Africa: The Sellout of 2014

Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 7 April, at 09 : 51 AM Print

(This one is for my friend, Barbara Gwanmesia. Thank you, Barb, especially for all the words of encouragement. Surely our continent deserve a lot better. Through our collective efforts, we shall, once again, shine. Keep hope alive!)

“There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air;
If you listen carefully now you will hear.
This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last:
Many more will have to suffer,
Many more will have to die – don’t ask me why.

Things are not the way they used to be,
I won’t tell no lie;
One and all have to face reality now.
‘Though I’ve tried to find the answer to all the questions they ask.
‘Though I know it’s impossible to go livin’ through the past –
Don’t tell no lie.

There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air –
Can’t keep them down –
If you listen carefully now you will hear.” – Bob Marley, Natural Mystic

“Rich people dey discuss, poor man sey e get idea. Which kain idea e get?” – Nigerian saying.

Hey, Femi, why do you look so smug?

Hmmm.

Hey, tell me, why do you look like all the burdens of the world rest on your shoulder?

Hmmm, maybe they do.

What’s up with you, you really look like the wrath of the gods?

Maybe I am.

We are in talkative, communicative mood today, aren’t we?

Whatever you say?

Ok, tell me what is bugging you.

Hmmmm, I have just been watching the show of shame in Brussels.

Show of shame in Belgium, what happened there? What happened in Brussels to put you in such a nasty funk?

Don’t tell me you didn’t see our so-called leaders in Africa strutting up and down Brussels like some important potentates?

You! Presidents are sovereign representatives of their nations so, per definition, they are important people.

Even the ones we have in Africa?

You! What is wrong with you? What do you find so loathsome about our African presidents looking important? They are important. And I thought you are the Pan-Africanist, ah!

Even Pan-Africanists have a sense of shame.

What! Do you mean that our presidents in Africa have no shame?

No, they don’t.

Really, Femi!

Really, Femi what? Tell me, what manner of people with shame will leave a mess at home to go and be playing Big Men and women in foreign land?

They were invited.

You! That exactly is what I meant. The manner of the invitation was in itself so insulting that any self-respecting person should have rejected it without any consideration. I doffed my hat to Papa Mugabe and our new Shaka Zulu in South Africa’ I meant President Jacob Zuma. It appears that they are the only ones among the sad lots we called leaders in Africa that have any sense of shame.

You!

Me, what? How do people send you invitation and have the temerity to exclude some members of your family?

What do you mean?

I meant that the European Union (EU) sent out invitations to African leaders inviting them to a meeting of African and European leaders, right. They sent their invitation as an organisation of 27 or so countries. The meeting was supposed to be one between leaders from the two continents, right. The Europeans then had the guts to tell the Africans who is welcome and who is not. Not only that, they insultingly extended an invitation to an African Head of State, but banned his wife from attending. I talk here of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. What balls, what galls! And we have so-called leaders rushing to attend such meetings. It makes me want to cry with shame! No European will accepted to be so insulted; yet the pathetic lot we have as rulers in Africa think nothing of it. Were the African Union to do the same thing, you can assure yourself that no European will turn up. But there they went, shameless leaders. They rushed to Brussels, wine and dine themselves silly and grinned like village idiots for televisions. And all the time parroting nonsensical like ‘our developmental partners,’ and our ‘friends.’

Do you mean to say that Europeans are not partners or friends?

Not unless the word partnership and friendship have lost their meanings.

Femi, you are true contrarian. And you talk in riddles. What exactly do you mean by that?

By that, I meant that no true friend will treat a friend the ways Europeans have treated and continue to treat Africans, I should say mistreated, Africans – shabbily and with the utmost contempt. From the time they broke out of their alpine caves and stole one African at Ceuta in Morocco, they have launched unremitting assault on us. They sold millions of us as slaves. They imposed savaged colonization that sundered our societies and rendered us impotent people. They keep on launching overt and covert aggressions all over our continent. No, sir, Europeans are not friends, and it is time we stop using that endearing term on a people that treated and continue to treat us beastly.

But you forget that independence came…

Stop there, my friend! Independence, my ass! Go get and read the Pacte Colonialisme and you will discover the types of arrangement that France signed with its colonies. Mind you I didn’t say ex-colonies. You will read in that document how the frogs deliberately set out to create twenty or so countries that they knew cannot, on their own, succeeded politically or economically. You will also find out how, up until today, France still receive payments for its colonization. It still serves as the Central Bank for its African colonies, and still collar their most lucrative mining contracts. And you talk here of friendship. The British have been less overt, but their perfidious actions still hamper the development of the places they colonized. The mess and the powder kegs they left in Nigeria blew up into Boko Haram. Their odious Land Tenure in Kenya and Zimbabwe still made it impossible to have meaning development in those countries.

But are we not hankering too much on the past?

There will be no need to hanker on anything if only the mentality, the colonial mindsets of Europeans have changed one bit.

You meant that they haven’t, that things are still the same?

Maybe by matter of degree, they are not. But essentially, we still deal with the same haughty, arrogant imperial attitudes and beliefs that the world and his resources, especially is resources, is the natural property of the Europeans.

But they talk of new partnership.

Don’t make me laugh, my brother! What partnership do we talk about when European companies still garner 97% of the money from our mines? What manner of partnership do we talk about when Western multi-nation pays between 6-10% for our oil? If you own 10% in any venture, the best you can call yourself is Junior Partner. But they we have our leaders calling themselves partners like they matter and have any relevance at all.

Do you keep blaming the European then?

No, I don’t. My beef is with or so-called leaders who keep on short-changing us. They and their inferiority complex is what is vexing me big time.

I see that. But do you then recommend that they stop attending meetings, then?

I started by saying that our leaders in Africa have no shame at all. Do you know what? Were I to become a leader in any of our countries in Africa, shame alone will dissuade me from showing my ugly face at international for a, Why? Because, I leave behind a country that have not manage to produce enough electricity for its people after almost sixty years of self-government. I leave behind a country where the provision of potable water for the people is still a major challenge. I leave behind a country that sits literally and figuratively on immeasurable mineral resources, but where people still eke out miserable existence that are unfit for pets in many countries. But do you know what is really galling me?

Why do I have the feeling you are going to tell me, anyway?

You! Sarcasm will get you everywhere. My biggest beef is that our rulers travel to these meetings on modern airplanes (made possible by aeronautical engineers); they move around town in stretch limousines (designed by automobile engineers); they stayed in Presidential Suites (designed by Architects); they move around well-laid out town (designed by City-Architects/Town Planners); they enjoyed uninterrupted electricity (courtesy of electrical engineers); hydrological engineers ensured that water flew uninterrupted in their taps. All these were made possible by the magic of modern science. Our leaders see and enjoy all these modern facilities and amenities, but it never moved them sufficiently to want to replicate it back home. An intelligent leaders would have become impassioned by desire to catch up, not so our leaders. The next thing on their agenda as soon as they return home would be to assemble parasitical priests to come and pray and fast for the nation. And do you know what I find the most shameful of all?

Really? I thought you said enough already.

You! Our so-called leaders’ lack of a sense of history is what galled me the most. It troubles me greatly that African leaders can even consider agreeing to a meeting at Brussels…

What is wrong with Brussels? I heard it is a beautiful city and it is the headquarters of the EU!

And it also happened to be a city saturated with statues and monuments dedicated to the one single man responsible for the death of more Africans than any other person. I talk of Belgian King Leopold. He was credited with killing about ten million Africans in the Congo. The Belgian saluted him with statues and monuments. No European leader will attend a meeting in any place where a single statue of Hitler stands. Yet, there we have shameless African mis-rulers, with absolutely no sense of shame or history, grinning like Cheshire cats in Brussels, where they are surrounded by statue of the Gory King Leopold.

PS: I do not have a television at home, and I tried as much as possible to watch as little TV as possible. But last week, locked up in my hotel room, I had little choice but to watch some.

It was a most distressing experience for me.

I honestly cannot believe that people failed to realize the enormous damage they do to their own brains by watching all those craps on TV.

Apart from some educative documentaries on the German station, DW, I did not see a single show that was not designed to braindirty the brain.

It was all about consumption, consumption, consumption.

No one will sell powdered milk product in Europe. But on Ghana TV, we have people dancing to advert of powdered milk!

And how one earth could any thinking person claim, and be allowed to get away with the outrageous claim, that dried cow milk enhances human brain?

But this is Ghana; anything goes.

PSS: This morning it was reported that a case of suspected Ebola has been registered in Kumasi. For weeks, neighboring countries have battle the scourge and yet our officials snoozed blissfully on the job. There was no information on what precautions citizens should take.

Sad!

Ma br3!

 

About the Author

Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa, and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.

Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.

He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.

His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:

1. Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
2. The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
3. WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
4. Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
5. African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer

Where to buy them online:

On Lulu Books:

18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn

Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99

Africa: Destroyed by the gods: https://goo.gl/HHmFfr

Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm

 

Africa: it shall be well

on Kindle books: https://www.createspace.com/4820404

on Amazon books: http://goo.gl/QeFxbl

on Lulu Books: https://goo.gl/SQeoKD

 

Africa: Destroyed by the gods

on Kindle books: https://www.createspace.com/4811974

on Amazon books: http://goo.gl/1z97ND

on Lulu Books: http://goo.gl/KIMcIm

 

My Lulu Books page: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/FemiAkomolafe

 

Get free promotional materials here:

1. Africa: it shall be well: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-introduction-in-pdf/

A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/

2. Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/

A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/

Read a review here

Contact Femi:

Femi’s Blog: www.alaye.biz/category/blog
Website: www.alaye.biz
Femi on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/author/femiakomolafe
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Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/alayeclearsound;
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LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/femiakomolafe

Email: fakomolafe@gmail.com

 

Kindly help me share the books’ links with your friends and, grin, please purchase your copies.

Comradely,

Femi Akomolafe

 

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Alayedotbiz, Blog, News, Polemics, Satire anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, colonial atrocities in africa, colonialism, European Union and African Union meeting, Femi Akomoafe