(and a global industry will keep it that way unless we have leadership that helps us take intelligent risks)
A. Introduction
This article is my brainwave reaction to an innocent tweet article by a very beautiful Tanzanian young lady who posted her picture a few days ago, to self-congratulate in the following terms: I am black but beautiful. I went in overdrive:
As if being black and beautiful were mutually exclusive (therefore her being both was an exception to, and confirmed a rule);
As if she is humbled and grateful for the honour of belonging in some beauty club, despite the perception that she did not deserve it;
As if she felt the need to apologize (to some entity controlling the definition of beauty) for daring to be beautiful.
As if she was saying: I tried to stay away from beauty because of my blackness, but…
Clearly, there are forces representing an insidious industry that perpetuates (and makes a fortune of) this mental enslavement of people. So, I proposed a correction, which she gladly agreed to as closer to what she meant. Black and beautiful, or better still, beautiful because I am black. It still remains that this mental block and self-depreciation are systemic, cultivated over the long-term, a carefully crafted mental hierarchy designed to perpetuate slavery, while escaping the obnoxious public name-calling. The same system that put a whole 20% of the world in the category of Sub-Saharan AFRICA. And we all just adopted the discourse of the illustrious learned from the north. So, let me make a few forceful points of coloniality, starting precisely with the fallacy: SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA.
I did some reading and researched and came across the following article, from where I extract two quotes:
Sub-Saharan Africa: History, Politics & Racist Connotation (africafactszone.com) visited on 05 May 2023
QUOTE
[…] What is defined as Sub-Saharan Africa
The region of the African continent south of the Sahara Desert is referred to as sub-Saharan Africa. […]
The dark-skinned populations south of the Sahara were more isolated from the rest of the world than those in the north, where Arab culture and Islam had a greater effect. […]
The phrase “sub-Saharan Africa” is frequently used despite making little sense and obviously having racial geopolitical connotations. A growing number of broadcasters, websites, news organizations, newspapers, magazines, the United Nations and its allied organizations, as well as some governments, authors, and academics, appear to be using the term “sub-Saharan Africa” to refer to all of Africa, with the exception of the five primarily Arab states of north Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt), and Sudan, a nation in north-central Africa. […]
However, the classification “sub-Saharan Africa” is useless, ridiculous, and deceptive. Its use goes against the principles of geography as understood by science and gives racial stereotyping and tired labels precedence. […]
Unquestionably, the term “Sub-Saharan Africa” serves as a racist geopolitical hallmark whose users continually seek to convey the desolation, aridity, and despair of a desert environment.
UNQUOTE
B. My considerations
The article is long and includes statements we may not agree with at times. Such as the isolation of Africa: one has only to read the history of Mali, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Zanzibar to remember for instance the Ambassadors of Angola to the Vatican way back in the 17th century. And the trade across the Sahara. However, to its merit, the article above concludes somewhere as follows:
QUOTE
[…] Its proponents will eventually succeed in replacing the name of the continent, “Africa,” with “sub-Sahara Africa,” or, worse yet, “sub-Saharans,” in the realm of public memory and reckoning, unless this steadily pervasive use of the term is vigorously challenged by rigorous African-centered scholarship and publicity work.
UNQUOTE
Both culturally and geographically, the areas divided by the Sahara are unique. Unique are also East Africa from West Africa, and from Central Africa, and from Southern Africa. Trying to force and reinforce the compartmentalization of Africa into separate entities is a futile attempt at whitewashing the history of belonging, in order to impose through carefully-prepared and data-supported discourses the politics of division and exclusion.
Let me narrate a few other incidents to confirm for all of us the need for a cultural de-colonization:
The debate about Cleopatra and the overwhelmingly virulent Egyptian reaction to the suggestion that Cleopatra may have been black. To the point of suing Netflix! I am sure we all have read the argument: that she is rather Hellenic or Arian, or something else, everything but black. Why would Egypt have an issue with being black? Thank you Cheikh. Thank you Kevin Hart.
I have seen at play in a bar in Tanzania, not too long ago, in fact, in 2022, the simplest mindset of colour as a mental determinant of social position and the resulting social behaviour: I went into a bar with my family, and ten minutes later two white fellows entered the same bar. You can rest assured, two waiters precipitated themselves on the white couple before they came to us. Probably unconsciously and entirely not maliciously, but wired in the brain of the African: a deference to the white hue.
After 18 years in the field as an employee of a UN organization, I applied for, and got a post in Geneva. So, I lived and worked in Switzerland, twice by the way. Immediately I reported to the office for the first time, my Unit colleagues started with humiliating micro-aggressions: “oh, so you too have come to work in Geneva? It is not like Africa eh!” The arrogance of comparing Geneva to Africa? Rather Tete, my small town in Mozambique, is comparable to Geneva, although of course, we have made a mess of it (a poor town full of resources that foreign companies are extracting out of!). Still, that is how comparisons are made: town-for-town, not town-for-country, much less town-for-continent. Mental colonial block!
Perverted results: it is planted in the African mind, through advertising, the film industry bombardment, the media, the publicities and speeches, that life is better in Europe and that the rest of us, all we are doing is wallowing in abject poverty (as they say in French, on vivote!). Pay attention to the adjectives that come in buckets! Anybody to the north of us seems to feel they belong in an exclusive club where the hoi-poloi, us of the South are not welcome. They now have invented another big English expression: the Global South. What a mouthful! An attitude industry that keeps inventing whitewashed expressions!
Well, that North has been, and continues to be, built on the resources of the South. Everybody knows it. Suddenly, they realize that there was this demographic shift that, left unchecked, constitutes a menace. We were crowding at their borders. They then decided to expand their borders at Valetta by defining the Sahara Desert as their neighbourhood, and decided that people shall be kept south of the Sahara. Naturally, those African countries to the North of the desert became opportunistic allies for the purpose and do collaborate in putting up a terrifying inhuman barrier, including abandoning people in the sea, shooting at their boats, torturing, extorting and selling black youth into slavery. Tunisian President said not long ago that Africans are polluting the Arab identity of his country. All of it financed by Europe, self-proclaimed standard-setter. I will come back to the issue of migration in a series of research articles later.
C. My conclusion “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery” (Bob Marley, Caribbean singer)
Those who think that we will be given a place in the Security Council of the UN just by arguing for it in the best of Englishes, wait to see the kind of seat you are served! You either fight for it or wait until it is vacated for you. Two different results.
Try to tell the Chinese in Mozambique (or Cameroon, or… or…) that they can no longer ship unprocessed timber to their country, and see how deep are their connections to the central governments in Maputo (or Yaounde, or…, or …)! The smallest of the examples.
Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Cameroon, try to process your own cocoa before export: expect divide and rule forces deployed on you, be ready for a serious push-back, first from our own institutions such as banks, which will keep you running in the same spot. Then the foreign interests: The international financial system using the risk of financing terrorism as a way of instilling fear, capturing, and paralyzing our banking systems. In fact, the bank in our countries, itself already a hostage, has become the master and the depositors have become the beggars queuing outside. A whole system of humiliation and oppression to get to the mind of the Africans the message: You cannot change this and if you dare, there will be famine.
The rest of the system reinforces this status quo: our education becomes a copy of the education system left by the colonizer on departure: primary, secondary, tertiary and university. Linear thought, no relation between education and the local economy and local development needs and resources. Tete my town has a huge coal extraction industry; how many students are being prepared to lead that industry one day? How many geophysicists? You can go on and on about many countries, many industries. It is all about fixing our minds to allow extraction with no value-addition, no manufacturing.
And by the way, I have with me Swahili and Nyanja translations of the bible. You get them everywhere. I have not seen Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, civic education in any of these African languages. Makes one wonder why the bible? I am Christian, mind you, but before that, I am African and my fate is sealed here. What of India, Japan, China, are school manuals not in their languages?
The colonial establishment, very much in command today and headquartered where it was before the Berlin Conference, has understood that to colonize, you no longer need to occupy territory or be the harsh white administrator. Or even be there.
All you need is go on visits, sing praise to the leaders, give them a glimpse of how much they can make if they agree to a joint venture with you, and they will forget the people for which they fought and in the name of whom they say they are governing.
Just impress them with knowledge, conquer their minds and the rest will be done, by them, for you. The former fighter for freedom soon becomes the fishing, mining, logging and logistics entrepreneur of your extraction enterprise. And the rest of the population, well, ensure the elite stays in power and they will keep the people in check.
Then for good measure, keep them down by issuing periodic reports classifying their institutions as risky through such outfits as Standard & Poor, Fitch,
and a few more self-appointed regulators-classifiers, and you will have them intimidated enough.
We are very comfortable in the knowledge that we are independent countries, and those who were in the frontline of our independence have been put in comfortable positions and have forgotten that a luta continua. Or we never really appreciated the real import of the statement and how true it is today and tomorrow. Perhaps we think that we will be given further freedom without a fight. Sorry for those of us who wish to think that way.
We are hoping for the emergence of courageous, visionary, selfless leadership to lead us into inventing, innovating, and changing the direction of the game. And keep us mobilized through the push-backs.
Well, there was once a one-line tweet: I am black but beautiful (and an innocent picture to match)! But it was the grassroots microscopic manifestation of a much bigger reality: a global colonial construct that is wired in our brains.
Canhandula
03 May 2023
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