Ever wondered why the borders of some African countries are made up of straight lines? Well those are just illustrations of the arbitrariness that countries like France carved out borders for countries that were under their colonial rule. Although these colonial rulers declared the independence of several countries, they in fact never completely decolonized many of these countries and people. Now, Russia is poised to raise the issue at next year’s commemoration of the UN Declaration on Independence and Colonial countries and peoples.
The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has been speaking about these issues to the press. Excerpts:
“Decolonization is a much younger phenomenon and to ignore the need to normalize how decolonization took place and whether this is the end of it, whether the remaining colonial people should remain under their metropolis is an open issue.”
“… we have to deal with the results of colonial period. Take a look at the borders in Africa including in the north of Africa, just straight lines cutting across ethnic groups and religious groups. And next year by the way we will be commemorating the declaration of the general assembly on independence of colonial countries and peoples.
“And I believe we shall remember how this declaration was adopted and what was still not resolved because some countries did not receive independence as was required by the general assembly. And if people now, some say we shall not remember colonial times, we must live by today. But people, many people including in Europe, they want to reopen the issues relation to the end of World War II which was 20 years before decolonization.
Meantime, Southern Cameroonian activists are warming up for next year’s commemoration which comes in the heels of serious contentions over what they say was the incomplete decolonization of Southern Cameroons. Even president Paul Biya added momentum to this school of thought when he admitted that efforts to assimilate the Southern Cameroonians by the francophone majority due to differences in mentality.