Africa: Africans and victimhood
Written byNdesanjo Macha
Enanga's Pov writes about Africans and victimhood: “Have you not met the kind of African who likes to detail the things that are wrong with our continent, how we have been raped and plundered over centuries, the sort of African who has all the details (real and imagined) of what the White man did and did not do, and who enjoys the telling? Have you not met them?”
Written byNdesanjo Macha
Top World Stories
Cancel this reply
10 comments
It would have been much better if no white man ever set foot in sub-saharan africa. of course, the africans by themselves would have, in the past 350 years, promoted themselves from stone-age living to silicon valley. they would have had their own alphabets, libraries, roads, sky-scrapers, and and would still have been the first to form operations like heart transplants. sorry the white man interfered!
Dr. Ross, you completely misunderstand the victim mentality. In fact you are coming at it from an entirely different frame of reference.
There is no doubt that there have been quite a few perks to living in the post colonial time -like infrastructure and all of that – but there’s also no doubt that that isn’t why the colonialists set foot in Africa. They came in to conquer, rape and plunder and they did.
Lest we forget we already had our own empires – Ashanti kingdom for one-and cultures all rich with their own knowledge and wisdom.
Hope I have enlightened you a little bit.
Ms Englightened, true they did have their own knowledge systems. It included – and still does – harvesting penisses and brains from victims live, as the screams of these unlucky ones would enhance the quality of the muti for which it is harvested. You cannot blame that the colonisers also took over these mutilations.
why is it that the African nations run to “White” nations for help? Also, while blaming a certain country for shipping off the best people during the slave trade, some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa has policies in place that contribute towards the brain drain, i.e. drives the well-qualified away. I can see it coming: in due time, the nations to which they went to work / emigrated, would be blamed for “taking away human resources”.
My grandparents were in concentration camps during the Anglo Boer War; Irish Catholics suffered under England … the list really, is endless. To be sure, most peoples were oppressed some time during history. Yet, they do not make a career out of being a victim.
Have you actually ever spoken to Africans, as in really spoken, or are you basing these ideas on just some superficial perusal of Western news and literature?
After WW2, Europe also went to other Western powers to bank roll their redevelopment just like Africa did. As you know, Europe got a bit of a fairer deal on that one, so I don’t think this whole victim thing is a one way street, also read this article which explains just how profitable the NGO industry is:
http://www.thinkersroom.com/blog/2006/02/get-real-poverty-eradication-101/#comment-134088
To be fair, a lot of what you have said is true. But it’s not complete in that it doesn’t capture the whole gamut of personality types that run across Africa including the saints among women who managed to feed a whole constituency of previously starving people starting with only one goat and a bag of cashew nut seeds or the Bikos and Wangari Maathai’s who put themselves on the line with nothing but love in their hearts.
But ultimately the biggest problem with your statements is that, they don’t offer a solution. Ultimately, your statements label us as victims and self destructive people and leaves us there. I think there may be a lot of things that Africans need but to continue to accept, wallow in and live a lives of self-destruction and victim hood aren’t one of them.
This response has been a little meandering, hope it makes sense
I lived in Sub-Saharan Africa for more than forty years. In various countries. I visited victims of muti murders in hospitals, and went to morturies as a researcher.
I have also witnessed schools being burnt down, when they were better than in many many other 3rd world countries.
I know the struggles of the white people to get anything going in Sub-Saharan Africa. Considering that there was no architecture.
I think on this topic we must simply agree to disagree: From what I can gather we are nothing but hopeless, self-destructive imbeciles who are even lucky to still be alive.
You see I am African, if I believed that what hope would there be. Instead I look at Africans as a people who have beaten up and are somehow still alive and trying to figure out just what to do now. In other words, I see hope and I see potential.
I gave my best years to Africa.
My family gave their best years to Africa. They worked hard. They paid taxes to make South Africa the country that provided more schools and hospitals and homes and a better standard of living in general for the indigenous people, than all the other Sub-Saharan countries combined. What a big mistake.
Now, the IMF has decided to cancel a deal with CHAD, for the corruption. Happily, that cannot be our fault too.