by

Africa, the motherland of humanity, though sitting upon an abundance of resources the continent finds its inhabitants in dire poverty, it finds itself hosting a plethora of senseless civil wars, and it finds its people dying by the wayside from diseases easily curable in other areas of the globe. We are all too familiar with images of African children with deformed bodies standing helplessly, begging for nourishment as flies scatter across their unsanitary bodies. As soon as one even mentions “Africa” the destructive imagery starts pouring in of impoverished children with fat bellies, underdeveloped huts, and diseased dirty people. Now the west obviously has a history of using their media machine to disrespect and dehumanize black people. Thus, all images portrayed through the western media deserve intense scrutiny. As people devoted to social justice we should always be skeptical of the verisimilitude of images portrayed by the Eurocentric media. However, this portrayal of Africa does indeed sadly have a basis in reality. Africa is a continent with billions of people in desperate need of water, clothing, food and housing.

In the face of Africa suffering, those of us in the heart of the beast – America – are bombarded with commercials by western charities claiming that paying “five dollars a month” will provide food and sustenance to an African child. We are told that Africans need donations from miscellaneous western charities and that this action will put food in their bellies. What these commercials lack is an in-depth analysis to the viewer as to why Africa is in its current predicament, which is of course due to western oppression, exploitation, racism, and colonialism. As sick as an African child may be, they will never be as sick as the parasitic capitalist monster that cements inequalities in the world. These pseudo-altruistic organizations also never tell us that paying “five dollars supposedly feeding an African child for months will not significantly improve the plight of that child. The only action which can accomplish that is bringing the entire system of western imperialism which pillages and murders black people all over the world to its knees!

In portraying negative imagery of Africans without an in-depth analysis as to why the people are in these living conditions in the first place, these organizations do more harm than good. While Africa is in deep poverty, it is also a place of beautiful paradises and wonders of nature. These commercials function as subliminal psychological warfare to disconnect Africa from the beauty of its lands and justify racist policies in the eyes of conservatives, racists, and other dunderheads who claim that Africa’s current state isn’t due to western imperialism but instead can be attributed to (brace yourself) – the natural ingenuity of the western world, corrupt African leaders, and general incompetency prevalent on that continent. In reality, Africa’s current state is directly attributed to white colonialism, racism and oppression. The free and noble Euro-American “civilization” has done nothing but rape the African continent purely for wealth.

The western world likes to champion itself as being the homeland of freedom, democracy, and equality but as hip-hop artist jay-z once said “we don’t believe you, you need more people.” All of the nations of that claim to be a part of the free world acquired their wealth from colonizing Africa in the most brutal, tyrannical, greedy, and bloodthirsty manner. The very nations that look down upon Africa as being a hopeless cesspool of poverty are the very same nations that built their wealth from the backbones of African people. The slave trade took many of Africa’s youngest, strongest and most astute people and packed them in the holes of ships to be treated as property. This slave trade devastated the African continent and destroyed numerous native civilizations. The American economy was born from the wholesale exploitation and enslavement of black people. Now when speaking of the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, people often argue that blacks sold other blacks into slavery to negate Europe’s role in Africa’s underdevelopment. Yet, they never tell you about the myriad rebellions that took place. Queen Njingha Mbandi of Angola led a quest to drive Portuguese slave traders out. Donna Vita in Kongo and Abd al-Qadir in Senegal refused to sell their own people, and King Agaja Trudo of Dahomey vehemently opposed it and launched attacks against European slave traders.1 Even if blacks had sold other blacks, the wealth they acquired from it would have been siphoned by European imperialists in their bloody conquests.

While the slave trade was eventually ended, Europeans found new ways to accumulate capital. In 1884, strategies for wealth thievery were brainstormed by various European powers. This was known as the Berlin Conference which was an agglomeration of parasitic European capitalists discussing who should get access to land that didn’t even belong to them! Eventually, Europeans began to conquer the previously beautiful African continent, completely obliterating African autonomy through unprovoked wars. Africa’s huge reserves of resources makes it a target by western nations that lack magnanimity existing only to indulge themselves in material wealth. This brutal theft of African resources by European imperialists is a constant them throughout world history.

Indeed, Belgium killed off millions of Congolese people in pursuit of resources by forcing blacks to work in the most abhorrent of working conditions. They were given no pay while Belgium made trillions of dollars off of their resources. In order to ensure Congolese met a certain quota for rubber, Belgium tyrannically beheaded, starved, whipped, burned, and castrated the native people. 2 This tyrannical killing of black people was intended to ensure that Congo’s resources were in the hands of Europeans. Belgium sought to secure white supremacy through its top operating system of capitalism, stealing the capital of blacks, and building the wealth of their own nation.

Belgium also had a hand in creating the conditions for the Rwandan genocide. In ruling Rwanda, the Belgians gave the Tutsi an elevated status in society by rewarding them certain privileges they would not allow for the Hutu. This was intended to bolster white supremacist perceptions of beauty. Although the Tutsi were black they exhibited longer noses, smaller lips, and cranial features that were commonly associated with whites. The Hutu on the other hand had more “black” features, with bigger lips, wider noses, and black skin. The Belgians began to turn each ethnic group against each other by giving the Tutsi puppet positions of power, which the Hutu people envied. Signs of Tutsi supremacy and Hutu inferiority were displayed throughout the nation and this Belgian-sanctioned ethnocentrism created the conditions for the Rwandan genocide. Belgians completely disrupted the fabric of Rwandan society, created antagonisms between the Hutu and Tutsi, and then withdrew with all the wealth they stole without mitigating the hostilities they created. 3 Now while Belgium has a history of exploiting African people, none of these depraved acts of brutality and savagery are limited to them. Many other Europeans took part in these same inhumane acts.

Britain stole precious riches from Africa having colonized Kenya, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South-Africa, disenfranchising African people and looting their wealth. The same goes for France, having colonized Kenya, Benin, Senegal, Niger and the Ivory Coast. They put people to work, stole their wealth, destroyed languages, families, and cultures in the process. Germany committed wholesale genocides against African people forcing the Herero and Namaqua off their lands into harsh deserts, after poisoning the few areas of water there.4 The Portuguese, Italians and other European nations partook in similar actions purely for resources and wealth. This exploitation, theft, and genocide increased the wealth of the western world at the expense of African people. It is what created the divide between the haves and the have nots.

Though African nations eventually won their independence, it was in name only. Western nations being all-greedy would find more sly ways to would still dominate the economies of African nations. Thus even today western multinational corporations continue to kill off African people, viewing the continent only as a source for raw resources, having absolutely no regard for human life. Even after colonialism ended, corporations that were established on land stolen from African people were maintained and continue to prop up turmoil. For example, the Shell oil company had displaced entire cultures in Nigeria and has contributed to countless oil spills that have harmed the environment and destroyed the food sources for many people. 5 Firestone has been working Liberian people for pennies in slave-like conditions, purely for rubber to supply the western world with tires. 6 De Beers has murdered, displaced, and forced many African people into harsh environments – purely for diamonds! De beers’ management is mostly white and the wealth they accumulate is literally off of the blood, sweat, and tears of African people. The actions of these corporations and many others continue to displace and contribute to instability on the African continent.

Many people argue that Africa’s instability can be attributed to the vast amounts of corrupt leaders. But what they leave out is that the western world is the reason why Africa has so many corrupt leaders. America supported some of Africa’s most crooked dictators as long as they were sure they did not align themselves with the Soviet Union during the cold war. These corrupt leaders allow the west and its parasitic corporations to siphon Africa’s resources without any resistance. It should also be noted that several uplifting African leaders have ascended to power in Africa seeking to bring Africa out of its poverty, but for attempting to improve the living conditions of African people they were killed by the CIA.

Thomas Sankara was the President of Burkina Fas, a proponent of Pan-Africanism, and a women’s liberation activist. Not only did he outlaw female circumcision and forced marriages but he also put large numbers of women in leadership positions in his regime. He demonstrated his loyalty to poor people by lowering his salary to a measly $450 a month. Under his leadership, his people became self-sufficient with regards to food. Thomas Sankara was loved by Africa’s poor people but hated by the west because he continued to prevent their influence on his affairs. Thomas Sankara was assassinated, and his regime was eventually overthrown in a coup d’état supported in France. In his place came a corrupt leader who reversed all of his anti-imperialist policies. 7

A similar situation occurred in the Congo with Patrice Lumumba, who came to power in a democratic election the western world pretends to love. Yet he wanted to eliminate the exploitation of his nation by western companies and thus empower his people.8 He was also assassinated in a western backed coup d’état and in his place came Mobutu, who allowed western nations to freely loot his lands’ resource. It is obvious that any African leader who seeks to improve the living conditions of his society by using resources to benefit his people instead of greedy capitalists is quickly assassinated. And then those that benefit from his rape and pillage turn around and have the audacity to say “Oh, I wonder why Africa is so poor”. Don’t play stupid. The western world and its policies hellbent on stealing Africa’s resources are directly to blame.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the Euro-American involvement in Africa’s underdevelopment, people continue to promote theories claiming that colonialism somehow benefited Africa by bringing “civilizing” to them. Listen, killing and robbing people is not “civilizing”. Africa was civilized prior to European imperialism despite the theories of crackpot pseudo-scientists such as Charles Murray, who go as far as claiming Africa’s poverty is due to ”special genes” that black people lack, that makes Africans genetically predisposed to poverty. The only problem with that asinine theory is that Africa was home to some of the greatest and wealthiest civilizations prior to European colonialism. The Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, and the Ghanaian empire were native African kingdoms that were extremely wealthy and powerful. They grew rich from the gold and salt trade and their resources were used to benefit their own people. After past and systemic rape, plunder, and genocides inflicted by Europeans against African people, it’s hilarious that people with such high I.Qs aren’t able to understand that people don’t recover that easily. Rape, pillaging and plundering are not reflections of a civilized, intelligent society, and being disenfranchised and impoverished as a result of this rape, pillage, and plundering is certainly not a sign of “innate” incompetency. Africa’s current state of poverty can only be attributed to white colonialism, racism and oppression, and nothing else. This poverty can only be ended through a massive resistance movement against western imperialism.

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1) Resistance and Rebellion http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=310&Itemid=222

2) Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold’s Ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa

3) Correspondent Fergal Keane’s interview with Gerard Prunier, author ofThe Rwanda Crisis. This interview covers the history of Tutsis and Hutus; events leading up to the genocide; the West’s actions; and Rwanda’s chances for justice and reconciliation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/interview.html

4) NAMIBIA 1904 http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_namibia1.html

5) Factsheet on the Ogoni Struggle http://www.ratical.org/corporations/OgoniFactS.html

6) Liberia: 80 years of exploitation in rubber plantation http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=14116&ThisURL=./index.asp&URLName=HOME

7)Revolutionary legacy of Thomas SankaraJames Haywood http://www.isg-fi.org.uk/spip.php?article600

Commemorating Thomas Sankara by Fari Omar, Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA), November 28, 2007

8) Patrice Lumumba: the most important assassination of the 20th century, The US-sponsored plot to kill Patrice Lumumba, the hero of Congolese independence, took place 50 years ago today http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination