‘We, the brave British, now building concentration camps’: How liberation movements in Africa were labelled ‘terrorist’
Western colonizers for years depicted themselves as saviors protecting locals from ‘satanic and barbaric terrorists’ who were actually fighting for their freedom

by Maxwell Boamah Amofa

For centuries, African countries fought for freedom from the shackles of colonialism, from being forced on slave boats across the Atlantic to the West Indies to cultivate sugarcane and tobacco for the European economy, from being forcefully conscripted to fight for colonial powers in world wars or being put in cages in human zoos, whether in the Jardin d’Acclimatation in France, The Tervuren Park in Belgium, or far away in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in the United States.

To legitimize their stranglehold on African countries, the colonizers resorted to labelling African freedom fighters as terrorists under the concept of rule of law, which in practice was rule by oppressive colonial laws. 

The imprisonment of Nelson Mandela serves as a stark reminder of this strategy.

Despite his efforts to liberate South Africa from the oppressive apartheid regime, which was deeply rooted in colonial policies of the Dutch and British, he was imprisoned for allegedly engaging in terrorist activities. He remained on the United States terrorist list until 2008, long after he had been honored with Nobel Peace prize in 1993 for his efforts in dismantling the apartheid system and ushering South Africa into a period of peace.

This labelling strategy dates back to the dawn of European colonialism when they portrayed the doctrine of discovery as a universal legal principle to “civilize” what they described as dark and primitive continent by occupying African lands and imposing their values on the people under the veil of Christianity. In practice, Christianity was frequently used as a pretext to loot the resources of the people. As King Leopold in his letter to the missionaries in 1883 admitted:

“You will go certainly to evangelize, but your evangelization must inspire above all Belgium interests. Your principal objective in our mission in the Congo is never to teach the n****rs to know God, this they know already. They speak and submit to a Mungu, one Nzambi, one Nzakomba, and what else I don’t know. They know that to kill, to sleep with someone else’s wife, to lie and to insult is bad. Have courage to admit it; you are not going to teach them what they know already. Your essential role is to facilitate the task of administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests in that part of the world. For these things, you have to keep watch on disinteresting our savages from the richness that is plenty [in their underground]”.

Therefore, whether it was the ‘French mission civilisatrice’ (civilizing mission), ‘La missione civilizzatrice’ (civilizing mission) of the Italians, the ‘Portuguese Lusotropicalism’ or the ‘white man’s burden’, a term used to justify British and the United States imperial policies against the black race, the intention was the same: to create ‘a narrative of moral duty’ to protect the dignity of the people in the countries they wanted to colonize.

The first half of the 20th century saw colonial powers fortifying their grounds in African territories. However, one major problem they faced was fierce resistance from people whose economic and social settings were tied to their indigenous lands and were unwilling to let them go, such as the Kikuyu people of Kenya.

In the 1950s, the Kikuyu people and other Kenyans whose lands were occupied by the British colonial forces formed an armed resistance movement against the colonial power to protect their lands from occupation. In response, the British launched what was described as operation Anvil to protect their interest. As part of their operation, they instituted ‘concentration camps’ where allegedly hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were forced into labor. Rape and sexual abuse of women, starvation, flogging, murder of inmates and death were commonplace in these camps.

British writer and broadcaster Nicholas Rankin, who experienced the situation, recalls:

“What I could not conceive, as I sat on the floor of my father’s study in my shorts and shirt and Bata sandals was that we, the brave British, were now building concentration camps”.

Torture practices in these camps were so cruel that the colony’s attorney General Eric Griffith-Jones described it as “distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany”.

During the Mau Mau struggle for freedom, it is estimated that over a million people were put in detention camps, with 13,000 Kenyans brutally massacred and about 1,000 people hanged by the British colonial force, while only 32 British had lost their lives in the struggle by 1954. 

In Kenya, despite their atrocities, the colonizers insisted that the Mau Mau resistance force were the terrorists, murdering British nationals, and that the operation of the colonizer was a civilizing mission by agents of the civilized world.

As the New York Times put it in 1952, 

“It is inevitable in our time that the white missionary should be tied to a hated imperialism. In turning on the missionary, the rebellion rejects the Christianity which the missionary brought. In Africa, this does not seem to mean falling back on atheism or agnosticism; it means a return to paganism, to the leopard man, to ritual murders, to primitive magic and terror, that is how Mau Mau works”.

This criticism could also be viewed as a direct response to the African people who had begun to grow increasingly skeptical about the role of colonial application of Christian principles in protecting what they described as ‘human dignity’. Africans began to see the hypocrisy of the colonial Christian administration because many of these missionaries were serving as home guards for the colonial government, fighting actively against the Kenyan people or using brutal methods to acquire information from the Mau Mau detainees while working in the detention camps.

In 1952, the media, particularly newspapers which had extensive reach, were used to spotlight the narrative of the colonial powers, and they did so by banning African media that did not align with the interest of the colonial government under the guise of a so-called state of emergency.

If framing involves accentuating certain aspects of perceived reality to garner support, the British press provided a perfect atmosphere for this, because their actions allowed the colonial government to control information dissemination based on two major narratives: the superiority of the European military machinery and the depiction of white supremacist colonizers as saviors of the African people from those fighting for freedom, but labelled as terrorists, such as the Mau Mau. 

The British press wrote about “heroic whites being slaughtered by fanatical, bestial, satanic, savage, barbaric, degraded and merciless Mau Mau terrorists”.

This sense of nationalist rhetoric was necessary for the colonial administration as it sought to rally support back home and create divisions among colonies; between those who supported the liberation struggle and the people who believed the ‘colonial saviors’ as part of the British divide and conquer policy, a strategy that became popular among the colonial powers after the Berlin conference of 1884/1885. 

The terrorist label has been used against several African leaders that wanted to liberate themselves from the firm grip of colonialism, such as Muammar Gaddafi, who they referred to as the “Mad dog of the Middle East”. A title that was given to the Libyan leader whose effort, like Kwame Nkrumah’s, to unite the African countries under the Gold Dinar currency threatened the vested interests of those who wanted to exploit African resources and maintain their global hegemony. President Reagan of the United States was the first to use this title: “We know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution, Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which is targeted on many of his own Arab compatriots”.

Gaddafi’s effort to unite the African countries was subsequently overshadowed by this narrative, depicting him as a terrorist against his own people.

Whether the Mad Dog of the Middle East, The Juntas of Sahel States or the Butcher of Syria, such labels have been an essential part of colonial policies for two major reasons. In Africa, it ensured that Africans would not unite against the main threat, which was the imperialist powers, but instead channel their energies to their fellow Africans fighting for freedom as threats and, secondly, it ensured that the colonizers gained support from the international community.

https://www.rt.com/africa/610196-liberation-movements-labelled-terrorist-by-west/

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SEE ALSO:

The privatization of Africa’s state-owned companies is always linked to the US through its financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, with the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s and 1990s.

By Dr Claire Ayuma Amuhaya

However, the British were behind the exploitation, privatization, and eventual collapse of Africa’s state-owned companies even before the introduction of the so-called neo-liberal market agenda by the US. The British have been doing this mainly through their Commonwealth institutions, proudly headed by the monarch.

The Commonwealth organization claims that the role of its head is purely symbolic, that it has no maximum fixed term, it is not hereditary, and that future heads will be chosen by the Commonwealth leaders.

King Charles III succeeded Queen Elizabeth II as head of the Commonwealth upon her death on September 8, 2022. This was after the Commonwealth head of government (CHOGM) meeting in 2018 agreed that the next head would be Prince Charles. Some claimed he had overcome really tough competition to win Britain’s backing as the best candidate, but there is no evidence of anyone else contesting or even voicing aspirations.

The reality, however, is that the title of Commonwealth head forms part of the monarch’s full and inheritable title in each realm and letters patent issued. For example, Elizabeth II’s letters patent from 1958 clearly state that Prince Charles was the heir and successor of the Commonwealth territories.

Similarly, on February 13, 2023, King Charles III’s official letters patent state that the Prince William of Wales and his heirs and successors shall be the future heads of the Commonwealth. So, it’s not true that it is not hereditary, but why would the British, through its monarch, still want to head and control the Commonwealth?

Use of the term neo-colonialism is internationally attributed to Alex Quaison-Sackey, a Ghanaian diplomat who addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on April 5, 1958. It was popularized by Kwame Nkrumah in his book Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism in 1965.

Most people think neo-colonialism started after most colonies had gained independence. However, the British were the first to start implementing it with the creation of the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1931 on the basis of the 1926 Balfour declaration.

In 1945, Britain signed the Anglo-American financial and commercial agreement with the US. But when the country started experiencing raw materials and food shortages in 1947, coupled with the US loan burden, its Labor government decided to find their own non-dollar sources of raw materials and food. Unfortunately, instead of looking inward, they looked at their colonies as their non-dollar source.

This led to the Overseas Resources Development Act of 1948, which was enacted by the King George VI, and the establishment of the Colonial Development Corporation, which was “charged with duties for securing development in colonial territories.” It also led to the Overseas Food Corporation, which was “charged with duties for securing the production or processing of foodstuffs or other products in places outside the United Kingdom, and the marketing thereof, and for matters connected therewith.”

After many colonies had gained independence, in 1963, the Colonial Development Corporation was renamed the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) and, in 1969, it was permitted to invest outside the Commonwealth.

Nicholas Mansergh wrote in his book The Commonwealth Experience Volume One: The Durham Report to the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1982): “Commonwealth was the heir of Empire, and imperial influences bore closely upon its earlier growth.” So, how does the Commonwealth, through its institutions such as the CDC, ensure that British imperialistic nature is maintained, albeit not directly as it was during colonialism?

It is stated clearly in the Act leading to the establishment of the Colonial Development Corporation that it was charged with securing development in colonial territories. While the main purpose of the Commonwealth Development Corporation (the renamed Colonial Development Corporation) in 1963 was “to invest in the creation and growth of viable private businesses in poorer developing countries to contribute to economic growth for the benefit of the poor; and to mobilise private investment in these markets both directly and by demonstrating profitable investments as part of the mission… to fight world poverty.”

More succinctly, the CEO of the CDC between 2004 and 2011, Richard Laing, said the “CDC exists to improve people’s lives in developing countries.”

However, the CDC had never led to industrial development, nor did it improve people’s lives in developing countries, because the aid supposedly given to their colonies (and/or their former colonies) had never been directed to Africa-owned companies, nor were the profits or even tax revenues ever directed to Africans. This was confirmed during a UK Parliament hearing in 2010, which led to the CDC’s reformation. The main conclusions of the investigations were that the CDC’s projects had “a focus on profitability to the detriment of development; depriving developing counties of much needed tax revenue; lack of analysis of development impacts and an ongoing failure of oversight and standards, transparency and accountability.”

How did they do it? First, the CDC aid was directed towards already established British companies, like The London and Rhodesian Mining & Land Co Ltd (Lonrho), which was incorporated in 1909 with a founding capital raised by seven British shareholders who began mining and agricultural businesses in Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe). In 1961, the company recruited the famous British neo-colonial agent Tiny Rowland, who expanded its interests out of Rhodesia into neighboring Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Zaire (DRC), and Tanzania, transforming the entity into an African conglomerate without rival.

The Africans were mainly employed as manual laborers with poor pay, while the foreign personnel performed the highly paid and prestigious engineering and technical functions. These companies just pulled resources out of the ground and sold them abroad. Little capital development was devoted to actually increasing the stock of productive wealth and this, in turn, deprived developing countries of much-needed tax revenue.

Secondly, the CDC was (is) actually behind the collapse, sale and eventual privatization of Africa’s state-owned companies. These include Nigeria’s National Fertilizer Corporation of Nigeria (NAFCON), which was privatized through corrupt deals that only enriched a few individuals. And how was the CDC involved? The CDC was one of the main investors in a private equity firm known as Emerging Capital Partners (ECP), which managed the ECP Africa Fund II.

Through the ECP Africa Fund II, ECP invested in three Nigerian companies: Oando, NOTORE (formerly state-owned NAFCON) and Intercontinental Bank.  The bank is reported to have been used for the laundering of money said to have been obtained corruptly by the former governor of Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta State, James Ibori.

According to Nigerian anti-corruption campaigner Dotun Oloko, the whistleblower in the Emerging Capital Partners case, Ibori used a front company (NOTORE) to acquire the assets of the privatized National Fertilizer Corporation of Nigeria (NAFCON), and one of the CDC’s directors was acting as Ibori’s front man during these transactions.

In 1997, the CDC became a Public Private Partnership (PPP). Then, in 1998, it transformed from a statutory corporation to a public limited company trading under the name CDC Capital Partners. In 2004, following further restructuring, two separate fund management companies were formed from CDC, ACTIS and AUREOS, leaving CDC Group plc as an emerging markets fund-of-funds investment company owned entirely by the government.

The CDC’s new role as a fund-of-funds investor meant that it was no longer a direct investor in companies in emerging markets. Instead, they now deployed their “capital through private equity funds, such as those managed by ACTIS and AUREOS, which in turn invest in companies in developing countries. These private equity funds thereby provide CDC with an indirect share in the businesses in which the fund manager invests.”

Unfortunately, the structure for resource exploitation and non-dollar supply of food and raw materials remains to this day, because in November 2021, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced that it would rebrand instead of disbanding the CDC as the British International Investment (BII) in 2022 as part of a strategy to deepen economic, security and development ties globally.

So BII is now working behind the scenes through one of its funding managements companies, such as ACTIS, to continue plundering African resources. The best example is the privatization of Cameroon’s electricity sector, which BII advertises as one of its impactful projects in Africa but in fact the investment goes to its own company and not to Africa’s state-owned firms.

In 2001, during the structural adjustment program, the state-owned Cameroonian electricity company SONEL was sold by the government to the US-based firm AES Corporation and renamed AES SONEL.

In 2014, AES sold its stake in AES SONEL and its subsidiaries Kribi Power Development Company (KPDC) and Dibamba Power Development Company (DPDC) to ACTIS. The company was renamed ENEO.

In September 2015, ACTIS sold its shares in KPDC and DPDC to a consortium comprised of the state-owned Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries, Norfund, and the state-owned British development finance institution, Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC Group). Norfund and BII (formerly the CDC) together are referred to as Globeleq – the majority shareholders of KPDC and DPDC.

In 2023, ACTIS announced that it was seeking to exit its investment in Energy of Cameroon and ENEO is currently grappling with liquidity problems as the investor ACTIS prepares to exit.

This showcases how the British, through its institutions, ensures that Africa never prospers. First, it privatizes state-owned companies, sometimes though corrupt deals or individuals, collapses them, and finally claims the need to exit after rendering the companies useless.

So, the CDC ensured the smooth transfer from colonial schemes of African natural resources exploitation by the British to the 21st century schemes that see the exploitation and collapse of Africa’s state-owned companies through its now rebranded institution, the British International Investment (BII).

https://www.rt.com/africa/597982-uk-financial-institutions-africa/

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King Charles keeps British colonial legacy mindset alive
The issue of abuses committed by UK troops has been left to civil society and remnants of freedom fighters for decades, while avoiding the focus of the country’s media and elites

The British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK) in Nanyuki, some 195 kilometers north of Nairobi, has elicited controversy over the years. Britain has permanently stationed about 200 soldiers in Kenya at any given time since Kenya gained independence in 1963. The Kenyan government regards its military cooperation with Britain as strategic to its national security, and the British troops and their Kenyan counterparts hold joint training from the camp. Crucially, BATUK is central to Kenya’s contribution to the ‘global fight’ against terrorism as a reliable Western ally in the East African and the Horn subregion. Kenya, to critics, is a proxy in this counterterrorism campaign and acts at the behest of Western powers.

Historically, Kenya has prized its relationship with Britain. Kenya is the first commonwealth country that the British monarch, King Charles III, visited after coronation. It is testament to Kenya’s longstanding relations with Britain. It is also a dubious distinction that shows that the colonial hangover still runs deep in the country. Diplomatically, the two countries have hardly had frosty relations except on occasions when British envoys abandoned diplomatic niceties and pointedly criticized the Kenyan government for runaway corruption, and other state excesses. Mau Mau, a liberation movement that led an uprising against the British colonialists, was only unbanned recently in 2003. Kenya’s postcolonial political elite, offshoots of collaborators – home guards – naturally inherited British antipathy against the Mau Mau and maintained colonial era legislation that outlawed them. 

The British government has never acknowledged colonial era atrocities in concentration camps in Kenya that included rape, castrations, torture, and murder. The British monarch, during a state visit to Kenya last week, used the words “greatest sorrow and deepest regret” to describe “the heinous and unjustified acts of violence against Kenyans” during the fight for independence. These are vague words that did not include an apology or a pledge for reparations.

Previous Kenyan presidents had shied away from calling for reparations from Britain. So has the Kenyan media, ever unwilling to sharply frame public interest issues. For decades, this issue has been left to civil society and remnants of freedom fighters. However, President William Ruto unprecedently called for reparations during his meeting with the monarch for egregious atrocities committed against the Mau Mau and various other liberation movements and civilians during colonialism. 

The Kenyan government often describes its relations with Britain as warm and cordial despite an atrocious colonial legacy and the postcolonial atrocities by the British troops training from Nanyuki. The monarch described these relations as a “modern partnership of equals.” Critics do not see how a colonial power and its former colony can have such a relationship. They fault the military treaty between Kenya and Britain as a symbol of enduring neocolonialism, imperialism, and erosion of Kenya’s sovereignty. In 2021, the treaty was up for renewal and some voices called for it to be scrapped, but expectedly, it was extended for five more years. This, however, did not dampen calls for reparations and an end to the treaty. Kenya’s political elite is anglophile in orientation. This is why for decades the problematic relations with Britain have not received due attention.

To some residents of Nanyuki, BATUK is a boost to the local economy. Besides employment opportunities to some Kenyans from the area and other parts of the country, this military base has injected $40 million into the local economy since 2016. Whenever the British soldiers come, they spend generously, particularly on entertainment. It is a windfall to some businesspeople and workers. Once they leave, however, the town turns forlorn until the next batch of soldiers arrive. This financial gain is what, to critics, made successive Kenyan governments unable to rein in rogue British soldiers or end this treaty altogether. It is not all glamour with BATUK, however.

This camp is a metaphor of gross human rights violations. Uncleared munitions at the training camp have caused untold suffering to children and adults over the years, but the victims have not had justice. Residents lost lives at the hands of the British soldiers, but no one has been held to account. The military treaty does not explicitly accord the British troops immunity against criminal prosecution, but has a caveat that effectively does. Law-breaking British soldiers can only be tried in Kenya with the agreement of the UK government. It explains why the Kenyan authorities have not held errant British soldiers criminally accountable and the UK government liable for the atrocities associated with its troops. Insidiously, the treaty ringfences British military interests and personnel in Kenya against accountability.

Cases of people being maimed by unexploded ordnance are common in Archer’s Post, an area not too far from Nanyuki. The victims have lost limbs, eyes, hearing, and even life owing to uncleared training grounds. Some of the victims have been compensated, but many more have not, or never will be. Some of the victims lost their cases on technicalities. When injured, disputes sometimes arise as to whose unexploded munition it was since Kenyan and British troops train in the same area.

British troops have also been accused of raping Kenyan women with impunity over the decades. The plight of these victims is never taken seriously, owing to the lack of political will to stand up to the British. The balance of power between Britain and Kenya is lopsided, weighted heavily towards Britain. Ordinary Kenyans’ lives are trivialized by the government’s unwillingness to fight for them.

One of the most egregious cases of impunity by the British troops in Nanyuki is the murder of a young Kenyan woman, Agnes Wanjiru, whose body was dumped in a hotel septic tank close to the camp in 2012. She had been seen alive in the company of a British soldier. The suspect showed other soldiers the body and the murder was reported to senior British officers, but no action was taken. The suspect was allowed to leave Kenya and while in Britain, allegedly casually confessed to colleagues that he murdered the woman. This story was broken by the British media and half-heartedly amplified by the Kenyan press. Authorities in Nairobi showed a nominal interest in the case to save face. The government and media’s first priority appeared to be damage control, not concern for justice for Wanjiru – or for others who have been maimed and died over the years courtesy of British troops. 

Once the story fell off the front pages of newspapers and prime time headlines, the government went back to default settings. They could not afford to associate BATUK with atrocities and jeopardize their relationship with Britain. The murder of Wanjiru was as much an indictment on the Kenyan government as it was on a military treaty that enables the commission of gross human rights violations in Nanyuki and its surroundings without accountability. It highlights racial undertones in the relations between the two countries. Whiteness shields these British troops from justice and the authorities of Kenya and Britain seem to converge on this recalcitrant legacy of impunity.

Despite lone voices from social media and civil society who question the relevance of BATUK 60 years after independence, the military pact is likely to exist far into the future and its supposed benefits overplayed. The British monarch was obsequiously accorded red-carpet treatment throughout his four-day state visit to Kenya. Consciousness about the disturbing relationship between Kenya and Britain is yet to take hold in the imagination of a critical mass of Kenyans. Until that happens, troops associated with BATUK will continue to hurt Kenyans without any recourse to justice.

https://www.rt.com/africa/586671-kenya-uk-army-criticism-colonialism/

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Remember, no colonialism: Why Russia did not participate in the ‘Scramble for Africa’
The history of Russia-Africa relations goes back several centuries, and these relations have always been based on equality and mutual respect

https://www.rt.com/africa/583519-history-russia-africa-relations/

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