Is it Africa's Turn* by Marxist Kola
For too long in the history of Africa,
Africa has spoken through the voice of others who are microscopic.
Africa, like other continents, is always in transition cum
transmogrification. Its map, fortunes and history have changed overtime.
It must be noted that African history reveals both continuity and
change. Many traditions and institutions have always been carried
forward, but changes and new ideas are constant. Africa is the second
largest continent, is the most central with most of its land mass in the
tropics. Today, it is divided into more than fifty countries with a
population of over 660 million.
Environment influenced the people's modus vivendi as they struggled to adapt. The survival of the communities and individuals were tied to the apron string of the land, as the majority of the population worked as farmers and herders. The fauna coexisted with humans. Where there was a need for space, food and other animal product, people encroached upon the fauna. The fauna supplied valuable materials for building, food, medicine and other products. Africa is diverse in ethnicities, religions, and languages and different agents of imperial control. The countries of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt) often claim to be different from Sub-Saharan Africa because they have been influenced by Islam and they share ties with South West Asia and the Mediterranean. [But] There were many similarities in past histories and cultures. Descent groups formed the building blocks of society. Individual rights were less important than community rights. Many aspects of culture were common, such as occupations, respect for elders cum authority, religious beliefs, attitude to land and social groups constructed in kingship.
For centuries, Africa was misconceptualized and humiliated by the outside world which promoted many ignorant, pseudo ideas to bamboozle homosapiens. To some, it was a 'dark continent' inhabited by savages. To others, it has no history and philosophy. The transatlantic slave trade and European imperialism encouraged racist ideas in which Africans were regarded as inferiors. Many of these pseudo views are intended to justify the exploitation of a continent and the imposition of imperial control. Not only is African history one of the most dynamic in human civilization, its people have also contributed substantially both to their own development and that of other continents. One of the intellectual achievement of the 20th century is the unraveling of the history of Africa [which dis]proved all the capitalist cum European writers wrote on their postulation about Africa. Presently, Africa is not yet uhuru because Our birthrights have been sold to the whites.
Is it Africa's turn? Franz Fanon, an African philosopher, was extremely pessimist on the question of Africa's turn. He submitted that the new African leaders would add insult to injury by creating an atmosphere of rancour, exacerbation, frustration and vendetta, capable of dividing the nation into warring or ethnic religious groups and that once that is accomplished, the attention of the people [will be] diverted. Their enemies are no longer the colonialist, not even their corrupt new leaders but members of the other ethnic groups, professional organisations or the other religious faith. Fanon saw those leaders as the true traitors in Africa for they sold their countries to the most terrifying of all enemies: STUPIDITY. The greatest wealth will now be surrounded by the greatest poverty. What Fanon pontificated long ago portrays a sordid but true picture of what has been happening in almost every African nation since independence.
Nigeria, my country, is a locus classicus of abject penury in the midst of plenty, economic quagmire in the midst of eldorado, political hugger-mugger in the midst of political resurgimento, socio-cultural imbroglio. Nigeria has become a country of one million millionaires and hundred million beggars. Today, she has fallen from the enviable of economic prosperity and socio-political advancement to the lowest depth of poverty, disease, despair and anarchic destructiveness because the nation's central authority has been bastardize by years of political brinkmanship, insincerity, ineffective and inept leadership, corruption, moral decadence, general insecurity of lives and property as well as a national ethoes of indiscipline, disregard for constituted authority and flagrant abuse of fundamental human rights. No wonder Professor Chinua Achebe, Nigerian born writer said 'The trouble with Africa is simply and squarely the failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the African land or climate or individual and collective psyche or anything else. Instead the African problem is the heartless unwillingness and unacceptable inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibilities and challenges of personal example, which are the hallmarks of true leadership.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe has a vision in the new age, the age of renascent Africa, the continent will be free, strong, and virile. It [is] an Africa that has suddenly emerged from the shackles of combined forces that had crippled and labeled her a DARK CONTINENT; it [is] an Africa that [is] rapidly shaking off the yoke of colonial bondage with a resolute finality, raising her head among the comity of nations and [can] now stand firmly on its two feet; it [is] an Africa that demand[s] redress for the wrongs done to her children with a dogmatic persistence. In the end, Azikiwe [sees] that Africa the plundered continent [is] now spiritually balanced, socially regenerated, mentally emancipated, economically deterministic and politically resurgimento.
Going by the situation prevalent in contemporary Africa, these expectations of the great Nigerian Statesman may remain in the realms of idea, never to be realised in reality. [I am] not ashamed to say that it is not Africa's turn, my basic reason being that while it was the Europeans that embarked on the ruthless task of the underdevelopment of Africa in then colonial era, in the contemporary neo-colonial state of affairs, African leaders are now viciously and mindlessly exacerbating the further development of underdevelopment in the continent.
Present African leaders need to study Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Sengor, Joseph Ki-Zebro, Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela, Walter Susuli, Alex Quaison- Sackey, Jomo Kenyatta etc.
BY Marxist Kola
*I am greatly indebted to Marxist for submitting this piece and adding another perspective to the dialogue on this blog. I am looking to make this question of "Is it Africa's Turn" a series of perspectives on the continent from anyone willing to share their own. I shared mine here: http://aplaceforhuey.blogspot.com/2012/11/is-it-africas-turn.html. If you have a perspective on this subject or any material on the continent of Africa, please feel free to email it to me at bbridget713@gmail.com.
Environment influenced the people's modus vivendi as they struggled to adapt. The survival of the communities and individuals were tied to the apron string of the land, as the majority of the population worked as farmers and herders. The fauna coexisted with humans. Where there was a need for space, food and other animal product, people encroached upon the fauna. The fauna supplied valuable materials for building, food, medicine and other products. Africa is diverse in ethnicities, religions, and languages and different agents of imperial control. The countries of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt) often claim to be different from Sub-Saharan Africa because they have been influenced by Islam and they share ties with South West Asia and the Mediterranean. [But] There were many similarities in past histories and cultures. Descent groups formed the building blocks of society. Individual rights were less important than community rights. Many aspects of culture were common, such as occupations, respect for elders cum authority, religious beliefs, attitude to land and social groups constructed in kingship.
For centuries, Africa was misconceptualized and humiliated by the outside world which promoted many ignorant, pseudo ideas to bamboozle homosapiens. To some, it was a 'dark continent' inhabited by savages. To others, it has no history and philosophy. The transatlantic slave trade and European imperialism encouraged racist ideas in which Africans were regarded as inferiors. Many of these pseudo views are intended to justify the exploitation of a continent and the imposition of imperial control. Not only is African history one of the most dynamic in human civilization, its people have also contributed substantially both to their own development and that of other continents. One of the intellectual achievement of the 20th century is the unraveling of the history of Africa [which dis]proved all the capitalist cum European writers wrote on their postulation about Africa. Presently, Africa is not yet uhuru because Our birthrights have been sold to the whites.
Is it Africa's turn? Franz Fanon, an African philosopher, was extremely pessimist on the question of Africa's turn. He submitted that the new African leaders would add insult to injury by creating an atmosphere of rancour, exacerbation, frustration and vendetta, capable of dividing the nation into warring or ethnic religious groups and that once that is accomplished, the attention of the people [will be] diverted. Their enemies are no longer the colonialist, not even their corrupt new leaders but members of the other ethnic groups, professional organisations or the other religious faith. Fanon saw those leaders as the true traitors in Africa for they sold their countries to the most terrifying of all enemies: STUPIDITY. The greatest wealth will now be surrounded by the greatest poverty. What Fanon pontificated long ago portrays a sordid but true picture of what has been happening in almost every African nation since independence.
Nigeria, my country, is a locus classicus of abject penury in the midst of plenty, economic quagmire in the midst of eldorado, political hugger-mugger in the midst of political resurgimento, socio-cultural imbroglio. Nigeria has become a country of one million millionaires and hundred million beggars. Today, she has fallen from the enviable of economic prosperity and socio-political advancement to the lowest depth of poverty, disease, despair and anarchic destructiveness because the nation's central authority has been bastardize by years of political brinkmanship, insincerity, ineffective and inept leadership, corruption, moral decadence, general insecurity of lives and property as well as a national ethoes of indiscipline, disregard for constituted authority and flagrant abuse of fundamental human rights. No wonder Professor Chinua Achebe, Nigerian born writer said 'The trouble with Africa is simply and squarely the failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the African land or climate or individual and collective psyche or anything else. Instead the African problem is the heartless unwillingness and unacceptable inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibilities and challenges of personal example, which are the hallmarks of true leadership.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe has a vision in the new age, the age of renascent Africa, the continent will be free, strong, and virile. It [is] an Africa that has suddenly emerged from the shackles of combined forces that had crippled and labeled her a DARK CONTINENT; it [is] an Africa that [is] rapidly shaking off the yoke of colonial bondage with a resolute finality, raising her head among the comity of nations and [can] now stand firmly on its two feet; it [is] an Africa that demand[s] redress for the wrongs done to her children with a dogmatic persistence. In the end, Azikiwe [sees] that Africa the plundered continent [is] now spiritually balanced, socially regenerated, mentally emancipated, economically deterministic and politically resurgimento.
Going by the situation prevalent in contemporary Africa, these expectations of the great Nigerian Statesman may remain in the realms of idea, never to be realised in reality. [I am] not ashamed to say that it is not Africa's turn, my basic reason being that while it was the Europeans that embarked on the ruthless task of the underdevelopment of Africa in then colonial era, in the contemporary neo-colonial state of affairs, African leaders are now viciously and mindlessly exacerbating the further development of underdevelopment in the continent.
Present African leaders need to study Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Sengor, Joseph Ki-Zebro, Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela, Walter Susuli, Alex Quaison- Sackey, Jomo Kenyatta etc.
BY Marxist Kola
*I am greatly indebted to Marxist for submitting this piece and adding another perspective to the dialogue on this blog. I am looking to make this question of "Is it Africa's Turn" a series of perspectives on the continent from anyone willing to share their own. I shared mine here: http://aplaceforhuey.blogspot.com/2012/11/is-it-africas-turn.html. If you have a perspective on this subject or any material on the continent of Africa, please feel free to email it to me at bbridget713@gmail.com.
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