“The evidence reveals
that in
Nyasaland, as in other colonies (emphasis
mine), the state was a
clumsy, feeble
institution whose regulatory efforts produced
contradictory
effects.”
- Wiseman Chijere Chirwa from his doctoral dissertation “Theba
is Power…”
Why don’t we hear this more often, particularly from the
harshest critics of colonialism? It
would seem a rather obvious line of attack i.e. “not only were they (are they)
racist pricks, they were (are) also bumbling, “feeble,” racist pricks.”
Yet if you read the literature, scholarly and popular,
colonialism’s power, while usually reviled, is also usually unquestioned. That’s a shame. Narratives of African history that
acknowledged colonial feebleness, not just racism, could open the stage for
more interesting, complex, and true accounts of Africa’s past that actually
featured Africans as who were neither merely “oppressed” nor “heroic.”
