The credits on the last page say it all. Bennie Bunsee is the Research and Development co-ordinator of this august organisation. The contact persons are Shafiek and Faik.
The tone of the overall report is plaintive yet extremely accusative.
How African slavery built the Americas;
How slavery destroyed African civilisations;
Slavery, colonialism and land conquest in South Africa.
In the month of April, for example, some pique is expressed over the denial by historians that early Egypt was an African civilisation and that Christianity emanated from this civilisation. It registers more pique because, so it is said, the Egyptians now wish to replace the nose of the Sphinx with an aquiline nose whereas the original flat broad nose was distinctly African!
In the month of February, it is explained how everything began with the African people:
“The first stage of this history as the first race on earth, they (the African people) built glorious cultures and civilisations, stemming from the Kush-Ethiopian empires that spanned the world and which reached its apex in the Nubian, and ultimately the glorious Egyptian Pharanoic civilisation during the very beginning of the rise of human civilisations. This is thousands of years before BC. Unfortunately, much of this history of the African people and their civilisations is buried in antiquity and for centuries was lost to the world.”
In March, the accusations begin
“The denial by the West of the great achievements of the non-West civilisations was to justify their so-called civilising mission towards the darker races they conquered and colonised worldwide, and upon whose backs they built their affluence.”
We can just imagine how the early Celts, Picts, Franks, Lombardi, Teutons, Visigoths, Burgundians, Vandals and Allemans suddenly decided to put an end to their constant invasions and internecine strife to hold a summit where they decided, unanimously, that in furtherance of their widely-held jealousy of glorious Nubia and Timbuktu, they would band together to civilise and/or destroy this magnificent African civilisation, bury all its infrastructure and then, not only enslave all its people but wipe away any memory of their existence.
“Contributing to this devastation was that with the rise of Western colonialism and imperialism, and its accompanying racism, history was re-interpreted (sounds familiar!) by Western historians to put the West at the apex of human achievement and historical development. The non-Western civilisations, which were the first civilisations, long before the rise of the West, were denied their place in humanity’s development. Africa, which produced the first known of the human civilisations on its soil, was for centuries called the ‘Dark Continent’ by the West.”
Without going into the rights and wrongs of the matter, one has to concede that it was a brilliantly crafted and most successfully executed operation by those Celts, Picts, Franks, etc. Such inter-tribal cooperation and dedication of purpose has seldom been seen since and is not readily found amongst any people nowadays. Sadly, Africa was immediately transformed into a Dark Continent.
The words genocide, extermination and slavery pepper the whole report and a large section is devoted to slave uprisings. On a lower, grammatical, plane it is noticeable that the word Black is spelled with a capital B whereas white remains in lower case.
The calendar concludes with December:
“In South Africa, colonialism began with slavery in the Cape. But it is believed it existed in different parts of the country as the land was systematically taken away from the African people through military conquest and the African and Black people enslaved and ruthlessly oppressed.”
(Has the Institute ever heard of Chaka?)
Yet, in its mission statement, the report claims its vision is to:
“bring universal freedom, peace and harmony in the light of the disintegration of social relations and the relative failure of the rationalist materialist secular system identified with the West and which reflects a crisis within modern civilisation”.
Throughout the months, Bennie Bunsee quotes: “A people that does not know it’s (sic) history does not know itself”. Perhaps the Diop/Du Bois Institute and Bennie Bunsee in particular should focus on another famous quote: “Let bygones be bygones” and get on with the original concept of building a Rainbow Nation.
Perhaps we might even echo Shelley: “The world is weary of the past, Oh might it die or rest at last.”
Instead of bothering to re-write history and wittingly build up inharmonious resentment, it may be wiser to research and address some of the real issues of Africa.
George Ayittey (*1) a prominent Ghanaian academic, points out that Africa’s problems
are not the result of external factors, but internal ones. Greedy politicians in Africa make no attempt to better their country. Instead, they just sit at their desks using up their country’s foreign aid money while blaming all of Africa’s problems on colonialism and the rest of the world.He says, playing the ‘blame’ game isn’t going to get Africa anywhere and a large amount of today’s issues are a result of Africa’s corrupt governments, greedy leaders and never ending warfare. Therefore, if Africa and Africans wish to better themselves, they need to begin to look at the causes within Africa.
On July 24, 2005, in the TV program Wide Angle, Professor Ayittey discussed social, political and economic development in Africa with Anchor, Bill Moyers (*2):
GEORGE AYITTEY: In Africa, we see our governments as the problem. In fact, one Lesotho traditional chief said as much back in 1989, “Here we have two problems, rats and the government.”
BILL MOYERS: Rats and the government?
GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes, it is because Africans see government as the problem. In fact, we call them vampire states because they suck the vitality out of the people, their own people. A vampire state is a government which has been captured or hijacked by a phalanx of bandits and crooks who use instruments of the state to enrich themselves, their cronies and tribesmen and exclude everybody else. It’s called the politics of exclusion.
Now, if you want to understand why America is rich and Africa is poor, ask yourself, how do the rich in each of these areas make their money?
Take the US, for example. The richest person is Bill Gates. He's worth something like $64 billion. How did he make his money? He made his money in the private sector by selling something, Microsoft computer software. He has something to show for his wealth.
Now, let’s go to Africa. Who are the richest in Africa? The richest in Africa are African heads of state and ministers. How did they make their money? They made their money by raking it off the backs of their suffering people. That is not wealth creation. It is wealth redistribution.
BILL MOYERS: By stealing the money?
GEORGE AYITTEY: By stealing the money!
BILL MOYERS: But you see, that’s what troubles those of us who are looking for a way to be helpful to Africa. Why and how would they steal money given to AIDS programs and money given to build a civil society?
GEORGE AYITTEY: It’s because they hold the key institutions in the state. They control the military. They control the media. They control the judiciary. They control the electoral commission. They control the civil service. They control the central bank. This is why it is very important to take these institutions out of their hands.
BILL MOYERS: Jeffrey Sachs, who’s advising Kofi Annan at the UN on how to solve poverty and develop the third world, says, “The poor are poor because of failing infrastructure, poor energy sources, geographic isolation, disease and natural disasters that inevitably conspire to foil progress.”
GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, if you go to an African village and tell them this, very few villagers will believe you because they clearly see where the problem is. If you want to understand why Africa is in such a rut, there’s one word which describes it. And that’s ‘Power’.
Power is what describes the condition of Africa. The inability, or the adamant refusal, of African leaders to relinquish or share power has been the bane of development in Africa. Zimbabwe would have been saved if Mugabe were willing to step down or share political power. Isn’t it ironic that a continent with so much, actually has so little. That a people blessed with such an abundance of natural resources are, in fact, poverty stricken and deprived of even the slightest bit of wealth.”
Hippos and Cheetahs
It was George Ayittey who coined the phrase Hippos and Cheetahs in describing the current situation in Africa. In a brilliant speech in Arusha, he unleashed an almost breathtaking torrent of controlled anger toward corrupt leaders and the complacency that allows them to thrive.
He likened the entrepreneurs present at the conference as the young, agile ‘Cheetah Generation’, a new breed of African taking their futures into their own hands—fast-moving entrepreneurial leaders who brook no nonsense about corruption and who demand democracy, transparency and accountability for better governance.
Above all, they are willing to do anything, regardless of government help, to succeed and make Africa better.
He contrasts these Cheetahs with the ‘Hippo Generation’, the ruling elite stuck in their intellectual patch, constantly complaining about colonialism and imperialism. “They won’t reform, because they benefit so much from the status quo.”
Hippos, are the old guard of complacent, greedy politicians and bureaucrats wallowing in the muck but happy to do so in their role as perpetual victims of colonialism and poverty.
Ayittey acknowledges his anger at a continent that’s so rich in natural resources yet so poor in material terms. An enduring tragedy is the fact that so many people, governments and organizations want to help the people in Africa who, alas, they don’t understand. As a result, “helping Africa” has been turned into a theatre of the absurd, where “the blind are leading the clueless”.
It’s unclear whether well meaning folks like Bono are blind or clueless, but as Ayittey reminds us: “Africa’s begging bowl leaks! It would be absurd to pour more money into it, given that corruption costs more than $180 billion a year”.
In the light of these views and developments, perhaps the Diop/Du Bois Institute and Bennie Bunsee in particular might be better advised to follow the less sycophantic and blinkered approach. Better by far to distance themselves from our local Hippos and focus instead on the positive and infinitely more realistic long-term ambitions of the Cheetahs for the overall betterment of Africa.
“Nicely off he went” is the phrase used by ANC leader Jacob Zuma to describe former president Thabo Mbeki's departure from politics during a television interview outside the National Assembly following President Kgalema Motlanthe's State of the Nation address.
How wonderful for South Africa in particular and Africa in general if our Hippos would all simply “go off nicely!”
*1 George Ayittey is a prominent Ghanaian economist, author and president of the Free Africa Foundation in Washington DC. He is a professor at American University and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Ayittey holds a B.Sc. from the University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana 1969;
M.A. from the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada 1971 and a
Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada 1981.
Publications:
Africa In Chaos.
Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa’s Future.
Human Rights: Africa’s Shady Politicians Are at Root of Continent’s Destitution.
China and Africa - what China wants in Africa and how Africans should view this new pragmatic ‘friendship’.
*2 Bill Moyers—Public Affairs Television Journalist; Deputy Director of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy Administration; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and recipient of the 2004 Global Environmental Citizen Award.
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