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Useless Africa – The Land of The Educated Fools
Sunday, 02 October 2011 22:49
(Opinion) - How dare I call Africa useless? Have I not been given a shot of the tranquilising drug of gradualism or could it be
that I have now become a wounded warrior, whose vengeance would light up and straighten the dark and crocket mentality and mind-set of Africans and African leadership that has crippled Africa’s economic prosperity and turned it into an island of poverty, starvation and beggars in a vast ocean of material prosperity thereby relegating Africa and Africans at the back heap of human aspiration. The once cradle of human civilisation has now become a desert of corpses and skulls. Should I be perturbed when people call Africa the ‘dark continent? Why are we afraid to call a spade a spade? Is Africa not a backward continent? Is Africa not still living in total darkness with a dependent mindset? Is Africa still not feeding its soul with the opium of hatred, greed and blame? Is Africa not still living in the invisible castle of patronisation and sympathy? Why has it become a taboo to speak about Africa’s uselessness to create post-underdevelopment enlightenment? Is Africa not the main instigator in activating the dynamics of its own underdevelopment?In this vast desert of global competition and under the sweltering heat of economic exploitation, Africa is an oasis of material resources, whose resources are looted with pens, booms and guns by traveling scavengers, who with the agility of the eagle and parasitic tendency of the vulture devour and pollute the fertile African oasis for their survival and Africa’s underdevelopment.Should they be blamed for scavenging into Africa’s home yard, especially when their survival depends on it?
For far too long Africa has taken every opportunity to blame its underdevelopment and backwardness on every single phenomenon and occasion. Firstly, it was slavery and the slave trade when Africa was looted (in millions) of its most precious and valuable young and energetic talent, who were transported (in inhumane conditions) to the New World to work in plantation fields, and who were discarded after the industrial revolution. Then came the advent of colonialism and the imperialistic era (the scrambling and petitioning of Africa), where this time Africa was not looted of its human resource, but of its material resources. A little later,came the “gentler”colonisation in the form of neo-colonialism or indirect colonisation, where Africa and Africans are made to be economically and politically dependent on the blood sucking scavengers. Today with Africa in flames, the apparatus of neo-colonialism has taken much more subtle forms, sizes and shapes, but still with the same deadly and venomous agenda (to loot and rape Africa once again of its people and resources). They come in the form of economic globalisation, global integration, the United Nations, the Common Wealth, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), good governance, western democracy, rule of law etc. etc. Africa is once again made to believe that its active membership and interaction with these instruments of the blood sucking scavengers would bring about development and once again revitalise the almost dead African oasis. Africa and African leadership have been programmed to believe that its integration into the “global economy” would bring about the much needed stimulants that will go on to activate the dynamics of development. In as much as I concur that these past and present events have had severe impacts on Africa and Africans, yet they are not the knockout punches for a determined and disciplined Africa.
Africa, what makes you think that those who have raped and looted you for nearly five hundred years will one day help you to become an equal like them, especially when their survival depends on your misery and misfortune? Do you expect a leopard to change its spots when it’s under the rain? For once Africa, why don’t you stop becoming the land of the educated fools and start becoming the mother of the uneducated wisemen and women?
Africa, despite been the faithful and loyal servant of the bloodsucking scavengers and their imperialistic instruments of rapping and looting for five centuries, your stupidity is fast becoming beyond redemption. Africa, please tell me your record and prove me wrong. Globally, the number of absolute poor has been in decline except for Africa, which has been on the increase for the past quarter of a century. Africa, over 300 million of your people are absolute poor (living on less a dollar a day), 33% of your population suffer from malnutrition, one in every six children die before the age of 5, one African dies from malaria every 30 seconds, the average life expectancy of your children is 41 years, and you are host to 32 of the 38 highly indebted poor countries of the World. Yet despite all your sufferings and undesirable record, you are the World’s largest reservoir of natural resources – Africa you are the richest and most endowed continent. It really puzzles one’s imagination how you became what you are now.
Africa, your leadership has now become the dancing puppet of the scavengers and has even mastered the scavengers’ art of looting and rapping, which they (African leaders) are now applying on their own people. Africa, your leadership has not only rapped and looted your people, but they have gone beyond the “moral” limit of the blood sucking scavengers, thereby activating the catastrophic tsunami of lifeless living, unredeemable poverty, insatiable hunger and starvation. Africa, your leadership is a hypnotised giant.Not only is your leadership redefining the boundaries of untenable corruption, they have begun radiating the unpleasant fumes of corruption to unborn babies. Africa, your leaders have become the irrational fools who have been rejected by the light of rationality. Africa, there is no going back, for your leaders have not only betrayed your people, but they have become active participants in the rat race, a race that has unleashed the venomous potency of poverty and human dilapidation, clutching your people under the angry jaws of underdevelopment. Your leaders have created unnecessary destitution without necessary institutions, castrating development in all its forms. Your children are now left in chaos, confusion and crisis, turning the once basket bowl of the World into the begging bowl. Your leaders are even worse than the prostitutes of Paris, for at least they have undignified common sense. African leaders are not only scrambling and partitioning Africa’s wealth, but they are also using such wealth to build dream castles in the fortified “West” and fattening Western Banks with Africa’s capital.
One more thing Africa, you said that you are independent, but I bet you don’t even know what it means to be independent. Your farmers toil the fertile African soil both day and night, under the scorching sun, only for the worth of their labour to be determined by the scavengers’ ever ready instruments, at very shameful prices. What kind of independence is this? They told you not to subsidise these hard working farmers for it does not make economic sense, but if you peep over the fence, they are doing the exact opposite and yet still it makes economic common sense. They ceremoniously package fiscal and monetary policies (a time-bomb waiting to explode) in the form of structural adjustment and economic “recovery” programmes so that you can slay more of your people and you been the educated fool happily accepts them with a twinkle smile. Africa what about the crises and conflicts that have been taking place in your own backyard? In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Somalia, and the drought in East Africa…what has your useless instrument (the AU) done? Could it be that it is faulty or is it the case that it has always been a ceremonial instrument? If my memory serves me well, I don’t seem to remember, America, UK, France, Italy and NATO been Africans or part of the African landscape. Could they be the new African boys disguised in the uniform of humanity, liberation, freedom and democracy but with the same deadly and intoxicating agenda? Africa, you don’t even have a say as to what goes around in your backward, how do you expect your voice to be heard and heeded by your neighbours? Should I be surprise that you don’t have a permanent sit at the UN Security Council despite the fact that you are the largest represented bloc in the United Nations? Africa, is this your understanding of independence? How much I pity your logic. You are always determine to play the symphony of past glories but I see nothing glorious about your past and present and even though there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it appears to be the light of a coming train. Africa, you don’t need to be given a worst case scenario because you are already the worst case scenario.
Africa, in the light of all of these, and much more, I dare refer to you as useless…the land of the educated fools. I am on my knees beseeching you Africa, for once in your long life, why don’t you think and do for yourself?
Written by Dr. Abdoulie Sallah
Associate Professor
Sharda University
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Comments
We are both real, transparent...and unafraid to endorse our credibility in strong sunlight.
We do not creep about the internet within a cloak of shaddows and secrecy.
It must be difficult to play cricket from underneath that darkness of none identity.
Can you see the bowlers arm...and the googly clearly?
Do you strike...or do you defend?
Or like Don Quixote..do you merely tilt at windmills..thinking they are castles?
Answers on a post card to the internet wizard.
I did ask this guy if he was English, for real. He never responded.
Your article would have been more appealing had you not quoted Martin Luther King verbatim - That's plagiarism! And as a professor you should know better. How can African develop when Educated ones like you are teaching in American universities?
Please stop throwing stones while you still live in a glass house!
Anyway,its great to see you join the forum and debate which your article has generated under your own name.
I can't remember encountering any commentator in a forum/discussion generated by their articles.
I suspect that some have even declined sending articles to Jollofnews,beca use I haven't seen their articles on this paper for a long time.
So thank you very much Dr. Sallah.
And thank you Jollofnews. Keep it up. This opportunity you gave us is PRICELESS AND INVALUABLE.
Dr. George B.N.Ayitty,Phd.
...and counterbalance My hero Bob Marley with another hero John Lennon..withv2
"all we are saying..is give peace a chance"
Thanks.
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