O NOVO COLONIALISMO É MUITO MELHOR...

Remember that America was on the other side in this conflict, fanning the flames of African nationalism and undermining the European powers. Yet Belgium - Belgium - managed to hold on to a colony 76 times its size, the Congo, from 1908 (after its rapine private ownership by King Leopold II) until 1960. Contrary to widespread belief, Britain was never beaten by the Mau Mau in Kenya, and in most of the African colonies and protectorates relinquished between 1957 (Ghana) and 1968 (Swaziland) we had been meeting little if any armed resistance. Britain was not drummed but shouted out of Africa.

Portugal, meanwhile, hung on to two territories (now Angola and Mozambique) the first twice the size of Texas, the second twice the size of California, until 1975. For years an impoverished and virtually Third World European tinpot dictatorship sustained two wars simultaneously against nationalist insurgencies in both countries without going under. Meanwhile. a tiny force of white renegades denied victory to Mugabe's Patriotic Front for nearly eight years until 1980: yet there were 20 times as many blacks as whites in Rhodesia, and the breakaway regime of Ian Smith was under international economic siege throughout.

Why then did the great (and lesser) powers of the day turn their backs on empire in Africa in the 20th century, and why in the 21st might their successors return to an interest in acquiring political grip?

European imperial powers lost the will rather than the capacity to own and govern overseas resources. A world in which all could buy and sell on the global market was arriving. It is a world, however, which is now feeling the pinch in the natural resources with which Africa is richly endowed. Meanwhile, the continent is in many places run by outfits that resemble gangs rather than governments. At their most dysfunctional (as in Congo) this disintegration seriously impedes the extraction of resources, because security, communications and infrastructure break down.

But a solution beckons: buy your own gang. You hardly need visit and are certainly not required to administer the gang's territory. You simply give it support, munitions, bribes and protection to keep the roads and airports open; and it pays you with access to resources. You dress up the arrangement as helping Africans to help themselves. The French, who have been doing this in their former African possessions for years, lead the way. But it is when China, then America, and perhaps even Russia or India follow, that the scramble for Africa will truly be resumed.

NÓS POR CÁ FICAMOS SÓ COM AS DESPESAS... E SOMOS COLONIZADOS!