Franco-Haram, C’est L’esclavage!

The world already knows Boko Haram as the most savage depopulation machine anchored on squint-eyed interpretation of Islam. Bestial as those terrorists are, they represent but just one form of physical violence visited on African people. The equally horrid haram of mortgaging the future of unborn generations is hardly given media attention.  I call it […]

The world already knows Boko Haram as the most savage depopulation machine anchored on squint-eyed interpretation of Islam. Bestial as those terrorists are, they represent but just one form of physical violence visited on African people. The equally horrid haram of mortgaging the future of unborn generations is hardly given media attention. 

I call it Franco-Haram. In my books, Franco-Haram is deadlier than Boko Haram because it perpetuates the political and economic subjugation of African people to France. When you hear that France is giving financial aid to an African country, scratch beyond the surface to see where France is getting the bounties to the extent of having surplus to dole out. 

In my piece, “Washington bridge falling down”, I briefly recalled the assassination of Sylvanus Olympio in Togo by soldiers loyal to France. Olympio had wanted to exit the inequitable system which cripplingly tied his country to Mother France but the colonialists were already used to free goodies from Africa. So they decided that Olympio had to be eliminated to enable France continue stealing Togo’s resources.

All Francophone countries are, by colonial pact, supposed to continue paying sums determined by France as colonization debts, that is paying the slave master for bothering to enslave you. France is also to be fully reimbursed for the cost of all infrastructure built during colonization.

All Francophone countries are supposed to domicile their national reserves in the Central Bank of France. Thus, since 1961, the following countries have kept their reserves in France: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea Equatorial Republic and Gabon. More than 80% of the foreign exchange reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “accounts of operations” controlled by the French Treasury.

France is given priority and right of first refusal in the purchase of all the natural resources of its former colonies. By some informed estimation, France manages nearly 500 billion African silver in its cash reserves. France allows African countries only 15% of their money a year. If they need more, African countries must borrow, at commercial rates, the 65% of their money held in the French Treasury. 

No wonder, the Analysis by a coalition of UK and African equality and development campaigners (including Global Justice Now), recently published claims that the rest of the world is profiting more than most African citizens from the continent’s wealth.

Francophone countries must send their senior training officers to France or to French military establishments (that is how future coup plotters are indoctrinated). Under the one-sided “Defence Pact”, France is guaranteed a right to invade any Francophone country in defence of its interests and also to station own troops permanently in military bases and installations around affected countries. That was why 450 French soldiers could control a population of 20 million people during the France-led ouster of President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire.

No former colony is allowed to enter defence pact with any other country unless approved by France. All Francophone countries must automatically ally with France in the event of any war.

French is compulsorily the official language of former colonies; FCFA (franc of the French colonies of Africa) is the approved currency; over $500 from Africa oils the French economy yearly while Africa is in penury. Those who romanticise the French assimilation policy in former colonies should scratch beyond the surface and unearth the truth: France is perpetuating slavery in Africa by economic means and African leaders are cooperating like zombies as long as the French allow them to stash and enjoy their loot overseas.

Despite recent pressures from embarrassed EU countries, the French are not about to relinquish their stranglehold on former colonies. The reason can be deduced from pronouncements of French leaders like François Mitterrand already noted in 1957 that, “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”; and Jacques Chirac who acknowledged that, “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power”.

It is logical to say then that without exiting the French economic slavery which makes African nations vassals in their own land and mortgages their future to the perpetual advantage of addicted looters, those nations will remain underdeveloped and their future generations are condemned to begging for crumbs from the table of the colonial master.

“The way forward for Africa”, says Antoine Roger Lokongo, “is to be united and to follow the South American model. South American countries are succeeding exactly because they have reached their own consensus. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from Western domination. 

“The region has moved toward integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanised elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. Some nations have also rid themselves of US military bases and of IMF controls. 

“If Africa can follow a similar model, it can escape the constraints of colonialism, whether French, British, Portuguese, or US, and carve its own destiny.”

Is the black man condemned to slavery in one form or the other for eternity? Where is the African Union? Where are the young people of Africa? This Franco-Haram nonsense must stop! C’est L’esclavage!