Postcolonial Colonial

Postcolonial Colonial

Politics is made in the North; Europeans believe they know better what is good for Africa.
About the colonial evaluation of Chinese influence in Africa and the hypocritical assessment of African politics.

[Image: Military parade in Burkina Faso, in the background; Ibrahim Traoré.]
(https://kritikpunkt.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Burkina-Faso-edited-scaled.jpg)

The “left” discourse on the influence of the BRICS countries in Africa, especially China, is often only superficially different from the bourgeois perspective.
The status quo is that Africans have been enslaved for 400 years, colonized for 50 years, and still cannot choose the right allies.

Left-radicalism, which sees China as an imperialist state, argues that Chinese engagement in Africa is merely a new form of neo-colonial, paternalistic exploitation.
Left-liberals and bourgeoisie transfer their anti-communist fantasies onto Chinese involvement in Africa and conclude, therefore, that China is doing no good there.

Particularly the left-liberal and bourgeois position is shaped by colonial ideas, believing they know better than African states what is good for them.
Africans are still portrayed as mystified Blacks who need the white master to guide them toward the good.
The eurocentric view that real politics is only conducted in the global North leads to the defamation of any political decisions made by African states to free themselves from Western influence.
Fact is, Western imperialism has drained the African continent like no other—couping and murdering more than anywhere else; the increasingly frequent decisions by African states to actively turn away from this system still shock the bourgeois press.
Western media repeatedly claim that Beijing pushes these countries into debt traps, as if their states are not the ones that have brought the continent into its current condition.
As if it weren’t American and French loans that have brought countries like Burkina Faso to where they are.
Blaming Africa’s impoverishment externally is then turned into anti-communist polemics; which, in terms of Africa, almost amount to the status quo.

It is clear, however, that Africans themselves do not share these views.
A study commissioned by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation surveyed 1,600 African decision-makers, most of whom praised:
“China makes quick decisions, implements projects rapidly, and does not interfere in internal political affairs like the West.”
Almost 80% of young Africans (4,500 respondents in 15 countries) see China’s influence in Africa as positive and prefer it over Western states—but what do Africans know!

The military governments in the Sahel zone, especially in Burkina Faso, have expelled French and German troops and are turning to Russia and China for infrastructural support and military aid against terrorism.
Ibrahim Traoré is an anti-imperialist who clearly aligns his policies with Thomas Sankara and seeks partners who respect the sovereignty of the state.
Suddenly, however, this is no longer African anti-imperialist resistance hoping for support from those who were never colonial masters, but a “Wagner revolution” and “expansion of Russian influence in Africa”.
Africans are therefore not capable of fighting for their own sovereignty according to the West—they are too underdeveloped; it can only be a Russian plot.
Already two years after Traoré’s rise to power, there have been multiple attempts on his life—the latest was an assassination attempt on January 15 of this year, by Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who, after the previous failed attempt (2022), found refuge in a French base.
Will Traoré be the next Sankara?

The mystification of postcolonial Africa is a product of Western invasion, exploitation, and coups—Lumumba, Abiola, Sankara.
Every resistance has been suppressed by Western capitalists, who to this day extract lithium, diamonds, cobalt, platinum, and uranium from the continent, while showering the oppressed with questionable charity and complaining when Africans come to Germany.