The Berlin Conference happened in 1884 - 1885; during the life time of my great grand father and his his generation. They were not invited to the conference nor were they in any way informed much less consulted on the consequences of the General Act of Berlin outcome. They had no say in the scramble for Africa in which the white colonial powers commandeered and looted from Africa without so much as by your leave!
It is a historic fact that the white man’s colonial occupation of Africa caused a lot of suffering and deaths and very little good, if any. This is not surprising since the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised was never one of equals.
The colonisers’ number priority was to exploit the colonised nations’ human and material resources to fuel Europe and North America’s industrial growth. The Berlin Conference was to ensure the free for all scramble for Africa’s resources orderly and amicable amongst the competing colonial powers. What each colonial power did in its colony was its own affair!
Some colonial nations did bring civilising influences and economic developments to their African colonies. Others were not so generous.
My great grand father’s generation’s number one priority was to survive the colonial storm as best as they could. Some wage wars to drive out the white invaders out of the country with very little success, as history shows.
However the continued ill treatment and exploitation of the Africans by the whites, was cause for biter racial hatred. Africans were third class citizens with no meaningful economic wealth and no political rights. The desire to end white colonial rule a.s.a.p. was a slow burning fire that never went out and was passed down from one generation to the next.
The first and second World War distracted the colonial powers but, more significantly, it opened up the Africans the bigger world beyond that of mother Africa and the colonising nations. The whispered calls for independence after the 2WW grew louder and louder. China and Russia supplied the Africans with the diplomatic support in the quest for independence and, more importantly, with weapons with which to fight the white colonisers. And as each African country gained its independence the pressure to end colonial rule became an unstoppable tide!
The last African country to end white colonial rule was South Africa in 1994 one hundred and ten years since the 1884 Berlin Conference.
Attaining independence was cause for great pride and joy for the oppressed and exploited Africans. Sadly the joy never last long for the overwhelming majority of Africans because their aspiration for freedom, justice, peace and economic prosperity were dashed. Most post-independence African rulers have turned out to be corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs who care more about enriching themselves at the expense of the common good.
A democracy index for Africa says it all; other than a few countries notably Mauritius scoring 8.14 out of 10, Botswana 7.73, SA 7.05 the overwhelming major are authoritarian states scoring 3 points or less.
Some people have argued that African leaders had focused on ending white colonial rule and took their eyes off what was to happen the day-after. That is just a feeble excuse to justify the continent’s reputation of failing to govern ourselves.
The repeated calls by some people for Africa to unite should be dismiss with the contempt it rightly deserve. Unity is not the panacea for the curse of rigged elections, corruption and breathtaking incompetence. If a leader like President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe has clearly failed to govern that country, for example, it is naive to think he would do a much better job governing SADC much less the whole of Africa!
The one of the things founding fathers of Organisation for African Unity, the forerunner of African Union, got right was that Africans must not waste time, sweat and blood fighting over country borders. We must accept the borders we inherited from the hated Berlin Conference. We have more pressing issues to deal with than borders - delivering freedom, justice, peace and economic prosperity to all our people.
The Berlin Conference country borders will melt away if there is peace and prosperity from Cape to Cairo and from Cape Verde in the west to the tip of the rhinoceros horn in Somalia.
The scramble for Africa a walk in the park for the colonial powers because my great grand father and his generation of Africans had lagged behind the invading white hordes in terms of intellectually development.
If we, in Africa, want to sit at the table as equal with anyone else on earth then we must earn that right by proving that we are just as competent in every field of human endeavour as anybody else out there. The tragic reality in most African countries today has white supremacists boasting they were right, Africans are incapable of self-governing. We should be striving to do much, much more than prove the white supremacists wrong.
“Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
……..
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are,
we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
