Ludicrous to say colonial exploitation served good

LIKE many Africans, I sometimes wonder what life would have been like had colonialists not arrived in Africa. It was inevitable therefore, that my blood boiled when I read the downright insulting article by Geoff Embling, “Tale of colonisation not always one with bad end” (DD October 14).

The article celebrates the joys brought by colonialism to the ungrateful colonised hordes. It was only when I read other contributions to the public discourse by this Mr Embling that I realised the gentleman was not being humorous but deadly serious.

He says it is a “... lie that colonialism was a wrong committed against the people”. In his opinion, this is because colonialism was “inevitable”; British colonialists were the “kindest and most progressive”; and most colonialists “were driven by a strong desire to genuinely serve humanity”.

It follows logic then, that the fight against colonialism was a futile and a barbaric one against progress and against humanity. The people who fought against colonialism were savages and barbarians, ungratefully resisting the kind embrace of civilisation.

There is nothing new in this view of the colonised people of the world. This is what made slavery, colonialism, apartheid and currently Zionism, morally acceptable among the perpetrator communities. The colonialised and the dispossessed were lesser human beings who needed to be saved from their foolishness and destructive ways by the benevolent colonialists. Some openly racist writers have called it the white man’s burden.

Ironically, Embling in the same article mentions the notion of race superiority as one of the destructive myths fed to the German population. He fails to grasp that colonialism and Nazism had the same race superiority roots.

Let us deal with Embling’s propositions to see how far removed from reality they are.

He says colonialism was good because it was inevitable. My understanding of the word inevitable is something which cannot be escaped.

This argument for colonialism can be likened to a criminal pleading in a court of law that he/she was not guilty of the crime because the crime would have occurred anyway, due to the prevalence of crime in that place or time.

This does not render the commission of that crime inevitable. Had that criminal not committed the crime, he definitely would not have been accused of it.

As to whether someone else would have committed a similar crime, this remains in the realms of speculation.

The same applies to colonialism. Had colonialists chosen to stay in their home countries and not turned up unannounced and uninvited, colonialism would not have happened.

Even if they did come, had they chosen to accept peaceful coexistence with fellow man and ceased to crave after his land, cattle and labour, colonialism would not have happened. There is nothing inevitable about human greed.

Colonialism was the plunder and theft of a country’s resources by another country, with the colonised population deprived of their God-given right to self-determination, through being ruled by the colonial country.

Now, whether this is practised in kindness or in cruelty, it remains a crime of plunder and exploitation. It is a fallacy to suggest British rule was anywhere near progressive and kind. The thousands of native’s graves which sprouted along the trail of the British imperial march from Cape to Cairo do not bear testimony to the kindness attributed to that rule.

The Khoikhoi and the San who were the first to encounter and resist colonialism in South Africa are today a broken nation.

Their existence is on the periphery of society. Colonialism reduced them to a life of eternal servitude without their land, language and culture. Without these, a once proud nation ceased to exist.

Maybe British kindness is compared to the Dutch, and later Afrikaner oppression. It was against the British that the Xhosa-speaking Africans fought 10 land dispossession wars.

Incidentally, a significant portion of the Xhosa speakers have Khoisan ancestry. All the African national groups lost their sovereignty and land in fights against British soldiers.

King Hintsa, King Sandile and Chief Luke Jantjie of the Batswana, Chief Bhambatha of the Zulu, had their heads chopped off in these battles.

When the apartheid regime exiled and imprisoned resistance leaders at Robben Island, it was emulating an old British practice enacted against Chief Maqoma, General Makana, King Cetywayo and King Langalibalele.

Embling further insinuates that because there was qualified voting in the Cape and Natal, there was equality of races. This is clearly a fabrication of history.

Qualified franchise meant one should have been propertied and have reached a certain level of literacy. This clearly excluded the vast majority of the natives.

Incidentally, some parties who today claim struggle credentials, had their forebears calling for qualified franchise.

However, even when propertied or literate, no native could be voted to the national assembly.

Currently, Africans remain landless, jobless and poverty stricken. They are social, cultural and economic misfits in this artificial society.

This is a society that is neither fish nor fowl in its identity. It has failed to identify itself as either colonial or African. It cannot deal with the legacies of both colonialism and apartheid.

African royalty still continues to be treated like dirt, except when elections are around the corner.

Land restitution processes shy away from the colonial era, by only entertaining land claims from 1913, when almost all the land had already been taken away. The major beneficiaries of our mineral resources are still from colonial countries.

Now, one still dares to suggest that it is a lie that colonialism was a wrong.

On second thoughts, it was not a wrong, but a crime against the colonised people.

It is proper that, like Embling, we quote a poem from the poet of the nation, SEK Mqhayi, in welcoming the prince of Wales in his visit to South Africa:

Hay kodwa’ iBritan’enkulu (Hail Great Britain)

Yeza nebhotile neBhayibhile (You came with a bottle on one hand and a Bible in the other)

Yeza nomfundis’ exhage’ijoni (You came with a preacher assisted by a soldier)

Yeza nerhuluwa nesinandile (You came with gunpowder and bullets)

Yeza nenkanunu nemfakadolo (You came with cannons and guns-which-bend-like-knees).

Ndlalifa yelakowethu (You who feast on the inheritance of my country).

Makadl’ubom uKumkan !i (Long live the King!)

Khwezi Siviwe Dalasile is the PAC Eastern Cape chair