Africa Cannot Bury the Historical Facts of European Colonization and Slavery

That Africa and Africans for that matter should forget the historical fact of their enslavement and colonization and forge ahead is a terrible suggestion to come from anyone, let alone an African head of state. It is just about two weeks ago that the latest plea to that effect came from the highly regarded Liberian President, Mrs.Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She is not the first and certainly won't be the last.

Ironically, her plea for Africans to “bury the past of colonization and slavery and continue forging into the future” was made at an event deeply encrusted in Africa's colonial narrative --- during one of the perfectly useless independence anniversaries celebrated every now and then across the length and breadth of the suffering continent. This time it was Senegal wasting the people's resources celebrating 50 years of what – one may ask!

For any African, leader or led, to urge Africans to “bury the past of western colonization and forge ahead with the development of the continent” to me is an indication of one's total lack of self, i.e. one's being, history, culture and to what extent you have internalized the hopes and aspirations of your people.

Bury colonization and you might as well bury these 50 plus so called independent nations. Why not, anyway? That could be a tenable proposition if it would provide a vent for one's frustrations over miserable the failures that they are.

Beyond that, European colonization should be written and embossed in concrete into mankind's collective consciousness as the prime example of man's evil and devious persona created more in the image of Marmon than God. It is within this context that we can begin to read into what extent the man can go to take what he wants (even if he does not need it). It is also within that context of European scramble, partition and colonization of Africa that one can scuttle the fringes of why Africa is in the pitiable condition it finds itself in today.

One cannot begin to catalogue the extent to which partition and colonization of Africa reverberates in our lives to this day. Where do you start and end without colonization?

European colonization of Africa is not a blimp on history's radar screen that can be ignored or listed as an unidentified flying object. It is not a Ghana versus Nigeria soccer match, the memory of which does not outlive the playing days of the players who starred in it. Scramble-Partition-Colonization-Slave Trade (Trans Atlantic or Saharan) is the multi-headed monster visited on a hapless Africa and which effectively decimated Africa culturally, socially, economically, spiritually politically and everthingly.

By the end of the 19th Century, Europe virtually gobbled up the entire “10 million miles of African territory along with 110 million of dazed new subjects” who never knew what hit them. Spurred on by the schemes of that “enigmatic Leopold II king of the Belgians” who reserved the Crown Colony of Congo unto his scheming himself, “Africa was sliced up like a cake, the pieces swallowed by five rival nations – Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, and Britain, (with Spain taking some scraps”

A little over 100 years after, “the colonial cake slices” of dazed natives have now become some 53 odd nations stuck to the barrel bottom of the world's poorest.

This is the event, the partition and colonization of Africa, that back in 1893, British geographer Scott Keltie a renowned authority on the subject described as “one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of the world.”

It's been said that nothing new happens under the sun and that history repeats itself.

And the finest clichés of them all – those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat their mistakes. And boy! did Africans make mistakes in their encounters with their northern , western and eastern neighbors? Blinded by naivety and ineptitude, Africa never was able to anticipate the man's motives and methods. The few who did were too weak to resist the brute and blunt military power the man possessed.

Methods may have change but motives live on. Africa was and is still “a winning lottery ticket (that) might earn glittering prizes”, the “El Dorado of diamond mines and goldfields crisscrossing the Sahara” Add petroleum. The merchant man still holds Africa as the answer to the merchant's prayers for new markets for British crackers, Dutch schnapps, and Swiss cheese French wine, American chicken parts, Chinese green tea, Indian rice, Russian vodka and Korean condoms. This is the lesson of colonization that we dare not bury in the graveyard of self induced intellectual coma.

Somewhere in the African wilderness, the natives know well enough to understand that the potential prey never ceases to run for as long as the predator continues the chase. Africa should keep colonization story as and others alive and well fed, even if the man takes a blood oath (before God and man) to abandon his age-old desire to take everything he wants from Africa and not pay for them. To him, no oath or treaty is so sacred as cannot be vacated – a lesson of history, his history.

The intention would not be to inject our souls with bitterness, anger and hatred (which would be righteous if we did). But that would only paralyze resolve and stagnate our efforts or drive us into suicidal confrontations with the man. Mind you, the man still possesses that brutish military strength that he will use and sleep soundly thereafter. If you doubt that ask Iraq! Africa cannot once again become the proverbial chicken who after a crummy meal discounts the hawk hovering overhead!

Herein lies the significance of a “Lest we Forget”, or “Never Again” attitude.

For now let us vehemently tell and sing in high and low places about European colonization of Africa, chattel slavery and other bitter episodes in or history with a view to informing our decision making process as we seek to extricate our race from the marginal fringes of humanity crafted for us by our enemies and made possible by our own naivety , ineptitude and incompetence.

If we bury the fact that we've been bitten once, we will never be twice shy!

By G. Ofori Anor
NYC 4/29/10