“I CAN testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched,” Harriet Jacobs, in her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
If there was any doubt about how the institution of slavery not only severely negated Africa’s development and created platforms for the continued exploitation of the continent you need look no further than the ludicrous suggestion by UK lawmaker Lord Adrian Palmer (pictured) who called for Britain’s recolonisation of Zimbabwe to ‘safeguard’ the lives of its citizens.
It is not clear whether the wayward Palmer was representing the collective view of the British. The swiftness with which London attacked Harare’s authorities and security forces calls for a rebuke of the dreadful UK lawmaker.
But the silence of the British authorities has not only been alarming. It has done little to reassure us they find Palmer’s suggestion an attractive proposition to their overall foreign policy.
This is notwithstanding the fact that there have been suggestions that relations between Harare and London are on the mend.
We give the British authorities the benefit of doubt on the matter.
Our concern this week is on why Palmer came up with the disastrous and bellicose suggestion.
The detail is in the words.
Speaking in the British House of Lords on Tuesday last week, Palmer asked:
“Has the minister even considered the idea of recolonising Zimbabwe? It is tragic to see what is going on.”
British Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad responded, saying he had not considered that option.
Despite that ‘assurance’, a stern rebuke of Palmer will do us all good.
It has not come.
It might never come.
Yet Palmer’s suggestion triggers emotional memories for the people of Zimbabwe.
It instils fear into the hearts of those who lived under British colonial rule.
It is common cause that Britain colonised Zimbabwe because of the lure of its vast resource base and prime land.
That lure still stands.
According to the South African History Online (SAHO) website, minerals triggered British interest in Zimbabwe.
“Cecil John Rhodes, who was the pioneer of the conquest of Zimbabwe, with his British South African Company (BSAC), bought a written concession for exclusive mining rights in the Matabeleland and other adjoining territories from King Lobengula. He arrived accompanied by an army and later declared war on the King. After successfully overthrowing the King he named the country Rhodesia,” reads the document in part.
“The British South African Company was formed by Cecil Rhodes in 1888. In 1889 Rhodes applied for a charter from the United Kingdom to form the BSAC and in October the same year the Royal Charter was granted. The Charter was first granted for 25 years and was later extended for another 10 years. He was given the responsibility of expanding the British empire by colonising north of the Limpopo in 1889.
The company was invested with the right to create its own political administration. Profits were made from diamonds and gold and these profits were re-invested in the company, allowing it to expand its area of influence. The BSAC carried out the mandate under the control of Rhodes and by 1890 the company successfully occupied Mashonaland, which saw the expansion of European settlement into the area. The British flag was raised and the area renamed Rhodesia after Cecil John Rhodes.”
But for people like Palmer, it should be borne in mind that colonialism was created to sanitise slavery.
It is an extension of that hostile policy which had, for more than 400 years, harmed Africa in any imaginable way.
An April 1998 story by Le Monde diplomatique titled ‘The Impact of Slave Trade on Africa’ brutally exposes the lie that has been created by Western propaganda that it was out of their benevolence that slave trade was abolished.
The truth is that it was no longer sustainable the same way colonialism was negated.
This is the message that has been woefully lost on Palmer.
Let us hear what Le Monde says:
“The ideas of abolitionist propaganda, which certain ways of commemorating the abolition of slavery tend to reinforce, should not be accepted uncritically. The desire for freedom, and freedom itself, did not come to the Africans from outside, whether from Enlightenment philosophers, abolitionist agitators or republican humanists.
They came from internal developments within the African societies themselves. Moreover, from the end of the 18th Century, merchants in countries bordering on the Gulf of Guinea, who had mostly grown rich on the slave trade, began to distance themselves from slavery and send their children to Britain to train in the sciences and other professions useful for the development of commerce.
That is why, throughout the 19th Century, African societies had no trouble responding positively to the inducements of industrialised Europe, which had converted to ‘lawful’ trade in the produce of the land and was henceforth hostile to the ‘unlawful’ and ‘shameful’ trade in slaves.”
Utterances by the likes of Palmer are not only ill-informed; they carry with them a slave mentality that is designed to instill uncertainty in the hearts and minds of the once colonised people of Africa.
Let those with ears listen.