BY GETACHEW MINAS
Africa had been high on the list of priorities for exploitation by the colonialists. In the past, the colonial powers needed troops and raw materials from their colonial empire to fight wars. And it was hard for them to keep the allegiance of colonial subjects around a “racial” hierarchy that reflected the prevalent feelings of racial superiority by the West. The survival of the continent, however, seemed to depend on the allegiance, loyalty and fidelity of African leaders to their people. These situations were not lost by the victims of racism. It was on record that colonial “subjects” had no much freedom to defend. Thus, the colonialists feared a worldwide revolt by blacks that were inspired by Ethiopia’s stand against white rule. These colonialists realized late that during the wars white racism was becoming a serious political liability. The “failure” to fully endorse racial equality at peace talks after the wars was also a huge embarrassment for the Whiteman.
In his book “The Tyranny of Experts,” William Easterly wrote that the colonialists had attempted to remove the liability of racial inequality during wars by reinventing the idea of “technocratic” development as a justification for colonial rule. The Western imperial legitimacy was to be based on its technical ability to achieve rapid development, but not on the racial superiority of the Whiteman. The colonial empire could develop a strategy for itself as a “benevolent” autocrat for the colonial peoples. The colonialists even banned racist statements by colonial officials to conform to the new strategy, although the victims of racism knew that such a “ban” did not immediately change racist attitudes. The ban on racist feelings appealed to the victims of racism and encouraged the new African political leaders to fight for their freedom.
The African leaders found the idea of state-led technocratic development to be a justification for their own aspirations to “unchecked” power. The African leaders would inherit the role of benevolent autocrat from the defunct colonial empire. This was a critical moment in the history of African authoritarian development, including the Ethiopian empire, when it was in the process of becoming the “new” consent on how to escape poverty. This situation reflected that Africa was a region where ideas of development took shape when Western colonialists were “still” racist. With such racism, there was little probability that ideas of development would recognize the “dignity and rights” of the Africans who were seen by the Whiteman as irrelevant objects of development.
When the new African leaders endorsed the same authoritarian ideas “without” racism, the debate between authoritarianism and free development came to an end. W. Easterly observed that only a few dissident economists protested the suppression of the rights of the poor, but they would be ignored and then forgotten. Many Western observers of Africa still expressed racist attitudes before “and” after independence. Inspite of combating racism, they were prone to heroic achievements of racist ventures. The antiracist efforts, however, created “embarrassing situations” for those who expected the colonial officials to accept Africans “as equals.” The problem was that most Africans were still poor and this made it difficult for the colonial officials to accept the African who had acquired the “culture” of development.
The US leaders and European colonialists sought to apply self-government and freedom to Africa. They made sure that African freedom was only a misnomer and misleading as long as its resources were all controlled by the West. They produced a defense mechanism “against” the charge of African inferiority arguing that the African was capable of equal education and responsibility with the Whiteman. They even asserted that the black man was as competent as the Whiteman to handle the scientific instruments of civilization. They also noted several black success stories in the tasks of government, industry, and commerce which were increasingly entrusted to young Africans, including Ethiopians. Yet, the racist attitudes “continued” in the West due to fears that the wars had caused a loss of white prestige.
Historians noted that the racists could no longer suppress the constant violence of intertribal wars in Africa. As a result, they felt a loss of prestige that fed the fears of a global race war. The WW had been a tragic civil war “between the white peoples,” which left them overstretched around the world. This enabled “the colored races” to threaten whites through sheer force of numbers, already outnumbering and outbreeding the whites. Unfortunately, for supremacists, the whites had contributed to this losing “population race” by sharing their scientific knowledge to bring down nonwhite infant mortality. Writers noted broader “sympathy” between the black man in the US, the African natives, blacks in the Caribbean, and Indian and Chinese nationalists. In other words, the “oppressed” races have a common foe, which are the white peoples of Europe and the US.
It was noted that the white mentality has approached hysteria, as “white” commentators thought nonwhites saw every military conflict everywhere as part of the color war. Several decades back, it was pointed out by an African student that events in the continent tended to unify the world of “colored” peoples against Western influence and above all against UK and the US. That student was the Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta, whom the British had later accused of leading the Mau Mau revolt against British rule in Kenya. Similarly, the Asian freedom fighters could offer themselves as leaders of a nonwhite counterattack on white imperialism. They had conducted severe armed confrontations with the colonialist in Asia.
The Whiteman was forced to ban racism in public whenever colonial subjects had complained about it. Colored workers were no longer referred to as “coolies” and as “niggers,” but as great peoples. It was pointed out that the colonial officials were advised to play down their racial arrogance and avoid the word “native” in their official reports. The Colonial Offices were already dealing with their own embarrassing race problem. The nonwhite colonial subjects were not eligible for the Colonial Service or officers’ commissions in the Army. It is on record that the League of Colored Peoples, an organization made up primarily of blacks fighting racism, protested against the racist policies.
The black economist, W. Arthur Lewis, who was the first black winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and one of the founding fathers of development economics, had been subjected to racism. He critically protested against racist policies. It was an embarrassment that advertisements for Colonial Service posts specified that the applicant had to be of European parentage. This was an embarrassment at a time when such overt racism was becoming a liability. After the outbreak of wars a new justification was required for colonial rule to continue and save the European domination. The colonialists were scared of the loss of control of precious resources in the colonies, particularly in Africa.
A new philosophy of colonial rule concerned the role of the state in the colonies. It was the primary function of the colonial state to concentrate its attention on the improvement of the standards of living and the extension of the social services in the dependencies or colonies. Some assistance was to be given to colonies which could not afford to improve the living standard of the people. The new philosophy included systematicplanning, which in turn implies control on the part of the colonialists. They downgraded, for example, the “initiative” and self-reliance of the native cultivator to improve his standard of living.
The natives might even require coercion in which the colonial state could use “legal compulsion” to improve the methods of cultivation of export crops or to correct faulty methods of cultivation leading to soil exhaustion and erosion. Such coercion became “justified” if it had shown that it was the only possible way to secure a reasonable increase in the standards of life of the native. The “technocratic” approach of the colonialists offered an excuse to “postpone” indefinitely any native demands for political rights. This was another critical moment in the story of how useful technocracy was to “evade” discussions about rights. After all, the approach delivered material benefits, which the colonialists thought undermined any concern for political rights of people who were starving.
The colonialists designed a strategy that “denied” the native population cause to complain. When the natives demanded for a political “vote”, they were offered bread. This situation led to a sweeping generalization that “political” liberties were meaningless unless they could be built up on a better foundation of social and economic progress. The shock of the conquests of the colonial territories by the natives provided motivation to “redefine” colonialism. These events in the colonies had created a demand for a radical change in the colonial policy. These events required a “new” conception of relationship with the colonies, in which the colonial powers would join the “movement” for the betterment of the backward peoples.
The Africans have to solve their own problems of economic development after removing the colonialist authoritarian and technocratic approach that denies their individual rights. Although technocratic solutions may solve some development problems in the short term, long-term prosperity can be achieved only in countries that promote democracy, economic and social development, free trade, innovation and entrepreneurship. Africans, including Ethiopians, have valuable historical contexts and experiences to “decide” their own destiny if they introduced democratic rule. The current development thinking evolved, tracing its beginnings to the post-colonial era, when Western powers needed an excuse to retain power and influence at a time their empires collapsed. They devised a Cold War strategy that led the US to support autocratic leaders and technocratic development initiatives that helped it retain influence in the newly independent African countries.
The experience of Ethiopians was more or less similar to other colonial peoples of Africa. They had been engaged in colonial wars twice, the first in the Battle of Adwa, in which they had won the Italian invaders. The second was a war of “occupation” and subjugation by Fascist Italia that lasted for about five years. In both cases, the Ethiopian Heroes had been able to defend their liberty. The occupation was only for a very short period compared to colonial rules in other parts of Africa. The heroic sacrifice of Ethiopians in defending their freedom that lasted for thousands of years entitled them to a lasting respect by Africans. Africa is now fully liberated, but still suffering from subjugation, exploitation of natural resources through neocolonialism. Africans, including Ethiopians, need conscious strategy to fend off the evil design of the Western Whiteman that engaged in the policy of “divide and rule,” based on ethnic, tribal, clan and family antagonisms. Whatever the Western policy toward Africa might be, the destiny, fortune and fate of Africans is based on defeating the war against racial superiority.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 7 JULY 2022
