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Saturday, June 05, 2021

Anti-France Fake News: Africa and Decolonisation

Under the paradigm of post-colonialism, Western countries have been and will always be blamed for anything that goes wrong in ex-colonies, which have no agency.

Perhaps the most egregious form of this mindset that I've found is an article by Mawuna Remarque KOUTONIN which actively promulgates fake news (i.e. makes shit up) about France's role in post-colonial Africa.

In 14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax For the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization published on Mediapart, he makes many dodgy claims:

When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which represented what they called the benefits from french colonization.

Three thousand French left the country, taking all their property and destroying anything that which could not be moved: schools, nurseries, public administration buildings were crumbled; cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged; horses, cows in the farms were killed, and food in warehouses were burned or poisoned.

The purpose of this outrageous act was to send a clear message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be very high...

On June 30, 1962, Modiba Keita , the first president of the Republic of Mali, decided to withdraw from the french colonial currency FCFA which was imposed on 12 newly independent African countries. For the Malian president, who was leaning more to a socialist economy, it was clear that colonisation continuation pact with France was a trap, a burden for the country development.

On November 19, 1968, like, Olympio, Keita will be the victim of a coup carried out by another ex French Foreign legionnaire, the Lieutenant Moussa Traoré...

On January 1st, 1966, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, an ex french foreign legionnaire, carried a coup against David Dacko, the first President of the Central African Republic.

To zoom in on 3 lies promulgated by Koutonin in the extract above:

1) I am unable to find citations for "infrastructure" the French "destroyed" in 1958 when they withdrew from Guinea.

According to the BBC, the French just "[deprived] the country of all technical expertise and worse, removing all key government files, even ripping out office telephones".

A research article on Cold War History makes some very general claim about the French destroying infrastructure, but the only details given are that France told teachers holidaying outside Guinea not to return - but 78 still stayed.

Meanwhile, the Encyclopedia Britannica says the French reacted by "recalling all their professional people and civil servants and by removing all transportable equipment".

The most extensive account of Guinean independence that I could find, The Challenge of Guinean Independence, 1958-1971, a PhD thesis by Mairi Stewart MacDonald, merely reports that:

Yet Paris continued to behave as though Guinea could be crushed. Messmer reported the rapid progress of France’s administrative withdrawal on 27 October. Magistrates, teachers, clerks, labour inspectors, postal workers, railway workers, and other civil servants, senior and junior, French and African: most were leaving or had already gone

MacDonald notes that France behaved like a petulant child diplomatically, but this is very far from Koutonin's wild accusations.

If what Koutonin claims happened really happened, it would be odd that such a spiteful and major act of destruction is not documented anywhere outside this one blog.

2) Modibo Keïta (Mali) was not simply a socialist as the article claims, to make it sound like the French got rid of him because he would threaten French hegemony.

He was also a brutal dictator who imprisoned political opponents and brutalised the people:

As in other one-party states of the time, citizens were expected to participate in mass rallies in praise of Modibo Keita and the socialist state. Cheikh Oumar Diarrah has compared Modibo Keita’s Mali to Maoist China; ideological dissenters were purged without hesitation. In 1961, when respected leaders of the colonial period, such as Fily Dabo Sissoko and Hammadoun Dicko, joined protests against the government’s decision to leave the French monetary union and create a new Malian currency, they were imprisoned along with 89 other demonstrators and accused of treason. Sissoko and Dicko were condemned to death, then pardoned and sentenced to forced labour for life. Both died in 1964 while serving this sentence...

The Keita regime grew progressively more dictatorial as its economic policies failed. The National Assembly was dissolved in 1968, after which Modibo Keita ‘governed by ordinance’. Since the regime’s central planning failed to alleviate the economic malaise and essentially taxed rural peasants to subsidise the urban population (a process that continues today), failed economic policies became the subject of rural dissent at this time. The peasants of Ouolossébougou revolted against the fixed prices of the government boards in June 1968: 15 peasants and merchants were arrested. A day later, when many of their fellow villagers attempted to liberate the prisoners, the police shot and killed two people and injured several others.

--- Censorship: A World Encyclopedia

The popular unrest due to a poor economy and fears of a purge led to the Traoré coup, which was popularly supported:

In January 1968, the National Assembly dissolved itself and authorized Keita to appoint a legislative delegation. The People’s Militia (Milice Populaire) of 3,000 young men was reactivated, and following the tactics of their model, the Red Guards in Mao’s China, set out to uncover corruption and purify the party. The militia manned roadblocks, conducted searches of home and person at will, detained many on the least pretext, and engaged in torture. The militia rapidly became the most hated element of Keita’s Cultural Revolution. The excesses of the militia affected the personal liberties of many and, in practical terms, it became a terror to ordinary citizens. By late 1968, there was widespread discontent with Keita and his policies, not mobilized into a political force capable of overthrowing his regime, but constituting a favorable background against which a coup d’e’tat could take place.

The move for an immediate coup was promoted by Lt. Moussa Traoré, an instructor at the Kati school, where a number of junior officers supported him. Traoré's timing was dictated by fears of his own imminent arrest and that of his fellow officers...

The following day, massive street demonstrations took place in support of the coup, and people shouted "down with Modibo; down with the militia."

--- Mali: A Search For Direction / Pascal James Imperato

So this coup had nothing to do with France.

3) Bokassa (in the Central African Republic) was not an agent of the French despite what Koutonin claims.

Dacko, who Bokassa overthrew, had actually been backed by the French and the French were surprised by his coup:

Reassured by the presence of French administrators and technicians in every post of importance, by the backing of French colons, miners, and businessmen who felt they would control him, Dacko proceeded rapidly to consolidate his power... in retrospect, clearly backed by his French councillors, Dacko seized power...

The unexpected intervention of a forty-four-year-old Mbaka army officer, Jean- Bedel Bokassa, who claimed to be Boganda's nephew, took Bangui and the French by surprise.

--- The Central African Republic: The Continent's Hidden Heart / Thomas E. O'toole

France then got Dacko to stage a counter-coup in 1979 to remove Bokassa. It is strange how France used someone they controlled to unseat someone else they also controlled. Maybe the author will claim that they were controlled by different factions of the French government.

Consider too that Bokassa was also a French soldier. So using the Koutonin's "logic" this French civil war (or power struggle, at least) must have been going on for more than a decade.

Of course, alternatively, maybe many political/military figures (often the same thing in Africa) used to work for the French military because they were the former colonial power, i.e. the primary source of employment for soldiers. Just because someone used to be a French soldier does not mean that all his subsequent action are directed by France (as Koutonin claims for all the other African coups).

Doubtless many other wild accusations in Koutonin's article are also, at best, wrong. One wonders if he came up with all this fake news himself in his attempt to blame the French for everything that has gone wrong and is still going wrong in Africa since colonisation.

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