Africa and Asia have chosen different paths to dealing with their histories of colonial suffering, says Peter Fabricius.
Johannesburg - The African-Asian Ministerial Meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, this week, which commemorated the 60th anniversary of the first summit between the continents in nearby Bandung, offered an opportunity to reflect on the different historic paths taken by them since then.
President Jacob Zuma cancelled his attendance to deal with the outbreak of xenophobic violence at home.
That was a necessary signal to Africa in particular, but also to the wider world, that the government was at last taking xenophobia seriously.
The Bandung conference led to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (Nam), which still exists, some might say anachronistically, as it was created in the context of the Cold War by nations that chose to remain neutral in that conflict, long since ended.
As International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane noted in her address to the meeting in Jakarta this week, the Bandung collaboration between Asia and Africa was also intended to overcome the forces of colonialism, which were still strong, though on the verge of retreat.
Colonialism had since been defeated, she said, “But our struggle for a better world is far from over, and this is what makes our gathering so significant. Institutions of global governance remain unchanged. Neo-colonialism is staring us in the eyes. Poverty and inequality are a reality all over the world.”
For all the commonality and solidarity this commemorative event and these remarks were intended to express, it is also true that the paths of Asia and Africa have diverged quite radically after Bandung. Asia generally went on to prosper after colonialism while Africa, generally, descended into an extended abyss of conflict and chaos.
The minister’s remarks about neo-colonialism still “staring us in the eyes” may offer a clue to the reason for these divergent paths. The Asian countries generally resolved to look pragmatically to their futures and to leave their histories of colonial suffering in the history books.
Most Indians, for instance, seem to have no issue any longer with their former colonial master, Britain, and are even inclined to appreciate its legacy of governance and infrastructure.
Many African countries chose instead to dwell on the past and the continuing manifestations of the past in the present, as an explanation, often an excuse, for their many failures. To be fair, it is probably true that the former colonial powers did indeed maintain a greater presence in Africa than they did in Asia, generally speaking.
Yet that greater presence was also to an extent the result of those failures of Africa to develop and to find peace.
In a column in Business Day this week, Allister Sparks refers to an excellent commentary by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen (whose parents were South African) about those countries in which the “majority” – the deceased – continue in a sense to outvote the “minority” – the living, in determining the national discourse.
Cohen identified South Africa as one of those countries. As Sparks noted, the huge recent furore about the statue of the arch-colonialist Cecil John Rhodes, who died over a century ago, was a symptom of the immense dead weight of history here.
While the country was conducting this ferocious debate about what to do with a man of stone, its attention was distracted, not only from the urgent development problems of the present – perhaps that was even the intention – but also, tragically, from the xenophobic violence that was by then simmering and about to boil over.
To be fair to Africa, some of Asia still has an issue with the past, namely the brutal Japanese occupation of many countries during the first half of the past century.
That became an issue at the Jakarta meeting between China and Japan.
It’s clear that Japan should offer an apology as unambiguous as Germany’s for its World War II atrocities – then everyone could move on.
Even so, no one in Asia is blaming Japan for their current failures.
On the contrary, the South Koreans, for example, acknowledge that their phenomenal post-war economic development owed much to the Japanese model it learnt during their occupation.
* Peter Fabricius is Independent Media’s foreign editor.
The Star