Take them off, watch them hit the floor, and step all over them, just as the colonial masters trampled over your rights, cultures, and even your very identity, leaving you confused about your ‘reinvented nature.’
Africa has been reinvented so many times and clothed in heavy colonial garments that it trudges through its existence not knowing what it truly is, and taking every definition and identity ascribed to it by its oppressors.
The colonial masters did a thorough job of projecting an identity onto Africa, telling Africans what they should and shouldn’t be. False narratives were written, stereotypes were upheld as facts, and the ideologies, cultures, systems, and traditions of Africa were erased by people who exploited Africa until they got what they wanted.
What was Africa before explorers landed, looking for treasures, land, and mineral resources? What is Africa after the so-called independence that many lost their lives to get?
To date, twenty-four African countries speak English as their official language, six African nations still have Portuguese as their official language, while 29 speak French, yet they claim to have attained independence.
If you say you are independent, but you bear the names of your colonisers, speak their languages, worship their gods, and uphold their ideals over your cultures, are you truly free, or have you willingly enslaved yourself?
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If the very names Africans use to identify themselves are borrowed from their oppressors while ignoring the traditional names that represent their unique culture, can you say that the continent has an identity? The very name ‘Africa’ might very well not have an African origin- talk about an identity crisis.
Why are locations in Africa named after colonial warlords and criminals whose invasion and genocidal acts caused the loss of lives, theft of resources, and destruction of properties?
Monuments in Nigeria are still named after Fredrick Lugard to date. In fact, the very name ‘Nigeria’ was allegedly coined by Flora Shaw, a girlfriend of Frederick Lugard at the time. Port Harcourt, a state in Nigeria is named after a colonial paedophile, Lewis Harcourt, and nobody is battling an eyelid. Leopoldville gets its name from King Leopold, and Stanleyville was named after Henry Morton Stanley.
To date, countless streets, areas, and towns are named after the very people who brought apartheid to South Africa and grabbed their lands. In Zimbabwe, schools are named after Prince Edward and Queen Elizabeth, and kids are educated just the way these colonialists prescribe.
If Africa continues to be educated by the very people who enslaved her, and in the same manner they laid down, can the mentality of Africans ever truly be free from the manipulations of its oppressors?
They tell you what to study and when to study, even when it doesn’t suit your clime, you follow it to the latter; having a lot of ‘educated’ people who have actually been indoctrinated. People whose knowledge is useless in Africa brag with certificates simply because the colonial masters recognise them.
In Africa, African religion is shunned and tagged as devilish or fetish just because the colonial masters said so. They came to your land, burnt your gods, and taught you their foreign religion while convincing you that your gods are foreign and dangerous ones, even when they killed your brothers in the name of that same religion.
On a cultural level, Africa cannot claim ownership of its history. Africans have abandoned the folklore and the tales told from generation to generation in favour of stories told by people who ‘discovered’ villages and lands that were already inhabited by men of old. If you choose to tell your stories as seen through the eyes of the outsider, you might as well have no story or history. If you abandon traditional dresses for Western fabrics, you continue to fasten your chains with your own hands.
Africa must truly get rid of its colonial garments in whatever form they come and take ownership of its identity, resources, and narratives. Africa must face the rest of the world, including its former oppressors shoulder to shoulder, not as subservient people struggling to find their way, and responding to the whims and caprices of the colonial masters.
The decolonisation movement is all-encompassing; Africa’s resources should be left for Africa to explore and utilised. Stolen historical artefacts must be returned to Africa. The educational sector should be decolonised, so that we have African schools, and not just schools in Africa.
Naming ceremonies should be carried out on all the towns, states, roads, and locations named after the oppressors, and African names should be given to them. African spellings and pronunciation of African names should be insisted upon, and not some Westernized versions, simply because the colonial masters couldn’t be bothered about getting it right.
Africa has been sleeping on its opportunity to create its own identity free from Western interpretations and infringements. Africans should immediately cease their shameless displays of favouritism of alien cultures and practices over theirs. Africa must cease celebrating its conquest and subjugation by foreigners and take up their identity as the people of Africa, with their unique languages, religions, practices, names, and cultures.
If Africa plans or hopes to achieve any form of economic, social, and political progress, it must take charge of its narratives, build its identity, and captain its ship.
Years have passed, and opportunities have been lost, but it is not too late for the continent to reinvent its identity; this time, telling the rest of the world what Africa truly is and what it believes in and stands for. It is time for Africa to wake up and shed its colonial garments and clothe itself in its true African garb, standing proudly for the world to see.
