Just a century ago, European imperialists occupied nearly 90% of Africa, subjugating the continent to a ruthless system of oppression, exploitation, and genocide. In Namibia, the Germans perfected concentration camps they would later bring to their own lands, while the Belgians exacted a holocaust in the Democratic Republic of Congo that resulted in the death of eight million people. Borders were drawn without respect to the native populations, while natural resources were stripped from the land at deafening speed. It wasn’t until World War II, when Ethiopia drove Italian settlers out, that the tide began to turn and the African Independence Movement was born.
.
During the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, dozens of African nations freed themselves from the pestilent grip of European colonization with Zimbabwe being the last to achieve liberation in 1980. Yet, even as Africans expelled foreign powers, a new plague took hold in the form of neocolonialism. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre first used the term in a 1956 rally for peace in Algeria to describe a system of capitalism, globalization, and cultural imperialism used by so-called “First World” nations to control rather than develop former colonies.
.
A decade later, Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, made it the subject of his 1965 book, Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. Upon the book’s publication, the U.S. State Department was so enraged, they immediately performed a textbook act of neocolonialism, cancelling $25 million of American “aid” to the fledgling nation. “Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practice it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress,” Nkrumah wrote.
.
Read the Full Story at Document Journal
.
