BEFORE and during the colonisation of our continent by the Europeans, it was common for all Africans to be referred to as ‘savages’ by the same Europeans who considered themselves ‘civilised’.
Yes, our African culture, African past, African personality, African governments, Africanness etc were often described as being ‘savage’, ‘barbaric’, ‘backward’, ‘uncivilised’, ‘inhuman’ etc.
It was therefore not surprising that the ‘civilised’ Europeans ended up calling our beautiful motherland, the ‘dark continent’.
Nothing good came out of Africa they said.
The impression that was painted by the whiteman was that, while Africa was ‘barbaric’ with a terrible past and present, everything good came out of Europe.
The Europeans lectured Africans that European governments, past and present were good and their societies were highly civilised observing human rights and respected other people’s religious practices.
However, below we would like to look at the whiteman’s past and that of the African and show that it was the European who was the shameless savage.
We shall start our journey of looking at the whiteman’s shameful past, by looking at the evil practice of crucifixion.
Many Christians in this country think that the killing of people on the cross only happened in the Bible when Christ was killed.
Crucifixion was in fact introduced to Israel by the Romans.
It was a method of carrying out capital punishment invented by the whites and was widely used in Rome which was the centre of European ‘civilisation’.
Crucifixion was a European invention.
“Crucifixion is a form of slow and painful execution in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead.
“Crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful, gruesome, humiliating and public.
“In some cases the condemned was forced to carry the cross on his shoulders to the place of execution.
“A whole cross would weigh over 300 pounds.”
Throughout European history, thousands of people were killed using this ‘barbaric’ method.
From crucifixion we now come to the mother of all savagery and barbarism created by the whiteman: Death by burning.
This method of execution was employed to carry out capital punishment for such crimes as treason, rebellion, heresy, witchcraft and sexual deviancy e.g. ‘hungochani’.
This was commonly referred to as ‘burning at the stake’.
Here the victim was bound to a large wooden stake.
“When this method of execution was applied with skill, the condemned body would burn progressively in the following sequence: Calves, thighs, and hands, torso and forearms, breasts, upper chest, face and then, finally death.”
There was another form of execution by burning which was used by the Europeans against their own people and later Africans which was as horrible as direct burning of the body.
This involved, “pouring substances, such as molten metal, onto a person (or down his throat or into his ears) as well as enclosing persons within or attaching them to red-hot metal contraptions.
“Immersion into a heated liquid which was boiling was also used.”
Let us now take a journey across Europe and look at examples of execution by burning in that so-called ‘civilised’ land.
Our first port of call is Spain where we come face to face with what was referred to as the ‘Spanish inquisition’ which was established in 1478 and the aim was to preserve Catholic orthodoxy.
In other words people were burnt at the stake for practising Judaism, Islam etc and not Catholicism.
It is estimated over 50 000 were burnt at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition.
Then there were the ‘witch hunts’ throughout Europe.
“The penal code known as the Constitution criminalis Carolina (532) decreed that sorcery throughout the Holy Roman Empire should be treated as a criminal offence – the witch was to be burnt at the stake.”
It is estimated that nine million witches were burnt at the stake throughout Europe.
No nation can beat this kind of savagery.
In the United Kingdom, one of their queens: One Mary 1st ordered hundreds of religious dissenters to be burnt at the stake during her reign (1553-1558) in what would be known as the ‘Marian Persecutions’.
There again in the United Kingdom, the traditional punishment for women found guilty of treason was burning at the stake where they did not need to be publicly displayed naked.
In the British West Indies, black slaves were now and again burnt at the stake.
For example, in 1774, nine African slaves at Tobago were found guilty of murdering a white man.
Eight of them were burnt alive at the stakes.
In the United States, several burnings at the stake are recorded particularly following suspected slave revolt plots.
For example, in 1712, 20 people were burnt at the stake after slave revolts.
In Africa, you never find these stories of savagery.
Take our own Monomotapa Empire which lasted for over 300 years.
There was no death sentence in that wonderful empire.
If you read all the Portuguese records covering that period you will never come across harrowing stories of barbarism like burning people at the stake.
It was therefore a devilish colonial lie to refer to Africans as savages when the real barbaric savages at that time were the Europeans who had the cheek to call us uncivilised while they burnt their own people at the stake.