Those who yearn for a free Africa must retool themselves

By Ikuya Magode 

There are many different ideas bombarding Africa about how the continent can come out of its doldrums. 

But even amongst those who declare sincerity in seeing Africa wriggle out of disagreeable conditions of life, there still prevails helplessness to differentiate and categorise the acclaimed ideas. 

Without the grasp of sorting out and categorising ideas in order to disseminate what is desirable for a once-declared dark continent, Africa risks remaining with the same status even though the continent is occasionally applauded to be developing. Quite naturally, the extolled richness of the variety of ideas across the world ought to be to Africa’s advantage. 

Imbibing ideas has always been pivotal to any society. This is why from ancient times, the human mind has been agog with curiosity about the natural surroundings. 

The raw reaction of any life hinges on how to secure life’s necessities, as well as to ward off threats by other adversarial species. Early humans who lived by gathering fruits sought greater satisfaction by scouring into more territory. 

In the course of such striving, they always also became confronted with unexpected circumstances which elicited other levels of curiosity. This drove human curiosity into relentless search of ascertaining nature.

Humans became puzzled why every horizon seemed endless, each one opening up to another. 

It is the pursuit of answers to such puzzles which led to the many trails of stupendous premises making the feats of understanding propelling the improvement of production.

But the offshoot of improved production did not always offer similar or commensurate improvement of living conditions to all members of the human race. 

This, in turn, impacted on how members of society related with each other. As some humans obtained capacity to make and store property, their very capacity became their Achilles heel. 

James Magode Ikuya

Their endowments attracted much envy, starting a frenzy of raids and mayhem by human groups against others, which resulted not only in looting of products of others, but also capturing them as slaves for the performance of labour for their captors. 

A slave society was principally between slavers who assumed ownership of other humans and their slaves who had to perform to the pleasures of their masters. 

The very nature of such society is replete with conflicting interests. While slaves boiled with longing for the uplifting of their lives from oppressive and humiliating slave conditions, their owners delighted in extracting pleasures from the misery they inflicted. 

The passion of slavers was derived from how the satisfaction of their pleasure was extracted. 

Yet, amongst slaves were also those who were meekly resigned to their slavery by not recognising that another world was possible. 

This way, the slaves got infected with ideas hostile to their own self-emancipation.

The frenzy to capture slaves to off-set yawning labour requirements of European nationals in America triggered the slavery of Africans. European conquerors had, in descending on the Americas, wiped out its local inhabitants off the face of the earth. 

This was later on followed by colonisation and control of Africans on their own lands and homesteads. This turned out to be cheaper slavery from haulage in rough seas. 

Celebration of victory against colonial rule was spontaneous. It was all happiness to be rid of a rule symbolised by the carriage of a sedan on the shoulders of Africans in which gloated a reclining White Man sitting as a boss exploring the terrain of Africa for his own good. 

Consequently, there can be no common definition of African reality by slaves with their masters, the colonised and the colonisers. Even amongst the colonised are those who thrive from licking or tying the laces of the boots of colonisers; these nurse different hopes from the rest of the throttled crowd. 

That is why only those who are interested in wading through the mass of ideas and bringing out what represents the true aspirations of the African people can claim to be patriotic to the African cause. 

To do so requires tracing the genesis of the different ideas. Much of the ideas being floated are formed out of sheer prejudices of the different social interests. 

Therefore, the true graph for African patriotism lies on interest to seek and imbibe ideas of struggle for Africa. 

The writer is the state minister for East African Community Affairs.