Amin, Africa and the World (1976)

Amin, Africa and the World (1976)

From the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The way to stop understanding of events is to show them as resulting from personal misconduct or mismanagement by those in charge. Had Hitler not been mad and bad, the Second World War would never have happened. Stalin's treacherousness made Russia what it is. But for a succession of weak and untrustworthy leaders, the Labour Party would have brought us all to the Promised Land. This view of history means we are perpetually invited to look at figures idiotic and corrupt, and put all the blame on them. Without doubt they are all as objectionable as stated, but that is not the answer. The high chairs in which these characters sit are provided by capitalism, and at some time of need each appeared to be the ideal occupant.

The special place of buffoon-turned-villain is held at present by President Amin of Uganda. Since his regime began it has been characterized by killings, culminating in the "Makerere massacre" of over 100 students in August this year. It has included the deportation of Asians in 1972, and a series of international incidents; in July there was a confrontation with Kenya, and on the 28th July Britain broke of diplomatic relations with Uganda. There have been attempts at uprisings and to assassinate Amin. On 1st August The Observer had an editorial headed "Getting rid of Amin".

The fact is that Amin's takeover in January 1971 was supported by Israel and favoured by Britain. A lengthy article in The Observer on 15th August recalled that the previous Prime Minister of Uganda, Dr. Milton Obote, had at the end of 1969 introduced a "Move to the Left" policy that was "Britain's reason for welcoming the coup d'état 13 months later". On Amin's accession, the article went on: "The British Government was delighted . . . One of Amin's first acts was to de-nationalize the British businesses taken over by Obote." Israel viewed Uganda under Amin as as an ally against the Arab states. While these relationships lasted, Amin was presented as a not-unsympathetic clown; since they were reversed, the Ugandan regime has been shown as a reign of terror.

Uganda was formerly a British protectorate, and remains part of the British Commonwealth. In the 19th century and up to World War II trade was carried on by a number of European countries and Asian traders; there were thriving cotton, coffee and timber industries, and large stocks of timber were contributed to war production for Britain. The wartime increases in world prices for cotton and coffee brought economic advances and the importation of industrial machinery and this in turn promoted ideas of nationalism. British companies still operate in Uganda — according to a report in The Times on 29th July they include Unilever and the ubiquitous Lonrho group, and subsidiaries of Grindlays, Barclays and Standard banks.

The concern with Uganda and other African states today is their relationship with the conflicting interests of the big powers. In East Africa, Somalia is backed and armed by the Soviet Union. Ethiopia is armed by America, but has officials who talk the parrot-jargon taught by Russia. In June this year the American government provided Kenya with a 44 credit for the purchase of 12 American fighter aircraft. A report in The Times on 20th July said:

In the American view, Soviet and Chinese arms supplies to the African states in recent years have completely altered the balance of power, and this must now be redeemed. Kenya is an obvious starting point.

In the week of Amin's Makerere massacre 98 men were executed in the Sudan for taking part in a revolt supported by Libya and other Arab countries (Times, 6th August) without expressions of horror from the western world.

Amin's support in finance, arms and technical personnel comes from the Arab states, particularly Libya, which is in turn supplied by Russia. In the flare-up between Uganda and Kenya it was said that neither America nor Russia wanted to see a shooting war develop in this part of Africa and had advised caution to both sides and their neighbours. Nevertheless, the balance between Africa and Middle East states and the major powers which "handle" them is like that of the Balkan states and Europe before 1914. It is absurd to imagine that this position would be different if Uganda, Libya and other states had more amiable rulers. In some cases they had different ones, who were made unacceptable by the situation instead of the opposite happening.

The continual threat of war is created by the worldwide working of capitalism. The major powers all want to exploit Africa far more intensely than was done under direct imperialism; at the same time the nationalism of the African countries provides a market for arms production. According to figures in the 1976 Yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the Middle East "where the arms trade had been most conspicuous" nearly 16 per cent of the region's gross product was being spent on military purposes.

The cause of war remains the same: conflicts among the capitalists of various nations over markets, trade routes and resources of production. Of course it is masked by diplomacy and and political motives. The last major war fought more or less openly for markets was World War I. The immediate factors in the modern world are control of strategic points and influence over particular sections, presented as a conflict between "ideologies". Ultimately, however, all wars are economic. The balance of power in Africa is between the growing and aspiring ruling classes of the states there, their deals for aid with bigger nations, and the bigger nations' own need for oil and minerals for commodity production.

In this balance, the grotesque Amin is entirely dependent on his sponsors. The continuation of the Kenyan oil blockade in July could have caused his downfall, and from the viewpoint of his Arab allies he is unreliable and disposable; no doubt their attitude is like Samuel Pepys's — "whether it will be better for me to have him die, because he is a bad man, or live, for fear a worse should come". Meanwhile, workers in Uganda and countless other countries not only under tyrannical regimes but have the prospect of being fodder for wars, in which the enemies are a matter of permutation. This is the result of production for profit. It does not have to go on.

Robert Barltrop

Report on Mau Mau (1960)

Report on Mau Mau (1960)

Book Review from the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau, carried out by Mr. F. D. Corfield, has now been issued as a Government Blue Book. It contains the following statistics of casualties up to the end of 1956

Terrorists: Killed 11,503. Captured wounded 1,035. Captured in action 1,550. Arrested 26,625. Surrendered 2,714.

Security Forces: Killed 167. Wounded 1,582.

Loyal Civilians: Killed 1,877 (including 32 Europeans). Wounded 978.

The cost of the emergency up to June 30th, 1959, is shown as £55,585,424. before the massive technical and numerical superiority of the British Government Security Forces finally overwhelmed this African uprising, all the violent measures of ruthless repression were called into use, even down to interrogation under torture and the hangman busy in the concentration camp.

Mr. F. D. Corfield, who is a former Governor of Khartoum Province, has produced a report which points a sanctimonious finger of blame at almost everyone except the British Government and the narrow interests that they represent. As an apology for the British Government, as a self righteous justification that might confuse and misdirect, the Corfield Report does a serviceable job. But as an objective historical account of the cause and development of a particularly ugly piece of human history the report is useless and in every way unworthy of its title.

The main contention of the report is that leading Africans, and in particular Jomo Kenyatta, encouraged by sympathy from many outside sources, and unwittingly aided by the facilities provided by a "liberal" government, perpetuated rebellion as a manifestation of their personal malevolence. The report says, "Without the freedom afforded them by a liberal government Jomo Kenyatta and his associates, would have been unable to preach their calculated hymn of hate." Mr. Corfield is completely convinced that the government of Kenya was pre-occupied with "...the material progress of the peoples of Kenya." He says, "One has only to read the annual reports of the provincial commissioners to realise the immense efforts made by officials and unofficials to raise the material and moral welfare of the Africans."

These are the terms in which the report ignores the naked and cruel self interest of the white landowners' mission in East Africa. For a rational society of controlled purpose to be confronted by a primitive social grouping over which it held immense technical superiority would involve problems of a most delicate sociological nature. Its approach would be scientific procedures, its motives would be humanistic. But when the envoys of European propertied society landed in East Africa to preach the Gospel of Self Interest and predatory exploitation they were interested only in smashing the social organisation of the African inhabitants and making them servants and labourers. Here surely was the bed rock basis of the Mau Mau violence. Mau Mau, though loathsome in form, arose inevitably from the indignities, the injustice and the sheer primary poverty of the African's plight. This is well known and the evidence for it is even contained in the government's own Colonial Publications. In contrast with the hypocritical Corfield report the African Labour Efficiency Survey, 1949 (Colonial Research Publications, No. 3) is a realistic appraisal of the problems of making the African a more efficient and effective wage worker.

In viewing the East African situation (in 1947) it says, "The East African comes from a tribal economy in which his human needs of sustenance can still very largely be met . . . He has not, to any significant degree been detribalised . . . The East African has not been bent under the discipline of organised work. In his primitive economy, the steady, continuous labour is carried out by women. In respect of the few working activities which in the past occupied him he was free and independent. Though the tasks he performed were prescribed by tribal law and custom, he could do them in his own way and at his own speed, for him time had no economic value. The work he did for others was not for wages, but was one of the duties arising out of his relationship with his fellows. He gave satisfaction by his work and derived a measure of contentment from it. In these circumstances he was willing to do what was required of him. To work steadily and continuously at the the will of another was one of the hard lessons he had to learn when he began to work for Europeans."

Even so, the report reveals the positive measures taken by the Kenya Government to coerce Africans into seeking wage employment. In the first instance the Kikuyu and other East African tribes were enclosed within small reserve areas which to an agricultural people was disastrous. In the terms of the report, South Nyeri, one of the three component districts comprising the Kikuyu reserved lands, had a population estimated in 1944 to be 542 to the square mile. This population density is probably among the highest in the world. As well as this the Government instituted a hut tax and poll tax, payable only directly in cash. Thus within two simple but brutal measures the authorities began to reduce the African from a dignified tribesman with a stake in his community to a dispossessed wage worker forced into white landowners' service or into industrial undertakings.

The report dwells in some detail on many reasons for the African workers' so-called inefficiency, including lack of education and poverty. It says, "Perhaps in some respects the greatest handicap is physical and arises from malnutrition." On the question of wages this report is equally forthright, " . . . it is clear that the wage plan does not ensure wages adequate to enable an African residing in any of the towns to bring up a family." Again: "It is therefore with more confidence that the whole survey team, including the medical and nutritional investigators, record their reasoned observation that they found much discontent concerning wages in relation to cost of living."

Apart from laying bare the ruthlessness of of British Colonial policy, even in modern times, the report contained a disquieting warning. Quoting a doctor who lived in East Africa for two decades it said "A doctor . . . can assert that the cause of the poor work output is more mental than physical. Malnutrition and disease play their part but, sitting and talking with the workers in their homes, one became aware of a very grave discontent which, unless constructively guided and relieved, may well threaten civil peace."

It was the violent repression that Mau Mau provoked that enabled British interests to finally destroy the Kikuyu and other tribal structures. The way is now clear for the rapid conversion of East Africans into wage workers. Mau Mau retaliation was bloody and horrible, primitive political struggles often are, but undoubtedly British colonial policy first provoked the violence.

Pieter Lawrence

African History Interrupted By Slavery And Colonialism

Majority of African people suffer from Inferiority complex, because of the huge amount of literature that portrays them like savage before the arrival of Europeans.
Anyone interested in african history know that’s not true. NOT AT ALL!
Now, According to Columbia University’s Alexander Ives Bortolot “Contrary to popular views about precolonial Africa, local manufacturers were at this time creating items of comparable, if not superior, quality to those from pre-industrial Europe.

Due to advances in native forge technology, smiths in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa were producing steels of a better grade than those of their counterparts in Europe, and the highly developed West African textile workshops had produced fine cloths for export long before the arrival of European traders.”
“Prior to the European voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century, African rulers and merchants had established trade links with the Mediterranean world, western Asia, and the Indian Ocean region. Within the continent itself, local exchanges among adjacent peoples fit into a greater framework of long-range trade.
The merchants from Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands who began trading along the Atlantic coast of Africa therefore encountered a well-established trading population regulated by savvy and experienced local rulers.”

African progress has been stopped by slavery and colonialism because we didn’t have guns when the europeans came.
Slavery and colonialism ARE NOT Africa History, They have interrupted it!

 By: Mawuna Remarque KOUTONIN
from here