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00:00The Legacy of Colonialism in Africa, The Road to Independence, the subject in the first of a podcast series and now a book by journalist Pierre Askey.
00:09Thanks for being with us here.
00:11Decolonialism is the name of it.
00:13Before I ask you about that, though, your reaction to this story of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, he's tried to, he's done these joint commissions on history when it came to Rwanda, when it came to Algeria.
00:28Cameroon.
00:28Cameroon.
00:29Cameroon also.
00:30And, you know, this sort of trying to address the colonial past, that enough time has now passed.
00:37How's it going?
00:38It just shows, first of all, that the legacy of colonialism doesn't go away, whether it's 200 years, as in the case of Haiti, or 65 years, as in the case of Africa.
00:50And this idea of commissions of historians is a way for a politician to establish some kind of scientific consensus before making hard decisions.
01:02It's going to be very hard for France to recognize it owes such a debt.
01:08It's a huge figure that is at stake.
01:12And so I think having historians working on it is a way of making it more acceptable for everybody before announcing concrete decisions.
01:23But I think after that step, there'll have to be concrete decisions.
01:28Yeah, how do you do it, though?
01:29Because if they have to give money to Haiti, what about Algeria?
01:34Well, the case of Haiti is very special because Haiti paid back France for more than a century because of the property that was seized.
01:45The French properties, the French settlers, the French settlers and slave owners were taken by the new state of Haiti.
01:52So that's a pretty, you know, you could say it's a very special, specific case that is not exactly the same as colonialism in general.
02:02The debt is not for colonialism.
02:05It's about the money that Haiti paid back.
02:09And like you say, the past continues to be in the present.
02:14We see it with France, as we've just mentioned, with those examples.
02:18You see it with Britain, with most notably with that commission a few years back regarding the Mau Mau rebellion.
02:25Yes, I think it affects everybody.
02:28And every country has set all this issue its own way.
02:33And you had that also in South Africa after the end of apartheid when you had this truce and reconciliation commission.
02:40I think, you know, you have to find ways of dealing with that.
02:45There was this idea at some stage that, you know, Emmanuel Macron, when he came to power, he made his first speech in Africa, was in Ouagadougou soon after he came to power.
02:55And he said to students, he said, like you, I was born after colonialism, you know, as if he could be exempted from the responsibility that France has about that period.
03:07I think it was a mistake to have imagined that, you know, he's the head of a state that has a legacy, that has a history.
03:14And therefore, we see it today, even with young people in Africa who haven't experienced colonialism and maybe have a fantasy idea of what it is, but it affects the relationship between France and African countries in a big way.
03:29And you have to face the burden of history.
03:32Yeah, and France and Africa is a particularly symbiotic relationship, even countries that have broken off with Paris, like the juntas in Mali, Niger and Burkina, well, their money is still printed in France at this point, because they have a common currency.
03:46But let me ask you about this, because you had, and you talk about in one of your episodes, one country that was kind of punished for not being part of this group.
03:57And that's Guinea, which decided to say no to General de Gaulle's offer of a monetary union.
04:05Yes, the case of Guinea is very interesting, because in 1956, Nkuma proclaims independence of Ghana, the British Gold Coast.
04:16It was the first one in Africa.
04:18And soon after, de Gaulle came to power and offered a kind of semi-autonomy, a community of France and African countries.
04:27And he made a referendum, and he toured Africa, and Guinea was the only one to vote no.
04:33And that was the end of it.
04:37Not only it did become independent, but it was punished for that.
04:42There was economic punishment.
04:45There was political punishment.
04:47There were destabilization attempts by Jacques Foucault, who was General de Gaulle's...
04:52Dirty tricks man.
04:52Dirty tricks man, exactly.
04:54That's the right way to present him.
04:57And that created a very complicated relation with Sécouture, the leader of Guinea, becoming paranoia, seeing plots everywhere.
05:09Some of them were true, and some of them were fake.
05:13And that country never recovered from that era.
05:17And that's a real lesson of history, that the relations at that time were not based on sound basis.
05:28De Gaulle wanted African countries to be independent, but remaining very strongly connected to France.
05:35There was what we call France-Afrique, a system, a network of influence, of very strong French presence in the heart of the state, through the army or through advisers, that was widespread during the whole 20 years that followed the independence.
05:59And just one final question, because there is no one-size-fits-all.
06:03You mentioned the example of Ghana.
06:05Ghana went through a terrible time after independence.
06:08There were four coups.
06:10And today it's considered one of the success stories of West Africa.
06:15Yes, the lesson of going through, I chose to draw the profile of the fathers of the nation, the first independence presidents, because these were men who were idealists.
06:29And Krumah is a typical example.
06:31And he remains today a big figure of Pan-Africanism.
06:34But they were hardly prepared to face the reality of economic development, of social development.
06:41And they mostly ended up in failure.
06:43And Krumah was overthrown by a coup.
06:46There is an episode in his, when he was still president, he arrives at the cabinet meeting and the minister of finance tells him there's no more money in the coffers.
06:57And he says, but there must be a mistake.
07:00And Krumah doesn't understand that the country is ruined.
07:03And a few months later, the army takes over.
07:06So you have this lesson that can be taken also from that history, that it's not enough to have a powerful political ideal.
07:17You also need to have concrete answers to very concrete problems that affect millions of your citizens.
07:24And that's the bitter lesson of history that is still not completely understood and taken.
07:31But it's also a lesson on the relation between France, Europe, the former colonial powers, and Africa.
07:39And my feeling, and that's why I wrote this book, is that this story is fading away.
07:46People tend to, especially here, tend to forget about the 60s and these powerful figures.
07:55And we need to remember them and to acknowledge what happened to be able to build a sounder relation between Africa and France and Europe.
08:07And that, I think, is the more necessary today with Trump, with the chaos of the world.
08:12If there's one time when a relationship between those two continents is needed, it's today, where nobody can go it alone.
08:22And nobody wants to return to the balance of power of imperial times.
08:27And France and Africa should be able to build something new.
08:34But first, you have to...
08:35Have a clear-eyed look at the past.
08:37To clean the past.
08:39Many thanks for that.
08:40Pierre Aski, the book is called Decolonization.
08:43So is the podcast.
08:44When are we getting an English language version?
08:46Oh, I hope so.
08:47I would love to.
08:48All right.
08:49The call is out.
08:50Many thanks, Pierre.