Every African season is either bloody or deadly. There is never a time when Africa enjoys a peaceful season. The end of one war has heralded the beginning of another.
Examples of this abound. Look at the so-called Arab Spring and its after-effects. Look at the endless Congolese blood-letting. Look at the suicidal Somalia. In all these cases, we lead in our own destruction while foreigners follow.
We create our own two thousand seasons of self-hate, self-annihilation and self-exploitation.
And Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah sums this up well in his narrative “Two Thousand Seasons”, an epic story of how Africa has contributed to her suffering and exploitation saying:
“Woe the race, too generous in the giving of itself, that finds a highway not of regeneration but a highway to its own extinction.”
The narrative is set in a nameless African country and starts with the coming of the “predators” who are harbingers of the country’s ruin.
There are Arabs first followed by Europeans and always they link up with weak Africans who easily and generously give themselves.
The pioneer predators come as beggars attracting pity and sympathy from locals but they cunningly use their religion to mislead and hold hostage the locals who, in turn, are used against their own.
Gradually, the locals are stripped of any character thereby becoming zombies or what Armah calls “white desert-men’s dogs”.
Turning the locals against their religion and culture, Armah says, is capturing the mind and the body into a slavery that lasts more and forever than the mere capture of the bodies.
Once the mind and the body have been captured, the African is left with no means of fighting back and the only solution is running away hoping “that new places, new circumstances might bring us back to reciprocity, might bring us closer to our way, the way”.
In the event where a few, yet to be captured, Africans resist, the predators retreat into the desert only to return stronger and in greater numbers.
The locals’ situation is no better because of lack of leadership, which is greedy and ready to give in in exchange of crumbs.
One such king in the narrative is Koranche who is described as, “The quietest king, the gentlest leader of the mystified, is criminal beyond the exercise of any comparison.”
After the Arabs – predators – come the destroyers from Europe.
Unlike the Arabs, the white men is armed and determined to have their way. They have no time for negotiation or listening to the locals.
“There is nothing white men will not do to satisfy their greed,” Armah notes adding: “Monstrous is the greed of the white destroyers, infinite their avarice.”
Of course, as part of the destroyers is the missionary with a different kind of religion, which will further poison and subdue the locals who, in turn, will destroy their societies.
Armah writes despite ‘the treachery of chiefs and leaders, of the greed of parasites that had pushed us so far into the whiteness of death’ all is not lost.
Once in a while, a voice of sanity emerges in the calm chaos of silent destruction. For Armah, that voice is Isanusi, the old man who is mocked and called mad because he still clings to the African way. He is imprisoned when he speaks against the destroyers.
Nobody listens to him when he warns the people of the greedy king’s intention of selling them off to slave traders. Only those who escaped from the slave ship live to recall Isanusi’s words but it was too late to return.
That we are still wasting our two thousand seasons wandering in the maze of our confusion as the narrative says is of no doubt.
Look at Africa today and see leaders who are leading their people the wrong path.
They are encouraged and urged by their benefactors – the Arabs and the Europeans.
In the eyes of these benefactors, such leaders are rewarded and praised while those who stand by their people and call for a return of African lands and culture are called despots.
The narrative also sums up what is happening in ‘liberated’ countries where whites still enjoy the fruits of the stolen lands and wealth.
Below is what Isanusi tells people: “. . . These white men, they do not want to be part of us. But here they have come claiming they have crossed the sea from wherever it is they come from just to do us good. They are pretenders. They are liars.
We have asked them for nothing. We should not have let them come among us. They have no desire to live with us. They will live against us.” (153-154)
Examples of this abound. Look at the so-called Arab Spring and its after-effects. Look at the endless Congolese blood-letting. Look at the suicidal Somalia. In all these cases, we lead in our own destruction while foreigners follow.
We create our own two thousand seasons of self-hate, self-annihilation and self-exploitation.
And Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah sums this up well in his narrative “Two Thousand Seasons”, an epic story of how Africa has contributed to her suffering and exploitation saying:
“Woe the race, too generous in the giving of itself, that finds a highway not of regeneration but a highway to its own extinction.”
The narrative is set in a nameless African country and starts with the coming of the “predators” who are harbingers of the country’s ruin.
There are Arabs first followed by Europeans and always they link up with weak Africans who easily and generously give themselves.
The pioneer predators come as beggars attracting pity and sympathy from locals but they cunningly use their religion to mislead and hold hostage the locals who, in turn, are used against their own.
Gradually, the locals are stripped of any character thereby becoming zombies or what Armah calls “white desert-men’s dogs”.
Turning the locals against their religion and culture, Armah says, is capturing the mind and the body into a slavery that lasts more and forever than the mere capture of the bodies.
Once the mind and the body have been captured, the African is left with no means of fighting back and the only solution is running away hoping “that new places, new circumstances might bring us back to reciprocity, might bring us closer to our way, the way”.
In the event where a few, yet to be captured, Africans resist, the predators retreat into the desert only to return stronger and in greater numbers.
The locals’ situation is no better because of lack of leadership, which is greedy and ready to give in in exchange of crumbs.
One such king in the narrative is Koranche who is described as, “The quietest king, the gentlest leader of the mystified, is criminal beyond the exercise of any comparison.”
After the Arabs – predators – come the destroyers from Europe.
Unlike the Arabs, the white men is armed and determined to have their way. They have no time for negotiation or listening to the locals.
“There is nothing white men will not do to satisfy their greed,” Armah notes adding: “Monstrous is the greed of the white destroyers, infinite their avarice.”
Of course, as part of the destroyers is the missionary with a different kind of religion, which will further poison and subdue the locals who, in turn, will destroy their societies.
Armah writes despite ‘the treachery of chiefs and leaders, of the greed of parasites that had pushed us so far into the whiteness of death’ all is not lost.
Once in a while, a voice of sanity emerges in the calm chaos of silent destruction. For Armah, that voice is Isanusi, the old man who is mocked and called mad because he still clings to the African way. He is imprisoned when he speaks against the destroyers.
Nobody listens to him when he warns the people of the greedy king’s intention of selling them off to slave traders. Only those who escaped from the slave ship live to recall Isanusi’s words but it was too late to return.
That we are still wasting our two thousand seasons wandering in the maze of our confusion as the narrative says is of no doubt.
Look at Africa today and see leaders who are leading their people the wrong path.
They are encouraged and urged by their benefactors – the Arabs and the Europeans.
In the eyes of these benefactors, such leaders are rewarded and praised while those who stand by their people and call for a return of African lands and culture are called despots.
The narrative also sums up what is happening in ‘liberated’ countries where whites still enjoy the fruits of the stolen lands and wealth.
Below is what Isanusi tells people: “. . . These white men, they do not want to be part of us. But here they have come claiming they have crossed the sea from wherever it is they come from just to do us good. They are pretenders. They are liars.
We have asked them for nothing. We should not have let them come among us. They have no desire to live with us. They will live against us.” (153-154)
SOURCE: SOUTHERN AFRICAN NEWS
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