The experience hardened his belief that European colonialism was out of date. In August 1941, in discussions on the Atlantic Charter  —  which laid out the Allied goals for a post-WWII order  —  FDR stressed the inclusion of an article on self-determination, much to Winston Churchill’s anxiety. Roosevelt insisted that a precondition for a peaceful world was the development of “backward countries”, but that one-sided colonial trade agreements — like those of the British Empire — were why those countries “are still as backward as they are”.

American leaders have long liked to position themselves as opponents of European colonialism. John F. Kennedy, during the 1960 Presidential election, declared that the US should side with third world nationalist movements. After all, America itself is the product of thirteen colonies emancipating themselves from the British Empire and building a democratic republic. That revolution, which took place 245 years ago, has since been a model for movements worldwide. Vietnam’s nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh, for instance, explicitly invoked the American Declaration of Independence as inspiration.

America, then, claims to stand for a liberal international order composed of independent nations, dedicated to promoting peace, prosperity and freedom. In theory, anyway. In practice, America did not become a benign superpower after the Second World War; it became an empire in its own right. It did not liberate European colonies; it inherited them and made them American.

In Indochina, the US supported the French colonial regime, before replacing it as the occupying force — leading to the original forever war. In the Middle East, the US replaced Britain as well as France as the imperial power ne plus ultra — a project that, as recent front pages graphically demonstrate, hasn’t ended well. But American interventionism in Africa is less widely understood. A revelatory, meticulous new book by Susan Williams — based on declassified documents and new testimony — has done a lot to correct this.

Africa, Williams suggests in White Malice, has long been of “central importance” in the vision of American foreign policy planners. During the second world war, in response to Hitler’s armies conquering most of North Africa, the US built a number of air bases on the continent  — in Liberia, for instance  —  to prevent its enemies using West Africa as a platform to attack the Americas. The OSS (the forerunner to the CIA) established an Africa service with three field bases in Ghana, South Africa and Ethiopia. And the Manhattan Project — the secret program to develop the first nuclear weapons — made the Congo, with all its natural resources, central to American foreign policy.

The Uranium used to create the first atomic bombs originated from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Katanga province in Southern Congo. In 1942, a band of OSS agents were assigned to secure the mine, holding the richest Uranium in the world, to stop it falling into Nazi hands. They were also tasked with covertly transporting the Uranium  —  disguised as “diamonds” —  to the US, via airports in Elizabethville and Leopoldville designed by the Americans to ensure reliable transport. Shinkolobwe’s role in the Manhattan Project, as Williams notes, “was shrouded in secrecy”. Journalists were not allowed any information about the mine — let alone to visit it. It’s name and location was wiped off the map in 1942 and security was akin to a “fortress”, with armed guards patrolling 24/7.

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The Congolese miners were hyper-exploited. They were paid terribly, were frequently whipped by overseers and had little protection as they handled high-grade Uranium — which caused many to suffer long term health conditions. In other words, they were no better off than they had been under the Belgian colonisers.

After the war, the withdrawal of European empires left a void. And so most of America’s military bases in Africa remained. Pan-Africanism, on the ascendancy, was influencing civil rights and black radical movements among black Americans. The Soviet enemy was threatening to gain influence over the newly independent African nations. America, Williams writes, had to “recapture Africa”, putting it back into Western hands “by any means necessary”.

The CIA was anxious to get a foothold in these newly independent nations early to contain any possible spread of Communism. In the 1950s, the CIA’s African division developed an elaborate network of front organisations to acquire information and intelligence from across Africa. It funded journals and concerts, and established contacts with journalists, writers and businessmen who would become informants. For instance, Maurice Tempelsman (known for his relationship with Jackie Kennedy), who had big financial interests in Africa, sat on the board of the African-American Institute, a CIA front group. His business associate, George Wittman — whose company operated in a dozen African countries — was recruited into the agency in 1951, and helped produce a massive study of Ghana. The CIA also developed a close relationship with the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was they who informed the South African police as the whereabouts of Nelson Mandela.

Meanwhile American policymakers, like the European colonisers before them, believed that Africans weren’t quite ready for “orderly development” and “progress towards self-determination”. Williams quotes the vice-President Richard Nixon advocating that the US side with the “strong men of Africa”  —  the tyrants, in other words  —  to maintain stability and cultivate military regimes. This would counter the Communist threat. President Eisenhower agreed. Despite grandiloquent rhetoric in support of democracy, then, US foreign policy actively supported anti-democratic movements in Africa.

Because of this, the US was perpetually irritated by the two main heroes of Williams’ book: Kwame Nkrumah, who became the first leader of independent Ghana in 1957, and Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the DRC. Both were huge icons of anti-colonialism. And both were Pan Africanists, who believed in the dream of a united, strong and sovereign African continent  —  one that would be an influential power bloc on the world stage independent of both the West and the Soviet Union.

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Nkrumah was initially well-disposed to the US; immediately after Ghana’s independence, relations were relatively “friendly and fruitful”. But by 1960, Accra was promoting an “African centric” foreign policy and Ghana was becoming the HQ for anti-colonial insurgents from all across Africa. With his quest for an atomic reactor, and his close relationship with Lumumba, Nkrumah was now seen as a “subversive”. His “tendency to support extremist elements in neighbouring African countries”, as a State Department document put it, troubled America.

The motivation behind Nkrumah’s nuclear program was the aim to modernise Ghana within a generation. According to Williams, Nkrumah got support from Canada to build a reactor, but US pressure ceased this collaboration, so he decided to appeal to the Soviet Union instead — raising US suspicions. It is worth noting here that the US gave a nuclear reactor to Congo in 1958, when it was still a Belgian colony, and also supplied enriched Uranium to apartheid South Africa for its nuclear program. It seems that, for the US, “a necessary qualification in Africa for access to a reactor”, as Williams notes, “was colonial occupation or white minority rule”. In other words, atomic energy was only appropriate in white hands, not sovereign black hands.

Throughout the 1960s, relations between Accra and Washington would deteriorate. Nkrumah publicly called the US a “neo-colonial” power in a book titled Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. He became paranoid and more dictatorial in his rule. The state monopolised the media; critics who “disrespected” the President were jailed. Economic mismanagement was rife; many state-run companies made losses. The cost of living rose dramatically, which led to protests on the streets, and repression in return. Discontent with Nkrumah’s rule within the armed forces produced easy allies for the CIA, who had been flirting with the idea of regime change in Ghana since 1961. In 1966, Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup indirectly supported by Britain and America, while on an official visit to China. Shortly afterwards, the pro-Western military junta swiftly shut down the Kwembaya atomic reactor.

America’s main gripe against Patrice Lumumba, meanwhile, was his desire to keep Katanga  —  Congo’s richest province, where separatism was building  —  as part of the Congo. The province was the home of lucrative American and Belgian mining companies; Lumumba wanted to nationalise the industry. And so the CIA suspected Lumumba was a secret Communist and in “Soviet pay” — even though ideologically he was a nationalist. His reputation tarnished by these suspicions, Lumumba’s appeal for UN intervention during the Congo crisis of 1960 fell on deaf ears. With Belgian support, Katanga seceded. Around 100,000 people were killed. Lumumba was captured and executed by Katangan separatists in January 1961.

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In 1960, as Williams reveals through recently declassified documents, the CIA had officially approved a plan to fund and help organise opposition to Lumumba — with the expressed purpose of overthrowing him and replacing him with a “moderate”, pro-Western strong man. The prime candidate mentioned for this role by CIA Director Allen Dulles was Colonel Mobutu, who organised a coup against Lumumba on later that year, but wouldn’t fully come to power until 1965  —  via another American-backed coup. Williams presents unequivocal evidence that Mobutu had been an informant for Belgian intelligence and the CIA for years previously.

The ousting of Nkrumah in Ghana and Lumumba in the Congo followed a similar pattern of US interventions: such “deliberate violations of democracy” had taken place in Iran in 1953 or in Guatemala in 1954. The CIA would support in various ways  — indirectly, and sometimes directly  —  the overthrow of governments that had been democratically elected. These governments were deemed unacceptable by America because they had the misfortune of believing that their nations deserved to exercise self-determination, not simply have it in name. The US would then help install brutal dictatorships — like Mobutu’s — that used torture to repress critics and treated the national treasury as their own personal piggy bank. For American policymakers, this was an acceptable outcome, even though it contradicted the values of their own constitution. Communism was kept in check. Black lives did not matter.

We are in the midst of a frenzied post-colonial “reckoning” but, with notable exceptions (like Vincent Bevin’s absorbing Jakarta Method, published last year), this reckoning has focused on events that took and take place on American soil. For all the interest in black people, there has been little interest, even on the Left, in the African continent — except as a historic victim of Europe. The enemy is 19th century colonialism, which gave rise to the slave trade; 20th century American imperialism has been largely ignored.

But as refugees pour out of Kabul, dragging the failures of American intervention into the spotlight, the revelations in White Malice are perfectly timed. Perhaps now we’ll collectively object to the fact that American companies  —  Apple, Google, Dell  —  are using child miners in Cobalt mines in the Congo. Perhaps we will realise that little has changed in America’s relationship to Africa since the Cold War.

Now Uganda is desperate for a fresh start. Once described by Winston Churchill as “a garden of sunshine and deadly nightshade”, the country’s hopes and optimism at independence curdled under the cruel regimes of Idi Amin and Milton Obote. So Museveni found fertile ground when he spoke at his inauguration in January 1986 about the need for “fundamental change” and how sovereign power must lie with the people rather than parasitic elites. “We have had one group getting rid of another one, only for it to turn out to be worse than the group it displaced,” he said.

The new president embraced market reforms, sparking a surge in growth and fall in poverty rates, then wrote a book asking What is Africa’s Problem? He answered his own riddle by saying “the problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power”. He took this message to neighbours such as Kenya, where he smiled impishly and repeated his incendiary suggestion in front of Daniel arap Moi to the joy of crowds frustrated by their own thuggish and thieving president. Yet at least Moi had the sense to stand down after 24 years of catastrophic rule, transforming himself into an elder statesman.

Today, Museveni is 76 years old, still on his gilded throne and resisting removal. His east African country is suffering under the rigid grip of his ruthless cronies as they milk the state coffers, desperately trying to whip up support with spurious claims of foreigners and homosexuals threatening society. His savage security forces beat, torture and kill his foes. And as he seeks a sixth term in office at today’s election, having bribed his supporters in parliament to overturn age and term limits, this president stands before his people as a symbol of the corrosive leadership issue that he so accurately diagnosed at the start of his rule.

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This time the main rival is not his former doctor, who challenged him at the last presidential election in 2016, but another rebellious younger man who symbolises a pent-up desire for change, freedom and real democracy. Bobi Wine, the self-styled ghetto president who was just four years old when Museveni took office, is a pop star who has shown immense bravery in face of assassination attempts, beatings, detention, harassment and slaughter of supporters. He campaigns in a bulletproof vest, wears a helmet and fears for his family, who have been sent abroad for safety. He offers little more than a new start for Uganda, travelling light on policy. But that is more than enough for many citizens in a country with mass youth unemployment and a median age of 17.

Wine, 38, was born Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu and grew up in a sprawling slum. He is an unlikely figure to be threatening such a wily political operator as Museveni as he attempts to leverage pop stardom into power. His mother, a nurse, warned him not to enter politics after her husband, a vet, was forced into exile under Obote. Instead, he went into music, picking his stage name in homage to Bob Marley and the idea that — like a good vintage — he grows better with age. He became a big star with a fusion of dancehall reggae, hip hop and a local Afrobeat style. Seven years ago he was banned from Britain over homophobic lyrics, although has since recanted and reportedly won over many in Uganda’s LGBT community.

Gradually his songs became more socially conscious and his passion for politics grew, seeing the chance to provide a voice for the impoverished masses being let down by their elderly leaders. Wine told Rolling Stone that the 2016 election was a turning point when he saw other singers paid to perform a song in praise of Museveni, but he rejected a substantial offer of cash and decided to take on the regime. “I realised nobody’s going to save us. We have to do it on our own. I knew it’d be much more effective if I didn’t only explain, I demonstrated. So I decided to run for office,” he told the magazine. “And, man, it opened a huge can of worms.”

So he shaved off his dreadlocks, donned sharp suits and became an MP in 2017 by a landslide, arguing that he was providing a voice for younger generations at the helm of the People Power Movement. “Our weapons are our words and our ideas, not arms of destruction and violence,” he said — yet the response has been brutal. Wine has been arrested repeatedly, badly tortured, stopped from performing and seen his driver shot dead as a warning to back down. Latterly, Covid has been used as an excuse to block rallies. The risks of challenging Museveni are clear: Kizza Besigye, the physician who stood against Museveni in previous elections, was charged with rape, treason, jailed and forced into temporary exile. Others simply disappear. “Why did such a prized revolutionary decide to become one of the world’s most despised dictators?” asked Wine in a BBC interview.

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Wine is not the first African pop star to run for president; Youssou N’Dour tried to win power in Senegal nine years ago before ending up as culture minister. Yet this struggle still has huge significance with a campaign cheered on beyond Uganda’s borders. “To me, he represents the spirit of Africa’s future,” said Wole Soyinka, the Nobel-winning playwright and a former political prisoner in Nigeria. Like many others, this grand old man of letters sees the contest as a crucial moment for Africa. Wine represents those younger generations who comprise the bulk of citizens in a rapidly-changing continent who are being failed by self-serving older leaders, frustrated by sluggish development and infuriated by grotesque corruption.

No doubt Museveni will rig the ballot again if needed. But as Ugandan voters go to the polls, Wine’s friends fear for his life. One just texted me to tell how the firm that installed the candidate’s home security system and guarded the house in Kampala for the past 12 years had suddenly turned up uninvited to remove it. Election observers from Europe and the United States are being denied access. Social media has been blocked, the internet slowed down. Troops are out in force in the urban areas that provide bedrock of his support. A tense country is steeled for this electoral struggle of cultures and generations, a clash between the impoverished streets and wealthy elites, a contest between those seeking change and those fearing more instability in a nation scarred by past turbulence. “It feels as though the country is at war,” said one prominent human rights lawyer.

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Yet Wine presents a challenge also to the complacency of nations such as Britain and the US, which proclaim democracy while ignoring blatant human rights abuses, pandering to elites and pouring aid into their bulging pockets. Museveni has played this game skilfully as he exploited conflict, refugees and the “War on terror” to keep funds flowing from naive paymasters abroad. “I’ve been working as a public health consultant on and off in Uganda for 20 years, a period when development agencies such as the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development spent $20 billion on aid projects in the country,” wrote Professor Helen Epstein in the New York Review of Books, explaining how she “looked on with dismay as the budgets of many of these projects were looted, elections were rigged, and innocent people who tried to draw attention to this were intimidated or worse”.

Such practises entrench inequality and stymie development — yet Britain’s aid agency in the past held up Uganda as proof that their policies promote democracy. Meanwhile Museveni’s forces have aided the bloodstained regime of his former spy chief Paul Kagame in Rwanda and pillaged the Democratic Republic of Congo with devastating consequences. He bought a private jet and was found to have ordered six Russian fighter aircraft at twice the market rate without parliamentary approval. Three years ago, I carried out an investigation in Uganda reaching into the highest levels of government that exposed rampant corruption, theft of aid, manipulation of statistics and sexual abuse of refugees. A United Nations review later confirmed dodgy land deals, lack of invoicing, overpayments, expense fiddles and untraceable workers.

Small wonder that polls show such fervent desire in the African nations still trapped under autocrats for fairer elections and greater freedoms. Whatever the result, Wine deserves great praise for his courage in drawing attention to the fierce desire for change among younger generations who deserve more from their venal leaders and festering regimes. “The people of Africa, the people of Uganda, are entitled to democratic government. It is not a favour from any government,” said Museveni in his inaugural speech all those years ago. “The government should not be the master, but the servant of the people.” Such fine words. How sad he ended up one of those ossified old men desperately clinging to power that he so despised.