Understanding Africa Book 1

Understanding Africa Book 1

Brian Ross

Copyright Brian Ross 2012

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Understanding Africa Book 1

Introduction

Chapter 1:

Europe Discovers Africa

Chapter 2:

Slavery

Chapter 3:

Mfcane

Chapter 4:

Colonialism

Chapter 5:

Shuffle from Africa

Chapter 6:

Belief

Chapter 7:

Administration

Chapter 8:

Leadership

* * * *

This book looks at the troubled history of the African continent south of the Sahara Desert. It tells of the early slave trade across the Sahara to destinations in the Middle East. It shows Portuguese explorers edging around the coast in search of gold, ivory and a sea route to the East. The history of colonialism is outlined with most of Africa falling under foreign control. A chapter gives details about the European powers withdrawing direct control after the second world war. The challenge to new rulers is illustrated in the chapters on Leadership and Administration with many instances of poor government. When you read of the misdeeds of Libyan dictator Qaddafi you may argue about orthography.

Author Explains Sources

Much of the information and opinion included in this book is derived from two South African publications with different and distinguished histories. The Natal Witness is the oldest daily newspaper in the country, founded in 1846. It remained privately owned until August 2000 and has a history of independence and insists on running articles and letters expressing many points of view. It does not toady to the government of the day. The Mail and Guardian, as The Weekly Mail, was established fifteen years ago (this book was written in the late 1990s until 2001) and struggled at the outset to appear from one week to the next. It fiercely exposed apartheid policies—within the draconian press laws of the time. Today it continues to appear weekly, and still provides a forum for discussion of issues of the day, and produces outstanding exposés of ineptitude and criminality in government and business. Both journals provide opinions from correspondents outside Africa, as well as from other African countries. I make no apologies for using so much of their material, but I gratefully acknowledge my debt to them. The non-African publication frequently quoted is the Economist, which itself enjoys considerable respect amongst international readers.

Where opinion is expressed in quotation marks the source is identified. Otherwise the views in this book are my own.

South African examples illustrate many points. They are used if they appear to fit the case. Having just emerged from the long nightmare of apartheid and a white supremacist past, South Africa is not your average sub-Saharan state. But it is the most developed of all the countries. With its relatively sophisticated (for Africa) infrastructure, institutions and organisations it can prove to be the driving force for a regeneration of Africa. Weaknesses exhibited in South Africa, therefore, cast a long shadow over the future of sub-Saharan Africa, and need to be acknowledged.

INTRODUCTION

The Sahara Desert, which is as large as the continental United States, is a massive physical barrier that cuts Africa into two pronounced parts. South of the Sahara lies negroid Africa, where dwell a predominantly different ethnic population. Running from the south into the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is the world’s longest river, a watered food-producing link between the two Africas. The Congo and Niger rivers are both over 4000 kilometres long, while the Congo River drains an area larger than India. In terms of the world’s land surface this is a vast area.

Noël Mostert positions Africa so well, (Frontiers, 1992) that I can only quote his words: There it is, at the centre of the planet, if centre be defined by the confluence of the northern mainstreams of hemispheric activity. The Americas were always, so to speak, peripheral; but Africa, in visible sight of Europe at one point, connected to Asia at another, forming the southern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea, and mingling the western and eastern oceans at its own southern extremity, was unavoidably at the heart of the rise of ancient and modern human activity. The history of its coasts is the history of the rise of civilization and the binding of the world.

Africa is where mankind developed an upright posture, evolving from earlier African forebears. Africa is where early man first learned to communicate in speech, using the vocal equipment he had developed. Africa is where man first learned to use stone or bone as a tool. From Africa man spread out to occupy the whole world. It is thought (John Reader, Africa, A Biography of a Continent, 1998) that 100 000 years ago homo sapiens began to move across the Sinai peninsula. Estimates say that descendants of these wanderers reached the tip of South America 12 000 years ago and the last large landmass was occupied 700 years ago: New Zealand. It may be claimed that every great achievement of mankind, artistic accomplishment, impressive structure and technological development began in Africa. In fact, the worst weapon of destruction yet used by man against his fellow man links Africa with the United States of America. It was uranium from the Belgian Congo (Raymond Dummet, Africa’s Strategic Minerals during the Second World War, 1985) that went into the Manhattan Project, and on to destroy two Japanese cities.

The area south of the Sahara is where we now try to glimpse something of the past as well as the present in an attempt to answer queries that so frequently beset visitors as well as those watching the news on television. Because South Korea was a colony and achieved independence at the same time as some African colonies of European powers, it is natural to make comparisons.

Why, for instance, in 1995 figures, did Somalia have a literacy rate of 24% while South Korea had a literacy rate of 96%? Somalia was an Italian colony. South Korea was a Japanese colony. Both became independent after the second world war. Kindly explain. Is it enough to say that the Japanese must have been much better in the field of education than the Italians?

Both South Korea and Ghana had mainly agrarian economies and had endured at least fifty years as colonies of another country and culture. In the 1960s each country had the same gross domestic product, $230 per capita. Except for tungsten South Korea had few natural resources and in the 1950s had endured 4 years of war. Today the West African state is an also ran among countries of the world, whereas South Korea is a member of the high-income countries. To consider another South Korean comparison, in 1964 Zambia’s GDP per person was twice that of South Korea (Economist, 24 February 2001). By 1999 Koreans were almost 27 times richer. Is this a matter of leadership, or again, one of more successful colonial tutelage? The question is asked (Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, 1994): Does it simply require imitating economic techniques, or does it involve such intangibles as culture, social structure, and attitudes toward foreign practices?

Indonesia was a Dutch colony, occupied by the Japanese and finally granted independence after World War II. In 1950 Nigeria, later independent, supplied the first palm seedlings to the Asian country. In 1970 Indonesia produced half the volume of palm oil that Nigeria did. By 1991 Indonesia was producing three times Nigeria’s output. In the mid-1990s Nigeria began importing Indonesian palm oil, once one of her own most lucrative crops.(Economist, 15 January 2000). Both ex-colonies were trying to pick up the colonial pieces and get an administration together. Were the Dutch better at establishing an administrative core than the British? Or is there another explanation?

The head of South Africa’s largest tourism association, and also owner of a successful tourism business, was forced to resign for suggesting that South Africa try to market itself so as to appear not to be part of Africa. In proposing the marketing strategy, in the best interests of tourism, Andy Dott fell foul of political correctness by saying: Africa in general, quite honestly, is a basket case. What does Africa conjure up in the mind of any American or European, for instance? A starving child on the dry breast of a woman with eight fly-infested children in tow, whilst the husband looks on with beer bottle in hand and AK47 on shoulder. And, to complete the picture, his president travels in limousines and Lear jets to check on his Swiss bank account while negotiating with civilized countries to borrow more money on one hand, yet write off unpaid debt on the other.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, wrote: Since 1970, more than 30 wars have been fought in Africa, the vast majority of them intrastate in origin. In 1996 alone, 14 of the 53 countries of Africa were afflicted by armed conflicts, accounting for more than half of all war-related deaths worldwide and resulting in more than 8 million refugees, returnees and displaced persons.(The Causes of Conflict and Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa, May 1998 Report to the Security Council).

This little study is an attempt to promote discussion and encourage others to dig and delve into causes and influences that seem to have crippled all the states of sub-Saharan Africa. One and all appeal for foreign aid! It may well be, also, that mankind may have seen an entirely different developmental model of social organisation evolve in Africa: a civilized way of living in small communities, at peace with their neighbours, and without the formation of nation-states. This is suggested by John Lonsdale in State and Social Processes in Africa: a historiographical survey (African Studies Review, 1981). But Africa was not isolated. Her spawn were spreading, changing, adapting, learning—and finally returning from far corners of the world, in many forms and guises, and bringing with them other attitudes, different cultures, foreign creeds. What might have been is mere speculation. We here try to penetrate the mystery, crack the hidden code of sub-Saharan Africa’s estrangement from the jostling twenty-first century world.

Chapter 1

EUROPE DISCOVERS AFRICA

Africa has, in the eyes of Europe, been a continent of mystery. That was where one could expect to find peculiar beasts, where myths joined with strange legends. "Ex Africa semper aliquid novi" the Romans said (Pliny the Elder, 1st Century, western reckoning). Almost right up to the end of the nineteenth century it was the setting for stories or romance, adventure and indeed any tale where facts were unnecessary.

Even today misconceptions about Africa abound all over the world. Living in Africa as I do, a South African whose antecedents arrived a few generations ago, I have been puzzled by something. It is a lurking, ominous shadow; misconstrued, misinterpreted, intangible. It is to attempt to get to the core of the African mystery that I pen this cursory overview of the continent, particularly, its ‘heart of darkness’ (Conrad’s title), that major section that lies south of the dividing desert of the Sahara. This is where I intend to delve because this is where ‘black Africa’ lives and dies in vast numbers, at its own bloody hand, and from starvation and disease.

This is written at a time that western media stand accused of constant condemnation of the continent, where the ‘Economist’ issue of 13th May 2000 had a cover picture with the title ‘The Hopeless Continent’ displayed on news stands all over the world. In response John Matshikiza, writing from Cameroon, stated of the Congo: The land is wide, rich and fertile. The marketplace culture is alive and kicking. If the ordinary people were allowed to live in peace they would be able to demonstrate their political sophistication and their ability to uplift and govern themselves. He makes an appeal for us to avoid being critical of our continent. The chapter on Leadership presents a view of Africa’s present bungling leaders, constantly short-changing their subjects. My sole objective is to examine why Africa projects such an image, why ordinary Africans, given the opportunity, leave in droves.

While Africa must be where mankind first originated, North Africa has also figured in early history as far as recorded indications go. As modern engineers have not successfully explained how to build the pyramids, even using modern technology, there is some doubt as to who actually built them. [Endnote 1] But the Egyptian civilisation was certainly important in the history of modern man. 3000 years ago India, China, Mesopotamia and the Aegean had all produced notable civilisations. Nowhere else has anything been discovered to match such achievements.

About 3000 years ago the kingdom of Kush emerged in the upper reaches of the Nile in the area of modern Khartoum. It had learned much from Egypt and around 750 before the Christian era conquered Egypt. The pharaohs of this period are referred to as the Twenty-Fifty or ‘Ethiopian’ Dynasty. When the Assyrians invaded Egypt the dynasty ended. The Kushites began to push further and further upstream. Southwards, ever southwards they went, becoming ever more negroid as they migrated. They had learned how to smelt iron from the Assyrians, and around the new capital Meroe they found iron ore and the fuel to smelt it. It became the metallurgical capital of Africa. Three hundred years of prosperity and expansion in the Sudan were based on the extension of farming that accompanied iron implements.

A few hundred years before the Christian period iron-working appears in what is today central Nigeria. (There is evidence of copper smelting in the West African Sahara and Sahel as early as 4000 years ago, which arguably may mean that this area developed iron smelting separately from the Middle East.) The new food-crops that had been spreading across the Asian landmass began to appear in Africa. Philology as a tool of historiography has been used to exploit root words to trace the movement of Bantu groups in early times. Deductions flowing from basic words seem to place original settlements in the Benue valley of Eastern Nigeria and the grasslands of Western Cameroon. About 5000 years ago dispersal began, a slow movement as an expanding population required more land. It has been suggested that it took 600 years to cover one thousand kilometres in the equatorial forest zones.

Analysis of pottery and radio carbon dating assists in measuring the speed of movement. In a specific case it was found that it took a decade to migrate 22 kilometres. The penetration of forests were assisted by the new iron tools spreading in Africa, and hunting and gathering food was being replaced by tilling the soil.

The plough was not developed, [Endnote 2] probably because animals from Asia could not survive the diseases of Africa, and Africans never domesticated the zebra or rhinoceros to breed in captivity in confined camps and to carry loads or pull ploughs. Similarly, in South America the llama was never successfully used as a draft animal. This is possibly why the Incas in South America never used the wheel which they appear to have developed on their own, as found on ancient toys: no use for a cart without an animal to tow it.

Because of the successful penetration of northern Africa by Islam we have documents recording something of later African history. Merchants like stability, and where this was obtained at the end of trade routes thriving commercial centres developed. The most famous of these was Timbuctu, which even had an Islamic university in the fifteenth century of this era. (See Chapter, The Bloodied Crucible, Book2) As early as the eighth century a West African country is recorded under the name: Ghana (not the same geographical place as today’s state of that name). The territory seems to have stretched from modern day Guinea across Côte d’Ivoire. It was spoken of as the ‘land of gold’. The gold came from the upper reaches of the Senegal and the Ashanti. This state collapsed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mali rose thereafter and became a bigger entity altogether, stretching about 1600 kilometres inland from the coast. Berber traders carried goods, primarily gold, slaves and salt, across the Sahara Desert to markets on the Mediterranean Sea, including the Arab stronghold on the Straights of Gibraltar, Ceuta, (today a Spanish enclave in Morocco) of which more anon.

One of the earliest maps showing the whole of the African landmass seems to have been drawn by a Chinese cartographer Ch’uan Chin. The estimated date is stated to be 1402, western reckoning. The map is now in the safekeeping of Ryukoko University in Kyoto, Japan. This is one of many proofs of massive Chinese fleets with boats of up to122 metres long that ranged over the Indian Ocean to the African coast long before the puny craft of the Portuguese sailed up the East African littoral. The cause of the sudden end to Chinese exploration was domestic. Why did the Chinese fail to exploit their advantage over backward Europeans? Why did the Chinese not colonise Europe and America? [Endnote 3]

The attention of European powers was drawn to Africa particularly by the pilgrimage of the emperor of Mandingo to Mecca in 1324. The tales of his wealth were widely reported. Author Noël Mostert (regrettably now resident in Tangier), wrote in pictures that flowed from his pen. You inhale the dust and fear the stabbing thorns of the trees as you mentally tramp the same dangerous tracks. He wrote in ‘Frontiers’ …he arrived in Cairo preceded by 500 slaves carrying heavy staffs of gold. He distributed gold so liberally in Cairo that its price there was devalued.

Until the late middle ages two thirds of European gold came from West Africa. The caravans of camels spent two months crossing the sands of the Sahara desert from Jenne and Timbuctu to finance the trade and development of Europe. It gilded the state of grasping bishops and avaricious kings.

The Mali ruler was said to have had 10 000 horses in his stables. The state collapsed in the sixteenth century. It seems as if the countries of this part of Africa were ruled by a Moslem elite but that the bulk of the population remained pagan. Apart from early Arabic writings the story of sub-Saharan Africa was lost in a world of oral tradition. The Kushite kingdom had some connection with Ethiopia, where an Amharic-speaking people were developing separately.

Kushites, fusing with a semitic people, formed a separate polity in the first century of the Christian era. At its height the Aksum empire stretched from the fringes of the Sahara desert across the Red Sea to the inner Arabian desert. It reached its zenith in years 300 to 500 of the Christian era. They were converted to the Coptic version of Christianity in the fourth century and the later spread of Islam cut them off from their connection with the Mediterranean world, creating a culture isolated for centuries. They indeed developed an untypical African culture with extensive power in the hands of the kings. The Aksumites developed Africa’s only indigenous written script, Ge’ez, from which the written form of the languages spoken in modern Ethiopia has evolved.(John Reader, Africa, A Biography of the Continent, 1997) They traded with Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean and Arabia. They made use of gold, silver and copper coins, minted by themselves. These are the first coins known in Africa until, in the tenth century, Arabian coins appeared on the East coast.

It is interesting to note that gold is the common factor that links all the major indigenous state formations in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa: Aksum on the northern Ethiopian plateau, ancient Ghana, Mali and Asante in West Africa and Zimbabwe in south-east Africa.

Possibly 2800 years ago some of the Bantu speaking peoples began to move out of the Congo Basin’s equatorial forest zone. Armed with skills in metal working and with wet-climate crops like yams they were better able to survive in the more open lands of East Africa’s Rift Valley and the Great Lakes region than the Nilo-Sarahan and Afro-Asiatic farmers and herders and Khoisan hunter-gatherers they began to displace. A century or so before the Christian period they had already reached the East African coast. In East Africa they acquired millet and sorghum. They were poised for expansion!

In East Africa there were numerous iron-age farmers, but to the south were thousands of kilometres of stone-age Khoisan [Endnote 4] hunter-gatherers lacking iron and crops. In an astonishing speedy movement of iron-age peoples, Bantu farmers moved south as far as the Thukela River (in modern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; ‘Tugela’ in an older orthography) within a few centuries, sweeping aside anyone in their path. Unlike intruders in the Americas and Australasia, the newcomers did not bring diseases that killed off many of the indigenous peoples. Similar to English settlers in Tasmania centuries later, the Bantu obviously killed off any peoples who stood in their way, but in the main they merely overran the Khoisan and forced them to flee.

By the eighth century of our era, peoples