Creating the Awareness on Ugly Truth and Beautiful Lies

Africa is one of the most diverse continents one can find blessed with different cultures as countless as the various languages yet the woes of the continent serve as our constant reminder of the place. Africa is divided into countries and these countries largely fight for themselves no matter how small to make it in the world’s way of development, where they do not have an equal footing to begin with. The best bet they have is when they are truly united. These nations face the same struggles, injustice, exploitation and discrimination but fail to realize the dire need to come together as a strong force. If African nations truly unite they would not only be liberating themselves, they would be liberating the whole world (a great force for good). All these nations attempt to develop alone, failing to appreciate that it would take a shorter time to develop as a united force than alone after all, we are connected.

Many Years of Lies

Our nations must come to terms with the fact that no one African nation has that singular strength with the way the world works. Ghana was the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence, its first president Kwame Nkrumah once said; “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent. The colonizers’ strategy of divide and conquer had worked very well against Africa in the past and is even more effective in the present. In the past, European colonialism thrived on seeds of discord, turning African tribes against each other. It was the only way colonialism was possible.

They had come to Africa to trade, stayed long enough to understand the diversity and used it as a powerful tool in their favour. Africa was not colonized as a continent but as separate tribes (chiefdoms) and Kingdoms.

European colonizers had help from other rival tribes to be victorious in battles against tribes. They might have had ulterior motives in Africa from the start but could not act on it until they had gained advanced weaponry and technological advancement which would give them an advantage.

We often think colonizing Africa was a walk in the park, but it was not the case. Britain for instance with this advantage and a consolidated effort with the help of some allied African tribes fought a series of wars that lasted decades with only the Ashanti kingdom of present-day Ghana. France also faced a similar task with the Dahomey kingdom. These kingdoms and some other African kingdoms at the time were expanding at a fast rate, colonizing other parts and establishing their rule (African colonialism). This being a threat to European interest would make them make alliances with other tribes who the major kingdoms were a threat to. By making alliances with the other African states and signing treaties with them, the European colonial process would come into force. This would give European colonialists a great number of African soldiers to count on to help them defeat the major African kingdoms.

Unity had always been Africa’s problem and European colonizers used that well enough. Even after colonialism, it is still evident that the strength and economies of other united countries/ states would always be at odds with fragmented states; as is the case in Africa. Throughout history, countries only became powerful by uniting with others. The topic of African unity always brings to mind the Ghanaian Adinkra symbol called FuntumfunafuDenkyemfunafu (the Siamese crocodiles).

This Adinkra symbol represents the need for unity and harmony in society. This symbol depicts two crocodiles sharing the same stomach; they are bound to one fate yet they are blind to that fact.

The death of one would eventually lead to the death of the other, yet they struggle to have more of what they both equally need to survive. This emphasizes how interconnected we are as a people. We should not limit this symbolism to only Africa but try to see the world at large through these lenses too. Civilizations have always sought their self-interest at the expense of others and this would eventually lead to the failure of those civilizations themselves. Many times we try to soothe our conscience by tagging exploited groups as “others” but truly speaking, there are no others in the world just us. If there is something this pandemic has taught us, it is how interconnected we are as a people. That is why we cannot continue to do things as we used to (business as usual), because when one person is at risk in the world due to social inequality, war and climate change, we are all at risk. Africa’s current state is a result of both internal and external factors. Much need not be said about the internal factors since the media does well to inform us about how weak leadership is to blame. However, what we are never told is how centuries of exploitation contributed to the current state of this continent; the external.

While researching for my documentary (Gold Coast Elmina: How Africa’s Gold Changed The World), I found out a lot that was hard to take in.

What transatlantic slavery did to Africa cuts deep. Diversity which is considered strength became Africa’s curse. The different cultures of Africa at the time saw themselves as separate units instead of what we now largely consider “Africa” today, and Europeans arriving took advantage of this.

They did this by fuelling conflicts between these cultures so to get the war captives sold as slaves for the new world plantation labour .

Hope for the Future

This took a life of its own and became uncontrollable, entire communities were wiped off because they couldn’t defend themselves against bigger rival states. The attack became a mode of defence for some of the smaller states too who began attacking other weaker communities and selling them as slaves to Europeans so they could get European weapons in exchange to better defend their communities. Humans became the currency for European goods just to satisfy the greedy elites of bigger rival African societies to begin with. In that age, manpower was immense capital and the able bodies who were needed in Africa were robbed off the land to produce wealth in the West Indies on a large scale for others. This is how the “West” was made. Brown people would also be robbed of their land and forced into terrible conditions driving some into near extinction.

It is important to understand that though the African groups considered themselves as separate groups they had always been trade partners and relied on each other for the provision of goods which each group was better suited to provide and all these seeping into a larger resilient African economy.

This depended on a peaceful environment though it is expected to have some rivalry between states/groups as it is everywhere in the world. We have to bear in mind that this continent had great civilizations such as the Sahelian Kingdom; The Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, Songhai Empire and other West African civilizations such as the Benin Kingdom, and Ashanti Kingdom, just to mention a few.

These were wealthy African states that were major producers of gold and other important trade commodities. Some of these kingdoms aside from their formidable armies had powerful rulers also such as Sundiata, (known as the lion king), Mansa Musa (the generous king) and Sonni Ali (the magician). African nations had established trade networks which connected the entire region creating flourishing kingdoms and poverty was not something always synonymous with Africa.

First European Sailors

The first European sailors who arrived on a shore of Africa bore witness to this, they recorded that even the ordinary people they encountered were decorated with expensive gold jewellery.

Unfortunately, this encounter would end up erasing all the prosperity Africa enjoyed. As I mentioned earlier, African groups would fight each other to sell war captives in exchange for their foreign goods and this would greatly affect the once resilient economy altogether, affecting intra-African trade of that era. It is surprising to observe that even in this present day. African nations still perform poorly on intra-trade which is very vital for every economy and this is a contributing factor to the current weak economy of Africa that cannot support it’s increasing and capable youth, this is why some are forced to seek greener pastures elsewhere. We hardly hear of the prosperity and peace Africa enjoyed in the past before European arrival largely because of colonization.

When Europeans arrived at the Americas, some of the soothsayers of the Indigenous people told their people not to accept the European goods they were being lured with because it was a trap that would corrupt them. Can we say they were far from the truth? If you observe Africa, the elites of those past societies began trading their gold for European goods but would soon replace that with humans at a rate so alarming affecting the productivity of the entire region. Their economies at the time would become so import dependent on these Europeans leading to a collapse of their thriving industries at the time such as their vibrant textile industry. In the present day, Africa’s economy still remains heavily dependent on imports which is a major cause of its woes.

On the other hand, Western countries would enjoy so great economic boom out of the exploitation/unfair trade of that era leading them into a truly defining industrial age as we have witnessed.

Prowess of our Ancestors

What happened to the Black and Brown people; the price they had to pay for this is something worth contemplating.

Miseducation has been a powerful tool in suppressing truth around the world. Growing up in a former colony, all I learnt from my flawed education system is how Western colonizers greatly improved my nation and in effect my life, it would take me a long time to realize it was rather the other way round. It was the exploitation of the former colonies that greatly improved the colonizer’s state. The psychological effects of colonialism need not be overlooked. Even some African leaders are still under the spell of colonial hangover. There remains a colonial curriculum in African schools that needs to be revised. A look at the disparity between the written sources of Mali Empire’s Timbuktu scholars and the Songhai rulers of the Sahel about the West African Emperor Sonni Ali would inform one that throughout history the pattern of historical distortion has repeated. Colonizers have always sought to change history in their favour. It is fair to point out that this theft of history as Jack Goody would call it cannot be placed on the same pedestal with other colonizers. Africa’s real contribution to the modern world is greater than we think. It is interesting to observe that the tragedy of colonialism is not only in its success in changing the narrative but also in creating a negative image of Africa through false literature that is still relevant today. False literature and arts have done a lot of harm to the world. In this modern-day it takes a better channel which is through mainstream media, leaving negative imprints on the mind. Information has always been a powerful weapon, during the era of liberty, European slave masters tried to restrict the wind of liberty from reaching the ears of their enslaved because they feared rebellion. How can one curtail liberty which is “the most precious of all earthly possessions” in the words of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture. Haiti’s enslaved population would fight for years to liberate themselves from the shackles of slavery. And fight on to defend their hard-won freedom from the European attempts to subjugate them again to restore slavery. They wanted Haiti so badly because the slavery-run sugar plantations there were generating so much wealth for them but Haiti’s resilience and quest for liberty was stronger. At a point in the Haitian struggle, the French forces even thought about exterminating all the slave population there so it could be “restocked” with a new group of enslaved people from Africa who knew nothing about Haiti’s last decade of struggle for freedom. All for what? Just to satisfy man’s greed? Our world cannot improve if we choose to be silent on issues that affect us all. After all, liberty is a universal human right.