Reflections on Colonialism and Solidarity
By Ashley Green-Thompson
Colonialism continues to find expression in the big political issues of our world. It is apparent every day in the skewed power distribution of multi-lateral institutions where former colonial powers enjoy sway over policy and priority setting, and the former colonies fight for their place at the table. Colonialism is essentially extractive, and its legacy is found in imbalances and inequalities of trade – Africa notably remains primarily an exporter of natural resources upon which the global economy is dependent. The benefits from this trade do little to address the historic deficit created in Africa by colonialism and slavery. These phenomena dealt severe blows to Africa’s development path when they removed the continent’s prime asset, its people, and when they arbitrarily created borders that shattered the viable social infrastructures that existed before.
Over the years there has been collaboration, to some extent, among those concerned with building a more just world to address some of the most egregious systems that cause suffering. The global movement to end apartheid is perhaps one of the greatest mobilisations of people in the north and south, and people in former colonies have enjoyed support in dealing with a range of injustices and crises – from civil war and famine to environmental disaster, from LGBTI struggles to defending human rights.
The problem is that too often the motivation for much of this support is rooted in the notion of charity, or a sense of guilty obligation that those who have must help those who do not. This is important when there is the immediacy of hunger or danger – people need to eat if they are starving, or need to find shelter immediately if there is a storm or conflict. If the giver does not reflect on the place from which this impulse to help comes, the danger is that the relationship between them and the receiver will remain one shaped by colonial attitudes. The giving is done according to the terms set by the giver who will forever have the resources – they alone will determine how they wish to give those resources. The receiver has no say – the desperation of their situation leaves them vulnerable to the whims of the giver. There is a massive inequality of power and agency in that relationship, and while it might respond to the immediate crisis, it does not lead to a fundamental change in the situation.
This inequality of power and agency is replicated in the funding of development projects as well. Social upliftment projects are important, but they stop short of seeking the transformation of the system that created the need for the project in the first place.
This inability to challenge the structures and root causes of justice, of colonial relations, is one of the great indictments of the development aid system. Too often it serves to ameliorate the worst excesses of current global neo-colonial economic and political systems. Funders from the global north very seldom support work that seeks the genuine overhaul – overthrow? – of systems that perpetuate colonial patterns of extraction and marginalisation.
Neo-colonial structures and relations are built by political elites who are beholden to those with money. Political parties and the electrical systems that characterise the ‘democratic’ world are expensive to maintain. Parties and politicians are reliant on funding from wealthy individuals and their corporations, and the policy decisions they make are always going to favour action that maintains prevailing systems rather than what will bring genuine change in the lives of those at the margins. This political-economic elite pact is manifest in states sponsoring particular sides in civil conflicts, in the advancing protectionist policies for those within the original colonial fold that create barriers to entry by those outside, and in using their financial resources to limit / reduce the disaffection of those who suffer poverty and exclusion under a global system still defined by colonial patterns.
NGOs and those in the global south who rely on development assistance to support their struggle against injustice are often compromised by the need to ‘comply’ with the requirements and priorities set by those providing the funding. Funding proposals are written with the aim of convincing the decision makers – how the funds will be used must align with the interests or priorities of those who give the money. It is very much a relationship of inequality. The significance of this is that activists and community organisers spend too much time and resources trying to comply rather than in waging the struggle for change.
What is needed is an authentic solidarity to define relationships and behaviours, one that goes beyond simply ‘charity’. Authentic solidarity requires that the people living in those parts of the world that have benefited so fundamentally from colonialism, including Germany, walk with the people from the global south and start seeing their struggles as shared. When you walk together with someone, you approach obstacles together and must look for solutions together. This solidarity demands that agendas are informed by those who are the forefront of resisting their oppression, so priorities for compliance are not the preserve of those who have the resources.
There is not enough commitment to finding new ways of developing a shared agenda that will enable this shared journey. What we are seeing instead is a retreat to parochial responses to the political and economic crises of our time. Development partners talk of reduced funding, increased compliance requirements, and entrenching of conditional support for work that is aligned with priorities set in Europe, all of which make social justice work in the south that much more difficult. Instead there should be agitation for a deepened commitment to collaboration, to harmonisation of support to the global south, and to challenging the political elites to do better at breaking unjust neo-colonial arrangements.
Development funding is not about charity, but remains a historic debt owed for slavery and colonialism. It is a valuable resource to support resistance and agency by marginalised communities that seek to transform neo-colonial structures and attitudes. It can be an enabler of solidarity that speaks of a shared concern for the problems caused by colonialism and greed, and promotes a shared exploration of what solutions there may be.
As individuals we do not have the power to reform the United Nations and other institutions, nor to stop the atrocities in Palestine, Sudan and elsewhere. We are capable of changing ourselves and our own understandings of solidarity and justice, and then connecting with others who share a commitment to genuine decolonisation that will guide our search for new ways of doing things.
