!

(Photo by Geert Vanden Wijingaert/AP)

World Economic Forum on Africa 2014: a conspiracy of thieves

War isn’t the best way to learn geography but now, as the US charts a major military intervention into Nigeria, those in the US will finally learn that Africa is a continent, not a country–an immense continent that most of us know nothing about (even those who listen to the BBC). But we are now forced to learn since re-colonizing Africa is the grand neoliberal strategy involving competition between countries for who can loot the most & fastest & with the most ruthless disregard for human life. Many of the countries we live in are involved in this corruption up to their eyeballs & we are all going to have to start a crash course–though we don’t even have to know where Nigeria is on a map to know that US intervention will bring nothing but carnage & disaster to the Nigerian people.

In another case of “you can’t make this crap up,” the World Economic Forum on Africa is now meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, under the theme “Forging Inclusive Growth, Creating Jobs.” Nine hundred international big wheels are attending, including several African presidents, international bankers, more bankers, investment firms, academics (who like to yodel for their supper), management consulting firms (akin to loan sharks in their moral fiber), & multinationals like General Electric. Let’s be frank; they’re not going there to improve the quality of human life. Those unsavory thugs are the creme de la creme of global plunder.

Articles about the economic forum claim Africa is undergoing an economic renaissance, that half of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world are in Africa, that the economic growth rate for sub-Saharan countries has surpassed much richer countries for more than a decade. According to the panegyrics, there are “dramatic improvements” in education, maternal & child mortality, agricultural development.

Nobody who has trouble balancing a check book wants to wrangle with the richest bankers in the world but something isn’t computing here because it is also reported that health & education indicators are the lowest in the world, that nearly half of all Africans live in extreme poverty & under the World Bank poverty rate of US $1.25 a day. The jubilant bankers don’t even mention the hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans trekking thousands of miles north to Israel & Europe for work. So those economies may look damn good for the bankers & multinational marauders but not for the working people of Africa.

Tottering on the borders of parody, the articles point out that this economic renaissance is due to the new generation of African leaders committed to widespread reform–by which, of course, the bankers mean barbaric austerity programs to maximize profits for the multinationals. We don’t want to presume a knowledge we don’t possess about African politics, but does this new breed of politicians include Goodluck Jonathan from Nigeria, Paul Kagame from Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe?

There is an omission in the financial panegyrics that stands out like a sore thumb & that is the war in the Congo that has taken millions of lives, employs mass rape as a weapon of war, has caused massive dislocation & millions of refugees, & entails UN occupation. If we want to understand the dystopic vision neoliberalism has in mind for Africa, we only need look at the Congo where the lives of working people are a living hell while multinationals milk the country for all it’s worth in natural abundance.

This wrenching photo is two Congolese refugees taken in 2012 when there were an estimated 280,000 refugees in the eastern part of the country. It’s a shocking image of two war-traumatized children who have become the chattel & the offal of neoliberal barbarism. Keep this image in mind if you’re the least bit inclined to wave one of those damn bring back our girls placards.

(Photo by Jerome Daly/AP)