Berlin Conference Represented African Tragedy, Root of Today’s Challenges, Scholar States

The Berlin Conference is what I call the “African tragedy,” because it marked the beginning of many of the challenges that continue to afflict Africa today, Dr. John-Mark Iyi, Associate Professor and Director of the African Center for Transnational Criminal Justice at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, tells Sputnik Africa.

Dr. Iyi argues that the conference formalized the exploitative relationship that European colonial powers had practiced with Africa for centuries, a relationship that began with the transatlantic slave trade. He explains that the immediate consequences of the conference were far-reaching, particularly in how it disrupted Africa's established systems of governance and social organization.

“The first immediate problem was that the Berlin Conference formalized the sort of exploitative relationship that European colonial powers had practiced with Africa for many centuries before. And here I'm referring to the transatlantic slave trade,” he explains.

One of the most visible consequences of the conference, Dr. Iyi notes, was the arbitrary drawing of colonial borders that divided ethnic and cultural groups across different nations. This division was not merely geographical, he says, but also deeply social and political. The imposition of foreign political systems on these groups disrupted the way they had traditionally organized their societies.

“It was not just geographical. The most obvious effect is the geographical demarcation or splitting of people into different countries. So beyond that and the fact that a particular tribe which used to exist together under the same political arrangement in pre-colonial Africa used to perhaps exist under one rulership, let's say a king, and now found themselves being subject to two different political systems of political arrangement,” he elaborates.

He stresses that these imposed systems were illegitimate in the eyes of the people, as they did not reflect their consent or aspirations.

The legacy of colonization, Dr. Iyi argues, remains at the heart of Africa’s inability to unite and assert its sovereignty on the global stage. He notes how colonial powers deliberately maintained exploitative structures to ensure that their interests were protected even after African nations gained independence.

“In any instance where a visionary African leader had emerged and tried to bring about change, any kind of meaningful change that would benefit African people, then we [see] military intervention, regime change. Whether you are talking about the murder of Patrice Lumumba in Zaire, the assassination of Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso or the killing of Kwame Nkrumah or even as recently as 2011, the murder of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is basically the same thing. The underlying principle was the whole system of exploitation, the structure of exploitation, that the colonial masters had left in place. These African leaders had sought to dismantle those structures, and that was their wrongdoing, and they were swiftly gotten rid of,” Dr. Iyi asserts.

A strong proponent of reparative justice, the scholar insists that Africa has both moral and legal grounds to demand reparations for the ongoing harms caused by colonialism. He criticizes the objections raised by former colonial powers, particularly the use of the intertemporal rule, which claims that the laws of the colonial era permitted such practices. To counter this, he points to the prosecution of Nazi war crimes.

“During the Second World War, when the Holocaust took place, the law that was used to prosecute some of the offenses did not exist. There was no written law where those conducts were prohibited, but laws were invented, laws were drawn up to prosecute the Nazis. The only difference in the case of Africa is that the victims this time around are Africans and not Jews,” he stresses.

To find out what else our guest had to say, tune in to the Global South Pole podcast, brought to you by Sputnik Africa.

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