What colonialism hides and the selected class interests its serves (Part 2)

Daily Maverick

05-06-2025

Both Chris Hani and Steve Biko echoed Frantz Fanon's warning that unless the fight against oppression is a fundamental one, decolonisation will just mean 'the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are the legacy of the colonial period'. Part 2 in a two-part series.
Many of the people who invoke Fanon don't seem to have read his extraordinarily prescient The Wretched of the Earth, and, more particularly, its chapter 'The Pitfalls of National Consciousness'.
Written in 1961, it could easily be thought of having been published yesterday, as will shortly be demonstrated. So germane is this chapter that it merits a longish quotation: ' The (post-independence) national middle class discovers its historic mission: that of intermediary. Seen through its eyes, its mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque of neocolonialism.
'The (post-independence) national bourgeoisie will be quite content with the role of the Western bourgeoisie's business agent… But this same lucrative role, this cheap-jack's function, this meanness of outlook and this absence of all ambition symbolise the incapability of the national middle class to fulfil its historic role of bourgeoisie (embedded in capitalism).
'Here, the dynamic, pioneer aspect, the characteristics of the inventor and of the discoverer of new worlds which are found in all national bourgeoisies are lamentably absent. In the colonial countries, the spirit of indulgence is dominant at the core of the bourgeoisie; and this is because the national bourgeoisie identifies itself with the Western bourgeoisie, from whom it has learnt its lessons.
'It follows the Western bourgeoisie along its path of negation and decadence without ever having emulated it in its first stages of exploration and invention, stages which are an acquisition of that Western bourgeoisie whatever the circumstances. In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie of the West. We need not think that it is jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness or the will to succeed of youth.'
For our purposes, the main takeaway from Fanon is the post-independence leaders' and business supporters' acceptance of their dependency, provided they remain the beneficiaries of the inequalities produced by their particular country's peripheral position within the global capitalist order.
It must be presumed that Professor William Gumede, whom I quoted in Part 1, has read 'The Wretched of the Earth' — but with the same selectivity that allows him to advocate entrepreneurship as the antidote to colonialism, when giant transnational corporations (TNCs) dominate all capitalist economies.
Although merely junior partners in this capitalist order — a 'pure appendage of the stock exchange', according to Frederick Engels' 1895 characterisation — the dependent bourgeoisie had capitalism 'in their bones', as noted US economist Paul Baran would have said, with a commitment to protecting — while helping to camouflage — the capitalist nature of their various societies.
This line of enquiry led to the development of underdevelopment analyses, beginning with Andre Gunder Frank's 1966 book, The Development of Underdevelopment and Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, of 1972.
In need of emphasising is that by the time of independence, all former African and Asian colonies had been integrated into the world capitalist system. Colonialism and the specificities of the societal features of each of the former colonies did indeed leave their imprint — most commonly in adopting the language and religion — of their erstwhile colonial owners.
Their market-driven economies, however, along with its profit-maximising imperative, monetarisation, various forms of commodification and working class of different sizes and functions, were all characteristically those of capitalism, even allowing for a sometimes high degree of variability.
That most of the people in these post-colonial countries were — and many still are — peasant farmers made no difference: they were and are chained to the unequal trade of capitalist markets worldwide for their livelihoods.
Fanon's 1961 insights additionally alert us to yet another major feature of the African dependent bourgeoisie. Fanon presents us with the seemingly paradoxical promotion by the dependent bourgeoisie of nationalisation, the supposed policy of left-wing socialists. Yet, it is the dependent bourgeoisie who, he alerts us: '… never stops calling for the nationalisation of the economy and the commercial sector. In its thinking, to nationalise does not mean placing the entire economy at the service of the nation or satisfying all its requirements. To nationalise does not mean organising the state on the basis of a new programme of social relations. For the bourgeoisie, nationalisation signifies very precisely the transfer into indigenous hands of privileges inherited from the colonial period.'
'Africanisation'
This 'Africanisation' has swept through Africa in various times and forms. Uganda was the first instance of this phenomenon when, in 1972, its then president Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of the sizable South Asian minority.
As elsewhere in British Africa, the colonial administrators had brought thousands of people from British India to Uganda to serve as labourers and mid-level administrators. These migrants — known simply as 'Asians' — held a middle position in the colonial Ugandan social hierarchy, being between the white colonial administration and the few white settlers and the African majority.
Following Uganda's independence in 1962, Ugandan Asians came to dominate the country's commercial life. Resentment by Uganda's African commercial interest ultimately culminated in their 1972 expulsion.
Importantly, the expulsion of Ugandan Asians was justified by a nativist logic that sought to paint the country's Asian minority not as fellow countrymen who had shared the Ugandan people's experience of colonial subjugation, but rather as parasitic relics of the colonial past.
Amin repeatedly referred to Ugandan Asians as 'bloodsuckers', and declared that his 'deliberate policy' in expelling them was to 'transfer the economic control of Uganda into the hands of Ugandans, for the first time in our country's history'. The expulsion was Africanisation in practice.
This policy of affirmative action, as Mahmood Mamdani pointed out, benefited only a 'privileged minority' of African Ugandans despite being dressed up as providing redress to all those who had experienced the brunt of colonial oppression.
South Africa's 'transformation' — the new and more neutral terms for affirmative action and BEE in all their various forms — replicates this Ugandan pattern, with the white supremacy of the apartheid era being replaced by persisting white privileges in post-1994 South Africa. This is the rationalisation used by the nominally non-racial South African state for its promotion of what former president Thabo Mbeki called the black bourgeoisie.
Except that the coloureds and Indians — the 'races' still used in all official statistics — are, like white South Africans, seen as non-African. The intended de facto beneficiaries of transformation are thus those people able to claim they are the African bourgeoisie. (There are no longer any legal definitions of the four apartheid races invented by apartheid and still used in all official statistics and, no less importantly, that frame the thinking of most South Africans.)
Fragmentation
At an African continental level, this fragmentation is part of Fanon's foresight: ' National consciousness is nothing but a crude, empty, fragile shell. The cracks in it explain how easy it is for young independent countries to switch back from nation to ethnic group and from state to tribe… Consequently, wherever the petty-mindedness of the national bourgeoisie and the haziness of its ideological positions have been incapable of enlightening the people as a whole… there is a return to tribalism, and we watch with a raging heart as ethnic tensions triumph.'
The anachronism of still referring to colonialism to describe aspects of the contemporary world obscures these realities when not entirely obliterating them. With activists for change still attributing colonialism, in some shape or form, to the burdens faced by most of their citizens, the resulting misunderstandings are ideal protections for the status quo — 'the most universal system the world has ever known, both in the sense that it is global and in the sense that it penetrates every aspect of social life and the natural environment', in the assessment of noted American-Canadian historian Ellen Meiksins Wood.
A colonial mask is ideal cover, at a local level, for the peripheral bourgeoisie. Their dependence on the metropolitan bourgeoisie for the economic and political privileges keeping them as the ruling class in each of the dependent countries needs the true nature of the relationship to be camouflaged in any way.
This colonial associated confusion makes impossible the very notion of a meaningful 'Africa'. Other than the accident of being on the same continent, which, in geological time we know will be short lived due to continental drift, there isn't even a semblance of any such homogeneous Africa.
Longstanding civil and regional wars; competing economic blocs geographically defined; exacerbated still further by all the major African countries prioritising what they see to be best in their own competing interests; growing authoritarianism and social conservativism, all beg the question: What is this 'Africa' we so readily invoke?
Yet, we continue speaking of Africa as though it is a meaningfully unified entity. Hence the longstanding and repeated calls for Africa to build robust, pan-African institutions and markets.
Hence, too, as an extension of this call, is delinking from exploitative global systems — whether controlled by Washington, Brussels or Beijing — together with deepening trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Nepad
Proponents of agreements like the AfCFTA seem to have forgotten Nepad. NEE who? The New Partnership for Africa's Development, an economic development programme of the African Union, adopted in July 2001. Yes, 24 years ago! Its 'newness' was being an African partnership, designed by and for Africans dedicated to an overarching vision and policy framework for accelerating economic cooperation and integration among African countries.
Yet AfCFTA is among the myths still being peddled by a leadership dependent on retaining its privileges by bamboozling the masses. Its incessant message is that the enemy of development is entirely 'out there', beyond national borders.
China is a new addition to this rogues' gallery, with the 'West', America and Europe being the foundation members. With the demise of Rhodesia, South Africa is unique in recognising an internal enemy, 'whites', the beneficiaries of our colonial and apartheid history, but not the inequality produced and reproduced by our unbroken assigned place in the international capitalist order.
Racialising this inequality extends to White Monopoly Capital. Note, capitalism is exempt; it is only the whiteness of the capital that is the problem. South Africa is further unique by simultaneously championing both 'Africa' and the xenophobia directed at anyone more black than the local standard for Africans, and any other marker of being a non-South African African.
The 'Global South' is no less of a mystification than Africa. Both, however, have the bulk of their populations bedevilled by poverty, which, in turn, is guaranteed by the role they play in what used to be promoted as a globalisation designed for their benefit — mainly via job creation.
Despite this mass of people who suffer the consequences of global normality, changing the status quo is something even Hercules would have found daunting. For those of us seeing the need for significant system change, we needlessly make it even more difficult for ourselves. Our starting point must be a broadly agreed understanding of what it is that we seek to change.
The way forward
Fanon recognised that decolonisation could merely entail 'quite simply the replacing of a certain 'species' of men by another 'species' of men'. His analysis of the newly independent African countries invites the conclusion that unless the fight against oppression is a fundamental one, decolonisation will just mean 'the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are the legacy of the colonial period'.
Steve Biko made similar warnings: ' If we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks filtering through to the so-called bourgeoisie. Our society will be run almost as of yesterday.' (I Write What I Like.)
Adopting the 'Coca-Cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds', he argued, would guarantee the relations of domination to continue. (ibid.)
Chris Hani, another hero of the Struggle against apartheid, was equally forthright in his expectations of what must follow the victory over apartheid. In October 1992, shortly before his assassination, he warned: ' What I fear is that the liberators will reveal themselves to be elitists… drive in Mercedes-Benz's and use up this country's resources… and live in palaces and gather riches.'
Similarly, the Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean theorist and revolutionary Amílcar Cabral argued in his seminal 1974 essay, 'National Liberation and Culture', that as harmful as 'the denigration of the cultural values of the African peoples based on racialist prejudices' has been, it would be just as harmful for the national liberation struggle to engage in 'blind acceptance of cultural values without considering the negative, reactionary or retrogressive (aspects) it has or can have.'
Though Cabral described cultural revival and resistance as a 'return to the source', he nevertheless made clear that the national liberation struggle in its efforts to promote and nurture indigenous culture cannot afford 'confusion between that which is the expression of an objective and material historical reality and that which seems to be a figment of the mind.' (Amílcar Cabral, National Liberation and Culture, Transition, no. 45; 1974)
In his Preface to The Wretched of the Earth, Jean Paul Sartre, one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, merits the last words to this article: ' The reader is sternly put on his guard against the most dangerous will o' the wisps: the cult of the leader and of personalities, Western culture, and what is equally to be feared, the withdrawal into the twilight of past African culture.
' If this suppressed fury fails to find an outlet, it turns in a vacuum and devastates the oppressed themselves. In order to free themselves they even massacre each other. The different tribes fight between themselves since they cannot face the real enemy.
' The time is drawing near, I am sure, when we will join the ranks of those who make it.'
In historic time, 1961 is but yesterday. It is tomorrow that beckons. New confusions will arise. But we should no longer be burdened by the muddles over the meaning of decolonisation. DM