We have so many who have a bad hangover about colonialism to the extent of harboring and promoting racial and ethnic antipathies towards the successors of the colonial “tribes”, i.e., non-Black human beings. To this lot the world is sort of White and Black, in which White is bad and Black is good. The problem needs to be tackled head on and laid to rest. There is no room for political correctness here.
In 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made a speech to the Parliament of South Africa counseling the whole region that there was a “wind of change” blowing that could not be stopped. He was telling the colonialists that Black liberation was inevitable. He was right, and he was thereafter proved right, despite much bloody resistance.
So too as regards colonialism. It was no more, no less, an inevitable “wind of change”. It is somewhat naïve, even silly, to imagine that a far more developed/advanced world was simply going to leave Africa alone.
From time immemorial man had not only been obedient to the Biblical command “go forth and multiply”, but committed to invading, conquering and subjugating those who were weaker. Had Africa been more advanced and stronger she would have done exactly the same. At local levels Africa did behave in the same way. A classic example is the Zulu nation that made a very grim business out of this with its mfecane campaigns that literally depopulated whole regions.
And please let us not be disingenuous and pretend that it is the White man that imported the culture of inequality. That culture was embedded in this region before the White man came. The Zulu nation is actually structured on the basis of inequality with its abeZansi, Abenhla and Amaholi classes. Mzilikazi invaded Zimbabwe and set up despotic rule.
Just think about why we reached a stage where Neil Armstrong recited those immortal words – “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. America putting a man on the moon was no more, no less, simply an extension of man’s inherent need to “go forth”. If we surmount the problems of space exploration we will do this as a matter of need, right and destiny! No question whatsoever! We WILL invade other populated planets if we find them. The only difference will be that this time it won’t just be Europeans doing this to Blacks, but man doing it to other species.
So we really need to get over the colonial hangover. We really need to understand that it was inevitable. We need to accept it as such.
More importantly we need to understand that this “wind of change” was necessary for our own advancement as human beings. Have we not indeed embraced this advancement? Is it not the case that just about everything we possess and value today is the product of foreign culture … from the houses we live in to the thing we use to post anti-colonialism comments on the internet.
So please get over it. Stop this silly lament that “but his father used to beat up my father”. Accept that we have all been brought here by irresistible “winds of change”. Let us work to go forward as humans. Let us be appreciative of our differences not resentful. Let us see diversity as enriching, not divisive. After all the most powerful nation on this planet is the one that is most racially diverse. It has also elected a mixed race person as its President for the second time.
Stop this wallowing in the past. Stop crying and whimpering about it. It is the culture of underachievers and those with an inferiority complex.
If you don’t agree kick all foreigners and their products out and go back to ibetshu, mud huts and donkey drawn sleigh ... as we had not even invented the wheel yet.
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