Page 189 - Afrika Must Unite

174 AFRICA MUST UNITE
disintegrating our national unity. The Congo, hastily invested
with independence, with malice aforethought, immediately
became the battleground of imperialist-fomented division.
These are all part of the policy of intentional balkanization of
Africa for m anipulation by neo-colonialism, which in effective­
ness can be more dangerous to our legitimate aspirations of
freedom and economic independence than outright political
control. For instance, Lenin m aintained that:

A form of financial and diplomatic dependence, accom­
panied by political independence, is presented by Portugal.
Portugal is an independent, sovereign state, but actually,
for more than two hundred years, since the war of the Spanish
Succession (i 701-14), it has been a British protectorate.
Great Britain has protected Portugal and its colonies in order to
fortify her own positions in the fight against her rivals, Spain and
France. In return, Great Britain has received commercial
privileges, preferential conditions for importing goods and
especially capital into Portugal and the Portuguese colonies,
the right to use the ports and islands of Portugal, its telegraph
cables, etc., etc.1

The form taken by neo-colonialism in Africa today has some
of these features. It acts covertly, manoeuvring men and govern­
ments, free of the stigma attached to political rule. It creates
client states, independent in name but in point of fact pawns of
the very colonial power which is supposed to have given them
independence. This is one of the ‘diverse forms of dependent
countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in
fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic de­
pendence5.2 The European power forces the conclusion of pacts
with the balkanized states which give control of their foreign
policy to the former. Often, too, they provide for military bases
and standing armies of the alien power on the territories of the
new states. The independence of those states is in name only, for
their liberty of action is gone.
France never subscribed to the thesis of ultimate independence
for her colonial territories. She had always maintained her
1 Lenin: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, pp. 137-8.
2 ibid, pp. 136-7.