Introduction
A closer look at Africa from
inside and outside suggest among other movements a renewal of enduring
tensions between forces at various scales since 2020. These tensions seem to have
ebbed away or rather receded from the 1990s following the collapse of the
Soviet Union. However post-collapse didn’t bring positive growth on most Africa’s
indicators of life for the majority. Bad situations got worse before advancing
to a freefall from 2011 to the present. The forces driving this collective
holistic degeneration of peoples are consistent, unwavering and predictable.
For many reasons, the intellectual springs and most African intellectuals
either ignore the true underlying currents or fail to appreciate the reality of
their structural power. Our focus in this output is to unveil two features of
these gaps both of which reinforce each other.
Function of Time
Most readings of Africa’s experience even among Africans on the continent and in diaspora flow from unquestioned imposed timelines. Even when the timelines are appropriated, the substance of outcomes offer lightweight testimonies of positively disruptive solutions to facts of the ground. In most cases timelines are presented as mostly short and medium, both of which are insufficient and insignificant for comprehensive investigation of complexity. The popular timeline is the 1950s – 1960s given as disruptive when colonial powers or rather European elite offered most African nationalist leaders flag independence. If critical reflection is tolerated, such gestures of deceit were made without compensation after an average of 100 years of violent imposition. None of the colonial structures, philosophy, strategy and institutions including religions were radically changed. Just a change of personnel!
A wrong reading of pre-flag
independence endured from colonial miseducation policies with its brainwashing
operations and reductionist curricula. While indigenous neocolonial
leaders pretend to offer credible alternatives, their policies only reinforced
colonial agenda. Colonial oppression, massacres and genocide of millions of
indigenous Africans were extended with radical passion in the name of national
security. Many intellectuals move to uncritically glorify colonial excesses and
even make pyrrhic distinctions between the British, Portuguese, Belgian and the
French as if oppression and genocides as categories operated strictly along those lines.
Sadly, indigenous leaders
including intellectuals since 1950s – 1960s settled for perpetuating false
narratives of European superiority while failing repeatedly to show positive
replications on the grounds. These deluded minds only feast on their illusions
in so far as their lower appetites located in narrow personal interest are
satisfied. They seek legitimacy without solidarity. There was nothing for the community and the peoples. The illusion is
propagated in universities, secondary and primary schools in state-sanctioned
intellectual poisoning of generations via public education. Till this day,
cheerleaders with numerous degrees and rabid spokespersons in high places
including religions continue to wax lyrical for indigenous mass degeneration. Colonialism
in all its forms have no positive, it is an inherently evil geopolitical and
geoeconomic strategy implemented by European elite with premeditated mass
murder from institutional violence.
Civilisational Appeal
While colonialism in all its
forms is evil regardless of timeline and executor, an extended timeline opens a
wider frame for appraising it without diminishing the features of its operation
in Africa. There are enduring core African principles recognised across diverse
communities. These are family, community, religion and learning. This is the
bedrock of millennia of civilisations and developments across the continents
during periods of ascendance and instability respectively. Internal contexts
offer useful insights on how peoples organise and developed. A longer time frame
favour broader outlines of principles and features of mechanisms. Civilisations
are never static and aren’t imposed to change radically in very short periods.
Africa for the most part is an exporter of life and dispenser of true nobility.
The last 500 years has
validated Europe as a geography of regression for Africans whose main products
and exports to Africa till this day are evil and death. All European
institutions and elite are united in their conviction that their boots of
impunity and oppression on the neck of Africans is normative. This is a
systematic geostrategic initiative with consistent resonance and sustaining
power in each generation. Unfortunately most African intellectuals prefer to disinterestedly
essentialise this clear stream of intergenerational construct against the
strategic interest of their peoples. They offer no counter-narrative or
contrary presentations. For those whose lands and peoples where subject to the
gravest holocaust for over 300 years, in the form of international trade in African persons, intellectual dishonesty is intolerable. It is not so much that European
elite spare their own peoples, no. The so-called first and second world wars
with millions of fatalities are indisputable testimonies. European peoples
worth less than their projected profits.
The idea that European elite
offer shining examples for Africa’s advancement is reprehensive. To suggest
that an uncritical implementation of so-called European theories and strategies
for the strategic uplifting all Africans including the dead without taking into
account indigenous cosmologies, civilisational realities and unique
experiential categories is fraudulent. The avoidance of asymmetrical response and
critical interrogation of foreign ideas, experiences, hypothesis and theories prior to
implementation is the fountain of most African intellectuals. They are not only
blind to inherent goodness of Africans, they accentuate their ignorance by explicating
their own ontological poverty, thoughtlessness and historical unconsciousness.
Conclusion
The current global
geopolitical conflagration is a strong sign of the times, a slow transition to
an irreversible phase. Our reflection reaffirm the inherent evil of colonialism and delineate
Europe as a space of evil and death (for Africans collectively), its enduring
primary exports to Africa. Europe is not an example, its elite are
strategically conditioned to go violently against Africa’s interest. Most
African intellectuals have refused or failed to acknowledge consistent facts,
patterns and relationships. The currency of new reactions and tentative
counter-actions in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are the first robust entrée to indigenous
appropriation of history since the 1960s. While it is too early to draw
conclusions, all the hallmarks of indigenous resistance to European elite and defacing
of flag independence are undeniable in these territories.
