Aug 20 marked 403 years since the first 20 or so Angolan slaves captured by Portuguese colonial forces arrived in the New World of British Virginia.
So began the commercial exploitation of the black body. Today, four centuries later, dressed as a subtler DNA of the ancient disease, Western neo-colonialism — European and American — is going for the black soul.
The irony is that the West is quick to say that "Africa is a mess" (as then British foreign secretary Boris Johnson wrote in his article in The Spectator on Feb 2, 2002) but refuses to take the blame for it. Here is more from the Briton who is an exemplar of a past that refuses to die. "The continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot on our conscience. The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more."
Colonialism, subtle or otherwise, will not go away as long as such hubris remains. The Guardian quotes Harvard University economist Nathan Nunn placing the blame precisely there in his 2008 study on the effects of the African slave trade on economic development there. "The African countries that are poorest today are the ones from which the most slaves were taken," Nunn wrote in the Quarterly Journal of Economics then.
If this isn't enough, the United States is also busy shaping its neo-colonial dreams there. Called the "US strategy towards sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)", the 17-page document reads like Washington's imperial plan to make little America out of the 46 countries in SSA. We shouldn't blame the Africans for viewing the intent behind the SSA with great suspicion.
An early quote sets the tone for the continent's distrust: "This strategy reframes the region's importance to US national security interests." Not the national security interests of the 46 nations nor the economic interests of the continent. Unsurprisingly, the gist of the strategy is to counter China and Russia's expanding influence there, wrote the Japan Times as Washington unveiled the "reframed" strategy for the region on Aug 9. China, the document laments, sees the region as a space "to challenge the rule-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness".
We can say the same thing about the US and the rest of the West. And Russia, in the American way of seeing, "views the region as a permissive environment… often fomenting instability". Again, we can say the same of the US.
The objectives of the US strategy for the SSA, too, is equally troubling. Two of the four objectives read like regime change recipes for the SSA. If you can't succeed in Latin America and the Middle East, try Africa. The two priorities for the US, the document declares, are to "foster openness and open societies" and "deliver democratic and security dividends". Whose openness? American? Why not African? Are American values the only one worth pursuing? Again, why not African? This US strategy for the SSA, Washington promises Africa, will "focus on rule of law, justice and dignity".
The US is the very reason for African scepticism. How could a nation that pays little to no attention to the rule of law, justice and dignity elsewhere in the world serve as an example for them in Africa? A case of the crab teaching how to walk straight?