narrative of pain

"For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness." -James Baldwin (Sonny's Blues)

oppressive culture

"Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prison. They simply extended into objective reality what was already a subjective reality. Only jailers really believe in jails." -Richard Wright (The Outsider)

violence of the soul

"Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge." -Toni Morrison (Nobel lecture, 1993)

These sentiments from Black Revolution,will find resonance with the poverty stricken majority of Africa today,2014. "We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings...In fact, we are actually fighting for rights that are even greater than civil rights and that is human rights." -Malcolm X (Black Revolution)

aspiration to be white is the Africans burden

"It is the duty of the younger Negro artist...to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful!'" -Langston Hughes (The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, The Nation) It is unfortunate that the power of corporations is conniving with many African states to perpetuate this very aspiration.We witness this through the consumerist culture,where African consume an abundance of products that they neither make,repair or design,simply because of their congruence with western wealth.So we have Africa's importing western luxury products,made with African raw materials.Am I the only only one that recognises the idiocy in the transaction?African's will travel to Europe to purchase diamonds and gold from Africa;all due to their deep seated idea of being honourary whites. If was truly about possessing luxurious goods,as opposed to imitating Europe.There would be a multitude of industries spawning clientele across the globe.But,alas,we prefer consuming the ideation of originating in Europe as deep in our sub conscious is makes us white by proxy. If you doubt mt reasoning,than explain why it is that European borders of Africa persist to date. Mugabe and his cohorts will complain about sanctions not enabling him to travel freely to Europe yet,at every opportunity he will lambast Europe,for wanting to dictate to him;yet the presidential palace which he has occupied for going on 34 years is probably styled in an an ostentatious European fashion. The African Union (AU) is now engaged in a war of attrition with the "international community" over the perceived bias in the dispensation of "justice" or injustice by the International Criminal Court (ICC).Yet,they had free will to ratify the Rome Statute.However in their rush,to embrace all things western,they failed to decipher the inherent bias,and are now using it as an excuse to delay dispensing justice to their fellow citizens. Aspiring to be the white man would seem to be the black man's burden.

Africa unite,reminds me of Batho ha ba eo,empa lekhooa le teng/there are no people around but there is a european around.How apartheid and it's colonial brethren dehumanised the society;we are now reaping their rewards of in #Sebokeng,#CentralAfricaRepublic,#DRC,#IvoryCoast ,and believe me,more are to follow,if Africa does not start consuming her own ideas,generated by her own minds passed on by,word of mouth from grandmother to grandchild,originating from the ancestors. The continent is not rising,it is burning,people. The rise is empty rhetoric of corporations,who have co-opted their governments and now corrupting yours. Africa rising is a shibboleth,concocted by a world outside,the axis of the drum beat,filled with equivocation to confound you into consuming what is their own,implicitly of no profit to you;whilst through subterfuge and stealth,they extract what is of consequence and potential pecuniary gain to you,at a cost yet to be disclosed. By the time your leaders do a volte-face,on your irrational structural adjustment consumption policy,your people and your soul is so immersed in a labyrinth of fiat capital,that you get amerced for utilising your resources,with intrinsic value to extricate yourself from a system which you recognise to be fraudulent. You have been deluded,by those that you call friends and investors, into a false sense of security of making you feel paramount,whilst in the greater scheme of things, you are just a consumption patsy.As you were getting inebriated through consumption of what you neither ideated nor produced,your land was being encroached.Now a foreigner is holding you ransom to their will,earning value capture,on the land of the people. Therefore how can Africa rise,when a cabal runs the system,premised on fiat currencies,yet we own quantifiable resources with real value. Africa cannot and will not rise,until its wounds are healed.There,can be no true healing,until the wound is recognised,there can be no sincere friendships without restorative justice.Reluctance of Africa's offender to transform the global governance regime or provide reparations,is evidence that restorative justice is not up for serious consideration;therefore Africa is not rising,it is sinking like a person in quicksand.For the global economy in it's current form,is like quicksand to Africa. It is for this reason the #AU has adopted a quixotic paradoxical stance towards the #ICC,due to its victimhood mentality,fostered by the quicksand it finds itself in. "Healing begins where the wound was made." "Victim mentality is an acquired (learned) personality trait in which a person tends to regard him or herself as a victim of the negative actions of others, and to think, speak and act as if that were the case - even in the absence of clear evidence. It depends on habitual thought processes and attribution. Victim mentality is primarily learned, for example, from family members and situations during childhood."(Wikipedia) Africa's wounds were and are caused by abusive exploitative practices,therefore it only makes sense that reparations be administered.Our deference has proved to be our weakness,looking towards the better nature of people,especially visitors,has done us ill.We rewarded to fast,behaviour that was not earned,thus becoming authors in our tragedy.We have now become the quintessential consumers,to products that are defective to our prosperity.Foremost amongst these products is foreign aid,our culture of sharing and giving sold back to us.It has been repackaged,to do for us and instruct us,to create jobs for their graduates.For this reason it will never yield anything sustainable. For Ubuntu empowers,were foreign aid disempowers. Africa is yet to be healed,the rest of the world,progresses at the expense of our open wound.Before, you mistake my truth for drivel best left to Malema,ask yourself,how many times do you assign certain outcomes in your life down to racism?Well,you get my point,that's because no matter how accomplished you claim to be,your subconscious recognises that you are not healed;our collective psyche is affected by our open wound. "Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor—all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked—who is good? Not that men are ignorant—what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men." -W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)

The monster feeds on us;we feed the monster

In Mali, Central African Republic, Congo, Algeria, the list is endless. They create the enemy for us, we react, they act; the cycle is forever in motion, all for the sake of resources. Once upon a time we used to be the prized resource, enter colonialism, it evolved with the industrial revolution, the land and what lies beneath became the resource in demand. We, the custodians, always an inconvenience, and it has never morphed since. A hint of vicissitudinous, but better to call a spade a spade, been consistent as imperialism. Moral regeneration, led to the countenancing of restorative action. Whatever form they took, they could not be called reparations, for to do so, would be an admission of guilt. As Europe had been assisted following World War II, not out of altruism mind you, but to keep the monster, communism, at bay. Enter aid, to appease and inebriate us. The common denominator used in the maintenance of this modus Vivendi, is the alacrity to use any means necessary to sustain the exploitation and reliance on collaborators, who are conspicuously conferred with the title of allies of one sort or another. In times gone by, they were allies against communism, today it is allies against the war on terror; irrespective of the era in question, these man, yes man, as more often than not, they are man. Capture state institutions, through patronage networks, making the distribution of the spoils of office take precedence over the national agenda. Mind you the national agenda in this states, is usually weak, as it never existed. What, existed in the space of the national agenda was a common agenda by all indigenous stakeholders to rid themselves of the coloniser. They inherited institutions, which in most cases they had no or little capacity to manage, all this was by design not default. If they had they the capacity to use the institutions or create new ones, they would in the long run become competitors. Accordingly, the potential rise of competition was circumvented by ensuring that the new states were overwhelmed by their new found reality. This state of affairs leads to crippling the ability of the state to create coherent policy, poor service delivery to the citizenry and inability to define your place in the global economy. The longer we enable this spurious existence to be pervasive, the easier it is to construct tribal wars, excogitate a plethora of ingenious schemes to address poverty, whilst synchronously feeding the monster, in order to create jobs for the boys. Ultimately the strategy is secure in its efficacy, for poverty is the status quo; Africa remains a habitual consumer of others conceptualisations. If you are, consistently consuming, you cannot create. To create, one needs time to think, hence the ubiquitous research institutions in countries, which are forever looking after their interests, irrespective of the consequence. That is how empires are built. We can only remain confounded, for as long as the quilt they have sown together with their vainglory known as African states is unmodified. It is incumbent upon us to reconstruct this quilt with similar indigenous sentiments, which better reflect the desires of our progeny or forever remain a stranger in your own land, never at ease.