Page 62 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 19

Re-Education

The quest of Africans for freedom
ignited all over our continent, and
independence was won through
the sacrifices of the people. While
freedom fighters or leaders played
an undeniable role to end colonial-
ism and slavery, we must remem-
ber that victory belonged to the
millions of Africans who chose
death rather than subjugation. We
commonly pay homage to great
dreams of leaders, but leaders must
also pay homage to the people who
sacrificed themselves to realize
these virtuous dreams. I stress the
significance of the people because,
in post-independent Africa, many
The house slaves forgot the shack- we can then call the slave-kings leaders pompously claimed per-
les of subjugation by comparing of Liberia the first mental house sonal victory. Such assumption
their lives with the harsher lives slaves. continues to torment Africa and
of field slaves. This is a mentality the world because revolutionary
that continues even in the present The former slaves ruled Liberia leaders who manifest person-
world, where slavery is abolished by imitating the ways of their al grandiosity inevitably end up
but forces of domination persist. former masters in the USA. They tyrants, personifying the very evil
whipped natives just as their white they helped to defeat. Ayi Kwei
It is a truism to state that neoco- masters whipped them, and set Armah in the novel, ‘The beautyful
lonialists continue to oppress the up rubber plantations such as ones are not yet born’, vividly por-
world mentally, culturally, eco- Firestone to satisfy Western greed trays post-independence Africa by
nomically, and politically. Never- for resources in a similar fashion showing how Africa was betrayed
theless, their evil intentions would to the white colonialists. As they by her own children. Truly, the
not have materialized without the brought their house slave mentality beautiful ones were not and are still
conscious and subliminal support when shipped back to Africa, they not born in many African nations
of the mental house slaves. The became black bodies with spirits that were and are led by leaders
house slaves had gone through that danced to the rhythm of white possessed by the house slave
an evolution when slavery was supremacy. While colonialism mentality. It is sad to see post-inde-
formally abolished and Africans enveloped the rest of Africa, only pendence African leaders that treat
with the rest of the oppressed Abyssinia or Ethiopia remained their nations as personal property,
nations fought and won their independent, by defeating the leaving office only through natural
independence. The house slaves colonizer, and dispelling the myth death or bloody revolutions. It is
transformed physically, but mental- of white supremacy. The battle depressing to witness the children
ly they continue to be an embodi- of Adwa, resonated the indepen- of African leaders treating their na-
ment of the real house slaves. I am dent spirit of Ethiopians through tions as family inheritances. Above
tempted to declare that the first Emperor Menelik II and Empress all, it is melancholic to discover
mental house slaves appeared in Tayitu. Inspired by Ethiopia and the reason behind childish African
Liberia around 1822. I am referring fed up of domination, Africans leaders who fetishize power.
to freed slaves from the US who were prepared to throw away the
settled in Liberia and preserved co- shackles of colonization. However, The house slave mentality that runs
lonialism by oppressing the native some of the leaders, who led or deep in African political leaders
tribes. But then I remember slaves stole the hard-won independence, can be attributed to various causes,
were also sold by local African were infested with the house slave but each motive is linked to an
chieftains to the Western coloniz- mentality as they imitated Liberia underlying cause. Admitting that I
ers. If we agree to call the latter after independence. might be mistaken, I contend that
ignorant merchants of servitude, morally and spiritually bankrupt

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