WESTERNIZATION
The ideas that we are religious,
civil, educated or democratic are all measured ideals for which the colonial
objectives were primed. In history, we learnt that at the advent of missionary
expeditions into the hinterland of Africa, religion was advanced to introduce
civility to the backward savages there. With religion, came western education
and the reinforcement of colonial language as the authenticated instruments of dominion.
Everything else African or black was subordinated and derogated as primitive,
insufficient and backward, while an adult African, however grown, was viewed as
a big inferior “child” incapable of truth telling and self governance, fit for menial
undertakings.
Such Black people’s history is
buried in a hip of tragic episodes, often romanticized by victors of colonial
advents. In the colonial narratives, our tragic history is disguised as
deliberate investments to enlighten backward people, no matter the cost. This
is unfortunate because the black consciousness often requires a revisit of its heartrending
history in order to make sense of it. It is this historical fact that also
drives the consciousness. Without such courageous effort to revisit the past, the
black consciousness would remain a recycling of internalized colonial distortion
of us, something which we are not.
In the pecking order of global
challenges, the Black race has seemingly lost the ideals of the original
struggle for liberation that Franz Fanon and others advocated. If African
liberators are still trying to stay visible, then their efforts are not paying
off. For, we cannot claim to be struggling for liberation if we continue to use
the very colonial systems, methods and objectives that were applied against us,
which dehumanized us. Shamelessly, we often juxtapose ourselves between
capitalism and socialism as contending ideologies to liberate Africans. In reticence,
by embedding our conscience in western ideologies, we placate our nerves to
subdue the intractable history of the loss of our identity, intellect, virtues
and values.
Through liberation, we
westernized. We appear to be fully complacent to the western ideals such that
we now struggle to manifest within westernized mainstream to proclaim
liberation. We continue to subvert our own cultures and make little effort to
modernize it because we have come to look at it through the same lens that the
colonialist used – primitive and savagery! Westernization as such has dictated
the way we valorize our own languages, religious practices, industries,
lifestyle, laws (norms and traditions), economic activities, consumption,
alphabet and others.
It is strange how in Uganda
today, we have abandoned our languages and yet we can neither speak nor write
any foreign language fluently; We have abandoned our religion, yet we lack in Christian
faith; Religion has not helped us, instead, it has diminished our collective
values and heightened our indifference
to our needy neighbors. Western religions have scared us inflexibly from our
roots, consequently eroding our traditions and values.
An increasing body of scholarship
has recognized the acculturation of the black society through Christianity.
Scholars have argued that it is the dereliction we accord our social-cultural institutions
that also augments our westernization.
Africans today, for instance, have
conceded most of their values, identities, and the control of their environment to
agents of colonialism, (now increasingly to Chinese). The footprints of monetized
Christianity in all these are evident.
Christianity itself is not a
culture, but a belief system that is transmitted through existing culture modes
and structures. Left unattended, this powerful belief system has the capacity
to dismantle indigenous cultures, rendering it near obsolete. Christianity is strong
in that it is transmitted through the very instruments of colonialism where
they augment and replenish each other’s legacy.
For instance, to be considered
civilized, an indigenous person was expected to identify as Christian, must speak
fluent colonial language and must flaunt colonial formal education. Each of
these is primed to invalidate the African cultural institutions of language,
knowledge and its very existence.
How then can true African
liberators possess all the traits of the oppressors? They are Christians
(Catholics, Protestants or evangelicals), speak and identify with the
colonialist (English, French, Portuguese etc), espouse colonial ideologies of
social transformation (capitalism, socialism, libertarianism etc), all conspired
to advance colonialists and imperialist objectives – to enlighten and therefore
“liberate” the primitive savages (in modern terms, those living under $1 a day)
Hitherto, it is mundane to
declare that contemporary African liberators are colonial mercenaries who continue to represent
the very ideals of those who stole the humanity of the oppressed. Their
struggles represent the distorted vocation of re-humanizing the black race. These
vain efforts have manifested in westernization rather than modernization of
African cultures.
END.
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