As a wise one once observed,
"A little learning is a dangerous thing"
It's about people and people hood. As an honourable Yoruba man, of course I'm concerned about Africa's future! Here's a good point of reference about the complexity: Pius Adesanmi and his "You're not a country Africa."
No, I'm not crazy, have not applied for refugee status from anyone's mental asylum. But I'm unspeakably angry and alarmed when I think of the atrocities being committed by Boko Haram in the name of "Allahu Akbar" or in their own name – in the heart of Nigeria – and Nigeria is a heart, all of Nigeria is a heart, one heart, that's how I see Nigeria. Of course the heart has a top – a North – a centre, an in side, an out side, an East and a West, if you want to be geographic about it. The Sufis say that's where God lives. In the heart – not to be confused with the petrol pumping station of course. It can be operated on - it can even be subjected to dismemberment – it can be daggered – it can be even suggested that the baby be split into two as in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle (some of which I saw performed in the courtyard of Mensah Sarbah Hall, University of Ghana, Legon, early in 1970, under the direction of James Gibbs). The baby can even be subjected to that test request of King Solomon to show who really loves the whole, the one.
And in another nation/ national context, what Golda Meir once said still holds true for today.
I'm not drunk, nor have I just been blessing the wine and drinking deep, and that's probably why at this stage with all my senses intact I'm mildly fascinated and slightly engaged by the topic of Democracy and "the human project" in Africa. Of late, I've heard and read a lot of gobbledygook on the subject, even read the visionary bordering on the apocalyptically absurd – as a panacea to Afrika's develop-mental problems. Or someone else's mental problems. Sometimes the visionary had better be expressed as poetry, after all it's the precise mathematics of poetry – that kind of concrete precision that sends man in a capsule, all the way into outer space and safely back to base, that transmits the signals that the Chinese spy Snowden and his companions snap up from our cell phones.
Still on the Democratic Project and the Human Condition in Africa. So many countries comprise Africa of which some speak in blanket terms, from North to South to East, to West and Diasporas across the Atlantic and much earlier one, the other side of the Pacific – to India, Papua New Guinea, Australia , some would- be Diopist says also Afghanistan .Sure I'm familiar with and mostly impressed by Runoko Rashidi's written output – he was up at Harvey Cropper's quite a while ago, but I missed him – I was in another country - Merry England at the time. Sure I was in contact with him, before he went to Belize- gave him my best contact there. Dig deep says I. Dig where you're standing otherwise you may wind up being like that jackass of all trades, utterly confused and master of none. Not even master of me, only master of your own exaggerated view of yourself. Drink deep? All I know about is the slave revolt in Basra... "Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring"? Well, if the first man was a black man or Adam, then where did the "White" people come from? It's only Ignorance asking, so answer the question.
Brother Lefifi Tladi once questioned as "The Indian Ocean" - he put the question to Baffour Ankomah, here in Stockholm, in the Kulturhuset, it was at a major African & Diaspora event put together by Joe Frans – and come question time Lefifi put up his hand and eventually stood on his feet Lefifi Tladi the poet and painter did, and asked, "How come it's called the Indian Ocean when most of that ocean washes a much more extensive East African shoreline, whilst India is over there like a little clitoris," he whined, bunching his little fingers together, suggestively. The room was quiet. The air stood still, I almost stopped breathing. Some smiled others were horrified, there was an Indian guy in the audience who I saw looking mortified.
Well, there's Africa and Africa's Diasporas, just as there's Shiva and the Shiva Lingam. True too, "Criticism is as inevitable as breathing" – and that's why I would not want to disembowel either Lefifi himself or his poetry or his visual imagery. In fact one of his paintings has a place of honour in my bedroom.
"The Human Project and Africa"
Indeed, the human and not the inhuman, not Hanuman the monkey or the new King Kong baboon project. Fascination will in time progress to the state of obsession, maybe even inebriation, but right now - and I have been following AIUSA Central Africa Regional Action Network for a while, but right now this Human Project thing is going to start with a review of Human Rights in Africa as catalogued by
and
Latest news on the Human project is Brother Obama in Senegal, saying that Homosexuals in Africa must stand equal with everyone else under the law. He has thus disturbed the hornest nest of the most conservative elements known as the African Church in particular. Goodness knows how al-Qaeda is going to react to that the idea that there should be no dhimmitude or barbaric executions or incarceration for homosexuals in Nigeria or Jamaica - and if you're human, you'll agree that you're made of the same flesh and bone, the same physical and spiritual material.
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