With respect, it is misleading for the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to claim that Africa and Europe are “united in the challenge of building sustainable economic growth and ensuring that it is inclusive in creating the jobs needed by our people.” (Two continents, one vision; 4th May 2013). The plain reality is that African and British peoples are very unhappy with European Union policies as explained below.

While Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, who led the ‘United National Independence Party’ (UNIP) is still alive to tell his own story; other African independence leaders like Haile Selassie, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Ahamed ben Bella, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sir Abukarar Tafawa Balewa, Aden Abdulle Osman Daar, Kamuzu Banda and Milton Obote must be turning in their graves to hear that the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is now leading an intensifying struggle for British independence from the German-dominated European Union.  Last week, UKIP won an impressive 23% vote share in the local election. The Economist said it was the biggest surge by a party since the Second World War!

According to the BBC, if this was a general election due in 2015, Labour would lead with 29% of the vote, the Conservatives in second place with 25%, UKIP in third place with 23%, pushing the Liberal Democrats, which are part of the present coalition government, to fourth position with just 14%.

In a narrative that could have been borrowed from African independence struggles, the UKIP leader Mr Nigel Farage has told the popular BBC Andrew Marr programme: “I want to make sure that my children can grow up in a country they call their own.”

Just as African leaders had said about their motivation over fifty years ago, the UKPI website says  “we believe in the right of the people of the UK to govern themselves, rather than be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels...We believe in democracy devolved to the people, through national and local referendums on key issues, so that laws are made by the people’s will...We believe that the government of Britain should be for the people, by the people, all the people of Britain, regardless of their creed or colour.”

Just as African independence leaders were demonised as communists, the British Prime Minister David Cameron has contemptuously described UKIP as an upstart right-wing party, of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.” Just as Africa’s domestic and foreign policies were decided in the capitals of the European colonial powers; British immigration, employment, trade and other key policies are today dictated from the European Union headquarters in Brussels. Just as Africa’s natural resources were plundered and shipped to develop European domestic economies; the British people are now paying £53 million a day to the European Union to support the economies of it poor member states.

The call for the UK to leave the European Union is spreading beyond UKIP. Writing in The Daily Telegraph of 4th May, the ruling Conservative party Member of Parliament Mr Bernard Jenkin, who is also Chairman of the Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee, spoke for the silent British people and said:

“UKIP’s astonishing success is about how all three main parties seem to accept that our government and national parliament no longer controls how our country is run – a frustration shared by many voting for all the main parties as well...the UK’s now dysfunctional and corrosive relationship with the EU, and its associated Court of Human Rights, enrages otherwise reasonable people.”

He went on “it (the EU) saps the national morale, and any respect for main parties at Westminster. We pretend to govern but the EU has us tied in knots. We are in office, but not in power.” 

Then Mr Jenkin posed asked these profound questions: “Why are our prisons so full of foreign criminals? Not even an obvious terrorist suspect like Abu Qatada can be deported. Why is our asylum and visa system in chaos?” Because governments no longer have the means to determine who shall enter or stay in our country. How can we liberate our business and entrepreneurs to compete, when so much red tape is imposed by Brussels? ”

In another article in The Times of Monday 7th May, Margaret Thatcher’s long serving Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Nigel Lawson said that “far from hitting business hard, the British exit from the European Union would instead be a wake-up call for those who had been too content in the warm embrace of the European single market when the great export opportunities lay in the developing world.”

Afro-British people should join the debate and support the United Kingdom Independent Party for two fundamental reasons of self-interest. The EU open-border policy is allowing white supremacists from Europe into the UK where they are upsetting and will upset the relative peace and sense of security, which black people have traditionally enjoyed. It is not unusual for black footballers and other groups and individuals to be physically attacked in mainland Germany, France and mainland Europe because of their skin colour.

Secondly and more importantly, Afro-British people should support UKIP in order for mother Africa to separately negotiate and conclude new amicable trade and foreign policy agreements with an independent United Kingdom and other countries in Europe.

Under the current arrangements, the European Union is not only imposing punitive tariffs on Africa’s nascent industrial and agricultural products while flooding African markets with cheap EU goods, stifling local businesses. The EU is also substituting aid for trade; thus entrenching a culture of dependency and discouraging sustainable development efforts.  For example, thousands of European NGOs are effectively taking over state responsibilities across Africa and providing basic health, education, clean water and food.

To make matters worse, the EU often uses aid as a political tool to impose its will as we are seeing in Eritrea, Sudan and Zimbabwe, causing unspeakable suffering on the most vulnerable people.

Just as the British people are looking to trade to get them out of the current economic crisis, African countries have for years been calling for fair trade, not aid, to get their people out of extreme poverty. Only an independent Britain can help the two peoples to realise their mutual interests in economic and social development through trade.

By Sam Akaki

The author is a Ugandan-born former independent parliamentary candidate in the UK (May 2010) Executive Director, Optimum Population for Sustainable Development in Africa (OPSUDA) and director, Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa (DIPRA).