The other side of colonialism

Evarist Bartolo’s (September 1) exhortations for the EU’s closer economic ties with African countries may seem most sensible and straightforward but the political picture in Africa is complicated. For a start, two powers seeking influence in Africa, which Bartolo did not name, China and Russia, both advocates of authoritarian rule and suppression of free speech, are seeking what they need from Africa.

China is after minerals and fossil fuels and Russia “rents out” its Wagner mercenaries to help forceful overthrow of elected African governments to be replaced by dictatorships and, of course, the Russians get paid handsomely for these military services.

Freedom of speech and other freedoms and human rights are anathema in China and Russia. The chasm between despotic dictatorships and liberal Western values is ever so deep and getting deeper and more dangerous.

China and Russia use the African resentment of past European colonialism for their own ends. Photo: Davide Bonaldo / Shutterstock.com

As Bartolo points out, China and Russia use the African resentment of past European colonialism for their own ends. The BBC also noted on African social media, soon after the start of the Russian “colonial” war against Ukraine, that Africans resented the fact that Ukrainian immigrants were accepted with open arms by European countries, unlike their response to African migrants. Mind you, Africans haven’t tried to emigrate in large numbers to China or Russia to find out what reception they would get.

Bartolo’s attitude to colonialisation always seems negative, ignoring the beneficial side of culture transfers to colonials who were capable to profit from them. Rome taught others the rule of law and how to establish schools and hospitals. Malta’s free primary and secondary education were established in British colonial times. 

Britain went through a civil war to establish parliamentary democracy at home and tried to introduce it in its colonies. 

Malta did not learn freedom of speech from the crusading “gentlemen pirates” of the “eight-pointed cross”, nor from the past fundamentalist Roman Catholic Church, nor from nearby Fascist Italy.

And can you imagine north Americans constantly whingeing about the terrible British colonial times? Whingers have to blame somebody else for their mismanagement of the common good.

Albert Cilia-Vincenti – Attard