Page 89 - A People Called Afrika

Colonization

came through compliance and cooperation rather than resis-
tance. What it left behind was a scarred almost barren land-
scape of a ‘former’ Afrika at the ‘end’ of the colonial period.
While the United States of America did not claim any ter-
ritory in Afrika, it did have representation in Berlin, assent-
ed to the goings on and also was the first country to recog-
nize Leopold’s sovereignty over Congo. After the conclusion
of the Second World War, the US had economic and po-
litical clout superior to all the countries colonizing Afri-
ka, many of which it was now funding, but even though it
claimed to be against colonialism, the US also seemed to want
to retain the friendship of its allies in the Western alliance.

This was during the Cold War and it needed ‘friends’ in its fight
against Communism and in its standoff against the USSR and
those aligned with it. So America took the position that it did
not want a “premature independence” for the nations of Afrika,
even though it could easily have strongly influenced the path
to full liberty of the continent. Instead, according to Dr. John
Kent, America first chose to try to portray colonialism in Afri-
ka positively and only later began to shift the narrative… when
it saw advantage in having Afrika on its side as part of its Cold
War efforts against Communism’s infiltration of the continent.

Afrika’s liberation struggle

By 1905, most of Afrika was trapped in Europe’s chokehold,
and the ‘colonial extractive industry’ was firmly in place. Eu-
rope had full control over the continent’s natural resources
and human resource, which they used to do the backbreaking
work of hauling it out. Imperialism had cast its pall over Afri-
ka, to the extent that Afrikans were conscripted into European
armies to fight in the two world wars. These wars would trig-

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