10 Horrible Atrocities Committed Under Colonialism in Africa.
The celebration of Halloween in African countries is still very much taboo. For most of us, October 31st is simply another ordinary day. No trickin’, no treating. Although many ethnic groups around the continent have their own tales and fables that involve the dead and unknown, the real life horror stories that have come to define so much of our recent history are what truly scare me the most. Raking through my knowledge of colonial history, these are some of the many incidents that have and continue to horrify me.
Be warned, these stories are all incredibly traumatic to read.
The Tragic Story of Ota Benga
Born in Congo in 1883, Ota Benga - a Congolese “pygmy” of the Mbuti tribe - lived a short life that was both troubled and tragic. Benga lived a peaceful and fairly normal existence in the forests of Congo, near the Kasai River, until his people were horribly and brutally slaughtered by King Leopold’s armed forces known as the Force Republique. It was during this massacre that Benga lost his wife and children, and only survived as he was out hunting. Upon his return to his village, he was captured by the very people that had killed his family and tribespeople and subsequently sold into slavery.
Whilst at a slave market, Ota Benga caught the eye of Samuel Phillips Verner - an American missionary and businessman that was in Africa scouting for pygmies to perform in an exhibition at the St Louis World Fair, on behalf of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition and as part of an anthropological display that would feature “representatives of all the world’s peoples”.
Benga would spend the rest of his life in the United States living in constant misery, so much so that it would lead to his depression and ultimate suicide at the age 32.
Congo and the Belgian Rubber King
In this haunting photograph, a man sits and stares solemnly at the hands of his five-year-old daughter that were chopped off as a punishment for having harvested too little rubber. The photo was taken around 1904-05 by the Rev. John Harris and his wife Alice, helped uncover some of the atrocities that were taken place during King Leopold’s ‘rubber rush’.
During this tme, Belgian King Leopold II wrought havoc throughout the Congo in his quest to build a lucrative rubber industry. Due to the increasing ownership of automobiles in the West, rubber was in high demand. Seeing an opportunity for immense wealth, Leopold ‘purchased’ the Congo in 1885 in what might just be the largest private estate ever ‘owned’ by man in history. It is estimated that the forced labor system enacted by the Belgians resulted in the death of up to 10 million Congolese, directly and indirectly eliminating around 20% of the population. The ‘Congo Free State’, as it was called, lasted until 1908 but its legacy still stands today as the Democratic Republic of Congo is still being pillaged for its resources by large corporations.
Biafra: The Nigerian Civil War
The Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria formed under the leadership of Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Eastern Region’s military governor. Lasting from 30th May, 1967, to 15th January, 1970, Biafra was established as a way for predominantly Igbo region to redefine themselves in a postcolonial sense. Nigeria had recently become indepent from Britain but the borders set up by the British did not reflect the cultural and ethnic identities of those contained within it.
As a result, Nigeria was thrust into a civil war when the other regions of the country refused to allow the southeast territory to secede, based on the oil wealth in the area. For almost three years, Nigeria and Biafra fought a brutal civil war that resulted in death of millions of primarily Igbo people in the southeastern part of the country, most of starvation due to the blockade the Nigerian government placed on the region. Doctors Without Borders was first set up in response to the critical humanitarian situation in Biafra.
The Gruesome Death of Mmadi Maki
Mmadi Maki was born around 1721 somewhere in modern Nigeria and was a member of the Kanuri ethnic group. As a boy he was enslaved and sent to Marseilles and eventually ended up in the household of a marchioness (the wife of a Marques which ranks between duke and earl/count) in Messina. There he took the name Angelo Soliman, naming himself in honor of another servent.
In 1734 he was “gifted” to Prince Georg Christian, Fürst von Lobkowitz, the imperial governor of Sicily where he became the prince’s valet and traveling companion, accompanying the Prince on his military campaigns. At some point Angelo saved the Prince’s life (possibly during the war of Austrian succession).
When the prince died in 1755, Angelo became part of the household of Joseph Wenzel I, Prince of Liechtenstein, a general and 3 time ruler of Liechtenstein. He remained with the next prince of Liechtenstein, Aloys I, after Joseph Wenzel died in 1772.
While Angelo was cultured and dressed in the latest European fashions in life, what followed after his death shows an ugly and grim side of the society in which he lived. Emperor Francis II, who came to power in 1792, had Angelo skinned upon his death in 1796 when he died of a stroke strolling the streets of Vienna. His body was taken to an anatomical theater where he was skinned and his skeleton was removed. His internal organs were then interred. His skin was given to the sculptor Franz Thaller who stretched it over a wooden model and then added stuffing to fill it out. The Emperor dressed the skin in what he thought was African garb and kept him in his wonder cabinet, a curio room.
Eventually, Soliman was added to a display on Africa with a little girl, some animals, and an ex-zoo keeper who was also African. The display was destroyed in 1848 when a bomb being used to quell rioters hit the building where the display was stored and the display, thankfully, burned.
The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba
Born Élias Okit’Asombo in 1925, the man who came to be the first elected prime minister of Congo was in office for only 12 weeks before being ousted in a military coup. A leader and staunch anti-colonialist, Lumumba had been instrumental in helping Congo achieve independence from brutal Belgian rule. On 30th June, 1960, Congo celebrated its independence.
By January the following year, Lumumba would be dead. His assassination would become one of the most definitive occurrences in Congolese and even world history.
After being arrested and imprisoned since December 1960, on 17th January, 1961, Lumumba was transferred from military barracks in Thysville to Elizabethville in the state of Katanga. There, he was placed under house arrest and brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers, along with his former government aides Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito who had bee detained with him.
That same day, when night came, the three men were driven to a remote part of the woods where they were lined up ad tied against trees. Lumumba, Mpolo and Okito were shot one after the other by a firing squad comprised of Katagan forces ad Belgian officers. The CIA ad England’s Mi6 have also been accused of being involved in this assassination. After being buried, in an attempt by the Belgians to get rid of their bodies, the three men’s remains were dug up, dismembered, dissolved in acid, and their bones scattered around the area.
The 1945 French Massacre in Setif & Guelma
In 1945, peaceful demonstrations had been taking place across Algeria for several months against the unfair treatment of Algerians by French colonists. On May 8, 1945, a day chosen by the allies to celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany, thousands of Algerians gathered near the Abou Dher El-Ghafari mosque in Setif for a peaceful march - for which the sous-prefet had given permission.
At 9am, led by a young scout Saal Bouzid, whose name had been drawn for the honor of carrying the national flag, the demonstrators set off. A few minutes later the crowd, chanting ‘vive l’independance’ and other nationalist slogans, came under fire from troops commanded by General Duval and brought in from Constantine.
Saal Bouzid fell dead, becoming a national martyr. The scene soon turned into a massacre - the streets and houses being littered with dead bodies. Witnesses claim terrible scenes, that legionnaires seized babies by their feet and dashed their heads against rocks, that pregnant mothers were disemboweled, that soldiers dropped grenades down chimneys to kill the occupants of homes, that mourners were machine gunned while taking the dead to the cemetery.
A public record states that the European inhabitants were so frightened by the events that they asked that all those responsible for the protest movement should be shot. The carnage spread and, during the days that followed, some 45,000 Algerians were killed. Villages were shelled by artillery and remote hamlets were bombed with aircraft.
Lasting from 1905 to 1907, the Maji Maji Rebellion was an organized uprising initiated by several groups of African communities in the colonized territory of German East Africa against German colonial rule and German policy that forced them to grow cotton for export, profiting the German colonists.
The series of events that led to the Maji Maji uprising stemmed from a system where the Germans began levying head taxes and charging each village with a quota of cotton production through the use of slave labor.
Following a drought in 1905 that threatened the region and the quota imposed against various villages set by the Germans, several communities banded together under the command of a medium named Kinjikitile Ngwale to oppose and resist German colonial policies. Ngwale claimed to be possessed by a snake spirit called Hongo and had communicated with the deity Bokera (no substantial information found on Bokera). Through this encouner, Ngwale had put together a concoction - the maji - consisting of castor oil and millet seed, that was said to be able to turn German bullets into water.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of artillery and firepower in the form of machine guns and canons, the Maji Maji rebels were terribly defeated. Furthermore, German reinforcements were sent from Germany to assist the colonists in their attacks on the anti-colonial fighters.
The German governor of East Africa at the time, Gustav Adolf von Götzen, used famine as a weapon of war, destroying entire villages, burning crops and killing livestock. One of the leaders of the German troops, Captain Wangenheim, wrote to von Götzen saying, “Only hunger and want can bring about a final submission. Military actions alone will remain more or less a drop in the ocean.”
It is estimated that at least 10, 000 casualties and losses were suffered by the Maji Maji rebels, and 15 Europeans and almost 400 Askari’s (local guards employed by the Germans) were the estimated casualties on the colonist’s side.
The Exploitation of Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman
Born in the Eastern Cape, Baartman, whose real name is unknown, was orphaned at a young age after a raid on her people. Whether as a servant or a slave, she began working for Dutch farmer Peter Cezar in the neighbouring Western Cape. There, Cezar’s brother Hendrik took a perverse interest in Baartman and soon arranged for her to be taken to England with the help of a showman named Alexander Dunlop. Although then Irish governor of the Cape Lord Caledon gave permission for the trip, it is said that he later came to regret this decision upon learning of the real reason for her journey.
At around age 20, Baartman arrived in England with the two men who wasted no time in placing her in an exhibition. Whilst Dunlop soon discontinued his involvement in this, Hendrik Cezar arranged for Baartman to tour parts of Britain and Ireland as a human exhibit, despite criticism from anti-slavery and abolitionist organizations. Around 1814, Baartman was sold by Cezar to a Frenchman who took her to France. There, she was exhibited by an animal trainer for over a year. She was also heavily examined by French naturalist Georges Cuvier who compared her to several primates, and whose name is inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Baartman, who is said to have lived under miserable conditions, passed away in 1815 at the age of 24/25. Her death has been attributed to several illnesses including smallpox and syphilis - both of which she would have contracted from Europeans. Upon her death, French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville dissected her body and published his “findings” the following year. Her skeleton, preserved brains and genitals were displayed at Paris’ Musée de l’Homme until 1974. Even when they were removed from public view, a cast was still shown. In 1827, her skull was stolen but later retrieved.
In 1994, following his election as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Mandela made a formal request to the French government to return Baartman’s remains. However, it would not be until 2002 that France would adhere to this request and send Baartman’s remains back to South Africa.
The Herero & Namaqua Namibian Genocide
Since fraudulently purchasing part of modern-day Namibia in the 1880s, Germany had continuously harassed and abused the local Herero population. Women and girls were raped by German shoulders and the local people were used as slaves by the Europeans, not to mention their land was forcibly taken from both Herero and Nama people.
In 1904, after learning about plans to but the Herero and Nama in reserves ad after the Germans introduced and placed special taxes on them, the Nama and Herero joined together to revolt against German colonial rule. The Herero, led by their leader Chief Samuel Maharero, first attacked a group of European ‘settlers’ killing a little over a hundred Germans ad Boers. In retaliation, and to quell any future possibilities of another revolt, German forces led by General Lothar van Trotha planned to annihilate the entire Namibian population.
In August, 1904, the beginnings of the first genocide of the 20th century occurred at the Battle of Waterberg where up to 5,000 Herero combatants were killed. As German forces continued to encroach on remaining Herero, any survivors, mostly women and children as orders were given specifically to kill all the men, were either killed or driven towards the Kalahari dessert and left to die. Other Nama and Herero survivors that were not driven into the dessert were placed in concentration camps were many either died of overwork, maltreatment and torture, disease or malnutrition. Medical experiments were also carried out on some of the population, mainly women and children.
According to the Whitaker Report, the population of 80,000 Herero was reduced to 15,000 “starving refugees” between 1904 and 1907. Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes, author of a book on the subject, places that estimate at around 100,000 victims. Fewer than 1,000 Herero reached the British protectorate of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) were they were granted asylum and accepted by Batswana chief Sekgoma.
The Arab and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Perhaps out of all the events listed, these intermingling portions of history need the least explanation when it comes to the injustices and atrocities committed against Africans. The consequences of both the Arab and Trans-Atlantic slave trades still both heavily impact the humanity of black people today. Because of this, estimate the number of victims of each of these periods in history is a near impossible task.
Though enslavement or indebted servitude were not altogether new to the continent, never had it had such horrific consequences. Though the Arab slave trade came before, the legacy of it was carried on in several ways through the practices of enslavement against Africans by Europeans, eventually ushering in decades of colonialism in Africa.
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