AFRICA AS A DARK CONTINENT BY A.O EZE

Africa is a continent about which outsiders have all sorts of impressions; one of the most enduring and disturbing impressions is that which portrayed and continued to portray Africa as a dark continent where nothing good is possible. On the contrary, the general impression especially among western scholars has been to stereotype the continent as a land afflicted by drought, famine, diseases, incessant conflicts, mismanagement, population explosion, brain drain, social disorder and endemic corruption. Western scholars and observers tend to play down the fact that colonialism undermined and in most cases destroyed the structures of African political and government systems. Whether the colonial powers ruled by indirect method or supplanted the existing political order or government machinery, the same result of stifling, undermining and the destroying the existing culture was achieved. The greatest harm done to the colonial subjects is the destruction of their self-confidence, determination and self-esteem. Independence was achieved by African colonies in three ways: by negotiation, by defiance and by military struggle. In cases where independence was attained by negotiation, it was not designed as a rupture of relationships, but a redefinition, in a form guaranteeing senior partner standing to the metro pole and its interest. The withdrawing colonial power ensured that it retained the capacity to orchestrate and manipulate the decolonization process sufficiently to exclude, where possible, the most uncompromising, the most intransigent and the most stubborn aspiring leaders in the colonies. Sometimes, such African leader incurred the wrath and the chastisement of the erstwhile colonial power, in which case, the emergent African countries either fell in line or over-reacted by moving to the other extreme, seeking friendship and association with the socialist bloc against the Western bloc to which all European colonizing powers belong. Only few countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia are examples of countries in Africa that achieved political independence by long military struggle and they paid for it dearly in human lives and disrupted structures and systems. Its reaction was predictable, since no member of the Western bloc would immediately come to their aid (There was of course, a tacit understanding between the colonizing powers which did not permit assistance to any errant former colony). With decolonization, the former colonies remained substantially the areas of influence of the former colonial powers. But for countries which achieved independence through military struggle, the situation was different. Since they took up arms against fraternize with their opponents on the battle field immediately after securing their freedom.