Africa's real problem today is it does not have enough of the 'colonial' values of materialism
Tuesday October 06 2009
No doubt Pope Benedict never expected to be loved by the Euro-left because of his conservative theological position on AIDS (on which, as it happens, he is epidemiologically absolutely right).
But perhaps his recent thoughts on the "toxins" of the West upon African life will give him an unexpected (and utterly useless) boost in those right-on circles.
These are his words. "There is absolutely no doubt that the so-called 'First' World has exported up to now and continues to export its spiritual toxic waste that contaminates the peoples of other continents, particularly those of Africa. In this sense, colonialism, which is over at a political level, has never really come to an end."
There are about 140 million Catholics in Africa. How many does the Pope think there would be if European countries hadn't colonised Africa? Would Irish and French and Spanish and Italian missionaries have gone into Africa in the absence of western "imperialism"? And without the Lee-Metford, Lebel or Mannlicher-Carcano rifles of the western imperial powers to protect them, just how long would European Christian missionaries have lasted in Africa?
That is one of the unpalatable but inescapable historical truths about the continent. Africa was physically subjugated and civilised by armed force. With the exception of Ethiopia and what is now Ghana, there was little from the Sahara to the Horn and down to the Cape that was not barbaric. Slave trading, cannibalism, witch-craft, voodoo, and tribal warfare: these were norms there. With the Ethiopian and the Ashanti peoples the invariable exceptions, almost no African society in sub-Saharan Africa had invented literacy or law: many had neither created the wheel nor agriculture.
Now you can pretend that the white man arrived and destroyed the great cities of Africa, ransacked the libraries, burnt the manuscripts, razed the universities, levelled the schools, laid waste to the art galleries and wrecked the great scientific laboratories, and be accordingly much loved in Africa. Indeed, if you further condemned the destruction of African railways and hydro-electric dams by western powers in the 19th century, the UN would stand and applaud your courageous anti-imperialism.
So it would be impolitic -- both in this space and in the UN -- to repeat that it was the British who first abolished the slave trade in 1807 in Africa, followed by slavery in 1833. Meanwhile slavery -- conducted largely by Africans -- remained a vital business across the continent for the rest of the century. King Guezo of Dahomey -- who had 18,000 wives and who enjoyed multiple human sacrifices almost daily -- expressed himself very lucidly on the issue in a letter he sent to Queen Victoria in 1848. "The King of Dahomey presents his best compliments to the Queen of England . . . he begs the Queen of England to put a stop to the slave trade everywhere else and allow him to continue it."
Ah yes: a militarily protected monopoly -- the ambition of all traders everywhere. Now, it would be utterly fatuous to pretend that the white man went to Africa to civilise it -- Europeans went to Africa for all sorts of motives; some good, some profoundly terrible, most of them somewhere in between. But by European efforts, Africa was turned from a cannibals' playground and a slave traders' paradise into a moderately ordered continent; and wherever the white man imposed his will with the most uncompromising authority by force of arms was precisely where the Christian missionaries were most able to operate. So if you want to know why there were about two million Christians in Africa in 1900 -- mostly in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola -- and 140 million a century later, the answer comes largely in the shape of a breech-loading magazine-rifle and a belt-fed Maxim or two.
So, actually, Africa's real problem today is that it doesn't have enough of what the Pope calls the "colonial" values of materialism. For it is materialism which causes people to limit family size, to value physical health, to build dams, to make roads, to plant crops, to dig irrigation channels, and to store grain, and yes, finally, to eat hamburgers. The most "westernised" African society today was the most advanced before the white man arrived: namely Ghana, just about the only democracy in sub-Saharan Africa today, which cherishes both the rule of law within its boundaries and peace with its neighbours beyond them.
Now on this issue of Africa, I know that there is limited free speech in Ireland. Tell it as it is and you're likely to be labeled a racist. But we have no choice. For as famine once again is about to strike in East Africa, threatening the lives of millions, we have to discuss the continent using the same economic realism which we employ when dealing with other post-colonial countries like Ireland, Indonesia and India. To employ a special, simpering, victimhood-rich vocabulary when we talk about Africa is to ensure that the terrifying threats of a continental calamity are even more likely to be realised.
And if Rome ever resembles downtown Lagos, as it could well do one day, then the Vatican might find itself feeling a certain wistful nostalgia for that dreadful thing -- the toxic waste of western materialism.
- KEVIN MYERS
Irish Independent
