Africans on battlefield bandwagon: From WW I to the war on terror

Some of the most interesting chapters in American history are the ones on race relations or the evil of racial discrimination which persists, to-date. The names, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges, Louis Farrakhan, Malcom X, all have deep stories of struggle and inspiration in their own right. Then there was Muhammed Ali in 1967. At the height of the war in Vietnam (where America did not fare well despite the many movies, which strive to give a contrary dramatic view), Ali refused the draft to join the war effort.

Ali reasoned thus: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” Instead he condemned racial discrimination in America, where Black people were treated as third class citizens and declaring that “no Vietcong ever called me nigger… Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam after so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” A jail term of five years and a fine of $10,000 was what he got for his effort after an all-White jury decided 11-0 that he was guilty.

Not many people in Africa have been afforded the opportunity Ali had of either joining a war effort for which they have no direct interest or going to jail with a hefty fine in case they objected. One hundred years after the end of World War I (from 1914 to 1918), something very peculiar has run through world history. It is the tale of Black Africans going to fight or being sucked into global wars in which they ‘ain’t got no quarrel’ with the adversary. These are wars where they are just pawns and gun fodder for other peoples’ interests, but can barely extricate themselves from the situation.

During World War I, for instance, more than a million people in East Africa alone died from war, disease and hunger. This happened while the Germans were using Tanzanian soldiers to protect the German East Africa (Tanganyika) from the British. The British wanted to disposes the Germans of the territorial loot they acquired from the Berlin Conference of 1884 at the height of the scramble and partition of Africa. The British eventually succeeded leaving dead African bodies in their wake.

World War II was a similar story. Africans were uprooted from their homes to go across the globe to places like Burma, ‘fighting for the European King’ while their own kings and chiefs in Africa were being disposed of land and authority they held, by the same people Africans were fighting for. They simply jumped or were forced onto the bandwagon fighting for the colonial masters to expand the frontiers of the very freedom they denied Africans. Throughout the struggles for independence, still the African was called upon to protect those interests against their own.

The Mau Mau struggle (1952-1964) in Kenya was suppressed with the help of Africans drafted in the so-called King’s African Rifles (KAR). The future Ugandan president Idi Amin had his training in viciousness in that experience. Then the Cold War saw a lot of these wars fought on the continent with groups backed by the West such as UNITA of Jonas Savimbi against the MPLA government of Eduardo Dos Santos, which was backed by Russia (USSR). These were battles of superiority of ideas and influence that pitted capitalism against socialism. The African soldier paid a heavy price.

Today, autocratic African leaders pride themselves in standing shoulder to shoulder in an often dubious partnership with the West in the so-called war against terror. African leaders provide ‘houseboy armies’ to die on battlefields in far-flung areas supposedly defending security and expanding the frontiers of democracy - things that they deny their citizens at home.

In exchange, the West provides economic aid and does not bother them or interfere in the way they (mis) govern their countries as is the wont elsewhere. In fact, the West will prefer such leaders over any other on that one point alone. The simple reason is that such African leaders who offer boots on the ground give the West the opportunity to fight wars in as many places as possible with little or no ‘body care.’ Western leaders are shielded from the anger and pressures that arise when the body bags start coming home. They won’t go to the West as happened in Vietnam.

They will stay in Africa where information and history of Black people’s contribution to the conflicts on the global stage have remained a footnote and don’t seem to cause outrage. Most leaders can by-pass the electorate anyway.
As was with the slave trade in the 18th Century, the modern African chiefs are now heavily involved in ‘selling’ the African soldier onto the battle field. The modern cloth, wine and trinkets they get in exchange is a guarantee to perpetuate themselves in power in this master-servant relationship.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social
issues. [email protected].
Twitter:@nsengoba