The expression, “Here we go again,” ran across my mind as I processed the enthusiastic effusions of some Africans, especially the educated elite, over Kemi Badenoch’s election as the new leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.
Questions, questions!
What makes it impossible for some of us to develop the minimalistic ability for critical thinking despite our education and degrees?
Why do we always get excited over primordial, ethnic, and tribal issues?
Why can we not, like most rational human beings, develop the ability to question what those who purport to be one of us bring to the table to improve our lot?
As I wrote in my essay, Obama’s Legacy, “Sadly, the Obama illusion left the Black world reeling from colossal disappointment, and vividly recall the lamentations of the Great Sociologist W.E.B Du Bois in his Classic, The Souls of Black Folk, the nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbound by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.”
Yet, here we go again, loudly blowing our Vuvuzelas because a “sister” who, throughout her professional life, demonstrates that she does not want to be associated with us, our pains, or our aspirations!
Are we too daft to understand the strategic thinking that informed the choices of selecting black “leaders” like Obama and Kemi?
Why do we keep forgetting Truman’s admonition that whatever happens in politics was planned?
Did we ask ourselves what our inputs were in selecting these leaders, or why we should expect leaders chosen by others to cater for our interests?
Do we think that a white American president would have gotten away with Obama’s vast crimes against Africa without being tagged as racist, colonizer, and imperialist?
As the late Lucky Dube sang, “Not every black man is my brother, not every white man is my enemy.”
Unfortunately, the simple but crucial logic that the mere presence of someone who looks like us in power does not always translate to their loyalty to our struggles or interests is often overlooked in discussions around racial identity and representation. The election of Kemi Badenoch echoed the experience many Black people had during Barack Obama’s presidency in the United States. Though many of us in Africa had celebrated the election of America’s first Black president as a monumental step for Black people globally, as I recounted in my essay on Obama, “our brother’s” most significant single investment in our continent was the expansive Drone facilities in Niger which, mercifully the new leaders of that country has dismantled.
“Brother” Obama also expanded AFRICOM’s ring around us. Our supposed brother led the war against Africa‘s most prosperous nation, Libya. His secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, gloated like a witch of Endor over Ghadaffi’s death. Obama called it his worst mistake. Too late. Libya has turned into a hell on earth, especially for Black Africans. Despite this bitter experience, our people are all over themselves because Kemi Badenoch emerged as the leader of the British Conservative Party. This woman told us bluntly, “I’m not interested in being an identity politics figure. I’m not here to represent the black community. I’m here to represent everyone.”History and experience should remind us that a leader’s identity alone may not be enough to produce tangible progress for marginalized groups.
While her Yoruba/Nigerian heritage may seem to represent a win for diversity and inclusion in British politics, there are more profound questions about what her leadership may mean in the broader context of the Black struggle, particularly for the marginalized Africans struggling in the streets of the UK. We instantly jumped into a celebratory mood instead of sobering to think of how her elevation (a valuable personal achievement, no doubt) could be parlayed into something positive for our collective well-being. However outstanding Kemi Badenoch’s achievement is, it should not stop us from scrutinizing the party she represents, its history, and its legacy on issues that continue to affect blacks globally.
The British Conservative Party, like much of British political history, is deeply intertwined with a colonial past that shaped the modern world in ways that continue to marginalize and exploit African nations and people of African descent. Britain’s leading role in the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism is well-documented to need recounting here. The might and the wealth of Britain came from the forced labour, the exploitation, and the suffering of millions of Africans and other people that Europeans colonized and savagely exploited. At the peak of the transatlantic slave trade, British ships transported millions of Africans to the Americas, reducing human beings to chattel cargo in one of history’s darkest but unacknowledged chapters. British insurance firms underwrite the infamous enterprise.
As Walter Rodney and Chancellor Williams recounted in their books, the wealth generated from slavery funded institutions and aristocratic families and continues to enrich Britain today. Many of the UK’s most prestigious institutions, such as the royal Family, the Church of England, and the Bank of England, were directly involved in the financing of slavery. Several Conservative politicians accumulated their family wealth through slave trading and colonial exploitation.
And let it not be forgotten that Africa was just trying to recover from the devastation that slavery wrought when Britain led the balkanization of Africa at the Berlin Conference, which resulted in the fragmentation of our societies and the colonization of our continent, with its systematic oppression, violence, and killings. The MauMau rebellion and the Sokoto Massacre were just two examples of how those who claimed to be civilizing us were killed on an industrial scale. Despite these, our sister Kemi said, “There is a never-ending desire for ethnic minorities to be treated differently in the context of social justice.” This is something that she would never dare to say to Jewish people. Although we might be accused of raking up old issues as the events occurred over a century ago, we maintain that any analysis that fails to see the effects of slavery and colonization in the economic, social, and political landscapes of many African nations today should be dismissed as jejune.
The development of the nations the British forced into colonial garrisons like Nigeria would undoubtedly have taken different trajectories were they not forced into an arrangement enabled solely to satisfy British imperial ambitions.
While Jewish Holocaust survivors received reparations, formal apologies, and remembrance from Western governments, including Britain, continue to treat demands by Africans for apology and reparations with utter contempt and disdain.