October 16, 1997. Copyright, 1997, Graphic News. All rights reserved

COLONIAL LEGACY STILL HURTS AT AFRICAÕS INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY
By Oliver Burkeman

LONDON, October 16, Graphic News- AFRICAN leaders meeting in London this month to assess the state of the continent 40 years after decolonisation began will confront a troubled history and a deeply uncertain future.
Heads of state including Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, NamibiaÕs Sam Nujoma and Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania join experts and diplomats for the conference on October 28-29, entitled ÔAfrica at 40?Õ. A speech by President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana Ð where independence in 1957 initiated AfricaÕs 
emancipation from imperial rule Ð will be delivered on his behalf.
Delegates to the conference, which follows the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edinburgh from October 24-27, have some cause for celebration. The 1994 abolition of apartheid in South Africa marked the end of over a century of oppression originating in the Ôscramble for AfricaÕ of the 1880s. Growth rates are improving too, some analysts even detecting a new Ôemerging marketÕ.
But desperate poverty and raging ethnic conflicts belie former Tanzanian premier Julius NyerereÕs claim that ÔAfricaÕs long struggle was overÕ when Mandela was inaugurated. Genocide in Rwanda, war in Somalia and the lethal Ebola filovirus have been only the more prominent features of an unending crisis. 
Literacy rates remain chronically low Ð 18 percent, for example, in Burkina Ð and infant mortality critically high: in Sierra Leone, 164 children in every 1,000 die before their first birthday. Democratic rule in countries like South Africa, Mali and Tanzania has not yet been emulated in Daniel arap MoiÕs Kenya or in Congo (formerly Zaire), where ousted president MobutuÕs usurper, Laurent Kabila, has yet to set a date for elections. Civil conflicts may have ended Ð for the moment Ð in Mozambique and Somalia, but drag on in Angola, Sudan, Burundi and elsewhere. 
And the colonialist legacy still smarts. Mugabe, currently chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, has threatened to seize white-owned Zimbabwean farms without compensation and urged Britain, ZimbabweÕs former ruler, to foot the bill. ÔWe are not going to pay a cent to any soul,Õ he said. 
For many, the exploitation of Africa by Western multinationals represents colonialism by other means. Dr Kimani Nehusi of the University of East London, one of the conference speakers, says the case for financial reparations from the West is compelling. ÔIt was African labour, for lashes instead of wages, that substantially built BritainÕs economy,Õ he argues. ÔBritain was one of the first to colonise Africa, and the first capitalist economy. Is that a coincidence?Õ
ENDS

Sources: Africa at 40? (Tel: +44 181 674 2583 / 0181 674 2583), JaneÕs Foreign Report, UNICEF, Reuter