By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein
Shanghai, November 12, 2024.
In his magnificent work “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”, written in 1916 and published for the first time the following year, Vladimir I. Lenin delineated, at the dawn of the twentieth century, the contours of the colonial situation that permitted placing it as the fundamental characteristic of the imperialist stage of capitalist society.
In Chapter VI, entitled “The division of the world among the great powers”, he provides innumerable figures and “irrefutable general data from bourgeois statistics and from the declarations of bourgeois scientists of all countries, a picture of the whole capitalist world economy in its international relations, at the beginning of the twentieth century, on the eve of the First World Imperialist War.”
Lenin quotes the German geographer A. Supan. Supan stated that “the characteristic feature of this period is therefore the division of Africa and Polynesia”. However, Lenin warns that “… it is necessary to expand on Supan’s conclusion and say that the characteristic feature of the period in question is the definitive division of the planet”. He then clearly states that “… Definitely not in the sense that it is possible to divide it up again – on the contrary, new divisions of the world are possible and inevitable – but in the sense that the colonial policy of the capitalist countries has already completed the conquest of all the unoccupied lands that existed on our planet. For the first time, the world is already divided, so that what can be affected from now on are only new divisions, that is, the passage of territories from one “master” to another, and not the passage from a territory without a master to an “owner.”
Precisely, we are witnessing this new distribution, the passage of territories from one master to another and that is evident in Africa, more than anywhere else in the world. The African leader, Ahmed Sékou Touré, in his book “Africa on the Move” written in 1967, confirmed fifty years after Lenin that such a situation was still evident. He said, when he was already the first president of independent Guinea, that: “Far from affirming that colonialism is overcome, we must, on the contrary, follow with extreme vigilance all its activities in their new mutations, discover their minor manifestations and combat them, in order to be able to destroy in time, all their direct or indirect maneuvers”. Prophetic words that – again – almost sixty years later are fully valid. The colonial powers have mutated in their imperial practices and are expressing themselves through new maneuvers of all kinds aimed at maintaining their control of the world and the plundering of its natural resources.
In several works on this subject, I have referred to the fact that this division of the world was consecrated during the Berlin Congress of 1884 and 1885. This milestone marks the beginning of the direct colonial domination of Africa and its late insertion into the world capitalist system. In an essay written by D.P. Ghai quoted by the Cuban economist Silvio Baró, professor at the Center for Research on the World Economy (CIEM) in Havana, it is pointed out that in 1965, when the independence gale was unleashed in Africa, this continent “supplied 22% of the total production of copper, 67% of the gold, 90% of the diamonds, 8% from petroleum, 76% from cobalt, and 25% or more from minor metals such as antimony, chromite, manganese, and others from the platinum group; and its share is growing rapidly in oil, natural gas, iron ore and bauxite.”
Another aspect of the system configured at the Berlin Congress has to do with elements that aimed to establish the political structure of the continent. In colonial times, there were no nation states in Africa. As the Cuban researcher, now deceased, Armando Entralgo, points out, one could only speak of “three levels of development of the human community, which precisely explain the extent of the resistance that these communities would oppose to foreign aggression.” These levels are multi-ethnic states such as Ethiopia, Egypt or Morocco; peoples with temporal ties occupying a territory under colonial domination of a country that gave it “identity” within the framework of the colonial and international system, and tribes with a strong identity and roots in a given territory.
This structure was destroyed by colonialism, giving rise to national states that were born from the disarticulation and atomization of human communities and that had nothing to do with the organization that they had given themselves in Africa. Thus, as in the rest of the world, colonialism forever planted the seed of discord that in Africa acquired the characteristics of “intertribal, inter-clannic, interethnic and border problems” among others, as Entralgo rightly pointed out.
The Europeans did not leave in Africa – as they neither did in Latin America – the seed of a developed capitalism, the same one that in a revolutionary way began to displace feudalism as the prevailing economic mode on the planet. In Africa, a form of denaturalized and diminished capitalism was established. This is what explains the permanent political instability that has become inherent in the system: eternal conflicts and deepening underdevelopment.
Colonial hypocrisy now wants to “take matters into its own hands” to “save” Africa from the evils they themselves created. So far this century, France has intervened in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002, 2004 and 2011, in the Central African Republic in 2003, in Chad in 2006 and 2008, in Djibouti the same year, in Mali in 2013 and together with their NATO partners in the invasion of Libya and the partition of Sudan.
However, as President Macron himself said in March last year during a visit to Gabon, “the era of ‘Francafrica’ is over”, regretting that his country is still seen as interfering in the internal affairs of African nations. When he made such a claim, just over a year had passed since the start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine.
Could it be said that the SMO was the cause of the recent debacle of French power in Africa? It is difficult to give a definitive answer in this regard, but there is no doubt that this fact has had a significant influence on the decision of African states to distance themselves from France, which is nothing more than another expression of the structural crisis of Western hegemony over the planet, especially when in the opposite direction, more and more countries on that continent are moving closer to China and also to Russia. It is worth remembering that with the entry of Ethiopia and Egypt into the BRICS, the African continent provides three members to that organization, more than Europe and America, which only have one, and only below Asia, which has five. In such a way, Africa’s leading role in the new world that is being born is undoubtedly relevant.
In this context, Mali and Burkina Faso requested Paris to withdraw military forces from their territories, given its total ineffectiveness in the fight against terrorism that had been used as a reason for its presence in the region. In June last year, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop stated bluntly that his country “does not want human rights to be instrumentalized or politicized as they are not the prerogative of any country or civilization” and added: “It is surprising that some countries, that have practiced slavery or colonization, today are the ones that lecture others on human rights.”
The changes of government led by young anti-colonialist military officers and defenders of the sovereignty of their countries who have displaced leaders established in power thanks to the support of the metropolises have transformed the face of the region and, to some extent, of all Africa. Paris’ threats in response to the decision of the new governments to expel the European military have been responded to with the agreement of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to move towards advanced integration mechanisms that include the economic, financial and even security and defense areas.
Among the antecedents of these countries, in addition to a common colonial past, it should be noted that at some point in their recent history they had autochthonous socialist governments that were brutally fought and destroyed by the interference of the metropolis in alliance with the United States, which now, opportunistically, seeks to blame all the problems of Africa on France, in order to open a space that gives it presence and relevance in the Africa of the future.
The three countries have also been attacked by forces linked to terrorism embodied in Al Qaeda and ISIS that have filtered across Mali’s northern border with Libya following the NATO-led assault on Muammar Gaddafi. On the other hand, the obligation of these countries to use the CFA franc currency is an expression of the colonial control that France still exercises in the region. This currency is controlled by the French Treasury, 50% of the monetary reserves must be placed in that country at the same time that all the coins and banknotes that are still linked to the euro are minted in the metropolis.
Protests against the CFA, called “the last colonial currency” have grown in recent years, as an expression of the rejection of French colonial control over the finances of fourteen African countries. Consequently, the calls for the end of the CFA expose perhaps more than any other fact, the repudiation of the French colonial system.
On the contrary, the agreements of African countries with China and Russia are proceeding at an accelerated pace. The African peoples do not forget that in the last half century they have counted on the unrestricted multilateral support of China and Russia, including in the military field, to shake off colonialism, giving continuity to cooperation in the difficult task of establishing themselves as independent countries.
It’s something that neither France nor the United States can do, knowing that they have given funding, weapons and training to these terrorist groups that have grown under their shelter in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other countries. As some African leaders put it, “You can’t be part of the solution when you’re part of the problem.”
In a regional logic, it is valid to say that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an instrument under colonial control that has almost 400 million inhabitants and 5,112,903 km², and which had 15 members, is today in open crisis. 4 countries are suspended and of these, three, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, have left definitively. The fourth, Guinea, is also very likely to move away from the organization. It could be said that, despite that, the majority remains, but it should be known that the three who left and the fourth suspended, make 3,000,000 km², of the total 5,112,903 km², that is, 60%.
In the background, there is an intention to give it a unique character and universalize Western culture as if the West were the whole world. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo put it another way: “Western democracy has failed to function properly in Africa, since it was imposed by the colonizers.” The former Nigerian president continued explicitly: “The exercise of Western-type democracy has failed on the African continent because, with this political model, the opinion of the majority of the population is ignored”, stressing that such democracy constitutes “a government of a few people over all the people, and these few people are the representatives of only a part of the people, not the representatives of all the people in their own right.”
In this context, instead of Western liberal democracy, Obasanjo was of the opinion that “Afrocentric democracy” should be applied on the continent, different from the Western democratic system, since this system had nothing to do with the history and culture of the peoples of the continent. He concluded by stating that: “The fragility and inconsistency of liberal democracy as it is practiced, derives from its history, content, context and practice,” for which it should “question its performance in the West.”
It will be very difficult for Europe – because of its conviction of being a garden surrounded by jungle as Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy stated – to accept a multicultural, multiethnic and multipolar world. Much less that their concept of democracy is questioned and called into question.
But the new leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger Assimi Goita, Ibrahim Traoré and Abdourahamane Tiani respectively, have understood the situation, have learned from their past and from the mistakes made by some of their predecessors such as Kwame Nkrumah and Thomas Sankara and realized that Pan-Africanism “must be more than a theory contained in best-selling books or hidden in speeches to please the crowds”.
Now, these new leaders are demonstrating strategic intelligence and have understood that the main alliance must be between the military and the people so that they become active subjects of the political management of the State. But they have gone further, they are building common defense and security mechanisms as stipulated in the Charter of the Alliance of Sahel States initially formed by the three countries. Their capacity and vision of the future have led them to produce radical changes even to choose their allies and chart a different course on the international stage. To that extent, they have expelled the French, while establishing solid relations with China and Russia.
In the context of decolonization, the African continent welcomed the joint declaration signed a few weeks ago by Great Britain and Mauritius recognizing the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos archipelago and Diego Garcia, leaving Western Sahara the only and last African country awaiting the exercise by its people of their right to self-determination. recognized by all international organizations to close the chapter on colonialism.
They are manifestations of the anti-colonial struggle in the twenty-first century. As can be seen, colonialism is still alive and manifests itself in different ways. At this moment, in Africa, the most important anti-colonial battles on the planet are being fought. We must know and support them.
To be continued…