New robes and old-fashioned imperialism

Last Monday I participated in a segment of the BBC discussion Programme ‘Four Corners’. The topic I discussed with two other guests (one Portuguese and the other from The Netherlands) was whether the relationship between former colonies and former colonial masters can ever be rid of master-servant complexes. The immediate stimulus for the discussion was the tragic situation that has been long unfolding in that former shining star of former French colonies on the West Coast of Africa, Cote d'Ivore.

Needless to say that the three of us had divergent views (that's the whole purpose of a multi sided discussion, isn't it?). But our disagreements were not principally due to the obvious: That because the other two were Europeans and myself an African, one belonging to victims and the other a descendant of perpetrators, there were objective and subjective contradictions. No. We were all opposed to colonialism and agreed too that the consequences were generally bad for the victims regardless of who the colonizer was. But that's where the agreement stopped.

Our differences emerged as a result of what is happening today and what can be done. Both Europeans were rather sanguine about the impact of history on contemporary relations between the former colonies and their erstwhile colonial subjects. The Portuguese saw no direct influence for his country as could be found in former British or French colonies. Maybe because the Portuguese were the first to arrive in Africa and the last to be chased out! The Dutch representative also felt his country did not have much control in the former colonies.

Both of them however saw moral and political responsibility to intervene in their former colonies. The Portuguese chap even argued that, but for Portugal, who cared about Guinea-Bissau or Cape Verde? When I retorted that even if both countries were not important internationally or even regionally they mattered to Cape Verdians and people of Guinea-Bissau the man was still relentless, finally quipping that he was not even sure about that! A few seconds later he realized the incongruity of his colonialist template by qualifying the absurd claim with ‘I don't think the elite care’. But the genie was already out of the bottle. So powerful and consuming is the latter day missionary fervour of many in the West that they actually believe that they care more about Africa than Africans themselves. This ideology of being more Catholic than the pope is so pervasive that even many Africans share in it. On the surface the argument is so beguiling and dressed in humanitarian concerns that it is almost seductive. But it is only a latter day repackaging of the old imperialist ‘white man's burden’.

The relationship between former colonies and their former colonial masters need not necessarily be a continuing repackaging of the same colonial attitudes through neo-colonialism or present threatening recolonisation. Looking at the relationship between Britain and the USA today, especially Tony Blair's ‘America right or wrong’ servitude to Bush, many would have forgotten that America used to be a colony of the British. The relationship between Britain and the former white colonies of New Zealand, Australia and Canada are also different. And yes too the relationship with India is different say from that with Gambia or Sierra-Leone. Even within Africa I do not think that Britain can be presumptuous enough to take South Africa or Nigeria's cooperation for granted. The Italians can never dream of controlling Libya, which is their former colony. And the French or the Belgians cannot walk like former masters across present day Rwanda.

What makes African countries vulnerable to continuing manipulation by former colonial powers is their essentially unviable nature built as they were to serve foreign interests and mostly lacking in organic linkages and legitimacy among the peoples forcibly brought together in these artificial states. But more than the economic linkages, in many countries security and intelligence networks help in retaining metropolitan hold.

This is certainly more evident in many of the former French colonies where the added burden of the French cultural policy of assimilation made many of their elite think they were French. It must be said that there are so many elite in the former British colonies too who regard themselves as English and mimic the English in many ridiculous ways, including confused middle class elements who refuse to speak their African mother tongue to their children even in the home because they fear their English will suffer.

But generally the colonial cultural project seems more complete in former French colonies. That was why France has always had far greater neo-colonialist influence in her former colonies. In recent years it has gone into retreat - but old habits die hard hence the current situation in Ivory Coast. But that mess is made messier by the fact that Laurent Gbagbo's government and his leadership is that of a genocidaire yet to be put on trial.

However that situation can only be sorted out by the Ivorians themselves, their sub regional neighbours, the African Union and the support of the international community. A positive role for former colonialists is one in which they support African efforts if and when asked and not by justifying continuing imperialism with 'the need to do something'. Too many times that something has turned out to be nothing but old fashioned imperialism in new robes.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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