“Wagner, the new looters of Africa”. This is the title of a survey initiated by a famous pan-African magazine. And it aroused this reflection in my friend Koulibali Lassina of Korhogo: “Wagner the new looters of Africa? Ok. So who are the ancient looters of Africa? Have these old looters stopped looting us? » The former looters? Let's not beat around the bush. These are the ancient powers that practiced the slave trade, then the colonization of the continent. The slavers were mainly the English, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Arabs. And these same Europeans, to which will be added the Belgians, the Italians and the Germans will later colonize the African continent. The first material that was plundered in Africa was what the Haitian poet René Depestre called "Black ore": "When the sweat of the Indian was suddenly dried up by the sun when the frenzy of gold drained to the market the last drop of Indian blood so that there was not a single Indian left around the gold mines we turned to the muscular river of Africa to ensure relief from despair then began the rush towards the inexhaustible treasury of the Black flesh then began the wild scramble towards the radiant noon of the Black body and the whole earth resounded with the din of pickaxes in the thickness of the Black ore…” Everything has been said about the transatlantic slave trade. It is on the other trafficking, that practiced by the Arabs and which still continues in this 21st century, on our continent, that we keep a strange silence, as if it were completely normal. So here are the first looters of Africa.
Are they what my friend Lassina calls the old looters? I believe that when talking about former looters, it would be wrong to name countries. Because what is in question is rather an economic system, namely capitalism, which extends to the whole planet. Lenin wrote in 1917 that « imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism ». He meant by this that when capitalism reaches a certain level in its development, it must seek new outlets and this leads it to go and dominate other peoples in order to seize their resources at the lowest cost when he has the possibility. And this is what the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire translates in these terms: « the decisive gesture here is that of the adventurer and the pirate, of the large grocer and the shipowner, of the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and strength, with, behind, the malevolent shadow cast by a form of civilization which, at some point in its history, finds itself obliged, internally, to extend to the competition from its antagonistic economies on a global scale ». For her part, the French naturalized American alter-globalist Susan George, author of the book livre « comment meurt l’autre moitié du monde » (“How the other half of the world dies”) had declared in an interview that the developed countries do not meet regularly to find the means to plunder the poor countries. Their concerns are to increase the standard of living of their citizens and voters by increasing their purchasing power, lowering unemployment, balancing their trade balance. On the other hand, the leaders of large multinational companies reflect every day on how to continue to make a profit, so as not to be sanctioned by their boards of directors. And to make a profit, you have to buy raw materials at very low prices, have production costs as low as possible, cheap labor, etc. For example, tropical countries will be encouraged to grow a lot of cocoa, coffee, rubber, or cashew nuts, and so, when supply exceeds demand, prices will collapse on their own. Or, we will feed endless wars in certain regions of the world rich in very precious minerals, in order to be able to appropriate them at a lower cost, we will foment coups d'etat to place at the head of countries rich in oil, uranium, diamonds or something else servile men who will not seek to know the exact quantity of ore extracted, etc. And this is valid for all developed or emerging countries that aspire to play in the big leagues. So Wagner, a new looter? Yes. Let's say he's the latest on the list, who comes with his own methods and which seem to displease the others who were there before him. Forgetting that they too had their Bob Denard, CIA, Executive outcome (it was for the South Africans) and other categories of mercenaries.
By Venance Konan
*This article has been translated from French into English by Marcus Boni Teiga
