Opposition MPs in the UK are not happy with Boris Johnson over comments supporting Britain’s colonial activities in Africa.

While a Tory MP, Johnson wrote in a 2002 article that colonialism in Africa should never have ended, arguing that Africans would not have grown the right crops for export if Britain had not directed them.

However, his 2002 article shows that Johnson has held the belief that British colonialism wasn’t a disaster while dismissing Britain’s role in slavery.

In 2002, before the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”

Writing on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s visits around the world, Johnson used the term “piccaninnies,” a racist term used to describe black children.