Melania, Trump’s wife is coming soon. She, whose husband think that non-white race are worth nothing. Her packaged tour is ignorantly dubbed a tour of Africa. It does not matter what Pius Adesanmi says, in many an American eye, Africa remains a country! But ahead of her coming, two of Europe’s most powerful women, Britain’s Theresa May and Germany’s Angela Merkel are trailing each other for the scramble. These people have developed a new love for the continent.
By Tunde Asaju
The BBC had a sweet title for latest scramble for African resources by new world leaders. They called it the charmed offensive! Nearly seven decades after the last European flag was lowered on the continent of Africa, they are back with poisoned chalice and their Trojan horses. They are thirsty for African resources and have charmed its leaders. As they come, they do not beg or come as partners, they are mavericks talking partnership. They’re not just hunting for minerals, they already have a sizeable chunk of the brains that should be making Africa the paradise it was endowed to be.
They want the minerals, but not the people. Those people that are frustrated and streaming across land, sea and any leaking orifice for the life that their home governments deny them. Some of them are qualified elites forced into exile, knowing exile dehumanizes them, but staying at home offers worse fate. We have a few success stories but buried are the doctors who become taxi drivers, engineers who become masons and the rest that make do sweeping the streets, washing cars and corpses – jobs that the unwashed masses of their host nations won’t touch.
Melania, Trump’s wife is coming soon. She, whose husband think that non-white race are worth nothing. Her packaged tour is ignorantly dubbed a tour of Africa. It does not matter what Pius Adesanmi says, in many an American eye, Africa remains a country! But ahead of her coming, two of Europe’s most powerful women, Britain’s Theresa May and Germany’s Angela Merkel are trailing each other for the scramble. These people have developed a new love for the continent.
Our so-called leaders are falling on each other to welcome them. They dress up our children with bouquets and detail their parents as dancers. It fits the narrative of the African as most useful for entertainment – after all, did their forebears not exhibit Africans in zoos as specimens. African leaders (for lack of a resonant adjective) who steal their people blind and stash their loot in safe western haven because of the insecurity that their misrule creates are frothing in their bucal cavities with terms of endearment – talking about partnership. Since when did the antelope and the lion form a pact?
In most societies sixty-year olds that are incapable of taking care of their own needs and still runs home to daddy and mummy are a failure. These African ruiners exhibit their failures with ignominy. They pitch ethnic nationalities and religious groups against each other and call their masters for help. The arms in conflict in Africa are not manufactured there, they are dumped by the West with local collaboration, some legitimately laundered by despots protecting their hegemony against D-Day. Now, defense pacts are needed to create a semblance of peace in Africa’s theatre of war and these visitors have the magic wand to end the conflicts!
Theresa May, like others before her came to Africa not with apologies for the atrocities committed by Great Britain against this continent. No. She came to open up Britain to the continent and vice-versa because she fears the flop that would result from her country’s myopic decision to break up from its European counterparts. Britain led the pack of wolves that scrambled Africa hundreds of years earlier. During its years of pillaging the continent, it stole the continet’s mineral resources and encouraged the trading in human beings. Till today, African stolen metal shines on the crown that is the symbol of British and so-called commonwealth authority. Britain owes Africa, it should not be signing pacts, it should be paying for its crimes of commission and omission.
African hands built the standing edifices that make up European tourism industry. Yet, Britain has refused to apologise for its legal theft. It’s new leaders claim they could not be made accountable for the sins of their forebears.
While Herr Merkel was in Africa signing pacts of cooperation, the Ovaherero communities of present-day Namibia were in Germany to receive 19 human heads. The heads of Namibians who were brutally massacred between 1904 and 1907 for anthropological evidence that whites are superior to blacks. Merkel would rather be in Africa signing pacts than admit to those well-documented crimes. The six million Jews gassed during the Holocaust have received their apology. Germany is still paying for its crimes against the Jewish state and anti-semitism is a crime in Germany but skinheads kill and maim people of colour on a daily basis. No apologies from these powerful nations for 400 years of slavery, killings and atrocities in Africa.
Belgium’s voice is hardly heard today even within European borders. Some of the most horrendous atrocities recorded in African history were committed by King Leopold in today’s Congo. The stories make ISIS atrocities look like child’s play and the foundation for the disharmony that dogs the Congo today were laid in those years. Belgium is yet to apologise for its crimes against African humanity.
The Dutch, a great people at home came to Africa and became monsters. They took over the southern part of Africa, confiscated lands, killed and maimed the people, stole, seized and occupied their land and pillaged their resources. Netherlands is yet to apologise for the crimes of apartheid. Today, it hides under international laws to legitimize its occupation of African land with the support of its western allies.
America has not ceased to be the black man’s grave in spite of the declaration. These are reasons anyone with a sense of history would never take these marauders on their words. The ethno-religious seeds of discord they planted in Africa is the monster haunting the continent and seeping through the world today. Should we be welcoming these people with drums or should we be watching their every step and demanding the apology we deserve and the reparation?
Who would stand for Africa? Certainly not those whose stolen mandates grants them the keys to the wealth of their nation and power to oppress the people. There should be no thank you May, Merkel or Trump’s wife – they should leave Africa to rise and develop or bury itself in shame!
tundeasaju@yahoo.co.uk
