This document provides an overview of how European colonialism constructed hierarchies of superiority and inferiority in Africa through legal and cultural means. It discusses how colonizers viewed themselves as civilized and Africans as primitive, justifying colonial rule. Key tactics included direct and indirect rule. Direct rule imposed European law and excluded Africans, while indirect rule ruled through tribal chiefs under colonial authority. This cemented unequal roles and stratified societies. The document also examines how colonizers sometimes fabricated tribes and manipulated tribal identities and land ownership to enforce their dominance and control labor. Ultimately, these policies led to the formalized racial segregation and inequality of apartheid in South Africa. The document analyzes how colonialism's hierarchical framing of racial differences continues to

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The Colonial Complex:
The Creation of Superiority and Inferiority Through European Imperialism in
Africa
It is no secret that European influence over the world has been significant
and widespread. According to Edward Said, “from 1815 to 1914 European direct
colonial dominion expanded from about 35 percent of the earth's surface to about
85 percent of it.”1 European hegemony in colonial society can be attributed not
only to their technological dominance, but also to the carefully and thoroughly
constructed legal and cultural colonial framework. Such institutionalized tactics
gave rise to the superiority and inferiority complex, which was propagated not
only to immobilize the colonial subjects within society, but also to psychologically
degrade them to the point of feeling subhuman. In the following paper, I intend to
dissect the colonial experience, both from the viewpoint of the colonizers and the
colonized, and attempt to understand how the cultural, as well as legal facets of
colonization contributed to not only the construction of the colonial world, but how
it continues to influence recently independent African states in the present day.
Finally, I will give brief observations of how I perceived the colonial complex in
modern-day Cameroon, where I studied abroad for nearly five months.
Central to understanding the functionality of the colonial world is what I am
calling the colonial complex. Colonization was based on the assumption of a
more technologically advanced, ‘civilized’ power (Europeans), imposing their
values and market systems on more primitive, ‘traditional’ societies (non-
1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 41. See
Appendix.

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Europeans).2 In order for the colonial mechanism to operate effectively,
therefore, clear, separate, and ultimately unequal roles in society needed to be
established. According to Mahmood Mamdani in his book Citizen and Subject:
Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, this was the concept
behind the creation of the bifurcated state. This was a world “in which the dividing
line between those human and the rest less human is a line between those who
labor on the land and those” who profit off of it. It is between those whose life “is
regulated by customary law on the one side,” and ‘modern,’ European-based law
on the other.3 More often than not, the basis of this distinction lay not in one’s
perceived ‘civilized’ nature, but simply in racial assumptions and projections. By
analyzing the various apparati that upheld, enforced and cemented the colonial
reality, one can gain significant insight into the creation of the complexes
comprising the colonial situation.
In an ancient context, colonization meant the acquisition of “new territory
into use by an expanding society, including settlements for trade and agriculture.”
This antiquated definition, however, took on new meaning in the modern (1870s
onward) context, when the term came to involve people as well as land: a
“coercive incorporation into an expansionist state and invidious distinction.”4 As is
the case with any despotic, dominating power, the power of the colonial was “an
object of struggle and depended on the material, social, and cultural resources”
2 See Appendix
3 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of
Late Colonialism. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 61.
4 Thomas Pakenham. The Scramble for Africa, 1876-1912 . (New York: Random
House, 1991), 27.

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of every party involved.5 Furthermore, in order to create an efficient (but not
mutually beneficial) colonial society, the colonial state “existed in relation to
different modes of production, each animated by people distinct from each other.”
It was these distinctions, whether real, perceived, or fabricated, that were critical
if “order was to be preserved” and the colonized labor was to be effectively
capitalized upon.6 Therefore, to effectively incorporate the large swathes of land
and diverse mixes of people into a single, formalized empire, different methods
were created so as to sustain order. Domination could not rely solely on
technological and monetary superiority; different legal codes needed to be
established so as to cement the colonizers place in society. The first of these
was direct rule.
When initially confronted with the ‘native question,’ many European
powers, particularly France, Germany, Belgium, and Portugal, first turned to
direct rule. This meant “there would be a single legal order, defined by the
‘civilized’ laws of Europe.” Under direct rule, no native institutions would be
recognized, and although the ‘natives’ would have to conform to European law
codes, only those assimilated or ‘civilized’ would have access to European
rights.”7 However, as Albert Memmi, a Tunisian Jew living in the limbo between
citizen and subject during the colonial period points out in his unique critique, The
Colonizer and the Colonized, the colonized “can never succeed in becoming
identified with the colonizer,” not even if the subject learns to speak the colonial
5 Ibid, 17.
6 Ibid 51.
7 Mamdani 16.

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language and dress the colonial way; the advertized equality with the colonizer
was always on the other side of a very thick glass ceiling. Therefore, in practice,
direct rule more accurately meant “the reintegration and domination of natives in
the institutional context of semiservile and semicapitalist agrarian relations.” In
other words, it entailed the subjugation of the vast majority of the native
population solely for their usefulness as a source of labor. Such distinctions were
entwined with an incredible amount of cultural degradation and hopelessness,
since they were largely based off the assumption African racial inferiority. Simply
put, in direct rule, “natives were ruled by proclamation and magistrates held
absolute power,” thereby cutting natives off from any form of authority. However,
this was eventually augmented by the shift from the direct, racialized system of
despotism to a decentralized, similarly repressive, tribal-based system of indirect
rule.8
Fashioned by the High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Nigeria,
Frederick Lugard9, indirect rule served to further stratify the colonial lattice. As
Frederick Cooper points out, this option was more attractive for powers who
“lacked the institutions and above all the revenue” to orchestrate direct rule, as
well as allowing them to disguise their intentions behind the Native Authorities,
providing them a cultural shield of sorts.10 According to Lord Lugard, the first step
of implementing indirect rule is to “endeavour to find a man of influence as chief
and to put under him as many villages and districts as possible.“ Second, the
8 Mamdani 65.
9 See Appendix.
10 Cooper, 167.

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colonials must teach him to delegate powers, and to take an interest in his
‘Native Treasury,’ to support his authority.” Finally, they must instill in him a
sense of purpose and responsibility, so as to keep him loyal to his colonial
‘benefactors.’11 For the British in particular, “the more ‘traditional’ Africans were,
the better,” for the most conservative chiefs were more inclined to keep their rural
kingdoms in check. After all, indirect rule was, at its core, a conservative
undertaking, requiring chiefs who would follow colonial orders as long as the
price was high enough.12
Indirect rule was also important in attempting to segregate the white-
dominated urban centers from the native-dominated rural expanses. “A European
is as strictly prohibited from living in the native reservation,” Lugard states with
transparent innocence, “as a native is from living in the European quarter.”13 In
order to halt the perceived “rural disintegration occurring before their eyes,”
Europeans encouraged “’tribal authorities’ to use ‘tribal sanctions’ in exercising
control over the rural areas to counter the forces of social decay.”14 This rural
tribal authority would be the bastion of the colonizer’s rule; they would be “the
law,” according to George Padmore, “subject only to one higher authority, the
white official stationed in his state as an advisor.”15 While on the surface, this
may appear to be giving a bit more agency to the ‘natives,’ in reality, it simply
reduced these chiefs to the status of colonial minions. Furthermore, indirect rule
11 Mamdani, 53.
12Leroy Vail. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa . (Berkeley: California,
1989), 169.
13 Mamdani, 16.
14 Vail, 13.
15 Mamdani, 53.

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established in many places unnatural, even artificial connections to tribalism and
ethnic identity. While these could, at times, give Africans a sense of connection
(or opposition) to one another, its primary function was to further ensure
European dominance.
According to the grand architect Lugard, the “implementation of indirect
rule would be greatly facilitated by the prior existence of a native state
apparatus,” i.e. a tribe. However, one did not always exist in the communities in
question, creating a potential administrative deadlock. If there were no chiefs to
control a chiefdom, how would the colonists exert their power? In times such as
these, according to Mamdani, the best way “to install a state apparatus among
communities whose lives had never before been shaped by one was literally to
invent tribes!”16 Therefore, the colonists needed to be able to maneuver the
‘tribal’ structure of African societies and effectiveness in relation to European
concerns, in turn manipulating Africans’ relation to one another as well.
According to the Native Administration Memorandum on Native Courts in
Tanganyika, tribes are defined as “cultural units possessing a common language,
a single social system, and an established customary law.” Tribal structure
created order and hierarchy necessary for the implementation of indirect rule,
and so in places where “there did not exist a clearly demarcated tribe with a
distinct central authority…one had to be created in the interest of order.”17 The
most extreme example comes from Rwanda and Burundi. While the international
media boiled the horrific events of those dreadful 100 days in 1994 down to
16 Mamdani, 79.
17 Ibid, 79.

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‘ethnic tensions,’ the root of the genocide dates back to the 1930s, during
Belgium’s colonial administration. The practice of tracing “official Bahutu, Batusi,
and Batwa identities through the male line was initially an administrative device
introduced for convenience” by the colonial power. During pre-colonial times,
these terms were used “in relation to one another,” instead of in opposition, “and
more flexibly than came to be the case.” However the Belgians used the terms to
create a social and political hierarchy, placing the more ‘civilized’ Tutsi-minority at
the top, and the more ‘primitive’ Hutu-majority at the bottom.18 Years of tension
between these artificial enemies culminated in nearly 800,000 Rwandans being
slaughtered, for little more than colonially indoctrinated and perpetuated
‘differences.’ The Europeans occupiers not only manipulated the legal
parameters of tribal systems, but also enforced their oppression and segregation
through laws on the land.
In pre-colonial times, the arable land in the more densely dpopulated parts
of Africa had “been turned into estates controlled by descent groups,” allowing for
flexible interpretations between “notions of community rights and corporate and
individual rights” to land. However, when the colonial powers arrived, they
brought with them the assumption that, according to anthropologist Elizabeth
Colson, “the full range of land rights covered by the concept of proprietary
ownership must exist in Africa as in Europe.19 Such legislative shifts gave them
power not only to define where the natives were permitted (or forced) to live, but
18 Helen Hintjens. "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda." The Journal of Modern
African Studies 37.2 (1999): 241-286. Jstor. 249.
19 Mamdani ,139.

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who, in fact, owned the land they toiled away on for meager pay each day. For
the African under European rule, land “could not be a private possession, of
either landlords or peasants.” Instead, land was legally defined as “a customary
communal holding, to which every peasant household had a customary access,
defined by state-appointed customary authorities.”20 In other words, since the
European authority was at the top of the indirect rule food chain, they ultimately
controlled all the land, and subsequently how it was exploited. These and other
aspects of indirect rule worked to create a birdcage of oppression, where no
matter which way the natives turned, there was no escape from their
marginalization. The culmination of such despotic colonialist policies, therefore,
can be found in form of apartheid.
While commonly associated solely with the South African example,
apartheid was, in fact, the status quo for all colonial Africa, just becoming more
officially enshrined in South Africa due to its unusually large settler population.
Not surprisingly, Nelson Mandela, in his renowned autobiography Long Walk to
Freedom, succinctly deconstructs apartheid, which “literally means ‘apartness’” in
Afrikaans. Apartheid “represented the codification in one oppressive system of all
laws and regulations that had kept Africans in an inferior position to whites for
centuries.”21 In fact, as Mamdani aruges, it is “precisely because the South
African historical experience is so different that it dramatically underlines what is
20 Ibid, 22.
21 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, (Little, Brown and Company, Boston:
1994), 97.

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common in the African colonial experience.”22 Apartheid and institutional
segregation “idealized a form of rule that the British Colonial Office dubbed
‘indirect rule,’ and the French ‘association.’”23 Colonialism itself was anchored in
racial dualism, difference, and inherent inequality. According to Lord Malcolm
Hailey, who worked extensively in the British Raj but was influential in African
colonial administration for the Empire, “the doctrine of differentiation aims at the
evolution of separate institutions appropriate to African conditions and differing
both in spirit and form from those of Europeans.”24 Such was the precise aim of
apartheid. It made what was “more or less de facto…de jure,” creating separate
and unequal worlds, reinforcing difference and inferiority so as to protect the
Whites’ minority-majority position in the country.25
As we have seen, apartheid was simply a more advanced manifestation of
indirect rule, yet there were specific circumstances that set the South African
example apart. The most significant of these was South Africa’s “semi-
industrialization, semi-proletarianization, semi-urbanization, capped by a strong
civil society.”26 The need for cheap, plentiful labor to turn the cogs of this
modernizing state, however, was countered by the institutionalized ethnic
inequalities imposed by the bifurcated state. Industrialization increased Black
urbanization, yet according to the White minority, “the Native should only be
allowed to enter urban areas, which are essentially the white man’s creation,
22 Mamdani, 31.
23 Ibid, 7.
24 Ibid, 7.
25 Mandela, ibid.
26 Ibid 28.

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when he is willing to enter and to minister to the needs of the white man,” and
should leave upon finishing his service to his superiors.27 To curb the influx of
black workers to urban areas, the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act was passed,
formally crystallizing “not only residential segregation but a comprehensive
administration of urban Africans along separate racial lines,” thus creating
concrete barriers between native and white civil society.28 The foundation of
these and other such laws and regulations throughout European-controlled Africa
lay in and were perpetuated by the deeply engrained colonial complex, based on
the assumptions of superiority and inferiority between the colonizers and the
colonized.
European expansion and dominance in Africa and Southeast Asia was a
carefully constructed, massive undertaking that relied on intellectual, cultural,
economic and even scientific justification for their conquest. In order to
understand Europe’s initial reasoning for their imperialist ambitions, one need not
look farther than Dr. David Livingstone, the famous Scottish explorer and
Victorian hero, whose dying wish was for Europe to introduce the 3 Cs,
Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization, into Africa to “heal this open sore of the
world.”29 While, in the context of the day, Livingstone’s intentions with this call to
action may have been genuine (in order to stop the Arab slave trade which was
ravaging East and Central Africa at the time), his dramatic charge to the
European community to ‘fix’ the continent served to intensify feelings of
27 Ibid 93.
28 Ibid, 94.
29 Pakenham, pre-title page.

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paternalism and superiority over the ‘savages,’ simply through their
‘responsibility’ of instilling these ‘universal’ values onto the less-fortunate
Africans. Moreover, in a time of increasing tensions between European states
due to the rise of industrialization and nationalism, the colonization of Africa
presented a unique opportunity: “not only would [Europeans] save Africa from
itself. Africa would be the saving of their own countries.”30 Europe’s civilizing
quest, full to the brim with national prestige and pride, disguised more sinister,
self-serving elements whose only validations could be found in the constructed
ideal of supremacy over their subjects, and in the vast amount of resources that
would be put at the disposals of their individual empires.
The concept of European superiority was a colonial phenomenon, not just
restricted to Africa. In his groundbreaking critique Orientalism, Edward Said
investigates the intellectual justifications that Europeans used to denigrate and
dehumanize ‘Orientals,’ which, in many cases, is easily interchangeable with
‘Africans.’ In the eyes of the colonizing Europeans, “there are Westerners, and
there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter must be dominated, which
usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled,”
and their resources put at the complete and unquestionable disposal of one or
another civilizing power.31 The Westerner rationalized this ‘natural’ domination
by, once again, constructing a glass ceiling over the non-European, for
regardless of how ‘advanced’ or ‘civilized’ an inferior subject is, he or she “is first
30 Ibid, xxii.
31 Said, 36.

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an Oriental, second a human being, and last again an Oriental.”32 Such
statements speak to the cultural methods by which the European powers
normalized and validated their ‘natural’ privilege over the ‘darker races,’ which
emanated from the presidents of the mother countries all the way to the poorest
white settler.
The creation of the European ‘colonial mystique’ has been propagated
throughout Western culture for a long time. Ever since the times of Rome, when
nearly an entire continent (and then some) was colonized for the sake of just one
city, Europe has been rife with high-culture contradictions. During the period of
modern-day colonization, Frederick Cooper observes, European publics “claimed
rights and citizenship for themselves, [while defining] a sharper division between
a metropolitan polity…and an external sphere” in which these rights were not
available. Naturally, this created a feeling of superiority based on the notion of
being inherently more ‘civilized’ than their empire’s subjects.33 Furthermore, the
colonial period, as stated earlier, coincided with the rapid rise of European
nationalism, that beautiful disease of the modern world, which had a large hand
in the propagation of superiority. “Patriotism” General Charles de Gualle was
once famously quoted as saying, “is when love of your own people comes first;
nationalism” on the other hand, is when “hate for other people other than yours
comes first.”34 This sort of attitude drove the politics of differentiation and race
theory in the colonial era.
32 Ibid, 102.
33 Cooper, 28.
34 Charles de Gualle, 9 May 1969. http://www.quoteworld.org/quotes/3480

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Such violent and forceful impositions into a foreign culture had to be
supported by provable, even scientifically based ‘knowledge’ about the
colonialist’s privilege. “At the heart of colonization, Partha Chatterjee has argued,
is the rule of difference.” In order to uphold their power, European empires had to
be explicit about “codifying difference—particularly codifying race” in order to give
credibility to why their subjects were not rights-bearing citizens, even if they were
part of the same empire. In other words, in order to hold onto power they had to
convince their subjects that they were not worthy of a voice in the political
structure.35 One of the most effective methods of doing so was through race
theory.
Ever since the slave trade, Europeans have justified their subjugation and
subordination of African peoples through one excuse or another. During the time
of colonization, theories began to evolve about “primitive origins and primitive
classifications, modern decadence, the progress of civilization, the destiny of the
white (or Aryan) races, the need for colonial territories,” and a host of other lofty
claims of European hegemony.36 Numerous books were written on the subject,
such as Robert Knox’s The Dark Races of Man and Gobineau’s Essai sur
l'inegalite des races humaines,37
in which ‘scientific’ studies were done, “whose
drift[s], almost without exception, was always to raise Europe or a European race
to dominion over non-European portions of mankind.”38 In fact, such a culture of
racism even used Darwinian theories to justify the oppression or, as in the case
35 Cooper, 23.
36 Said, 232.
37 Ibid, 206.
38 Ibid, 232.

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of the Herero of German Southwest Africa (presently Namibia), outright genocide
and extermination.39
Racism has long been a sore on the quest for the ambiguous ‘modernity,’
yet rarely does racism denote absolute extinction. While Charles Darwin’s theory
of evolution and natural selection did not explicitly condone the extermination of
one human ‘race’ by another, the intellectual following that his work created
sought to justify their racialized violence as “natural and inevitable—indeed, even
beneficial and progressive.”40 Such attitudes lead to the infamous “attempted
genocide of the Hereros…in which over 80 percent of the Hereros were
annihilated.”41 The Herero people had been a thorn in the German colonial
government’s side, and so the colonial government sent for General Lothar von
Trotha42, who, upon arrival, issued the notorious annihilation decree, the
Vernichtungsbefehl, of 2 October 1904. In his order, he threatened that every
Herero within German-occupied boundaries, “whether found armed or unarmed,
with or without cattle, will be shot.”43 Those who were not killed were driven into
the waterless Omaheke desert or put into squalid and isolated concentration
camps, a frightening foreshadowing of the Third Reich just four decades later.
Trotha, when asked to account for his actions, cited Darwinian principles, stating
39 For further reading on the Herero genocide, see Sarkin, Jeremy. Germany's
Genocide of the Herero Why Kaiser Wilhelm II Gave the Order.. London: James Currey,
2011.
40 Weikart, Richard. "Progress through Racial Extermination: Social Darwinism,
Eugenics, and Pacifism in Germany, 1860-1918." German Studies Review 26.2
(2003): 273-294. 275.
41 Ibid, 288.
42 See Appendix
43 Pakenham, 611.

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that “he believed that the contest between the Germans and the Hereros was a
racial struggle that must ultimately end in the extermination of one party or the
other.”44 A sense of superiority was cemented among the Europeans, beliefs that
created the adverse reaction in their subjects, that of an inferiority complex.
The mere existence of a superiority complex sculpted by the colonizing
powers demands the subsequent existence of an inferiority complex. “The lack of
human dignity expressed by Africans,” proclaimed Nelson Mandela in his famous
Rivonia speech of 1964, “is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy.
White supremacy implies black inferiority.”45 The inferiority complex, while
intricately entangled with the superiority complex, manifests distinctively in the
colonized subject. As an inherently oppressed group, the colonized were faced
with the infamous “double bind—situations in which options are reduced to a very
few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation.”46 Out of these
inescapable realities facing the colonized, the inferiority complex took shape. The
first measure of inferiority comes from the aforementioned glass ceiling imposed
by all forms of colonization, whether direct, indirect, or apartheid.
In a society where racially imposed structures were the inescapable norm,
for those at the bottom of the ladder, life did not offer many choices. Under direct
rule, the option of assimilation presented a clear double bind; either attempt
(inevitably without complete success) to become like the colonizer, and lose
44 Weikart, 288.
45 Nelson Mandela. “Statement from the Dock at the Opening of the
Defense Case in the Rivonia Trial.” Pretoria Supreme Court, South Africa.
20th April, 1964 http://www.anc.org.za/3430
46 Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality. (Tramansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press,
1983)

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connection to your own culture, or sit in idleness and wait to be wiped out by the
colonizer. In his book Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon analyses how the
inferiority complex plays out in those trying to navigate the complexities of
colonial society. According to him, every subject under colonial rule, “in other
words, people in whom an inferiority complex has taken root, whose local cultural
originality has been committed to the grave” are judged, and judge themselves,
“in relation to the civilizing language: i.e. the metropolitan culture.”47 He depicts
this struggle as the quest for whiteness, since that is what the colonized has
been indoctrinated to believe is civilized and pure in the world. He gives the
example of a Black man from Martinique, such as himself, who departs for
France for the first time. In his mind, he is leaving behind the lack of opportunity
and culture for something better. He feels the “call of Europe like a breath of
fresh air,” with its high (white) culture and advanced (white) civilization. In order
to prepare himself, he must first learn to differentiate between his ‘Black self’ and
his ‘White self’ if he is to survive in the metropole.48
In order to be taken seriously in the ‘mother country,’ the subject must
differentiate between his two opposing dimensions: the “one with his fellow
Blacks, the other with the Whites.” This means that he must cease speaking
Creole, practice his diction constantly, and not give the white man any fodder to
call him uncivilized or savage; a sizeable task to say the least. Especially in
countries such as France, where a heavy emphasis is placed on the language as
a measure of cultural adeptness, the pressure to behave like a ‘civilized’ (i.e.
47 Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 2.
48 Ibid, 1.

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White) person is increased exponentially.49 Therefore, the Black is expected to
forego his identity in order to become, in essence, White. To do so, he must “stop
behaving as an actional person” for his actions are “destined for ‘the Other’ (in
the guise of the white man), since only ‘the Other’ can enhance his status and
give him self-esteem at the ethical level.”50 However, even after making his trip to
France, he has isolated himself from his own culture. Upon his return, Fanon
notes, “he can no longer understand Creole; he talks of the Opera House, which
he has probably seen only from a distance,” and assumes an air of
condescension towards his fellow islanders, which alienates him from his friends
and family.51 This desperate desire to disguise his core identity in order to
achieve a higher status was also exhibited in the politics of sexual relationships
between the colonizer and the colonized.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon details the nuances of relationships
between a man of color and a white woman, as well as a woman of color and a
white man. For the purposes of this study, the latter is better suited to exemplify
the inferiority expressed by the colonial situation. Fanon uses the testimony of
Mayotte Capécia, whose book Je Suis Martiniquaise (I Am A Martinicuan
Woman) is, in the eyes of Fanon, “a third rate book, advocating unhealthy
behavior.” Nevertheless, her autobiography provides numerous examples of how
Blacks were indoctrinated to aspire towards Whiteness while harboring distain for
their own skin. She expresses the various perceived virtues of being white, such
49 Ibid, 1.
50 Ibid, 132.
51 Ibid, 7.

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as the general acceptance that “one is white if one has a certain amount of
money,” giving an economic imperative for assimilation, and touching on a root
justification for claims of white supremacy.52 Additionally, Capécia takes pride in
the fact that her grandmother was White, meaning that her affair “was a gift and
not a rape,” as so many others were within the métisse population.53 However,
despite this, she “decided that I would love only a white man, a blonde with blue
eyes, a Frenchman,”54 showing an unwillingness to see the beauty (let alone the
value) in her own countrymen. Capécia’s comments are reinforced by a
conversation Fanon had with another woman from Martinique who said “there is
a white potential in every one of us; some want to ignore it or quite simply
reverse it. Me, I would never accept to marry a nigger for anything in the world.”55
Such disgust for one’s own people compounds the inferiority complex by
devaluing their brethren to being inescapably unequal to Whites, regardless of
their virtues. However, in any case where the Blacks attempt to assimilate to
what they believe will improve their status in the world end up contending with
the infamous double bind of oppression. “Rejection of self,” says Albert Memmi,
“and love of another” are common traits to any aspiring assimilé.56
Therefore, no
matter how hard they try to escape their roots, what they aspire towards will
never be fully achieved. Meanwhile the connection to their people will slowly
fade, leaving the subject in a cultural limbo.
52 Ibid, 26.
53 Ibid, 28, fn.
54 Ibid, 29.
55 Ibid, 30.
56 Memmi, 121.

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Within the colonial structure, assimilation was intentionally placed just on
the other side of the glass ceiling; enticing yet barely out of reach. In the French
Empire, for example, “subjecthood existed alongside citizenship, a category in
theory attainable but in practice withheld.” The prerequisites for becoming a
citizen were intentionally “narrow, culturally specific notions of Frenchness” that
made the possibility of their attainment almost absurd, even, in reality, for many
French people.57 This tactic was intentional, for as Memmi wisely notes, to
expect the “colonizer [to] accept assimilation and, hence, the colonized’s
emancipation, means to topple the colonial relationship.”58 If the subjects could
be made equal to their colonial masters, then what use would colonization serve
any longer? How could the Great Powers justify their absurd exploitation? Unable
to gain political rights through any means, whether it be in a colony of direct,
indirect, or apartheid rule, the choices of the colonized soon narrowed to just
one: violence.
Colonization was a system of complete and total humiliation and
degradation for the colonized. The colonized’s situation cannot improve unless it
be by “doing away with the colonial relationship” altogether.59 The colonial
relationship is not a negotiable network; “like an iron collar, it can only be
broken.”60 In his book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon talks extensively
about how violence was used as a reaction against the debasement of the
colonial subjects. “The determination to have the last move up to the front” says
57 Cooper, 175.
58 Ibid, 126.
59 Memmi, 126.
60 Ibid, 128.

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Fanon, “can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course,
violence.”61 The colonized subject has been “reduced to the state of an animal”
by the colonizer, which wears on his self worth and, ultimately, his patience. The
example of the Herero is useful in this context. They started a revolt against the
German colonial government because they were being marginalized and treated
like “dogs, slaves, worse than baboons on the rocks,” according to a Herero
speaking to a German settler.62 Unfortunately, the turn to violence only made the
situation worse for the Herero, who fell victim to the German’s superior
technology and numbers, therefore ingraining further the sense of inferiority
against the colonial adversaries.63 Whether in German South West Africa or
Algeria, South Africa or the Gold Coast, the prospect of violence was another
example of how, even with superior numbers, the colonial subjects were caught
in a double bind.
Since the colonizer’s world was built upon conquest and artificial power,
the colonized represented a constant threat to their dominance. The colonizer
degrades and insults the colonized, accusing him of cowardice and savagery,
hoping to break his spirit completely. Providing further reinforcement, the
colonized knows that, upon even the slightest infraction, “all the resources of
science…would be placed at [the colonizer’s] disposal and, within a few minutes,
terrible weapons of defense and destruction” would be used liberally on the
61 Frantz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 3.
62 Pakenham, 602.
63 For more information on how technology affected the feelings of superiority and
inferiority, see Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology,
and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

21. Verrier 21
‘subhuman’ population without remorse, posing a grossly asymmetrical struggle.
This meant, “for each colonizer killed, hundreds or thousands of the
colonized…would be exterminated,” so as to ‘break even.’64 Such a deadly
double standard was expertly portrayed in Gillo Pontecorvo’s groundbreaking film
The Battle of Algiers. In one scene, the French commander, Colonel Mathieu, is
in a press conference with Ben M’Hidi, a captured leader of the FLN. A French
journalist asks Mr. M’Hidi, “don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's
baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent
people?,” referring to an earlier scene in which women were used to plant bombs
at various locations in the Kasbah. In response, M’Hidi coolly and calmly retorts,
“And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on
defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims?
Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your
bombers, and you can have our baskets.”65 To this, Colonel Mathieu says
nothing, showing the inhumanity and cowardice behind the colonial mission, yet
also the bind in which violence puts the populace. If they do not act, their
destruction will be slow, long, without dignity, and mired in their perceived
inferiority. However, even if unsuccessful, “violence is a cleansing force. It rids
the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing
attitude.”66 And throughout the continent (let alone the colonized world), violence
became a force so powerful, whether realized or threatened, that the wave of
64 Memmi, 93
65 Battle of Algiers. Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. Perf. Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef
Saadi. Rhino / Wea, 1966. DVD.
66 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth. 51.

22. Verrier 22
independence washed Europe’s empires from the map. However, despite the
flag-independence that followed the numerous revolutions and movements of the
1950s and 1960s, the legacy of colonialism, particularly the colonial complex
lives on through neocolonialism and unbalanced market capitalism, or as it is
more commonly known, globalization. From my experience in Cameroon, where I
lived and studied for nearly 5 months, evidence of this colonial residue was
plentiful, and speaks volumes to the grip Western culture has on this country and
its people.
Cameroon67, a country nestled literally at the intersection of West and
Central Africa, became a German colony on July 14, 1884, and remained so until
Germany lost the First World War, and were forced to cede it’s colonies to the
other Great Powers.68 Since Britain and France were the dominant powers on the
continent, they partitioned (unequally) the former German possession, with
Britain controlling the Western 1/5 of the country from Nigeria, and France taking
over the vast remainder. Officially, Cameroon was a League of Nations Mandate,
yet it was still treated by the Powers as a colony. In both the French and British
sections, “colonialists had come to rely on the peasant farmer to produce large
quantities of agricultural produce” to be exported to the mother country. Both
ruled through indirect rule, where they had “attempted to build a rural bourgeoisie
as a leading elite, conservative in nature, which would provide a bulwark” for the
facilitation of their colonial administration. By the time independence came
67 See Appendix
68 Mark W. DeLancey, Cameroon: Dependence and Independence. (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1989.), 8.

23. Verrier 23
around, Cameroon “had become an economic appendage of the European
and—especially French—industrial economy.”69
Independence for Cameroon was a complicated matter. French
Cameroons gained independence on January 1, 1960. The following year, there
was a referendum in British Cameroons, in which the largely Muslim Northern
British Cameroons decided to join Nigeria, while the Southern British Cameroons
decided to attach itself to the former French Cameroons on October 1, 1961.
While the country is officially bilingual (with over 275 different mother tounges),
French is used predominantly, and the smaller Anglophone section is
increasingly marginalized by the administration in Yaoundé. In it’s nearly 50
years of independence, Cameroon has had just two presidents, Amadou Ahidjo
(1960-1982), and Paul Biya (1983-present), a testament to the crooked politics of
the country. Today, Cameroon is considered one of the most corrupt countries in
the world, and while it remains relatively stable, the political and cultural situation,
as well as the still incredibly close ties with France, have created a neocolonial
situation that keeps much of the population feeling relatively helpless and
hopeless.
During my time in Cameroon, I noticed numerous examples of how the
inferiority complex still plays out in every day life. Most evident to me during my
first weeks there was how much of an influence Western culture and styles had
in Yaoundé. I was surprised by how many men I saw walking around with baggy
jeans and doo-rags, appropriating hip-hop style from the United States, let alone
69 Ibid, 27.

24. Verrier 24
the number of shirts I saw with President Obama on them. The older people that
I talked to said that many of the younger people were loosing touch with their
Cameroonian heritage, and preferred to assimilate to the Western images they
were bombarded with constantly through the media. This rejection of their
Cameroonian identity went so far as for many of them to desire to leave the
country, since they saw no opportunities there due to corruption and bad
governance. “How is it,” my host father, Gaston, asked me one day, “that the
richest businessmen in the country are still poorer than most higher level civil
servants and government workers? That does not sound like a fair system to
me.” What I saw as untapped potential, Cameroonians saw as a dead end,
where the only chance of success was to find a way out of their country. Most
often, their ideal destination would be the United States.
Many Cameroonians romanticized the United States, and oftentimes
became quite excited when they found out where we were from. “In the United
States, racism does not exist any longer because of Obama,” my French
professor, Abraham, claimed one day. Many believed that the United States was
a country full of New York City’s and Los Angeles’s, where everyone is beautiful,
rich, and talented, and where no one suffered. Of course, we Americans were
quick to refute their claims, yet it was hard to blame them for their
misconceptions. Our media, the most powerful and prevalent in the world, gives
the impression that the United States is just like “Friends” or “The Adventures of
Zach and Cody;” that everyone looks like Brad Pitt and has a voice like John
Legend. In essence, the common consensus between many Cameroonians was

25. Verrier 25
that the USA was a paradise where anyone could make their dreams come true.
Such slanted beliefs served only to further perpetuate the inferiority complex
through reminding them of their lack of access to economic resources, one of the
chief ways the colonizing (and neo-colonizing powers) justified their presumed
superiority. However, the complex was not just expressed through desire for
monetary gains, but by cultural assumptions and beliefs as well.
One of the most striking examples of how the inferiority complex was
displayed in Cameroon was through television commercials. One commercial I
saw often was for skin whitening cream. The commercial showed a very light-
skinned woman, soaked in bright, almost blinding light, rubbing skin-whitening
cream on herself. The commercial, which broadcasted in both French and
English, never explicitly said that the cream was for decreasing pigment, but said
the product helped to achieve a “beautiful, healthy glow.” This is an example of
the color complex, which “privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in
areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market.”70 The
culprit, once again, is the global media, led by the United States and Europe,
which propagates the image of the “good life, of white beauty, white affluence,
white heroes, and brown and black entertainers/criminals” as the societal norm.
Cameroonians, as well as many other people in the non-white world, feel their
only hope for advancing their status is to continue aspiring towards whiteness
through any means necessary, a frightening reminiscence of Mayotte Capécia’s
70 Margaret Hunter. "The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and
Inequality." Sociology Compass 1.1 (2007): 237-254. Wiley Online Library,

26. Verrier 26
desperate desire for whiteness mentioned earlier.71 In another commercial (for
beer, I believe), a Cameroonian male was throwing a party, which he seemingly
intended on keeping small. However, Cameroonian after Cameroonian shows up
at his door, and making him feel noticeably distressed until, out of nowhere, a
white man, holding a six-pack of the beer, arrives, which instantly brings a smile
to everyone’s face. While this may not be as blatant as the skin whitening cream
example, the change in attitude upon the white man’s arrival speaks to the
cultural perception that, with whiteness comes money, agency and stability. Both
of these commercials, as well as the many other manifestations of the inferiority
complex in contemporary Cameroon, deeply disturbed me, giving me the impetus
to write this paper.
Colonization, in all its forms, represents one of the most complicated,
coercive, and callous institutions ever created. Intentionally founded upon
artificial assumptions of supremacy over those perceived as different or less-
human simply because of their appearance and geographic location, the societal
and cultural fallout has remained engrained in post-colonial society to this day, in
former colonies and mother countries alike. Not until the global conceptions of
power, agency, and self-worth are radically redefined will the world see an end to
the colonial complex, which continues to infiltrate nearly every aspect of
contemporary life.
71 Ibid.

27. Verrier 27
Appendix
Image 1: Colonial World, 1900
(http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/KISH_25_
578.gif)

28. Verrier 28
Image 2: “The Colonial Squeeze” From an early 20th century German newspaper,
with the subtitle “Thus Colonize the English.”
(http://www.edteck.com/dbq/dbquest/quest10.htm)
Image 3: Frederick Lugard, architect of Indirect rule.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/LordLugard.jpg/225p
x-LordLugard.jpg)

29. Verrier 29
Image 4: General Lothar Von Trotha, the ruthless general behind the genocide of
the Herero people from 1904-1907.
(http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co
mmons/archive/5/55/20060312010950!Lothar_von_Trotha.jpg&imgrefurl=http://e
n.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lothar_von_Trotha.jpg&h=600&w=311&sz=25&tbnid=IE
QR74J1YHzSoM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=70&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLothar%2Bvon
%2BTrotha&zoom=1&q=Lothar+von+Trotha&usg=__cmKTw_1gaxvLeG33h7Yo
RzEVMxk=&sa=X&ei=DTQJTaGVFIWisQOKw-GgDg&ved=0CC4Q9QEwAw)

30. Verrier 30
Image 5: Cameroon

31. Verrier 31
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32. Verrier 32
Hunter, Margaret . "The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and
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Defense Case in the Rivonia Trial.” Pretoria Supreme Court, South Africa.
20th April, 1964 http://www.anc.org.za/3430
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Battle of Algiers. Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo. Perf. Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yacef
Saadi. Rhino / Wea, 1966. DVD.