WEST, NATURAL RESOURCES AND POPULATION CONTROL POLICIES IN AFRICA IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, THE

INTRODUCTION

With a surface area of 11,700,000 square miles and a population currently estimated at 700 million (resulting in an average density of population of 16.7 per sq. mi.) spread over 54 countries, it can hardly be said that Africa is overpopulated. Indeed, it has been calculated that the following countries/regions (totaling 11,616,110 sq. mi.) could fit within Africa: China, U.S.A., India, Europe, Argentina and New Zealand.1 Yet, strangely, population control policies in general (and family planning in particular) have been energetically and consistently advocated by major bilateral donors and international organizations-most notably the United Nations specialized agencies, such as the United Nations Fund for Population Activities/UNFPA, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation/IPPF-in independent Africa. Indeed, such policies have now become part and parcel of the standard package (Structural Adjustment Programs/SAPs) enforced on the African countries by the international financial institutions (IFIs: World Bank and International Monetary Fund/IMF) as a sine qua non condition for access to foreign aid from the IFIs or any other source.

This paper argues that from the trans- Atlantic slave trade of the 15th-19th centuries to the diseases, epidemics and wars of present time, the West has consciously, consistently and systematically pursued policies designed to control, reduce and eliminate altogether Africa's population for the avowed purpose of gaining exclusive access to the continent's best agricultural land to serve its commodity requirements, as well as to its vast mineral resources, particularly those deemed 'strategic', (i.e. indispensable to the advanced technology industries of the West, such as electronics, aeronautics and space). As unbelievable and far-fetched as it might sound, this argument is supported by incontrovertible historical and factual evidence. It leads to the inescapable conclusion that for Africa to be able to embark on a path to self-sustained and autonomous development, such harmful population control policies should be actively and effectively countered, and should ultimately be abandoned in favor of population promotion policies within a new continent-wide framework: the United States of Africa.

WESTERN CONQUEST AND GENOCIDE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: "EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES!"

The historical record clearly shows that from the very beginning relations between European conquerors/intruders and peoples of other cultures were based on genocide and dispossession, under the guise of civilization (and now, neo-liberalism). From the very beginning, relations between European intruders and peoples of other cultures were also based on naked physical force, under a thinly-disguised legal veneer, according to the age-old principle of "might makes right." In the mid-19th century, the anatomist Robert Knox-one of the founders of'scientific' racism-observed that "the only real right is physical force," and that "laws are made to bind the weak, to be broken by the strong."2 At the turn of the century, Alexander Tille concurred: "All historical rights are invalid against the rights of the stronger;" it is "the right of the stronger race to annihilate the lower."3 In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow, a seaman and adventurer, reflects on the predatory nature of the Europeans' conquest of the world:

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind-as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.4

In the same vein, Plumelle Uribe notes a consistent Western cultural pattern throughout the duration of the African slave trade, namely:

the banishment of the blacks from humanity, for which the white race remains the only yardstick. Being removed from humanity naturally leads to the extermination of the group. Such extermination can then take place without concern or objection, since the victims are supposed to belong to a different species.5

Similarly, Chinweizu has this to say about the Euro-African connection:

In order to explore the ramifications of the problem confronting the rest of us [Third World], we might do well to examine in some detail the Euro-African connection, from its inception to the present, to see how it visited Africa with the holocaust of slaving, the trauma of invasion and conquest, the humiliations and complexes of occupation, and with a systematic and continuing impoverishment. For, outside of the Amerindians who were exterminated, black Africans and their diaspora have suffered the most from the white peril.6