ONE of the things I enjoy about this column is getting feedback and views from readers on what they think about Africa, its people and poverty in general. In most of the views, there is one constant – that Africa must do something to improve its people’s lives.
However, the sticking points are always why Africa is poor and how can the continent pull its people out of poverty just like other countries in the East and West. These questions have remained and will continue to dominate debate on Africa development.
So last week, I met one disgruntled Zimbabwean, who works in one of the troubled countries in Africa, but his base is now in England. He prides himself as being British because he feels let down by the government back home. On this Sunday afternoon, he asked me if I sincerely believe in what I write and my answer was affirmative.
And his story started with two key points. His first point was that colonialism did not make Africa poor, but better and richer, therefore, there was no need to fight those wars of liberation. His second point was that the land reform was an unnecessary project, which killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
Africans cannot accuse the West of making them poor, as if they were in a better situation before the arrival of the colonialists. If Africa was indeed better before colonialism, then there was no need for the West to colonise the continent. The scramble and partition for Africa was largely driven the need to access resources by Western countries and the only continent that had underutilised natural resources was Africa. Colonialist were interested in those resources we didn’t have use for. As my colleague argued, blaming colonialism for poverty in Africa is tantamount to accepting that Africans are weak and easily defeated, which takes away the entire narrative about certain people having fought for liberation and won the war.
He questioned why colonialists, who were very few in number compared to the millions of Africans, would win battles over Africans and displace them to less fertile lands. While we can use the argument of the colonialist having advanced war machinery that, for him, is a sign that Africans were not only behind, but very weak and should not cry foul over being dominated. In fact, if Africans had embraced the new regime, there was no need for the colonialists oppressing a weak group of people who were not a threat to their goals. But the ineffective resistance meant that the colonialists needed an oppressive system to protect and pursue their interests.
He added that it is not true that Africa is poor because of colonialism, but we are just poor because we lack the pedigree to develop ourselves. Instead, Africans must be the thankful for the development that colonialism brought to the continent because Africans are the biggest beneficiaries of the colonial project in comparison to how most African countries have fared after independence. He used Zimbabwe as an example, that the country was a bush and without infra-structure. When the colonialists came, they had a plan of what they wanted to do, which was to settle and create comfortable lives for themselves by developing areas they settled in. They had ideas of how they wanted to explore available and underutilised natural resources. Most of what the colonialists took was not used by Africans for lack of interests or machinery. And the colonialist fought any resistance that came between them and their goals.
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He feels betrayed and decries having been part of the liberation struggle. If he had known that those who took over were after feeding themselves and destroying what the colonialist had built, he would not have been part of the war. In his assessment, the post-independence Zimbabwe leadership destroyed what was built in hundred years, in less than 35 years and the only thing that has improved are the sizes of their pockets. In a way, my colleague despite the anger he harbours over the government, may be right. Zimbabwe’s economy, which was the second biggest in Africa in 1980, stopped growing after independence, regressed in the 1990s and slumped in the 2000s. It is currently a pale shadow of our imagination.
His second point was that the land reform was not necessary. He argues that the fact that part of the land was occupied by white people did not present any danger to anyone. He says, In fact, it fed the nation and other countries. It created jobs and sustained the economy. If black Zimbabweans felt farming was their God-given right, they could have exploited underutilised land elsewhere where land remains virgin.
So the land reform was not, as portrayed by our politicians, meant to address the imbalances of the past, but driven by greed, lack of initiative to develop undeveloped land and the laziness that only wants to benefit without working hard. In fact, in his view, there were no imbalances because all services blacks claimed to have been denied access to where established by the colonialists. He says, blacks were not denied access to their rivers, mountains, tree, caves, bushes and others. One can’t be denied access to a school or clinic they never built or knew of.
He argues that if our politicians were sincere, they would have left the white farmers alone, but instead they should have encouraged the black majority to start new industry without touching the farming industry. He questions the contradiction in narratives especially why a government which has perpetually claimed to be independent after supposedly winning a war can continue to claim that the West is oppressing them.
Tapiwa Gomo is a development consultant based in Pretoria, South Africa
