adminThe Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America finally moved to spearhead a coup against Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. It had been for some time that Washington and London were worried about the ideas that Kwame Nkrumah was preaching and spreading in Africa. He envisioned and proselytised for a united Africa that could solidly stand up against imperialism. When Nkrumah published Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism in 1965, Europe and America got it in black and white that Nkrumah was a threat to Empire. The book explained in graphic terms how economically and politically, imperial and colonial designs were still alive in Africa, and why African countries had to urgently unite to counter the imperial machinations. In Europe and America, the book was treated with the seriousness and fear of a piece of evidence that witchcraft exists. If Europe and America did not act, J. F. Kennedy had opined in 1961, Nkrumah was going to turn Africa into a communist haven. Soon enough “Operation Cold Chop” was set afoot and on 24 February 1966 Nkrumah was overthrown. The idea of a united Africa and Kwame Nkrumah’s economic and political analysis scared Empire to its cells. Similarly, from 30 March 2009 when Muammar Gaddaffi turned his back to the Arab League of Nations and considered Libya an African country in earnest, and conducted a spirited drive for a United States of Africa, his political days were as good as numbered. The Euro-American Empire fears African unity the way the apocalypse itself is feared. Every excuse was to be used to get the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Libya to liquidated Gaddaffi.
Africa the Cake
For the Euro-American establishment, Africa is a natural resource, a big cake that must always be sliceable and shared amongst Europeans whether they come as colonisers, investors or other prospectors. Many historians and political scientists in Africa have noted the religious way in which America and Europe treasure unity for themselves and always sponsor divisions and disunity among and within African countries. It appears that the very future of Empire relies on political and economic disunity, strife and chaos in Africa. African disunity, within and amongst African countries is of serious interest to Empire.
In 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia convention, after 30 years of war European countries met to cement their collective unity and respect for peace and sovereignty. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the Napoleonic wars they met again to remind each other that the future of Empire relies on unity and peace. In 1919, in Paris after World War I, unity and peace for Europe were validated as it was in San Francisco 1945 after World War II. For America and Europe, unity is a talisman; any threats to the fetish are dealt with decisively.
Gifted Kenyan historian and political scientist, Ali Mazrui, never tired of loudly wondering how German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck made himself a legend in Europe by uniting Germany and launching it into a formidable European economic and political power in the nineteenth century. Yet, soon after that, Bismarck in 1884 to 1885 presided over the vicious division of Africa into convenient colonies for Empire. Since then Africa was shaped into a continent of impoverished polities and economies that were peopled by masses of miserable and deprived human beings. The unity and peace that Empire worships like a God for itself, is not going to be allowed in Africa which is a political and economic cake that must always remain in slices for convenient consumption by the powers and eaters of the present world. The eatability of Africa, its economic and political availability and vulnerability is what Kwame Nkrumah sought to highlight in the book that ignited anger and fear in Europe and America, a book that serious African thinkers must revisit for a slow reading. Slowly and softly, politically and economically, the slicing of Africa that started at Berlin is still going on. And with continued divisions, like a cake Africa remains eatable and an object that is conveniently acted upon by Empire. Even as African countries tried individually to decolonise Empire did not de-imperialise, will not de-imperialise or even think of it.
Can Africa act upon Empire?
Former Ugandan President Idi Amin caused much laughter in the world when he claimed to be the conqueror of the British Empire and the very last king of Scotland. There was even more laughter when Idi Amin publicly mobilised Ugandans to donate grain towards aid for starving Israelis. Recently there was renewed laughter when Yoweri Museveni, the present Ugandan President, threated economic sanctions against the United States of America if the racist Donald Trump won the pending elections. Threats to punish or the promise to aid Empire by any African country are bound to attract laughter.
There was much irritation and anger in America and Europe when Thabo Mbeki intimated that the “unending torrent” of refugees and immigrants that were flooding into Europe from Africa were a result of the displacement and dispossession that Europe and America have caused in Africa. The irritation was sparked mainly by the suggestion Mbeki made that African refugees and immigrants that were invading Europe and America were a form of reverse colonisation and forcing Empire to redistribute ill-gotten wealth.
Under the stewardship of the West Indian lawyer Henry Sylvester William in 1900 the First Pan-African Congress met in London to plot African unity and peace. The Second Pan-African Congress met in 1921 in London again, decolonisation, unity and peace were the theme. The Third Pan-African Congress was in 1923 in London and Lisbon, while the Fourth Pan-African Congress was in 1927 in New York and the Fifth Congress was to be in 1945 in Manchester. Even today the African Union and Sadc continue to gather African heads of state to plot unity and peace in Africa. Evidently, the well-meaning Africans do not seem to have as yet organised a meeting to unite Africa that has had the same impact as the Berlin Conference that divided Africa.
We do not seem in Africa to muster the gravitas at decolonisation and African unity that Empire had in colonising and dividing Africa. Since conquest and the colonial encounters, Africans are the ones who seem to respect colonial borders and maps more than the colonialists themselves believed in them. Decolonisation and Decoloniality should mean to undo with greater energy what Empire did in Africa.
With the passage of time and our fragile memory as former colonised peoples of Africa who are still punished by imperial and global designs in our local histories, less attention is paid to the long struggle for African unity and peace. Founding fathers of Africa, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere fought bitterly against each other. Nkrumah wanted a radical and speedy institutionalisation of a United States of Africa. Julius Nyerere gestured for a slow and gradual unification of Africa that respected the sovereignty of individual African countries to develop themselves as separate entities. Julius Nyerere and many other African leaders feared, at some point, that Kwame Nkrumah wanted a United States of Africa because he wished to be the President of Africa.
Later when he got persuaded to the idea of a United States of Africa, the less modest Muammar Gaddaffi did not conceal the wish to be the “King of Kings of Africa.”
It is important that when Kwame Nkrumah died on the 27th of April 1972 as a deposed, disgraced and disappointed exile, Julius Nyerere was the first to admit that Kwame Nkrumah was right and that Africa lost out on the vision of unity and peace that Nkrumah championed. In our selfie crazy generation, a generation of summarised Facebook thoughts, can we produce such large scale thinkers as Kwame Nkrumah who can challenge Empire to the death? Seemingly, solid African economic and political unity is the biggest and deadliest blow African can deal Empire, if it was a united Africa not a singular Yoweri Museveni threatening economic and political sanctions against America, there would not have being such laughter.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena is a Zimbabwean academic based in Pretoria. mailto:[email protected]>
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