Britain’s ‘common’ wealth: How London ensures that Africa never prospers
21 May, 2024 13:52
Britain’s ‘common’ wealth: How London ensures that Africa never prospers
The privatization of Africa’s state-owned companies is always linked to the US through its financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, with the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s and 1990s.
However, the British were behind the exploitation, privatization, and eventual collapse of Africa’s state-owned companies even before the introduction of the so-called neo-liberal market agenda by the US. The British have been doing this mainly through their Commonwealth institutions, proudly headed by the monarch.
Not hereditary, but inherited
The Commonwealth organization claims that the role of its head is purely symbolic, that it has no maximum fixed term, it is not hereditary, and that future heads will be chosen by the Commonwealth leaders.
King Charles III succeeded Queen Elizabeth II as head of the Commonwealth upon her death on September 8, 2022. This was after the Commonwealth head of government (CHOGM) meeting in 2018 agreed that the next head would be Prince Charles. Some claimed he had overcome really tough competition to win Britain’s backing as the best candidate, but there is no evidence of anyone else contesting or even voicing aspirations.
The reality, however, is that the title of Commonwealth head forms part of the monarch’s full and inheritable title in each realm and letters patent issued. For example, Elizabeth II’s letters patent from 1958 clearly state that Prince Charles was the heir and successor of the Commonwealth territories.
Similarly, on February 13, 2023, King Charles III’s official letters patent state that the Prince William of Wales and his heirs and successors shall be the future heads of the Commonwealth. So, it’s not true that it is not hereditary, but why would the British, through its monarch, still want to head and control the Commonwealth?
Britain looking for food and raw materials
Use of the term neo-colonialism is internationally attributed to Alex Quaison-Sackey, a Ghanaian diplomat who addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on April 5, 1958. It was popularized by Kwame Nkrumah in his book Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism in 1965.
Most people think neo-colonialism started after most colonies had gained independence. However, the British were the first to start implementing it with the creation of the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1931 on the basis of the 1926 Balfour declaration.
In 1945, Britain signed the Anglo-American financial and commercial agreement with the US. But when the country started experiencing raw materials and food shortages in 1947, coupled with the US loan burden, its Labor government decided to find their own non-dollar sources of raw materials and food. Unfortunately, instead of looking inward, they looked at their colonies as their non-dollar source.
This led to the Overseas Resources Development Act of 1948, which was enacted by the King George VI, and the establishment of the Colonial Development Corporation, which was “charged with duties for securing development in colonial territories.” It also led to the Overseas Food Corporation, which was “charged with duties for securing the production or processing of foodstuffs or other products in places outside the United Kingdom, and the marketing thereof, and for matters connected therewith.”
After many colonies had gained independence, in 1963, the Colonial Development Corporation was renamed the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) and, in 1969, it was permitted to invest outside the Commonwealth.
Nicholas Mansergh wrote in his book The Commonwealth Experience Volume One: The Durham Report to the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1982): “Commonwealth was the heir of Empire, and imperial influences bore closely upon its earlier growth.” So, how does the Commonwealth, through its institutions such as the CDC, ensure that British imperialistic nature is maintained, albeit not directly as it was during colonialism?
Commonwealth Development Corporation: Aid agency or cash machine?
It is stated clearly in the Act leading to the establishment of the Colonial Development Corporation that it was charged with securing development in colonial territories. While the main purpose of the Commonwealth Development Corporation (the renamed Colonial Development Corporation) in 1963 was “to invest in the creation and growth of viable private businesses in poorer developing countries to contribute to economic growth for the benefit of the poor; and to mobilise private investment in these markets both directly and by demonstrating profitable investments as part of the mission… to fight world poverty.”
More succinctly, the CEO of the CDC between 2004 and 2011, Richard Laing, said the “CDC exists to improve people’s lives in developing countries.”
However, the CDC had never led to industrial development, nor did it improve people’s lives in developing countries, because the aid supposedly given to their colonies (and/or their former colonies) had never been directed to Africa-owned companies, nor were the profits or even tax revenues ever directed to Africans. This was confirmed during a UK Parliament hearing in 2010, which led to the CDC’s reformation. The main conclusions of the investigations were that the CDC’s projects had “a focus on profitability to the detriment of development; depriving developing counties of much needed tax revenue; lack of analysis of development impacts and an ongoing failure of oversight and standards, transparency and accountability.”
How did they do it? First, the CDC aid was directed towards already established British companies, like The London and Rhodesian Mining & Land Co Ltd (Lonrho), which was incorporated in 1909 with a founding capital raised by seven British shareholders who began mining and agricultural businesses in Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe). In 1961, the company recruited the famous British neo-colonial agent Tiny Rowland, who expanded its interests out of Rhodesia into neighboring Malawi, Zambia, Kenya, Zaire (DRC), and Tanzania, transforming the entity into an African conglomerate without rival.
The Africans were mainly employed as manual laborers with poor pay, while the foreign personnel performed the highly paid and prestigious engineering and technical functions. These companies just pulled resources out of the ground and sold them abroad. Little capital development was devoted to actually increasing the stock of productive wealth and this, in turn, deprived developing countries of much-needed tax revenue.
Secondly, the CDC was (is) actually behind the collapse, sale and eventual privatization of Africa’s state-owned companies. These include Nigeria’s National Fertilizer Corporation of Nigeria (NAFCON), which was privatized through corrupt deals that only enriched a few individuals. And how was the CDC involved? The CDC was one of the main investors in a private equity firm known as Emerging Capital Partners (ECP), which managed the ECP Africa Fund II.
Through the ECP Africa Fund II, ECP invested in three Nigerian companies: Oando, NOTORE (formerly state-owned NAFCON) and Intercontinental Bank. The bank is reported to have been used for the laundering of money said to have been obtained corruptly by the former governor of Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta State, James Ibori.
According to Nigerian anti-corruption campaigner Dotun Oloko, the whistleblower in the Emerging Capital Partners case, Ibori used a front company (NOTORE) to acquire the assets of the privatized National Fertilizer Corporation of Nigeria (NAFCON), and one of the CDC’s directors was acting as Ibori’s front man during these transactions.
Plunder continues
In 1997, the CDC became a Public Private Partnership (PPP). Then, in 1998, it transformed from a statutory corporation to a public limited company trading under the name CDC Capital Partners. In 2004, following further restructuring, two separate fund management companies were formed from CDC, ACTIS and AUREOS, leaving CDC Group plc as an emerging markets fund-of-funds investment company owned entirely by the government.
The CDC’s new role as a fund-of-funds investor meant that it was no longer a direct investor in companies in emerging markets. Instead, they now deployed their “capital through private equity funds, such as those managed by ACTIS and AUREOS, which in turn invest in companies in developing countries. These private equity funds thereby provide CDC with an indirect share in the businesses in which the fund manager invests.”
Unfortunately, the structure for resource exploitation and non-dollar supply of food and raw materials remains to this day, because in November 2021, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) announced that it would rebrand instead of disbanding the CDC as the British International Investment (BII) in 2022 as part of a strategy to deepen economic, security and development ties globally.
So BII is now working behind the scenes through one of its funding managements companies, such as ACTIS, to continue plundering African resources. The best example is the privatization of Cameroon’s electricity sector, which BII advertises as one of its impactful projects in Africa but in fact the investment goes to its own company and not to Africa’s state-owned firms.
Israel-Hamas war: South Africa threatens to arrest citizens fighting with Israel | LiveNOW from FOX
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Jew In South Africa Pretends To Speak For Whites
Kim Heller: A Jewish Radical In South Africa Pretends To Speak For White People
Kim Heller: A Jewish Radical In South Africa Pretends To Speak For Her ‘Fellow White People’
Kim Heller, the radical jewish agitator masquerading as a ‘political consultant’ for the likes of the communist ANC and EFF parties, has recently been repeating her old ploy of pretending to be White while she incites Blacks to steal land without compensation, and at the same time disingenuously urging her “fellow Whites” to accept this theft because it’s the “right thing to do”:
In the crying game of privilege, white tears matter. White tears will fall, with great lavish, when land is taken back from us by the rightful owners. Despite marathon opportunity to return stolen land to black South Africans, we have failed. Nor do we, as white South Africans, show any resolve to do so.
When justice finally collapses our entitlement and privilege in South Africa, I will not weep. I will rejoice. Because entitlement and privilege are brutes which rose illegitimately on the arc of racism, downgrading blackness to junk status in the supersizing of white fortunes.
White South Africans pedestrian-pass black poverty on the fringes of ‘our’ suburbs as if this poverty is not our business. Yet the welts of poverty and inequality in our post-democracy panorama, is the work of apartheid and colonial plunder.
A hand-craft of exploitation by white settlers which imposed a life sentence of poverty on the majority of black South Africans. When our land is expropriated, without compensation, I will not sob, I will support this, without reservation, because we are not the rightful owners of land in South Africa.
Historically, whites robbed black South Africans of land and this fractured families and fortunes and denigrated black dignity and culture. Today, in what some call a free South Africa, black South Africans are squatters on their own land, while we as white South Africans live as squire on land our forefathers stole.
Today, in what some call a free South Africa, a real-time game of monopoly continues with white South Africans holding the lion’s share of land and where vast expanses of white wealth and unrelenting sweeps of black poverty defy economic liberation. On 27 May 2017, in what is probably the keenest expression of radical economic transformation this year, a National Land Imbizo was held in Molofo, Soweto.
The initiative, spearheaded by the Black First, Land First (BLF) Movement and supported by many other black organisations, lucidly voiced how the everyday anguish of black South Africa and the omnipresent poverty and violence in townships, squatter camps and rural villages are the direct product of landlessness.
The President of BLF, Andile Mngxitama said; “The bones of our ancestors are crying out for land. They are not resting in peace. The bones of Sikhukhune, Shaka, Nyabela, Hintsa, Moshoeshoe, Cetshwayo, Nghunghunyane arecalling for land now! “The spirit of Bambatha, Sobukwe, Biko, Mantatise, Nzinga, Nehanda, Tsietsi Mashinini, Kgotso Seatlholo cry over the centuries across the African continent for land to be returned! “It is the land that gives us life and when we die, it’s the land that takes care of our bodies. Without land we are nothing! With land we are everything!”
The National Imbizo’s Land Declaration provides a programme of action for the expropriation of land without compensation, on the backbone of black unity beyond party political association.
The Land Declaration notes the lack of remorse of white people for slavery, colonialism, apartheid and land theft and how the comfort and wealth enjoyed by white South Africans today is a direct profit of the oppression, exploitation and land dispossession of the black majority.
The Land Declaration calls on whites to abandon arrogance and cooperate in the return of stolen land. Mngxitama says whites must meet in their own Land Imbizo, before the end of 2017, to resolve the return of land to its rightful owners. My dear white South Africans, it is time to return land. Let us heed this call for a white Imbizo on land.
Whether we are company directors, top business executives, CEO’s, ordinary workers, religious leaders, farmers or teachers, employed or unemployed, students or learners, we are all children of privilege. We are all beneficiaries of a loyalty club dating back to 1652, which rewards us daily, at the expense of our “fellow” black South Africans.
Mngxitama says ‘the biggest and most evil corruption is land theft –this is the mother of all corruption!’ and that we ‘cannot heal if the land is not returned’.
It is a crying shame that we as white South Africans sprint with great enthusiasm to protest marches on alleged state corruption, yet appear totally motionless on land theft.
The Rainbow Nation and its artificially sweetened wand of social cohesion and reconciliation has harmed, not healed us for it has dulled the call for land expropriation.
The Rainbow Nation has long gone into overtime and it is time for us, as white South Africans to discover our moral compass and to step forward, in a collective burst of ethical consciousness to facilitate the return of land which was taken by our fore-fathers not through facilitation, but through force, coercion and trickery.
Land return and economic liberation does not need the consent of white people and so the fact that black South Africans are still allowing us to even discuss the return land is a sign of their humanity not ours. Let us find our moral compass and return the land. The return of stolen land, will free us all.
Apparently, even some Blacks on her Twitter feed aren’t fooled by her racial shell game, with one noting, “Kim Heller you are not white, if you are, I doubt you were raised in SA.” Now that Jews have helped destroy White South Africa, tens of thousands of them have left since the fall of Apartheid, and many more have their bags packed and are ready to take flight when the violence they’ve incited among the Blacks really starts escalating with the help of Kim Heller and her “former” Black clients, like Julius Malema and Andile Mngxitama. If some Blacks aren’t fooled by Heller’s game, why are so many Whites in denial that this is happening?
It has always been an essential part of jewish political strategy of pretending to be “White” so that they can speak for “Whites” and undermine them at the same time. Privately, very few Jews, if any, truly believe they are White, and all genetic studies prove that they are not, in fact, of White European stock, but they have the ability to pass as White, which gives them enormous power to manipulate the political landscape. The real White people in South Africa need to call out Jews like Kim Heller on this deception and start insisting that they do not speak for Whites any longer because they have proven over and over that their real interests are anything but White.
@laurafalciani6787