Remember that posting about the largest landowners in Kenya? The ones cited are all White, and they benefit from Kenya’s wildlife, which is supposed to be a public resource (try keeping an antelope in your shamba and see what happens).
It reminded me why Mugabe is so hated by the West - he tried to undo that colonial shit where 4,000 white farmers owned 70 per cent of the arable land.
It triggered a memory I had about Francophone Africa.
Imagine this:
To allow its African colonies become independent, France signed a pact with all of them about the establishment of a common currency. 14 former colonies were involved.
The 14 countries were expected:
i) To deposit 85% of their foreign reserves in the French treasury. If they wanted to use it they had to borrow it at prevailing commercial rates.
ii) France retained the first right to buy any mineral or food crop from the 14 countries, whether it offered the lowest price or not.
iii) French contractors had the right to win any contract in the 14 countries, whether they were the highest bidder or not. I was shocked to learn that Gbagbo was deposed because he opposed a French firm building a bridge at double the cost the Chinese had quoted.
Believe it or not, these racist, crimes-against-humanity pact still remains! Just recently, a very senior French politician even admitted that without Africa, France would become a third-world country!
Why am I telling you all this?
When you ask the average African why the continent is poor, they’ll ramble on about corrupt leaders etc etc. Our education systems have failed to produce thinkers who can discern that when the former colonial rulers were leaving, they rigged the system with loopsided pacts and treaties that make us work for them like we were still colonies. Our lawyers are somehow unable to seek legal redress in international courts.
We have all beeen conditioned by Western media to blame ourselves!
In Kenya, for example, until the other day the British Army had the right to fly in everything they wanted without passing through Customs; their bases could not be inspected by Kenyan authorities, not even the president could step there!; the soldiers could rape and kill with impunity etc etc.
But the worst exploitation was in the economic field where British companies had virtual monopolies to supply government, especially the lucrative military and police. Until 1979 when the Americans supplied us with F5s, the entire military budget was going to Britain for second-rate hardware!
To their credit the British are not as rapacious, racist and bloodthirsty as the French, which is why most former British colonies are fairing much better than French ones. Kenya, Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia etc etc together have had lesser coups than two former French colonies combined.
So, what is the purpose of this rant?
It is to ask the modern African that the battle for freedom is not yet won. We need people to take action to liberate their countries. Francophone Africa must break its yoke. Countries like Kenya must look for new equitable markets like India and China. Locally, we must ask ourselves, are we getting value for money for those thousands of acres owned by Whites in Laikipia? We must take legal action to get Constitutional interpretations on whether wildlife can be privatised. If foreigners should be allowed to have private militias in the form of rangers.
The new emerging world means that if we kept our act together, countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda could become newly-developed countries in the next 30 years; we simply can’t supply the coffee, flowers, sugar, eggs, rice, tea, pyrethrum etc etc that is needed in India and China. The demand is endless.
We must break the slavery bond with the West now!
