How many more lives will be lost as a small Sudanese diaspora struggles to bring attention to a crisis that has paralyzed Africa’s third-largest country? And how much longer will a crisis be widely recognized as tragic, brutal and heartbreaking—but ultimately disregarded in practice as just another African war?

Using an African country as a political and economic tool is as old as colonialism itself. If this is what Canada’s new politics are on the African continent, it is indeed retrograde. Canada should not be engaging with, or buttressing a nation that has inflicted so much harm on innocent people. We should not be aiding and abetting crimes abroad.

While the US claims that Mali is turning the screws on the mining industry because it wants to hand lucrative gold mines to Russian interests, these reforms are part of a broader anti-colonial uprising sweeping the region. If Mali continues to put pressure on Canadian mining companies, it would not be unreasonable to assume Ottawa may involve itself in the dispute.

A groundbreaking criminal case against a company accused of war crimes in South Sudan is now underway in Sweden, drawing parallels with the corporate complicity trials of Nuremberg in 1949. The trial in Stockholm against executives of the Swedish oil giant Lundin is expected to change the landscape of corporate accountability for international crimes.

Canada’s role in West Africa was ostensibly a counterterrorism effort, but like the US and European presence it was meant to bolster, Canada failed to bring security or development to the region. In fact, the results of the ‘War on Terror’ have been catastrophic. Since 2002-2003, deaths in Islamist militant attacks in the Sahel have risen a shocking 50,000 percent.

The international community covered up the massive crimes of Paul Kagame and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994 and from then on. As journalist Judi Rever writes, the United Nations’ refusal to prosecute Kagame has only emboldened his regime and fed the violence in Central Africa over the last three decades.

The emphasis placed on former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s opposition to apartheid—and the erasure of left-wing governments and movements that had supported the liberation fighters materially and for far longer—serves a deeper political purpose, writes Owen Schalk.. It is about more than Mulroney. It’s about Canadians’ perception of their own country on the world stage.

The facts on the ground show that Western imperialist policies for Africa—if we needed more evidence of this—are inherently violent, have created failed states and are unsustainable. While it is not possible to undo history, it is possible for Africans to make choices that increase their sovereignty instead of undermining it.

John Shannon Saul, the writer, scholar, and solidarity activist, died in Toronto on September 23, 2023. He leaves behind a rich scholarly and activist legacy, having authored, by a conservative estimate, some 25 books on African history, politics, and society. Saul played a key role in supporting liberation movements in Africa while advancing social change at home.

The fact that Canada has soldiers stationed overseas, in countries including Iraq and Niger, almost never comes up in domestic political discourse. It is rarely covered in Canadian media. It isn’t a topic at debates. No major political party runs on bringing Canadian soldiers home. As Owen Schalk argues, Canadians should start asking why that is.