The African mindset: too much intrigue; lots of intolerance; too little selflessness. 

By 

Babatunde .A. Ayinmode.

Victoria, Australia.

The African mindset: too much intrigue; lots of intolerance; too little selflessness.

There were three articles on the African mindset in the world wide web recently; the first was ‘the only saviour of Africa: Liberate African mind’, the second ‘The African mindset: A functional Analysis’, the third was a rejoinder to the second. The subject of whether the African mind is peculiar or not, is as divisive as it is real. Why is it that black communities and countries worldwide are not doing as well as others (races)? Why is it that black communities or countries worldwide are the most unorganised and backward when in most cases they are endowed with lots of resources? Why is it that it is the black communities or countries that are the most disunited, fractionalised, disorganised and strife prone. Why is it that it is the black communities or countries that you have the largest number of tribes, ethnic, dialects and language groups? For example Nigeria has over two hundred ethnic groups. Why are we so easy to divide and oppress? Why do we often think of ‘self’ only at the detriment of the group (community or country)?

Why? Why? Why? Honestly, it’s difficult to provide adequate answers, but surely there is something peculiar with the African mindset. The vast gap between the ‘others’ and us cannot be by accident; it is time we told ourselves the truth. It is now time to throw off superficialities and dig deep. There is no doubt that history has been rather unfair to us. There was the slave trade problem then colonisation; both gave and still give us lots of opportunities to blame others for our problems. However with the world gradually becoming a global village it is increasingly difficult to continue to hold others responsible for our pathetic state of underdevelopment. In a world that you can acquire technology or get it transferred to you ‘without much sweat’ if you can organise an investment or productivity friendly society, Black people no longer have too much opportunity to blame others for their problems, time is running out. Instead of investment or productivity friendly environments, what we have is instability, conflicts, corruption and consequently underdevelopment; characterized by lack of basic infrastructure, low productivity, low level of investment and poverty.

These preambles foreground the hard issue of the peculiar African mindset. Is the African mindset different from the ‘others’? The author of ‘the only saviour of Africa: Liberate African mind’ named three well thought of problems (inferiority complex, colonial mentality and mental slavery) afflicting African leaders and elites as been responsible for why black people are not doing well. He went further to give several examples of terrible misdemeanour by African leaders and elites to justify his well-constructed model of the African mindset. I was deeply moved by the emotional force of that article, so much so I would have preferred (with unreserved apology to the author) to title it the ‘ lamentation for the African mindset’. I could feel the pain of the writer through and through.

The author of ‘the African mindset: a functional Analysis’, delved into behavioural theories to carefully construct his own version of the African mindset. He lavishly gave examples of how Nigerians re-enforce the terrible behaviours of their leaders by allowing them to get away unpunished, only for them (leaders) to perpetrate worse atrocities, thus setting up a vicious cycle. In effect African leaders and elites are corrupt because their people are tolerant of their behaviour. He wove this argument around the principle of ‘determinism’ (every phenomenon in the universe occurs as a result of other events). While I agree with most of the points he projected, I suggest that we cannot afford to over-intellectualise the matter of the African mindset. The issue must be reduced to the basics, so that the ordinary man on the street can be carried along. The subject is too important to be reserved for the consumption of the elites alone.

It may be easy to suggest that the African mindset suffers from ‘inferiority complex and mental slavery’ because of our sickening underdevelopment, but the fact remains that all human beings share the same attributes irrespective of race. Every race has its own share of the good and the bad (of lazy and hard working, of honest and dishonest, of thieves, of corruption, of embezzlement, of bribery and rigging, etc). The desire to have the basic necessities of life and live life to the fullest is universal. To have lofty ambitions and to have the desire to succeed are individual attributes common to all races, no wonder you have many black achievers scattered across the globe.

Blacks are not inferior in respect to all God given attributes. At the individual level, given reasonable opportunity, blacks are comparable to the ‘others’. This is evidenced by the large number of thriving black people in all areas of human endeavours (from business, to the arts, science and technology, etc) albeit most may be in Diasporas. What then is the problem? Why are they backward as communities, groups and nations? The answer is that blacks find it difficult to work as a ‘group’, it will be wrong to say they are incapable of working as a group. It is this individualism or intolerance for group cooperation and defence that is probably responsible for the break-up of blacks into incredibly large number of ethnic nationalities. It is also probable that this same factor, as well, made and still makes blacks vulnerable to external forces of ‘divide and rule’. It may therefore also probably explain why they were (and still are) the ones most susceptible to slavery (mental or physical) and to oppression as suggested by historical and contemporary facts.

Why is it that Africans find it difficult to work as a group? The answer again is simple; it is because they engage in too much intrigue. What then is intrigue?

‘Intrigue can mean many things at the same time, intrigue is intriguing’

‘Intrigue is being too clever, trying to be too smart’

‘Intrigue is about deception, conspiracy, plotting and scheming’

‘Intrigue is about widening the goal post each time your opponent is about to win’

‘It is saying everyman to himself when it pleases you’

‘It is about -if I cannot get what I want, let the whole system be destroyed’

‘It is about- if I can not beat them I join them and the end justifies the means’

‘It is about - I am the wisest and every other person is foolish’

‘Intrigue is about remote control and hanging on the fence’

‘It is about hidden agenda and dribbling your opponents’

‘It is about saying what you did not mean and meaning what you did not say’

‘It is about being white when your are black’

‘Intrigue is about laughing last and winner take all, but it is also a two edge sword’

‘Too much intrigue cut relationships, nurtures selfishness, disunity and intolerance’

‘Intrigue is never-ending’

Whereas most people (groups or communities), irrespective of race, will probably need (or have always needed) small doses of intrigue to ‘survive’ in this depraved world, I strongly (I may be ‘very’ wrong) feel that blacks may have had an overdose of it. The nature and intensity of our intrigue is often more ‘group destructive’ or ‘misapplied’. Too much intrigue is not only counter-productive but could be fatal. Blacks are probably too clever to work together. They are probably always involved in the game of trying to out-manoeuvre one another, at the end they lose out.

The hypothetical model is something like this: imagine a family where every individual is trying to outwit the other, extend this to villages where every family is trying to outmanoeuvre the other; further extend this to a situation where every village want to out-smart the other; keep extending this scenarios to every town, every dialectic groups; every ethnic group, every local government area, every state; every nations; et cetera. The cumulative effect of this ‘excessive’ internal struggle is best described by the saying ‘ a house divide against itself can not stand’. It cannot stand (effectively) against slavery (economic, mental or physical), external manipulation or oppression.

There seems to be constant disruptive intrigue in black communities that predispose to underdevelopment and external manipulation, except these are controlled we are likely to continue to wander in the wilderness. For example why is that, it is in Africa that virtually all elections and census results are alleged rigged, never accepted and nearly always leads to some form of violence or the other. We forget that election and census problems occur even in the so-called developed countries also; but do not generate the types of crisis we have in African. It is the nature and intensity of intrigue that account for this difference. While the ‘others’ are prepared to preserve the common good by sacrificing selfish interest and individualism for the ‘group interest’, we are not.

Like a Yoruba proverb (‘kaka ki eku ma je sese afi se awa danu’) literarily translated, alerts; if the rat discovers for whatever reason that it cannot have your grains it will scatter and waste it in whatever way it can. If after exhausting all forms of intrigue and the objective is not achieved we then, result unwittingly to self-destructive tactics. For example when a section of the political class (or even ethnic group) fail to secure power they invite the military to take over, and eventually also get caught in the web of brutal dictatorship. Thinking they were ‘too clever’ they became foolish. Like another Yoruba proverb (‘obo ni o de ara re’) instructs that the monkey in its intrigue and manipulation will eventually and unwittingly get itself tied up or trapped, so it is with our politicians. This example (of our political class) can be replicated in many areas of our life as a people or as nations. Could these factors have contributed to our inability to adequately resist slavery, colonisation, and bad and corrupt leadership, et cetera? Probably.

Ultimately too much intrigue become harmful, that is the story down history lane.

‘It is too much intrigue that makes us easy to divide and rule and to choose bad leaders’

‘It is too much intrigue that makes many of us so deeply religious and yet so crooked’.

‘It is too much intrigue that makes many African countries discriminate against black immigrants unbelievably more than many European nations’,

‘It is too much intrigues that made several thousand of Nigerians sent abroad for training at government expense not to return home to honour their contractual obligations’.

‘It is only too much intrigue that can explain our avidity for foreign things (goods and services) and for plundering the treasury at home to enrich foreign banks’.

‘It is too much intrigue that make a Nigerian on return to Nigeria after only one year in America to begin to twist or even bite his tongue to speak like an American’.

‘With present-day Nigerians, too much intrigue is still countless ’.

While agreeing that the African mindset needs liberation from ‘inferiority complex, mental slavery and colonial mentality; I insist that it is more important to liberate ourselves from our intolerant, parochial, individualistic, ‘each man for himself’, unattached, ‘floating’ and self-seeking mindset. Putting it in crude terms we need to liberate ‘ourselves from ourselves’. We must liberate ourselves from too much intrigue. We must minimise or set a limit to our intrigue. It is our inability to work together (disunity) that made us unable to resist the factors (slavery and colonisation), which have so battered the psyche of majority of our elites and leaders that today they are still entrapped in inferiority complex and ‘mental slavery’. I also agree that liberating the African mind will require education, but this must start very early in life especially at the family and school levels.

The most critical short-term approach is to put in place systems or mechanisms that will help us put high premium on ‘group’ interest and engender unity across every boundary. Democratic institutions can assist greatly in creating the right environment to install these systems or mechanisms, and must therefore be the benchmark for all African countries. We must all make sure that democratic rule is defended in Nigeria at all cost; once this can be done the sky is the limit.

The writer wrote in from Victoria, Australia