I did use some of my precious time to comment on exactly these words from Kwame Zulu Shabazz:
"vicious, bloody, murderous white terrorism. The Germans and Brits slaughtered many Cameroonian leaders whilst destroying or distorting indigenous institutions. Missionaries schools were imposed--the propagandist arm of brute violence (but its important to note that violence as "disciple" was a common feature of the schools)."
I know next to nothing about Cameroon. Read Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, lastly, Mbembe's Postcolony quite some time ago. Went to school with two Cameroonians Kofi Ngoh and Dominic Tarqwa - an ardent Roman Catholic. We were all dazzled by their national soccer side when they wiped out the reigning world champions Argentina 1-0, in 1990. Have listened to Manu Dibango, Richard Bona, Eboa Lotin, and Willy Ekwe, many others. I have a few Cameroonian friends here in Stockholm; have also listened to Dr Jean-Claude Njem whining on endlessly about Paul Biya. I was sitting next to Jean-Claude when Wole Soyinka on his world tour against Sani Abacha held a public meeting in Stockholm. When it was question & discussion time open to the floor, Jean- Claude's hand shot up and what ensued was a five minute volcanic eruption. I've never before or since seen him so angry. - Jean – Claude (PhD in Law from Uppsala) – the thing was paining him –he accosted Professor Soyinka thus, screaming at him " You keep on talking about Idi Amin, Mobutu, Abacha BUT YOU DON*T OPEN YOUR MOUTH TO SAY ONE WORD ABOUT PAUL BIYA!, This is public knowledge. I had to escort him from the hall to cool him down. (When Morgan Tsvangirai was in Stockholm (to complain about the bad treatment he was receiving) Jean –Claude stood up to call him out, called him an "uncle tom". So I know that there are brave men from the Cameroons.
So this ignoramus posted his comments at approximately 9.15 GMT on Thursday, 2nd January, 2014 but they have yet to surface in the light of day or night. Did I push the wrong "post" button? I'm not sure. Were my comments deemed indecorous? Offensive? Objectionable? Stupid? Racist? Uncle-tom-foolery? Is a Black man free to speak as a black man on such a burning issue or must I clothe my views in non-satirical or even in "unethical"poetry? I am quite capable of doing so, incessantly in an irresistible manner. I'll dispense with that for the time being, but if this doesn't get through then I'll have no choice but to take the bull not by the horns but by his tail or by his buttocks.
And what about Ferdinand Oyono - my favourite Cameroonian writer by the time I was leaving secondary school? " Houseboy" is how some of the Europeans still look upon some of us. He knocks on the door, I open it he thinks I'm the houseboy, and could he please have a word with "Madam" (My Better Half)
Chinweizu's " Decolonising The African Mind" is still an important critical work and the ideas therein are strongly at work in some of us ( especially me) when I observe that propensity/ tendency to prop up arguments up by invoking or quote this or that African writer ( almost like the Bible, the Holy & infallible word of God) as a mirror that reflects some reality that we want to project – usually the realities of what Africans suffer, have suffered and will suffer, yet after all these years it's only now that a film like "12 years as a slave" and that kind of sadism, and unspeakable brutality is finally hitting the screen. The Germans in Namibia has been much discussed before in this forum – and of course out of it. Until I find the courage to discuss it with two German history professors that I know – I'm afraid that I won't be touching that subject. The last time I discussed history with a German professor of history - this was in May, 1994 at the Upplands-Väsby Gymnasium, we started with some agreeable observations about Islam and as we eventually, inevitably approached the subject of the Holocaust and I listened to his opening remarks, I was terrified of the rest of what I thought he might want to say, so I told him that I wasn't interested in what more he had to say – terminated him on the spot and that was the end of the conversation. Of course I could have first hit him on the head with what his people had done to the Herero .
I guess, some of you would say that would have been below the belt.
Anyway, fresh in my thoughts are some of the words I heard about the Congo Free State, very recently. I'm still angry. I can't be nice about it and it's with that immediate background that I'm approaching the matter at hand ( my above quote of what Kwame Zulu Shabazz wrote)
That violence as discipline is the imported ideology tool– a brutal, practical pedagogic aid (a far cry from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed ) ensconced in the adage "Spare the rod and spoil the child", the antithesis, " Spoil the straps and spare the child" was never part of the applied colonial ideology - given that part of the civilisational project was to dominate and subdue the colonial subject based on the fundamental approach that Africans are but children and should be treated as such. For the right antithesis I must quote The Jungle Brothers here: "Sent to earth to educate the fool"
I should like to observe - and this is in response to a point made further on in the discussion thread, what I call the two-faced nature of some Europeans' contact with Africans. On the one hand what's best expressed in David Diop's The Renegade - those malleable souls ( house negroes) who willingly acquiesce to their own colonisation and enslavement - in contrast with the field and jungle brothers as presented here by Malcolm, re –Are you a member of the Mau-mau ?
Underpinning all of the above: David Diop's The Vultures
I understand the function of the USA- Africa forum as a platform on which to stage these kinds of discussions. It would be interesting to hear the Chinweizus and Ngugis and Ali Mazruis chip in. Some of the thread is déjà vu in spite of which I look forward - as an observer of course, to the next round of jolly good discussions on racism, corruption (the missing $50 billion Nigerian oil revenue money was mentioned on the BBC's Focus on Africa: 2014 the other day) reparations, the Busharraf and Morsi treason trials, the 2015 Nigerian presidential elections etc...
Wishing everybody a Happy New Year.
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