“For Africa to take its rightful place as an equal in the comity of nations, it is essential that Africans wake up the realities of the time – none but ourselves can lift us up where we truly belong: in the highest regions.”
This clarion call has become necessary because Africa, the undisputed cradle of civilization has lost this position to other races that now have the nerve to call us uncivilized, underdeveloped and highly indebted poor countries (HIPC).
Blame them? Far from it! These ignominious tags are our own doing. The African for a very long time now has stopped thinking for himself. Not only that, but he does not even know who he is; neither does he love nor respect himself apart from the fact he is not himself, does not believe in himself and so he is trying very hard to be anything other than himself but most importantly is not doing anything for himself. Just show me a people with these characteristics ever treated with dignity.
Now more than ever is the time to free ourselves and within us lies the solution and in this introductory article I’m going to enumerate the solutions and in subsequent articles expand them.
First is our mind, I mean thinking for ourselves.
The African’s mental capacity and capability has been seduced into a deep sleep by the provision of our “needs” by others so that they can hold us in perpetual servitude. Well, this policy I must acknowledge has worked to perfection. If not, why have we become so dependent on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank “experts” for solutions to the economic quagmire in which we find ourselves in spite of the fact that none has worked so far.
The second wake up call is for us to know ourselves. What I mean by this is an honest introspective analysis of ourselves. This of course means truthfully answering the questions: who are we and why are we who we are, what have we and why have we what we have, where are we and why are we where we are? You see, it only when we find correct answers to these questions then can we define our future and control our destiny.
The other crucial message accompanying the crowing of the cock is: African love yourself as your neighbour p-l-e-a-s-e! It is the absence of love for ourselves that makes it difficult for us to accept the success of other fellow Africans. The fact that we are more than willing to make the life of others heaven on earth yet bent on making life for our fellow Africans hell on earth is enough proof. In any case, where does it say that one should love his neighbour more than himself? But, it is what the African is doing. Caution, my brother caution, any deviance from the golden rule can lead to nothing but self-destruction as are witnessing now.
Lesson number four. African! Be still and know that “In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses … that a people who surrender voluntarily such respect, or cease striving for it are not worth civilizing.” - WEB Du Bois. The African has lost respect as an equal race because he has no respect for himself.
But the question is why do we hate ourselves so much that we do not want to have anything to do with our God-endowed physical attributes and our way of life? Trying to be pseudo-Caucasian or pseudo-Mongoloids only increases the contempt the other races have for us. No one is saying we should not enhance our beauty but this must not be at the expense of our God-given features. It is an affront to God in whose image we were created. In the same vein, culture because it is dynamic must of necessity change. But again, this must be done taking into account its underlying purpose(s). They must only be discarded if the purpose(s) which they were to serve is/are no longer valid. In so doing, the wholesale abandonment of our culture and the adoption of Western values and practices under the guise of modernization would cease. Then of course we can find ways to modernize the relevant ones to suit the times.
“…forget it! We can’t do anything about it.” I know you have heard this so often that you now believe that it is true but nothing can be further from the truth. Sadly however, the reality on the ground is that the African has totally lost confidence in himself. He has resigned himself to fate accepting his third-class world citizenship and consequent sub-human treatment. Man, woman and child; let’s get serious! Are we disputing the fact that God created all humans equal in the endowments of both body and mind? Then what is the problem? We can also do for ourselves what others are doing for themselves. All that needs to be done is putting the active intelligence of our minds to work and boom, there goes our most worrisome problem, our failure (or is it refusal) to do things for ourselves.
Just take a closer look at the foreign products on the market and I bet you will be as disgusted as I always am. The bulk of the commodities that we spend our hard-earned foreign exchange (which we have very little of anyway) on are things that we can produce here. Just check out the tomato paste for instance. We have a sizable proportion of our tomatoes going waste because of bad preservation practices. What prevents us from also turning it into paste and canning them? Imagine the money we could save. The earlier we realize that our survival is dependent upon our ability to produce for ourselves the better for us.
In a series of short articles dubbed the '7 sankofa canons' namely
- African, think for thyself!
- African, know thyself!
- African, love thyself!
- African, respect thyself!
- African, believe in thyself!
- African, be thyself!
- African, do it thyself!
I intend to tackle the core of our problem - ourselves – for as once rightly noted by Alice Walker, any direction that is away from ourselves is in the wrong direction and echoed by Ayi Kwei Armah, we are our own enslavers first. Only we can free ourselves.
Africans, the cock crows and it is time to wake up! Are we forever to be the drawers of water and hewers of wood for others? A people who cannot provide food, shelter, clothing and other basic necessities of life for themselves place themselves in the ranks of the sub-human and would be treated as such.
san-kofa
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