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When Elephants dance it is the grass is trampled; when elephants fight the grass it is still the grass that get trampled; African proverb

More than a century after a certain Berlin congress which sealed the fate of contemporary Africa, the situation of that vast continent remains depressingly unchanged. Africa remains the theatre of inter imperialist carnage, which the ‘civilised’ imperialist nations shrug- off as the mindless tribal and inter ethnic violence of the African ‘savages’. It also remains the horn of plenty for the imperialist nations. It’s riches are still systematically plundered and make their way to the coffers of the imperialist nations working in concert. And when Africans die in their millions due to famine and drought in lands where millions of cubic metres of water are spent on the cultivation of carnations for export to western markets, the west can pat itself on the back for it’s humanitarian aid and ruefully point out that the ‘child like’ Africans are totally incapable of managing an economy. When millions of Africans die of malaria each year because they are unable to spend a few pfennigs on Quinine made from the cinchona which grows wild in Africa, it is pointed out that the devaluation of the CFA franc which should certainly go down in history as one of the biggest robberies committed by France this century and in cohorts with Germany, and which is the direct cause of enormous suffering in that part of the world, was in fact for the good of the Africans and that France had done only what any good Pater Familias would have done for the good for it’s African family. It is well known that the Roman pater familias had the right to kill his new born infants should he not wish to accept them and that he regularly availed himself of this right, in this France most certainly has conformed to the best traditions of ancient Rome. One need only examine any ‘natural’ catastrophe or any strife resulting from ‘eternal and undying tribal enmity and hatred’, just a little more than superficially to see the dead hand of the imperialist nations working in concert or against one another without the slightest regard for the African people. Africa remains the mirror held up to the naked face of imperialism. We don’t aim to provoke pity for the miserable plight of Africans, we shall leave that to others better qualified than us, we merely aim to make those interested understand an infinitesimal fraction of the dark bitter rage of the Africans which makes us refuse to die, spring back to life and resist, as the grass of our endless plains trampled beneath the feet of elephants.

We shall talk only about the stories that made the headlines. The countless ‘unsensational’ daily tragedies and their victims, considered unworthy by the western media to titillate your appetites and reinforce your prejudices, shall forever hold their peace. The first story ironically is far from sensational, those among you in the habit of wading through the murky waters of the economic pages of the press may have noticed in early 1993 that the CFA franc which you perhaps thought of as some quaint colonial vestige on the lines of the Maria-Theresa Thaler or the gold Reichsmark, had been devalued by 100%, some in the ‘know’ may have shaken their heads gravely and remarked over their morning coffee that these things are inevitable, given the state of the Africans economies. In fact you were reading about the heist of the century , a robbery in plain daylight resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands committed by the most civilised of nations, worthy in fact of the goriest front pages. Behind this economic debacle was not the incompetence or cupidity of any African tyrant, though everybody knows they are a dime a dozen.

The point of departure was the fixed parity between the French Franc and the Deutsche Mark in view of European Monetary Union, politically this parity had to be maintained at any cost, so that the common european currency could come about, and become one of the main arms in the arsenal of the European Union in it’s rivalry with the United States. Unforeseen events however intervened in the in the form of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In order to make the prospect of ‘ unification’ palatable to the citizens of the GDR politically it became necessary to offer the conversion of the ‘Ost Mark’ which had since become worthless, at par with the Deutsche Mark, fearing galloping inflation due to this in monetary mass the Bundesbank increased interest rates to unprecedented levels. The countries in the european monetary system were all either forced to increase interest rates accordingly or leave the system as the parity between these currencies could not otherwise be maintained without unleashing a wave of speculation against them. Thus in 1992 the Pound sterling and the Italian Lira was forced out of the system. As monetary union essential in the inter imperialist rivalry between Europe and the US would be impossible without France, France too was forced to increase interest rates despite the lowest inflation in it’s post-war history thus provoking the gravest recession in that country since the 1930’s. In order to revive it’s economy France gambled on a reduction in interest rates unleashing a wave of speculation against the franc, within the space of one day the Bank of France spent more than a 100 billion marks to maintain the parity between the franc and the mark to no avail and trading in francs had to be suspended. In order to recoup its losses the Bank of France did not hesitate one second to dip into the Dollar reserves of the African countries which it held in exchange of it’s guarantee of the CFA franc. This currency is common to a number of ‘former ‘ French colonies in Africa and was freely convertible into French francs, in exchange the African countries deposited their dollar reserves at the Bank of France and issued CFA francs within the strict limits of it’s reserves. Now lacking in sufficient dollar reserves due to it’s engagements to Germany and it’s rivalry with the US , France unilaterally suspended the convertibility of the CFA franc and imposed a 100% devaluation on the African countries through it’s hirelings called the ruling classes of those countries. This amounted to a de facto expropriation of the dollar reserves of those countries and brought about needless to say the most serious fall in the already appalling standard of living in those countries with people dying of starvation and the lack of the most basic medicines. Those who want Germany for the Germans and those who call for the deportation of ‘criminal African’ would do well to reflect on those ‘criminals ‘ contribution in life blood towards ‘German’ prosperity and European strength against the US.

While these idyllic proceedings were going on in Western Africa in the French sphere of influence in the East plans were underfoot for the worst genocide the world had seen since the second world war. The country was Rwanda which left neither the television screens nor the front pages of the press in the civilised West for the space of a few blood drenched weeks in 1994 where more than a half a million people lost their lives. The supposed undying enmity between the so called Hutus and Tutsis has very little to do with an eternal animosity. On the contrary it has every thing to do with the colonialist strategies of the Germans and Belgians who created a loyalist class among the local elite, based on the discrimination against the minorities. When France moved in as the neo colonial power into this region in it’s infinite belief in democracy instigated a reversal of the discrimination, this time of the minority by the majority based on the same ethnicised identity in order to better entrench itself. This discrimination coupled with a policy of systematic expulsion of the Tutsis on the advice of French experts in order to ‘alleviate population pressure’ created a Tutsi Diaspora in the neighbouring countries notably in Uganda and Tanzania which in turn gave rise to armed resistance against the Rwandan state. In the post cold war context these groups came to be armed and trained by the US and it’s African allies to be it’s proxy army in the region against France and it’s proxy the Rwandan state in the re kindled inter imperialist rivalry in Africa. The Hutu government’s genocide policies were not only perfectly known to France but was aided and abetted by it in order to completely wipe out the Tutsis seen as the proxies of the US. France even went to the extent of fighting the advancing Tutsis alongside the Ruwandan armies and the paramilitary ( interhamwe) in the guise of offering humanitarian aid, and of offering political asylum in France for those leaders who planned and carried out the genocide.

However neither Germany nor Belgium nor the imperialist world can point at France and get away with their responsibilities. Germany bears responsibility for the introduction of this odious system of racial discrimination among the local population, which was to surface a few decades later in all it’s horror in Germany itself however much it may displease Mr. Schroeder to think about it. Belgium and France are responsible for it’s systematisation and the entire imperialist world is guilty of the instrumentalisation of the potential and actual conflicts they themselves created to the ends of the rivalry among themselves , thus leading inexorably to this appalling genocide. Thus the extreme brutality and violence of this strife supposedly among ‘backward African tribes ‘ is but the true face of the relationship between the imperialist powers and the rest of the world.

Such pleasant tales are certainly not limited to Rwanda. The entire southern African region comprising the former Zaire, Congo and Angola has become one vast battlefield of inter imperialist rivalry and the re-enactment of the grab for Africa. The whole continent has been reduced to a field of ruins and ashes. Except for those sites serving the multinationals to drain away the lifeblood and resources of our peoples. The negation of our existence though begets as surely as a law of nature the negation of the negation and we shall fight to the last drop of our blood .