Africa
Big Power Violence and Exploitation of Africa Derails Development
Imperialist plunder of Africa comes in various forms. Global cartels steal its enormous mineral wealth leaving behind poverty and economies that have barely begun to develop a modern form of industrial mass manufacturing. Another method is to saddle Africa with debt and expropriate newly produced value through interest payments.
Most commentators not directly
holding African debt acknowledge that the current external debt
levels in Africa are untenable. As long as African states are
forced to pay huge amounts yearly to service imperialist debt no
economic headway can be made. However, recognition of a debt
problem is not the main issue. Decades have passed with reams of
articles and statements that Africa must have a debt moratorium
if any economic progress is to be made. The issue is that every
time an African state and leadership attempt to solve the
problem, the big powers holding most of the African debt put an
end to the attempt with military violence and coups d'état.
A most egregious attack recently was the U.S./NATO destruction of the Libyan state and assassination of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Libya under Gaddafi had embarked on a path to liberate all of Africa from the impossible burden of external imperialist debt. The imperialist holders of African debt demanded military action to put an end to Gaddafi's efforts.
The U.S./NATO assault including the militaries of Canada and the UK began in March 2011 with large-scale bombing of Libya from the sea and air. By October, Libyan forces had been forced to retreat from the capital Tripoli. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton entered the city as a conquering hero and soon after the leader Gaddafi was assassinated. In an interview upon her return to the U.S. Clinton infamously laughed and joked about the killing of Gaddafi. When a CBS reporter asked if her visit to Libya was connected with his assassination, she agreed with a big smile and ugly guffaw declaring pompously, "We came, we saw, he died."
The destruction of the Libyan state, which continues today, put an end to Gaddafi's efforts at resolving the African debt problem and gaining a certain measure of economic sovereignty. His proposals and actions had been winning widespread traction with many throughout Africa seeing them as a positive road to take.
Gaddafi proposed the creation of an African currency backed by gold, known as the Gold Dinar. This was meant to eliminate Africa's dependence on the U.S. dollar and euro, allowing African nations to trade with one another in a currency based on their own resources.
Wikileaks in 2016 released thousands of emails to and from Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State in the Obama administration. The emails reveal that one of the main reasons U.S. President Obama ordered U.S./NATO forces to destroy the Libyan state in 2011 was to prevent Gaddafi from launching the gold-backed African currency as a rival to the U.S. dollar.
The U.S./NATO assault was preceded with the financing of terrorist groups inside Libya and unrelenting anti-Gaddafi propaganda to prepare for his assassination. As current U.S. President Trump declared recently, any attempt to weaken U.S. financial supremacy and the global hegemony of the dollar will be met with violence.
Another Gaddafi effort that drew the ire of the imperialists was the proposal to create an African Organization of Natural Resources (AONR), an institution that would have unified Africa's resource management and ensured that the continent's wealth was controlled by Africans, not foreign corporations.
Many say his most ambitious economic project was the establishment of an African Central Bank (ACB), headquartered in Nigeria. The ACB would have served as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank, issuing African currencies and financing development without reliance on imperialist financial institutions.
Imperialist Interference and War in the Congo
Throughout Africa, resistance to colonial plunder has been met with violence and war from the imperialist powers. A prominent example is the Congo. Resistance in the Congo following WWII forced the European colonial power Belgium to relinquish its open colonial grip in 1960 but not its control. The newly independent country faced an economy based solely on foreign plunder of its immense resource wealth. The decades of colonial rule had placed ownership and control of Congo's resources in the hands of U.S. and European mining companies, which they refused to relinquish.
At the Congo independence ceremony on June 30, 1960 in the capital now called Kinshasa attended by many young leaders of the resistance, Patrice Émery Lumumba, born Isaïe Tasumbu Tawosa, spoke proudly of the victory over Belgium colonialism, saying, "No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it (independence) has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood. We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force."
The European and U.S. press denounced his speech with Time magazine characterizing it as a "vicious attack." U.S. President Eisenhower is reported to have told Allen Dulles, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that he wished Lumumba would "fall into a river full of crocodiles."
Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister of the newly independent nation attempted to nationalize the country's resources to benefit the people and take a path forward to economic independence and self-reliance. The CIA organized a coup d'état and assassinated Lumumba on January 17, 1961 just seven months after independence. The imperialists installed a puppet government that smashed the dreams of the young revolutionaries.
Social Consciousness and Responsibility
An important feature of a modern social consciousness is to support people everywhere who are struggling to throw off the chains of imperialism. Young people have been in the forefront of demanding an end to the U.S./Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people. The recognition of the crimes of imperialism has to be materialized in the formation of an anti-war government and democratic renewal within the imperialist heartland that makes exploitation of others around the world a serious crime.
The plunder of Africa must end. The centres of this exploitation are found in the imperialist countries and the supranational ownership and control of their economies. The power and wealth concentrated in the hands of the oligarchs and their control of the state machinery of the imperialist centres in the U.S. and Europe give them the political and military means to keep the peoples of Africa and elsewhere enslaved.
The working class in the imperialist countries has the social responsibility to negate the power and control of the oligarchs of the economies not only in the imperialist heartland but throughout the world. Canada and the U.S. must become zones of peace with anti-war governments in control that do not allow the oligarchs to use the destructive military might of the imperialist powers to suppress the peoples of the world and their longing for empowerment and control over their own affairs.
This article was published in
Volume 55
Number 3 - March 2025
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2025/Articles/M5500315.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca