Monday, October 16, 2006

Mental Re-engineering of Africans


Occupying the Mind
“The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” Steven Biko.


Why is Africa different from other colonized cultures?

Africans are not the only peoples in the world to have been colonized. But something sets Africa apart- some incomprehensible vulnerability factor. Some strange loyalty to their past or present occupying and oppressive forces. An algophilic hedonistic yearning that seems to pull Africans continuously towards their historical and new sources of pains.

Any land could be occupied; any nation could be colonized under the flimsiest of excuses. The occupying force cannot however not be contented with occupying only the land, he actively seeks to re-engineer the mind of the oppressed peoples. The objective of the occupying force is dual in this regard. He seeks the mind of his victims not only to concede him legitimacy but also to make them see themselves through his own eyes. He seeks to re-create them in his own image by imposing his language as the official language of communication, his religion, his culture. In the words of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, he “dis-members” their way of life, their perception of themselves and “re-members” them in his own image. He seeks to create an imperfect version of himself, a clone amenable to the dictates of his short and long-term objectives of plundering.

In seeking to liberate themselves, oppressed people will be compelled to conduct their struggle on two fronts: liberation of their land and liberation of their mind. The order in which these struggles are conducted will determine the characteristics of the future liberated nation. The choice of the order of the struggles and the methods chosen to conduct them become enormous historical responsibility on the avant-garde intelligentsia and the political class of the oppressed peoples. Where the choice of freeing the mind before freeing the land is made, the avant-garde intelligentsia and the political elite are obliged to carefully examine the fundamental lapses and weaknesses that in the first place made the oppressed people vulnerable to occupation and exploitation from which they are seeking to liberate themselves. This analysis should not be conducted within the framework of any foreign ideology, but within the context of cultural and ethical peculiarities of the people concerned. There should be a deliberate policy to purge the people’s mind of the occupier’s pervasive hold and re-re-member it to its near original state.

Lamentably, in the absence of vision and ideas, African leaders have held on dearly to their colonial legacy, their re-engineered minds; and indeed transformed it into a status symbol. The more profound the mental re-engineering, the more sophisticated they portray themselves flaunting their short umbilical ties with their former oppressors. This short umbilical connection otherwise known as “historical ties” of the oppressed to his oppressor, the self-abasing algophilic hedonism not only deludes the oppressed into a false sense of common identity with his oppressor, but also serves as the Grail of discrimination against other Africans of different mental re-engineering and color of umbilical cords.

Thus, African francophones see themselves as having more in common with the French than with their African anglophone “brothers”, who also see themselves as kin of English speaking Western countries with nothing in common with their francophone neighbors. The lusophones stand world apart too, their brothers being the Portuguese. The mental re-engineering process begun in the 15th century have borne fruits. The primordial connection of traditions, culture and color, the common history of injustice, subjugation and humiliation become insignificant in the re-invented African.

It is lamentable that African leaders go out of their ways as a sign of prestige to belong to organizations (language schools) of former occupied countries like the so called Commonwealth, the CPLP (community of Portuguese speaking countries), the Francophonie. In their minds, it is a shame not to belong to these bodies, and they fight hard to retain their seat when they are threatened to be expelled like school boys from these bodies. They have failed to see these bodies as a reminder of the tragedy that befell us as peoples in 1884/1885.

Whatever benefits they think they reap from making us belong to these bodies should be weighed against the indignity and the humiliations of the historical raison d’être of these bodies.

The Way They See us - 1500 AD - 2006 AD

The Way they see us - 1500 AD - 2006 AD

Blacks are born blacks irrespective of where they are born or whatever nationality they may carry. The heritage of the color of their skin is primordial over all other social or political conditions of their environment. They face prejudices predicated on the color of their skin in any environment where they constitute a minority. Even here on African soil, the minority white population has by instinct arrogated a superior attitude to itself vis-à-vis its black hosts. In the mind of many people including the most liberal of other cultures, being a Black African is synonymous with all possible evils: diseases, wars, corruption, famine, drought, drugs and an infinite ineptitude to redeem himself from his precarious condition. This perception has its origins not only in the ease with which foreigners overran Africa and sentenced it to the periphery of humanity; but is also rooted in supremacist ideology and views of Western scholars, politicians and the clergy.

Georges Curvier, a French biologist, once wrote that “the African manifestly approaches the monkey tribe. The hordes of which this variety is composed have always remained in a complete state of barbarism…”[i] This position was also shared by America’s Thomas Jefferson who wrote “...I advance it therefore as a suspicion only that the blacks whether originally a distinct race or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of the mind and body…"

John Hanning Speke, British Explorer, in the 1860s said this of Africans: “As his father did, so does he. He works his wife, sells his children, enslaves all he can lay his hands upon, and unless fighting for the lands of others, contents himself with drinking, singing, and dancing like a baboon, to drive dull care away.”

Hegel in his Philosophy of History, also said this of Africans: "their condition is capable of no development of culture, and as we see them at this day, such they have always been.."

Hendrick Verwoerd, the architect of grand apartheid said in 1953 “Natives will be taught from childhood to realize that equality with Europeans is not for them”[ii]. He said further, “there is no place for the black in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour.” Hendrick Verwoerd deserves credit for giving credence to Malcom X’s beliefs, by expressing clearly in public what others have shied away from saying but have always manifested covertly as an accepted fact of life, a societal behavior-regulatory philosophy. Britain’s Lord Milner also had this to say of early South African politics: “A political equality of white and black is impossible, the white man must rule because he is elevated by many, many steps above the black man”[iii].

And Frantz Fanon in his book, “Wretched of the Earth” claimed that WHO’s Dr. Carothers in the nineteen fifties crowned it all by arriving at the conclusion that the black man is equivalent to a lobotomized white man[iv].

Have these views changed over time or have they been closeted in the recesses of politically correct behavior?

The seams of blanket of “human rights” sewn with deluding threads of politically correct statements and behaviour are beginning to fall apart. No one, except the most naïve of Africans, is surprised on this side of the planet.

History is repeating itself, not only in events but also in words. Nicolas Sarkozy, parroting Georges Curvier, claims that Africans are simply different human beings from others. Although he did not say to which category he classes them, but we understand the unsaid. Christoph Blocher in a statement, quite reminiscent of John Hanning Speke and Hegel, claims that Africans are lazy and are a lost case. These two are not saying any thing new.

Africans can only thank them for expressing their views in a bare-knuckled manner. At least we know where we stand with the likes of them. I’d rather live with a thousand Blochers and Sarkozys than with patronizing, deceitful and manipulating politically correct western politicians.

It is time for Africans to show the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy and Christoph Blocher, who have thrown away the shock-absorbing gloves of politically-correct behaviour and those that use it as a curtain to hide behind, but share the same views with these two that, yes, Africa has what it takes to face up to the challenges confronting it.

[i] Georges Curvier: The Animal Kingdom, (1827-35),
[ii] Martin Meredith: Nelson Mandela, A Biography. Penguin Books
1997
[iii] Martin Meredith: Nelson Mandela, A Biography. Penguin Books
1997
[iv] Frantz Fanon. Wretched of the Earth. Penguin Books 2001.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Christianity, Islam and Africans - On Pope' Benedict's Comments

The pope, the mullahs, their prophets, and poor Africans.

As a representative of former “heathen/infidel” victims of swords of christianity and islam, I say both religions stand guilty of what they accuse each other of. As it was, before, during, and many more centuries after the Byzantine era, Christianity used twisted logic and perverted “Hellenic” reasoning to perpetrate injustices and atrocities, and Islam employed intolerance and outright oppression for the same purpose on African soil. None of the two has any right to mount the moral horse. We are still living the legacy of their passage through our shores, even many centuries after.

The Janjaweed Creed

The Janjaweed Creed

The atrocities being perpetrated in Darfour did not begin only a few years back. It only came to light when the yoke became too heavy to bear for the black population and the historical victims took their first organized steps to question the “life and death” hold of their Arab “masters”. Unused to any voice of disobedience or any dissent from their erstwhile submissive slaves, the “masters” chose to exercise their “right” of “life and death” over their “property”. They chose death and unleashed it mercilessly among the dissenters – men, women and children.
Anyone interested in African history knows that black Africans have always been at the receiving end of all forms of humiliation in the hands of Arabs for more than a thousand years. I have seen black African slaves. I saw them only last year. Yes! Slaves, as in being completely owned by their Arab or Moor masters as one owns a radio or a TV, a goat or a chicken. Darfour is an example of many cases of injustices being perpetrated against black Africans on African soil. It has a pattern. It is a creed as in this exposed Janjaweed Creed in Sudan. I can only think of this creed in verses.

Janjaweed Creed
(Black Africans in the hands of Arabs in Sudan 10AD-2006)

Catch them. Sell them.
Buy them. Barter them.
One horse for twenty,
One ass for ten
…………arses,
boys, girls, it doesn’t matter.
Let off the steam of caravan engines on virgin soils.
Zurq tight. Succulent melons.

Leave the hell of the sands,
friction demons.
Seek paradise, live the life of kings,
It is all there black as the night,
right under your nose, disrobed, un-turbaned.

Pack eggs, carry cream,
don’t spill, don’t touch.
Kick mind off the caress
of the hump of satanic camel.
Humphallic treachery.

Pray to ward off temptation,
roquefort aroma of the missus.
Leave a thousand and one nights unvisited.
Sin..bad. Bad...sin.
Bribe the blood with tea, a little mint,
watch the dates, priapic demons,
afro...., nah! Ah-rabodisiac.
Paradise is just ahead.

Habibi! Here it is !

Convert the land,
you have the milk, they have the honey,
monochrome labial, rectum juvenilum,
Almo…ravish. Zurq tight.
Let the land flow with your milk and their honey.

You have the sword,
they have the heads,
heathen balloons, godless baboons,
capitum emptorum,
Zurq pest.
Hack! Flood the valley with unholy blood.

You have the sun, they have the faces,
visage of the devil, maskum infidelum,
Zurq disposable.
Put their necks in casts
turn their faces to the east.

You have the pliers, they have the nuts,
castrate some: good guard dogs,
harness some for the plough “four legs good, two legs better”
homo kaffir multi-utilitarium.
Zurq despised.

It is weeding season,
weed the rest,
thumb the nose at the sanctimonious west,
round up the leftovers,
cut their stem, scatter the branches,
burn the roots.

Undo their DNA.
Homo negro demonicum,
Zurq parasite.

Cleanse the land.