History, memory, and Africa’s unfinished struggle

“Wrong must not win by technicalities” — Aeschylus

COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | I am often asked why I return, almost instinctively, to history when reflecting on the failures and possibilities of Africa’s contemporary political order. Why, some wonder, do I insist on excavating the past when addressing the present? Although usually well-meaning, this question betrays a misunderstanding of the power, memory, and injustice matrix.

History is not an archive. It is an active force.

Recently, this question was put to me by a young professional, Helen, a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand. Bright, articulate, and globally aware, she nonetheless struggled to grasp the enduring significance of Patrice Émery Lumumba in Africa’s continuing struggle for sovereignty, dignity, and self-determination. To her, Lumumba was simply another Congolese politician who met a tragic end at the hands of a dictator. She even suggested that had he “played ball” with the Belgians and the Americans, he might have lived a long and comfortable life.

That reasoning, casually offered, reveals precisely why history matters.

Lumumba was not killed because he was reckless. He was killed because he was principled. He was assassinated because he refused to surrender Congo’s independence to foreign interests and their local collaborators. His crime was not miscalculation, but conviction. To reduce such a figure to a footnote of poor political judgement is to misunderstand the very architecture of neo-colonial power.

History, however, has a way of reasserting itself. It sends reminders when societies grow forgetful. At the recent Africa Cup of Nations tournament, one such reminder emerged in the form of Congolese supporter Michel Nkuka Mboladinga whose striking resemblance to Lumumba, and whose deliberate emulation of Lumumba’s famous statue in Kinshasa, captured continental attention. Dressed in vibrant suits and standing motionless with raised arm through entire matches, he transformed a football tournament into a site of political memory.

In doing so, he revived conversations many would prefer to bury. He reminded Africa that the struggle against plunder, humiliation, and external domination did not end with flag independence. He reminded us, especially when Algerian footballer Mohammad Amoura mocked him, that dignity is not an abstraction; it is a political posture.

His silent protest echoed the words of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in his 1966 address at the University of Cape Town, delivered under apartheid’s shadow: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” Those ripples, Kennedy said, can converge into a current strong enough to tear down walls of oppression.

Africa today is in urgent need of such ripples.

This is not romanticism nor is it idealism. It is realism.

The forces that have sought to dominate, extract, and subordinate Africa have not disappeared; they have merely changed vocabulary and method. Colonialism has been rebranded. Exploitation now arrives clothed in the language of investment, partnerships, and development assistance. But the underlying power asymmetries remain intact.

In this context, Africa must view the re-emergence of transactional, coercive foreign policy under President Donald Trump with sober clarity. His doctrine of “America First” goes beyond George Washington’s in that it is not merely isolationist; it is extractive. It reduces diplomacy to barter and sovereignty to collateral. The emerging posture — minerals in exchange for security, resources in exchange for recognition, compliance in exchange for protection — is a return to the logic of the concessionary state. It invites Africa to trade strategic autonomy for short-term relief, and dignity for access. Such arrangements are not partnerships; they are pressures. They risk locking the continent into a new cycle of dependency where African soil fuels foreign industry while African agency is quietly surrendered. History warns us where such bargains end.

Yet it would be dishonest, and strategically naïve, to imagine that this pressure comes from Washington alone. China courts Africa with infrastructure and credit, but often leaves behind debt, opacity, and weakened local industry. Russia arrives wrapped in the language of anti-imperial solidarity, yet trades in arms, mercenaries, and political leverage. The Gulf monarchies project fraternity and faith, while extracting land, ports, and strategic footholds. India invokes shared colonial memory, even as it competes aggressively for markets and minerals. Each power speaks a different language, but the grammar is familiar: access, influence, advantage. None are neutral. All are pursuing interest. The danger for Africa is not engagement — it is asymmetry.

When Arab armies arrived in North Africa in the 7th century, they did not encounter a barren or primitive land. They encountered civilisations along the Nile whose political organisation, medical knowledge, and architectural mastery predated many others by centuries. Ancient Egypt was not an anomaly; it was an African expression of human ingenuity.

Yet the 19th-century European imagination insisted on describing Africa as “dark” — not because it lacked civilisation, but because acknowledging African achievement would have complicated the moral justification for conquest.

No corner of the continent was spared. Even Ethiopia, which, through its Queen of Sheba, is celebrated in ancient Jewish and Christian scripture and revered for its imperial continuity, was invaded. Italy’s defeat at Adwa in 1896 was not merely a military event; it was a declaration that Africa was not destined for submission. When Mussolini returned with fascist ambition in 1935, he came to avenge that humiliation. He failed again. By 1941, Ethiopia was free, and Africa had once more reminded the world that it was not without agency.

These episodes are not academic curiosities. They are lessons.

They teach us that Africa’s predicament has never been accidental. It has been engineered, resisted, renegotiated, and too often misunderstood — even by Africans themselves. They teach us that figures like Lumumba were not reckless idealists, but necessary disruptors of an unjust global order.

And they teach us that forgetting is not neutral. Forgetting is political.

To be ignorant of Lumumba is to be ill-equipped to understand Congo. To be dismissive of Adwa is to misunderstand Africa’s capacity for resistance. To trivialise history is to make peace with subjugation.

Wrong must not win by technicalities.
Not in law.
Not in memory.
Not in the telling of our story.

Africa’s struggle is unfinished, but it is not hopeless. Each act of remembrance, each assertion of dignity, each refusal to bow — however small — is a ripple. And if history teaches us anything, it is that enough ripples, sustained and deliberate, can become a wave.

*****

By Andrew “Pi” Besi | On X: @BesiAndrew

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