Cabral Pinto
16 October 2009
column
Nairobi — In his Thursday column last week, Charles Onyango Obbo, with tongue in cheek, raised one of the most dangerous questions in the debate on the right of nations to self-determination. He mockingly asked US ambassador Michael Rannenberger and other envoys from the West to run Kenya for three months to give the country the direction they think it lacks, and get the hell out of the country if they fail.
Obbo challenged the international community, that euphemism for foreign interests, to take direct control rather than the invisible one they engage in. Will this invisible and indirect control ever become direct?
The invisible and indirect control is what Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, in his Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism analysed, addressed. To some extent, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, in his book, Not Yet Uhuru, also analysed what he called an invisible government that William Attwood, the first American ambassador in Kenya, oversaw.
Now we are being told that direct colonisation will save dominated countries and peoples from their corrupt, inept, oppressive and clueless leaderships. Have we not heard this script and text before: the need to be civilised?
At the end of March 2002, Tony Blair's political adviser, Robert Cooper, kicked a controversy in Britain by publicly arguing the case for what he called "defensive imperialism", which was to involve recolonisation of states that posed a security threat to the "empire."
Cooper's argument was contained in a policy pamphlet titled, Reordering the World, published by the Foreign Policy Centre. He called for the return of imperialistic methods of earlier eras -- force, pre-emptive attacks and deception.
Cooper argued that the need and opportunities for colonisation were as great as they ever were in the 19th century. The new imperialism was to bring order and organisation. Yash Tandon, the famous professor from Obbo's country, Uganda, said of Cooper's argument: "These are not words of a lunatic, nor an armchair academic.
These words come from the highest policy-making structures of the British government under Blair." America's Operation Provide Relief and Operation Restore Hope in Somalia were stark attempts at recolonisation.
The emergence of war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks on US targets, and its implementation in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq are other clear examples of this policy. History records many examples of occupation of countries by foreign ones, rationalised as protection of human rights and security.
But is it for the safety of those foreign nations or simply war on terror? Whether the occupation ends the argument of recolonisation or not remains a valid one. Might, therefore, is not right; just might.
What is emerging as new in this argument, laced with racist terms, is recolonisation justified by the failure of Africans and other dominated people to rule themselves.
After decades of independence under the rule of indigenous leaders, it has become clear to the West that the roads they built have not been extended, the classrooms they built in various schools are dilapidated, while the "natives" still suffer from ignorance, poverty, disease and hunger. It is music to the West's ears when some of us argue that conditions under colonialism were better than those after independence.
Are there not some islands in the Caribbean that once asked Britain to recolonise them, and the countries now see benefits through tourism and food security?
Have we not heard furious arguments in Kenya that to solve our problems we should ask President Obama to let us become the 53rd American state? What is perhaps positive about this debate is the realisation that as sovereign people we are yet to be free and we must prepare to fight for our freedom.
The wars we will next face are against foreign interests and our own leaders who neither the international community nor we need. Jaramogi Odinga Odinga taught us in the 1960s that we were not yet free. His legacy is that vision about uhuru that he lived and died for. Thank you, Charles Obbo, for challenging us to reflect on "what others say".
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
