The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  THE FORTUNES OF

  AFRICA

  Martin Meredith is a journalist, biographer, and historian who has written extensively on Africa and its recent history. His previous books include Mandela; Mugabe; Diamonds, Gold, and War; Born in Africa; and The Fate of Africa. He lives near Oxford, England.

  Copyright © 2014 by Martin Meredith.

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Published in 2014 in the United States by PublicAffairs™,

  a Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved.

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  Maps by ML Design

  Typeset in the UK by M Rules

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014939816

  ISBN 978-1-61039-460-4 (EB)

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  List of Maps

  Preface

  Introduction

  PART I

  1Land of the Pharaohs

  2Venture into the Interior

  3A Clash of Empires

  4Death on the Nile

  5Roman Interlude

  PART II

  6Saints and Schisms

  7The Arab Conquest

  8Highways of the Desert

  9Zanj

  PART III

  10A Chain of Crosses

  11In the Land of Prester John

  12The Middle Passage

  13Southern Frontiers

  PART IV

  14Mamluks and Ottomans

  15The Black Guard

  16The Sword of Truth

  17A Matter of Faith

  PART V

  18The Gates of Africa

  19The Pasha

  20Pieds Noirs

  21Bibles, Ploughs and Bullets

  PART VI

  22Masters and Servants

  23The People of the Heavens

  24Republics on the Highveld

  25The Missionaries’ Road

  PART VII

  26The Tunes of Zanzibar

  27Unlocking the Congo

  28The Pearl of Africa

  29A Game of Thrones

  PART VIII

  30The Khedive

  31Equatoria

  32Delegate of the People

  33The Expected One

  PART IX

  34Diamond Fever

  35The Fellowship of Afrikaners

  36The Washing of Spears

  37A Chosen People

  38The Most Powerful Company in the World

  PART X

  39This Magnificent Cake

  40Spheres of Interest

  41The Eagle and the Lion

  42Carving up the Niger

  43By Right of Conquest

  PART XI

  44New Flower

  45Omdurman

  46A Desert Fraternity

  PART XII

  47Bula Matari

  48The Rubber Regime

  PART XIII

  49A Tale of Two Towns

  50The Road to Ophir

  51Marching to Pretoria

  52The Extermination Order

  PART XIV

  53Interregnum

  54A Veiled Protectorate

  55Elect of God

  56The Goal of Mastery

  57The Turn of the Tide

  PART XV

  58Before the Deluge

  59Revolution on the Nile

  60The Nationalist Urge

  61Gone with the Wind

  62‘An Honourable Exit’

  63The Congo Bet

  64In the Name of Apartheid

  PART XVI

  65The First Dance of Freedom

  66Coups and Dictators

  67Lost Decades

  68Liberation Wars

  69In Search of Democracy

  70Soldiers of God

  71Platinum Life

  Chapter Notes

  Picture Permissions

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  LIST OF MAPS

  Map 1Africa in 2014

  Map 2Egypt and Nubia

  Map 3Highways of the Desert

  Map 4Land of Zanj

  Map 5West Africa

  Map 6Land of Prester John

  Map 7Southern Africa

  Map 8Egypt’s Empire

  Map 9Africa on the Eve of the Scramble

  Map 10East Africa

  Map 11Congo’s Heart of Darkness

  Map 12Africa in 1914

  Map 13Africa in 1954

  Map 14Africa at Independence

  Africa in 2014

  PREFACE

  Ever since the era of the pharaohs, Africa has been coveted for its riches. The pyramids of the Nile Valley dazzled the rest of the world not just because of the ingenuity of their architects and builders but as symbols of the wealth of Egypt’s rulers who commissioned them as stepping stones to the afterlife.

  Legends about Africa’s riches endured for millennia, drawing in explorers and conquerors from afar. Stories in the Bible about the fabulous gifts of gold and precious stones that the Queen of Sheba brought King Solomon during her visit to Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE grew into folklore about the land of Ophir that inspired European adventurers in their quest for gold to launch a war of conquest in southern Africa 3,000 years later.

  Land was another prize. The Romans relied on their colonies in north Africa for vital grain shipments to feed the burgeoning population of Rome; they named one of their coastal provinces Africa after a Berber tribe known as the Afri who lived in the region of modern Tunisia. Arab invaders followed in the wake of the Romans, the first wave arriving in the seventh century, eventually supplanting indigenous chiefdoms across most of north Africa; they used the Arabic name ‘Ifriqiya’ to cover the same coastal region.

  When European mariners began their exploration of the Atlantic coastline of Africa in the fifteenth century, they applied the name to encompass the whole continent. Their aim initially was to find a sea route to the goldfields of west Africa which they had learned was the location from where camel caravans carrying gold set out to cross the Sahara desert to reach commercial ports on Africa’s Mediterranean coast. Their interest in the west African goldfields had been stimulated as the result of a visit that the ruler of the Mali empire, Mansa Musa, paid to Cairo in 1324 while making a pilgrimage to Mecca. He was so generous in distributing gold that he ruined the money markets there for more than ten years. European cartographers duly took note. A picture of Mansa Musa decorates the Catalan Atlas of 1375, one of the first sets of European maps to provide valid information about Africa. A caption on the map reads: ‘So abundant is the gold that is found in his country that he is the richest and most noble king in all the land.’ Modern estimates suggest that Mansa Musa was the richest man the world has ever seen, richer even than today’s billionaires.

  Another commodity in high demand from Africa was slaves. Slavery wa
s a common feature in many African societies. Slaves were often war-captives, acquired by African leaders as they sought to build fiefdoms and empires and used as labourers and soldiers. But the long-distance trade in slaves, lasting for more than a thousand years, added a fearful new dimension. From the ninth century onwards, slaves from black Africa were regularly marched across the Sahara desert, shipped over the Red Sea and taken from the east coast region and sold into markets in the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf. In the sixteenth century, European merchants initiated the trans-Atlantic trade to the Americas. Most of the inland trade in slaves for sale abroad was handled by African traders and warlords. Fortunes were made at both ends of the trade. By the end of the nineteenth century, the traffic in African slaves amounted in all to about 24 million men, women and children.

  Africa was also valued as the world’s main supplier of ivory. For centuries, the principal demand for Africa’s ivory came from Asia, from markets in India and China. But in the nineteenth century, as the industrial revolution in Europe and North America gathered momentum, the use of ivory for piano keys, billiard balls, scientific instruments and a vast range of household items made it one of the most profitable commodities on earth.

  A greedy and devious European monarch, Leopold II of Belgium, set out to amass a personal fortune from ivory, declaring himself ‘King-Sovereign’ of a million square miles of the Congo Basin. When profits from the ivory trade began to dwindle, Leopold turned to another commodity – wild rubber – to make his money. Several million Africans died as a result of the rubber regime that Leopold enforced, but Leopold himself succeeded in becoming one of the richest men in the world.

  In turn, Leopold’s ambition to acquire what he called ‘a slice of this magnifique gâteau africain’ was largely responsible for igniting the ‘scramble’ for African territory among European powers at the end of the nineteenth century. Hitherto, European activity in Africa had been confined mainly to small, isolated enclaves on the coast used for trading purposes. Only along the Mediterranean coast of Algeria and at the foot of southern Africa had European settlement taken root. But now Africa became the target of fierce European competition.

  In the space of twenty years, mainly in the hope of gaining economic benefit and for reasons of national prestige, European powers claimed possession of virtually the entire continent. Europe’s occupation precipitated wars of resistance in almost every part of the continent. Scores of African rulers who opposed colonial rule died in battle or were executed or sent into exile after defeat. In the concluding act of partition, Britain, at the height of its imperial power, provoked a war with two Boer republics in southern Africa, determined to get its hands on the richest goldfield ever discovered, leaving a legacy of bitterness and hatred among Afrikaners that lasted for generations.

  By the end of the scramble, European powers had merged some 10,000 African polities into just forty colonies. The new territories were almost all artificial entities, with boundaries that paid scant attention to the myriad of monarchies, chiefdoms and other societies on the ground. Most encompassed scores of diverse groups that shared no common history, culture, language or religion. Some were formed across the great divide between the desert regions of the Sahara and the belt of tropical forests to the south, throwing together Muslim and non-Muslim peoples in latent hostility. But all endured to form the basis of the modern states of Africa.

  Colonial rule brought a myriad of change. Colonial governments built roads and railways in an attempt to stimulate economic growth and make their territories self-supporting. New patterns of economic activity were established. African colonies became significant exporters of agricultural commodities such as cotton, cocoa and coffee. In the highlands of eastern and southern Africa, European settlers acquired huge landholdings, laying the foundations for large-scale commercial agriculture. But what attracted most attention was Africa’s mineral wealth. The mineral riches of Katanga, when first discovered, were described as ‘a veritable geological scandal’. Africa was found to possess not only a profusion of gold, diamonds and copper but a host of other valuable minerals including oil.

  Colonial rule was expected to last for hundreds of years, but turned out to be only an interlude in Africa’s history, lasting for little more than seventy years. Facing a rising tide of anti-colonial protest and insurrection, European governments handed over their African territories to independence movements. The colonial legacy included a framework of schools, medical services and transport infrastructure. Western education and literacy transformed African societies in tropical Africa. But only a few islands of modern economic development emerged, most of them confined to coastal areas or to mining enterprises in areas such as Katanga and the Zambian copper belt. Much of the interior remained undeveloped, remote, cut off from contact with the modern world. Moreover, while European governments departed, European companies retained their hold over business empires built up over half a century. Almost all modern manufacturing, banking, import-export trade, shipping, mining, plantations and timber enterprises remained largely in the hands of foreign corporations. As the end of colonial rule approached, Europeans followed the old adage: ‘Give them parliament and keep the banks.’

  The independence era, beginning in the 1950s, prompted much jubilation and enjoyed the world’s applause. Africa seemed to hold so much promise. African leaders stepped forward with energy and enthusiasm to tackle the tasks of development. The honeymoon, however, was brief. The new states of Africa were not ‘nations’. They possessed no ethnic, class or ideological cement to hold them together. Once the momentum to oust colonial rule had subsided, older loyalties and ambitions came thrusting to the fore, often exploited by politicians for their own ends. African leaders became preoccupied with gaining a monopoly of power, preferring to rule through systems of patronage to enforce their control. Ruling elites seized every opportunity for self-enrichment, looting state assets at will. Decades were lost in internal conflicts, mismanagement and corruption.

  Despite the high level of risk and hassle, the lure of Africa’s riches remains as strong in the twenty-first century as in the past. As well as the activities of Western corporations, new players have entered the field. The rising economic might of China and other Asian countries has stimulated a boom in demand for Africa’s oil and mineral resources. Land too has become a prized commodity once more. To secure food supplies, foreign corporations have acquired huge landholdings in Africa, just as the Romans did.

  But much of the wealth generated by foreign activity flows out of Africa to destinations abroad. Africa’s ruling elites further drain their countries of funds, stashing huge sums in bank accounts and property overseas. The World Bank estimates that 40 per cent of Africa’s private wealth is held offshore. Africa thus remains a continent of huge potential, but limited prospects.

  When compiling his encyclopaedic work Historia Naturalis, the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder referred to an ancient Greek proverb, mentioned by Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, about the profusion of strange animals that occurred in Africa. ‘Ex Africa semper aliquid novi,’ Pliny wrote. ‘Out of Africa always something new.’ Africa is indeed a continent of great diversity. It possesses a multiplicity of landscapes and cultures. Some 1,500 languages are spoken there. The hazards it presents are equally diverse. Much of Africa is afflicted by a harsh and variable climate; unreliable rainfall; frequent droughts; challenging terrains; poor soils; and a plethora of human and animal diseases. But what also stands out is the vast range of natural resources found there. It is this abundance of riches that has played such a significant role in shaping the fortunes of Africa over the past five thousand years. ‘I speak of Africa,’ Shakespeare wrote, ‘and of golden joys’.

  INTRODUCTION

  Rising high above the desert plains in the south-western corner of Egypt, the steep cliffs of the Gilf Kebir plateau exude a sense of mystery. The plateau stands at the centre of the most arid and inhospitable part of
the Sahara, the largest desert in the world that stretches across the width of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. No one lives in the rocky wilderness of Gilf Kebir now. Yet prehistoric paintings and engravings there show scenes of people dancing, hunting, swimming and diving, evidence of a vanished era. As testimony of their existence, the ancient inhabitants of Gilf Kebir also left behind scores of their hand prints, with palms and fingers fully spread; and on the northern periphery of the plateau they constructed a circle of stones with precise astronomical alignments, hinting at their study of the stars.

  The Sahara was once a well-watered region of savanna grasslands, lakes and rivers and abundant rainfall, the domain of nomadic cattle-herders and hunters and a huge variety of African wildlife – elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, hippopotami and giant buffalo. But about 7,000 years ago, the rainfall belt driven by winds from the South Atlantic began to shift progressively southwards, marking the start of an arid climate and forcing pastoral groups to migrate. By 6,000 years ago, much of the Sahara had become uninhabitable, reduced to a landscape of bare rock and moving mountains of sand. Like other communities of the eastern Sahara, the inhabitants of Gilf Kebir abandoned their home territory and gravitated towards the banks of the Nile. Apart from a scattering of oases in the desert wasteland, it was the region’s only source of water.

  The Nile Valley, a narrow strip of fertile land hemmed in on both sides by barriers of desert, thus became the homeland of a rapidly growing population. Pastoralists from the Sahara, bringing with them a tradition of stone-carving and a knowledge of the stars, settled among valley peoples who used the floodplains of the Nile to cultivate crops such as wheat, barley and millet.

  By about 5,500 years ago, the entire length of the Nile Valley – from the First Cataract, a stretch of unnavigable rapids near the modern town of Aswan, to the marshlands of the Nile Delta, where the river divided into seven branches – was covered by a string of villages. Several village clusters developed into walled towns. The towns became cult centres for the worship of local gods. Local gods were propitiated to ensure the fertility of the land and hence the stability of the lives of inhabitants. Religious ideas grew from a belief in the magical powers of objects, to a belief in the magical power of animals – such as the hawk, the jackal, the snake and the crocodile – and eventually to a faith in gods with animal heads and human bodies.