By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein
November 21, 2024

The author is a former Venezuelan soldier and diplomat. This is Part I of his presentation at the International Symposium “Decolonization and Cooperation in the Global South,” held at the University of Shanghai, Nov. 12-13, 2024. Translation: John Catalinotto.

In his magnificent book “Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism” written in 1916 and published for the first time the following year, Vladimir I. Lenin, writing as early as the dawn of the 20th century, delineates the features of the colonial relationship that allow us to place it as a fundamental characteristic of the imperialist stage of capitalist society.

In Chapter VI, “The Distribution of the World among the Great Powers,” Lenin provides innumerable figures and “irrefutable general data from bourgeois statistics and from the declarations of bourgeois scientists of all countries, a picture of the whole of the capitalist world economy in its international relations, at the beginning of the 20th century, on the eve of the first imperialist world war.”

Lenin quotes the German geographer A. Supan, who affirmed that “the characteristic feature of this period is, therefore, the division of Africa and Polynesia.” Lenin warns, however, that … “it is necessary to amplify Supan’s conclusion and say that the characteristic feature of the period under review is the final partitioning of the globe — final, not in the sense that repartition is impossible; on the contrary, repartitions are possible and inevitable — but in the sense that the colonial policy of the capitalist countries has completed the seizure of the unoccupied territories on our planet. For the first time the world is completely divided up, so that in the future only redivision is possible, i.e., territories can only pass from one ‘owner’ to another, instead of passing as ownerless territory to an owner.”

It is precisely this new distribution that we are witnessing, the passage of territories from one master to another, and this is more evident in Africa than anywhere else in the world. The African leader, Ahmed Sékou Touré, in his book “Africa on the March,” written in 1967, confirmed 50 years after Lenin that such a situation was still evident. He said, when he was already the first president of independent Guinea that: “Far from affirming that colonialism is outdated, we must, on the contrary, follow with extreme vigilance all its activities in its new mutations, discover its minor manifestations and combat them, in order to be able to destroy in time, all its direct or indirect maneuvers.”

These were prophetic words that — once again — almost 60 years later are still fully valid. The colonial powers have modified their imperial practices and are expressing themselves through new maneuvers of all kinds aimed at maintaining their control of the world and the plundering of its natural resources.

The Berlin Congress

In several works on this subject I have referred to the fact that this division of the world was consecrated during the Berlin Congress of 1884 and 1885. This milestone marks the beginning of the direct colonial domination of Africa and that continent’s belated insertion into the world capitalist system. In an essay written by D.P. Ghai quoted by Cuban economist Silvio Baró, professor at the Center for Research on the World Economy (CIEM) in Havana, it is pointed out that in 1965, when the tidal wave of independence was unleashed in Africa, this continent “supplied 22% of the total production of copper, 67% of gold, 90% of diamonds, 8% of oil, 76% of cobalt and 25% or more of minor metals such as antimony, chromite, manganese and others of the platinum group; and its share is growing rapidly in oil, natural gas, iron ore and bauxite.”

Another aspect of the system set up at the Berlin Congress has to do with elements aimed at establishing the political structure of the continent. In colonial times, there were no national states in Africa. As the late Cuban researcher Armando Entralgo points out, one could only speak of “three levels of development of the human community, which precisely explain the extent of the resistance that these communities would put up against foreign aggression.” These levels are: multi-ethnic states such as Ethiopia, Egypt or Morocco; peoples with temporary ties occupying a territory under colonial rule of a country that gave them “identity” in the frameworks of the colonial and international system and tribes with a strong identity and roots in a given territory.

This structure was destroyed by colonialism, giving rise — from the colonial order — to national states that were born from the fragmentation and atomization of human communities and that had nothing to do with the organization they had established for themselves in Africa. Thus, as in the rest of the world, colonialism planted forever the seed of discord that in Africa acquired the characteristics of “intertribal, inter-clan, inter-ethnic and border problems” among others, as Entralgo rightly pointed out.

The Europeans did not leave in Africa — as they did not in Latin America — the nucleus of a developed capitalism, the same one that in a revolutionary way began to displace feudalism as the prevailing economic mode on the planet. In Africa, a form of denatured and diminished capitalism was established. This is what explains the permanent political instability that has become inherent to the system: eternal conflicts and deepening underdevelopment.

Colonial hypocrisy now wants to “take matters into its own hands” to “save” Africa from the evils the colonizers themselves created. So far this century, France has intervened in Ivory Coast in 2002, 2004 and 2011, in the Central African Republic in 2003, in Chad in 2006 and 2008, in Djibouti the same year, in Mali in 2013 and were masterminds with their NATO partners of the invasion of Libya and the partition of Sudan.

However, as President Emmanuel Macron himself said in March last year during a visit to Gabon, “the era of ‘French Africa’ is over,” regretting that his country is still seen as interfering in the internal affairs of African nations. When he made such a statement, just over a year had passed since the start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine.

The role of Russia 

Could it be said that the SMO was responsible for the recent debacle of French power in Africa? It is difficult to give a definite answer in this sense, but there is no doubt that this fact has had a relevant influence on the decision of African states to distance themselves from France, which is nothing more than another expression of the structural crisis of Western hegemony on the planet, especially when, on the contrary, an increasing number of countries of that continent are moving closer to China and also to Russia.

It is worth remembering that with the entry of Ethiopia and Egypt to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the African continent has three members in that organization, more than Europe and America [Western Hemisphere], which only have one, and only fewer than Asia, which has five. Thus, Africa has a leading role in the new world that is being born, and this is of unquestionable relevance.

In this context, Mali and Burkina Faso requested that Paris withdraw its military forces from their territories, given their total ineffectiveness in the fight against terrorism, which had been put forward as the pretext for their presence in the region. In June last year, Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop stated unequivocally that his country “does not want human rights to be instrumentalized or politicized, because they are not the prerogative of any country or civilization,” and added, “It is surprising that some countries that have practiced slavery or colonization are today the ones lecturing others on human rights.”

The changes of government by young anti-colonialist military officers and defenders of the sovereignty of their countries, who have displaced leaders who had been in power thanks to the support of the colonizers, have transformed the face of the region and, to some extent, of the whole of Africa. The threats from Paris in response to the decision of the new governments to expel the European military have been answered: Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have agreed to move towards advanced integration mechanisms that include economic, financial and even security and defense areas.

Besides a common colonial past, it is worth mentioning that at some point in their recent history these countries had indigenous socialist governments that the colonial power, in alliance with the United States, brutally intervened, fought and destroyed. Now the U.S. opportunistically seeks to blame all of Africa’s problems on France, in order to open up a space that will give it a presence and relevance in the Africa of the future.

Likewise, all three countries have been attacked by forces linked to terrorism embodied in Al Qaeda and ISIS. These forces, following the NATO-led assault against Moammar Gaddafi in Libya, have filtered across Mali’s northern border.

Moreover, the obligation of these countries to use the CFA franc currency is an expression of the colonial control still exercised by France in the region. This currency is controlled by the French Treasury, and 50% of the monetary reserves must be placed in that country, while all coins and banknotes, still linked to the euro, are minted in France.

Protests against the CFA, called “the last colonial currency,” have grown over the last few years as an expression of the rejection of French colonial control over the finances of fourteen African countries. Consequently, the calls for the end of the CFA expose, perhaps like no other fact, the repudiation of the French colonial system.

African agreements with China and Russia

By contrast, the agreements of African countries with China and Russia are moving at an accelerated pace. The African peoples do not forget that in the last half century they have counted on the unrestricted multilateral support of China and Russia, including in the military field, to shake off colonialism, giving continuity to cooperation in the difficult task of establishing themselves as independent countries.

This is something that neither France nor the United States can do, since they have given financing, weapons and training to these terrorist groups that have grown under their aegis in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other countries. As some African leaders say: “When you are part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.”

In a regional context, it is valid to say that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an instrument under colonial control with almost 400 million inhabitants and nearly 2 million square miles, and which had 15 members, is today in a sharp crisis. Four countries are suspended and three of them have left for good, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The fourth, Guinea, is also likely to leave the organization.

It could be said that, despite this, the majority remains, but it should be noted that the three that have left and the fourth suspended account for almost 1.2 million square miles, that is, 60% of the total.

In the background, there is an intention to give Western culture a unique character and universalize it as if the West were the whole world. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, speaking at a conference on “Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy for Africa” in November 2023 put it another way: “Western democracy has failed to function properly in Africa, because it was imposed by the colonizers.”

The former Nigerian president was more explicit when he said: “The exercise of Western-style democracy has failed on the African continent, because, with this political model, the opinion of the majority of the population is ignored,” stressing that such democracy constitutes “a government of a few people over all the people, and these few people are the representatives of only a part of the people, not the representatives of all the people in their own right.”

In this context, instead of Western liberal democracy, Obasanjo believed that “Afrocentric democracy,” different from the Western democratic system, should be applied in the continent, since the Western system had nothing to do with the history and culture of the peoples of the continent. He concluded by stating that: “The fragility and inconsistency of liberal democracy as it is practiced derives from its history, content, context and practice,” which is why it should “question its performance in the West.”

It will be very difficult for Europe — because of the conviction of being a garden surrounded by jungle as Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, stated — to accept a multicultural, multiethnic and multipolar world. Much less that its concept of democracy be questioned and challenged.

The new leaders in the Sahel

But the new leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — Assimi Goita, Ibrahim Traoré and Abdourahamane Tiani, respectively — have understood the situation, learned from their past and the mistakes made by some of their predecessors like Kwame Nkrumah and Thomas Sankara and realized that Pan-Africanism “must be more than a theory contained in best-selling books or hidden in crowd-pleasing speeches.”

Now, these new leaders are demonstrating strategic intelligence and have understood that the main alliance must be between the military and the people so that the latter become active subjects of the political management of the State. But they have gone further, they are building common defense and security mechanisms as stipulated in the Constitutive Charter of the Alliance of Sahel States initially formed by the three countries.

Their capacity and vision of the future have led them to produce radical changes even in choosing their allies and charting a different course on the international scene. To that extent, they have expelled the French, while establishing solid relations with China and Russia.

In the context of decolonization, the African continent welcomed the joint declaration signed a few weeks ago by Great Britain and Mauritius recognizing the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago and Diego Garcia, leaving Western Sahara as the only and last African country awaiting the exercise by its people of their right to self-determination, recognized by all international organizations to close the chapter of colonialism.

These are manifestations of the anti-colonial struggle in the 21st century. As can be seen, colonialism is still alive and manifests itself in different forms. At this moment, in Africa, the most important anti-colonial battles of the planet are being fought. We must be aware of them and support them.

To be continued — www.sergioro07.blogspot.com.