Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation

366 Pages·2015·1.99 MB·English

by  Yves Engler

Canada in Africa
300 Years of Aid and Exploitation

By
Yves Engler

Fernwood Publishing, RED Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Yves Engler All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages
in a review.
First printing August 2015

Cover design by Working Design Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis

Printing A co-publication of RED Publishing
2736 Cambridge Street
32 Oceanvista
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1L7 and Fernwood Publishing
Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0
and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3
www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial
support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the
Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities,
Culture and Heritage, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and
Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the
Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our
publishing program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Engler, Yves,
1979-, author
Canada in Africa : 300 years of aid and exploitation / Yves Engler.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-55266-762-0
1. Canada — Foreign relations — Africa. 2. Africa — Foreign relations
— Canada. I. Title.
FC244.A35E54 2015 327.7106 C2015-900667-8

Table of Contents

5 Acknowledgements etc.
6 Introduction 13 1. Profiting from Slavery 21 2. Brute Capitalism 49 3.
Providing Ideological Cover 67 4. Canadian Colonialism 87 5. Liberator or
Defender of Colonialism 112 6. Aid Against Independence 117 7. Canadian
Coups 127 8. Neoliberalism 139 9. A Mining Superpower 151 10. Mining
Conflict 183 11. The Spoils of Privatization 200 12. Mythology and Reality 219
13. A Sordid Tale 231 14. Carrying a Big Stick 248 15. Whose Corruption?
262 16. Our Shared Environment 268 Conclusion 270 Notes 315 Bibliography
Acknowledgements etc.

I would like to thank Nadia Hausfather who has long encouraged and
enabled my research habit. I would also like to acknowledge Dru Oja Jay and
Nik Barry Shaw for allowing me to draw from Paved with Good Intentions.
While writing this book I moved between Ottawa, Toronto, Montréal and East
Africa. A number of individuals allowed me to stay at their places along the
way: Rose Marie Whalley, Paul Tetrault and Sally Teich; Dan Rosen and Jessica
Haber (as well as Evan and Denise) Araceli Gonzalez Reyes and Diego
Hausfather; Angela Schleihauf, Nadia Hausfather and Tareq Shahwan.
I would also like to acknowledge my uncle Al Engler for looking over the
manuscript and my father Gary for his endless help. I’d like to thank my
wonderful partner Bianca Mugyenyi whose rigorous judgement greatly
improved the manuscript.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the dozens of individuals (Nikki Baker,
Scott Harris, Mark Haley, Peter Eglin ...) who’ve set up public events for my
books. In a hostile media climate, their work makes it possible and worthwhile
to continue researching and publishing. Their activism gives us hope for
developing a genuinely justice-oriented Canadian foreign-policy.
***
The English spelling of many African place names and other words has
changed over the years. I have tried to use current commonly accepted “mid-
Atlantic” spelling, but have respected historical use in quotes and titles.
***
Writing using voice recognition software has been a wonderful solution to
old hockey injuries worsened by repetitive strain. But along with beneficial
health effects comes danger — speaking “continent” can easily be transcribed as
“content”, for example — and cleaning up this technologically-induced
minefield can be a daunting task for any editor. I take full responsibility for any
such errors and apologize in advance to any upset readers.
Introduction

“Judge me by my actions, not my words.”
Lord Byron, nineteenth century poet

At the end of 2014 I spent a brief, but exciting, five weeks traveling through
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The trip provided a glimpse of life in East Africa.
One striking contrast with Canada was the freedom kids had to roam. Siblings,
older children and neighbourhood adults supervised the littlest ones. I admired
the social trust regarding children, but held my breath every time I saw a six or
seven-year-old grasping a toddler’s hand mere feet from a road.
A highlight of my travels was running into a group of kids playing football in
Mwanza, Tanzania, who were happy to have a “Muzungu” join their game.
Rather than chase the ball, the youngest in the group spent most of the game
doing flips. It was fun, but didn’t do my team any favours!
After 3,000 km in three countries I can confidently say that the buses are less
comfortable than those in Canada. Bumps repeatedly sent me flying. But while
the road jolted me from my seat the stops made it so one needn’t get out. At
every stop individuals sold nuts, fruits, popcorn, drinks and other goodies
through the window or aisle. Crossing Tanzania a young man got on with a large
bag of warm corn and slowly made his way up the aisle peeling a cob to whet
the appetite of anyone who looked his way. By the time the driver let him off he
was tens of kilometers from his starting point though carrying a much lighter
load. The corn seller was lucky. Another vendor ended up miles from where he
started without selling a single biscuit.
The entrepreneurial spirit is much stronger in East Africa than Canada.
Notwithstanding certain ideological claims, however, it’s highly inefficient. It
may be convenient to purchase a bag of nuts from the comfort of one’s bus seat,
but a large number of sellers at every stop reflects limited opportunities and is a
poor use of people’s capacities.
***
This book details Canada’s role in exploiting Africa and undermining the
sovereignty of its people. Canadian policy provides a unique window into
Western exploitation of Africa and this book can hopefully contribute to
overcoming widespread ignorance of African affairs.
The first half of the book is largely organized chronologically while each
chapter in the second half covers a region or theme in Canada-Africa relations. I
focus on sub-Saharan Africa, but the northern part of the continent has been
included where it fits the general pattern.
Prior to Confederation in 1867 the territories of current day Canada played a
small part in the transatlantic slave trade. For over 200 years, New France and
the British North America colonies held Africans in bondage and Canadians
helped suppress Caribbean slave rebellions. Most significantly, the Atlantic
provinces literally fed the slave system, generating great wealth selling cheap,
high-protein cod to keep thousands of “enslaved people working 16 hours a
day.”
As the European powers transitioned from stealing Africans to taking the
continent’s resources, Canadians helped Britain and the Belgian King conquer
various parts of the continent. Four hundred Canadians traveled halfway across
the world to beat back anticolonial resistance in the Sudan in 1885 while a
decade and a half later thousands more fought in defence of British imperial
interests in the southern part of the continent. Usually trained at Kingston’s
Royal Military College, Canadians also led military expeditions, built rail lines
and surveyed colonial borders across the continent.
At the same time as Canadians fought with the imperial forces, Canadian
missionaries helped the colonial powers penetrate African society. Gripped by a
desire to rid “darkest Africa” of “heathenism”, in 1893 a couple of Torontonians
founded what later became the largest interdenominational Protestant mission on
the continent. By the end of the colonial period as many as 2,500 Canadians
were proselytizing across Africa.
These Christian activists sometimes worked alongside Canadian colonial
officials. Hundreds of Canadians administered British colonies, even rising to
become governor in Ghana, Northern Nigeria and Kenya. Throughout the
various stages of the colonial project, Canada provided political, military,
economic and moral support.
As independence struggles grew, Ottawa opposed or abstained on many
anticolonial resolutions at the UN and repeatedly called for independence
movements to be patient. Canadian officials regularly condemned liberation
movements for engaging in armed struggle and despite delivering (free of
charge) weaponry to the colonial powers, Ottawa never sold, let alone gave,
arms to anticolonial movements.
Upon independence Canada immediately promoted participation in the
Commonwealth (and later La Francophonie) as a way to keep African countries
within the colonial fold. Ottawa also delivered aid in the hopes of dissuading
newly independent countries from following wholly independent paths or falling
under the influence of the Communist bloc.
But when African leaders strayed too far from Western dictates, Ottawa
backed more coercive methods of maintaining its influence. The Canadian
military played a significant role in overthrowing African independence leaders
Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah.
As the post–independence anticolonial spirit dissipated, the leading capitalist
nations took the offensive. Since the mid-1980s Ottawa has pressed African
countries to follow neoliberal economic prescriptions, spending tens of millions
of dollars in Canadian “aid” to promote International Monetary Fund structural
adjustment policies.
Canadian companies grabbed a significant share of the spoils of the neoliberal
war on government. A number of Canadian corporations promoted, facilitated or
profited from the privatization drive across the continent. While some prominent
Canadian public utilities took over or managed state-owned companies, one
relatively unknown Ottawa-based consulting firm led corporate Canada’s assault
on Africa’s public sector.
Canadian mining corporations have been the main beneficiaries of “free
market” reforms on the continent. Since the late 1980s Canadian mining
investment in Africa has grown 150 fold, surpassing $30 billion. Extractive
companies have benefited from aggressive government lobbying and a slew of
“aid” initiatives to advance their interests. Yet Canadian mining companies are
often bitterly resisted by local communities.
Nowhere have Canadian extractive companies been linked to more rights
violations than in eastern Congo. Canadian officials also exacerbated conflict in
that country and, with Senator Romeo Dallaire in the lead, have promulgated a
remarkable deception about the terrible violence that has engulfed Africa’s Great
Lakes region.
At the same time as the Canadian military became involved in Rwanda, racist
Canadian soldiers tortured and killed Somalis in 1993. Then in 2006 Ottawa
supported the violent US-Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
Alongside the emerging US Africa Command (AFRICOM) Canadian forces
have played a growing role in African military affairs. Ottawa exerts influence
on the continent through its training initiatives and participation in regional
security initiatives. Canadian naval vessels also patrolled the coast while the
military sought to house equipment and soldiers in a number of African
countries.
While deeply involved in African military affairs, Canadian officials largely
turned a blind eye to the continent’s leading threats, namely corporate tax
evasion and climate change. While Western commentators are quick to
denounce corruption in Africa, they generally ignore the role multinationals play
in it and the fact that the continent loses more from corporate tax evasion.
Starving governments of much-needed income, many Canadian companies
evade their African taxes through various morally and legally questionable
means.
More than elsewhere, anthropogenic global warming poses a particularly
profound threat to large swaths of the continent. Demonstrating near total
indifference to the impact of global warming in Africa, the Canadian
government has pushed to grow the global “carbon bomb”.
***
The twin political purposes of this book are to engender solidarity with
Africans and antipathy towards Canada’s foreign-policy intelligentsia. Since
2012 at least three books have been published on Canadian foreign policy in
Africa: Canada-Africa Relations: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, Canadian
Foreign Policy in Africa: Regional Approaches to Peace, Security and
Development and Canada and Africa in the New Millennium: The Politics of
Consistent Inconsistency. Purported to be serious investigations, they instead
demonstrate academia’s broad subservience to state and corporate power.
In the opening chapter of Canada-Africa Relations: Looking Back, Looking
Ahead editors Rohinton Medhora and Yiagadeesen Samy write: “Even if very ad
hoc and reactive, Canada’s engagement, whether it was for developmental
reasons, peacekeeping, nation building, democracy promotion or human rights,
reflected familiar Canadian values. Commercial interests, although present, have
never been a defining feature of that relationship.”1 One wonders how the
dispossession of First Nations fits their definition of “Canadian values”, but
leaving this aside, Ottawa has repeatedly demonstrated its indifference to both