THE MAD SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA

Prof. Walter Rodney asks a pertinent question “What would have been Britain’s level of development had millions of her people been put to work as slaves out of their country over a period of four centuries?” As if slavery had not already done enough damage to Africa’s people, European leaders met in Germany from December 1884 to February 1885 at the imperialist Berlin Conference The Belgian King Leopold stated the purpose of the Berlin Conference as “How we should divide among ourselves this magnificent African cake.” Africa was thus plunged into another human tragedy.

Through the Berlin Treaty of 26 February 1885 the European imperialists sliced Africa into “Portuguese Africa”, “British Africa”, “German Africa”, “Italian Africa,” “Spanish Africa”, “French Africa” and “Belgian Africa,” Comrades, Slavery and colonialism enriched Europe and reduced Africa to abject poverty. The riches of Africa and her raw materials fuelled the economies of imperialist countries. The British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill bore testimony to this fact when he said: “Our possession of the West Indies gave us the strength, the support, but especially the capital, the wealth, at the time when no other European nations possessed such reserve, which enabled us to come through the great struggles of the Napoleonic Wars.

The keen competition of commerce in the 18th and 19th centuries enabled us not only to acquire this appendage of possessions which we have but also to lay the foundations of that commercial and financial leadership which when the world was young,…enabled us to make our great position in the world " It was against this background of genocide in the name of “European civilisation” that Africans in the Diaspora who had been shipped from Africa and enslaved in the West Indies and in the Americas realised that the solution to Africa’s people both at home and abroad was Pan Africanism the Pan Africanism is a political philosophy that was conceived in the womb of Africa and now We must claim our inheritance to be a total people Africa’s riches belong to Africa’s people The control of our resources and land was the substance and objective of Africa’s liberation struggle Africans cannot face the onslaughts of imperialism without Pan Africanism because the imperialists are determined to loot the riches of Africa for themselves, even using violence or financing proxy wars in Africa to achieve their heinous objectives and Pan Africanism must never be just a meeting of African Heads of State Pan Africanism created African States.

Pan Africanism is older than these states. A United States of Africa has taken so long because many African leaders in this African Union are not Pan Africanists and They have no qualifications to drive the Pan African agenda It is like asking capitalists to drive a communist agenda or asking communists to drive a capitalist agenda.