"CIVILIZATION" ON TRIAL: THE COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL STATE IN AFRICA

INTRODUCTION

In this article I will analyze modern African states' development from the onset of colonialism to the present to understand why these states' attempts at implementing policies that improve the dire conditions that face the majority of their populations (lack of health facilities, infrastructure, food security, peace and an economic self-sufficiency) are unsuccessful. By "Africa" I mean the continent including its islands. This is a general study, which draws examples from east, central, west, north and southern Africa. This does not imply that Africa is homogeneous (just as Western countries are not homogeneous). Issues of class, ethnicity, gender and race inform born the African continent and Western countries. "State" as defined here is a multilayered entity from grass-root organizations to the leadership.

By "civilization" I mean Western countries, institutions and African elites' belief that they best know how Africa should develop. This belief discourages industrialization while encouraging an export-oriented economy where inter-African trade is marginalized. African countries act as laboratories where bankrupt development ideas are tested while the majority of the people continue to the of AIDS, conflict, and starvation. In "civilization on trial" I argue that "civilization" is still being imposed on Africans with the help of the African elite. This ongoing project denies millions of Africans access to their resources. It encourages criminal behavior as some people do all they can to survive in an environment which denies them their humanity. "Civilization" in its cold logic also denies most Africans the right to decide their destinies as it forces countries to pay back 'debt' while their populations wallow in poverty. Unless people across the globe confront this inhumanity, which is still promoted by some governments and institutions under the veil of "civilization," barbarism, conflict, extermination and un-development will become the norm. "Underdevelopment" means that African countries have lost their earlier economic gains, for example in education and healthcare. It also entails the rise of inequality and moral decay.

We destroy the land that we purport to colonize and civilize (...) Atrocities committed during colonial wars of conquest by supposedly 'civilized' people are everywhere me same: massacres, rape, arson, pillage, land theft and slave-trading. Once the 'pacification' is completed, the objective then becomes to finish the surviving conquered people through alcoholism, syphilis and tuberculosis (. . .) [Paul Vigné d'Octon, La gloire du sabre. Paris: Quintette, 1984 [1900], 77-78].

Gaud [a French officer] was accused of multiple murders and executions; of having baked a woman alive in an oven. Finally Gaud, with Toque's complicity, was accused of having boiled a human head and given the soup to drink to a man servant and, for good measure, to have blown up a prisoner with a stick of dynamite stuck in his bottom to celebrate July 14th, 1903. [Jean Suret-Canale, Afrique noire Occidentale et Centrale; tome 2: L'Ere Coloniale, 1900-1945. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1964, 53]

When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders (. . .) Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth (...) For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity (...) we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man. [Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press 1968): 313, 316].

"Civilization" in most African countries was introduced through colonialism. By colonial rule, we mean the formal partition of Africa and its direct occupation by European powers, resulting in the exclusive use of African resources for Europe's development. During the 1884-85 Berlin Conference Africa was divided between Belgium, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. What was the justification and rationale for colonization? What were the objectives modus operandi of the colonial state and its successor, the post-colonial state?

For clarity of the exposé, this article is divided into four parts. The first section examines how Europeans imagined Africa. This discussion is important because it helps us understand how European conceptions of the continent informed the colonization process. Part two discusses the argument for colonization and how it negated African culture. In part three, I will analyze the objectives and modus operandi of the colonial state. In section four I will proceed to a similar analysis of the postcolonial state. Was it a departure from the colonial one or entrenchment of colonialism by other means? I conclude by highlighting the main aspects of the argument. Throughout the article I will focus on answering four questions. First, whose interest did the colonial state serve? Second, what was the relationship between the colonial state and its subjects? Third, did a civil society based on African people's culture and history emerge during colonial rule? Fourth, did the new African elite, which took over power at independence actually transform the colonial state to meet the majority of the peoples' interests, priorities and needs? Based on my argument the "civilization" project is ongoing because Africa is still been colonized though the methods may be different.