Michael Nelson Byaruhanga on the dehistorisation of a continent
“The African Revolution” by Richard Reid published by Princeton University Press
In the forest of pages, Reid correctly rejects the notion that Africa’s post-colonial political instability was a failure on the part of Africans to adapt to modernity. Although I find in his arguments a small need to decolonise the understanding of modernity or even revolution itself, Reid’s intact truth on the subject is spot on. He challenges the dominant narratives imposed by colonial powers, which often portray African states as inherently unstable or incapable of governance.
I like it! The African Revolution flattens Africa’s past and profoundly examines the bad romance between Africa and the West. It confronts colonial dehumanising concepts that portrayed African polities and cultures as barbaric, primitive, uncivilised and generally anti-human life. Reid puts it rightly, such were the illusions used to validate the looting of African resources, killings and mass destruction of the continent (in the name of saving it).
When I talk about destruction of the African continent, I talk as a child from a fishing village on the northern shores of Uganda’s Lake Mwitizige, which Sir Samuel Baker colonized as Lake Albert and lied that he had discovered a Lake (as if the word ‘discovered’ itself had lost its true English meaning which is to find something unknown and make it known), it is important to me because the scars from Baker’s half a century violence (1860s-1890s) are real. The period saw both the future and the childhood of the lowland children condemned in a case of competing brutality, where an estimated three million people died in a purported war that came in the name of ending the slave trade but in reality was to overthrow Bunyoro’s King Kabalega and usher in colonial parasitism. Those scars are still fresh.
Reid is right when he refers to the above as colonial rehistorisation (and dehistorisation) of Africa. The scramble and partition of Africa was indeed an abortion of the genuine evolution of African societies into modernity. It reduced nations into tribes and condemned the people into collective identities in the form of republics thus depriving them of a heritage and nationalistic sense of belonging. It is quite disturbing that even in the twenty-first century, imperialists and their agents are still stuck in the same historical mud of their accumulation. They continue to view Africa as a place that needs to be saved by the uncles in America, Europe or Asia.
We need to separate facts from fiction and through works such as The African Revolution, scholars of African history and Pan African writers should find the courage to decolonise the African story and sell Africa to the rest of the world, for what it deserves (truthful history, good politics, fair trade and equal opportunities). Africa’s political challenges cannot be viewed in isolation but must be understood in the context of their historical and ongoing external influences, such as capitalism, neo-colonialism and globalisation
I have always debated with my peers that the problem with African businesses, poverty, power or even political greed is all due to ‘lack’. The majority of Africa’s states end up with less than 30% of their own resources after colonial taxes. No matter what issue these states try to work on from within, it is futile because you cannot feed the country and its industries with just 30% of its resources. It’s impossible! Then as a leader, you are forced to either take the 30%, split it equally between everyone, and go bankrupt, or invest it where you think it will help most and incur the ridicule and civil war that follows from places you didn’t consider. Or keep the bulk of the 30% to yourself and use the rest to pay people to protect you from the population you are robbing. In either case, no good result will occur until you get 70% of resources from unfair colonial trade terms.