Africans have got this colonial thing all wrong and here's why

Soldiers guard Mau Mau fighters behind barbed wires, in October 1952, in the Kikuyu reserve. Colonialists understood that Africa was very rich in minerals and fertile lands. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The colonialist, like the modern-day imperialist, doesn’t go where there are no huge economic gains.
  • They came not because Africa was useless, but because they saw it as a very good thing.

  • The colonialists came because they figured that Africa was not all “doom and gloom”.

In response to an article a few days ago on the rising debt in many African countries, someone on social media said reporting problems on the continent was “a colonial mentality”.

Africa was not all “doom and gloom”, he repeated the tired line. Of course, it is not. It is a normal continent like others, with as much agony as joy. The danger would be to see it as the land of only milk and honey.

MISUNDERSTANDING

The bigger problem though with his argument, is this idea that the 19th and 20th century European colonialists (or the West and others today) see Africa as a continent of “doom and gloom”. It represents a serious misunderstanding of colonialism and imperialism.

MALARIA

At the beginning of the colonial era proper, towards the end of the 19th century, records show that on average, it took 16 to 22 days to sail from Britain, to the coast of most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that eventually became British — and French, German, or Belgium — colonies.

REWARD

There was little to no treatment for malaria those days. It should be noted, a fact that is not taught at all in our schools, that the greatest anti-colonial weapon in Africa was the mosquito. For it was virulent malaria, really, that ensured that Africa wasn’t settled and consumed by the Europeans like most of the Americas were.

So why would a European sail for nearly a month over dangerous waters, and come to Africa where the likelihood that he would die of malaria or some other disease for which there was no treatment then, was several times higher than death in war?

WORTHWHILE

You don’t take all that risk if the reward is not so big. It had to be worthwhile. Look, today, al-Shabaab militants kill innocent civilians in an ambush in northern Kenya, and tourists cancel their holidays hundreds of kilometres away at the coast. We, humans take high risks when we are extremely desperate, or the rewards — if you get out alive — are gargantuan.

LUCRATIVE

So the colonialists came because they figured that Africa was not “doom and gloom”. They understood that it was very rich in minerals that were not exploited, and fertile lands that they could farm and grow lucrative cash crops and spices that they would sell to Europe and Asia.

They understood, as Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has written, that they had a technological and scientific advantage, so the cost of overwhelming the natives in conflict would be relatively low. In modern terms, we would say the cost of market entry in Africa was low.

NEW WORLD

In an earlier period, the Arabs and Europeans who came and enslaved millions of Africans, while they were criminal and evil, were not stupid. Though they said the African was not fully human, that was merely propaganda that allowed them to exploit African labour. They needed to open sugar and cotton plantations and figured that living in malaria-infested lands, Africans had evolved slightly greater resistance to the disease, and would endure the fields in the “new World” better.

CAPTURE

They also understood the opportunities that rivalries among African chiefdoms and kingdoms presented, and that our early leaders, like others in history, were already corrupt, and would trade their people or capture the ones from a neighbouring rival hill, and sell them off for trinkets, whisky, or cigarettes.

MARBLE

The colonialist, like the modern-day imperialist, doesn’t go where there are no huge economic gains. I remember visiting two big British offices in Westminster with a Kenyan journalist friend one day. As we left and walked to Trafalgar Square, he was pensive. Then he said: “Man, these mzungus got a great deal out of colonialism that is no longer possible in the modern day. You can’t build a city and these grand offices with marble and fine granite the way they did today.

SYNTHETICS

“These days, however rich you are, you can afford only plastic, fibre glass, and other cheap synthetics like Shanghai and Dubai”.

And he was right. A wise old woman back home once said: “If you want to know the type of woman an unfaithful man will cheat with, listen not to the type he praises, but the one he criticises.

“If he criticises minis, lipstick and such things, know that when he gets to the bar without his wife, that’s the type of woman he will look around for”.

CONSCIENCE

In many ways, racist colonial portrayal of Africa and the natives was like that. In any case, it troubles the conscience less to steal land from a native you think doesn’t deserve it, than one who does.

The colonialists knew a good thing when they saw one. They came not because Africa was useless, but because they saw it as a very good thing.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africapedia.com and explainer Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3