By Fémi Akómoláfé
The expression, “Here we go again,” ran across my mind as I processed the enthusiastic effusions of some Africans, especially the educated elite, over Kemi Badenoch’s election as the new leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.
Questions, questions!
What makes it impossible for some of us to develop the minimalistic ability for critical thinking despite our education and degrees?
Why do we always get excited over primordial, ethnic, and tribal issues?
Why can we not, like most rational human beings, develop the ability to question what those who purport to be one of us bring to the table to improve our lot?
As I wrote in my essay, Obama’s Legacy, “Sadly, the Obama illusion left the Black world reeling from colossal disappointment, and vividly recall the lamentations of the Great Sociologist W.E.B Du Bois in his Classic, The Souls of Black Folk, the nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people – a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbound by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.”
Yet, here we go again, loudly blowing our Vuvuzelas because a “sister” who, throughout her professional life, demonstrates that she does not want to be associated with us, our pains, or our aspirations!
Are we too daft to understand the strategic thinking that informed the choices of selecting black “leaders” like Obama and Kemi?
Why do we keep forgetting Truman’s admonition that whatever happens in politics was planned?
Did we ask ourselves what our inputs were in selecting these leaders, or why we should expect leaders chosen by others to cater for our interests?
Do we think that a white American president would have gotten away with Obama’s vast crimes against Africa without being tagged as racist, colonizer, and imperialist?
As the late Lucky Dube sang, “Not every black man is my brother, not every white man is my enemy.”
Unfortunately, the simple but crucial logic that the mere presence of someone who looks like us in power does not always translate to their loyalty to our struggles or interests is often overlooked in discussions around racial identity and representation.
The election of Kemi Badenoch echoed the experience many Black people had during Barack Obama’s presidency in the United States.
Though many of us in Africa had celebrated the election of America’s first Black president as a monumental step for Black people globally, as I recounted in my essay on Obama, “our brother’s” most significant single investment in our continent was the expansive Drone facilities in Niger which, mercifully the new leaders of that country has dismantled.
“Brother” Obama also expanded AFRICOM’s ring around us. Our supposed brother led the war against Africa‘s most prosperous nation, Libya. His secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, gloated like a witch of Endor over Ghadaffi’s death. Obama called it his worst mistake.
Too late. Libya has turned into a hell on earth, especially for Black Africans.
Despite this bitter experience, our people are all over themselves because Kemi Badenoch emerged as the leader of the British Conservative Party.
This woman told us bluntly, “I’m not interested in being an identity politics figure. I’m not here to represent the black community. I’m here to represent everyone.”
History and experience should remind us that a leader’s identity alone may not be enough to produce tangible progress for marginalized groups.
While her Yoruba/Nigerian heritage may seem to represent a win for diversity and inclusion in British politics, there are more profound questions about what her leadership may mean in the broader context of the Black struggle, particularly for the marginalized Africans struggling in the streets of the UK.
We instantly jumped into a celebratory mood instead of sobering to think of how her elevation (a valuable personal achievement, no doubt) could be parlayed into something positive for our collective well-being.
However outstanding Kemi Badenoch’s achievement is, it should not stop us from scrutinizing the party she represents, its history, and its legacy on issues that continue to affect blacks globally.
The British Conservative Party, like much of British political history, is deeply intertwined with a colonial past that shaped the modern world in ways that continue to marginalize and exploit African nations and people of African descent.
Britain’s leading role in the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism is well-documented to need recounting here.
The might and the wealth of Britain came from the forced labour, the exploitation, and the suffering of millions of Africans and other people that Europeans colonized and savagely exploited.
At the peak of the transatlantic slave trade, British ships transported millions of Africans to the Americas, reducing human beings to chattel cargo in one of history’s darkest but unacknowledged chapters. British insurance firms underwrite the infamous enterprise.
As Walter Rodney and Chancellor Williams recounted in their books, the wealth generated from slavery funded institutions and aristocratic families and continues to enrich Britain today.
Many of the UK’s most prestigious institutions, such as the royal Family, the Church of England, and the Bank of England, were directly involved in the financing of slavery. Several Conservative politicians accumulated their family wealth through slave trading and colonial exploitation.
And let it not be forgotten that Africa was just trying to recover from the devastation that slavery wrought when Britain led the balkanization of Africa at the Berlin Conference, which resulted in the fragmentation of our societies and the colonization of our continent, with its systematic oppression, violence, and killings. The MauMau rebellion and the Sokoto Massacre were just two examples of how those who claimed to be civilizing us were killed on an industrial scale.
Despite these, our sister Kemi said, “There is a never-ending desire for ethnic minorities to be treated differently in the context of social justice.”
This is something that she would never dare to say to Jewish people.
Although we might be accused of raking up old issues as the events occurred over a century ago, we maintain that any analysis that fails to see the effects of slavery and colonization in the economic, social, and political landscapes of many African nations today should be dismissed as jejune.
The development of the nations the British forced into colonial garrisons like Nigeria would undoubtedly have taken different trajectories were they not forced into an arrangement enabled solely to satisfy British imperial ambitions.
While Jewish Holocaust survivors received reparations, formal apologies, and remembrance from Western governments, including Britain, continue to treat demands by Africans for apology and reparations with utter contempt and disdain.
Both Conservative and Labour governments have been complicit in this refusal, choosing instead to downplay or ignore our calls for reparations. In recent years, politicians such as former Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative with ancestral ties to slave-owning families, have not only failed to issue an apology but dared to tell us to “move on.”
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson even questioned the impact of colonialism on African nations. In his view, we Africans are piccaninnies happy to wave at British monarchs with our “watermelon smiles.”
Keith Starmer demonstrated this shoddy disdain at the last Commonwealth Conference in Samoa when he haughtily brushed aside pleas for reparations from especially the Caribbean.
While we take no joy in harking back to the past, we believe that for progress to be made, we need to understand what happened in the past, if only to serve as a compass to guide our future actions.
We should stop being myopic and understand that we, in Africa, live in a world that was constructed by atrocities perpetrated against us in the past. We operate economic and political systems imposed on us by our conquerors.
How many of the Africans who are dancing because of Kemi’s election know or care that many African countries are still paying off loans from colonial governments or corrupt regimes curated and propped up by Western powers?
How many of them care that our “sister” and her party will work hard to ensure that the World Bank will continue to function as a tool that Western countries use to exert influence over African economies, prioritizing Western interests over the well-being of African populations?
While Kemi Badenoch may present a fresh face for the Conservative Party, the party’s track record on race and immigration issues must be remembered.
In recent years, the Conservative Party has implemented increasingly restrictive immigration policies, mainly affecting people from former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. The Windrush scandal, in which long-standing British citizens from the Caribbean were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, and in some cases deported, was a stark reminder of the party’s neglect – or even disdain – toward Black people.
Africans, who celebrate Kemi’s achievement, should remember that our sister will be in charge of managing the party of Enoch Powell, who notoriously warned of “rivers of blood” in response to immigration from the Commonwealth, framing non-white immigration as a threat to British society.
Our sister told us that: “I don’t believe the UK is systemically racist.”
Kemi Badenoch’s rise to leadership could be seen as a strategic move within the Conservative Party to project a veneer of diversity and progressiveness without committing to substantive change. This type of “representation without change” is an approach that many institutions have used to deflect criticism without addressing systemic issues. Barack Obama’s presidency is a poignant example. While his election was celebrated as a breakthrough for Black people, his administration often maintained or even intensified policies that disproportionately harmed Black communities. His support for Wall Street bailouts while Black communities continued to suffer from foreclosures, along with his expansion of drone warfare and mass surveillance, disappointed many who had once seen him as a symbol of progress.
Kemi Badenoch’s position within the Conservative Party may follow a similar pattern. While her identity as a Black woman of Nigerian descent is significant, her policies and party affiliation do not necessarily align with the interests of Black people in Britain or Africa.
Her track record on issues like race and immigration suggests that her leadership may reinforce, rather than dismantle, the structures that perpetuate inequality and discrimination.
As African and Black communities consider the significance of Kemi Badenoch’s rise within the Conservative Party, it’s essential to view her leadership critically and understand the broader context of the party’s history and the policies it represents.
Representation should not be conflated with progress, especially when it lacks the commitment to dismantle the systems that harm the communities it claims to represent. Although she shares the same skin colour as us, Kemi has demonstrated, through her pronouncements, that she is as far away from us as possible. Ideologically, she does not share the same universe with us. After all, she said, “I don’t see why we need specific equality legislation if all citizens are treated equally.”
W.E.B. Du Bois said, “A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.” It is time for us, as Africans, to shed our primordial instincts and realize that for actual progress, Black communities and nations need leaders who prioritize the needs and interests of their people, not simply those who mirror their image.
It should be clear that real freedom for Black people—both within and outside of Britain—will require more than symbolic victories. It will demand a commitment to justice, reparations, and an honest reckoning with history that transcends mere representation and reaches toward true equity.
I concluded my article, Welcome Emperor Obama, thus, “As a cultured African, I welcomed Barack Obama’s visit to our shores because our culture demands that we warmly welcome visitors, but I am not naïve enough to believe that his visit will do Ghana or Africa any good.”
I hold the same view regarding my sister, Kemi.
•Fémi Akómoláfé is an author and social commentator
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