Dr. David Newbury portrayed a scene of intense violence, kidnappings, rapes, murder and racially motivated destruction in central Africa at the Stanton Sharp Lecture on Africa. The antagonist behind all the violence: Western nations.

The lecture, “The Deferred Violence of Decolonization: The case of Congo,” was sponsored by the Clements Department of History. It allowed Newbury to present his views that the hasty, messy decolonization of African nations 50 years prior by Western powers is the root cause of the extreme violence and political strife in the African nations.

“We live in a world of global modernity that has spawned a world of violence,” Newbury said.

Newbury is the Gwendolen Carter Professor of African Studies at Smith College of Massachusetts.  He is also the author of several books on Africa, including “Kings and Clans”; “Vers le Passé du Zaire.” As an advocate for African rights, Newbury began the lecture with a moment of silence for Alison Des Forges, Human Rights Watch activist who died in the Continental Airlines flight 3407 which crashed near Buffalo, N.Y.

“The very process of creating the African states, or incomplete process that is, has led to the proliferation of violence at the intrastate level,” he said.

He cited Sudan, which has experienced 2 million deaths in the last decade and 8 million deaths in Congo as examples of the extreme violence taking place.

He said that to the rest of the world the “dissolution of imperial power” was supposed to be a turning point for Africa, a catapult into the modern world.

However, that model failed.

“Decolonization itself was accompanied by a greater degree of violence than the liberation process itself,” Newbury said. “Primarily on levels such as white and black and national versus colonial.”

He said while all this was occurring, listeners outside of Africa attributed the voices to ethnic divisionalism.

He said the conflict in Congo was not as clear-cut as many outsiders would believe.

“The lines of conflict are multiple and difficult to decipher, no matter how outsiders wish to interpret it. It is not just victims trying to claim what is rightfully theirs,” he said.

He added that history tries to claim a singular protagonist and antagonist, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, and the black and the white but “reality is so much more complicated,” he said.

The violence in Congo, which Newbury said is rooted 50 years prior in the decolonization of the African nation, has “created conditions and actions of the present based on the decisions of the past.”

The independence of Congo has not accomplished any of the goals the liberated nation sought during its independence Newbury said. The country has not been able to represent itself on the international level, it has not protected itself from exterior invasion, nor has it provided basic services to its people.

Newbury said the post-colonial era was marked by four stages in Congo. The first phase was hopecollapsed, which collapsed a mere two days into its nationhood with the assassination of the newly liberated leader. The next was a struggle that ensued at the local level by individuals seeking a “second independence” from the national government. The third phase was marked by 32 years of dictatorship, and the fourth and most recent phase is direct occupation resulting in 5.5 million Conganese deaths.

“The decolonization was a drama of competitive visions that were manipulated by the few – 50 disastrous years memory has not dimmed,” he said.