Brutal
Truth about Black People
My guess is that had the following been written by a
white journalist, he would have been sacked from the
newspaper. As it is, this is a black reader's letter
that appeared in 'The Namibian' on 08 April 2011."
ALTHOUGH hard to swallow, us black people despise
everything that looks like us. To prove my point,
not so long ago fellow blacks who had run away from
atrocities in their own African countries were
beaten, burned and some even killed by fellow blacks
in South Africa.
In Namibia, black supporters of the ruling party
Swapo and the opposition parties clashed in 2009 and
we still hear of such quarrels or violence just in
the name of politics. Through studying history, I
have come to learn that we actually disliked one
another before colonialism, hence fierce tribal
fights during those years. Colonialism united us all
in the fight against a common enemy and after
colonialism, we saw the rebirth of things we thought
were buried a long time ago, like tribalism,
regionalism, favouritism, etc.
Although we do not like others from other tribes, we
all love things that we do not produce. We love fine
branded clothes from Europe, we love American and
German-made cars, we love expensive wines and
whiskeys, yet no African person brews any of them.
All we own, unfortunately, are thousands of shebeens
where we drink ourselves to death, stab each other
with knives/bottles, infect each other with the HIV
virus, make lots of unwanted babies and then blame
others for our miseries. We love all sorts of
expensive foreign made items and show them off yet
we look down at our indigenous products that we fail
to commercialise.
As blacks, we know very little about investments,
whether in stocks, or in properties. All we know is
how to invest our money in things that depreciate or
evaporate the fastest like clothes, cars, alcohol
and when we are at it, we want the whole world to
see us. I know some brothers driving BMWs, yet they
sleep on the floors and don’t have beds because
nobody will see them anyway.
This is what we love doing and this is the black
life, a life of showing off for those who have. A
black millionaire tenderpreneur living in
Ludwigsdorf or Klein Kuppe in Windhoek will drive to
the notorious Eveline Street in Katutura where he
will show off his expensive car and look down on
others.
We sell our natural resources to Europe for
processing, and then buy them back in finished
products. What makes us so inferior in our thinking
that we only pride ourselves when we have something
made by others? What compels us to show off things
that we don’t manufacture? Is it the poverty that we
allow ourselves to be in? Is it our navigated
consciousness, our culture, or just a low self
esteem possessing us? For how long are we going to
be consumers or users of things we do not produce?
Do we like the easy way out, such that we only use
and consume things made by others?
Do designer clothes, expensive wines or changing our
names to sound more European make us more confident
in ourselves?
Our leaders scream at us how bad the Europeans are
yet they steal our public money and hide it in
European banks. We know how Europeans ransacked
Africa but we are scandalously quiet when our own
leaders loot our countries and run with briefcases
under their arms full of our riches to Europe. The
Europeans took our riches to Europe but our African
leaders are doing this too.
Mubarak of Egypt, Gadaffi of Libya, Mobutu Sese Seko
of the then Zaire, all had their assets allegedly
frozen in Europe. Why do our African leaders who
claim to love us run to invest ‘their’ money in
Europe? Again when they get sick they are quick to
be flown to Europe for treatment, yet our relatives
die in hospital queues. Don’t our leaders trust the
health systems they have created for us all?
Why are we so subservient, so obedient to corruption
when committed by our very own people? Nobody can
disagree with me that in this country that we are
like pets trained to obey the instructions of their
masters.
I am sure we look down when we think of our broken
lives but what do we see then? I wonder if we
realise how we sell our dreams to our leaders for
corruption, misery, poverty, unemployment,
underdevelopment and all other social evils
affecting us.
How long are we going to let our manipulated minds
mislead us, from womb to tomb?" |
