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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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30 June 2010 By Reason Wafawarova
GIVING a lecture at Wellesley College in Boston,
Massachu-setts, Louis Farrakhan had this to say; "We
are not oppressed because we are Black; we are
oppressed because we are ignorant. It is ignorance
that keeps us on the bottom, not Blackness."
Many times we are made to think so much against the
blackness of our skin, to fight that blackness and to
try and change it.
It is not the blackness of the African skin that we
must be fighting but the darkness of our ignorance,
the blackness of a deep-seated lack of knowledge.
It is this kind of ignorance that makes the life of
an African a life of contradictions.
We inherited, cherished and perpetuated colonial
educational systems that make us dumb, that teach us
not to think; welfare systems that keep us poor and
perpetually dependant, foreign aid that keeps our
nations in a permanent state of poverty, religious
establishments that are going to send us to hell; we
embrace international laws that maintain inequality.
There is this vain motivation that makes our people
seek an education.
Many of our people believe that knowledge is meant
to make us acquire a decent home, a good job, a nice
car and a decent savings account.
Real knowledge must make the African provide decent
homes to others, provide good jobs, manufacture nice
cars and own banks where other people can have decent
savings.
We need to evolve from a system of contradictions
that is often projected in our African parents, a
system that creates self-defeating attitudes, negative
self-perceptions and frustrations. We have allowed the
global charity industry to grow into a billion-dollar
enterprise at our own expense.
The West is now awash with professional
philanthropists whom we consider helping professionals
— ultimately helping themselves to us, rather than
helping us.
They have earned obscenely comfortable lives in the
name of our perpetual plight, and the educated among
us choose to join their ranks and to maintain the
status quo of our so-called Dark Continent.
As Amos N Wilson noted in the book "The
Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness", the response
of some of our African people to the contradictions of
the world order dictated to us by the Westerner is
"over-compensation".
We see some people who will strive to prove to the
white folk that we blacks are the greatest in the
world.
Wilson argues that sometimes we notice a success by
our own black people that is, in fact based on
failure; a success that can be considered to be in
itself a type of failure.
This is the type of success that is void of
satisfaction and peace — a success that makes someone
feel psychologically cheated.
This is success that comes with obsession and
compulsiveness, and many times it is this kind of
success that gets some African leaders piling up
stolen monies in European banks.
We aspire to be like this wonderful white image of
success that we actually want to disappear into the
white man so we can prove that we have made it to be
like him; and to have our money in the same banks with
him, have our kids studying and staying in the
homeland of the wonderful white man.
We feel unsafe to keep within Africa whatever
riches we acquire because we always see imminent
disaster pursuing us — imminent disaster created by
the pressure that pushes us to emulate the lifestyle
of the foreigner in the West, a lifestyle we feel is
threatened by the sea of poverty-stricken masses
surrounding us.
The reality of the world we live in today is that
the white man dominates other races in as far as world
affairs are concerned; economically, politically and
even militarily. Caucasian people are not at our stage
of development in Africa.
We are coming out of colonialism, we are struggling
under imperialism; and we are still grappling from a
dark night of ignorance.
The Caucasian should not think that Western
evolution makes him superior. The Caucasian comes not
from such a great background himself.
These are people who struggled with life in the
hills and caves of Europe. They did not know how to
bury their dead or how to cook their food, and the
British are still not the best of cooks.
Yet you hardly ever hear the Europeans ever talking
about their beginnings. You do not find Europeans
glorifying the caves. It is nothing to talk about.
They have put that behind them and they have moved on,
and we must equally evolve from our past into a bright
future that we shape for ourselves.
We cannot be studying Egyptology so that we can
prove to the white man how great we are, or hope that
one day when the white man admits and acknowledges
that Egyptians were black Africans — then he will
accept us as human beings.
Our study of Egyptology or that of the greatness of
African architecture at Great Zimbabwe; cannot be a
collective defence mechanism, or a means of dealing
with our hurt pride. We cannot use our past as a means
of trying to slip into the acceptance of white people.
We cannot hang-up with history and exaggerate
certain of our achievements as a way of salvaging our
damaged ego.
We always have this ache of inferiority that never
seems to go away. Our people study and graduate in
their thousands from various universities, but the
sense of inferiority persists.
This is because our motivation is wrong; it is
because we are pushed by the wrong reasons.
The problem with this kind of motivation is that
even if we manage to replace those who oppress and
rule over us, we will only end up being exactly like
them. Wrong motivations set our minds up for being
inculcated and possessed by the very devil we fight
against.
This is why we need to change the way Africa is
proceeding right now, otherwise another revolution
will have to be fought; and it will have to be fought
against us.
This is not a revolution by Caucasian-sponsored
political parties, the so-called "pro-democracy"
parties and so forth. We are talking of a revolution
of African masses seeking to free themselves from
imitators of the Caucasian; from people who respond to
Western domination and oppression by over-compensating
themselves in a bid to catch up with the white folk.
We cannot build African economies on development
aid. That brings a victory that leaves the taste of
ashes in our mouths. African economic success is not a
matter of making it in the system that has been set up
by the European. It is a matter of questioning that
very system.
Our success is not just a matter of equality within
the system but a result of critical analysis of the
entire system.
It is not enough for us Africans to look at the
system and react with rage, apathy, stereotypy,
paranoia, suspicion, depression or mania. We cannot
confront this system with bourgeoisie nationalism
either.
We have to be very careful and make sure that we do
not see our suffering masses as only in dire need of
comprehensive lessons in liberation history, the great
history of Africa, lofty ideals of morality,
patriotism, sovereignty and so forth.
What we are fighting against is what Apostle Paul
called "principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual
wickedness in high places." This is what the Imperial
system led by the United States is like.
We are not fighting just a mindset of a repressive
people. We are fighting against real flesh and blood
people who control the world’s economic system, its
social system, and its military system.
Though of great importance, mere knowledge about
our liberation legacy, our great African history,
morality, patriotism, or sovereignty is not going to
be enough to extricate us from the situation we are in
today as Africans.
We need to dismantle the system established in
Africa by the Westerner and not seek to survive within
its dictates; not to emulate it and hope for the best.
We cannot keep looking at white, yellow, or brown
people; crying endlessly about our own condition. It
is time we learn what there is in order to evolve on
our own — not to aspire to evolve into whiteness.
Louis Farrakhan pointed out that when an embryo is
being formed, the first thing to be formed is the head
and after it has developed then hands and other limbs
are formed.
God knows the futility of giving hands and limbs
without a head. It is the head that tells limbs what
to do.
Yet post-independent Africa agrees to a world
economic order headed by the G8 and by its former
colonisers.
Africa agrees to a UN Security Council headed by
five non-African countries, and Africa agrees to an
International Criminal Court whose entire trials list
is made up of five African countries and 13
individuals all from Africa — and that in a period of
12 years.
How can we as Africans say we can do without our
own global leader economically, politically and at
international law?
Why are we wondering that our hands have done next
to nothing?
What do you do with only your hands and feet?
Dance Kwasa kwasa?
Does that build a nation?
The Westerner has sought to be our head so that we
remain his hands and feet. In fact labourers are
literally called "general hands" by those who own and
run industries.
Every African leader who has stood for black people
has been castigated, demonised, and many have been
destroyed. Zimbabweans must simply forget about
working positively with Westerners until President
Mugabe is fatally discredited or even destroyed.
No amount of progress will make Westerners ever
work with such a strong African leader who chooses to
stand and defend the rights of his own people. That is
the fate of Zimbabwe’s inclusive Government.
They did not agree to work with Kwame Nkrumah,
Gamal Abdel Nasser, Thomas Sankara, Samora Machel,
Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Haile Selassie or
Kenneth Kaunda.
These are some of our African nationalists who
sought to head the economic affairs of the African
continent and they were castigated, demonised,
assassinated, murdered in cold blood, and discredited
as examples never to be followed.
Africa is a continent with a long history of a
people that have not been treated right. It is a
wonder that we somehow think that the people who did
not treat us right in the past can teach us right
today.
We continue to seek total dependency on the
Caucasian for food, clothing, education, shelter and
employment. We even think that Caucasians can teach us
democracy.
What rank naivety!
Our minds have been fed wrong and we behave wrong.
Our youth hate themselves and are ashamed of the
blackness of our skin.
How could we be fed properly and yet we hate
ourselves?
How can we say we are well educated and yet we deny
ourselves?
How do we expect other people to love us and yet we
do not love ourselves?
How do we expect other people to respect us and yet
we do not respect ourselves?
Why should we expect other people to do for us what
we are unwilling to do for ourselves?
When one looks at how the Westerner has sought to
steal, plunder, exploit, suppress, oppress and
enslave, it becomes no exaggeration to say man has
become so weak and wicked that he has lowered himself
to the level of a beast.
Western knowledge is being used to destroy rather
than to build. That behaviour is beastly in nature.
The US calls itself the world leader today but it
uses its knowledge to destroy the planet and so many
nationalities.
We are not being taught by human beings but by
deadly beasts. It is a wonder the world is expected to
show human qualities when we are being led and taught
by beasts.
When our people are feeding from the Western
teacher of democracy, they are feeding from death
itself.
All that is wanted through the "democratisation
process" is to create client regimes and to own and
control our people, as well as our resources.
Farrakhan warned the United States to be careful
about its foreign policy doctrine of maintaining its
position of supremacy by might.
He said, "When you suck the blood of the peoples of
the world, at some point there is going to be a
natural combustion because people are going to revolt
against the man who knows and kept knowledge from
others to oppress, enslave and exploit them."
Is Africa heading for this revolting or are we
still in the comfort zone of putting up with
subjugation and inferiority?
Africa we are one and together we will overcome.
It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can
be contacted on
wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk or reason@rwafawaro va.com
or visit
www.rwafawarova.com
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