Page 48 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

“Go home, m’zungu Go Home !”

An Overview of this volume

De-colonisation was not an act of altruism.

The m’zungu never wanted Africa to be independent. Acts of civil resistance were
countered with force and brutality. Colonial powers frequently resorted to assassination of

emerging pro-independence African leaders

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The colonial m’zungu left a legacy that doomed newly independent African

nations to decades of chaos

Colonial powers left a legacy of

long-term deep societal divisions

(Colonial rule frequently side-stepped traditional forms of governance and imposed their own systems
which created divisions based on distinct grouping and gave power and privilege to new elites – elites
which were often a ‘smaller tribe’ on the basis that they would fight harder to keep colonial rule as their
own future depended on it)
a desperate lack of infrastructure, both physical and economic

(A consequence of colonial rulers categorising African lands as being fit for a ‘plantation’’ or
‘settler’ or ‘peasant’ economy and then restricting development around that)
African leaders unprepared for government
(Colonial powers had no plan for creating nation states out of their colonies and so post-
Independence African leaders had virtually no experience of government.)
independence governments without the means of administration

(In the Congo, a territory larger than Western Europe, there were : no army officers, only 3 African
managers in the entire civil service, only 30 university graduates)
(“The British ruled us for 43 years. When they left, there were 2 trained engineers and 12 doctors.”
st
Julius Nyerere, the 1 President of Tanganyika now Tanzania)
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The m’zungu played an active part in creating the chaos in the decades that
followed African independence

Ex-colonial powers, and others, violently undermined post-independence Africa

(“Between 1961 and 1973, six African independence leaders were assassinated by their ex-colonial
rulers,” ; Victoria Brittain writing in the Guardian newspaper.)

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