Opinions of Tuesday, 14 August 2018

Columnist: Suntaa Abudu Ibrahim

The tragedy of the African continent

Africans have become European in their mindsets and appearancesAfricans have become European in their mindsets and appearances

Most often than not, I ask myself whether we still have African men amongst us? What I mean is that, a typical African man, who dresses, talks, eats and who is of himself and has his or her pure African cultures. Are there still these type of people in this our contemporary world?

Yes of course we can still find some minority tribes in some African countries like Kenya, South Africa, Sudan and many others, but with these minority tribes too are also at the verge of extinction and very soon they will vanish literally but the majority of us only call ourselves African because we are blacks and find ourselves on the continent.

Personally, I believe most of us are only Africans literally and I will bring some points that show we are no more pure Africans except just name and I will mostly base my argument on our dressing, talking, relationship, food, tools etc.

Firstly, when we talk about our dressing, most of us will accept that we don’t patronize our African heritage at all, when it comes to what we wear, but the most worrisome thing is about our African leaders who even preach to us every day about patronizing the made in Africa wears are not even patronizing it, even schools in African don’t even promote their clothes because most schools follow the other continents dressing forcing students to stick in with ties as if Africans don’t have dresses that can be uniformly worn by the students. it is worrying to not know that when any African president or leader is about to leave to the European continent he or she tries to dress to look like an European just to tell and show how important their clothes are, so any time I see our leaders talking about regaining the pure African continent, I feel sad and annoyed. Trust me these things are all part of the of the African under development.

One of the most strange and annoying part of we Africans is that, we have left our acts and beautiful ways we used to relate with each other and adopted new ways of relationship that is more like a class or a social status where those who are educated by the western school system see themselves as more knowledgeable and superior to those who did not sit in the western and formal classrooms to study the Whiteman’s theories, ideas and cultures which most of them are "nonsense" to us.

Please I don’t want my readers to misunderstand me, I am not in any way saying the Whiteman’s school is bad NO, Of course the Whiteman’s formal school has brought a lot of development to the African continent in all sectors health, infrastructure, communication, transportation, knowledge, agriculture, and these things are undeniable facts but let’s consider certain things before we conclude on how important this Whiteman’s school is important to the African continent, looking at the olden African continent you will realize that all these sectors were also taken care of, by the Africans themselves, health, disease and other sicknesses were easily cured without going through any complex ways. women were able to deliver in very complex situations.

From the infrastructural aspect, you will realize that Africans were able to also establish their buildings, roads, without anybody’s help, anytime I think of infrastructural development a good example that always comes to mind is the Egyptian Pyramids, the Ethiopian Yeha temple, these are buildings that show Africans would have been able to work towards their infrastructural development without sitting in the Whiteman’s classrooms to acquire knowledge.

In addition, communication is never left out. When it comes to the communication aspect, you will find out communication tools, such as drums, flutes, whistles and these were used to communicate perfectly and there were no difficulties involved, transportation was not a problem as far as Africans in the olden days were concerned. They used to travel with their horses, donkeys and other animals. When it comes to knowledge, I don’t even want to go there. Because we have failed in knowledge in the sense that our knowledge acquired from the Whiteman’s school has caused a lot of harm to us. it has introduced to us nuclear family, better ways of stealing from the poor and greed have poisoned our souls. Our so-called knowledge acquired from the Whiteman’s school has made us cynical; we tend to be clever, hard and unkind. African agricultural system was very affordable without heavy machinery and other complex practices, but there used to get food in abundance, hunger wasn’t there like today, but today we have machines that produce more than enough foods but people are dying every day out of hunger, then you ask what is the importance of these machines that produce in abundance while leaving us in wants.

Yes I know somebody might argue that, all these points I have mentioned was just in the past which is different from today because population has increased to its peak and Africans couldn’t have been able still depend on these aforementioned to survive which is a genuine argument but let’s not forget that was their beginning so as time goes on they would have also developed to the highest level as the European continent.

I know others will read this article and have so many criticise it but surely the best person that will be able to analyze this article perfectly will a pure African because we aren’t Africans.

The reason why I believe we are no more Africans is that our minds have been polluted by the Whiteman’s school so we now see almost everything about the African culture to be bad, even among us who try to be like an African man is seen as an archaic and primitive being, for me I will say we cannot get back our cultural heritage as far as Africa is concerned in the sense that, our level of Afrocentrism is reducing at a faster rate and our generation to come will not even call themselves Africans except Black Americans.

In conclusion you will find out from the analysis above that we those who call ourselves Africans do so just because we have found ourselves in the African continent and we are blacks, if not our mindset, dressing, talking, relationship, eating, and our way of life is just like that of people from the European continent.

We have devalued our culture to the least point, we see ourselves as slaves to other people, we are always waiting for someone to help us and most people will attribute these problems to colonialism which I find it very difficult to understand, because somebody can force you to do everything but nobody on this earth can force you to look down upon yourself, except you are willing.