Let’s break out of this prison

There is a famous blogger who uses the term “fake news” more than Donald Trump to discredit solid but unpalatable news. A creature from the swamps of yellow journalism tremblingly dragged into the light by Jubilee, he has been a pillar of the dirty war against formal media and other institutions of democracy. 

Nothing keeps us awake at night and gets editors to break into a cold sweat than falling for fake news. So I will be careful about how I quote the following material. I have done a quick online check on it but can’t authoritatively establish its origin. I also can’t find it published in a reputable space; its only playing on social media, which is a big red flag. So I will not attribute it to the alleged speaker and I will not present it as fact, as something that was actually said, but as hypotheticals.

Just suppose, for purposes of debate and introspection, that a moderately influential European cultural figure was asked what he thought about Africans and he gave the following answers, what would you think of it?

“They sell everything to the highest bidder, even the land. Then they poison themselves with everything that is edible.

“I am not racist because I do not believe for a single second that I am superior to a black man. The difference with them is that we think of our descendants, we are calculators, we protect our interests and we’ll kill for that if need be.

“We are not emotional, we have passed this stage. If the lion has pity on the gazelle, it is he who will die of hunger. They have lions at home, but they do not understand the laws of nature.

“For everything, they confide in superstition and religion. The difference between the others and blacks is, while others reflect, blacks do not think, they do not use their intellectual capacity and very few blacks are analytical.

“And when a few black people pierce through, we admit them to our side or eliminate them in one way or another, most often, with the hand of other blacks.

“We brought them our god and continuously invent fuzzy concepts to confuse them more.

“In a hundred years, their descendants will be more slaves than they are now. They are already more unhappy than the generation of their parents, and they naively believe that numbers will be their strength.

“Just watch how they drown at sea to come here. We conquered them with a few tens of ours and the active help of theirs.

“We forced them to speak and write in our languages. We will control their descendants more than we control them right now.

Accurate description

“Other people understood our game, they started to use the same technical knowledge as us to protect and dissuade, but the blacks did not understand anything.

“I’m sorry to be so brutal in my franchise. Nothing personal, I’m just plain.”

So, do we sell everything and then eat poison? I think this is an accurate description of the African elite, not of all Africans. In all honesty, for some of us, we will sell our grandmothers if there is money in it. 

If we were not so corrupt, if we were not too eager to sell the welfare of our compatriots, we’d be better off. There were, or are, people stealing money for medicine in the face of a pandemic. Our traditional food is good and wholesome, but how many still eat it?

True, we rarely think about the future. That is how we have saddled generations to come with debt.

Compassion is part of who we are. We share, we do things for each other. If you have food, you don’t eat alone if your brother has none. You share, then starve together if need be. No use explaining it to a European.

Africans don’t think? We are like a lion that pities the gazelle? Does this European know that some of us used to eat them?

Is it true that those of us who make it in the world ape the mannerisms of the oppressor and disavow their own kind?

Yes, we speak the tongue of the oppressor, which is a trap. But not all Africans have abandoned their language and culture.

The rest of the material in that alleged interview, well, let me quote Rev Mutava Musyimi when the Red Card team was trying to kill the new constitution a decade ago: “We have issues with all of them. But it is food for thought, an impetus to think about our total liberation from the cultural and economic yoke of neocolonialism. 

“When you are poor and at the bottom of the food chain, it is very easy for people to say that you don’t think. They figure, if you can think, why are you at the bottom? But it is not that easy. Sometimes your circumstances are a straightjacket.”

The African is in a prison of prejudice, racism, cultural domination and economic exploitation. And it is not just by the white man: The worst neocolonialists are the African elite and the nouveau riche, such as the Chinese. 

We must free our people out of this prison.

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