Ozodi
Osuji
Looking at the fallen house that is Africa one is tempted to ask whether God is
punishing Africans for the sin of selling their people to Romans, Arabs and
Europeans. Seriously, has any African asked if God is punishing Africans for
their ancestors’ sin of not loving and respecting their people hence capturing
and selling them into slavery?
I am assuming that there are some Africans who are introverted and
introspective and do think or are all Africans happy go lucky extroverts who do
not think about why things are the way they are?
Africans roamed around their world, hunted down their people, captured and sold
them to all interested buyers. Just thinking about this incredibly evil
behavior makes ones stomach turn. How could they have done such dreadful thing?
And having done it is there a consequence for their criminal behavior?
Is slavery sin? And if it is sin do Africans feel that their ancestors sinned
for selling their fellow Africans?
If you talked to contemporary Africans they certainly do not feel that
their ancestors sinned in selling their people. However, they are usually very
quick to blame the white man for slavery.
They will glibly tell you about the evil committed by Europeans who bought and
used Africans to develop the two Americas. Some would even go as far as saying
that in carting African young manhood to the Americas that Europeans prevented
Africa from developing hence Europeans underdeveloped Africa. Such persons
would cap their amusing thesis by telling you that Europeans need to pay
reparations to Africans for under developing Africa.
How about paying reparation to those they sold, African-Americans?
Apparently, those are not Africans concern.
The wanting of other people to pay them reparation for capturing and selling
their own people betrays Africans self-centeredness, their inability to think
about the effects of their behavior on other people but instead see themselves
as victims who other people hurt. They want payment for what was done to them
while they make no payment to those they hurt. They hurt African Americans by
selling them and don’t want to do anything about it but want those who along
with them, white folks hurt African Americans to pay them reparations; this is
the audacity of evil.
In human terms, those who sold their people are more evil than those who bought
them, for the buyers do not who those they were buying are and could have
believed that they are not different from mules with which to work but Africans
knew their people and ought to know that they are human beings who feel pain
and resolved not to inflict pain on them by not selling them. Africans
ought to have had strong emotional bonding with their people and that ought to
have prevented them from selling their people.
The salient point is that the Africans who jabber rubbish on how Europe
underdeveloped Africa through slavery and demand reparation understand that
slavery was wrong. If it was wrong and the buyer of slaves is to be blamed, as
he should be blamed, shouldn’t the seller of slaves also be blamed?
It takes two to tango, right? There must be demand for slaves and supply of
slaves; both parties were necessary for slavery to exist. If Slavery is wrong
then the buyer and seller were equally wrong.
Africans blaming white folks for slavery is childlike petulant attempt at
denying responsibility for capturing their people and selling them to
slavery. They vaguely recognize that what they did is wrong and shift
responsibility for it to white folks.
Having denied responsibility for their crime by blaming their partner in the
crime, Africans actually believe that they are now free from the consequences
of their behavior. No, they are not; life is not that simple. Life is complex.
We know from the study of ego defense mechanisms (such as repression,
suppression, denial, projection, displacement, rationalization, justification,
reaction-formation, sublimation, fantasy, acting out, avoidance behavior and so
on) that what we defend we retain. If you drink a lot but deny that you are an
alcoholic, you will keep drinking until you kill yourself with alcohol.
Defenses do not remove what they are defending; denial does not remove
responsibility for one’s criminal action.
I understand what Africans are using the ego defense of denial and
projection to accomplish and know that it does not work. They want to see
themselves as innocent and perfect; they showed imperfection and criminality by
selling their people and have to deny responsibility for their action and
project it to other people. They project responsibility to those who appear
suitable as scapegoats, white men who bought African slaves.
Alas, the white conservative denies responsibility for slavery and does not
accept Africans childish denial of selling their people; white conservatives
blame Africans for slavery. Indeed, many white conservatives see Africans as
savages and see white civilization, including the slavery it gave to Africans,
as responsible for whatever civilization is now seen in Africans.
White liberals, the type found at university social science departments,
often feel guilty and accept Africans projections and blame themselves for
slavery and not blame Africans. Such bleeding-hearted liberals are not doing
Africans any good for they collude with them in taking responsibility away from
them hence perpetuate their childishness, the childishness of selling your
people and not seeing your action as evil and instead laugh as if you are a
saint when in fact you are Satan itself.
CONTINUITY
AND CHANGE IN AFRICAN CULTURE
There is continuity and change in people’s behaviors and in culture. The
African culture that allowed Africans to sell their people and not feel guilty
and remorseful for doing such an outrageous thing continues today in the
African culture that allows African leaders to be thieves and cart their
peoples wealth to themselves and not worry about serving their people’s needs.
Most African leaders are criminals; their political offices are avenues from
which they rob their people; they do not concern themselves with the fact that
their people are suffering.
It is not African leaders business that their people are
poor. In their minds it is not their business to help their people. They are
predatory animals that kill other animals and eat them and do not feel bad for
what they did.
Most African leaders are anti-social personalities, sociopaths and psychopaths;
they steal and kill with impunity and do not feel that they did wrong. Just as
their ancestors captured and sold their people and did not feel bad
contemporary African leaders suck it to their people and do not feel like they
did wrong.
Clearly, Africa’s past cultures that permitted slavery were criminal cultures.
Africa’s past is one of criminality.
The only change in Africa’s criminal culture is the injection of Christian
teaching that folks should love and care for one another; however, such
teaching is still skin deep in Africans, for when push comes to shove Africans
live for their individual selves and do not care for the human polity (the
political system is a place from which they steal).
It should also be noted that Africans sold their people as slaves to the
Romans. From history we see African slaves in Rome; they were mostly used as
gladiators fighting with each other to death and with lions and tigers for the
entertainment of Romans.
So, why are Africans always selling themselves into slavery for other people to
use them for their muscle power or for sporting entertainment (contemporary
Europeans use African soccer players for entertainment; in North America white
folks use black folks as their entertainers in sports and music)?
The curious thing about Africans penchant for blaming white folks for under- developing
Africa is their refusal to blame Arabs. Actually, Africans sold their people to
Arabs much earlier than they sold them to white men. Indeed, they continued
selling Africans to Arabs until the Second World War.
West Africa’s history tells us that by 900 AD Islam had come to Sahel Africa.
With the coming of Islam Africans began trading with Arabs by selling
African slaves for Arab goods.
We can unequivocally say that Africans were selling their people from about
900-1900 AD; that is, for a thousand years Africans sold their people to Arabs.
For evidence, go to Arabia, from North Africa to Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc. and
you find that the people are mostly a mix of African slaves and Arabs.
So, why don’t Africans blame Arabs to whom they sold more of their people than
Europeans? It is probably because they realize that Islam condones slavery and,
as such, Arab Muslims do not feel guilty from enslaving folks.
Christianity condemns slavery and Christians feel guilty for enslaving people
so they are amenable to be blamed by African sociopaths who want to blame other
folks for their crimes while not blaming themselves.
When the Portuguese came to West Africa in the mid-1400s they did not see
Africans as inferior people; they intermarried with them. Vasco Digamma reached
India in 1494; on his way he saw Arab plantations in the India Ocean and saw
Arabs using African slaves in those plantations.
When the Portuguese landed at Brazil in 1500 AD and could not successfully use
the native Indians to do their work they came to West Africa and arranged with
coastal Africans to supply them with African slaves. Coastal Africans were only
too glad to do so.
In what is now called Nigeria, coastal Africans like the Efik at Calaba and
Ijaw at Bonny negotiated with Interior Igbos to supply them with Igbo slaves.
The Igbos living close to the Efik, Aro became the chief supplier of Igbo
slaves to the Efik.
Aro people recruited mercenaries called Abam people and had them roam around
Alaigbo capturing Igbo people and marching them to the sea coast and selling
them to Efik who sold them to the Portuguese
In his autobiography, Olauda Equiano talked about how Abam mercenaries captured
him and his sister (they were about ten or less years old) and marched them to
the coast and sold them. He wound up at Barbados and later Virginia and finally
in England.
The point is that it was Africans like Aro, Efik and Ijaw that sold Africans to
white men. These Africans today do not feel like their ancestors did
wrong. This lack of guilt feeling for their ancestors’ criminal activity means
that they are mostly anti-social personalities.
The fact that they are sociopaths and psychopaths explains why in the present
they are able to steal and rob down their country with impunity and not feel
bad.
The current Nigerian head of state, a certain clown called Goodluck Jonathan is
an Ijaw. The man and the thieving cabal around him have taken corruption to a
whole new level. His insensitivity to the evil of corruption is probably
best explained by the fact that his ancestors were slave sellers and did not
feel guilty. His ancestors apparently socialized him into their criminal culture;
he internalized criminal thinking hence today is literally the head thief of
the criminal enterprise called Nigeria. The man and his criminal gang redirect
Nigeria’s oil revenue to their pockets and could care less that his countrymen
live in abject poverty; the average Nigerian lives on $2 a day while the clown
flies around in several jet planes. He does not evince sense of doing wrong.
These people are so habituated to criminality that they no longer know what is
right or wrong.
REINCARNATION AND KARMA: ARE AFRICANS BORN TO PAY OFF THEIR PAST LIVES CRIMES?
I often wonder whether contemporary Africans were past Africans who
reincarnated to come and pay a price in suffering for their sins of selling
their people. This presupposes that reincarnation is real. Do
people reincarnate upon death? I do not know.
Most African people believe in reincarnation. If it is true that people do
reincarnate couldn’t it be that those Africans who today suffer poverty and
assorted diseases reincarnated to pay a price for their sins in the past?
If karma is true these people are probably taking the effects for their past
criminal behaviors. They are paying off the samsara’s they accumulated by
being criminals who sold their people.
I do not know that reincarnation and karma is true. I am just thinking out
loud. Moreover, I am aware that such belief can be abused. For example, I could
say to me: suffering Africans are paying a price for their past sins and that
there is nothing that I can do about it, thus I ignore them. That is, we could
use reincarnation and karma to rationalize Africans suffering and not help them
out.
If we do not help Africans we would incur negative samsara and get retribution,
born in future life times to suffer. Therefore, whatever is the reason why
Africans are today suffering we must do something to help them.
DISCUSSION
So, do you believe that Africans are today suffering because of their
ancestors’ crime of selling their people into slavery? Do you think that
Africans are sinners who are punished for their evil past?
Are Africans a cursed people who must pay off their past samsara before they
can be blessed with prosperity?
Your answer to these questions would be cherished. We ought to explore every
possible explanation for why Africa seems a shit house and is going nowhere.
Whereas Asia is joining the ranks of the developed world Africans are sliding
backwards.
We have explored the neocolonial explanation, maybe we ought to explore
religious explanations and see if Africans suffer because they are a sinful
people.
I am agnostic and do not believe in a punitive god; however, I am willing to
explore whatever helps me to explain Africans shiftlessness. Why is it that
nothing good comes out of Africa?
I suggest that your answer should not be academic. Academics offer convoluted
arguments that is academic; they do not address the real world. I am looking
for real world explanation as to why nothing seems to work out well in Africa,
why everything that Africans touch turn sour.
Africans gained independent at about the same time that Asians did but today
Asians are almost in the ranks of developed nations whereas African nations
remain beggar nations.
Africans beg other people for economic aid and when they are given such aids
their leaders steal them and squander them. One would think that fifty plus
years after gaining independence Africa should have produced technocrats that
can run its economy but instead what we see in African governments are thieves
masquerading as political leaders. Why this dreadful situation; what is
the matter with Africans, anyway? Are Africans cursed by the gods so that
nothing good ever comes out of Africa?
CONCLUSION
Africans must make amends for their past and present sins; it is when they do
so would Africa house come to order and for things to work out well for
Africans.
Africans must change their hearts, from past and today’s stony hearts that do
not love and care for their fellow Africans; from stone hearts that only know
how to sell other Africans and not work for their good to loving hearts that
work for the good of Africans.
Africans must quit being god dammed thieves and stop stealing too much.
African leaders instead of stealing from their people must work for their
public good.
Africans must ask for forgiveness from African Americans and if possible give
them some monetary remuneration for the harm done to them.
Africans must stop denying their culpability in slavery and quit blaming their
European partners in that crime; instead of seeing the grain of sand in white
folks eyes Africans must remove the mountain in their eyes preventing them from
seeing clearly and loving their people.
Africans must become a loving people instead of the unloving people they have
historically been.
PS: I am not a
religionist. I deliberately employed religious categories, such as sin and
punishment in this essay. My real goal is to find out why nothing is working
out well in Africa, why everywhere you look in Africa you see man-made
disasters. If you can answer why Africa is a shipwreck without taking recourse
to religion your answer is welcome. One thing I forbid you to do is blame white
folks for Africans poverty. If I hear that excuse one more time from an African
I will chop off his freaking excuse making head. It is about time
Africans accepted responsibility for their fallen house and sought ways to
rebuild it instead of always, like children blaming other people for their
African condition. Those who blame other persons for their issues are always
unable to correct those issues; Africans blame white folks for their poverty
hence swim in their self-made poverty. To correct a bad situation you must
man-up and accept responsibility for causing the bad situation.
Ozodi Osuji
December 15, 2013
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