Explotación del Gente

Africans were minding their own business, well, mostly minding their own business when the European powers of the day met in Berlin to dice and slice the continent into spheres of influence. To them, Africa, then and even today is the "dark continent:" incomprehensible, mysterious, and about as disposable as an anal wart. Still, the European industrial age needed to be sustained by the mindless exploitation of the African continents' resources, and, infamously in the case of Leopold II of Belgium, the people. 

An image depicting the mutilation of the natives of the Congo Free State by Leopold II

Indeed, Leopold's regime is documented to have so brutal that it is estimated that about half (8 million out of 16 million inhabitants) of the the native population died between 1885 and 1908. This was a level of carnage which unfortunately cannot be accurately documented because much of the Congo was still quite impenetrable, but the level of carnage wrought by the colonists was utterly horrific. 

The legacy of colonialism brought with it christianity, human zoos throughout the western world where natives would be displayed for the perverse entertainment of eugenicists, and outright theft of resources, the latter which carries on to the present day. For the British, even in the present era to suggest a payment of £2600 for surviving MauMau¹ in 2013 was utterly insulting. This is in light to the extent that even the Portuguese have gone on to apologize to and compensate Ashkenazi Jews, and the Germans in their atonement for the Showa.

In the basest sense, it showed to the world that Africans were "lesser people" in comparison to other demographic groups who had suffered under the yoke of colonial powers, or had suffered what we now identity as war crimes. Among the detainees who suffered severe mistreatment was Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British government were castrated. Yes, the grandfather of a former US president suffered inhuman torture in the hands of the colonial administration. 

Indeed, an excerpt from R Edgerton's book, Mau Mau: An African crucible² reads: If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked. If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted... Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave. When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk."

Such was the brutality that the colonial administration wrought on people who wanted little more than self-determination, the return of their lands, and freedom to live as their ancestors had. The administration also coopted natives to be their taskmasters, a duty they accomplished with brutal gusto. These so-called homeguards have never been brought to book for their crimes and to add insult to injury, their family members were elevated kmto positions of power by the Homo Kenyatta government following the declared independence of Kenya. In that way, the British retained their looted lands and assets as they were protected by the post colonial administration, and still are to this day.

The African today will declare their love for a white Jesus, will struggle to acquire a western visa, but will still exalt the superiority of western norms, all while voting to, and participating in the destruction of their own backyards. We still are mentally colonized, only that we do not know, or refuse to acknowledge it.

This is an excerpt from the non-apology apology that William Hague, the then UK foreign secretary made in 2013: "We continue to deny liability on behalf of the Government and British taxpayers today for the actions of the colonial administration in respect of the claims, and indeed the courts have made no finding of liability against the Government in this case. We do not believe that claims relating to events that occurred overseas outside direct British jurisdiction more than fifty years ago can be resolved satisfactorily through the courts without the testimony of key witnesses that is no longer available. It is therefore right that the Government has defended the case to this point since 2009."³

Yes, very few folk alive saw it happen, so we should not be held accountable for it, he said. Perhaps William J Hague should have been reminded of the dire consequences of Holocaust denial.

¹https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/05/kenyan-mau-mau-payout-uk-regret-abuse

²R. Edgerton. Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London 1990. pp. 144–159.

³https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-to-parliament-on-settlement-of-mau-mau-claims