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Gibson Nyikadzino
Herald Correspondent
The greatest problem we face today as Africans is that some of our intellectuals have failed to reorient from the colonial archive, yet they do not even know it, nor do they do anything about it.
These people always make claim of “smart ideas” when the continent wants to solve problems, but their “smart ideas” have no appeal because apart from being so, their audiences are dead.
This is a social-cum-intellectual death that has been caused by neoliberal mis-education.
Did you know that when Africans take pride in adopting digital technologies and social media platforms they did not invent; many are unaware they will be possessing colonial artefacts? The question is directed to Africans because through observation, they have been victims of institutionalised colonial modernity which is being embedded in technology.
We live in a new era of coloniality which is but a highly distinctive exercise of power from all corners of the world that targets the continent, regarded as the cradle of civilisation.
For Africans to be free and decolonised, there must be courage and bravery to think critically and not metaphorically.
From history to modernity, firstly colonialism created the fuel for industrial capitalism’s eventual rise, and today, through new forms (technology, education) it is also paving way for a capitalism that is based on the exploitation of knowledge systems or coloniality.
As coloniality becomes the biggest threat to the continuation of African societies, re-teaching and remembering the architecture of Africa’s history and heroes is the crucial antidote that our societies now need to adopt.
For many years, the education set-up that Africans have been used was based on the details that were set forth by the colonial governments, and Africans continued teaching that.
A lot of distortions, misinformation and deliberate alterations have been done by the white establishment, especially when it comes to the provision of meaningful history by Africans.
Surprisingly, this history that has been validated by colonialism and coloniality over the years has overlooked the heroism of black Africans, either in the continent or as African-Americans or slaves.
What the African leaders need to do is question and interrogate the intentions of coloniality and rewrite the narratives to address their problems and elevate their heroes. History that has been taught was written by the people who did harm, not those who got harmed.
It is time to go back and teach both sides of history.
For instance, not much was taught in colonial curricula on anything good about black people. As Africans, we thus cannot have a society that is brought up like that, where people only teach what is convenient to the colonially-minded and at times, racist teachers.
For a progressive end to institutional racism that is today being reinforced through technological artefacts and the single-sided education curricula, Africans should embark on a meaningful education on black history.
For example, the white man’s historical version of who invented the light bulb, they give credit to an American, Thomas Edison.
Edison is regarded as the one who invented the light bulb.
But Edison invented a light bulb with a paper filament which burnt out in no time at all.
Nothing has been written or spoken about the black man who invented the carbon filament that makes lights shine throughout.
A black man, Lewis Howard Latimer, invented the carbon filament to allow lights to continuously shine, yet credit is given to Edison.
If we go back many years, there exists evidence that the entire world and society was built on the distortions by white people. In the end, white people are said to have done everything. Nothing has been taught about the good things that were done by the blacks.
Young children are growing up in this environment which will be inculcated in them that everything good is done by the white man, or anything bad is done by a black man, it cannot be good for their mental health and that of society as a whole.
This has a detriment to the kids who when they grow up are nurtured to think they absolutely have no chance of achieving what other kids their same age, but just with a different skin colour have achieved, and that is not good for them. No one should benefit from white privilege.
Education is important unless we just want to continue living the life that we are living and continue just having black heroes be demonised by coloniality, white privilege and institutionalised racism in education and technological forms.
By education, it means going back in history. The demonisation of blacks started a long time ago and history cannot be corrected just by saying “forget about things that occurred long back”.
No one should get over such demonisation and no society has gotten over something like that. Education should not be an instrument to brainwash any race or group of people.
Unfortunately, people are being brainwashed in different ways.
Africa’s education and the knowledge of its black heroes must not be removed from the foundations of history by groups that have sinister motives in shaping the trajectory of unfolding histories.
The long-term skewing of the world’s economic-resource distribution in favour of particular types of power formations and the justification of this skewing by an equally biased distribution of knowledge resources should not in any way favour the West.
Coloniality is both an ideological and material phenomenon that should be fought and stopped forthwith.
The legacies of colonialism should not outlive colonial rule.
Online Reporter