In a recent report on the BBC website captioned “France-Africa ties ‘must change”, it is reported that French presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, declared that “France and Africa must change the "old ways" and move past the colonial era.” This is another false dawn in the metropole where the French concoct their poisonous portions against defenseless Africans. No one African soul should be impressed by this perfunctory word play, even if one must note that Mr. Sarkozy is honest enough to realize that the “colonial era” is still wholly in play regarding France-Africa ties in 2006.
One remembers the hope that a leftist François Mitterand generated in the hearts of progressive Africans when he stepped into the Elysée Palace in 1981. He did not sound differently from this Mr. Sarkozy. He put in the young Jean-Pierre Cot as the Minister of Cooperation (you know, The Cooperation Agreements), and no sooner had Mr. Cot began dismantling the nefarious networks at the Cellule Africaine did the françafrique lobby led by people like Bongo and the French business interests that loot Africa protested successfully to have Mr. Cot removed. Mitterrand’s legacy in Africa is his thieving son, Jean-Christophe "Papa m'a dit" Mitterand and his unwavering support of the Hutu fascist genocidaires in Rwanda. François Mitterand's quote regarding the genocide in Rwanda that "in places like that genocide is not important" tells us all we need to know about the entrenched French view of Africans and the consideration they deserve.
More recently, according to F.X. Verschave, Alain Juppé, French Prime Minister (1995-1997), after reading a study that was later to be published under the title of “The Criminalisation of the State in Africa" by Bayart et al, became so distraught that he advised Jacques Chirac that French policy in Africa could not continue as we know it. His reward was that a few weeks after his discussion with Mr. Chirac, it was leaked in the French press that he was involved in a shady deal on an apartment in Paris. He knew then not to mess with the French loot in Africa; not to mess with that France's special relationship with their Negroes down there in the bush of Africa. Mr. Juppé, like Mitterand before him, got the message.
As for Mr. Sarkozy, if elected as president, he may use the monarchial power of the Imperial French presidency to do as he says, but we can not hold our breadth. The nefarious lobbies will fight him to the death, just like the lobbies in Algeria fought DeGaulle, making several attempts on his life when he realized that "L'Algérie [n'était pas] française" after all. He may want to revisit Mitterrand’s and Juppé’s attempts to end this France-Africa colonial era ties.
The end of French colonial rule in Africa, as Mr. Sarkozy seems to acknowledge in 2006, will only come from Africans understanding fully the background of 500 years of slavery and the enormous benefits it gave to Europeans (and continues to give to France in the current context); understanding that colonialism was instituted to replace slavery; and that Cooperation Agreements between France and her African colonies are still in place to maintain the benefits of slavery and colonialism in the guise of "independent" states in Africa. These agreements remain a negation of the humanity of Africans and a return to the doctrine and attitudes of slavery in the modern world. An understanding also of the reality that this paradigm is allowed by the rest of "civilized" world: the nebulous "international community"; for they all know and understand clearly the type of relationships that exists between France and her colonies in 2006. They accept it and legitimize it within a frame work of age-old racist instincts and the reflexive hatred of black Africa.
We in the Southern Cameroons Liberation Movement and especially the IG have made it a point, to at all times articulate this truth, and from this understanding and articulation, our freedom is sure to emerge. The French, the Southern Cameroons successor colonizer, after being handed to them by their British cousins in the furtherance of their Entente Cordiale must be confronted squarely with the evil of their ways. We may even end up freeing the people of LRC from the French before Mr. Sarkozy has a chance to.
In the final analysis, Sarkozy is blowing hot hair, and only a complete digestion of historical perspectives as hinted above and a violent and relentless campaign against the French in Africa will bring the type of changes that Sarkozy is yapping about, for as Frantz Fanon noted, "colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence."
Research Bureau
MedCom, IG
