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Africa: Guard Against Allure of Foreign Favours
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Macharia Munene
George Washington of the United States and Kwameh Nkrumah of Ghana have a number of interesting things in common. Each successfully led his people against British colonialism and became the first president of a fledgling country trying to find space in the international arena.
They were both symbols of zealous anti-colonialism beyond the confines of their countries. Separated by more than 160 years, the US and Ghana became reference points for those aspiring to be independent. Most important, each warned people of the dangers of dependency confronting nascent geopolitical experiments. The warnings are still valid.
After eight years implementing on a new form of government whose squabbles revolved around two antagonistic ideological prima donnas, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, Washington issued his political testament or Farewell Address in 1796.
He wanted Americans "to steer clear of any permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world" and warned that it was "folly in one nation to look for disinterested favours from another" because "it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept."
He stressed: "'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride must discard." He concluded hoping that his advice would occasionally serve "to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigues, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
The testament came when the US was weak and trying to create its own identity and maintain independence. It stressed self-reliance, which was later expanded by John Quincy Adams's refusal to joy-ride on British power.
This sense of self-reliance led to the Monroe Doctrine declaring the Western hemisphere to be an American preserve. Americans upheld the advice on alliances for roughly 150 years, discarded it and are now stuck with a NATO that appears to have lost direction without a clear way out. The initial concern was avoiding "favours" and "alliances" that could take away portions of independence.
Washington warned against accepting "favours" and in 1965, Nkrumah published Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism and accused the US of being "the very citadel of neo-colonialism." Having studied in the US, Nkrumah probably knew about Washington's testament. He was at Manchester in 1945 and heard Jomo Kenyatta stress the value of grabbing political power first. As president, Nkrumah found time to write his book advancing the concept of neo-colonialism. Overthrown the following year, 1966, with the supposed help of "the citadel", he went to exile in Guinea and made neo-colonialism a household term.
Neo-colonialists, Nkrumah noted, trapped countries through "aid" with conditions that give them "rights". These include "the right to provide aid" and impose privileged "advisors" who "infringe on our sovereignty" as they dictate friendship, trade, education, entertainment, and news. Neo-Colonialists, he argued, believe that "independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject peoples."
Washington's Farewell Address and Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism had lasting value as instructions to those in authority not to mortgage countries through "favours" or "aid". Countries "pay with a portion of ... independence" for "favours" and "aid." The advice from Washington and Nkrumah is more relevant today than when they wrote, roughly 170 years apart.
Munene is a professor of history and international relations at USIU.
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