Writing our own HIStory
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 28 May, at 14 : 11 PM Print
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slaves
“The Europeans are not yet willing to acknowledge that the world did not wait in darkness for them to bring the light, and that the history of Africa was already old when Europe was born.” – Professor John Henrik Clarke.
“For the last 500 years, the history of African people throughout the world has been told through the slavery experience—only a short period in our life, considering that we are the oldest of the world’s peoples.” – Professor John Henrik Clarke.
The recent commemoration of the end of the African holocaust (which Europeans prefer to call the Slave Trade) once again starkly demonstrates the level to which the west continues to concoct and embellish history in order to continue its perpetual self-glorification and Black debasement.
It also clearly demonstrates how dependable we Africans still are on our oppressors for information about ourselves and importantly about our history.
That BBC and the other western media spent inordinate amount of time on white-washing the most appalling atrocity ever committed against a people.
In its desperation to lessen the enormity of the greatest crime ever, the BBC told (insulted is a better word) us that slavery is age-old long and it was not confine to Africa alone.
As usual the BBC, the mouthpiece of British imperialism, invited ‘experts’ to come on air in order to further dirty our brains and to confuse us further.
Africans were further insulted when allusions were made to the existence of what western media continue to call slavery in Sudan and Mauritania in present days.
Give me a break!
“Sit down son. What you are calling African history and Negro history are the missing pages of world history. Son, go study the history of your masters, go study the history of the people who enslaved you and find out why they found it a necessity to remove an entire people from the respectful commentary of the history of the world.” – Professor John Henrik Clarke.
It is as though these western journalists do not understand their own language!
How else do we explain these deliberate attempts to confuse the word ‘slavery’ with words like ‘servant’,’ ‘househelp,’ ‘maid,’ and the rest of the words that are abundant in the English language to describe someone who helps with the domestic chores?
Like many Africans, yours sincerely had occasions to stay with relations when I was growing up.
I was about ten years when my youngest aunt got a teaching appointment and I went to live with her.
Auntie Titi had grown up with my mother and was like an elder sister to us. My mother had sponsored her through her education, and her taking care of me was her way of saying ‘thank you.’
My mother had treated her the way she will her own child, and it would never have occurred to Auntie Titi to treat me with anything but the best affections; I was like a younger brother to her. I ran errands and helped with the house chores, of course, but I never consider myself a servant or whatever; simply someone staying with an Aunt.
It would simply be preposterous to call Auntie Titi my mother’s ‘servant,’ as it would be outrageous to call me her ‘houseboy,’ not to mention the S word.
When the Europeans vandalized their ways into our lives, they met a highly sophisticated social system the likes of which did not exist in their societies.
“No matter what Europeans say they believe religiously, politically or culturally, their main objective in the world is control. Everything that has ever been developed in the European mind was meant to facilitate mind control of the world.” – Professor John Henrik Clarke.
The highly sophisticated family system of Africa is totally unfathomable to these aliens who have been brought up on a strict diet of monetarism and materialism and where the essence of humanity revolves around a nuclear family – the smaller the better.
To them, any relationship, including filial, should have monetary underpinnings; anything else is barbaric and must be denigrated.
In my essay, ‘On Slavery’ (which can be accessed here:), I gave some of the qualitative as well as the quantitative differences between ancient slavery and the slavery practiced on Africans, by European slave masters for upward of four hundred years.
Principal among these are the facts that the European-imposed slavery in Africa was the first recorded history of slavery that is solely motivated by commercial concerns.
Earlier slaves were unfortunate victims of wars; what we call prisoner of wars in modern times.
Their capture and treatment are well regulated according to customs and ancient conventions.
They are unfortunate victims of wars, no more and no less. They are accorded every dignity and are treated as humanely as possible.
And they were certainly no one’s property.
For them manumission is possible and was well practiced.
This is not so with the Africans carted away into slavery by the Europeans.
The Trans Atlantic slavery was the first slavery that totally stripped its victims of every vestiges of humanity.
What this means was that the Africans enslaved by European slave merchants were no longer considered part of the human family; they became the personal properties of their owners.
They were shorn of all rights that allow us to call ourselves human beings.
Just like the cattle, African slaves became chattel properties – to be used and abused without compensation or consideration, and without recourse to legal remedies.
These were among the reasons European slave masters could start breeding their slaves the way one breeds animals.
That also explains why the slave masters could have incestuous relationship with their own offspring without any compunction, and sell their own children off without any qualm.
It is well documented that many leading Jews collaborated with the Nazis, yet no westerner dare to suggest that the Jews were culpable in the Jewish holocaust.
It is a crime now in Europe even to deny to holocaust; a leading European historian was jailed for expressing doubt that the Jewish holocaust occurred.
Why is it then that it is only we Africans who are still being insulted by these shameless offspring of our oppressors?
“The aftermath of chattel slavery is an adjustment to a new kind of slavery. As long as you are dependent on other people solely for your jobs, your house, the cleaning of your streets, the education of your children, the image you see on television, or the image of God in your church, you can cut it any way you want to, you are a slave.” – Professor John Henrik Clarke.
And why do we in Africa allow the heirs of those accursed slavers to hug the high moral ground?
The genius of the West lies in its ability to sell itself positively. And westerners spare no effort in selling themselves; that explains why they take marketing so seriously at their institutions of learning. That also explains why every Western nation spends good money in setting up media outlets.
It was Steve Bantu Biko who made the very important observation that: ‘the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.’
Psychologists have also recognized you can get a man to do your will if you control his mind.
It appears that it is only those of us in Africa who are still slumbering and are unconscious of the values of communication and propaganda.
We still very stupidly rely on our oppressors to continue to give us the image of ourselves and to tell us our own stories.
Our elite still feel very giddy when they consume the distorted images about themselves they read in the western media.
Many of them still consider the BBC an objective purveyor of news. They fail to ask themselves why one of the world leading imperialist nations will spend good money setting up a broadcasting outlet to broadcast ‘OBJECTIVE’ news!
And for those that did not know it, the BBC African service remains the few among the old BBC structures that had not been axed due to budget constraints.
Go figure why not!
When fed up with Western news distortion that portrays them as merciless blood-thirsty fiends, the Arabs launched their aljazeera media outlets to portray themselves in their own image.
Today the aljazeera TV is giving both the CNN and the BBC World Service good running for their money.
And the Arabs now have an outlet that portrays them in the ways they want to be portrayed.
For years, nay centuries, American multinationals super-exploited Latin American natural and human resources with American media cheerfully praising the US as champions of freedom and Human Rights, when the reality and the facts speaks otherwise.
That was until the late Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, got fed up with the mindless distortions of his country’s and region’s realities.
He started his own TV Sud to portray Latin America in the images of its inhabitants, and not the through the jaundiced lenses of American media houses.
Whither thou Africa?
Westerners and their local acolytes would want us to continue to believe the bare-faced, jejune lies that Europe and the US are interested in our betterment and have been helping us.
They failed to answer the question as to what all their so-called help have done for us in over six hundred years of our relationship with them!
In what tangible ways have we benefited since the Europeans forced their ways into our lives?
The imperialists and their local compradors should tell us which friend will pay five to ten percent for exploiting his friend’s resources? Or which friend will rain bombs on a supposed friend at the drop of a hat.
Everyone with an iota of brain knows that the arguments that colonialism was an altruistic, almost charitable enterprise undertaken by noble and righteous pioneers of civilization, is nothing but a criminal lie.
Why should we in Africa accept that colonialism was for our benefit, when no European nation colonized by the Nazis will accept that it benefited from the Germans violent invasion? No German today will dare say that the victims of Nazism benefitted, even though we know that they (Nazis) built good autobahns.
Our elders say that until the Lions learn to write history, every tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
How true!
Time for us in Africa to start to tell our own story.
We Africans owe it to the memories and the souls of our ancestors to ensure that the embalmers of western history do not get away with their attempt to lessen the enormity of their crimes against us.
We should reject any attempt to whitewash our holocaust with every fiber of our being.
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:
- Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
- The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
- WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
- Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
- African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer
Where to buy them online:
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Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm
Africa: it shall be well
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Africa: Destroyed by the gods
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Get free promotional materials here:
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A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/
- 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/
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Comradely,
Femi Akomolafe
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