THE celebrations of Africa’s birthday which
come every year on May 25 evoke many
memories, some of them sad, others quite
tragic amidst all the jubilation about Africa
coming of age.
The story of Sarah Baartman, torn from
her home in South Africa, and made an object
of the most obscene racial sexual abuse,
psychological and physical, sears the spirit.
The story of the Genocide of Herero’s
at the hands of the Germans in the then
South West Africa and the story of Africans
enslaved from Mozambique by the Portuguese,
coming with a picture of a little
African girl in a Zoo in Belgium, being fed
bananas, the way one would feed a petty
monkey.
How much worse can it get, how much
lower can humans sink in their denigration
and abuse of other humans?
Sarah Baartman was infected with syphilis,
and she died from it, she had a heart,
feelings, she was not just a body to be used,
she was a complete person who was violated,
totally defenseless, she was a victim of
rapid vileness.
And of course slavery is one of the worst
outrages against the African people, whose
physical, spiritual and psychological pain
we cannot ever quantify.
It defies imagination, no words or images
can capture it. This is just the tip of the
ice-berg though, Africans are not the only
victims.
In Australia, Aborigines were nearly annihilated,
in North America, the Indians,
the owners of the land were massacred,
brutalised and reduced to a token.
These are monstrous crimes carried out
by West Europeans.
We are culpable if we do not reveal all this
and more to our children so that they can
see that white skin does not stand for purity,
but that over the centuries, whites have
been guilty of some of the most heinous
crimes.
This will protect them from the colonial
cult of worshipping whites which is being
foisted upon them, through our school
system even.
When the British, the French, Germans
and other Europeans had no compunction
about setting out from their continent to go
and kill, suppress in order to loot the wealth
of another people, in another continent,
Africa, it was not a fluke by any chance, it
was characteristic.
It is historical, whatever they wanted they
took by force, armed robbery culture is their
culture.
Nothing disturbed them about setting
up violent laws which reduced the owners
of the land they had stolen to beggars and
slaves in the lands of their birth.
It is this violent culture which armed the
British, the Portuguese and other Europeans
to fight genocidal wars against the
Africans and their liberation movements
instead of relinquishing what they had
hitherto stolen. It is this violent culture by
which they live today.
They have been consistent over the
centuries.It is this violent culture that the
British reneged on their Lancaster House
commitment to compensate their grandchildren
and great grandchildren for the land
re-possessed, which land they had stolen
from Zimbabweans when they raided and
occupied Zimbabwe in 1890.
And it is still according to this violent
culture that the British and their European
relatives imposed sanctions on us when we
took the land regardless.
Instead of honouring their responsibilities,
they punish others for the consequences
of their own dishonesty and lack of
honour.
It is this same violent culture that saw the
Americans aggress Iraq, ravage it and leave
it in tatters because they coveted its oil; that
saw the French and their relatives destroy
Libya so they could loot its oil.
In Zimbabwe the British sponsored a
puppet so they could use it to siphon its vast
resources, they would have used force, but
Thabo Mbeki would not agree to such evil.
Thus to tell our children that these West
Europeans are their heroes, these very ones
who made life unbearable for the African, is
sacrilegious.
The dominant life force in us is not one of
cowardice, nor of conniving with the enemy
to destroy ourselves, there are sell-outs, but
those are on the fringe, they are not characteristic
of who we are.
The dominant life force in us is not one to
be cowed down by those who challenge our
sovereignty, but to defend ourselves even
with our lives.
We have developed this over centuries,
from the days of the Great Mwenemutapas,
the Rozvi Mambos, Lobengula, to President
Robert Mugabe (whom the British are so
scared they never pause in their vilification.)
But we do not want to tell our children
the truth that we are the heroes, that we
are at peace, that we love God, that we do
not treat others as objects to be abused for
our benefit, that we are not murderers and
in this, we have been consistent over the
centuries; we are not violent.
We have remained human and humane
despite the brutality that was unleashed on
us by the armed violent robbers from the
West.
Such is the dominant force in us.
Our children need to have a complete and
accurate map of what happened in the past
so they can understand the present, so that
they can understand our current struggles,
the ones they should champion.
Once they understand this they will be
at peace, pieces of the puzzle will fall into
place and it will not be easy for our enemies
to befuddle them and recruit them to work
against themselves and their people.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and
holds a PhD from Havard University.
She is currently doing consultancy
work.
In Australia, until the 1960s, Aborigines came under the ‘Flora & Fauna Act’,
which classified