The West needs to change the way it thinks about Africa, and representation isn’t enough.

Thomas Sankara. “our country or death- we shall prevail”

Black Panther, Marvel’s latest cape-based outing, marketed as the first black superhero movie of a generation (well Hancock was ten years ago tbf) has, even before it’s release, become something of a cultural event, almost annoyingly so. There’s no doubting that Hollywood has a representation problem when it comes to black actors and stories, and the US twitterati has been glowing in the film’s affirmation of black heroes. Yet why stop there? is a film set in Africa with an American hip hop soundtrack really the best they can do? There are more than enough stories of African self-determination, intrigue, betrayal in the history of the twentieth century, and they’re all true, too.

There’s a narrative in the West that the countries of Africa and other developing countries that cases of poverty and instability on the continent are their own fault. On the identarian right, this is expressed through racist ideas that the people of Africa are intrinsically less human than whites, while on the liberal side of things, the attitude amounts to the idea that African nations are still dealing with the legacy of colonialism and western aid has been selflessly helping them recover amidst a political culture of strongmen dictators.

Where both the racist right and the liberals share common ground is their insistence on portraying African nations as insulated cells of human activity. The right ignore colonial wealth extraction and the liberal, while rightfully aware of colonial-era plunder, still fail to realise the devastating effects of neo-colonial political involvement and free trade.

The liberal and the neoliberals may insist that at least the west now is trying to make up for its past mistakes with aid, but the truth is, incoming aid to the global south is a fraction of the wealth that is exported. While the politics of representation are important, they didn’t mean that the USA’s first black president would stop advancing the neoliberal agenda of “free trade”, destroying African worker’s livelihoods for the sake of American cargo.

History tells us a story so that we might learn from past mistakes, but in the case of Western aggression in Africa, it informs our present understanding of African instability and poverty. By understanding western aggression, we can see that Africa does not need a helping hand, it needs the boot off its neck.

image from http://communitymonitors.net/2015/04/capital-flight-is-holding-africa-back/

Perhaps Hollywood could be a vehicle for better understanding? Blood Diamond (2006) was maybe the closest we got to a blockbuster that attempted to draw the link between destitution and global economics. The Last King of Scotland (2006) told a familiar tale about African “strongmen” leaders, but neglected to fully explore the British and Israeli involvement to install Amin, preferring to see British diplomats as naive fools rather than involved coupsters. Mandela (2013), was the inevitable outcome of a decade of western feting of South Africa’s beloved leader, yet the rose-tinted hagiography failed to examine the truly shocking economic handover of the post-apartheid era, a sleight of hand that put power not in black africans, but in western ecomomists who bullied South Africa into accepting a path to “development” where life saving drugs would be sold to them at huge profits, wages were stalled and the budget would be put in service of the national debt to the West.

“in the Western imagination, Africa is stereotyped as a continent plagued by corrupt dictators, with the supposition being that Africans are perhaps too ‘primitive’ to appreciate the virtues of Western-style democracy. But the truth is that ever since the end of colonialism, Africans have been actively prevented from establishing democracies. The legacy of strongman rule in Africa is a Western invention, not an indigenous proclivity.”- Jason Hickel, The Divide

So, here are three real life heroes of Africa, each with a story worthy of a wider audience:

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was the president of Ghana from 1960–1966 and in the era post independence was a strong advocate for national determination. Realising that growth and development would come from local industries, he nationalised the mines and began to regulate foreign corporations, making sure they wouldn’t exploit the newly independent Ghana. He also introduced free health care and education, the social safety nets that would ensure equitable development.

Nkrumah was a pan africanist and also an internationalist, being one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement. He was a fierce critic of western intervention and in his seminal book Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism he wrote:

‘Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below her soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operates to Africa’s impoverish’

But Nkrumah never had the chance to fulfill Ghana’s potential. He was the victim of a CIA backed coup and was banished into exile. From them on, Ghana, under a western-friendly junta, took economic lessons from the IMF and the World Bank and Ghana went back to being an exporter of primary goods rather than developing it’s own industries.

Patrice Lumumba

Lumumba was, like Nkrumah, a post-independance pan-Africanist leader. Elected Congo’s president in 1960, his assassination at the behest of Belgium and the US has been described as the country’s “original sin”. Lumumba, only in office for two months barely got a chance to fulfil Congo’s dreams of economic self-determination.

“Political independence has no meaning if it is not accompanied by rapid economic and social development”.

Thomas Sankara

In 1984 Thomas Sankara helped to overthrow the military leadership of what was then called by it’s colonial name, Upper Volta. Like the other heroes of Africa, Sankara knew that the key to development was not opening up the country to profit seeking multinationals, but investment in health and education. School attendance rates doubled and infant mortality dropped. Sankara also pushed forward austerity, not for the people, but for the government lifestyles, cutting salaries of overpaid ministers, including himself.

Sankara drew the ire of the West with his rejection of the debt regime that was being imposed on the global south. Speaking in 1987, his message was clear.

Sankara was assassinated shortly after in a move widely held to have the support of the French, if not their involvement.

Debt

On debt Sankara was a prophet, 30 years after his death, African countries remain enslaved by debt (from loans bought mostly by dictators and that has done nothing except enrich the West) to the point where countries such as Ghana, are simply paying off interest, unable to escape. Not only that but so-called “free trade” agreements continue to destroy livelihoods, especially among farmers.

If Hollywood were to create films about these three extraordinary men and the many others of Africa who fought against the imperialism of the West, and who recognised that development could not be imported but was built on the strength of the people, then it might go someway to changing the narrative. whether they would make them is another question. Westerners who look back to the era where slavery was legal in their countries and convince themselves that if they were around at the time, they would have been an abolitionist, should ask themselves today whether they support the debt that keeps the poorest countries of the world poor.

get involved: There are many groups out there that support debt justice, such as the Jubliee Debt Campaign in the Uk or the Debt and Development Coalition of Ireland.