Page 234 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

“Go home, m’zungu Go Home !”

Some Key Findings

Independence

De-colonisation took place in the mid to late 1950s to 1975. There was no single pathway
to national independence. Different colonial powers adopted different policies. A few

accepted, almost always reluctantly so, the inevitability of African independence. Others

resisted and did so bitterly. Some affected a public image of acceptance of African
Independence but, out of public view, worked in different ways and at different levels to

shackle new African Presidents and their governments..

(Some observers believe this undermining of the spirit of African Independence continues in an
undiluted form today)
To say that African nations were not ready for Independent rule is a simplistic, somewhat

patronising, understatement of the reality. m̩'zuŋɡu colonial powers had never really built

up the infrastructure necessary for African ‘home rule’. For example, in the Congo, a
territory larger than Western Europe, there were no army officers, only 3 African managers

in the entire civil service and only 30 university graduates in the whole country. All over

Africa whatever communication and transport links existed were those that m̩'zuŋɡu
colonial powers needed to aid their ruthless policy of extraction & exploitation

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The 20th Century m'zungu Scramble for Independent Africa

(“Veni, Vidi, Vici ",Steti - ego adduxit inimici mei")

• De-colonisation took place at the same time that the Cold War was in full swing. Newly
independent Africa became a proxy battleground.

• Major & minor nations deluged newly independent Africa with new embassies

Nationalist China (Cameroons and French Congo)
Communist China (Ghana, Guinea, and Mali)

South Vietnam (Ivory Coast)
North Vietnam (Guinea, Senegal and Ivory Coast,)

Russia (Togo,)
• Most of the Asia and European communist nations had embassies in Mali, Ghana and

Guinea

• The new independent African governments signed trade and credit agreements with Russia,

Poland, Czechoslovakia, China, Hungary, and East Germany on the one hand; and
Scandinavia, Japan, West Germany, Britain, and America on the other.