By Dr Rino Zhuwarara

BRITAIN is out of the European Union (EU) and is now busy negotiating for its post-Brexit trade relationship with the same Europe from which it has felt compelled to distance itself. 

For most of us in Africa this Brexit business remains a distant squabble confined to family members of the House of Europa. We often assume that Brexit has very little to do with us, especially those of us in southern Africa who are over 8 000 km away from that group of European countries located to the North of us. 

But this self-distancing posture may not be as wise and strategic and as most of us assume. 

Why, we may ask?

It is because Brexit may, after all, turn out to be connected in one way or other with our fate as children of the African continent. 

There are many reasons we cannot afford to be completely casual and uninvolved towards global events and processes that may seem distant and far removed from us.

A good example why we need our scholars, policymakers and researchers to be always on the lookout for Africa from a geopolitical perspective is what Boris Johnson said recently during the Africa-UK economic summit held on 20 January 2020. 

He said: “Africa is the future and the UK has a huge and active role to play in that future. And I hope you agree because we are, and will be a partner through thick and thin.”

During the same summit UK ministers acknowledged that by 2050, Africa would have a population of about two billion people; this figure means that in thirty years or so for every four consumers of the world one of them will be an African. In an almost inevitable way Africa will then be hosting one of the biggest markets of the world; currently it has eight of the 15 fastest growing economies in the world and has the potential to grow a middle class population that could begin to compete in size with the middle-class populations of India and China combined.

Therefore, from a business point of view one of the biggest attractions to investors is the huge size of the emerging African market and the infinite range of needs and services that such market will demand from business people. 

This is the demographic dividend that Africa stands to gain from, that is, if it has learnt appropriate lessons from its painful history.

While it is true that Britain is desperate to ensure that its departure from Europe is as smooth as possible in terms of supplies and that it is wooing Africa in order to make up for any shortfalls it may encounter along the way, it is also true that it is looking at Africa for the long term. 

One British writer advised Johnson accordingly: “As the UK rethinks its standing in the world, Africa needs to be front and centre of its plans.”

While ministers from the UK felt free to refer to the potential of Africa’s demographic dividend 30-40 years from now what they could not say loud and clear but which everyone who attended that summit knew about very well is that Africa has always been and remains a treasure-trove for the rest of the West. 

Africa has the following in abundance and we should always be keen to state them in detail:  gold, platinum, diamonds, copper, cobalt, iron, uranium, titanium, lithium, coal, coltan, aluminium, nickel, petroleum, gas etc and the list can go on and on- ad infinitum.

The question is: Is Africa ready to benefit the most from the inevitable ‘Scramble for Africa’ that the UK and Europe are already preparing for? 

The French are already busy re-defining their presence in West Africa by inserting many of their troops in African countries, ostensibly to fight off the Islamic State and Al Quaida insurgents. 

As for the Americans they have created several army divisions dedicated to serve under the Africa Command. 

And now we have the British suddenly proclaiming their commitment to Africa using missionary-like rhetoric! Suddenly Johnson seems to think the UK has been a partner of Africa through ‘thick and thin’, forgetting that one of his political ancestors defined the partnership between Africans and whites in the then Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as being akin to that of a horse and a rider!

The question is: How much homework have we done so that British and European and American re-engagement with Africa does not become a one-sided exploitative affair as happened soon after the Berlin Conference of 1884-5?

Put differently, the current scramble for Africa by Europe, Britain and the US is not something new at all. 

In fact, there is a whole history to refer to, a tradition in fact, of how all these have related to us in a way that has always been detrimental to the interests of our continent. 

The challenge for us is how to deal with the West from our point of view; how to bargain with them in the projection and defence of our interests and on the basis of  our comprehensive grasp of their needs and interests and how desperate or not they are on any specific issues both for the short and long term. 

There is always this uneasy feeling bordering on fear of betrayal that African nations have never been at any time fully prepared to enter into agreements with Western nations as equals. 

And this unpreparedness is in reality a symptom of a deeper crisis in our knowledge of the local and global and the way they affect us. 

And one can argue that this unpreparedness continues to haunt us. 

Often we get taken in by cheap expressions of friendship, goodwill and human rights from our detractors and lose sight of the real interests that matter for us. 

A good example is the way Africa betrayed itself at the UN and voted with the West to interfere in Libyan affairs in 2011. Africa has never been the same again.

One gets the impression that soon Britain will be criss-crossing the length and breadth of our continent looking for various agreements on the kind of raw materials that its economy will always need for its growth. 

And with self-professed friends like Johnson who is informed by think tanks on almost any conceivable subject that he may need to address, the questions are: Does Africa have many of the required strategic think-tanks and many schooled policy makers who are steeped in our history? 

We need to be represented by people who know our history and the mistakes we have made in the past so that we do not repeat them, people who are not imprisoned by their past but make the most out of it! 

Does Africa have a shared vision, a shared methodology of how to achieve that vision, a shared set of principles and values to underpin that vision and a shared memory of our losses as a continent and how to limit those losses? 

Unless and until we get organised and address all these said issues countries like Britain will always play one African country against the other as indeed it tried during the recent economic summit in London; it chose to meet leaders of 21 African countries out of a total of 54.

China, India, Japan and Russia do not openly play that divide and rule tactic that the British adopted recently in London, making some countries feel special and others not so special. We should never underestimate the impact of the imperial toolkit from which this divisive tactic is coming from!

Here is how the same Boris Johnson who today professes that Britain will become Africa’s ‘partner through thick and thin’ thinks about that same Africa and its people. 

He wrote in The Telegraph in 2002:

“What a relief it must be for Blair (then Premier of UK visiting the Congo) to get out of England. 

It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies.” 

Anyone familiar with the history of black enslavement in North America will know how deeply offensive Johnson is using the word ‘picaninnies’.

In the same article he continues: “No doubt the AK 47s will fall silent and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white Chief touchdown in his big white British taxpayer funded bird.”

Again we notice that Johnson’s imagination is steeped in stock phrases and deeply repellent stereotypes spawned by the British Empire of yore. 

It is not surprising either that in the background British policy makers are arguing furiously about how to handle Africa after Brexit, with some describing the imminent return of Britain to Africa as the Empire 2.0 Project.

As if to remove any doubts that some of his countrymen may have about British imperial ambitions in Africa, Johnson wrote in the Spectator in 2002: “The continent (Africa) may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. 

The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge anymore.”

The import of the Johnson’s statement is self-explanatory. The only comment to make is: With self proclaimed friends like Johnson hovering all over us, does Africa need any enemies?