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HOW TO TURN
AFRICA
AROUND
(Proposing a dual governance structure for
Africa
)
Looking at the African scene is very depressing. You ask: can Africans ever join the rest of the world and be accounted as worthwhile? Can Africans have governments and economies that instead of begging for foreign aids are part of the power players of the world? Can Africa become like the
USA
or
Japan
,
Western Europe
,
China
and
India
? Is
Africa
condemned to perpetual poverty and political and economic insignificance?
The answer to my questions is:
Africa
can be turned around and made to compete with the best in the world. However, to accomplish that goal may take a total change in thinking and behaving in Africans. If African countries continue on the same path that they currently are one doubts that in a thousand years they can amount to anything significant. They must totally change course for them to amount to something significant.
The present course that Africans are supposedly on, or advised to be on is democracy. African countries are advised to democratize their political institutions, what institutions?
Democracy is a wonderful form of government except that it is not correlated with economic development and political power. No country has come to political power and economic prominence through democratic means. If you doubt this assertion the onus lies in you to show us a country that came to prominence through democratic means.
China
, the present economic phenomenon of the world, is certainly not doing so through democratic processes!
Often folks cite the
USA
as a country that came to power and prominence through democracy. Is
America
democratic even as I write? One must be a total imbecile to consider a country where a white clique used force to steal the entire land from the native Indians, enslaved Africans and used their labor for free to develop its economy as a democratic country. At best
America
can be called an oligarchy. There is no democracy in
America
today and there has never been one in her entire four hundred years history. Let us, therefore, not amuse ourselves with silly talk of
America
as a democracy. In appearance
America
appears democratic and is dressed up to look democratic, to deceive the world into thinking that it is democratic but in substance is a brutal and repressive dictatorship (I call it velvet dictatorship). One out of every four black men between ages 14-24 are either in jail and or supervised by parole and probation officers. Go tell them that their country is democratic, a country that instead of providing them with jobs have them unemployed and for the most trivial crimes clamp them into jails and prisons while slapping white folks who committed similar crimes on the wrists.
Empirical evidence shows that no country ever came to political and military power through democracy. Ancient
Egypt
did not.
Greece
did not.
Rome
did not.
Spain
did not.
England
and
France
did not.
Japan
did not;
China
did not;
India
did not (in
India
the caste system essentially eliminates the black race from participation in social institutions).
Holland
did not. The Ottoman Turks did not.
Germany
did not.
Russia
did not.
No one can show us a country that came to political, economic and military power through democratic means; all we hear is loose talk of how democracy is the best thing that has happened to mankind since the Garden of Eden (itself a myth). This does not mean that democracy is not beneficial. Democracy is probably an ideal political ideology for maintaining on-going polities but not for making newer polities powerful, political and economic.
HUMAN NATURE AND DEMOCRACY
One of the reasons why democracy is not the ideal means of making a new country powerful is human nature.
Human beings are existentially the same; the same life force operates in all human beings but, unfortunately, operates differently in them. People are different. In a world where people are different it is simply silly to expect all of them to participate equally in doing anything and achieve the same results. When we want to build a bridge the only opinion that matters is the opinion of civil engineers; when we want to remove a brain tumor the only opinion that matters is that of brain surgeons. By the same token in politics whereas all people have a right to entertain political opinions the only opinion that really matters is the opinion of leaders, political and economic leaders.
In eternity, heaven, people are the same, equal and unified but in time, earth, people are different, unequal and not unified.
In the world of space, time and matter people are different and all of them cannot perform given tasks at the same levels.
To explicate human differences let us focus on just one variable (we can focus on many but one would do). Let us consider the issue of fear and how different persons react differently to fear.
All human beings experience fear. To be a human being is to be fearful. Without fear no human being can survive to live another day.
Fear is a built-in mechanism into people that alerts them to threats to their lives, to what could eradicate their lives and urges them to take protective measures. Fear is a signal that there is a threat to the individual’s life and compels him, often in an involuntary manner, to defend his life either through flight (running away from the perceived threat) or fight (doing something to defeat the source of the threat). We must have fear to be able to live on planet earth, an impersonal place where most things are trying to snuff out our lives and we seem built with a bent on living at all costs.
Children who are born without the capacity for fear or have deficient fear alerting signals (which goes with deficient pain mechanism, anhedonia) often do not learn about what could harm and eventually destroy their bodies and generally do not take precautions to protect their bodies and tend to die young. In total fearlessness and painlessness such children die before they reach adolescence; they die from injuries. Animals must take measures to protect themselves from the impersonal threats posed by certain stimuli from their environment if they are to survive.
Simply stated, animals, human beings included, must have fear to be able to survive on planet earth. Fear is a survival mechanism; fear is adaptive for human beings. Alas, that which is adaptive is also at times not so adaptive.
People have different levels of fearfulness. Some persons’ bodies have a quicker fear arousing tendencies. Their bodies built-in danger signaling system are over developed and they tend to be alerted to threats to their lives more than other persons. Even when they are sleeping if there is a threat in their immediate environment their bodies pick them up and they react with fear response (fight or flight).
Fear response is associated with complex biochemical movements in people’s (animals) bodies. In fear our bodies elicit excitatory neurochemicals, such as adrenalin, norepinephrine, and reduce the elicitation of inhibitory neurochemicals, such as GABA. The excitatory neurochemicals forces the individuals heart to pump faster and send blood to all parts of his body, makes his lungs to breathe faster so as to drag in more oxygen, oxygen needed by his body as it works faster; his body releases stored glucose, sugar, carbohydrates, to give his muscles additional energy to do what he has to do to cope with the threat to his life (fight or flee behavior requires additional energies).
Fear response is mediated by a biophysics and biochemistry that is beyond the scope of this paper. What is salient is that different persons have different dispositions to fear response and that some are slow to fear response whereas others are quick to fear response. Individuals’ inherited physical constitutions play roles in their fearfulness. Those quick to fear response may become fearful persons. They may develop anxiety disorder and are always anticipating what could harm them and react as if they are, in fact, being harmed, feel fearfully and run away (though nothing is objectively threatening their lives). There are fearful persons who are avoiding all kinds of situations that potentially could harm or destroy their bodies but that in the present are not threatening their lives.
On the other hand, there are people who do not go about anticipating harm and danger and merely respond to threats when they actually occur.
It is safe to say that the majority of mankind has normal fear response whereas a minority has excessive fear response. Perhaps, ninety percent of the people have normal fear response (that is only feel fearful when there is objective threat to their lives) whereas about ten percent of the population has some sort of anxiety disorder (feel fearful when there are no objective threat to their lives).
There are many types of anxiety disorder, including panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social phobia and so on. However, whereas it is debilitating to be fearful we must also remember that sometimes the most fearful human beings tend to have the most developed intellects! Out of anxious neurotics we have our artists, intellectuals etc. Nature operates in such a manner that its bad has some good and its good has some bad built into it; seldom do we see only good or only bad in human beings; people are always a mixture of good and bad but never perfect and we have to deal with them as they are. Expecting either good or bad people is idealism; realism in perception of actual human beings see them for what they are, imperfect creatures, creatures given to committing horrendous crimes against their own kind! No other predatory creature has equaled the barbarism of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, not with killing over fifty and thirty five million human beings respectfully.
ANXIETY DISORDER AND LEADERSHIP
In sum we can say that those human beings who have survived to adulthood are prone to fear with some of them more so.
Empirical observation shows that those human beings who are prone to excessive fear seldom make good leaders; they may make good intellectuals and professors, but professors are not where we go to recruit the leaders of mankind. The universities are teaming with anxious neurotics but seldom with decisive people who know what they want out of life and organize other human beings to go get them. Idle talkers are seldom doers.
To be a leader is to identify with a goal(s) that one believes serves public good and commit to realizing it. Leaders accomplish their goals through the auspices of other people; they employ other people’s labor in accomplishing political goals. Leaders use human and material resources (money etc) to accomplish their objectives.
To be able to use other people to accomplish set goals one must be a bold and fearless person. Human beings are the most intractable creatures on earth; each of them thinks that he knows what is good for him and for society. Therefore, to rule them one must be bold and courageous in asserting what is good for them. A leader must be able to break other people’s wills and implement his own will. The average human being’s will, at any rate, amounts to nothing more than self centered wishes for what is good for him; therefore, a political leader who is pursuing what is good for society must be able to ignore peoples petty wishes and forcefully implement what is good for society.
A political leader needs less fear than normal-neurotic persons. (Average human beings are normal to neurotic in character structures; only few human beings are psychotic, that is schizophrenic and or manic depressive and for all practical purposes are not relevant in political discourse. The psychotic drops out of organized society, lives in his own world and does not concern himself with how his society is governed. It is the normal-neurotic that is involved in politics. It is mostly those with personality disorders, especially narcissistic and paranoid personalities that tend to gravitate to politics. These are the people we need to pay attention to and make sure that our rulers are not too sick.)
Leaders tend to be less fearful persons or if they are fearful persons tend to have understood the nature of fear and resolved to overcome it.
(Adolf Hitler was a very fearful person; he understood the nature of his and other persons fear; he appreciated that most people are fearful and resolved to exploit their fearfulness. If you know that people are fearful and want to exploit them you can succeed. Terrorists do this all the time; they threaten to kill people, show that they mean business by randomly killing some persons, and hope that they could intimidate the rest of the people into embracing their political agendas; they hope to rule the people by manipulating their fear. So-called normal politicians also exploit the people’s fearfulness. George Bush is currently exploiting Americans fearfulness; he is always telling them that Arab Muslim terrorists are out to get them and out of fear they do as he asked them to do, fund a stupid war in
Iraq
, while fifty million Americans do not have health insurance. A fraction of the money spent in Iraq could provide all Americans with health insurance; talk about a misguided political policy!)
Leaders do not run when dangers threaten them and if they initially ran stop and come back to deal with the source of those threats to their lives.
If an environmental stimulus arouses fear response in your body and you stay and fight it you have learned to cope with fear appropriately. On the other hand, if you tend to run from danger though you are surviving you are not coping with fear appropriately. If you tend to run from fear, you may be an artist or intellectual or professor but you are not a leader of men.
(These days’ fearful African professors run to the West and from there talk rubbish about African politics. Leaders are in the trenches doing the work necessary for winning wars; they do not give idle directions from the Ivory Tower. However, the Ivory Tower has its uses; it sometimes produces good ideas for the consideration of those in actual leadership positions.)
Leaders of men know that the run of the mill human being is fearful and run when there is danger. Understanding that average persons take to their heels when threatened, leaders stay calm and try to calm people; when the going gets tough leaders stay cool and do what has to be done to solve the problem at hand rather than run from it. A leader reassures fear stricken mankind and uses them to do what has to be done for the good of society.
The average human being is a fearful person and when push comes to shove would run for safety and therefore does not make for good leaders. The average human being does not lead the people, only a handful of human begins, those not prone to running when fear urges them to do so make good leaders. In every human group, leaders are few in numbers. That is to say that the variable of fear and the fact that it manifests differently in different persons determines who is a good leader or not. Other variables of course affect leadership. The point is that human beings are different and cannot all do the same thing well; different persons do different things well.
FEAR AND AFRICANS
Africans are like human beings everywhere in this world. When they perceive threats to their lives they react with fear and either stay and fight or run for safety. As elsewhere in the world only a handful of Africans stay and deal with the source of fear; thus only a handful of Africans, as elsewhere, make good leaders.
The African situation is complicated by certain historical factors. In my view,
Africa
selected for fearful persons more than for fearless persons. How so?
Africans allowed fear of harm and death to dispose them to accept internal enslavement and later Arab and European enslavement. For over a thousand years the African environment produced people who accepted fear instead of fight for their dignity.
Africa
produced a fearful people and a fear oriented culture.
The slave obviously does not want to be a slave but feels that were he to disobey the person enslaving him that he could be harmed and or killed. To avoid harm and death the slave gives in to his sadistic master.
Over time the slave develops a masochistic personality that permits sadistic persons to inflict pain on him and he endures it with the rationalization that the future would free him.
I am sorry to say this, most Africans are masochistic personalities, they so fear harm and death that they permit those who threaten to harm them to harm them and they endure pain so as to live. In my judgment most Africans are fearful cowards. Raise your voice at Africans, point a gun at them, fire into them and kill a few of them and they do what you asked them to do. They may talk volubly but shoot into them and they panic and like rats run for safety. These people so desire to live that they accept living as slaves. Observing Africans give in to fear led me to see them as contemptible and despicable. I respect only courageous persons and since I see Africans as mostly cowards I do not respect them. Love is free but respect must be earned.
For our present purposes, in the world of the here and now it is fear of harm and death that makes the slave tolerates the oppression and abuse of his master.
The slave is, therefore, not suitable for leadership positions for he is habituated to tolerating others oppression and abuse instead of fighting and if necessary dying for his liberty.
Aristotle observed that slaves and women are not suitable for leadership positions; I agree with him but for a different reason. Those two classes of human beings tend to be prone to fear but no more so than other human beings; they were merely compelled by society to be habituated to excessive fear response. If they are trained to understand the nature of fear and to defy it they may make good leaders.
Until we have retrained slaves (Africans) and women and made them not to give in to fear, I believe that it is a mistake to thrust them into leadership positions.
The majority of Africans habituated themselves to slavery and therefore is not suitable for leadership positions. If in doubt see a continent ruled by those habituated to fear,
Africa
. In contemporary
Africa
there is a dearth of leaders. Fire a gun into a crowd of Africans, kill some of them and like rats the rest of them scamper, run and go hide in underground burrows to protect their cowardly lives. Only God knows what they are living for if they must live life as cowards.
(I was a teenager during the Nigerian civil war; I witnessed people running when bullets fly; I saw those who talked most volubly in support of the war run when a Nigerian air force jet flew by to go drop its bombs or spread bullets at innocent market women. I learned that the many talk tough and the few are actually courageous when bullets fly. One must stay and not run when bullets fly for one to have esteem in my eyes. I hold myself to the same standard I hold other persons. I walked the streets as jet fighters flew at house top spreading their bullets. I said: to hell with them; if I must run to live life is not worth living. If I run in the face of danger I see myself as a yellow coward, a chicken shit and not deserving of respect from me or from any one else.)
For our present purposes, Africans tendency to give in to fear means that they are not suitable for leadership positions. It is those who do not run when bullets fly and instead seek ways to get at the person firing the bullets at them, and if need be, strangle him with their bare hands that make good leaders. Of course in addition to animal courage leaders must be committed to a vision of what is good for their society.
WE MUST USE MILITARY SERVICE AND WARS TO PURGE FEAR FROM THE AFRICAN PSYCHE
Africa
needs fearless leaders. Those fearless leaders must find a way to purge from Africans psyche/mind the fear that led them to tolerate slavery and develop masochistic personality traits, tolerate abuses by white folks, and tolerate living as second class citizens everywhere they are found in oar contemporary world.
I believe that the best way to purge fear of harm and death from African minds is to put Africans through compulsory military service and wars. I believe that in undertaking wars men learn to tolerate dangers to their lives and still do what they have to do to survive.
Fear is always part of the human condition and folks must look fear in the face and still do what they have to do to live and live fully.
In my opinion, wars are the best ways to purge from folk’s minds the fear that binds them to slavery to other people and to living as second class citizens.
(Jesus taught love and forgiveness as an alternative method for healing fear. If you love the person pointing a gun at you, forgive him, and do not mind if he blows your brains out, you tend to be fearless. However, the problem with this Jesus method of overcoming fear is that it invariably leads to one dying and leaving the person pointing a gun at one to live and continue terrorizing other people. Jesus died fearlessly but he left the terrorists that killed him to live to terrorize other people. Two thousand years after his dearth we still have a world that looks like the world he lived in, a world where a few rulers tell the many what to do or else arrest, jail and or kill them. Thus, whereas the Jesus method for dealing with fear is an alternative method for coping with fear one must remember that it tends to lead to Carthaginian peace, peace of the dead. If one wants to live in this world as a separated ego self housed in body one must stand up to bullies. The Jesus method is for those who want to get out of this world, those who want to return to the world of unified spirit; fighting back is for those who want to live in this world, the world of separated selves, and live as free men.)
I believe that there ought to be a century of conscious wars in
Africa
, a century where leaders put all Africans, particularly the males, through continuous wars.
Nothing liberates a young man from fear than, say, five years of sustained experience at the battle front where he is constantly shot at and could be killed at any time and he sees his comrades killed. After experiencing war the individual cannot possibly give in to fear?
Wars, however, are not to be fought for the sake of fighting wars. Wars must have a purpose to be justified.
Africans have a legitimate purpose to fight wars. Africans must fight wars that aim at unifying all of
Africa
into one federation. Wars to unify and develop
Africa
are just wars.
I recommend that a leader of a populous African country, say, Nigeria, should compel all men between eighteen and fifty to serve in the military, for, at least, five years; provide them with excruciatingly rigorous military training and then use them to fight wars to unify Africa.
Nigeria
could come up with ten million soldiers today, and unleash them on West Africa, use them to unify all of
West Africa
.
Thereafter, the youths of the conquered (yes conquered, we must not shy away from employing heroic terms) West African countries would be compelled to serve in the emerging African military and unleashed on other parts of Africa until the whole continent is unified.
If this is done within a decade all of
Africa
would have been unified into one federation. Give or take ten years of sustained warfare and all
Africa
is unified into what I call United African Nations (UAN), with each tribe a state in the emergent African Federation.
I am interested in democracy in Africa but before we get to it we must engage in a period of sustained autocracy where a handful of committed Africans use military power to unify the entire continent south of the
Sahara
. Of course, this period of time would be a time of suffering and dying. So be it.
If fifty million Africans die to bring about a new Africa, a unified and fearless
Africa
that price is worth paying.
What is all this fear of death for, any way? We are born and must die, so why fear the inevitable, death?
Carpe Diem, seize the day and make the most of it, for tomorrow we must die. To fear death is the most silly and cowardly behavior one could engage in. Look death in the face and go ahead and do what you believe is right and if you and other people die in the process that is heroic death. Dying heroically is the best form of death and ought not to be regretted.
Is what I am talking about excessive African nationalism, a sort of fascism? Is it akin to Adolf Hitler’s philosophy (see his Mein Kampf)? If it suits you to see what I am talking about as fascism please yourself.
Let me make myself crystal clear. I am of the opinion that Africans need a period of total autocracy where a few people use force and all necessary means to bring about a united
Africa
and in the process purge from Africans psyche the fear of harm and death that disposed them to tolerate slavery and second class status in our extant world.
If Hitler’s method (I have studied his method as well as other methods, civilian and military) for achieving the goal of
Africa
’s unity works I will borrow it. I fault Hitler for trying to kill those he considered inferior persons but otherwise I do not fault him for using force to unify his people. If Hitler had used force to unify all German speaking peoples into one nation and left it at that his behavior would not have been heinous. What is bad in him is his nihilistic desire to kill Jews, Blacks and Slavs. He had no right to judge any human being inferior and want to kill him. He was not god and does not have the right to judge another human being inferior to him and his people. All human beings may be different but in spirit they are equal. As a human being Hitler had a right to seek unity for his people, and make his country strong, but he had no right to kill members of other groups.
I have a right to seek to unify Africa, and make
Africa
strong. Using Africans in a war to unite
Africa
, and if in the process millions of them die, is fine with me. Let me reiterate my stance:
WE MUST TRAIN AFRICANS TO OVERCOME THE FEAR THAT PREVENTS THEM FROM DOING WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO TO BECOME FREE, DEVELOPED AND POWERFUL.
TWO STRUCTURES FOR GOVERNING
AFRICA
FEDERATION
To accomplish the goal of a strong and unified Africa, I propose a dual governing structure for
Africa
. The two structures are (one) a regular democratic structure and (two) a guardianship structure.
The entire continent of
Africa
is to be restructured with each tribe a state, for a total of no more than five hundred states (the smaller tribes merged into viable states).
Each state should have a unicameral legislature of fifty persons. The legislators are elected for five year terms. The party (parties should not be vanity parties dedicated to serving individual politicians sense of importance but national parties, in which case three parties are plenty enough) with the majority in Parliament forms the government (produce the prime minister with ministers, not to exceed twenty-two ministers). The legislature makes all the laws of the state and the prime minister and his cabinet executes them. An independent judiciary headed by a state high court (under which are districts courts and town courts) adjudicates the laws.
The state is divided into districts (local government areas or counties). Districts are divided into towns (cities). Each district has a district council of no more than eleven members serving five year terms, a district administrator selected from the council and a district court.
The same structure is replicated at the town level (town council of no more than seven members serving five year terms, a town mayor selected from the council and a town court).
At the central or federal level is a unicameral legislature of no more than five hundred members (a member from each state) serving five year terms. (Term limit takes freedom away from people so its legality is in question.) The party with the majority in Parliament forms the government (produces the national prime minister and his cabinet, not to exceed twenty-two ministers). An independent judiciary headed by a supreme court of no more than thirteen members, the chief justice included.
Each state is in charge of public education. All education levels must be free and compulsory: six years of elementary school, six years of secondary school; four years of undergraduate university (for the top third of secondary school graduates); four years of technical education for the remaining two thirds of secondary school graduates. There compulsory education ends.
Only the best and brightest are allowed to go to graduate school, perhaps, no more than ten percent of all undergraduates are fit for graduate education. Two years of master’s level education and another two years for the doctorate and the students take their doctoral comprehensive examinations and leave school and submit their dissertations when they want to.
Whereas there must be sufficient public space for the education of all young persons yet private education must be encouraged, if only to give the public sector some necessary competition.
Each state provides all people in it with medical insurance. Health insurance is a human right.
Besides education and health insurance the state ought to hands off other areas of the economy. I am talking about a mixed economy here. Whereas the state ought to regulate the economy it is also a truism that private enterprise gives the best incentive for working hard and productivity.
Each state ought to be in charge of its economy. Citizens must pay twenty percent flat taxes to the central government. Additionally are of course the other sources of public revenue, such as corporate taxes, value added taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, licensing fees etc.
The central government shares revenue from mineral, fifty-fifty with their state of origin. The central government is in charge of national security, the military and foreign affairs.
Each state is responsible for raising its own revenue and developing its economy without looking to the federal government for revenue shares. The money the federal government obtains from minerals and taxes etc is for national development.
THE GUARDIANS
In addition to the regular Parliamentary structure for governance in democratic polities is what I call the Guardians structure. The guardians are an added governing structure.
The guardians supervise the parliamentary system and make sure that politicians do what they are supposed to do and punish them if they do not.
The structure of the Guardians should look as follows. At the center is the Guardian General. He must have had military experience (say, a retired General).
The Guardian General is advised by a Guardian Council of twelve (all retired military officers).
The Guardians, in addition to supervising the politicians are in charge of the military and police. The Guarding General is the commander in Chief of the armed forces, the police included.
Upon the advice of the Guardian Council, the Guardian General can veto any decision made by the legislative, executive and adjudicative branch of government.
The goal of the guardians is to supervise the politicians and make sure that political actors do what they were elected to do and to remove them from office if they do not.
The Guardians, in good behavior, serve for life.
At each state level are the state guardian and his council of twelve. They supervise the politicians at the state level and make sure that politicians are not corrupt (any sign of corruption and a politician is removed from office, to be reinstituted if found not guilty by the slowing working judiciary).
At the district level is a district guardian and his council of twelve. They supervise the politicians at the district level.
At the town level is a town guardian and his council of twelve and they make sure that the politicians do what they are supposed to do at the town level and get rid of those who step out of line.
The guardians are not elected into office. I expect that an initial military coup establishes the guardian system (and the parliamentary system) with the head of the coup the Guardian General. The guardian general and his council appoint state guardians, who, in turn, appoint district guardians, and the latter appoint town guardians.
All guardians are appointed for life tenure (during good behavior, they can only be removed by the Guardian General) and are selected from the ranks of retired military officers, from those who have served the polity well, guard it and make sure that it is properly served by those calling themselves politicians.
Clearly, the guardians are to be very powerful if they are going to be able to remove elected officers from office. They are designed to be powerful.
(The guardians are to live apart from politicians. Politicians and political offices…legislature, executive and judiciary…are generally in the center of the city where they are located. But the guardians are to be located far away from the center of the city; they are to be close to military barracks; after all they are military persons and are paid according to their military ranks. Each city ought to have one hundred acres of land set aside for the local guardian and his council; each district ought to have two hundred acres of land set aside for the local guardians and his council, each state ought to have five hundred acres of land set aside for the state guardian and his council; and the federal, central level, the guardian general and his council ought to have one thousand acres of land set aside for them. In these set aside lands are guilt residences and offices denoting the power and authority to supervise politicians.)
Why have guardians of the law supervise politicians? In my experience, African politicians are prone to antisocial behaviors, to stealing from the public treasury and to not caring to develop their people and therefore need to be supervised by those who have demonstrated their service to the people.
Let me repeat: from what I have seen of the African of this generation he is morally bankrupt. The African I see with my two eyes is a weak character. He is self centered and prone to stealing from the public treasury. I do not listen to his beguiling talk for even those of them who talk the right talk do not walk their talk; give an African opportunity to govern and suddenly he becomes a thief.
Therefore, whereas he is to be permitted to engage in the governance of his people he needs an additional structure to supervise him.
In my opinion, the African of this generation is an underdeveloped character; he is emotionally like a child and needs to be supervised by adults (the guardians). If unsupervised he seldom does the right thing for his people. His spirit of public service is very weak.
We must remember that for over a thousand years Africans captured their people and sold them into slavery, first to other Africans, then to the Arabs and finally to Europeans.
In my judgment one thousand years of selling their people has made Africans morally weak. The Africans I see with my eyes are psychologically warped and stunted. They are incredibly self centered and narcissistic.
In so far that Africans seek public office they largely do so not to serve their people but because public offices make them seem very important persons (VIPs); they are motivated by narcissistic reasons.
Africans, in the main, see public offices as from which to steal from the public treasury and become rich so as to gratify their prestige needs.
I am yet to see an African who is motivated to serve his people for the sake of doing so. In this dreadful situation what seems appropriate is to treat Africans as one treats those with arrested development. The guardians are to perform the unfortunate function of helping Africans grow into real adults who do the right thing for their people unsupervised.
I believe that we need this structure for, at least, a century. Africans need at least a century of resocialization to make them care for their people. Their over thousand years’ history of slavery has produced a self centered culture in
Africa
and a slave mentality in Africans.
Though Africans are no longer selling each other into slavery they still live under a culture produced by slavery. In slave societies people capture other people and sell them into slaves meaning that people were self centered and primarily invested in self survival. As I see them, Africans are the most self centered human beings on planet earth.
In fact, if you give them the opportunity contemporary Africans would resume selling their people into slavery and not feel remorse or guilt from doing so; that is how morally degraded Africans became.
Africans did not fight to stop slavery; white folks did so for them! I do not believe that the African I see with my naked eyes if left alone would serve his people’s public good. If you like, you can say that I have negative view of Africans and you are correct. I think that contemporary Africans are contemptible and despicable; I have no respect for thieving Africans.
This is not self hate projected out to other persons, as cavalier persons would say; it is a realistic perception of a degraded people, a clear eyed response to the African situation. Africans need to be subjected to draconian laws and immediately punished if they step out of line.
One way to re-socialize Africans to doing the right thing for their people is for all male Africans to be trained in the military and used to unify
Africa
.
And when the task of
Africa
’s unification is completed Africans still need to be trained in the military and serve a compulsory five year military term. During that time frame they should be used to perform public works, such as build roads from one end of Africa to another (
Africa
high way system).
We must do whatever it takes to change Africans self centered spirit and replace it with the spirit of public service.
One cannot be sentimental in dealing with Africans, for they are given to corruption and must be treated as such. They must be taught law and order and social interest oriented behavior. This requires a period of being brutal to Africans.
Why be brutal to Africans? Do you need justification to treat Africans in a punitive manner? Here is one reason for doing so.
Africans sold their people into slavery. Those who sold people into slavery are not exactly good people and therefore need to be punished.
Africans deserve to be punished for the crime of selling their people into slavery. Their effort to make themselves seem like they are victims whom others enslaved is childish and unconvincing. They were selling themselves to each other before they began selling themselves to Arabs and eventually to Europeans.
Africans have no regard for human life; Africans do not respect human beings. If you want your self esteem damaged relate to Africans. Africans abused their people, in the past and present, and ought to pay a severe price for this evil behavior.
To me, one century of punishing Africans for their past and present evil behaviors seem appropriate.
As I see it, Africans must be made to suffer for their sins. One way to do that is to use them in a merciless manner to develop
Africa
.
Left alone, each African looks after his self interests but seldom social interests. The guardians are needed to make sure that Africans care for public service; the guardians ought to punish those Africans perceived to live only for their selves.
PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY
Every statement that an individual makes on politics is, ip so facto, rooted in the individual’s philosophy. Whether we are conscious of it or not our political behaviors are rooted in our world view, our view of what life means to us, human nature, and where we go after we die. We all have preconceptions and presuppositions of what reality is that influence our political behavior. There is no use denying ones apriori, the best that one can do is understand it and make it clear to ones self and to the public.
Just so you know where I am coming from and what actuates me, I was raised a Catholic Christian but at age thirteen declared myself an agnostic. Later in life I revisited religions, most of them: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, Gnosticism etc and used the information that I gleaned from them to construct what seems to me a correct metaphysics. My metaphysics is the philosophers’ religion. Like Plato I believe that there is something behind the appearances of this world. What that something is I do not pretend to know. You cannot label or define me, for to define a person is to limit him; I cannot be limited to this or that world view.
By nature I am idealistic but I have learned to be realistic, to adjust to the imperfect reality that idealists are running from. I call myself a realistic idealist.
I am idealistic in the sense that I used my thinking to come up with ideas on how the world ought to become. I have a pretty good idea of what I am (imperfect) and what I ought to become (perfect). I see my imperfections and wish that I were an ideal alternative to them, a perfect self.
I see other people’s imperfections and wish that they were the ideal alternative to them that I used my mind to invent.
I see the imperfections of social institutions and the world in general and used my mind and imagination to invent how they ought to become, perfect.
My ideals like all ideals, from Plato to all of us, are, of course, in the nature of wishful thinking, fantasy, really.
The real world is always imperfect; real people are always imperfect and would remain so for as long as they live in space, time and matter.
You cannot make human beings perfect; you cannot make imperfect human beings institutions perfect for their institutions reflect their imperfect nature.
Nevertheless, idealists wish for idealized versions of themselves, other people and social institutions. An idealist must wish for perfection; that is okay but he must have the wisdom to know the difference between wishes and reality.
The idealist cannot totally adapt to the imperfect real world; he must wish for beauty but must live with ugliness, the ugliness that is human nature and the world in general.
Reality is not art; people are not works of fiction; people are flesh and blood hence imperfect beings.
As a realistic idealist I wish for perfection and then juxtapose my wishes with reality and accept that my wishes cannot be realized, at least, not entirely. I wish for a unified
Africa
but in reality what would emerge would be different from my wishes. Such is life, c’est la vie, grind your teeth and accept reality.
I have used my thinking to conceptualize the origin of the world and where folks would go to when they die.
Science did the same thing. Astronomy came up with the Big Bang hypothesis to explain the origin of the material world. According to the latest astronomical story of creation, fifteen billion years ago all matter and energy were concentrated in a ball the size of a particle. That pre-singular state explored and in nanoseconds invented space, time and matter. Matter, in time, formed the stars, planets and eventually biological life. Quarks (the current idea of the smallest sub-particle) formed electrons, protons and neutrons and the later formed atoms and atoms formed the various elements which, in turn, formed biological life forms. Biological life forms produced thinking in an epiphenomenal manner.
The Big Bang story is a fairy tale if ever there is one. Nevertheless, it is a useful story of the origin of matter.
Human beings need material and spiritual myths of creation, a story of how they came into being. Science has provided us with a material myth of creation but not a spiritual one. Below is my own mythology. My story of creation is a mental construct and is not factual. Nevertheless, it is what I would like to think is real but whether it is real or not I do not know. If, however, you ask me what I believe in I would give you the following metaphysics (which I elaborated on in other writings).
In the Beginning was God. (There cannot be a beginning; things, in some form or another, have always existed otherwise where did they come from? Please do remember that we are presenting a story, not a fact; we are talking mythology not verified science.)
God extended himself to his son. He gave his son the ability to extend his own self to his own son. The son of God extended himself to his own son. In this manner creation emanates from God to us and from us to our children. Creation is a forever continuing activity.
God created us and gave us the power to create and we do create our children; we create with the creative power of God in us; we do not create with our own powers. Your father produced you, and gave you the ability to produce your own children and you produce your own children who, in turn, produce their children, ad infinitum. Creation has no beginning and no end.
God and his children are one; they literally share one self. Where God ends and his children begin is nowhere.
God is in his children and they are in him and in each other. There is no space and time between God and his children.
In their unity God and his children, the whole and its parts, are changeless, permanent, immortal and all knowing.
Somewhere along the line the children of God resented the fact that God created them and that when they do create their own children they create with the creative power of God in them, not by their own powers. They wanted God to die so that they would create themselves. God is immortal and cannot die. Therefore, the children of God contrived to seem separated from their father. They, as it were, went to sleep and in their sleep dream that they are now separated from their father and from each other. They invented a world that is the opposite of their father’s world. (All these are metaphors trying to explain what has not, in fact, happened but seem to have happened; it has not happened because as I write we are in unified spirit though we seem in separated selves housed in bodies living in space and time. We are always in spirit though we dream that we are in matter.)
In heaven all is spirit and unified; in the world they invented as a replacement world the children of God, the parts of the whole seem separated from each other. They invented space, time and matter to make their desired separated selves seem real to them.
In the temporal universe, I am over here and you are over there and we do not see our father, God. (God is not a person; he is the symbol for the whole; we are the symbol for the parts of the whole.) We house ourselves in bodies, and bodies give us a sense of boundaries and we believe in our separated states.
GUILT AND PUNISHMENT
The act of separating from God and from each other produced a feeling that we did something wrong. Call it original sin, as the Gnostic Christian Church did, or what you like.
We all feel guilty for separating from God, and from each other, from our true self, unified spirit self. We feel like we did something terribly wrong to our father and expect him to punish us. To avoid his anticipated punishment we run from him and hide from him.
To live on earth, to be a human being, is to have existential guilt and to expect punishment, and since God is not punitive to punish ourselves in lieu of God punishing us.
Guilt is painful. We try to get rid of our painful existential guilt. One way to do so is to blame other persons for the act of separation (now disguised as the wrong they did to us on earth).
I will subtly attack you (for example, by disrespecting you) and believe that I am not attacking you since the attack is psychological (psychological attacks are probably more hurtful and lasting than physical pain) and then get you angry at me and you physically attack me.
Now seeing that you have physically attacked me, I tell myself that I am an innocent victim of your attack and see you as guilty.
Perceiving myself as innocent and you as guilty I desire that you be punished. Each of us, every human being, perceives himself as innocent (an attempt to escape from existential guilt from separation) and sees other persons as guilty (making them responsible for separation).
Perceiving ones self as innocent and others as guilty one wants them punished but not ones self. We want other people punished but not us.
Black folk (who judge themselves as innocent) want white folk (whom they judge as guilty) punished but not them. Igbos (who judges themselves as innocent) want Hausas (whom they judge as guilty) punished but not them. White folk who judge themselves innocent despite using black folk as slaves want black folk punished, and punish them by relegating them to menial jobs and second class state in white society.
All these are, of course, childish attempts to obviate their existential sense of guilt; they are attempts to eat ones cake and still have it. We are separated from God and feel guilty, and want to retain that separation from God but not feel guilty by making our brothers the guilty ones, those to be punished by God!
From God’s perspective he and his children are still one. God is spirit and in our reality we are spirit. We are forever in spirit, in union with God and each other. We cannot separate from God and from each other; we can only seem to separate. Because we have not separated from God and from each other we have done nothing wrong; we remain as God created us, unified with him and each other; we have not sinned; we are still innocent.
While still in unified spirit, hence innocent, we dream that we are separated but in reality we are still unified. (When you have experienced what is variously called mystical union, Samadhi, Nirvana, Satori etc, you would know that we have not separated from God and from each other; we remain as God created us: unified with him and with each other.)
In heaven, that is, spiritual union, unified spirit, there is no subject and object, no seer and seen; in unified spirit we are all one; we are one spirit self with infinite units in it; one mind with infinite minds in it; in spirit we are all joined to each other.
God is spirit and knows that his children are spirit and are eternally joined to him, are one with him. He does not know that his children are separated from him. He does not know that his children feel guilty for separating from him. To God all his children are eternally unified with hum hence guiltless, sinless and innocent.
However, in spirit, when God tries to communicate with his children he observes that they are sleeping and dreaming and could not hear him. He does not want to forcefully awaken them, for he is not rude. He permits them to sleep and dream. But he wants to make their dreams pleasant.
Wishing that the world his children invented is pleasant, God created the Holy Spirit and as him enters the world his children created, the temporal universe.
As it were (we are talking in metaphors, figures of speech, remember,) God entered his sleeping children’s minds. In their minds he tells them to love one another and to forgive one another; and, above all, he tells them that they have not separated from him and from each other and are not guilty; God tells them that they remain as he created them: unified and innocent. But they do not believe him; they prefer seeing themselves as separated, for that is the objective of the dream, and to project their guilt to their brothers.
THE HOLY TRINITY
In the temporal universe, in our minds, is the unified self (holy self): God and all of us as o self; the Holy Spirit and the separated self, the ego. (The three states of self and mind are metaphors, not literal.)
When we see ourselves as separated from God and from other people we are in ego state, and must feel guilty, and project our guilt to other people and want them punished for our presumed sin of separation.
When we see ourselves as one with all people, love them all, we are operating out of the Holy Spirit and feel less guilty; we still feel some guilt; as long as we live in the world of space, time and matter we feel some separation hence feel some guilt; in this world we can reduce our guilt feeling by loving all of us but we cannot eliminate our guilt feeling. The only way to eliminate all guilt feeling is to overcome the world, to give up the world of separation and return to the world of unified spirit; Jesus Christ did exactly that.
On earth we are not aware of our unified spirit, and its unified mind. In the awareness of unified spirit and unified mind one is not aware of this world, for one would be awake and not sleeping.
Our extant world is a place where the children of God come to sleep and dream that they are separated from their father and from each other; a place they seem the opposite of their true self. Their real self is unified spirit self but on earth they see themselves as separated physical selves; they are deluded. Indeed, in as much as they see other people who seem to live in bodies but who do not live in bodies they are seeing those that are not there; they are, therefore, hallucinating. To live on earth is to be psychotic; to be a human being is to be insane; to be insane is to believe what is not true as true (separation is not true) and to see what is not there as there(we are always in spirit which is formless but see ourselves in bodies).
The world of matter, space and time is not real; but we want it to be real and defend it and defense makes it seem real to us. When we stop defending it, forgive it, we recognize that the world is not real. Forgive all people and suddenly you experience yourself in unified spirit, a formless self.
You have probably heard the statement: we are saved by faith not by our works. Paul made that statement and Martin Luther adumbrated on it. You probably do not know what it means. It means that we need to do nothing to be saved. We are already saved for we always live in unified spirit. On the other hand, we seem to do something to make us live in the world of separation. Now stop doing whatever you do to make you live in body and its ego. Undo what you did to make separation seem real to you. You undo the ego and its world with faith. Faith in oneness; faith in unified spirit, faith in God is all you need have. We are saved by faith not by what we do. Have faith in oneness of mankind. Oneness means love. Therefore love all mankind and you experience oneness (in spirit).
Do not bear grievances against those who wronged you; do not have grudges against you or other people; do not seek vengeance and revenge for the ills done to you in the past; forgive all persons for their past errors and work for our present good.
The above is my metaphysics, a metaphor, not a literal fact. It is a figure of speech I used in my effort to explain reality, a reality that cannot be explained in words. Language is adaptation to the world of separated selves hence does not apply to the world of unified self. God is ineffable.
I am not motivated to convince you that God exists or does not exist, for it does not matter whether we believe in him or not; reality is not for us to determine but to accept. Unified spirit is real, it is the only reality that there is, the rest is mere noise and games the sleeping and dreaming children of God play; when they get tired of their childish games they awaken from their sleep-dreams and return home to their real home, unified spirit aka heaven.
In our game of separation we feel guilty and try to deny that guilt by making other persons seem the guilty ones. One way we play that game is to subtly attack others and then see they counter attack us, thereby giving us the impression that they are guilty and we are innocent. Do you get the point? We subtly attack other persons and provoke them into overtly attacking us thus giving us the impression that we are guiltless and that those we see attack us are guilty and are to be punished. We justify punishing them and now they see us as the attackers and justify attacking and punishing us. That way the world remains a conflicted place.
Africans subtly attack non-Africans thereby making them angry at Africans and counter attack Africans. Now seeing what others did to them Africans see themselves as innocent and others as guilty. We all do little things that irritate other people and they feel angry at us and attack us. We see their attacks on us and see ourselves as their innocent victims.
The trick is to realize that there are no innocent persons on this earth, and that we are doing these things to each other and overlook what we did to each other and still work for each others welfare.
Forgive other people the wrongs they did to you in the past and work for our mutual good in the present. That is how I see life. To me the good life is working for our common interest.
If I practice what I preach I tend to feel peaceful and happy. Practice is the key word here, for merely talking about it wont do one any good.
Love all people, forgive all people the wrongs they did to you in the past, correct our behaviors in the present by teaching love and work for our mutual good. This is what life means to me. It is how I see the good life.
I do not accept this view of life because God gave it to me or because it is this or that religion‘s view. I accept it because it makes sense to me. It seems self evidently true and I accept it on that basis.
If it makes sense to you by all means accept it but if not discard it. Whatever you do, however, you must work for our mutual good.
For our present purposes, if you are an African you must work to unify and develop
Africa
. If you work against
Africa
you are my enemy. As an enemy of
Africa
hence my enemy, I would not hesitate, not for a second, sending you to the spiritual world so that the next time you come back to the material world you work for our collective good. A leader does not hesitate removing the obstacles on the path to realizing his goals; those obstacles include people.
I do not believe that people die when they physically die; I believe that they merely come back to dream some more until they get it right, dream loving dreams.
I believe that eliminating those who give us bad dreams is not an evil; sending people out of this dream merely give them another opportunity to go change their minds and return and give all of us good dreams. I am sure that you get my point, don’t you? People’s death, mine included, does not bother me at all; what I am interested in is doing what serves people’s good.
CONCLUSION
In this essay I stated my wish for a unified Africa, a federated
Africa
with a central government and state governments, each state composed of a major African tribe.
I pointed out that there are obstacles to achieving my ideal
Africa
: Africans history of slavery and consequent culture of self centeredness.
I pointed out that Africans tend to be very fearful. I pointed out that we need a group of less fearful leaders to help eradicate fear from Africans psyche.
I pointed out the need to have a dual governing structure in Africa; one, the usual democratic structure of governance, and two, an authoritarian structure of folk dedicated to making sure that everything is done to unify and develop
Africa
.
As I see it, we must mix democracy and autocracy, freedom and totalitarianism, to modernize
Africa
.
I believe in what I said and if given the opportunity to govern
Africa
would immediately implement it.
I hope that if my wishes make sense to you that you, too, seek the opportunity to implement them in
Africa
.
If my fantasy of how
Africa
ought to become does not make sense to you, well, nobody is making you accept it.
Whatever you believe, and you have a right to your belief, please work for
Africa
’s union and development.
With the two structures of governance in place the only business in town would be economic development.
Africa
cannot be economically developed as long as it is politically unstable and the people are prone to thieving. But with a stable government in place and with a resolute group that clamps any thief into long term prisons (and use them to perform public works)
Africa
would be turned around. The various state governments would be given the green light to develop their economies. Annual awards would be made to states with the best economic performance. I believe that with iron will resolution Africa can accomplish what
China
is accomplishing and even surpass her. I believe that if real men, not the present thieves governing her, take over the governance of Africa within a century
Africa
would be developed and Africans would finally become able to feed themselves instead of always having hats in hand begging others for help.
* This essay is an exercise in political idealism. I permitted my imagination to run wild, ignored what seems the African reality, and come up with what it wishes that would be needed to turn things around in the continent of woes, Africa. I thought aloud; you may call it magical thinking. I did not try to make it realistic. I leave it to political realism to transform into what is doable in the real world where power blocks (interest groups, political parties, the rich etc) jostle with each other, bargain with each other, trade off their desires, log roll and resultant public policies are compromises that all can live with but satisfy no one in particular. So, make of my dream or is it fantasy what you wish. When dreams die the man dies. A people without dreams, visions, are a dead people. So far, dreams of what man and society ought to become have not come out of
Africa
. All that seems to come out of
Africa
is the story of human suffering. Henceforth, let us hear of dreams of great things coming from that seeming dead continent and let realism make of them what it may. Life on earth is like Sisyphus’s heroic rolling a stone up a hill only to see it roll right down, yet rolling it up again, again and again and….
Ozodi Thomas Osuji
November 10, 2007
ozodiosuji@gmail.com
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Posted by Robot| 09.11.2007 14:25