AFRICA AND CULTURAL COLONIALISM

AFRICA AND CULTURAL COLONIALISM

We have had Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyeyere, Alpha Oumar Konara, Samora Machel, and Desmond Tutu, among others. Their services were characterized by selfless sense of duty; they put the rights and needs of others above theirs. But today in Africa, most of our leaders had mopped our resources to enrich themselves and plunged millions of people into despair. Apart from the above names, different cranes have come to the fore to lift us up from the valley of underdevelopment, yet we are still in the valley of misery, crying for help. A rich continent well-endowed with abundant natural resources and a young dynamic population is deeply rooted in cultural colonialism.

Yes the past can be remembered, it is an industrial-scale cruelty of human being that must be condemned in its entirety. Yes the bonfire of slave trade is still smoldering in most heart of Africans, yes we were not asked how our countries should be structured territorially; yes they made our ‘’articles’’ to undress and shake their bums and if they could dance salsa on their bum, a deal is brokered; yes they made us drink our own urine to sate hunger, yes we might be tagged culturally inferior, without any civilization worthy of emulation because most of our achievements were not written and therefore not known to the rest of the world. But it is high time African countries stopped whining and complaining that colonization is impeding our progress.

Today, some African countries are beset with strife, war, terrorism, inequality, corruption and other social ills. Today, some rulers collude with foreign firm to heap its treasures away.Today, our novea riche are getting richer with little to the poverty ravaged population.Today, we cannot get accurate and credible data to work with. Today we routinely hail and congratulate those who illicitly acquired wealth and treat them as tin gods.

Today the lust for power prevails over love and care of the people governed. Today our leaders have left us in the lurch and most of us have continually cried to the church, mosque and other places in search of solution.Today, it is a society that takes away from the have-nots in order to give to the haves.

Oh Africa, where knife goes through a mountain as if it’s a bread. Where elephant is afraid of the rat. Where bribery, kickbacks and criminal activity intertwine as one family. Where so many families ration foods as if they are beggars. Where corruption saunters elegantly at the threshold of honesty as if they are Siamese twins. Where leaders yearn to stay in power perpetually. Where electoral process are marred by the harassment and arrest of opposition candidates. Where piles of scandal and shame are lobbed at the threshold of equity.

Perhaps the time has come for our leaders not to brood at the leaden skies but find what’s compatible with it. It is time for us to discard the culture that are suppressing our development, the modern culture of endemic corruption, the culture of dignified ineptitude and greed, the culture of tribalism and nepotism.

Despite the aforesaid challenges not a modicum of doubt has seeped into my resolve that the future looks limitless and bright for Africans.

Olusanya Anjorin,

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