Recurrent Genocidal Nightmares

Tatah Mentan

Description

Genocide has been called the ‘crime of crimes’ and an ‘odious scourge.’ With millions of victims in the last century alone, it is one of the great moral and political challenges of our age. Despite the challenges, such human cruelty has not stopped. The 21st century is recording its first genocide in Cameroon with only a scanty few raising a finger. The significance of the ‘odious scourge’ has compelled Tatah Mentan to research on the trajectory of the ‘scourge’ in Africa over the past centuries. The targeted ongoing mass killings in Cameroon, like those of Rwanda before, have driven the scholar to expand his focus beyond the Holocaust, which had long been the primary case study.
In this book, Tatah Mentan explains that these cases were not merely a human catastrophe, nor an atavistic reversion to the barbarism of a past epoch, but rather an event produced by the unfolding of the logic of capitalism itself. This book therefore critically explores the essence of capitalism as genocide in Africa and its consequences on Africans during their colonisation and incorporation into the European-dominated racialised capitalist world system in the late 18th century. It uses multidimensional, comparative methods, and critical approaches to explain the dynamic interplay among social structures, human agency, and terror to explain the connection between structural capitalist terrorism and the emergence of the capitalist world system. Tatah Mentan proposes a genuine participatory democratic alternative to the unending genocide nightmares. Nurturing participatory attitudes, would facilitate and reinforce self-management, and educate and empower individuals and dispossessed and under-represented communities to seek self-determination and democratic participation in the political arena. Tatah Mentan concludes that the same fundamental commitments that urge humanity to promote participatory political democracy should compel them to promote truly inclusive economic democracy as well.
Political economists, historians, students, corporate managers and policy makers at national and international levels are invited to share the insights of this book.

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 28 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956550593
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

The 21st century is recording its first genocide in Cameroon with only a scanty few raising a finger. The significance of the ‘odious scourge’ has compelled Tatah Mentan

targeted ongoing mass killings in Cameroon, like those of Rwanda before, have driven the scholar to expand his focus beyond the Holocaust, which had long been the primary case study. In this book, Tatah Mentan explains that these cases were

the European-dominated racialised capitalist world system in the late 18th century.

the connection between structural capitalist terrorism and the emergence of the capitalist world system. Tatah Mentan proposes a genuine participatory democratic

would facilitate and reinforce self-management, and educate and empower

economic democracy as well. Political economists, historians, students, corporate

 is an erudite Theodore Lentz Peace and Security Studies Fellow and Professor of Political Science with enormous contributions to knowledge in the

RECURRENT GENOCIDAL NIGHTMARES RECURRENT GENOCIDAL NIGHTMARES The Hidden Side of Euro-African Encounters, 1450-1950

TATAH MENTAN

TATAH MENTAN

RECURRENT GENOCIDAL NIGHTMARES The Hidden Side of Euro-African Encounters, 1450-1950 Tatah Mentan L a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-550-57-4

ISBN-13: 978-9956-550-57-9

©Tatah Mentan 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

Dedication

To

Victims of Genocide, Politicide, Ecocide,Dmocide, Politicide and

Linguicide in Africa and Beyond.

Table of Contents Acknowledgment .............................................................. vii

Chapter One

Introduction: Understanding the Unthinkable ....................................... 1

Chapter Two Conceptualizing Capitalism as Structural Genocide ...................................................... 33

Chapter Three Genocide: Slave Raids, Arabic and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, And Slavery .......................... 71 Chapter Four The Dynamics of European Colonial Genocidal Terror in Africa ................................................ 121 Chapter Five Exemplifying German Colonial Genocide in South West Africa (Namibia)........................................ 177 Chapter Six Theoretical Reprise, Summary, Conclusion and Way Forward ........................................... 235

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Acknowledgement This book is intended primarily for students of historical sociology, scholars and policy makers grappling with human atrocities in historical perspective. I am heavily indebted to Ashley Riley Sousa, History Department, Yale University: “‘They will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed!’: A Comparative Study of Genocide in California and Tasmania,” Journal of Genocide Research 6:2 (June 2004), pp.193-209; Arendt, H. (1964)Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking; Benjamin Madley, “From Africa to Auschwitz” (European History Quarterly, 35:3 (2005), pp. 429-64); Genocide and Literature: The Herero-/Nama-Uprising in German colonial literature, by Jörg Wassink, M.A. (2004); Lemkin, R. (1944)Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Their works invaluably inspired this study.

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Chapter One Introduction: Understanding the Unthinkable On Thursday April 20, 2017, the 678th Peace and Security Council of the African Union Meeting on preventing ideology of genocide in Africa issued a Communique recalling ( Annexture I ) : … the horror of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and reiterates its commitment to prevent the recurrence of similar mass atrocities, hate crime and ideologies of genocides throughout the African continent. In this context, Council underlines the imperative of early and appropriate responses to credible early warning signs of situations that, if not addressed in a timely and effective manner, could lead to potential genocides. In the same context, Council also underlines the importance of use of clear analysis and proper terminology in order to avoid falling into the problem of denials. Genocide is not new to Africa. Unlike most twentieth-century cases of premeditated mass killing, the African slave trade was not undertaken by a single political force or military entity during the course of a few months or years. The transatlantic slave trade lasted for 400 years, from the 1450s to the 1860s, as a series of exchanges of captives reaching from the interior of sub-Saharan Africa to final purchasers in the Americas. It has been estimated that in the Atlantic slave trade, up to 12 million Africans were loaded and transported across the ocean under dreadful conditions. About 2 million victims died on the Atlantic voyage (the dreaded “Middle Passage”) and in the first year in the Americas. 1 “Mass Genocides in Mighty Africa” was a screaming headline of a news story in 1994.Genocide by definition is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, usually those of an ethic group or religion. There are many examples of genocides throughout history but when someone says genocide most people think of two immediately, those 1 http://www.history.com/topics/rwandan-genocide 1