allAfrica.com: Africa: Is Recolonising Continent the Solution to Its Woes? (Page 1 of 2)

As Africa performs below par due to poor governance, negative ethnicity, neo-imperialism manipulations, petty cross border differences and genuine ideological disagreements, the voices calling for the continent's recolonisation are as unfortunate as they are misinformed, writes policy analyst Peter Kagwanja

As Africa's budding democracies like Kenya emerge from ethnic violence, cynics are entertaining the idea of a new scramble for Africa which would entail re-colonisation and loss of sovereignty.

With China's economic shadow looming large over the continent, voices prodding for Africa's re-colonisation, particularly by the West, are growing louder and brazenly bolder.

Recently, the South African journalist and colonial apologist, David Bullard, was fired after writing an article asserting that "un-colonised Africa wouldn't know what it was missing" (Sunday Times, April 7, 2008).

Bullard stirred an hornet's nest by surmising that colonialism is the best thing that ever happened to Africa.

Had the continent escaped being sliced into chunks by Europeans during the 1884 Berlin Conference, he argues, in the 21 century it would be a sitting duck for Chinese colonisers "looking for coal, metals, oil, platinum, farmland, fresh water and cheap labour."

Beyond Bullard's racial mongering, Africa's Post-Cold War political instability, state collapse, war and famine have been invoked as the central plank of the re-colonisation discourse.

Writing against the backdrop of the horrific events in Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia, the Kenyan academic, Ali Mazrui, courted the ire of his intellectual colleagues when he argued that "decaying parts of Africa need benign re-colonisation" (International Herald Tribune, August 4, 1994).

The main thread of Mazrui "benign re-colonisation" thesis was that "external re-colonisation" under the banner of humanitarianism was necessary to stem "the cancer of chaos."

Mazrui's idea of a trusteeship system like that of the United Nations over Congo in 1960 may have rationalised more than eight UN peace-keeping missions in Africa.

Other analysts like William Pfaff urge for a "trusteeship system" by the former European colonial powers as the solution to much of Africa torn by conflict (International Herald Tribune May 25, 1996).

Be that as it may, colonialism in whatever garb or shade is the worst form of dictatorship. The Trusteeship debate has a racist streak to it. Curiously, no calls for a trusteeship system for parts of Latin America, Eastern Europe (former Yugoslavia and Chechnya) or Northern Ireland where communal killings also occurred.

Casting a dark shadow over Africa's sovereignty is a refurbished United Nations Trusteeship Council, established in 1945 to administer and to ensure peace and security in non-self governing territories.

Now under Michel Duclos of France as President and Adam Thompson of the United Kingdom as the Vice-President, the Trusteeship Council is beginning to be imagined in some quarters as a likely framework for the re-colonisation of "decaying parts" of Africa.

In 2005, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the termination of the Council as its mandate had expired in 1994, but it is emerging as a new site of the struggle for global dominance, especially by the veto-wielding powers and movers and shakers of global politics -- China, France, The Russian Federation, United Kingdom and the United States.

The 21st scramble by both the West and China for unfettered access to Africa's resources and markets carries eerie echoes of its 19th century forerunner, especially the idea of Africa as being in need of being "saved' from conflict, disease and hunger.

While Western analysts accuse China of neo-colonialism, many African leaders view the country not as an imperialist but as a friend and partner.

Beijing backed many African liberation groups fighting for independence and has not put the strong demand for "good governance", democracy and human rights as condition for its aid to Africa.

Further, African states condemned as pariahs by the West, Zimbabwe and Sudan for instance, look to China's veto in the powerful UN Security Council to protect their interests. In the war against terror context, the Sino-Western rivalry in Africa seems to be drawing to a head, with the establishment of the US Africa Command (Africom) in October 2007.

Washington has marketed Africom as a mere tweaking of its global military infrastructure to give close attention to Africa and to combat terrorism, improve security, promote development, health, education, democracy and economic growth in the continent.

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