A Short History of Africa: From the Origins of the Human Race to the Arab Spring (2012)
By Gordon Kerr
Published by Pocket Essentials
ISBN 978-1-842434420

I HAVE never liked Charles Darwin’s evolution theory not for any religious reasons, but that it creates some sort of racial arrogance.
Western and European writers, thinkers and policy makers have always used this theory to justify and legitimise their plundering of Africa on a civilisation mission.
It has been used to coin the infamous term, “the African is my brother, but my younger brother by several centuries” as used by Albert Schweitzer a German theologian.
Africa has been labelled the cradle of mankind where the oldest bones in human form were found.
Darwin proposes that from the ape mankind evolved and racist Europeans have always declared that the African is yet to evolve to the blue eyed and blonde being.
This theory has compelled many Africans to use skin lightening creams and bleach their hair to attain the civilised status.
Gordon Kerr’s book is a must read for those that want to know when the ‘rains began to beat us’.
Gordon Kerr is a non-fiction writer-born in 1952 in Scotland.
He has written and edited more than 30 books in a variety of non-fiction genres – wine, history, biography, true crime, humour, art, poetry and travel.
His love for the African continent is evident in his brutal honesty from the first page in his book, “A short history of Africa: From the origins of the human race to the Arab spring.”
Although l may not particularly like his beginning with the evolution theory his attempt at compressing the history of African experience in 160 pages is quite impressive.
He traces the existence of mankind from Africa from the kingdom of the forests to the 54 colonially created states.
Although he focuses a lot on the northern part of the continent Kerr, however, highlights a very important point.
He notes the role of religion in the imperial conquest.
Religion was used as a tool to unify and make the colonised citizens more malleable to those that had brought it.
Africa was soon turned into a religious battleground for the already established Muslim and the new Christian religion both brought violently upon the continent.
“In the name of the ‘holy war Christian war’ against Islam , they sailed their heavily armed ships into harbours, demanding that rulers become Portuguese subjects and pay a hefty tribute to the Portuguese king….reluctant Muslims were put to death….the Portuguese built a massive Fort Jesus …which became their administrative capital for the next century,” Kerr highlights.
Islam came with the first slave trade on the continent and Christianity another lethal and hypocritical religion soon followed.
After the plundering, bribing, corrupting and killing the missionaries would then follow to convert the brutalised citizens.
Before executing the Zimbabwean spirit mediums Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi, the settlers had the audacity to try to convert them to their religion so they could have a peaceful ‘afterlife’ while they benefitted from the present.
Sekuru Kaguvi was christened ‘Dismas’ (the good thief) while Mbuya Nehanda refused to be baptised before they hung her.
Europe was in crises and Africa had the resources and Kerr draws attention to the arrival of the brutal Portuguese explorer.
“In 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama…astonished by the wealth in produce, cloth and gold of the Swahili coastal city states, they plundered Mozambique …fought off the Swahili at Mombasa,” says Kerr.
Racist Rhodesian writers like Peter Godwin today claim that when his family arrived in Zimbabwe we were disease ridden and found salvation in doctors like his mother.
“Africa, of course already had its own diseases, among them sleeping sickness, bilharzias and malaria,” writes Kerr.
“The arrival of the Portuguese, English, French and other Europeans brought new killer diseases such as small pox, syphilis, typhus, tuberculosis and a pneumonic plague the Black Death.”
Today history has been twisted and instead Africa is also the origin of all diabolical diseases.
The lessons that can be drawn from Kerr’s book are simply that history merely repeats itself.
According to the author, the slave trade was abolished not for humanitarian needs, but rather the capitalist factory owners needed a market to sell their wares.
“Leaving Africans in Africa would provide such a market,” the author says.
Therefore local and indigenous products were made to die a fast and silent death while the Europeans brought in their wares to exchange for ivory, spice and gold.
Fast forward to post independent African states, Zimbabwe being an example, was advised to allow free markets and competition to their home grown products such that our brands that were still establishing were quickly outmanoeuvered.
Instead they encourage imports more than exports to their home countries, the dependence on imported European manufactured goods brought in a decline in traditional craft industries.
Today African states are mere buyers of other continents’ products.
We are given food aid brought by Western governments to support their own farmers while creating a strategic dependency syndrome on the locals.
Few, if any, will want to develop irrigation or farming skills on the locals.
Another very important lesson is drawn in the book.
“The Mutapa of the time was overthrown in 1629 after trying to expel the Portuguese,” says Kerr.
“The colonists placed their own ruler on the throne and the Mutapa kingdom became a Portuguese puppet state.”
Throughout African post independence from Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba to Muammar Gaddafi, the imperial powers have been deposing what they term ‘dictators’ who do not carry the Western agenda and replacing them with their more pliable and obedient rulers (puppets).
The book is a must read for those that need to understand the plight Africa faces today.
Kerr concludes by warning the continent of the ‘new scramble for Africa’ in which the players remain the same in a game as old as the foundations of mankind.
The rules of the game have not changed, each continent for itself our gods for us all.