The capitalist tsars in the
West want to maintain the way things are. And that is, they want the poor to
remain [poor] and the rich to continue to get rich. They employ the lower
classes who work 40-60 hours a week to make the capitalists wealthy. Still, these
poor workers are called lazy!
Yet still, we look towards
Europe and America for guidance and goodwill. Then we wonder why Africa is
still mired in the indescribable. Our poverty and political mess only help them
remain wealthy.
How about Jubers! Nea! The hopeless me better not say!
I know all of us have been or are
now being schooled in eurostandardized world. Our thoughts, our view of ourselves
and our ideas are such that they have to be in line with what Europe has
already standardized. This is required in some cases, however, there are cases
where following this dug snare and ditch becomes our political and economic
stagnation. Am I supposed to be optimistic?
I recently published a book: Is ‘Black’ Really Beautiful? This book
looks at Race, Color and Racism from an African perspective you can’t find in
our contemporary euro-literature and scholarship. However, from the subject of
the book, it’s very easy to see why such ideas are not addressed in the manner
in which they are supposed to be handled. Most of us think “Black is
Beautiful?” However, many of us don’t actually see the fatuitous insinuation in
the proposition. So buckle up!
People scratch their heads when
I ask them what you call a person who
is proud of his or her race! They don’t have the answer! Why? Because Europe
has decontextualized and instrumentalized the appropriate word.
I maintain in the book that the
color (black) that has been used by the Europeans to describe the Africans
wasn’t meant to be a presented glory for the Africans. However, the color has become so dear to the
African person and the person of African descent to the point that they’ve
owned the color per se. The African
person has been so much lost in the ontic of this loosely descriptive, and
begrudging color that she sees no difference between this describing color and
her own skin and humanity. Black becomes her skin and her skin becomes black.
Okay, let’s get silly! Black
President! Black Market! Black Friday! Black Man! Black Panther! Black Magic! Black
Days! Point out your choicest pick! What a miasmatic state of affair for the
scions of the colonized and the enslaved.
So, to be proud of oneself, one
has to be proud of the color [black]. But does the color black describe the
skin of the African? Does it describe the skin of the person of African descent? No, obviously! However, the
color has been accepted with near divine essence that black as a color and the
African are seen as one and the same.
The question one would ask me
is: if we are not black then what are we? You are black only because someone
says you are. We have no name that stems from our own ingenuities. We are what
Europe says we were… what we are now, and what we’ll be in the Future.
Blackness is a description used
by the Europeans to degrade the African person. And the poor African embraced
it wholeheartedly! What else can she do anyway! The magnificent Europe calls
herself white. Who dare ask the
ridiculous?
So what is happening in South
Sudan? This same ‘looking outside’ for the solution to our problems has
crippled South Sudan and it will take it to its economic and political grave.
What is lacking in South Sudan is not creation of ideas strictly
speaking, but the methods through which these ideas can be implemented. If
corruption has to be dealt with comprehensively, then it has to be dealt with
at all levels. Laws and regulations don’t implement themselves. There has to be
across-the-board systemic instruments to deter every civil servant and
politician from putting his hand into the cookie jar. And if that person is so
callous as to put his hands into the jar, then these systemic methods can cause
this civil servant’s hand to be caught inside then cookie jar.
If the Vice President, Riek
Machar, calls for peace and reconciliation, he has to draft a comprehensive
strategy and plan on how this peace and reconciliation can be achieved. Ideas
and goodwill without any methods of efficacious implementation are just as good
as the fancy ideas of that perennially drunken old fellow around the corner.
President Kiir calls for the
police and the security agents to respect the average citizen. Without any
systemic and institutional methods devised by the government to check the daily
operations of these people and to hold them accountable, these people will
continue to kill at will.
We need day-to-day instruments
that can check daily operations of people in public offices. If some people
slip through these instruments, then they can now be held accountable through
instituted regulations and laws.
Let’s stop looking outside; at
America and Europe for ideas that’d help us prosper. The poorer we are the wealthier
the capitalists (who drive politicians like cars) in the west get. So don’t
expect Europe and America to give us ideas that are helpful… in essence.
Let’s harvest our internal
powers. Let’s be ingenious and come up with economic and political ideas
relevant to our realities. And let’s not forget the methods to implement them;
because implementation is the KEY! Let’s stop quoting the ideas of Dave, John
and McDonalds from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford etc… etc. Okay, so you went to
those universities! Why are you still talking about their ideas? Where are your
own ideas?
Why do I even blame South Sudanese
leaders when 90% percent of Africans and people of African descent answer ‘YES’
to this question: Is ‘Black’ Really
Beautiful?
Without strong innovative ideas
and feasible ways to implement them then we are off the cliff! How long will we
continue to look towards Europe for Salvation? And you expect me to be
optimistic!
Twitter: @kuirthiy